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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HSLD: absolutely right. If the BNP are self-evidently scum, the best possible way to destroy them is to give them a public platform in which they can be seen for what we are told they are.
For the same reason, I would love to see some petulant Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesman demolished in a Question Time type format.
As a society we should either ban an organisation, or treat it like any other. If we find nothing in it that is actually illegal, yet try to whitewash it from existence with witch-hunts, we end up giving it a status that is rather more exalted than it deserves, and we similarly fail in our duty to hold its claims to account, granting it more credibility than we would by facing it head-on.
And we also make hypocrites of ourselves.
Witch-hunts against legally constituted political parties are a way of saying, “Certain types of thought should be illegal, and we wish we could legally enforce such a ban.”
Juxtaposition Bias
There seems to be some kind of rule on the BBC that any report on the BNP has to be followed by an old story on Hitler or something along those lines. This time, on last nights Newsnight, they did a special report on “ultra-nationalists” in plot to overthrow the government of Turkey, entitled Violent Nationalism Blights Turkey:
For decades reformers have suspected the existence of an anti-democratic network buried deep in Turkey’s military and other state organisations. The trial could also shed light on the death of Hrant Dink, the dissident writer who was assassinated last year after he was convicted of insulting Turkishness. We have a special report from Turkey.
Newsnight put this report on after the BNP story in the hope of associating the BNP with the actions of “ultra-nationalists” in Turkey.
henryflower | 20.11.08 – 2:20 pm
But they are given a public platform, have been for years, and have well and truly hung themselves so far as I’m concerned.
You talk as if Griffin were under some form of house arrest.
He’s not. He stands in elections. He holds hustings. He’s on the television. He has a website and a blog. And the only reason we are talking about him now is because he was on the bloody Today Programme this week.
If he got any more free publicity he’d turn into Shami Chakrabarti.
PaulS – hats off to a fine punchline.
I talk as though a police force is “investigating” whether or not a member of the force has links to a legally constituted political party.
Do you not see why that’s disturbing? Whatever you or I may think of the BNP?
Boy Blue
A bit late but your point re the IRA says it all about the BBC.
It plainly circumvented the Goverment’s desire to remove the “oxygen of publicity” from the IRA but should the present Government propose the same for the BNP I don’t think you would ever hear those famous words “the words of Nick Griffin are spoken by an actor” on a BBC broadcast.
Amazing that PaulS never mentions the connections between the far left and the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.One might think that he supports them.
“A bit late but your point re the IRA says it all about the BBC.”
Though the IRA was a violent terrorist group and no matter how despicable the BNP,it is not.
Whiteswineilliberal
Did not the ban also apply to spokesmen of Sinn Fein, the “political” wing of the IRA, a distinction the BBC seemed to recognise. Most Loyalist spokesmen always seemed to refer to Sinn Fein / IRA to make the point that there was barely a fag paper between them.
One suspects that the Sinn Fein leadership only had to ask the question of the person looking back in the mirror to obtain the IRA view on anything.
he’d turn into Shami Chakrabarti
Puts me in mind of John Carpenters ” The Thing ” 🙂
Henryflower
I talk as though a police force is “investigating” whether or not a member of the force has links to a legally constituted political party.
Do you not see why that’s disturbing? Whatever you or I may think of the BNP?
I find it strange that when we read a A Merseyside Police spokesman saying “We will not accept a police officer or police staff being a member of BNP.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/7739446.stm
Are we led to conclude that they will, however, accept that a police officer in free and fair elections at the ballot box, may actually vote for the BNP?
I wish we could hear the BBC or a journalist put this point across. In the interests of political democracy it would help somewhat. There doesn’t seem to be any clear explanation that it is totally acceptable (indeed democratic) for a police officer , or for that matter a prison officer, teacher, etc., to vote for for parties in an election.
What constitutes “membership” of a political party should be the issue not the party itself.
