Well then, I am sure you will heard plenty about the BNP’s published membership list today. I first caught Nick Griffin being interviewed about this on Today this morning by John Humphrys and I reckon Griffin acquitted himself quite well. Whilst I am no admirer of the socialistic racist nonsense served up by the BNP, I did chuckle at Humphrys evident dismay when Griffin wondered aloud why radical Islam was not treated in the same way as the BNP? In fact that’s really my point here. The BBC trumpets the cliched establishment revulsion at the BNP and loves to suggest it is “far-right” when in fact it is more accurately “hard-left” with a flurry of racism added. So how does that make it any different to the likes of “Respect” – other than it is not Jihad-sympathetic? And isn’t it cute the way the BBC finds room for UKIP’s Nigel Farage to stick the boot into the BNP whilst it normally ignores him on most other issues? The best way to test the BNP, in my view, would be for the BBC to allow Griffin onto the likes of Question Time so that his party views could be examined just like the other parties but the BBC chooses to ignore the BNP whilst finding time for other comedians such as Marcus Brigstocke. But that just is not going to happen and so by ignoring the BNP, the BBC actually helps create an undeserved mystique for the organisation. I never did see the list that was published but wondered if the BNP has members in the BBC?
BNP and the BBC!
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Nicely perceptive post DV. Very measured. Spot on.
I really liked that:
“…whilst finding time for other comedians such as Marcus Brigstocke.”
I really have heard it all now: comparing Marcus Brigstocke to Nick Griffin. Hilarious if it wasn’t so warped. Have you read the BNP’s constitution? Read it here –
Click to access constitution_8ed.pdf
Then consider again whether or not the BNP is utterly beyond the pale and should be given the platform you suggest.
Where does the bnp get votes, i imagine it is not in conservative Surrey for example.
Can anyone help with this.
Mikewineliberal’s a BBC employee.
I’d like to see how many people at the BBC are members of the Labour party, Communist party or Socialist workers?
How about the Greens or Animal Liberation Front as well?
So who is going to decide what polticial views are acceptable? What about a teacher who is homosexual promoting homosexuality to children? Is that acceptable? What if parents object?
Why is it that being hard left is acceptable but hard right isn’t?
mikewineliberal
How is david vance comparing marcus bridgestock to nick griffin beyond simply calling them both comedians? We all know Marcus is a different kind of comedian to Nick, not funny granted, but he’s a comedian who travels with the Guardian and Independent newspaper readers (2 of the 3 least read daily newspapers in the country), and as a consequence gets lots of BBC work. There’s a connection there somewhere.
To say comedians have no place on a political show like question time seems perfectly valid to me.
mikewineliberal Indeed the BNP is an abhorent party BUT as far as I know it is still a legal political organisation. As such it should get an airing on the impartial public broadcaster we know as the BBC.
Have you read the consititution of the Socialist Workers Party? That is an equally abhorrent party. I seem to recall that someone said that Marcus Brigstock and several other BBC ‘comedians’ were(are)members.
Its called bias….
The BBC is a far more dangerous organisation than the BNP,shielding and promoting as it does leftists from pale pink to blood red.
All BBC staff should have to register political party membership.This should be on screen if any of them engage in political broadcasting.
Yes, why should BBC staff get away with shielding their own political prejudice whilst excoriating others for showing theirs? We may all have bias but the BBC denial of its own bias is indeed very dangerous.
mwl,
Denying Nazism the oxygen of publicity has worked well in Germany hasn’t it…
Marcus Brigstocke is an unfunny, lady-arsed nincompoop. One with clear political leanings and afforded considerable airtime to promote them at my expense. I do not find this acceptable.
What I would merrily enjoy is Nick Griffin and his party given enough rope to hang themselves on national telly. By their own words we can damn them. But we would need to see and hear them come from their own mouths and once in a blue moon is not often enough. We would need to see them challenged directly and repeatedly to try and defend their positions, which are racist and grotesque from the off. Get one on Have I Got News For You and let Ian Hislop and Paul Merton rip them apart. Get one on Question Time and see how long they last. A good mauling from Paxmo. The knee-jerk attempts to silence debates on the BNP simply play into their hands. By trying to hide them from us our supposed betters in politics and the media reinforce the idea that the BNP are a party to be feared, when a better approach would be to shine a light on their odious stance and cast them as a party to be ridiculed.
