Martyn in Europe

From my perspective, having democracy is better than not having it, many people do disagree with my views on democracy, but I do prefer democracy, and the more democracy the better, to any other form of system of governance and opposition.

But that doesn't mean that democracy is inextricably linked to decency, or that choice is always linked to pluralism and significantly differentiated options.

In an election with an appallingly low voter turnout, the BNP have won 2 EU seats, but that hasn't placed them in government, anywhere, nor is there even a remote possibility of that happening.

I recall Chirac's refusal to form a government with the help of the French extreme right. I may disagree with conservative policy, but that sort of political choice places decency over expediency. It's a pity that it's isn't more people who understand the importance of decency and honesty in politics.

Of course, fascism is also used as an epithet, the origins of which probably can be traced back to the allies WW2 propaganda – a pervasive propaganda that was kept alive well into the eighties and nineties. Maybe the same can also be said for other terms that have also become epithets because of the cold war, for example: Communist, Marxist, Trotskyite, Hegemony, Imperialism, etc. Term abuse seems to be far worse now than it was twenty five years ago, but I have no accurate data to prove that perception. What I do see is that many terms are freely used as slurs and epithets, whether it is socialist, liberal, conservative, capitalist, leftwing, progressive, rightwing, democrat, republican, Zionist, nationalist, racist, feminist, misanthrope, misogynist, or any number of terms. People have used the terms fascism and fascist as terms to label political bullies, people and groups that display certain authoritarian tics, and to fascism itself. In general, I think there are notable abuses of superlatives, terms and epithets in ways that have little or no relationship to reality.