I see the BBC gives that paragon of political integrity Peter Hain (!) the chance to sound off on the “shock” BNP victory in the local council election in Sevenoaks. Wonder will the BBC’s political experts consider why it is that the increase in BNP votes seems remarkably proportionate to the decrease in Labour votes? The BBC and others on the political left portray the BNP as “extreme-right”even though it is essentially socialist in nature. So when it becomes clearer by the day that the advance of the BNP is related to the retreat of Labour, perhaps the BBC may like to consider asking some tougher questions of Mr Hain.
THAT BNP VICTORY
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From reading the excerpt from the BNP website above it seems to me that they are essentially leaning toward fascism in nature – fascism being of course just another form of collectivism, a stone’s throw away from socialism.
Essentially, the only part of the BNP that the left disagree with is its stance on immigration. Otherwise it’s more of the same pseudo-Marxist “collective resources which belong to everyone” nonsense.
My own view on immigration is that there’s nothing wrong with it…just so long as immigrants have absolutely no access whatsoever to any freebies or entitlements and so long as they’re kicked out if they commit crimes.
The far left and far right are blood brothers and yet they just won’t admit it. I find the ideas of the socialist left every bit as odious as those of the far right.
It will be a sad, sick day in a few months time when the BNP wins one, maybe two seats in the Euro Parliament. And it will only add to the continuing increase in BNP votes at local level.
But maybe it will be a wake-up call.
When the Euro seat(s) are won by the BNP – no doubt they will get fair and unbiased treatment by the BBC.
JohnA | 22.02.09 – 12:32 am |
It will indeed – but even then New Labour will not see the problem, let alone solve it.
but there already IS a BNP style fascist organisation in power in the UK – and unlike the BNP , it has an army, with guns.
its called Sinn Fein. and they are in the Stormont government.
which is why this hysteria with regards to the BNP never ceases to amuse me.
Jon
And neither will the Tories recognise the real problems, the real reasons for the increase in the BNP vote.
The current Tory leadership couldn’t run a bloody chip shop.
JohnA | 22.02.09 – 12:58 am
i would agree. the Tories dont exactly inspire confidence.
they seem to be more about Blair style PR than any substance – prime example, their love-in with “green” issues – which is a load of dishonest crock.
Ratass Shagged: Thank you for the clarification.
I can thoroughly understand (and even to a degree share) your view that the establishment in his country needs picking up by the scruff of its corrupt, collective neck and shaking, like a rat in the jaws of a terrier.
However, the lesson of history is that once they gain a foothold, extremist parties can be the very devil to get rid of.
I worry that if the BNP ever gains critical mass, it could do great damage.
Then again, I freely admit, I haven’t a better suggestion – the rest of the parties being utterly corrupt, their representatives, for a large part, being fit only to sew mailbags.
Tom:
Garden Trash | 21.02.09 – 7:52 pm
That presumes that English,unlike Scottish Welsh and Irish is not a racial identity.
None of these is a racial identity. They are all national identities.
Caucasian, Negroid etc are racial identities.
Tom | 21.02.09 – 11:03 pm |
————————————
Nothing is in fact and immutably a race – such divisions are largely arbitrary and notional and can be drawn in a number of ways and in a number of different places.
So it makes just as much (or as little) sense to say the Irish and Scots are a race as it does to say that (African) “black” people are a race. I mean, I know they are “black” but so what? Why would that mean they are a race? There is no agreed scientific definition or meaning to “race” and there are lots of distinct ethnic / national groups of peoples in Africa (as well as distinct ethnic and national groups in Europe or Asia).
Maybe it is slightly more sensible to talk about ethnicity / ethnic groups and/ or nations / national groups.
GCooper | 22.02.09 – 1:06 am
and lets be honest – libertarianism isnt exactly flavour of the month right now.
i dont see the masses flocking to LPUK anytime soon.
more importantly though – my own take on the BNP is that its also a result of the devolution policy of New Labour – it is not unreasonable to assume that if English folks see the SNP in power in Scotland, and Sinn Fein sharing power in Ulster, that English working class folks would begin to ask “what about us?”
and thus , enters the BNP to fill that vacuum.