If you remove the racist and xenophobic bile from the BNP’s manifestos you’d find yourself looking at just another leftist party. Perhaps this is why the media generally avoid the BNP at all costs.
Yay!!!! Michael Prick on Newsnight. BNP supporters are often ‘Sun readers’
Oh dear Mr Prick. I don’t think they will like you at the Sun now.
Mr Vance,
Interesting isn’t it? The BBC has an income of over £3 billion a year and twice as many employees as the BNP has members,but somehow the latter is the big bad wolf.
The standard leftist technique, demonise your opponent and project your intentions onto them.
Gareth,
The BBC is swarming with leftists and it hasn’t worked on them.
Lest we forget,the BNP is not a “Far Righ Party” it is a National Socialist party.That is why it is picking up Labour voters.
OK, I guess a Socialist Party would have sections like those in its constitution:
“Social stability and contentment is best
achieved by the many enjoying a personal stake in our society. Accordingly, we
believe that private property should be encouraged and spread to as many
individual members of our nation as possible.”
“The British National Party is implacably opposed to Marxism”
But then, never let the facts get into your way.
Click to access constitution_8ed.pdf
mikewineliberal thanks for the link to the BNP constitution. There is much there to disagree with but nothing I would call “beyond the pale”. Which particular section were you refering to?
OK, I guess a Socialist Party would have sections like those in its constitution:
“Social stability and contentment is best
achieved by the many enjoying a personal stake in our society. Accordingly, we
believe that private property should be encouraged and spread to as many
individual members of our nation as possible.”
“The British National Party is implacably opposed to Marxism
–Indeed as was the Nationalist Socialist Party –the nazis allowed individuals to have property rights and private businesses but only with the complete control and oversight of the State. This constituted a Big State apparatus in a similar vein to one constructed by the Socialists- These control freaks are what I am so opposed to irrespective of the semantics of their job title —all I ask the State to do is leave me alone!!
I see WWL still seems incapable of walking without tripping over his own boots.
Like Mr Vance and others here, I find much to dislike about the BNP, but I’m also well aware that making martyrs out of them simply earns support from the many who feel completely locked-out by the anti-democratic political establishment, which demonises any opinion it cannot understand.
It isn’t the BBC’s job to discriminate against the BNP – any more than it is to ‘seek to explain’ Islam.
That it does both is a sign of its corruption and its moral and intellectual bankruptcy.
The BBC suffers from an auto-immune disease, whereby it hates and rejects its own as a reflex, and actively seeks to accommodate the alien – however dangerous to the host’s own survival.
It is culturally suicidal.
As there seems to be no cure and it is spreading the disease of liberal self-hate, it needs putting down. And the sooner the better.
gunnar | 19.11.08 – 11:19 pm |
“On the other hand, there is plenty of anti-capitalism, opposition to free trade, commitments to “use all non-destructive means to reduce income inequality”, to institute worker ownership, to favour workers’ co-operatives, to return parts of the railways to state ownership, to nationalise the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and to withdraw from Nato. That sounds pretty Left-wing to me.”
http://beliefinbritain.blogspot.com/2006/04/bnp-and-extreme-right.html
Jeremy Hardy, the alleged ‘comedian’, once said on R4 that BNP members should be shot in the head.
That says it all.
i agree with your points David.
rather than ignoring the BNP, they need to be on mainstream TV – so that we can hold them up to ridicule.
this semi-underground aspect of the BNP is what makes them attractive in the first place. joining them is kind of like joining the I.R.A or the U.D.A. ,but without the bombs or guns. or the risk of a visit from an SAS anti terror squad.
its a thrill – a kick against the “system”.
then again, one wonders why the BNP is picked on – when you have loonies like the SWP and assorted hangers on who would love to overthrow democracy and send us all to the gulags.
by the way – for the same reasons as i defend the BNP , i am one person who is very disturbed by the locking up of islamists for mere “hate speech”. such as abu hamza and other assorted islamists.
i’m against that. and i find it disturbing that the british state can just lock you up for merely *saying* something.
if you are proven to be connected to terrorism – such as fund raising – then fine – you should be arrested.
but recent moves to arrest people on “suspicion” of terrorism cos they downloaded a PDF off the internet is disturbing to say the least.
i love the way the reports are saying that the police are barred from membership of “far right” organisations.
so how many police are members of a far left communist or islamist organisations?
i guess the media won’t tell us.
Read the the rest of it Gunnar.