What is the difference between a “member” of the Labour Party or Liberal Party and somebody who votes for that party?
I would like to know who are “members” of the Labour Party and work for the BBC, and why this is seen as “acceptable”?
The MSM does not seem to be interested in the wider implications of this, the manner in which they simply echo “concerns” from police spokespersons may very well be originating from fully paid up Labour Party “members” has anybody in the BBC thought to question that possibility?
henryflower | 20.11.08 – 11:05 am
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.
Yes, henryflower, you are quite right.
You’ll perhaps have noticed that the two main political parties in this country have similar (though significantly different) policies to limit non-EU immigration only to applicants with urgently needed skills • almost like the US green card system. So it must be that the parties were listening after all. Or, at least the Conservatives were and NuLab have copied them as per usual.
Nor is Tory interest exactly new. You’ll remember William Hague was attacked by the Left for making immigration an issue in the 2001 election. Michael Howard, ditto, in 2005.
There is and never has been any need for the BNP’s input.
And you’ll have noticed the home office figures published this week showing vast numbers of Poles etc have already left and that we are fast approaching a negative migration position.
The figures also put a few other things into context. Of all the people who live in Britain, 53 million or so were born here. Another 2 million plus were born elsewhere in Europe (Ireland….Poland…France….Italy….Portugal etc)
leaving only about 4 million who were born ‘in the rest of the world’.
The immigration policies of neither Labour nor the Conservatives have any relevance.Immigration is an EU competence.
Gerald Brown,
It matters not,the IRA were murderers and the BBC equates the BNP with them.It was though a government ban which the BBC managed to get round by having actors read the words.
PaulS | 20.11.08 – 6:15 pm “we are fast approaching a negative migration position.”
spinning with the same fury as Wollas on yesterday’s Daily Politics
Ministers were left predicting yesterday that a falling pound would help to curb immigration as figures showed the arrival of more than half a million new foreigners last year.
The figures represent the second-largest increase in new arrivals on record and an overall rise in the net figure on last year
The net increase of 237,000 — up 46,000 from last year — takes Britain’s population to a little under 61 million, at least 1.8 million more than the 1997 figure
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5192706.ece
in what way is a net 237,000 annual inflow “approaching a negative migration position”?
I`ve heard the three main political parties advocating immigration policies “to stop support going to the BNP”
So they didn`t have those policies out of principle, or because they wanted to give the electorate what they wanted .
So who is legitamising the BNP ?
I’m not sure how one should comprehend the following -shock, horror, news- just skimmed from The Independent, maybe the realisation that bnp members no longer conform to the stereotypes of the past?
“The Green Party has revealed one of its former parliamentary candidates joined the BNP because he believed its climate change policy “was more radical”.
Keith Bessant, who ran for MP in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, in 2001 and 2005, was named in the list of members of the far right organisation.
The party also confirmed a church minister, Rev John Stanton, from Rochford, Essex, also exposed on the membership list, was also once a local Green Party chairman.”
Do I hear the scurrying of BBC legs for an interview? Following all the sordid revelations of B. Obama’s minister I would have thought this would be very news worthy.
I once saw a declared BNP member make a contribution from the audience on Question Time that was very favourably received by most of the Panel. It was against the Iraq War. I suspect the BNP and many at the BBC share a common motive for loathing the Iraq War: One less nutter keen to wipe out Israel.
I’d like to say that there is no way that a neo-Nazi Party should get a place on QT. The same type of standard should also apply to extremists on the Left as well. Unfortunately, many of them are running the BBC.
hippiepooter writes: “I’d like to say that there is no way that a neo-Nazi Party should get a place on QT”
I think we need to be very careful with our definitions here. If by ‘neo-Nazi’ you mean rigidly authoritarian and against individual liberty, then I believe many ZaNuLabour politicians would qualify very well indeed.
