The rights of being wronged

A post about getting to the heart of the matter of divisive labels

When I heard people talking about the ‘far right’ recently, I was confused.

Did they mean the movement formerly known as the ‘far right’? (God, I sound like Prince!)…….or the new far right?

Are they essentially the same?

Was it like RnB where one thing has emerged from the roots of something else, yet calls itself the same name?

(If you’ve ever suggested putting on some RnB, meaning some 90’s Aaliyah or TLC, only to be met with some hardcore 60’s Ike Turner or James Brown, you’ll know what I mean.)

Where does one begin and one end?

Was it a spectrum like autism?

Or was it more like the song, ironically by the band ‘Free’.

Is everyone “All Right Now”?

Because we need to know, don’t we? If we’re going to start dishing out labels, we need to know clearly what those terms now mean.

Why do I care?

Well, back in the days of lockdown protests, I too, found myself tarred with that curious, icky brush.

‘Far right’.

Me, a former Labour and Green voter!

For real!

At the time, I found it both perplexing and amusing. Why was a refusal to go along with the groupthink that was ‘Covid’ deemed ‘far right’?

Was I some gullible fool susceptible to foreign propaganda?

Really?

Certainly my own objection to measures taken in 2020, hinged not on whether Covid was ‘real’ or if lockdowns lowered cases, but rather, if I considered it ethical to demand something of an individual ‘for the common good’.

I decided it was not. That it was immoral to ask healthy people to stay home, not see their relatives and give up school.

Radical, hey?

Or should that be ‘radically right’?

Fast forward, a few years on, and it is now anyone who is anti-immigration who is being labelled  ‘far right’.

I should add at this point that I personally have no strong feelings about immigration. I volunteer teaching English to a Kurdish refugee. I have been lucky enough to live in several countries, so it would be a bit rich for me to get precious about others doing the same. I support those in genuine need receiving help.

BUT

I do not for one minute believe that everyone who is worried about immigration is ‘far right’.

Many people have concerns and it’s a failure to address them and offer reassurance and constructive solutions that has drawn many of those people towards the more extreme political movements and unsavoury figures out there.

Dismissing all those people, many of whom are politically homeless, as ‘far right’ is adding to the problem.

If those people are now deemed ‘far right’, what are those formerly known as the far right now known as? The scum we saw looting shops, attacking and intimidating people? Causing havoc.

Even further right? Furthest right?

OR JUST PLAIN WRONG ’UNS?

A quip I read recently which resonated, was ‘right and left meet in a tunnel round the back’.

How that spoke to me. Made sense. I imagined them canoodling like sneaky teenagers behind bike sheds. Both movements claiming to want different things, but actually, the greater goal - a power grab - being all too similar. Just achieved by different means.

If the lockdown marches taught me anything, it is just how easily causes and protests can be misrepresented and infiltrated. After seeing the way false leaders hijacked the ‘freedom movement’ funnelling people off on all kinds of other crazy tangents, not only would I never again attend a protest of any type, but I would be reluctant to align myself with any so-called ‘movement’.

People, do not be played!

If you have an issue with immigration, you do not really have an issue with immigrants. Immigrants are ordinary humans, after all. Can you really blame those people for doing what you yourself would probably do in the same situation? If you had the chance of a better life? Who wouldn’t?

Your problem, is with your government and how they handle it!

The brief - in case you hadn’t got the memo - is to keep everyone fighting amongst themselves, and over the next few years, this will intensify.

We will see immigrants played off against those born here.

We will see women’s rights played off against trans rights.

We will see Islam played off against Christianity and Judaism.

Some of these issues, we may feel passionate about - women’s rights is one of mine - but we must be careful not to play into the hands of those who benefit from our quarrelling. From distasteful individuals and companies on social media pocketing huge payouts from our spats, to those invested in war arms.

All this, as governments rub their hands together in glee, salivating as you walk willingly into their waiting traps - more control over our actions, greater surveillance, new invasive laws, facial recognition, digital ID and further globalisation.

All these things, of course, will be presented as solutions to ‘problems’.

Problems YOU caused!

YOU!

YOUR fault!

Damn…..if only you’d have played nicely, Big Brother wouldn’t have had to do all that nasty stuff!

You really left him no choice, you know…..

All solutions will be duly executed in the familiar name of ‘safety’.

How about we carve a different name in this thriving tree of life we have been blessed with?

How about we make it ‘humanity’?

To return to my original question.

In actuality, there is only ONE right.

ONE ‘right’ that truly means anything.

And one day, it may be all you have LEFT.

It is not governed by shades of ideology or political dogma.

It is the one that is the opposite of wrong.

Of hate. Of fighting. Of greed.

Where do you find it, this ‘right’?

This LOVE?

Bang in the CENTRE of your heart, of course.

PS: You can find more of these kind of posts under ‘opinion piece’ at the top of the page.

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