Month: December 2022

By Liam McCrorie

Euroscepticism has been on the rise in Europe, especially this past decade. Many countries in the EU are beginning to become more Eurosceptic and have more supporters who might be looking for change in the EU or to leave it all together. The UK was probably the most Eurosceptic as they left the EU in 2020, due to concerns over the power of the Euro. And it seems that more and more countries are feeling the same way, even if Brexit didn’t turn out too well for the British.

Many countries in Europe nowadays have a large Eurosceptic party. Hungary has the Fidesz Party run by Viktor Orban, in Italy Giorgia Meloni, an extremely far right Eurosceptic, was recently elected in Italy. But what can the EU really do to combat this rise in far right nationalism and Euroscepticism? They can’t really do much since the EU can’t tell countries how to govern themselves, really all they could do would be impose economic sanctions, but would this even be enough to stop this wave of Euroscepticism.

By Liam McCrorie

The political spectrum has always been made up of the left and the right, with conservatives leaning to the right and liberals to the left, but lately it seems both sides of the spectrum are trying to go as far to their extremes as they can, with neither side really seeming to represent the people, and leaving ordinary people left with nobody to really turn to.

The right has very clearly been turning into the far right for a while now with people like Donald Trump, Giorgia Meloni, Viktor Orban, and others being elected and leading their countries right leaning parties. None of these leaders are moderate conservatives they all lean very heavily into nationalist and sometimes borderline fascist rhetoric. They all talk about wanting to seal the borders to keep the enemies of the state out, and always portray migrants and foreigners as others, and sometimes as the enemy. These far right leaders also usually use Christianity and Christian ideals as a backing for many of their platforms such as banning gay marriage and abortions.

And the left has many issues as well. While the left usually, at least in my opinion, generally is much better than the right in terms of social issues and being progressive, can at times be over sensitive in some areas, which gets us nowhere, and wastes time and resources. Just as a quick example and something I have thought a lot about, gun laws in Canada. Trudeau is trying to pass Bill C-21 which would heavily restrict access to handguns, as well as ban many semi-automatic style rifles. Now this sounds like it would be a good bill except if you look at handgun crime it is nearly always with illegally smuggles handguns so this ban would do nothing other than affect the ability for hunters of target shooters to access what they need. And as for the rifles they would be banning many semi-automatic style rifles such as the Simonov SKS, a semi-automatic rifle she says is commonly used by Indigenous hunters. Now this is a smaller issue but it still shows how the left is trying to ban something because it sounds dangerous, when in reality they aren’t even dealing with the problem. And I do believe hunters should have access to the tools they need for a proper hunt.

By Liam McCrorie

I’m sure many of you like me have seen recently the increase in the use of hate speech by people with big followings on the internet, and not just a rise in the use of hate speech but a rise in the tolerance of hate speech. Not even a decade ago it would be crazy and pretty much career suicide for anyone of note to go out and openly spew hate speech about a certain group, and you’d think today with cancel culture it would be even more crazy to spew hateful rhetoric in an open forum, but sadly the opposite is happening.

More and more people with large audiences have seemed to have almost gone off the deep end with some of the stuff they say. Probably most noteworthy and very recent in the news is Ye’s (formerly Kanye West) constant hate speech towards people of the Jewish faith. He has gone on and on spewing his hatred toward Jewish people and the Jewish faith. This has caused him to loose his deals with brands such as Adidas and Balenciaga, and more recently he was recently on the far right conspiracy podcast, Info Wars hosted by Alex Jones, where he admitted he “likes Hitler” and went on to defend the leader of the Third Reich saying everyone has value and he did valuable things as well. This most recent outburst has cost him many fans, but on the other hand, some of Ye’s other followers have decided to agree what he has said and more and more people are spewing hate about Jewish people. It just starts with one hateful person spreading a message and it can spread like wildfire.