The EU is the most destructive organization on the European Continent since the Third Reich. It’s long term objectives include WIPING OFF THE MAP dozens of of European nations and there replacement and supplanting with “regionalisation”, multiculture, and massive immigration from the Muslim world.
Comparison with the Nazi Lebensraum project is, in principle, not inappropriate or inaccurate, if not realistic. Yet.
The BNP can’t even compete.
Also, Britain has no control whatsoever over it’s immigration policy and we should give anyone the benefit of the doubt regarding this.
We’re facing total annihilation if things continue the way they are. We face a threat greater to us than that of Nazi Germany, greater than the Taliban. The real soldiers, the bravest warriors are right here at home, fighting the latest “Enlightenment” project to create a “new” and “improved” humanity.
PaulS, interesting approach. Rather than addressing the ethical point, you use HO figures to demonstrate that BNP “input” is unecessary because their hobbyhorse issue is indeed being dealt with by the main parties, grudgingly and reluctantly, despite accusations of racism being attached to any Tory proposal on immigration by both Labour and the BBC.
This neat, though entirely unconvincing manoeuvre, allows you to sidestep entirely the larger issue of why it is considered entirely unacceptable for teachers or police officers to belong to a legally constituted political party, to the extent that they are “investigated”. What we are dealing with there is nothing less than the moral criminalisation of certain opinions and thoughts, and the entirely unwarranted destruction of people’s careers based on that moral judgement.
And what, in any case, does the following sentence mean:
“There is and never has been any need for the BNP’s input.”
This rather meaningless formulation serves only to cloak the fact that they exist legally, attract increasing amounts of support, legally, and as such deserve as much of a platform as any other party of equivalent size, and their members should no more be exposed, witch-hunted, and sacked, than a member of Respect, the SWP, or UKIP.
You may not see the “need” for BNP input: regrettably or otherwise, the increasing success they are having rather indicates that others see in their communities a need that you do not see in yours, reassured as you are by government statistics.
And no, I am not a fan. Mr Griffin may be very suave and convincing to some, but when I see his minders I feel I know all I need to know about what type of people the BNP leadership are.
But as Roland Deschain said previously, we must not insist on due process and basic fairness only when it favours those with whom we agree. Sometimes we have to object to the unfair treatment of those we consider wholly wrong.
Bit of Friday fun:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/shane_richmond/blog/2008/11/21/hitlers_bnp_membership_gets_leaked
On a more serious note, as the BNP hopefully slides back into the minor, if cautionary niche such organisations will always occupy, I was watching a documentary last night on Night of the Long Knives, and the part it played in cementing Hitler’s power base by crushing the SA, which was deemed a tad too extreme even for most Nazis jockeying for control over the masses.
What most struck me was the highly effective part played by the state media, who explained it all away to the evident satisfaction of the public, who got seduced into being rather too comfortable being told what to think by a government/media ‘elite’ (not sure if they had to pay a fee for it in 1934, mind). Didn’t work out so well, as I recall.
Let’s see how well history unfolds this time. Knives can have two edges.
Rather ironically (well, I thought), this was soon to follow…
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/daniel_hannan/blog/2008/11/21/eu_website_launches_with_a_picture_of_hitler_then_crashes
Anway, as some here try to infer to such crushing effect, one might say it’s just the Telegraph, and you know what they are like.
You can see how they might not rate highly in some quarters, mind…
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/tracy_corrigan/blog/2008/11/21/first_barclays_now_the_bbchow_to_lose_your_bonus_but_keep_your_job
I have to say it is a good question. Why does any public servant, especially one working for a funded, unaccountable monopoly, get a bonus at all?
Has the BBC reported this yet?
The world has never seen such freezing heat
The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.
Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies is run by none other than one of the BBC’s favorite sources for AGW propaganda, and best buddy with the second Nobel Laureate for Being Against George W. Bush, Al Gore. It’s funny, because usually the BBC has all kinds of time for Dr. Hansen.