Far Right, Far Left, Far Out

Mainstream media bias makes it hard to work out how extreme Far Right and Far Left parties have become. Both are dangerous, but the threats are not equivalent.

Partisan media has made it hard to understand which threats are credible.

Mainstream media bias has become so endemic that it is hard to understand where credible threats lie on different sides of politics.

Reading the competing narratives about the anti-Israel protests at US university campuses has been sobering. Some think the story is that racist Jihadists and Far Left extremists have taken over universities and are a threat to the country. Others saw fascistic police breaking up mostly peaceful protests as a worrying sign of authoritarianism to come.

Watch Fox News and MSNBC and you will get not only different opinions, but different “facts”. Read The Guardian if you are nostalgic for Pravda, or the BBC if your tastes are more Orwellian.

How can one make sense of this? Here is a thought experiment. Imagine a journalist interviewing three people before an election. The first interviewee says he is a Nazi and gives a Nazi salute. The second says he is a Jihadist and waves a Hamas flag. The third declares he is an avowed communist.

What would the media response be? There would be outrage about the Nazi, apologies and excuses for the Jihadist, and little, if any, outrage about the communist. That is the media landscape, even though these three political philosophies are monstrous.

This thought experiment shows we have a better sense of where the line to extremism sits on the Right than we do on the Left. It also shows that most mainstream media tilts Left. Research has shown that media uses Left-wing language more frequently, which is a reasonable, though imperfect, proxy for bias.

This makes it difficult to determine whether Right and Left political actors are extreme or just demonized. My writing is considered on the Right, but for most of my life, I was considered Center-Left. My views have not changed; the political landscape has. The Left has moved so far to the Left that I find the same positions I have always held now put me on the Right. So, when I read warnings about the Far Right, I wonder if they are truly extreme, or if it is just a Left-moving zeitgeist shift.

Media headlines express considerable alarmism about the Right. Consider:

“Ruthless, clever, pragmatic: why Giorgia Meloni is so dangerous to Italy – and Europe” - The Guardian

“Hungary’s Viktor Orban is a threat to the West” - The Washington Post

“Far-right win by Geert Wilders in Netherlands spells trouble for Brussels” - AFP

“Why Croatia is the EU’s latest member to embrace the far right.” - The Financial Times

“Is Trump or Biden the true threat to democracy? Voters split along partisan lines.” - USA Today

“Argentina’s election result is the worst of all possible outcomes.” - The Economist (hardly a Leftist publication).

These are scary headlines. Are these people and parties fascistic or just conservative? How reliable are the news media’s portrayals?

Consider Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is always called the country’s most right-wing leader since Benito Mussolini, the father of European fascism. So far, her two big issues have been a conservative approach to transgender issues, as befitting her Catholic heritage, and efforts to curtail immigration.

Immigration is an issue in all of Europe, not just Italy. Muslim immigration is especially touchy. Some fear that concerns about Muslim immigration are Islamophobic, while others see restricting it as essential to Europe maintaining its identity.