BNP voters aren’t going to listen to me. I don’t blame them. But then, this message isn’t aimed at BNP voters. This is aimed at those of you still desperately clinging to the idea that No Platform is going to work.
As I write this, I’m listening to a live broadcast of a speech by bog-eyed slime ball fuck-wit Nick Griffin. I’m struck by the overwhelming sense that Nick is quite clearly a moron, that he’s just another politician like any other, promising truly atrocious policies presented in the sort of style more commonly associated with infomercials and tele-evangelism.
It’s obvious, isn’t it? The best way to ’stop’ the BNP is to put this man on television and allow him to make people feel that same sense of queasy repulsion I felt.
You can’t really go around yelling, “BUT THEY’RE RASCIST” and expect that to have an effect on people who don’t give a shit about racism. You can’t go around yelling, “BUT THEY’RE FASCISTS!” and expect that to have an effect on people who don’t understand what fascism is, and you can’t go around yelling, “BUT THEY’RE NAZIS!” and expect people to believe something that sounds so fantastical and absurd.
Quite simply the best way to fight the BNP is to let people understand just how pathetically typical of bad politicians they really are. Platform the bastards. It’s the only way. Of course, if they try imposing their national socialist shit on me I’ll raise up a militia and have them exterminated like the vermin they are.
Just saying.
devolute said...
8 Jun 09 at 7:44 pm
This should all be obvious.
Let them speak and they’ll hang themselves with what they have to say.
Stu said...
8 Jun 09 at 7:56 pm
Have you ever seen ‘Thank You For Smoking’, Charlotte?
There’s a great line in that about why you bother having an argument – that it’s not about convincing the person you’re arguing with, it’s about convincing the crowd who are watching.
Even worse than just shouting ‘they’re racists’ is imagining that just saying ‘theBNParetwats’ is something that will convince anyone or make some kind of difference. Even the ‘Hope Not Hate’ website does little more than (ironically) pour hatred over the BNP.
Let them be condemned by their own words instead.
asquith said...
8 Jun 09 at 8:09 pm
You’ve got it right.
Repeatedly ask them, in public, just how they think their fantasies can be enacted. What would they do & what effects do they envisage their policies would have?
Let it be hammered home that they haven’t thought it through & don’t know what the fuck they’re on about.
Quite a simple solution really.
jd said...
8 Jun 09 at 8:37 pm
I couldn’t agree more.
I suspect in practice the greater threat to liberty actually comes from creeping statism under the main two parties, but should it ever come to it, sign me up for the militia.
(Hell, it’ll be like FCS promised in the posters for Blue Dawn…)
Joe Otten said...
8 Jun 09 at 8:44 pm
Ignoring the content for a moment, the BNP have done well to put on suits and speak in measured tones, and this does mean that yelling “Nazi” at them does not work as well as it should. The wrong people sound shrill and out of control.
Also let’s remember that the Nazis were quite a long time ago now. Few people do remember them. Nazi is now such an easy stereotype of evil, that we can’t imagine them asking for such innocent things as equal rights for Germans in the Sudetenland.
Just letting them speak, and even arguing against them isn’t going to be that easy. Ultimately whether you identify yourself as a human being or as a skin type, is an emotional/values position not a rational one. Racists are emotional cripples on this score, just as animal rights people have emotional diarrhoea, but reason alone will not convince either of their errors. And if they are smart enough to stand up and push emotional buttons, while you just reason, you will lose.
Remember they’ve spent years working out this strategy, while we’ve had better things to do.
Anyway, this is what I would like next interviewer to ask Griffin: When did you stop being a racist? What events led to this change of heart? How did you feel when you realised that you had been supporting the bad guys for so long?
Mark Reckons said...
8 Jun 09 at 9:16 pm
I completely agree with Charlotte’s approach and have been saying the same for ages.
I think Joe has a very good point at the end here though. Now that they are elected they are going to be interviewed and held to account for their views. Their incoherent and nonsensical policies will fall apart under this sort of exposure. Getting elected to such high profile positions may turn out to have been a very bad thing for them.
mdc said...
8 Jun 09 at 10:30 pm
Labour are also fascists and giving them a platform took quite a while to inspire revulsion. 100 years too many.
Simon said...
8 Jun 09 at 10:32 pm
I thought both Griffin and Brons came over very well. Both articulate and polite, I would class them as of a much higher calibre than most mainstream politicians. What’s more they both come across as honest and sincere which is more than you can say for anyone in Westminster. Rather a breath of fresh air in fact.
I won’t vote for any of the mainstream parties again but would certainly listen to what the BNP have to say. Their first aim appears to be to root out corruption in the EU, that will probably play very well over here. Good luck to them.
Niklas Smith said...
8 Jun 09 at 10:33 pm
Couldn’t agree more, Charlotte.
blind steve said...
8 Jun 09 at 10:34 pm
Quite right. I thought much the same watching the odious prick make his victory speech last night, and especially as Sky’s Boulton was making him look like a complete fool.
