But the latest local victim is Peter van Onselen, who, for some reason, decided to come to Paul Murray's defence for saying on his show that World War 2 was all about fighting socialism (and suggesting that the youth of today didn't know this like their forebears who fought the war did.).
Peter is widely considered a mild mannered political soft centrist out of place on Sky News, so it was with some surprise that people read:
This comment has received, unsurprisingly, a lot of pushback. And, sad to say, I don't think Peter's response has been honest:
Yours is the only tweet I'm responding to, I said I'm no longer using twitter for more than posts bc the vile abuse I've received has stunned me. The left right spectrum is more of a curved U leaving extreme left & right with much in common. That's all I was saying. Signing offAs Ben Pobjie quite correctly says next:
No it’s not. What you we’re saying was “Nazism is considered a branch of socialism”. This is factually incorrect. You know this.Later, Andrew Wright says to Peter:
Some pretty severe nuancing required here for ‘branch’: you can argue that European Fascism drew to a significant extent from socialism, especially given Mussolini’s pre-1918 career - but it’s ultimate trajectory was a complete negation of socialismAnd Peter replies:
That's trueWell, if that's true, just admit your initial post was a blatant indefensible overstatement, and stop whinging about people correcting you on Twitter.
Update: Ben Pobjie, no doubt frustrated at Van Onselen's refusal to just say his first tweet was wrong, goes with:
It doesn't matter what form of socialism come communism you are talking about Capitalists do not do very well thank you under any of them. They did so under the Nazis.
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