Ontario Fall Colours

Golden Dawn

Notwithstanding the election of Socialist Francois Hollande in France, Europe and North America are generally experiencing a rise of right wing politics, often of the extreme variety. In 2012 Greece is plagued by the Golden Dawn whose intolerance of immigrants has led to Nazi style incidents. Germany has uncovered over a dozen murders linked to the National Socialist Underground (NSU) and of course Norway has had the politically charged Breivik shootings come before the courts. In the USA the Wisconsin mass murders of Sikhs was perpetrated by a right wing extremist. This in an atmosphere of general disrespect and intolerance, especially of all things governmental, emanating from the Far Right Tea Party which although in itself not violent has brought ethics in politics to a very low point. Beyond the Tea Party on the spectrum, the USA has experienced the phenomenal rise of right-wing hate groups, a 69% rise since 2000 and now numbering over 1,000 (The Guardian Weekly August 24th 2012). From my listening point north of Toronto on any given evening my radio dial is full of stations from places such as Chicago, Boston, Cincinnati, flooding the airwaves with the diatribes of political right-wing whiners such as Mark Levin, Bill Cunningham and Sean Hannity. In Canada we have an ideological right wing government and a relatively new Sun News TV channel featuring the likes of Ezra “The Rant” Levant. Bummer, eh?