My only worry about the BNP is not that the BNP would ever gain power – my worry is that the BNP will reach a critical mass that triggers the Civil Contingencies Bill by the incumbent government.
That is my far bigger worry.
Millie Tant | 22.02.09 – 1:36 am | #
in terms of DNA , there certainly are things call “races”. Darwinian theory certainly has “race” as part of evolutionary theory – a “race” is a distinct branch of a species – which might or might not , evolve into a separate species. but “race” is the starting point.
we humans are not immune to it. but thats pure biology.
in human society, culture and language matter far far more over time than mere race. you are correct in that regard.
e.g. the Roman Empire was pretty much color blind, having several dark skinned Emperors and Centurions from their N.Africa colonies… but they spoke Latin and were utterly Romanized..
actually maybe theres a lesson in the Roman Empire for us. when they absorbed other cultures , but imposed Latin and Roman Law , they prospered.
When they turned Christian and got all touchy-feely , post-Constantine , they declined…
archduke:
Millie Tant | 22.02.09 – 1:36 am | #
in terms of DNA , there certainly are things call “races”. Darwinian theory certainly has “race” as part of evolutionary theory – a “race” is a distinct branch of a species – which might or might not , evolve into a separate species. but “race” is the starting point.
we humans are not immune to it. but thats pure biology.
————————————
There are differences in DNA found between groups of peoples, but skin colour is not a good correlation to those; geography is more so. So what is commonly thought of as race is not well founded on genetics either. It is more an assumption founded on social and political grounds than anything else. It isn’t particularly reliable or useful.
Millie Tant | 22.02.09 – 2:11 am
i tend to agree with you – whilst the tabloid headlines might say “indian kids do better at maths” , digging below the headlines shows a cultural advantage at work – that their family/parents are pushing the kids a lot harder.
you can replicate that across all sorts of scenarios. social/cultural stuff is definitely a way way bigger impact on us humans – who are ultimately just hypercharged social apes.
Is the BNP any worse than ‘respect’
Is it BNP members that take part in large scale postal voting fraud.
The rise of the BNP is in part due to Labours open door immigration policy and endless concessions to keep Muslim votes. Large scale immigration followed by a depression will always lead to tension.
It is credit to the native British people that they still have a low level of support. Not that the BBC will acknowledge that, they will brand the whole country racist for daring to let a single BNP councilor be elected.
Like Roy Hattersley the BBC think elections are a good thing only if they give the ‘right’ results.
“From the BNP website;
Globalisation, with its export of jobs to the Third World, is bringing ruin and unemployment to British industries and the communities that depend on them.
[…]
Finally we will seek to give British workers a stake in the success and prosperity of the enterprises whose profits their labour creates by encouraging worker shareholder and co-operative schemes”
Sounds pretty Left Wing to me!
Libertarian | 21.02.09 – 6:22 pm | #
The Far left and the Far Right meet round the back and most of what they believe is essentially socialist , as many commenters here have observed.
“What the Right puts forward, we put through” Mao Tse Tung
In all this talk of left and right, how nice it is to hear no mention of the “centre”. The centre, of course, is a place invented by the left. They invented it to have a place to which they might entice the gullible and the young and have their way with them in peace and quiet without seeming to be in any way political. But because it is not a real place, it sometimes makes no sense. Preposteroso, for instance, believes in throwing terrorists into the sea without trial, before the left-leaning legal profession and the BBC and others can earn big money from them. This, quite properly, puts Preposteroso on the right. BBC people do not believe in throwing terrorists into the sea without trial but this doesn’t mean they are on the left, it somehow curiously means they are in the centre. Logically, this would then have to mean that people on the true left must actually want to clone and multiply terrorists.
Hitler and Stalin breathed the same air, the only difference being how many millions each killed. I believe Stalin won on points.
