Rise of right down to the fear it creates

WITHOUT realising the world seems to be sleep walking into an era of increasingly right wing and xenophobic principles.

All you have to do is look at the number of people reposting the supposedly harmless links from groups such as Britain First, many doing so without realising what and insidious and dangerous organisation this truly is.

The recent win by the United Kingdom Independence Party of a parliamentary seat in England is yet another sign of the inexorable rise of the right wing and the closing of minds across the world.

It is not just in Britain that this steady rise of the politics of fear and hatred has been seen. It is increasing across the globe, as with it brings a diminishing opportunities for solving the very problems which are pushing people towards the extremes of the spectrum.

Fears over terrorism, economic woes and increasing calls for isolationism are driving the focus of voters while hiding from them the long term impact removal from the international system would have.

Using Nigel Farage's UKIP as an example again, his calls for an exit from the European Union play well with voters but what would it actually mean for the country? Has anyone actually considered why so many countries want to join the bloc? Turkey has been in negotiations to join for years, is this merely because it enjoys the process? Of course not. It is because it knows that the benefits of joining far outweighs the negatives.

"I'm not prepared to wait for three years. I want us to have a referendum on this great question next year and if UKIP can maintain its momentum and get enough seats in Westminster we might just be able to achieve that," Farage told the BBC.

Essentially what he is saying therefore is that he is not prepared to wait until all the facts are in and people have had time to rationally analyse the arguments rather than being pushed into a decision which could, and will, diminish Britain's power in the international system for generations to come.

Parties on the far right play on fear. They attract the dispossessed not because they are any more motivated to move towards them than anyone else but because they make people believe that they are dispossessed. 

It is all too easy to think of xenophobic bigots as tattooed shaven thugs, and some still are. They have learned from the lessons of the past though. They are using social media to get people to share their insidious views, often without realising it, they preach there messages of hate coached in the language of sense by using half truths and distorted facts. They play on ignorance and fear. 

At their very worst, and here we go far beyond the hyperbole of Mr Farage's party of malcontents, and the recruitment by the global far right has much in common with that used by terrorist groups such as that calling itself Islamic State. The truth is that fear one is driving people to support the other. It is only through teaching tolerance and inclusivity that both can be defeated because it surely must happen that go one to go so must the other.