Communists are Not Fascists they are Communists

I know this is completely off topic for this Blog but I just had to rant about it.

On BBC radio4 "The World this Weekend" on Sunday Mr Kit Malthouse a Deputy Mayor of London was interviewed about the damage and disruption caused in London by so called "demonstrators" who attached themselves to the peaceful and lawful protest march against government expenditure cuts.

He finished his talk by referring to the the troublemakers as a "group of fascist agitators" You can listen to it at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00zqc43/The_World_This_Weekend_27_03_2011 at point 10.55 into the programme.

It really irritated me because whatever the marchers were they were definitely NOT "Fascists". I did see a couple on TV who were carrying the old Soviet Flag so why not call them "Communists" or "Anarchists" why call them "Fascists".

I suppose it all ties in with a general tendency today to use "Fascist" as an all encompassing political insult for anyone you disagree with however I also think it ties in with a general tendency to forget about or to excuse communism and the terrible things it did.

A couple of years ago I lectured on Human Rights at a local university and gave a general historical background to the European Convention and I talked about the Holocaust, naturally, but I also talked about Communism and Stalin. What I discovered is that the students, who were all late teens early 20's had all been taught about Fascism, Hitler and the Holocaust but they knew absolutely nothing about Communism, Stalin or the Gulags. I fear that we have a generation who are incapable of understanding that the "left" ever did anything wrong in History so when anything is done that is bad it has to be blamed on the right and the offenders branded as "fascists" even when that is clearly the last thing they are.