Imagine if some far right militia had just taken to the streets of Germany. Imagine that the militia covered their faces with balaclavas. Imagine if they smashed up buildings, set light to cars and otherwise made the centre of a major German city resemble a war-zone. Would it not attract attention? Would it not also, quite rightly, lead to major opinion pieces and much opining elsewhere about the far right being ‘on the march'? Would it not be treated as something more than just weather by the BBC and other news organisations? Imagine the weeks of reflection if a movement of the right had just left a city like Hamburg, looking like this after it had visited:
Of course it wasn’t the far-right who laid waste to Hamburg last week. The group ostensibly rioting because of the meeting of the G20 was a conglomeration of groups from the far left - groups who claim to be anti-fascist but increasingly resemble nothing so much as the fascists they claim to oppose. As I say, I would understand and participate in the outrage if the far-right had just done this to a European city. But why is this deemed not just normal, but apparently just something we have to live with when it comes from the far-left? And are there really no greater lessons to learn about this growing threat of our time?