Sir, – The number of innocent Europeans killed in a few short years by Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in now nearly 500. Had the Islamist cell from Ripoll not blown up their own bomb-making factory prematurely last week, we could already have reached double that number dead and the Sagrada Família might be a smouldering ruin.
It is in this context that Una Mullally continues to ring the alarm bell about the danger posed – exclusively – by the far-right. The latest contribution muses whether it is preferable to pillory those on the right with humour or confront them head-on ("Why laughing at the far-right is dangerous", Opinion & Analysis, August 21st).
Her single-mindedness is admirable, and humour can indeed be a potent weapon. Although as the cartoonists at the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo would attest, some people take graver offence to mockery than others.
Una Mullally’s dogged insistence, against a backdrop of ongoing slaughter and mayhem, that the greatest existential, personal and societal threat that we face in the West is from far-right extremism would in itself be funny, if it were not so so myopic and disingenuous. – Yours, etc,
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SIMON O’NEILL,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.