Guardian (Manchester), October 22, 2009
Hoping to ‘expose’ the BNP leader on Question Time only repeats the mistake France made with the Front National
One overlooked aspect of the emergence of the BNP is the influence of Jean-Marie Le Pen. BNP publications praise his Front National’s (FN) transformation “from a far-right party with embarrassing figures and strident language into a slick, sophisticated, more electorally appealing party” and reserve particular admiration for the fact that “while the Front maintained its hardcore support, it could also reach a much wider audience”.
Access to the media played a crucial role in the FN strategy, first drawn up by a group of self-styled “revolutionary nationalists” in 1972.
Their aim was to court respectability to reach a wider audience and then transform it, as they put it, “in our image”. Television appearances provided two distinct types of opportunity for the FN. The first was to cement Le Pen’s status as a fixture in mainstream political life. The second was to bolster hardcore support by shifting the parameters of what it was acceptable to say in the public arena.
The opinion of many liberal commentators—that Le Pen was a buffoon who would be exposed and belittled on national television—was confounded by his first major TV appearance, on the flagship current affairs show L’Heure de Vérité (The Hour of Truth). Le Pen’s bombastic performance saw him demand a minute’s silence for the victims of Stalin’s gulags and was followed, according to FN HQ, by a flood of applications to join the party.
Regular TV appearances gave Le Pen’s ideas an air of legitimacy. But respectability was never an end in itself for the FN. Those who see this week’s Question Time as an opportunity to outwit or rubbish BNP leader Nick Griffin miss this aspect of the BNP/FN strategy.
Le Pen used his high profile to scapegoat gays, Jews, black people and women. For the first time since the Vichy regime, antisemitism was aired openly and frequently in the media. Le Pen baited a Jewish government minister about the 1942 roundup of Jews in occupied France, made endless coded references to the role of “lobbies” and “cosmopolitanism” and, in his most notorious intervention, claimed that the Holocaust was a “detail” of the second world war.
Le Pen’s influence was not eroded or even stalled by others getting the better of him in televised debates. Instead—and crucially for the FN strategy—hitherto taboo subjects, from Holocaust revisionism to myths about racial inequality, were reintroduced to the mainstream. Racists and antisemites were emboldened. Their politics are not motivated by reason or defeated by clever turns of phrase, so their world view appeared vindicated by the profile and status conferred upon Le Pen by a compliant media. A craven political elite that capitulated to FN myths on law and order, immigration and asylum further enhanced this status.
When Griffin responded to his election to the European parliament this summer by calling on the EU to sink boats carrying migrants, he was simply following Le Pen’s lead—twisting democratic legitimacy into a tool with which to foster prejudice. That Griffin should learn from Le Pen is one thing. That the BBC should learn nothing from the unwitting complicity of the French media in his rise is another. Either way, the BBC’s decision to provide a platform for fascists to distort democracy remains nothing less than a disgrace.
[Editor’s Note: See also yesterday’s story on Nick Griffin’s appearance on BBC here.
Original article
(Posted on October 23, 2009)
Comments
This journalist might consider applying the rigor of science to his analysis. Before going with the hypothesis of comparing the BNP to the National Front along with ugly implications, he should consider an alternate hypothesis of comparing diversity leftists with other nasty leftists such as the Jacobins, Bolsheviks, Maoists and Pol Potists. I think an honest analysis would show the BNP and National Front to be reasonable middle-road reactions to diversity left-wing fanaticism.
Great Britain has awakened:
The article states that the BBC’s decision to allow a fascist a platform to express his views and “distort democracy” is a true disgrace. Just using the word “fascist” implies evil Nazis. The British Nationalist Party is not advocating fascism or killing Jews. Only foolish liberal whites in England fear the party. Obviously, the colored hordes now residing there resent anyone asserting any rights for indigenous white British.
Is is too bad that a new Third Party like the BNP cannot see the light of day in America.
Never saw the interview however all English papers (I mean all) printed front page reviews and comments the next day, some less than flattering, even the Daily Telegraph is today (Saturday) running an editorial broadly sympathising with his views, without agreeing with the BNP (!)
However I was startled by the fact that everyone was talking about it at work. When I went to buy my newspaper the checkout girl even mentioned how we (England) needed someone like him, as you cant say boo to a Goose now.
The BNP are destined for bigger things, the ice is breaking and the BNP will flow through. Well done Nick, im proud of you.
If the idea was to ‘expose’ the BNP leader on Question Time, then the plan appears to have misfired, as this report shows.
“More than a fifth of voters would consider backing the British National Party in a future election, according to an opinion poll taken in the hours after leader Nick Griffin’s appearance on BBC1’s Question Time.
Some 22% of those questioned said they would “seriously consider” voting BNP in a local, European or general election - including 4% who said they would “definitely” consider backing the party, 3% who would “probably” consider it, and 15% who said they were “possible” BNP voters”.
http://tinyurl.com/ylf3h3s
Today’s UK Daily Telegraph in the link below has a short article which is truly dynamite and should finish off the neo-Marxist New Labour criminal government for ever. ”Labour wanted mass immigration to make the UK more multicultural … Labour threw open Britain’s borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a “truly multicultural” country, a former Government adviser has revealed … The huge increases in migrants over the last decade were partly due to a politically motivated attempt by ministers to radically change the country and “rub the Right’s nose in diversity”, according to Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett.
http://tinyurl.com/yfc22qu
”A Home Office spokesman said: “The British people can be confident that immigration is under control.” Still lying to the very last. Please good people of the USA, pass this link around to as many as you can & help sink the neo-Marxists who are destroying the UK.
