Writing behind the paywall in today’s Times, Aaron Porter, the president of the National Union of Students, says:
Conservative readers may complain that there is a near total silence from the BBC and liberal press about the ability of the Socialist Workers Party and other totalitarian movements to takeover every left wing protest from the Stop the War marches to the National Union of Teacher’s campaign against Michael Gove’s free schools. I can hear you saying that if the BNP tried to hijack the Countryside Alliance, you would certainly expect to hear about it on Radio 4.“In Manchester on Saturday the National Union of Students organised what was the latest in a series of protests against government plans that are allowing the burden of the deficit reduction to fall on young people. We were there to expose the contradiction of David Cameron saying that we cannot build a future on debt and then tripling tuition fees….However, before I was able to speak to the rally of thousands, a small group of people started to chant abuse to try to intimidate me, and there were audible anti-Semitic comments. I wouldn’t associate the racist comments with everyone in this breakaway group, who are largely drawn from hard Left factions and who disagree with the tactics and some of the policies of the NUS. For them it is not enough for the NUS to mobilise 50,000 students and lecturers to protest against the rise in tuition fees; instead they say we should be standing alongside those who kick in windows and burn effigies of Nick Clegg.Those tactics are wrong and do not work. I represent the vast majority of students who believe that peaceful protest should be one part of a campaign.”
Tories should not fret. They should be grateful. The pattern of British protest is set. Good causes draw hundreds of thousands of people into left-wing politics. After a brief period of exhilaration, they find themselves harangued by pinched-faced, spit-flecked demagogues who insist they must embrace violence and hate. They realise that the far-left is not interested in the issue at hand but only wants to entice new blood into its various cults so it can exploit their energies and empty their bank accounts. Disgusted and demoralised, they drift away.
The failure to understand that the far left is as malign as the far right, and that its violence and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories overlaps with the violence and conspiracy theories of the far right, explain why the British Left always loses. And always will lose until more people imitate Aaron Porter and find the guts to reject the totalitarians in their midst.
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