Whenever the BBC mentioned a “Tory” minister forced to resign he/she was always “Disgraced” former minister.
I haven’t hear the BBC saying “Disgraced former minister Peter Hain” or “Disgraced former minister Lord Mandy..”
Seems that the disgrace only lies on the right…
Any worries about the BNP achieving ‘critical mass’ are of a lesser scale than of the establishment achieving its aims. If the BNP gets to power, socialism will not die because there are strands of it in the BNP’s manifesto – BUT THERE WILL STILL BE A BRITAIN.
Either way things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. How much more abuse can this country take from it’s own government and the BBC?
I got a phone call from my dad a couple of months ago, he told me he’d received several abusive, threatening calls from “weirdos” because his name was on the leaked BNP members list. He found it funny, said he tried to talk to them in French which seemed to vex them and make them more abusive. I feared for him. But I realise now who “the thugs” are.
The Tories let my dad down when he was a miner, Labour are letting him down now as a pensioner and the LibDems just seem to offer more of the same.
After initial shock, I fully support my father and he’s got me thinking about who I’d vote for.
I do wish the BBC would drop this “far right” tag. The more they use it and the more I realise decent people are voting BNP, the more I realise how hoplelessly out of touch the BBC are.
Things are already getting worse.
GCooper migh like to know that some are taking potshots at journalists.
Whether this is the start of 1776,1789, 1848,or 1968 time will tell.
In America they are selling out of handgun ammunition.
Garden Trash: Yes, interesting link, thank you.
And I can’t say I blame the cousins for stocking-up on ammunition. If it were legal, I would be doing the same thing here!
“The Far left and the Far Right meet round the back”
No. That roundabout (excuse the pun) formulation arises from the left’s rejection of nationalist socialism and its determination to portray it as being as far from “real” socialism as it is possible to be.
But it ain’t.
The “Far Right” is the far left, but nationalist. Mussolini was a communist, and never renounced socialism. The NASDP was founded by social democrats and explicitly and repeatedly rejected capitalism (it was, of course, the “Third Way”). Mosley left the Labour Party to found the BUF, and rejected the “far right” tag in one of his final interviews, saying, “I am a man of the left”.
If we define the “left” by collectivism and the rejection of free-market capitalism, then the “right” must be individualist and free-market. The BNP, being collectivist on a national rather than international level, is therefore slightly less left-wing than international socialists.
If we define the “left” as being in favour of radical social and economic upheaval, with the “right” being conservative, then again, the BNP comes out as less left-wing than traditional socialists. However, this is the area where the traditional left can get away with pinning the “right” tag on their nationalist brethren: opposing immigration and “keeping Britain for the British” as it (supposedly) once was can be portrayed as a “conservative” position. But the point is that even if you accept that analysis (and it has flaws), the BNP are conservative socialists, not Conservatives.
Join them David, I’m sure you’d fit in.
I can’t see where the “Detective” part comes from – but it is plain that the BullsXXt bit fits.
Who is the Bulls**t Defective ?
Garden Trash asks: “Who is the Bulls**t Defective ?”
And why hasn’t he been banned?
I got this Tommy Boyd link from the comments Iain Dale’s article “How well will the BNP do in June?”
Debate: Unite Against Facism vs The BNP
Very revealing.
Where do all the loony lefties come from? I will be voting BNP for no other reason than to kick all the self righteous lecturing BBC/government lefties right up the arse – we have had enough of them 10 times over!
“Where do all the loony lefties come from?”
You know the BNP are also from the “loony left” I suppose.
