Wrong terms

Maybe Joyce McMillan’s own rethinking (Perspective, 5 June) could include avoiding the sloppy, short-hand catch-all abuse and misinterpretation of the term “right-wing”, usually linked with “extreme” or  “detested”.

By The Newsroom

Published 6th Jun 2015, 01:00 BST

The past century’s worst so-called left-wing regimes have been no different from those deemed “right-wing”, causing just as much, if not more, murder and mayhem. Both terms, as two sides of the same coin (vide Prof Alan Bullock’s Hitler and Stalin : Parallel Lives), are better rejected.

John Birkett

Horseleys Park

St Andrews