There is an enormous amount of truth in this. I suspect it will continue to be ignored.
Other than getting candidates elected to the fucking European Parliament, of course.
Why get your panties in a bunch? The British government, being familiar with all responsible literature on race relations, has already arrested and prosecuted Griffin once for expressing unapproved opinions, and when that didn’t work, Gordon Brown said they should change the laws to ban speech that would “offend mainstream opinion”. I’m sure they’ve already hatched a scheme that will keep the BNP out of power.
Clearly, this is a government that recognizes the irreconcilable conflict between free speech and the inculcation of proper views, and has chosen sides accordingly. You can’t have just any old person popping off on the telly. Someone might get angry and blow up a train.
My point is they’re in Europe as MEPs representing us. It doesn’t matter who voted for them, they’re there. The protesters can claim to represent people but until they’ve been elected spokesmen by their community they’re just representing themselves.
Protesters didn’t kill anyone. There is a huge difference between people waving placards and shouting offensive slogans and people willing to commit mass murder.
Whoa whoa whoa. The BNP is full of people who deserve, at gun point, to be forced to extract and eat their own kidneys then rub salt in the wound. I hate them and their political KKKlan.
But they also deserve free speech IMHO. There was a time when many views that we consider right, proper, and the height of morality were despised by the government. It isn’t the government’s place to judge views, it’s the citizen’s. They’re the ones who need to see this hateful vile filth for what it is and stop it. You can’t police thoughts.
whooooosh
I hope so.
This is one area where Labour et al have got it completely wrong: the BNP isn’t a far-right party. It’s a socialist authoritarian party. One of the BNP people elected, Andrew Brons, was originally a member of the National Socialist party. Labour, the BBC, et al, decry the BNP as far right to tar the Conservatives by association.
Oh, for goodness’ sake. Racist nationalists have long been referred to as “far right”, regardless of their economic bent. You can argue it’s not an ideal term, but blithering on about the evil BBC trying to do down the Tories is just sad. Take it up with the 1930s French if the term bothers you.
Again the phrase I used was ‘people not unike them’ I did not suggest that those protesters actually killed anyone.
[quote]
There is a huge difference between people waving placards and shouting offensive slogans and people willing to commit mass murder.
[/quote.]
Yet here again a distinction. BNP placard wavers are enough to get more than a few posters in this thread, frothing at the mouth … yet waving a placard calling for those who oppose islam to be beheaded is somehow less serious.
I seriously doubt any other political, religious, or special interest group would get away with that since it is tantamount to incitement to murder.
Again, if we have freedom of speech why were the cartoons not pubished without restriction, yet protests to them allowed to unfold in they way they did ?
You will recall also the stark contrast with the way the protesters who turned out for the last visit of of President Hu, were handled. They were forcibly contained on the far side of the street behind screens. Yet they were only protesting for democracy in Tibet and none advocated murder.
You cannot distinguish between degrees of extremism, you cannot mitigate for one over another.
By all means ban the BNP from running for office, publishing their ‘newspaper’, etc. I have no problem with that since I previously stated that they as a government would leave this country marginalised on the world stage, much like South Africa during Apartheid.
In the 30s some in Germany shouted ‘jews out’, others smashed up jewish shops.
Some people call for ‘jihad’ and others go out and blow themselves, and others up.
- Were they so far apart … or did one escalate to the other ?
:rolleyes:
Oh come on.
Do the BNP even have an economic policy coherent enough to fit on the left-right scale? As far as I can gather they are very far from being [classic] liberal on economics, but they don’t really explain how they’d get every white Briton in employment.
It’s unfortunate that the elections came at the same time as an ongoing political scandal which has turned a lot of people off all the mainstream parties - fringe and “alternative” candidates were bound to pick up more votes as a consequence.
And the BNP, horrible though they are, are a pretty well-organized fringe party.
Of course. the usual pattern of events is, the BNP make an electoral gain somewhere, their candidates then have to try and deliver on their election promises, said candidates fail dismally, said candidates are out on their ear come the next election cycle.
But in the meantime, we’ve now got a couple of these people claiming to represent us in the European Parliament, and that really doesn’t feel good to me. But that’s the democratic system in action - nothing to do about it except grit one’s teeth, endure it for the moment, and work twice as hard next time to convince the voting public to kick these losers out.
It’s happened through proportional representation in large multi-member constituencies. Their actual vote was not high.
The Myth of the BNP protest vote.
That’s the problem with proportional representation. You see the same thing anywhere it is used and I bet you’d get equally unpalatable outcomes if it was used in the USA.
On the plus side it allows the Green Party some representation.
