On Friday 1st April 2021, Sky News UK online carried a report with this headline and subtitle:
Met Police officer who acted as recruiter for banned neo Nazi terror group faces jail.
The 22 year old is the first police officer to be convicted of involvement in far-right terrorism.
The article goes on to point out the evidence inculpating Benjamin Hannam:
- his active involvement with National Action, a group banned in the UK since 2016
- his possession of a ‘manifesto’ of the “right wing extremist Anders Breivik” who murdered 77 people in a mass shooting in Norway in 2011
- the Breivik manifesto included bomb making instructions and justifications for mass-casualty attacks
- Nazi propaganda posters found on his bedroom walls after his arrest
Despite all this, he had successfully applied to join London’s Metropolitan police which had failed to identify these indications of his unsuitability. The article concludes with
After his arrest, PC Hannam’s stop and search records, crime reports and case files were all the subject of a detailed review by the Metropolitan Police.
The force said that review found that there was “no evidence that Constable Hannam targeted individuals as a result of any right-wing views”.
Just a comment on this young man and his suitability before addressing my main concern arising from this report.
A person having such a mindset is totally unsuitable to be a police officer in a free and democratic society. This young man needs to reflect on the nature of this thinking and its consequences.
I note that he has grown up in the post Christian era where people are taught their rights; where God does not exist, and where the basics of moral behaviour called the Ten Commandments long ago suffered the fate which Thomas Paine ascribed to all dusty old parchments…
Jesus Christ, of course, summed up the Ten Commandments impeccably in the terms, Love God; love your neighbour as yourself. And when the clever young enquirer then asked Jesus who might his neighbour be, Jesus related his famous story of the Good Samaritan. Of course, in the culture of Jesus day, a Samaritan was a second rate foreigner. Jesus deliberately chose the outcast as the one person prepared to do good to the person in need, while those who should have known better walked by on the other side – how many of our young people know this parable today ? How many know and understand the term, walk by on the other side ?
But my principal concern in this post is the shameless abuse of the term “Right Wing”.
This Sky report is blatant evidence of the complete conquest of UK media and politics by left wing propaganda. Left wing propaganda is now treated as impartial truth by people who have sufficient intellect to know better.
Intellect is not the problem, of course. The problem is the psychology at work in our intelligentsia today. And that psychology reflects today’s post Christian world dominated by Materialism. A world where our young people, like Benjamin Hannam, are not taught to love others as themselves; where they are not taught the fundamental moral maxim:
THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS
That moral maxim has been eroded, indeed eradicated, from the repertoire of virtues in the public conscience today. In its place we witness the teachings of a new religion, Materialism. In this religion, false witness or lying is not discounted. Indeed, distortion and censorship are actively encouraged.
Evidence ?
It is all around us in our everday lives. Internet and television advertising is an exercise in the practised art of deception and distortion. No advertiser will tell you the shortcomings of their product ! This is not only the case in the commercial realm, but in the political and media. When was the last time you heard a politician say that the other side had a good idea or proposal ? The media, of course, thrives on hype and accentuating the terrible. The mindset of distortion and wilful disregard of the overall picture is normal and ingrained. Indeed, it is endemic.
So, abuse of the term “Right Wing” becomes easy, especially as there are ideological imperatives in play.
The terms “left” and “right” wing derive from a parliamentary context – the French National Assembly over two centuries ago. They refer to people prepared to debate and discuss their differences in order to come to a workable agreement – such compromise to be upheld by all.
The term ‘right wing’ in the particular tradition of the English speaking peoples, moreover, upholds the tradition and heritage of constitutional government where executive authority is bound by convention and by law. To wit, Magna Carta of 1215 and the 1689 Bill of Rights. I am right wing. I hold the principles of Conservatism expressed in Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke – an Irishman. Can anyone find a political viewpoint more removed from the Ideological Innovations which were Bolshevism, Fascism, Stalinism, Nazism, and Maoism?
All these Revolutionary Ideologies are Corporatist, Statist, dirigiste, totalitarian and dictatorial; they are anti individualist and hostile to western law and order. All were insistently and radically nationalistic, as any comprehensive appreciation of all the historic evidence about each will show. But that does not suit the propagandic purpose of the Ideological Left who have managed to displace the historic truth about “Right Wing” with their extreme, propagandic smear.
You will appreciate then that I am deeply disturbed and offended by the intelligentsia’s abusive and false association of the term ‘Right Wing’ with words like ‘nazi’ and ‘terrorism’.
But there is yet hope !
One conceptual abuser of the Right, Sarah Khan, no longer runs the Counter Extremism Commission. There, she initiated various studies into how to define the words “extremism” and “right wing” but failed to find an appropriate formula in three years. That’s because they see everything through the lens of left wing ideology and propaganda; they therefore refuse to accept the historic record and reality.
Perhaps her successor Robin Simcox will bring a dose of reality to the Commission. Or better still, bury it.
Ray Catlin
The Sky report is online at
and the news release about Sarah Khan plus the links to the various documents produced during her 3 year tenure can be found at
The new interim head of the UK’s Counter Extremism Commission is Robin Simcox – official release at
Robin Simcox appointed as Interim Lead of Commission for Countering Extremism – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
his profile in his last work at Counter Extremism Group is at
Robin Simcox – Counter Extremism Group
his profile with links to blogs during his time at The Heritage Foundation is at
Conservatism Institute 