I DON’T know if Steve Bannon’s European movement project is really the regression to Nazism that David Pratt makes it out to be (Behind street thugs like Tommy Robinson lies a transnational extreme-right threat, August 2).

Bannon represents the extreme, rather than the (even Trumpian) mainstream right in the US, so while he may have aims to unify Europe’s new populist right under his flag, the actual spectrum that right represents is large enough to leave him on the margins.

What I do know and acknowledge is that Bannon is trying to exploit a legitimate bottom-up rebellion against undemocratic left-wing control via the media and “education”, (increasingly becoming particularly anti-male and anti-white indoctrination, in the US) of the narrative their hitherto captive audiences have seen the world through.

For years people were lied to morally and fed falsification of the issues, among them that the views of “middle-class white men” couldn’t be shared by anyone else and were, like that whole constituency, to be discredited, marginalised and disenfranchised.

The real reason for this is that they are the voter segment most resistant to the “Long March (to Marxism) through the institutions” (which include the media and education), and so must be electorally eliminated.

The same divisive, delegitimising rationale has been thrown at Jordan Peterson, soon to be followed, I’m sure, by every “-ist” in the left’s thought-obviating vocabulary. He hasn’t been forgiven for the unbowing honesty he showed in demolishing the left-wing mediagogue Cathy Newman (I don’t remember the interview being “ill-tempered”; au contraire, Peterson was far to polite to her at the end of it) who tried to twist everything he said into the form of her ideology, the one narrative the left will allow, especially where they’re supposed to be objective. Peterson rose to prominence for his opposition to the Canadian law that will have anyone who fails to use the correct non-existent pronoun agitators have created for all the different shades (30+) of “trans” identities while addressing or referring to any particular shade thrown in jail, echoing what happened to ideological transgressors in East Germany, Communist Russia, and Red China, and still does in North Korea. Not a single left-wing commentator has mentioned this.

Don’t let’s forget that the extreme left has its take-over agenda too, and that it’s just as insane and dangerous.

Ian McQueen
Dumfries

THERE is no doubt Mr Crines is sincere in his beliefs but sincerity is no substitute for knowledge, which Mr Crines sadly lacks (Letters, August 4).

When he proclaims, “I’ll be resisting leaving the EU as much as I will be supporting Scottish independence”, it is like listening to a confirmed atheist proclaiming their faith in a “superior being”. Like many other Remainers, he uses the word “internationalist” when the correct term is “supra-nationalist”. Is this deliberate or does he just not know the difference? Again, like many Remainers, he uses the word “interdependent” as if it was a newly arrived at concept in world affairs. The first time two peoples started to trade with each other they created an interdependence. What is new, is the notion that two nations, or several nations, or several groups of nations, cannot be interdependent without surrendering their sovereignty.

In 1952, Jean Monnet said, “Europe’s nations should be guided towards the superstate without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps, each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation”.

Walter Hallstein, the first president of the EEC said, “We are not in business at all, we are in politics”. What do Remainers think “ever closer political union” actually means? If the stated intentions of the founding fathers is not enough to convince them of the real aim of the EU’s elites, what will? Are we meant to sit back and allow them to continue to spread their nonsense?

It is even more obvious that Mr Crines knows absolutely nothing about currency, and its importance to the economy of any country. When people have to throw in comments about “Robert the Bruce or Marie Curie on our notes” it is a perfect giveaway that they are floundering. I am only surprised there was no reference to “groats” and “bawbees”. Mr Crines opines, “We may run through several of the many options before currency settles down”. Is that his prescription for stability? We have just had an increase in interest rates which, given Scotland’s current economic performance, is totally inappropriate and will hinder the economy more. That is what it means to be in a currency union.

Remainers ignored my question about “independence and membership of the eurozone”. I won’t hold my breath.

Jim Fairlie
Crieff