Let’s leave aside the fact that, to the extent that the words “left” and “right” still have a meaning, this is the exact opposite of the original meaning, in which the “right” was the party of State power and the “left” the party of individual liberty.

Let me concentrate instead on the idiotic “far-right” label. In Europe, this label is used to group together 2 polar opposites: parties which are anti-capitalist, anti-American, and antisemitic [the obvious examples being Le Pen and the BNP]; and parties which are market-liberal, pro-American, and Zionist [the obvious example being Geert Wilders]. To complicate matters further, there are parties such as the Vlaams Belang, which are, or pretend to be, part of the 2nd group, but have not managed to repudiate their connections to the 1st group.

Of course, there is a difference between the anti-capitalist, anti-American anti-Semites of the “far-right” and those of the “far-left”: the former are, or tend to be, white supremacists, while the latter tend to be anti-white. However, the “far-right” anti-capitalists are united to the “far-left”, not only by anti-capitalism, anti-Americanism, and antisemitism, but also by intellectual genealogy. In this respect, the real eye-opener for me was neither The Road to Serfdom nor Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism [both valuable books in their different ways], but George Watson’s The Lost Literature of Socialism.

I once had a date with a man who seemed normal, but in the car on the way home he began to spout conspiracy theories. When I said jokingly, “Oh yeah, and all the jews were told to leave the Trade Center towers, too..,” and he replied, “That did happen,” I knew I was in big trouble.

Surely they lack the basic capacities for reason necessary for an argument? (After all, a whopping great lump of doublethink they have to manage is that an all-powerful US conspiracy is capable of contriving and covering up an intricate plot to kill 3,000 of its citizens and destroy two iconic buildings, yet is happy to sit back and let a few spotty geeks expose the whole thing). Isn’t it best just to point and laugh?

67 years after Hitler’s treachery with Barbarossa, Stalin’s retaliatory propaganda that the Nazis were “far right”, even though during his pact with Hitler he had acknowledged deep ideological sympathies, still has traction. Describing myself as centre right, I find the idea that my political instincts, taken to extreme, would be anything like Nazism or the BNP to be deeply offensive. The extreme extrapolation of my views would bring me to J.S.Mill, not Hitler. I want, above all, freedom – as much of it as can be commensurate with security and justice. To ask someone who has not known freedom what he thinks when he finds it, is to understand this much better.

The far right are neo-Liberals, not Nazis or KKK supporters, and the BNP, Facsists, Nazis and Communists are all authoritarian far-left. The only differences between Communists and the others is the element of Nationalism, and it was missing this vital point that duped Stalin. Other common elements of the Left (in their instincts) involve the flawed concept of the perfectibility of Man and the elimination of individuality. This programme requires the coercion or elimination of dissent, not freedom.

Look at the political spectrum that way, and the hate that meets the Right (of any flavour) and alliances like that between the SWP and Hamas makes much more sense. In particular, the Left Tribe hates: the USA; Tory Toffs; the Countryside Alliance; Israel (especially Likud); Orangemen; Serb Nationalists; Le Pen; Vlaams Blok; White Africans; Anglicans. If you are not one of those, the some on the Left will welcome you, particularly if you want to change the world – in what direction and with what methods seems to be less important. That is, like Red and Black ants, until their territory starts to overlap with yours.

My impression is that these people are really very few, but the rise of the Internet has given them the chance to get in touch and encourage each other. And in a bunch, as they are now, I would not regard them as altogether harmless.