Sunday 2 December 2018

I Am Not a Number


As a keen observer of the far right, one thing I've noticed is that the further right a person is, the more he or she generally tends to view all people as members of a group, rather than as individuals. It's as if their pattern recognition faculty, as humans are essentially a pattern recognising species, is in overdrive. It's the cause of so much misery in the world today.


For example, we know that the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful and want nothing more than to get on with their lives but, for the far right, the actions of a few tarnishes an entire group; all benefit claimants are spongers; all refugees are economic migrants; all homeless people are drug addicts; anyone with left-leaning views, or any political party with the word socialist in it, is communist.

It is infinitely easier to pass judgement based on ignorance and move on, than it is to analyse and take a chance that your view of yourself and your world may be called into question.

Analyse and discuss.


2 comments:

Steve Borthwick said...

I agree the far-right are guilty of an over-eagerness to indulge in identity politics. But, if you think about it, so are the far-left; who get themselves into equal irrational trouble with gender, race, religion and equality of outcome. They also seem susceptible to labeling people who have different views to them as "Nazis" or "racists" etc. Perhaps it's not so much to do with left-right alignment and more to do with being at the extremity that's the problem?

Chairman Bill said...

Indeed - they lump all fascist together when there are many nuances in the fascist end of the spectrum....