“The problem with you, H, is that you’re an extremist”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. You scare people and the British people aren’t extreme by nature”
“Define ‘extremism’ then”
“Well, you know; all that ranting about the poor, class war and inequality. It’s just too extreme. Too radical and it’s unworkable and utopian anyway”
“I see. Funny, that; I kinda see entire continents starving to death, in the 21st century, while the West destroys tonnes of food every day, instead of giving it away to the starving poor, as extreme. I reckon 10% of the population owning 80% of the nation’s wealth is pretty extreme. I think making people work for dole money, when they’ve paid national insurance stamp for precisely that dole money, is as good a definition of extremism as you could find”
“See? That’s exactly what I’m talking about! You’re an extremist!”
“You don’t think invading a country, illegally, bombing and slaughtering its civilians, all in the name of deposing a dictator that the West armed, funded, trained and put in power in the first place as extreme, then? You don’t think standing idly by while Israel murders women, children, the elderly and infirm just for the crime of being Arabs as extreme, then?”
“I’m not on about that, I’m on about the trade unions holding the country to ransom and ruining the economy. You support that! You’re an extremist!”
“That’s an interesting inversion of reality, don’t you think? Considering the trade unions are weaker than they’ve ever been, strikes and industrial disputes are at their lowest level ever since records began and they are hamstrung and paralysed by the most draconian and undemocratic legislation that exists anywhere in the Western world? Now that’s ‘extremism’, surely?”
“Words! Just words! You’ve always got an answer for everything!”
“Are you real? Isn’t that what debate and discussion is about? The free-flow and exchange of contrasting views and opinions?”
“Whatever but you just refuse to live in the real world!”
“That’s ironic because in the real world, where real men and women and their families live, the real ‘extremists’ are bankers, CEOs and executives who have, literally, sold the country to their spiv mates and the crooks while the ordinary men and women in the streets are flung on the dole as jobs are hacked and slashed in their thousands. And then they’re smeared as ‘scroungers’ by brainwashed idiots and told they’ve got to give their labour for free to some profiteering supermarket chain or lose their paltry benefits. That’s your ‘real world’ for you. Don’t you think that’s ‘extremism’?”
“Oh, you’re just a communist, you are!”
“So; let’s sum this up, then; because I believe a system that exploits people for profit, sees them as mere commodities to be bought and sold, that condemns entire nations to war, poverty, famine and death so that the rich can grow ever richer is wrong, that makes me an ‘extremist’?”
“But you are an extremist! You’re living in a dream world if you think you can ever change anything”
“How do you even live with yourself? How can you look at yourself in the mirror? How can you sleep at night?”
“Eh? I don’t know what you mean”
“Exactly. And there, in a nut-shell, is the problem. That’s why the world is fucked…”
“You’re just a raving idiot, H. Millions of normal people agree with me. There was this article in The Daily Mail earlier…”
Normal people, eh? You better watch out for them. There are more of them than us…