Had they been given more exposure, held properly up to scrutiny the way any legal party, however crap, ought to be in a properly functioning democracy I doubt that they would have attracted anywhere as near as many votes as they did.
David said...
8 Jun 09 at 10:37 pm
The BNP policies are idiotic in the extreme, and even a small amount of exposure would make them look stupid. Adam Boulton managed it after less than a minute on Sky last night.
The more mainstream politicians hurl abuse and scorn at them the worse it’ll be. Voters won’t want to hear how they are either racist or gullible.
Charlotte said...
8 Jun 09 at 11:20 pm
I would say viewing BNP as more sincere or honest than other politicians says more about how much someone would want to believe that were true than anything else. I would say that, but I smell spam.
Charlotte Gore said...
8 Jun 09 at 11:22 pm
Weird
Alan Bates said...
8 Jun 09 at 11:36 pm
I’m with you on this one, but then I had 2 1/2 years of the First Amendment.
Rob Farrington said...
9 Jun 09 at 12:27 am
Exactly; you can’t rationally argue, for example, that someone who’s served in the British Army and been awarded a VC doesn’t have a right to call himself British.
You can’t argue that position at all without admitting that your ideas about the right to British nationality are based solely on race, which doesn’t fit with the warm, cuddly image that they’re (temporarily) trying to portray..
Let ‘em hang themselves with their own words, I say.
Rob said...
9 Jun 09 at 12:47 am
The BNP’s greatest ability is to make normally rational people sound irrational, overbearing, hyperbolic and condescending all at once when the subject comes up.
blind steve said...
9 Jun 09 at 12:50 am
“The BNP’s greatest ability is to make normally rational people sound irrational, overbearing, hyperbolic and condescending all at once when the subject comes up.”
Like all socialists.
Charlotte Gore said...
9 Jun 09 at 12:58 am
Not the BNP I’m angry at. They’re just getting what they can. mers. It’s no platform fools that make me really angry because it’s so patently a ridiculous policy.
blind steve said...
9 Jun 09 at 1:11 am
“It’s no platform fools that make me really angry because it’s so patently a ridiculous policy.”
I recall many moons ago at university having this exact same argument with the SU exec, who wanted to deny the BNP a platform on campus. It’s literally at that level of politics.
In fact it’s below that level of politics, since we rather sensibly no confidenced the bastards while they were in a minibus on the way to the national conference. Ho ho ho, those were the days.
Frankly, before that brouhaha nobody even knew the BNP were on campus, so the fuss they raised had the effect of actually raising their profile. Do’h!
DavidNcl said...
9 Jun 09 at 7:24 am
It’s important to realise that the BNP actually attracted less votes this time than last time. They got in because the Labour vote utterly and completely collapsed.
This isn’t a victory for the racist left, it’s a failure of the labour party to represent the class interests of the people who vote for them; one of many such failures, across many or all issues, and over three terms in office.
The BNP doesn’t matter; they’re a silly little group of oafs. One the other hand the Labour party has actual power in our society and they’re actively destroying it.
Caron said...
9 Jun 09 at 7:38 am
Totally agree and I also said something similar yesterday. I was never very comfortable with the no platform idea anyway because I’d much rather have arguments out in the open.
I think the Labour approach to the BNP “But they’re nasty, you have to vote for us or you will let them in” just doesn’t cut it. We have to take those bastards apart.
Did you see the Channel 4 demographics of BNP voters – funnily enough, they’re mostly men who read the Sun and the Star. It’s time we also challenged the ideas that those scummy papers put out, often aided and abetted by the Tory front bench, about asylum seekers (when do you ever see those words without bogus in front of them in the tabloid scum?). They’re a free press but we have to get better at arguing against the nonsense they spread.
Shaun Pilkington said...
9 Jun 09 at 9:41 am
I’ve never agreed with no platform. I remember when I was at Uni in the early 90s, the lefties *loved* it as a tool to deny free speech to anyone they percieved as being on the right (especially the BNP), while not applying it to people on the ‘left’ with equally attrocious views (Hizb’ut Tahir comes to mind but then communists, who in the Soviet Union, North Korea and Cambodia killed stacks of people were a-okay).
This ridiculous situation served only to protect the far-left BNP; it protected them from the exposure of their ridiculous economic policies, concealed their overt, moronic racism while banging on about it and finally it protected them from people seeing what a misanthropic bunch of moronic weirdos they were.
All that’s changed is that now we talk about the nation and not the university and brain dead lefties are STILL going on about ‘no platform’. To me, that suggests that they have no confidence of persuading people of their arguments – which implies that on some level, they must assume that the BNP has a point. Ah well, it does have a clause 4 type policy and seems a natural home for disaffected labour voters, presumably because of both the economics and the echo of Dear Leader’s cry for ‘British jobs for British workers’ which the BNP kindly carried forward to the Euros for him.
Painfully Liberal said...
9 Jun 09 at 9:58 am
I think it’s fairly clear that just ignoring them was a mistake or at least is a strategy that no longer reaps dividends. That said, I think the strategy and tactics of how to address them need more thought.
