It has been going on for the majority of my life.
It is a specialised form of playground nastiness which contains virtually no truth and is designed to belittle and misrepresent the victim.
At one time, when we actually had a few rightist politicians - they were referred to as 'Nazis'. The secret was to use the jibe constantly and repetitively until the terminally simple and easy influenced turned it into an absurd mantra. Enoch Powell - a man who was a true liberal - was the first I recall to have been victim of such scheming.
As the handful of genuine rightists in the Tory Party became rather old hat - there was soon nobody remaining to target.
The next callous step was to take that small percentage of centre-right amongst the Tories and declare them all to be 'hard' right. Frankly, I never expected this to work even half as successfully as it did but it is now broadly accepted that not being a socialist made you inevitably 'hard right'.
When you see that a majority of Tories could easily switch to the Lib Dems without even batting an eyelid, there is a huge weakness in the plan which so many have failed to perceive.
If all the non-socialists are now generally classed as 'hard right' - how come the Conservatives have no remaining MPs who can be classed as centre-right? - It makes zero sense but continues to work superbly well amongst the ill-educated and the nauseating, left-leaning bigots.
So many Tories, once suckered, fell too for the propaganda hook, line and sinker - so often courtesy of the dear old Beeb, of course, and that paragon of all the virtues - The Guardian.