None other than the ex political editor of the Guardian, Michael White agrees! http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2008/nov/19/bnp-privacy
I live in a Labour heartland, former mining town, where up until recently a pig would get elected if it wore a red rosette.
At the last local election the BNP nearly won, despite their candidate being a bit of an abrasive character ( I think he’s a twat – a likeable twat, but a twat just the same ) who didn’t run any sort of campaign.
‘Hope not Hate’ were shoving leaflets through our doors ( in the wee small hours, so they didn’t actually have to interact with any of us neanderthals )
People here aren’t joining, or voting for the BNP because it’s some student lefty urban guerilla thrill, they genuinely feel that the white working class have been disenfranchised.
Betrayed even.
That very idea might make the metrosexual elite chuckle into their wine glasses, but there is a burning resentment amongst the ‘decent’ working class about unrestrained immigration, crime and the undermining of traditional values.
I don’t think that the BNP’s national socialism is any kind of answer, but a hell of a lot of people do.
I think HSLD makes a good point and it’s one that would be utterly lost on the BBC.
They may well hate the BNP and they may well be right to do so: but if they cannot understand it, all they will do is feed it.
There was a letter in the papaers once, along the lines of:
What is more scary: the BNP winning lots of votes, or Parliament proposing
measures to ensure that they don’t get lots of votes?
Have any of you watched Question Time recently? The synchronised right-on PC-fest played by NuLab, wet-Tory and the LibDhim with a lefty luvvy thrown in for entertainment. A BNP spokesman would have a field day because he has the entire field left open to him. That’s why the BBC doesn’t let someone like Nick Griffin on QT.
DV , great piece and interesting thread. As a typical Tory, I find most of the bnp stuff simplistic, but I find the beeboid/labour/grauniad orcestrated attempt to deny them a platform, even more objectionable.
I was pretty appalled by the way this was dealt with on newsnight last night. They’d taken the trouble to do a full analysis of the BNP membership by area and demographic profile. The conclusion was that they are highly likely to be “Sun readers” – a bit contemptuous i thought and i’m sure there’s a lot of “sun readers”, myself included, who wouldn’t touch them with a bargepole.
There has been absolutely no analysis or discussion that I’ve seen on whether it’s appropriate that membership of a legal political party should prohibit you entering a particular line of work like the police. This seems to be accepted with the discussion all about whether its appropriate for other professions to “accept” BNP members (the church, the queen’s servants)…
I don’t think “”hard-left” with a flurry of racism added.” is a good description. “hard left” economically, “hard right” socially with a flurry of racism added perhaps.
Compare and contrast the BBC’s attitude to the BNP and Sinn Féin.
The first the BBC go out of their way to avoid giving a platform to.
The second the BBC went out of their way to circumvent government restrictions to give a platform to.
Obviously the BNP need to form a paramilitary wing and start killing British people to get some air time.
This blog seems to becoming sympathetic to the BNP in many of the same ways and to roughly the same extent as the BBC is sympathetic to Hamas.
Of course people occasionally distance themselves from the worst aspects, but they buy into the victim status and the whole performance in this thread acts like a dog whistle.
I think this is a bad idea for two reasons.
First, the BNP are scum, who should be given no quarter.
Second, it totally undermines the reputation of B-bbc if beeboids are able to turn around and accuse us of being even closet BNPers.
I can see not everyone is mad keen on the boy Dave. But FFS there is UKIP.
First they came for the scum, but I did not speak out….
I don’t want to vote BNP any more than I want to jump into a cold river fully clothed, but then again, if I’m on fire and the people who should be putting it out aren’t doing anything, what choice do I have?
All parties are a mixture of good and bad. None of them are perfect, all of them are tainted with ideologies of the past. Labour has a hangover of socialism, the Tories powerful, inhuman capitalism.
Sure there are things about the BNP I dislike – unsavoury characters and possibly some racism – and I hate racism. But who else is confronting the reality of the existential threats to this country – Islamisation, multiculturalism, loss of identity, mass immigration, loss of democracy?
If the Tories turned round tomorrow and confronted these issues I would forget about the BNP in a trice. If they promised to get us out of the EU, to stop all non pre-assimilated immigration, to repatriate the majority of immigrants who have come here since ’97, to address our own demographic collapse, to abandon the Human Rights act, to abandon multiculturalism, to stop Islam in its tracks and recognise it as a destructive ideology rather than a religion, then I would vote for them. I don’t think those are unreasonable demands.