I’ve seen a few interviews with the BNP MEPs now, all of which involved pretty identical questions being asked, all of which they now have soundbite responses to. New lines of attack will be needed, or the current lines need to be developed (It’s clear for instance that their stock response to questions about their whites only membership is to mention the Ascociation of Black Police Officers – people interviewing/debating with them should prepare a response to that.)
I also think that more research needs to be done into the attitudes of the people who vote BNP (though this may be partly because I’m in a constituency where the BNP barely outpolled the Christian party so I really don’t have a clue about them). Some politicians maintain that most BNP votes are pure protest and their policies have no support. Is that true? Do we know? Presumably at the least their policies are not anathema ot their voters, and presumably their voters have at least a general idea of what they support.
I worry that often people taking on the BNP base their attacks on what resonates with them rather than potential BNP voters. When I see BNP representatives being attacked on Channel 4 News or Newsnight, I think “that’s it, go on, give it to him!” but I worry that people in their target demographic (who are unlikely to be watching those programmes which is another issue) see people they think are like them being brow beaten and interrupted by members of the establishment elite, which plays directly into their narrative.
t
Letters From A Tory said...
9 Jun 09 at 9:58 am
I saw Nick Griffin on the BBC yesterday and he came across very well. It’s only when you really scratch beneath the surface that their true colours start to show – 30 second soundbytes will never be enough to trip them up.
Painfully Liberal said...
9 Jun 09 at 10:02 am
One other thing. If there’s one thing that’s not going to help the situation, it’s the ultra-tedious “‘The BNP are right wing’ – ‘no, they’re left wing’” arguments. I’m not sure who anyone thinks their impressing with this, but it just comes across as juvenile and self-indulgent.
Shaun Pilkington said...
9 Jun 09 at 10:29 am
Yes and no, Painfully.
I think its importnant to specifically understand where the BNP are coming from in order to understand their appeal. Their hard-left economics and working-class community aspirations chimes with the pre-Blair Labour designs of Clause 4.
If people continue to fight the BNP they wish was there – a straw man that drips seemlessly off the end of the Conservative spectrum – then they will not land a glove on the actual BNP which, like the Nazis, is a leftwing group, with leftwing appeal, wrapped in the flag.
To defeat your enemy, you must know your enemy and know yourself. The anti-BNP campaign thus far has done neither.
blind steve said...
9 Jun 09 at 11:05 am
“If there’s one thing that’s not going to help the situation, it’s the ultra-tedious “‘The BNP are right wing’ – ‘no, they’re left wing’” arguments.”
In addition to agreeing with Shaun, above, I would add that if one believes that the best way to combat the BNP is to reveal the ‘truth’ about them – on the basis that most of their core support don’t understand any of their policy platform other than “kick out the darkies” – tyhen those same supporters probably look as unkindly on “lefties” and “commies” as they do upon other groupings.
I would be willing to bet that there are an awful lot of BNP voters who would just curl up and die if they realised that they were closet commies, and race politics is an essentially collectivist toy.
Painfully Liberal said...
9 Jun 09 at 12:07 pm
I’m not quite sure about that though, One could equally say that the target BNP demographic tend to be people who have visceral, tribal loathing of the Tories and that association with them would be more damaging to the BNP.
I’m not suggesting that as a strategy though, quite the opposite though. I think my problem with the BNP – left or right arguments is that often (not in these comments, I hasten to add) it’s just used as another tool for partisan party bitching. The BNP are left wing/right wing is used to attack Labour/the Tories by comparison.
I don’t think the BNP’s policies are a logical extension of Labour policies, nor are they a logical extension of Conservative policies. BNP policies aren’t a logical anything of anything.
Shaun Pilkington said...
9 Jun 09 at 12:14 pm
But Painfully that misses the point.
The point is to get at the truth, on the basis that the BNP is inherently repulsive once you know a bit about it, whether you come from the left or right economically. Smearing them does not use the truth and will backfire, allowing the BNP to claim, with some justification, that its critics are afraid to engage with them and have to smear them to discredit them.
My whole argument is that you have to deal with exactly what they are, not what it would be convenient for you to claim that they are. Facts are key to this, both to target attacks and in allowing these facts to be presented to the electorate in lieu of panicky smears or tired cries of ‘racist’ from the usual suspects.
Joe Otten said...
9 Jun 09 at 12:39 pm
One factor in the futility of the ‘are the BNP left or right wing’ debate is of course that the far left and far right are not very different from each other.
If you recognise that conservatism, fascism and libertarianism are different (or that socialism, communism and anarchism are different) then you shouldn’t be using the terms left wing and right wing at all.
The main problem with the BNP is that they want us to be at war with our neighbours. This goal is of course shared with groups affiliated to Al Quaeda, in a delightful example of cross-cultural co-operation.
Shaun Pilkington said...
