From the Sunday Telegraph:
Labour heartland turning to BNP, warns Cruddas
More and more disgruntled Labour voters are switching to support the far-right British National Party, deputy leadership hopeful Jon Cruddas will warn today. Mr Cruddas, a former Downing Street aide, will suggest people in Labour heartlands have lost hope and turned to the BNP in protest at mainstream politics….
“There are signs that the fascist party is becoming a home for many disgruntled former Labour voters.”
The human ability to rationalize away clear and incontravertible evidence in favor of its cherished beliefs never ceases to astound me. Setting aside the question of whether the BNP is actually fascist or not, this movement of left-wingers towards fascism is not the mysterious and unusual counter-intuitive phenomenon it is usually described to be. From the very start, when the Socialist Mussolini first penned the Manifesto of the Fascist struggle, leftists from British suffragettes to Le Pen supporters have been drawn to the evolved form of socialism that is fascism.
One would think the fact that fascist parties inevitably draw primarily from other left-wing parties would suffice to demonstrate its nature, (never mind the host of similarities between the ideologies and governing practices), but it seems that many, if not most, leftists are more than happy to sacrifice consistency and credibility in favor of baseless attack propaganda.
Of course, as various faux conservatives have shown with their silly accusations of “Islamo-fascists” and “Nazi libertarians”, this is not solely a left-wing phenomenon.