The (not so?) Far Right14 Oct 2022 20:59
'It certainly is. Calling Tories the "far right" just goes to show his ignorance.' GateBoy (the all knowing)
'Lord Evans of Weardale, who led Britain’s domestic security service between 2006 and 2013, suggested that the threat of far-right terrorism in Britain could be diminishing following Boris Johnson’s election victory a few months earlier.
The supposed blunting of that threat was not, he said, because the ideological extremism which sustains the far-right was fading away. Instead it was because many of the “alienated” voters who are usually sucked into the British National Party (BNP) or English Defence League (EDL) felt as if their voices had been heard at the ballot box after the Conservative victory the previous December.
“Whatever you think of the outcome of the recent election in the UK, the fact that some of the legitimate concerns that were being used as a pretext by English nationalists have now been formally acknowledged at the ballot box might be a good outcome, even though it is sort of disconcerting for southern liberals,” the former MI5 director general – now a crossbench peer – said.
“There was a significant alienated and disenfranchised group out there who didn’t think the system was taking any notice of them. And that’s where you need to be concerned about extremists exploiting legitimate concerns.
“Disaffected English nationalists were manifesting themselves at the extremes in things like the British National Party and National Action, which fed the undertone that articulated itself as extreme rightwing terrorism.”
In the weeks after the election, it emerged that more than 5,000 supporters of far-right group Britain First – whose leaders were jailed for hate crimes against Muslims in 2018 had joined the Conservatives. “We will support a party that is willing to take a firm stance against radical Islam and it looks like the Tories are willing to do that,” the organisation’s spokeswoman said.'
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