In response to some comments here: I interpreted 'shunning' as meaning not excluding far right-wingers from society and its provisions, but simply putting their views on a real-life version of 'ignore' rather than trying to convert them or compromise with them.

I think that while on the one hand some people split themselves into hostile factions on trivial issues (sadly common on the left), some do try too hard to seek common ground with extreme right-wingers.

This happens where people on the left or centre assume that dealing with the *extreme* right is like dealing with the *moderate* right, and that they share basic principles in common, and differ only in how to achieve and implement them. Not true with the extreme right; the principles are fundamentally different.

It happens when people argue that 'the Right may be right on some issues; the Left have no monopoly on truth'. The Far Right are IMO *always* wrong on fundamentals; they may happen to achieve a correct conclusion for the wrong reasons (e.g. xenophobic-isolationists who oppose the Iraq war because they oppose all dealings with foreigners); but I will stick out my neck and say that there is *never* any issue where right-wingers are consistently right where non-right-wingers are not.

It happens when anti-establishment left-wingers think that it is OK to accept or collaborate with anti-establishment far-right-wingers, because they share some enemies. Not so. The right-wingers oppose the establishment because they want to replace it with something *worse*, not better; and progressives should never collaborate on that. That way could lie new or even old forms of fascism.

It is perhaps easier to identify the real Far Right and its fundamental opposition to democratic and pro-society principles in multi-party systems, where the most extreme often have their own political parties. The British BNP or French National Front are obviously not parties with which left-wingers or moderates should be seeking to collaborate! Related to the above: as someone from a different system, I am struck by the rather different use of 'conservative' in American than in much Europaean politics. Here, it mostly means the moderate right and usually excludes true extremists (though some of the latter do slip through the net!) Americans appear to use the term both for the mainstream right and for the far right. On the whole, the equivalents of 'teabaggers' here would not be referred to simply as 'conservative'; they might or might not vote for the mainstream Conservative Party, but such extreme views are called *right-wing*, not conservative. I would describe Blue Dog Democrats and moderate Republicans as *conservatives*; Pat Buchanan and Michele Bachmann and Senator DeMented are not *conservatives* but at least borderline fascists. I wonder if this broad use of the term 'conservative' helps to blur distinctions between moderate and extreme right-wingers, and encourages some liberals to think that common ground can be made with the latter?