9 Jun 09 at 2:30 pm
Joe, left and right now only have any meaning in terms of economics. The other divide is authoritarian/libertarian. Obviously facists, be they the BNP or the Socialist Workers, have more in common than appart; the recent spats on Harry’s Place about SWP anti-semitism should show that the difference is in who’s a ‘good racial group’ rather than some nasty collective.
Stacey Riley said...
9 Jun 09 at 2:52 pm
I wrote a similar piece here: http://staceyuk.dreamwidth.org/624963.html on how we could counter the BNP.
Like you, I think we need to give a platform to the BNP, and we also need to understand why people voted for them.
blind steve said...
9 Jun 09 at 3:07 pm
Sigh. Unite against fascism has disrupted Griffin’s press conference by throwing eggs and deploying violence (at least on person was taken away in an ambulance).
Their spokesweasel said to the BBC they don’t believe that Griffin, or anyone from the BNP, has a right to a voice.
So freedom of speech, until you say something they don’t like, then they suppress your voice by force.
Dumb fucks.
Stacey Riley said...
9 Jun 09 at 3:11 pm
Definitely not helping ourselves over this. *sigh*
How can we ask people to act in a calm rational manner if we don’t do that ourselves?
Shaun Pilkington said...
9 Jun 09 at 3:26 pm
Also, frankly, if we’re all calming down a bit – you could argue that returning the odd Nazi to the Euro Parliament makes us *more* like the rest of Europe rather than less. Even countries who should know better (Germany – Nazi – defeater, Italy – Blackshirt – defeated, France – quislings – defeated and don’t get me started on Eastern Europe and their SS Units), still return the odd facist. In that context, maybe this is a sign of our becoming more like our neighbours rather than less.
blind steve said...
9 Jun 09 at 3:34 pm
Indeed. Our ability to tolerate a couple around the place would be an indication of political maturity and a healthy attitude towards democracy and freedom of speech. Fat chance, as Unite have just ably demonstrated.
Shaun Pilkington said...
9 Jun 09 at 3:42 pm
Fascism comes in many hues.
The most appealing is always based on ‘I find your views appalling and anti-{INSERT STATE HERE} and you should be denied the right to voice them’.
blind steve said...
9 Jun 09 at 3:48 pm
Heh. DEATH TO ALL EXTREMISTS! sort of thing, yes.
Joe Otten said...
9 Jun 09 at 5:31 pm
But let’s not get carried away here.
Shouting louder than somebody else in a public place is exercising not preventing free speech.
A thrown egg is mostly political statement and only tokenistic violence.
So it’s not death to extremists so much as eggs to extremists.
DavidNcl said...
9 Jun 09 at 5:41 pm
The angry egg throwing mobs resemble the fascist’s more than a little bit. Do you suppose that whatever their anti-racism credentials there are many friends of free markets in thouse mobs? No. I think not. Just another kind of collectivist with a different set of people slated for the death camps.
DavidNcl said...
9 Jun 09 at 5:42 pm
rouge ‘
oops – not that I’m actually literate, after all I went to a state school.
Joe Otten said...
9 Jun 09 at 5:49 pm
Oh they look like fascists to me, probably none of them support free markets. ???
Is that the best you can do? Who knows what the politics of each of them was? I support free markets, and I would have no problem demonstrating against Griffin. I wouldn’t have thrown eggs, but nor did most of the demonstrators.
Demonstrating is meeting free speech with free speech. it is exactly the correct response.
I can understand what you’re getting at – I’ve read Orwell on anti-fascists who don’t seem that different to fascists. But that is no reason to jump to conclusions.
Shaun Pilkington said...
9 Jun 09 at 5:59 pm
So, Joe, is the ‘wrongness’ of violence inextricably linked to the intensity of the violent act? Or, as I suspect, the cause against which the violence is directed?
I argue that the use of violence for political ends is a core fascist measure (political violence can exist outside of fascism but I have yet to see fascism exist without political violence), regardless of intensity. In which case throwing an egg to deter people from saying things that you consider wrong is every bit as fascist as smashing in their teeth to prevent them from speaking.
DavidNcl said...
9 Jun 09 at 6:06 pm
“I can understand what you’re getting at – I’ve read Orwell on anti-fascists who don’t seem that different to fascists. But that is no reason to jump to conclusions.”
Oh come on, we all know it the RCP and a bunch of other commie fuckwits looking for a buzz/members.
Do you think this is enraged citzens or something?
blind steve said...
9 Jun 09 at 6:07 pm
“I can understand what you’re getting at – I’ve read Orwell on anti-fascists who don’t seem that different to fascists. But that is no reason to jump to conclusions.”
Nobody is jumping to conclusions, the UAF spokesperson said *explicitly* that they wish to deny the BNP the right to a voice, specifically that they do not believe that the BNP have the same rights as other people, simply by virtue of holding differint opinions to the UAF.
There isn’t anywhere to jump, go listen to the news. If you still don;t buy it try this sentence again “do not believe that [x] have the same rights as other people.” with something other than BNP substituted for x.
Suppressing freedom of expression through force IS fascism, and that was exactly the explicit, planned, stated, boasted even, intent of what happened today.
