The Prydain Review Team
@PrydainReview
It’s a new week, and Leanne Wood, former leader of Plaid Cymru and Member of the Senedd for Rhondda, is at it again. This time she has described a fellow MS in Janet Finch-Saunders, as “supporting the Far-Right”.
What is the great offence Finch-Saunders supposedly committed in Wood’s eyes? She dared describe the Trotskyist organisation “Extinction Rebellion” as being neo-fascists.
One can debate whether neo-fascist is the right name for this group- Marxist revolutionaries may be more apt- but Prydain is concerned that an elected representative in Wales’ national parliament is coming to the defence of an organisation that stifles the free press; prevents ambulances from getting to patients in need and desecrates buildings in the name of the “climate emergency”.
Possibly more concerning is that condemning such an organisation leads Wood to describe it as facilitating the far-right, a pretty damaging smear and consequences for free speech and the exchange of ideas.
If Wood was consistent in calling out bigotry then even though she would be wrong to describe Finch-Saunders as such, at least she applied the same standard. Yet Wood has stood behind a Plaid candidate who has tweeted that the ‘Children of Israel’ were causing corruption in the world and expressed support for Hamas, a proscribed anti-semitic terrorist organisation.
Before Wood lectures politicians on contributing to the work of the real far-right, she should challenge the intolerance festering in her party.