So if the mainstream parties are going to be unreasonable, then perhaps the electorate are going to have to be too.
This blog seems to becoming sympathetic to the BNP…
PaulS | 20.11.08 – 9:49 am |
I’m not sure that’s correct, although there are inevitably some sympathisers amongst the commentators. Much of the usual BBC bias is against things I am in favour of and this can make it difficult to differentiate between its bias and my opinion.
The BNP on the other hand is a rare area where I generally agree with the BBC’s opinion. Trouble is, the BBC shouldn’t in my view have an opinion about a lawful political party and this makes its bias all the clearer as far as I’m concerned.
That I think is why you feel the blog is sympathetic to the BNP – we can see the bias even where we might agree with the sentiment.
PaulS: I don’t see this blog becoming sympathetic to the BNP. What I do see is sympathy with the white working class who live (as I do) as a minority in their town or or borough, who never gave their consent nor were asked for their opinions by the politicians who have seen fit to allow such massive levels of immigration as the country has seen in the past two or three decades.
I see sympathy here with the anger of those who are told by every nuance of the BBC’s current affairs output that certain topics are off-limits, forbidden, only of concern to “Sun readers” or “racists”.
I see sympathy here for those who might feel disenfranchised by a system in which the state broadcaster is quick to discuss the strains on our infrastructure and social cohesion by immigrants from Poland, having studiously refused to touch the issue with a bargepole during decades in which mass immigration from Pakistan and Bangladesh have transformed many towns and cities of this country.
I see sympathy here for the fact that a certain segement of the population feels they have no way to express their views politically, because mainstream political parties have turned immgration from a practical issue into a moral one – partly due to the instant reflex talk of racism hurled at them by the BBC whenever they attempt to actually discuss the issue sensibly.
I’m willing to bet that outside of Islington, White City, and Notting Hill, the vast majority of white people in this country, of all classes, hold views on race and immigration that have been morally outlawed by the BBC. I don’t think it’s healthy or democratic that the elite media and political class try to censor and stifle that view.
That censorship is far greater oxygen to the BNP than open engagement and scrutiny would be.
It’s like the Shakespeare authorship controversy, or 9-11 truthers: the conspiracy theorists complain that they are marginalised and ignored, but in fact that marginalisation is their lifeblood, because as soon as the real world engages with them and exmaines their claims by scientific or critical standards, their whole enterprise begins to look decidedly shoddy and loses its mystique.
If the BNP are a legal organisation, the top brass have no business investigating whether a police officer is a member or not. It’s either illegal for him/her to be so, or it isn’t. End of story.
I – and I seem to think the majority here – have no time for the BNP as a serious political party. But some of us are concerned by the consequences of the mass immigration that has been imposed on us, concerned by the bias of the BBC in comnstantly giving entirely disporportionate airtime to islam, explaining it and introducing to us its ideas, making excuses for its atrocities, agonising over the racist backlash they constantly expect muslims here to suffer (which never seems to materialise), allowing groups as actually racist and violent as Hamas or Hezbollah to state their case through the BBC, while whitewashing the rather pathetic BNP from existence.
Race and immigration should be up for discussion without the BBC suffering a moral heart attack.
The BNP should be a well-scrutinised minority party, on the same level as the Greens or Respect, or the SWP.
What’s the problem with that?
I sense that what really scares the lefties at the BBC about the BNP is the notion that if their message is widely available and discussed, the people might actually find something in it they liked.
I wouldn’t: but it’s not my right to impose my views on others. That’s not a mindset that operates in White City, evidently.
“That I think is why you feel the blog is sympathetic to the BNP – we can see the bias even where we might agree with the sentiment.”
Roland Deschain | 20.11.08 – 10:42 am |
Roland Deschain, spot on as ever.
I’m willing to bet that outside of Islington, White City, and Notting Hill, the vast majority of white people in this country, of all classes, hold views on race and immigration that have been morally outlawed by the BBC. I don’t think it’s healthy or democratic that the elite media and political class try to censor and stifle that view.
Today the BBC asked in an upbeat manner – Could Leicester, the first British city with a white minority, become the template for other cities?
I wonder how many BBC employees live in Leicester? Or would want to?
Perhaps that could be the next reality TV series – “How multicultural are you really?”, following the life of a BBC exec as they try to get their heads round being an ethnic minority in their own neighbourhood.
First, the BNP are scum, who should be given no quarter.