Worse, for the lefties, it’s oppressing an under represented victimised minority. The sort of thing that would have them up in arms for any not equal to ‘BNP’.
DavidNcl said...
9 Jun 09 at 6:07 pm
BTW, extra marks for “I’ve read Orwell” LOL!
Shaun Pilkington said...
9 Jun 09 at 6:16 pm
Need anyone forget that the Anti Nazi League was a front for the SWP, an organisation that espouses both totalitarian socialism and the occaisional spot of anti-semitism? All they need is a desire for some livingspace and they’re all set.
These wacky fascist ‘anti-Nazis’ eh? Just like Nazis but slightly less racist.
Joe Otten said...
9 Jun 09 at 6:17 pm
OK fair enough, if the stated aim is to deny them the right to a voice, I wouldn’t go on that demo.
I thought the RCP were these days the Frank Furedi/Spiked online/Institute of ideas crowd – fairly libertarian these days. Did you mean CPGB?
Tokenistic violence is not as bad as bodily harm, but egg throwers should be caught and dealt with appropriately (for which they will be heroes to many).
I’d rather take an egg than have somebody shout so loud, with or without amplification, that it hurts my ears. Perhaps we need health & safety on demos rules to draw that particular line between speech and violence.
Shaun Pilkington said...
9 Jun 09 at 6:24 pm
Arguably, Joe, egg throwing is terrorism:
If you define terrorism as seeking a political objective through acts of violence designed to inspire fear in the target to elicit the desired response, and its fairly hard to find another definition, then throwing an egg to shut someone up easily falls within that ambit. It may sound de minimas but the target of the assault has mo way of knowing if it’s an egg, a bio-weapon, acid or whatever. Could be a grenade – they are egg shaped. The fear caused is out of proportion to the threat – another characteristic, incidentally, of asymmetrical warfare/terrorism.
But yeah, at the shallow end, its unquestionably assault regardless of whether the missile connects.
Charlotte Gore said...
9 Jun 09 at 6:26 pm
Engage Irony Mode!
Personally I’m just disappointed this Anti-Nazi nazis hadn’t read this blog post and seen the error of their ways.
Oh well, ultimate power to dominate all life isn’t yet mine.
Stu said...
9 Jun 09 at 6:27 pm
Joe, I thought the idea was supposed to be ‘hope not hate’. Throwing eggs and inciting violence is ‘hate against hate’. It’s petty, it’s irrational, it’s immature and it’s counter-productive.
When BNP support rises sharply after today, I hope the egg-throwers will be bloody proud of themselves.
DavidNcl said...
9 Jun 09 at 6:29 pm
Actually I stood next (well, kinda) to a “anti BNP” not so long in tyneside. Lots (errm three) RCP banners and members. The same orgs come to the same tired demos.
I actually understand the modern marxists, do you? If you started from the position that the people you where talking to actually knew at least what you do or more it would make you seem like less of a complete cunt.
“Perhaps we need health & safety on demos rules to draw that particular line between speech and violence.”
Why am I bothering to speak to you?
Charlotte Gore said...
9 Jun 09 at 6:31 pm
Annoying I think it’s right that the BNP will thrive off this very malevolent form of No Platform.
You can’t change minds by slagging people off (a la James Graham today), or by harassing and bullying (anti fascist league).
I suppose they feel like the BNP ‘deserve’ it and therefore that’s fine. It’s that bloody ‘greater good’ thing *again.*
They’re not helping.
blind steve said...
9 Jun 09 at 6:32 pm
“These wacky fascist ‘anti-Nazis’ eh? Just like Nazis but slightly less racist.”
As DavidNCL observes above, they’re all collectivists of one flavour or another, they differ in their definition of ‘us’, but seldom their treatment of ‘them’.
DavidNcl said...
9 Jun 09 at 6:33 pm
Actually Joe – I’m sorry about that. We all do it to dome extent. Sorry.
blind steve said...
9 Jun 09 at 6:35 pm
“I suppose they feel like the BNP ‘deserve’ it and therefore that’s fine. It’s that bloody ‘greater good’ thing *again.* ”
That’s the problem, yeah. The BNP feel like the “non indigenous people” deserve it, and therefore that’s fine.
They arrived on different buses, but they got to the same place. It’s *exactly* the same line of reasoning.
DavidNcl said...
9 Jun 09 at 6:50 pm
Anyway. It’s not the same as machine gunning chip shops or blowing people up.
Throwing eggs at Nick Griffths may seem like hardcore politcal action … but the truth is its a game for smug middle class kids (wankers one and all). No one is getting shot or thrown out of aircraft here. Yet.
Shaun Pilkington said...
9 Jun 09 at 6:59 pm
“Anyway. It’s not the same as machine gunning chip shops or blowing people up.”
Sorry, David, I actually think that it is. Or is it okay to use a certain level of violence in certain circumstances? If so, lets set aside the subjectivity of the latter an look at the former.