Whilst the BNP do make points in regards to immigration that are worthy, it is worth remembering that they are essentially a white supremacist party. Yes we should put our country first, yes we should put our workers first, and yes we should limit/halt immigration. But none of these things have anything to do with racism – the BNP however, have a lot to do with racism. The ‘our’ in ‘our country’ is taken by the BNP , and their supporters, to mean whites only. And thats the problem with them. British job for British workers is fine, but that should be the case for British workers white, black, brown, red. The BNP cleverly exploit these issues to drum up the prejudices a lot of us have in regards to race. Yes they do exist as a result of Labour’s failed immigration policy, Vance is right about that. But they are not the solution to our problems. People are flocking to them cos Labour are hopeless, the Tories don’t seem like a decent alternative cos no one knows what their ideology is, and the rest, well they aren’t worth bothering with.
And yes, the far right and the far left do meet. And it’s not nice.
A significant BNP victory would be a disaster long in the making. I don’t think ethno-nationalism has a real precedent in British history. That a Blair era degeneration.
Is the regime in Venezuela, a favourite of the BBC, referred to as “far left” or just merely socialist? I can only recall them ever using the term socialist. In general, there does not appear to be any symmetry in the BBC’s political labelling. But everyone knows that when the BBC says “far-right”, that is their code for something they think you should consider bad; as in the “far-right politician” Geert Wilders.
Incidentally, there was a bizarre report on BBC World yesterday about traffic conditions and road accidents in Egypt in which a member of the notorious Islamist organization “The Muslim Brotherhood” spoke about Egyptian public being under constant stress, hence the reason for such bad driving habits and so many fatalities in road accidents. I almost felt as if Israel was going to be blamed for the Egyptians’ bad driving habits and half expected Jeremy Bowen to be wheeled out to back up this thesis.
‘Mail’
Melanie Phillips:
“The odious BNP is only gaining ground because voters feel so utterly betrayed”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1152431/MELANIE-PHILLIPS-The-odious-BNP-gaining-ground-voters-feel-utterly-betrayed.html
Who thinks the best way to defeat the BNP is not debating with them and denying them a “platform”?
And listening to Tommy Boyd in my link above, which of the two protaganists came across as “fascist”?
That was me BTW.
Anonymous | 23.02.09 – 9:14 am
The closed mind of the “Left”
“I don’t like what you say; therefore I reserve the right to deny you any platform for saying it”
“On the other hand, I also deny you the right of stopping me saying what I like, just because you don’t like it”
No wonder I detest them, and they ban Geert Wilders for uttering nothing in his film but for simply allowing those he opposes to convict them selves from their own text’s and mouths.
Bye the way.. did anyone read this….
http://www.internationalfreepresssociety.org/2009/02/the-house-of-lords-speech-what-wilders%E2%80%99-would-have-said-if-the-uk-allowed-free-speech/
Try copy & paste of this..
“http://www.internationalfreepresssociety.org/2009/02/the-house-of-lords-speech-what-wilders%E2%80%99-would-have-said-if-the-uk-allowed-free-speech/”
The last one seems dud
The more we are told no to do something, the more we want to go ahead and do it!
The BNP are not nice, but they represent the views of millions of Britons who are not racist or xenophobic.
Immigration,crime, Islamicisation, preferential social housing for immigrants, ghastly state schools,the NHS crammed full of foreigners as staff & patients, no hope for their children. Just who should anyone earning average wages vote for ?
Today on Working Lunch we saw a schoolroom 90% black. Would the BBC show an African school as being 90% white ?
Martin
Bastard:
A significant BNP victory would be a disaster long in the making. I don’t think ethno-nationalism has a real precedent in British history. That a Blair era degeneration.
Bastard | 23.02.09 – 1:39 am |
You really think a BNP victory would or even could be worse than 12 years of ZaNu Liebour?
State police, state surveillence, political correctness gone mad, the bust of private pensions and, not too far down the line, the bankrupcty of the UK.
Just who is the enemy to the citizens of the UK, Mr Bastard?
“I don’t think ethno-nationalism has a real precedent in British history.”
On the contrary surely this was taken for granted until very recently.
There is nothing intrinsicaly wrong with it.
However the BBC et al want to equate this with “racism”
Although presumably what was meant was voting as compteting ethnic groups as the unhealthy result of Blairism with which I heartily agree to be the case