Today’s UK Daily Telegraph in the link below has a short article which is truly dynamite and should finish off the neo-Marxist New Labour criminal government for ever. ”Labour wanted mass immigration to make the UK more multicultural … Labour threw open Britain’s borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a ‘truly multicultural’ country, a former Government adviser has revealed … The huge increases in migrants over the last decade were partly due to a politically motivated attempt by ministers to radically change the country and “rub the Right’s nose in diversity”, according to Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett.
http://tinyurl.com/yfc22qu
”A Home Office spokesman said: “The British people can be confident that immigration is under control.” Still lying to the very last. Please good people of the USA, pass this link around to as many as you can & help sink the neo-Marxist pigs who are destroying the UK.
Hurling the epithet of “Fascist!” at someone has become the modern version of calling them a heretic. It places them outside the pale of decent society. It is a way of declaring open season on them by branding them as social outcasts who are not entitled to the normal respect and protection guaranteed to everyone else.
Amazing, to think of it! Not that much has really changed in 500 years … except that nowadays we don’t burn non-conformists at the stake. But those who have unorthodox views are still made to suffer. Society does everything in its power to punish them and make their lives miserable.
Sadly, these are often people who have a broader, sharper, wiser vision than the rest of us. In the Middle Ages, such tormented souls as Nick Griffin would have been declared saints, posthumously, of course — after they were safely dead for a convenient time. First, we hound and torment them in life, then we exhault them in death.
The political central question Mr. Griffin faces is how explicit
“In the Middle Ages, such tormented souls as Nick Griffin would have been declared saints, posthumously, of course …First we hound and torment them in life, then we exhault them in death.”
Oh, wait a minute, some still do. I forgot about MLK.
The question should not be are those that oppose the destruction of their countries by massive immigration racists, but whether or not those that support the destruction of their countries via massive immigration are traitors!
Show us how Diversity and Multiculturalism is not really ethnic cleansing of our peoples and is good for us or else explain to us why we should not do to you and your families what you are doing to ours.
I watched the programme and to be fair, Nick Griffin needs tutoring at a drama school and possibly a few weeks attending toastmaster. He lacked confidence and who would not expecting all others in the specially elected audience held in an area (London) that is now well over 50% non-white. But he did well considering the situation and te remark by one coloured gentleman who supported the BNP’s aims as obviously he can see the future “blood on the streets” (already in some areas) if the problem is not quickly attended to now. But the other politicians are looking after themselves not the Brits now and in the future. Personally there rae many non-white British born people who are a benefit to Britain but a great many are career criminals and a menace to society. As for the flawed immigration policies, that is a major problem that will not go away where white Brits are told not to enter an are they have lived in or near al their lives because it is now a “Muslim Area”.
As a 71 year old Brit who as in the military (RAF) and under fire at times, I would be unable to control my emotions if one of these hoodlums said that to me in my Britain. The success of the BNP is vital in my opinion as it will start t ball reality rolling everywhere in the West. The politicians will be forced to act in favour of what the majority really want before it is too late, and many currently sitting on the fence will also join in, at last.
Meanwhile, those who scream out at rallies for the sub-Saharan Africans to get their “freedom” are conspicuously silent over the ongoing genocide of the white Africans (farmers & crime victims) there especially in South Africa now.
I am retired to Spain no where most Spaniards are openly hostile to the economic African immigrants who try to sneak in an the other day after being continually harassed by African sales people (fake watches, CDs et) while eating a meal, I turned on one woman and siad in a loud voice, “Go back to Africa and work to uplift your people. We do not need this rubbish here.” The looks of approval from the Spanish were obvious but in The UK I could possibly be arrested for a “race hate crime” so the politicians who have enacted these stupid laws must go so they can be changed back again to saner ones by new governments who do what the voters really want.
We (my wife and I) lived in South Africa for 24 years until we escaped in 1999.
Don’t expect any impartiality from the Guardian, the most bigoted left-wing rag in the United Kingdom. These neo-Marxist Red Totalitarians have for years had the cheek to deny the BNP and Nick Griffin any publicity whatsoever, while like M. Le Pen, he has been demonised from pillar to post using fabricated and embellished stories without even granting him the courtesy of the right to reply. Under the National Union of Journalists’ (NUJ) Code of Conduct under no circumstances whatsoever are the BNP, deemed fascists by the NUJ, to be shown in a favourable light. Denis MacShane, lifelong ”ex-Marxist” & for decades New Labour MP for Rotherham is a former President of the NUJ, (Head Marxist brainwasher UK would be a more apt title). The British political Establishment brainwashing no longer works on some and has backfired again as more and more people realise that the Question Time persecution of Nick Griffin was horrifyingly reminiscent of a Stalinist show-trial and hopefully the BBC neo-Marxist/liberal criminals will be taken to court for breaching the BBC’s Charter of impartiality.
It’s great to hear so much support for the BNP from the states. I am an activist in Birmingham England and it really does feel like a new era now. We have new groups popping up all over and the response from the public is improving thanks to question time.http://northfieldpatriot.blogspot.com/