If eggs are okay, what about stones? Rocks? Breezeblocks? I’m guessing that gunpowder-projectiles would be off the agenda but if you like eggs but not, say, rocks, then what about hard-boiled eggs? Or do we then get into arguments on the legitimacy of just how hard that hard boiled egg is? I can see a certain kind of lenninist consulting an approved document for the successful and legitimate hardening by boiling of poultry eggs but the rest of us have dozed off by then…
Joe Otten said...
9 Jun 09 at 7:02 pm
Ah, the health & safety thing was a joke. I thought that would be obvious.
And why are people talking to me as if I were defending egg throwing.
The interesting question is whether an egg thrown as a political act should be treated any different to an egg thrown for some other reason. I see a parallel here with the ‘racially motivated’ crime.
DavidNcl said...
9 Jun 09 at 7:13 pm
“Or is it okay to use a certain level of violence in certain circumstances?”
Yes, clearly it is. Some assaults warrant a stiff verbal and the withdrawal of ambassadors, others warrent the mass launch of thermonuclear weapons and still others the interdiction of shipping. Etc. FFS.
Shaun Pilkington said...
9 Jun 09 at 7:16 pm
Sorry David – I personally don’t think its ever acceptable to respond to somebody’s expression of ideas – speech – with violence of any level. That’s why I’m not a fascist.
DavidNcl said...
9 Jun 09 at 7:21 pm
The BNP warrant disinterest like the British Union of Fascists and what not.
The hard left are using them as a campaign tool. Please don’t play into their hands.
By the way I do support political violence in some circumstances – The situation can become quite desperate (von Stauffenberg).
DavidNcl said...
9 Jun 09 at 7:23 pm
Ideas which will clearly lead to your extermination, such as people organising an atomic strike on your homeland or the gassing of your ethinc sub group or social class warrant political violence or warfare.
DavidNcl said...
9 Jun 09 at 7:28 pm
We’re off in Godwin’s law territory.
There’s no cause for political violence in England. Not egg throwing or bombs.
Aye We Can said...
9 Jun 09 at 8:42 pm
Understand the egg throwers. Some genuine enough people concened at the odious nature of the BNP, some students on a day out, ….and all manipulated by the SWP. Was ever so…just the deluded followers that change
This aint about denying the BNP a platfom, but about getting the SWP one. Today, Nick Griffin got a platform he could not have dreamed of, no I suspect did dream of, played the protesters like fools. But the SWP got some publicity out of it and no doubt recruited a few more cadres…exposing the “innefectiveness” of the mainstarem left and centre to tiny numbers of people…. whilst millions are either appauled by their antics and touisands are attracted to the BNP by the publicity their antics gave them. “No platform?” – what a joke, the BNP as a result the lead item in most news bulletins, Griffin, the “victim”.
But there is “no platform” and there is refusing to share a platform, two different things. And I think the latter both effective and dignified. So long may it contiue that candidates from all the main parties refuse to debate with the BNP at hustings and in TV studios. To me, and I think more imporantly the ethnic community, this says something quite profound – that the BNP is beyond the pale, is not normal, is not just another opponent.
I single him out because he is Tory leader, but i think there is something deeply significant in David Cameron going along with this policy, being supportive of it – a real shame if “liberals” proved the weak link in a policy that has worked over the decades. Even now, look at the relative weakness of the far right in the UK compared with most of Europe. And they scraped onthe dog end of these two lists remember, despite heavy targeting of the regions conerned and on a very bad day for nulab
This does not mean denying the BNP platform, it just means the mainstream parties not legitimising them, by sharing a platform, saying in effect “you are just like us”. Leave it to Paxman, Jon Snow and co to, start up every interview by saying, no one will sit with the BNP, a then leave it to them to turn them over – they are more than capable of i, dont need Vince Cable or Toy McNulty tohelp them – indeed they get in the way. And in a line with 3 the three main parties the BNP’s agenda would undobtedly dominate. So treat the like they are, parhias. But in a dignified and thought out way – not like those clowns on Westminster Green this afternoon…they’ve just about added a third BNP seat…and half a dozen new members of the SWP
blind steve said...
9 Jun 09 at 8:58 pm
“To me, and I think more imporantly the ethnic community, this says something quite profound”
You were doing OK up until about there. It does indeed say something quite profound. It says “we lack the intellectual rigour, the emotional maturity, or both to engage in a grown up debate so we are taking our ball home.”
“the BNP is beyond the pale, is not normal, is not just another opponent. ”
It is *exactly* just that. Why give them some special status just because you disagree with more strongly than some other political grouping ?
“not legitimising them, by sharing a platform, saying in effect “you are just like us”. ”
But they are. They are a legal political party, with democratically elected representatives. Period.
Alan Bates said...
9 Jun 09 at 9:15 pm
“But they are. They are a legal political party, with democratically elected representatives. Period.”
In a nutshell, blind steve. No point second-guessing democracy. They’re on the landscape. So let’s engage them like any other party. Their record in local government suggests they may quickly be found wanting.
Joe Otten said...
