Way Out Rightwards

I haven’t checked in on the nastier right-wing blogs since getting back to NZ, and something at This Modern World prompted me to take a look and see what they’re yammering about.
Three big themes on the front pages today. The first is crowing about the possibility of civil war in Palestine (which pretty much tells you all you need to know).
The second is championing the cause of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who used fraud to enter and gain citizenship in the Netherlands; and mocking and ridiculing the cause of Mexican illegal immigrants in the US who are looking for more rights and legitimacy.
Yeah. Huh. So they’re still not that good at joining the dots.
Actually, that’s too glib. That whole scene is not driven by any kind of coherent ideology. Its responses to any given situation are driven entirely by whether the rhetoric espoused furthers or diminishes their self-justifying and self-righteous paranoia.
This, I note, is not irrelevant to NZ – the Kiwi online community takes many of its cues from what’s happening in the US version, both on left and right. It’s just a shame that the right-wing sites of choice are basically paranoid, semi-fascist incoherent racist hatemongers. The long-running stream of anti-Islam letters to the editor in the local rag are, I’m convinced, built on “talking points” that are directly sourced from right-wing US blog sites.
Anyway, it’s a waste of energy thinking too hard about this stuff. There will always be nasty populists exploiting our base fears. Lets keep on with our own project of building and promoting a different world.