Extremists!
Who do you think are extremists? Do you agree with Tories and Republicans?
The British government has just redefined ‘extremist’ (see above) and listed a few organisations it thinks fits the bill. Ministers and officials are not to be allowed to have any contact with them. This is, of course, a slippery slope it would be best not to go down. The list includes those it considers Islamist or neo-Nazi, but not other kinds of extreme right wing groups. Like Republicans, they rail against left wing groups’ ‘wokism’ and ‘communism’ so it would not be surprising to see some of those added to the list, like Just Stop Oil, whose protesting members have already been given severe jail terms.
Over the years, I have watched the Conservative Party become more and more extreme right, as has the Republican Party. This became noticeable to me under Maggie Thatcher, with her ‘greed is good’ attitude and economic policies that have made inequality in Britain more and more extreme. According to Our World in Data, “during the 1980s, inequality increased substantially in the UK” and since then, “income growth at the very, very top of the income distribution has outstripped the strong growth of incomes across the rest of the distribution”. Maggie Thatcher became PM in 1979. Far from supporting workers, the backbone of the country, she declared war on them with the miner’s strike, just as Reagan had declared war on air…