9 Jun 09 at 9:31 pm
Clearly BNP MEPs have the same rights as other MEPs. But that doesn’t mean I have to treat them the same as the rest. How I relate to other people is up to me.
So, for example, when arguing with other politicians, I will, if only for the sake of argument, credit them with sincerely believing what they advocate.
With the BNP the evidence says otherwise. They are criminals in suits, who go round trying to stir up violence within our communities. To debate with them as if their arguments and policies represented an honest attempt to do the right thing, would be missing the whole point of the movement.
blind steve said...
9 Jun 09 at 9:41 pm
“They are criminals in suits”
Not like anyone in Westminster then.
“To debate with them as if their arguments and policies represented an honest attempt to do the right thing…”
Are you actually expecting me to believe that this is always (or even ever) the case for other politicians ? Because if so I’m going to be laughing in your (virtual) face.
Aye We Can said...
9 Jun 09 at 11:06 pm
Blind steve….the BNP is not a “normal” political party, For starters it bans non white people even joining it. It proposes to deny citizenship to millions of our current ctizens, it conciously sturs up racial hatred. It uses violence and intimidation against the vulnerable, specifically ethnic communitiess…I could go on and on
So we start on different premises, so reach different conclusions. We do indeed need intellectual rigour and courgage to take on the BNP and defeat them, but this need not mean face to face debate. That woud make all I describe above and more “normal” They,ve already got you, it appears – you think them “normal”, moved your parameters on the basis of two scraped results in a low turnout euro poll
blind steve said...
9 Jun 09 at 11:20 pm
“It uses violence and intimidation”
We bomb cities. Get over it. It simply does not matter how vile their ideology is.
“moved your parameters on the basis of two scraped results in a low turnout euro poll”
Nope, I have *always* believed in freedom of speech and democracy. It sickens me to hear people espouse those same ideals and then postfix them with an “except for [x]“. I have *always* despised the pathetic and childish “no platform” and all it’s “lets pretend we’re grown up now, but still no platform, really” off shoots. You either engage with these people like adults or you yourself end up looking childish.
Your argument that they are so disgusting they deserve to be treated as a class apart and denied rights we would grant others is *exactly* the same argument that they represent. Where does it stop ? You dehumanise someone, you make them an object. Evil begins there, and whether it’s them doing it or you, it’s still evil.
Aye We Can said...
9 Jun 09 at 11:43 pm
Hey Blind Steve , you aint listening
I aint advocating that we deny the BNP any rights, just that that maistream parties continue to exercise their right not to appear on platforms with BNP spokespeople.
I am not in favour of “no platform”, I’m just not infavour of enahancing the BNP’s platform by turning up and debating with them.
And I aint in favour of the trot/student antics of the Westemister Green protestors ths afternoon. Nor am I in favour of the etiquet of a student union debating club…..
I leave that to you liberals – perenial losers in every contest you ever enter.
blind steve said...
10 Jun 09 at 12:14 am
“I’m just not infavour of enahancing the BNP’s platform by turning up and debating with them.”
As I say, that’s just ‘no platform’ pretending to be a grown up.
“I leave that to you liberals – perenial losers in every contest you ever enter.”
Oh, I’m not a lib dem, I just wandered in here by mistake.
Aye We Can said...
10 Jun 09 at 12:28 am
hey steve – and here is me thinking ive come across a real liberal….. not one of thise kid on dem ones!
all the best anyway. But i still dont agree with you on this one
blind steve said...
10 Jun 09 at 12:49 am
“ll the best anyway.
And to you.
“But i still dont agree with you on this one”
And what a boring old world it would be if we all agreed. I’d have no one to argue with for a start, and that would never do.
abi bilesanmi said...
11 Jun 09 at 4:35 pm
Me again and spot on (again) on what you say i.e. going around yelling they are racist will have an effect on their support. However the argument that ‘the best way to fight the BNP is to let people understand just how pathetically typical of bad politicians they really are’ is more complex. ‘Platforming the bastards’ is easier for the likes of ourselves and much tougher than you predict. Polls show that there is great sympathy for the main tenets of the BNP particularly in white working class areas, particularly amongst men, and particularly between the ages of 18 – 55. This incidentally is where there message is targeted and where it is most successful. The BNP have also ‘redirected’ their bile based on race to inculcate Islamophobia – again very successfully. The question we should address is if they are that abhorrent why are mainstream parties (especially Labour) falling over themselves to show how tough they are on ‘terrorism’ (muslims) and immigration (foreigners). Call their agenda what you want, it is successfull Labour votes exceeded the BNP’s in the East of England European elections (not Northern and not poor) by less than 6000. The ‘extermination of these vermin’ won’t be easy. Complacency will be perilous
Just saying too.
Ralph Musgrave said...
25 Oct 09 at 9:35 pm
The Muslim population is expanding at ten times the rate of the rest of the population. So Charlotte – don’t deny it – you want your grandchildren and those of your friends to live in a Muslim country.