PaulS | 20.11.08 – 9:49 am | #
You’ll find scum in this website – and they are from the ruling parties.
http://liarsbuggersandthieves.blogspot.com/
Gareth: ‘What I would merrily enjoy is Nick Griffin and his party given enough rope to hang themselves on national telly.’
Hmm, I’m not so sure this would happen – Nick Griffin can be a tidy performer. I suspect this is the reason that the BNP rarely get a platform.
Two excellent comments above from henryflower and Roland Deschain.
Aside from the specific points they are making, what they also illuminate is the lie told by the BBC apologists who repeatedly accuse B-BBCers of only perceiving bias against the Right.
I suspect most of us here are deeply troubled by aspects of the BNP’s policies and yet we clearly see the shameful treatment allotted to the Party by the BBC – an organisation which never discusses the hard Left and shows Islam nothing but cringing obeisance.
This is B-BBC at its best.
It is disgusting that they are so keen to promote multiculturalism.
They seem to have a hatred of white people.
As a typical Tory, I find most of the bnp stuff simplistic, but I find the beeboid/labour/grauniad orcestrated attempt to deny them a platform, even more objectionable.
backwoodsman | 20.11.08 – 8:58 am | #
As a typical Tory, you offer no opposition to the destruction of our country when it was your duty to do so. As a typical tory, you have allowed, or collaborated in, the takeover of one of Britain’s governing parties by an effette clique of simpering fopps who have no understanding of the world in which most of us live. You are even worse than NuLab because you deprived us of an alternative to NuLab. BTW, I used to vote Conservative.
“First, the BNP are scum, who should be given no quarter.”
How about,Respect,the SWP Islamist.
Breeze in the trees?
“Second, it totally undermines the reputation of B-bbc if beeboids are able to turn around and accuse us of being even closet BNPers.”
Most Beeboids are left,many extreme left like the SWP.Interesting that the latter is at the heart of many protests and demonstrations,active in academe and most of all has vast influence in the BBC considering its small membership.
Note also the alliance between the extreme left and Islamism,Respect for example.Consider to appalling antisemitism of the left in general.
The BBC is not neutral it is a political entity with an agenda,and that is ever leftwards comrades.
Demonising and silencing the opposition is a principle tactic of the left.I recommend Saul Alinskys “Rules for Radicals”.
I wonder how many BBC employees live in Leicester? Or would want to?
Did you not see the ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ episode about Jeremy Paxman? That was a good example, I think. It turned out he has roots in Bradford – which, for those of you who aren’t aware basically resembles somewhere in Pakistan, especially Manningham – and I’m not sure if he was trying, but he was doing a terrible job of hiding his outright disgust.
Beeboids are quite happy to foist unfettered, demographic inverting immigration on us peons, so long as they can remain in their elitist enclaves in London where multiculturalism means going for a curry one a week or buying some wine from that ‘nice little ethnic man’ who runs the offy.
HSLD 1.58 is correct. People are desperate to show their disapproval of this Labour Government.
Labour are afraid of the BNP, so their mouthpiece the BBC (and Sky) like to talk about the BNP and being ‘far right’ because they want to discredit any party perceived to be ‘right’.
I’ve posted this before, from the dissecting leftism website
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com/
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin’s Communism. The very word “Nazi” is a German abbreviation for “National Socialist” (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler’s political party (translated) was “The National Socialist German Workers’ Party” (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
And this :
The term “Fascism” is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate defintions — e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.
Susan Franklin,
Did you know Mussolini was a friend of Lenin’s,and indeed WWII was the great socialist war.
Whilst the Third Reich was allied to the USSR the left would not lift a finger to help,there was even a dock strike,making it difficult to ship munitions.
What we have now in Europe is Fascism,big business capitalism and tight state social control.
The Labour party is more dangerous than the BNP,they have power,even though the party is bankrupt,Labour is totally owned by the Unions.Labour is dedicated to intrusive social policies,ID cards, surveillance,indoctrination through education,above all the destruction of the old social fabric of Britain.
It isn’t what the BNP might do in some distant future,it what the New Labour Project has done in just over a decade.Even down to banning other parties.
the BNP are scum, who should be given no quarter
A phrase no doubt written on the walls of Student Union offices throughout the land.
It’s a bit more grown up though to ask what it is the BNP stand for ( as opposed to what the BBC claim they stand for ) and why they attract the support of ordinary decent people.
I have to agree with Henryflower.
Britain has been sold down the river.