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No matter which way you plan to vote this year, I urge you not to believe or even tolerate the destructive lie that is at the heart to this year's PLP election campaign.

That's the notion that a desperate white right-wing conspiracy (headed by Opposition Leader Michael Dunkley, of course) is out to take over Bermuda, destroy black hope and opportunity and culture, and grab every Government contract it can get its hands on.

The only thing that can save Bermuda from this horrible fate is the superhero Dr. Ewart Brown.

You've read this kind of stuff before, mostly in comic books. But you can read the same fantasy on the PLP web site, hear it at their rallies and see it on their TV and YouTube commercials.

The ad that the PLP has been running over the last few days - with the bold heading "Dunkley versus Bermuda" - is shocking for its nasty tone and for the blatant untruths it contains.

But it is run-of-the-mill paranoid hysteria to anyone who's been following the PLP's propaganda.

The ad's claim that Bermuda is in "grave danger" from a "regime of extreme right wing measures" is typical of the campaign. So is the call for voters to reject Mr. Dunkley and the UBP before they can "inflict their harsh agenda on our country."

In the comic book world of the party's campaign literature, Mr. Dunkley is "Deceiving Dunkley", always out to "disenfranchise voters". His supporters are "out-of-the-mainstream" white racists, or blacks who need white approval.

They speak with "race-based allusion" and "coded" racist messages... except the "ardent UBP supporters" their candidates meet on the doorstep, who spout their racist views directly.

These are the people, according the PLP campaign fiction, who will come to power if we don't vote for their superhero.

But the threats lurk around every corner. Even a UBP promise to cut payroll tax for lower-income workers becomes, bizarrely, the threat of "income tax" and the "welfare state".

Reasonable people can argue over which party can best represent the concerns of black Bermudians, or do a better job of governing the country as a whole. They can argue over a whole load of specific issues and policies that may support their beliefs.

But the PLP's fear-filled propaganda portrayal of their opponents is simply wrong, and party leaders know it.

They know, for example, that significant numbers of PLP MPs, and supporters, disagreed with the abolition of hanging. It isn't some kind of right-wing UBP thing.

They know that flogging isn't on the UBP agenda. They know that one of the most vocal supporters of corporal punishment in schools has been their own Social Rehabilitation Minister Dale Butler.

They know that the UBP's "three strikes and your out" policy was about sending drug dealers to jail if two attempts at rehabilitation had failed. It had nothing to do with sending people to prison for life, as they claimed.

Is that an "extreme right wing measure"?

I personally oppose all mandatory sentences. I believe every case is different, and justice demands that judges look at each case on its own merits.

That's why I oppose the automatic, mandatory three-year jail term for people caught carrying any kind of point or bladed item, which the PLP introduced in 2005.

There are "right-wingers" in both parties.

PLP leaders know now - if they didn't already know in 1998 - that creating racial equality in Bermuda is no easy straightforward task.

Many were frustrated by the lack of progress made by former UBP Governments; many are frustrated by the lack of progress made by PLP Governments too.

It is clearly wrong to claim that the UBP doesn't care. Indeed, some programmes now adopted by the PLP, such as economic empowerment zones, were first advocated by the UBP.

PLP propagandists know too that the "extreme right wing" UBP they are urging voters to fear has, in fact, promised to introduce a wide array of open-government measures and codes of conduct that the PLP Government has done nothing about.

The effort to build a false, demonic, racist portrait of their opponents goes on and on and, like comic book stories, it is so much fun that it's hard to resist.

On Thursday, PLP Southampton West Central Candidate Marc Bean was quoted telling an audience of party supporters that they had to fight the UBP's "neo-fascist agenda.

"If they have the opportunity they will lock all of us up," Mr. Bean continued. "It's true."

No it's not true. It's a divisive lie.

We need truth and reconciliation in a country that is struggling to overcome a history of fear, suspicion and inequality. It's the only possible way forward.

Fear begets fear and hate begets hate.

The false, fear-mongering comic book stereotyping pushes all Bermuda backwards, no matter what colour our skin or what our political beliefs.[[In-content Ad]]

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