And the % of the national vote was based on a severely reduced turnout where the main ‘protest’ was not to vote.
Please give a single example of a poster here, or a commentator or politician, who is on record as having said that fundamentalists demanding murder is a less serious issue than the election of BNP MEPs.
Also, could you give any evidence you have that there is a significant number of people calling for the BNP to be banned?
Utter nonsense.
It’s understandable that people find it difficult to identify with any of the parties. On the other hand it’s the non-voters who allowed the BNP to get a high enough proportion of the votes to get elected - apparently the BNP had fewer votes in NW England than last time.
The (probably simplistic) way that I see it is that voters in early 1920s Italy and early 1930s Germany voiced similar discontent with the political systems they had. They started to vote far right and ended up with no vote at all.
There’s been a lot of talk about our supposedly corrupt MPs - someone claimed £2000 to build a shed, or something. Oh no, let’s get rid of democracy all together! Really, the amounts British MPs have been claiming, rightly or wrongly, are nothing compared with the massive amounts of political corruption that have been exposed in various other European countries in the last 15 years. Anyone heard of Charles Haughey? Anyone heard of the corrupt land deals made by politicians that have blighted the Irish countryside and possibly ruined the Irish economy? Our MPs are clueless when it comes to screwing the system.
Our civilisation is at a bit of an impasse at the moment, thanks to the end of the belief in progress. Politics in Britain is at a bit of an impasse because Labour never seriously wanted to reverse the policies of Thatcher and Major. the recession doesn’t lift anybody’s mood. Unfortunately there are no inspirational ideas or leaders (I think Rupert Murdoch has a lot to do with that). At the same time I think many of the public have unrealistic ideas about what politics can actually achieve.
But this is not the excuse to start badmouthing democracy (which I can’t help feeling is what you’re doing if you don’t vote). British people seem to see nothing but negatives in our system. They forget that none of their relatives are being imprisoned or tortured for their political beliefs. They forget that we do not have concentration camps, that we are not forced to turn out in support of our leaders, that there is not a civil war happening, that the armed forces are not roaming around shooting people indiscriminately.
All this is happening in other countries right now. All of the main political parties in Britain are against it happening here. Is the BNP against it?
A few years ago the run off for the French presidency was between the conservative Chirac and the fascist Le Pen. French left wingers organised behind Chirac, even though they couldn’t stand him. They knew that Chirac stood for democracy and so made sure that he got elected over someone who stood for oppression.
The French know all about living under a murderous, repressive regime. Too many people in Britain think that the Second World War was just about the great escape. The next time the BNP have a chance of winning a seat, unaligned voters need to get their arses in gear to vote our system of democracy and freedom.
Similar to what ETA’s political branch pulled in Spain. Mind you, I think the situation with them is partly our government’s fault (and not of a specific sign, it’s been this way for over a decade): “HB” (Herri Batasuna, Motherland First) gets banned, they reincarnate under a new name, they get banned, reincarnate…
The name this time? “Internationalist Initiative,” which if you look at the logos on the voting paper carefully shows it’s a mesh of ultra-nationalist, violent groups, but some people thought the “internationalist” was from “international+ist”, not “inter+nationalist.”
Most of the people who voted for them did so in full conscience, but not all.
Heh, yeah. It tickles me when politicians come on TV trying to reassure everybody that the rise of the BNP is down to voter apathy. It isn’t. The BNP are getting votes because there’s hundreds of towns in the provinces (i.e. everywhere outside of London and its suburbs) that have been left to rot, whilst more and more money is funnelled toward London: East London run down? Let’s drop billions on an Olympic village for regeneration! Manchester needs a tram extension to the suburbs? Let’s deny that but spend $20 billion on a < 50 mile rail extension in the South East and rennovate St. Pancra’s at huge cost. Let’s funnel 75% of all cultural spending in the UK into London, etc. etc. Rebuilding the national stadium? Let’s put it in London despite being perhaps the most awkward place for supporters of half of the Premiership football teams, rugby league fans etc. in the North to get to.
Whilst the Scots have the SNP to vote for their interests, and the Welsh have Plaid Cymru, it’s easy to see how a party that comes along with the mantra “British jobs for British people” is going to start getting votes in towns with a chronic shortage of jobs and opportunities.
Nothing will change, though.
While i’m not going to disagree on exactly the same point others have, nor with your characterization of Labour, I do have to disagree on one thing. Why assume the BBC decry the BNP as far right in order to tar the Tories? I mean, for what reason do you believe the people who set their political standards don’t honestly just disagree with you, but actually agree and lie?
Let’s be reasonable, though - would you really want to visit a national stadium that was half a mile from the Bull Ring?