Why a window? 3

When people are angry and afraid, the window on the world is cracked, oblique, distorted. Instead of taking out their anger on the principal guilty parties, people attack the weak, the unfamiliar. This reaction has benefited the far right minority-bashing parties throughout much of Europe and in the UK. Few people voting for the BNP or its like ever stop to wonder how these dishonest, often criminal, egomaniac, rat brains would solve today's issues. The BNP voter's view on the world is cracked. (Thus the cracked window picture for today's blog).

The supporter of fascist, authoritarian rule attempts to retreat from the multi-coloured cacophony of life by biting into the fantasy of total strength, absolute right and nostalgia for an illusory sweet-tasting, pure past. It is about ways of seeing. For this reason, I'm always suspicious of anyone who is too sure of her or his authority or organisation, particularly anyone who wants to directly or indirectly exclude others. Are they being seduced by the same siren song as the fascist?

I prefer John Locke's more humanistic approach (Treatise on Government), although it is true to say that one's approach to life, government and everything else will often vary depending on time and events:

People are in 'a state . . . of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection'.

We are all entitled to the same rights. We all respond in our own ways to experiences and we are all capable of offering something unique and perhaps invaluable, as Locke wrote (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding):

'I pretend not to teach, but to inquire; and therefore cannot but confess here again, that external and internal sensation are the only passages I can find of knowledge to the understanding. These alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into this DARK ROOM.'

It is impossible to imagine the BNP's Nick Griffin or the Dutch Freedom Party's Geert Wilders having this sort of view of humanity. What about Gordon Brown or Barack Obama?