Do me a favour will you? Take yourself and your friends to some Muslim country (along with all Muslims in the UK). That way you and your Muslim friends get what you hypocritically claim to want. And I (beastly racist that I am)get what I want, namely a British Britian for my grandchildren. It’s called freedom of choice, which I believe in. Free choice makes everyone better off because they can get what they claim to want. But you don’t want freedom, do you – at least not for anyone else.
As for what Muslims do, migrating from a culture which has yet to have its renaissance to one that has, and then claim that one’s own culture is superior, well that’s just stupidity combined with bloody mindedness combined with hypocrisy.
Charlotte Gore said...
25 Oct 09 at 10:06 pm
Yeah, I really really believe that this is going to be a muslim country in a few decades. That’s very, very plausible… no.. wait.. it’s fucking moronic.
Ralph Musgrave said...
26 Oct 09 at 8:06 am
“Fucking moronic”? So you’re a bit short of vocabulary, like the average BNP critic who as you rightly point out can’t manage anything more than “racist”, “fascist”, and about three other words.
Re the Islamisation of the UK, the maths is quite simple. I got A level maths – how about you? Muslims expanding at ten times the rate of the rest of us. That means “Muslim country” in a few decades.
Yasser Arafat made exactly this prediction, as did Gadaffi. Yes, I know Gadaffi is a twit, but he’s not as big a twit as the average white UK politically correct liberal.
Anyway, are you enjoying your curtailed right to criticise religion?
Are you happy with Muslims getting the job description of the UN rapporteur on Human Rights changed from “exposing those who prevent free speech” to “exposing those who defame religions and prophets”? See Johan Hari’s article on this:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-why-should-i-respect-these-oppressive-religions-1517789.html
Finally, I’d like to apologise from the bottom of my heart for the pathetic racist policies of the BNP. I mean Labour plus Tories backed the Iraq invasion on the basis of doctored intelligence reports and a pack of lies, which resulted in a million Muslim and Kurd deaths. In contrast the BNP always opposed this war, plus they’ve never killed a single Muslim or Kurd. Compared to Labour, the BNP’s racism is, as I say, pathetic.
Charlotte Gore said...
26 Oct 09 at 9:21 am
It’s moronic because you’re making the huge assumption that the rate of increase of the population of muslims is going to keep growing at the same rate indefinitely.
You claim the maths are simple yet you seem to be in ignorance of the fact that the variables in your calculations are unknown.
And, you know what? Seriously? I couldn’t care less either way. Other people’s faith doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference so long as the state preserves civil liberties properly, retains our right to free speech, doesn’t fund faith schools and guarantees that each person is equal under the law.
We might not have these things, but these are the things I’d rather concentrate on rather than opening the door to fascists. My objection to fascism, I assure you, is far more to do with their economic policies (nationalisation, protectionism) than anything else. They’re still collectivist, thinking that the ‘ends’ of putting the state first means doing anything they like to particular individuals, and that’s why they’re wrong.
So yes, you’re barking up completely the wrong tree here.
Charlotte Gore said...
26 Oct 09 at 10:04 am
For example, your beloved leader, Nick Griffo, complained about usury on Question Time. Usury? Where’d that come from?
Let’s see.. hmm…
You know, large segregated communities of muslims with their own schools, own businesses, own communities completely isolated from other communities are a bad thing. They’re bad because they mean that otherwise sane and rational people get scared and angry and start turning to people who promise the very worst, the least British political ideology ever.
British liberalism, you see, free trade, Capitalism… these things were the ‘our way of life’ that we were fighting for against the Nazis. We weren’t fighting to save the Jews. The Germans, above all else, hated liberalism. They thought socialism was the way. They saw the Jews (happy capitalists that they were) as a threat to the communitarian, collectivist German way of life.. and thanks to a depression and a war wiping out Germany’s middle class, Hitler was able to come to power on a populist anti-capitalist, anti-jew platform.
Looking at Griffo’s ecomomic policies I see exactly the same mentality – raise up the walls, nationalise everything, subsume everything in the interests of the state, or whatever objectives Griffo decides. It’s the death of individualism, and if you can’t see that by helping the BNP, or Labour, or any collectivist party (whether they’re socialist, fascist, communist, whatever..) you’re working against Britishness. You’re bringing German style fascism to the UK, which makes your sanctimonious claims to want to preserve an ideal of Britain as ridiculous as it is hypocritical.
Yet, funnily enough, it’s the BNP’s racism that really damns it. I don’t know why. Perhap’s it’s just something about the character of the majority of people that just sees something distasteful and mean-spirited and frankly un-British at picking on people who can’t defend themselves.
For me the racism is a complete side issue. I personally don’t like it but I don’t condemn the BNP for being racist. I don’t even condemn them for exploiting racism to win council seats in run down white estates. I condemn them for being authoritarian, for being facist, for being nationalist, for being all those things that lead to totalitarianism, to tyranny, to economic ruin whether or not they then decide to go on to murder immigrants, homosexuals, intellectuals, capitalists, bloggers, whatever. They’re wrong anyway. Completely.