RALPH MUSGRAVE (HAS, Dec 1) misunderstands why “Britain’s political left and the respectable centre ground” (ie all but the far right) has unanimously condemned Donald Trump’s recent re-tweets from the Britain First organisation.

The main reason for the outrage is that the President of the United States has given encouragement and publicity to an extremist far-right anti-Islam group.

As a long-time BNP activist and former election candidate, Mr Musgrave may find this a little hard to understand. After the BNP faded into obscurity, some former BNP members founded Britain First, which became notorious for invading mosques and harassing and intimidating law-abiding British Muslims.

“Britain first” was a slogan much used in the 1930s by Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists.

There are disturbing parallels between the 1930s and the rise in right-wing nationalism across Europe today, the main difference now being that Muslims, rather than Jews, have become the scapegoats for social and economic problems.

Pete Winstanley, Durham