It looks like I’m pissing in the wind here, but I’ll try one last time, if you use the same tactics as them e.g. intimidation, then whether for the right reasons or not you’re just as bad as them.
As I said before, you can make them look stupid by engaging in an honest debate, in fact in all likelihood they wouldn’t even turn up for it.
Have you ever dealt with the BNP or their prior incarnations, Walker? This isn’t about beating them in debate. That isn’t how they roll, if you forgive the terminology. They thrive off intimidation - of kicking the crap out of gay people walking the street (or putting nail bombs in London pubs frequented by gays). They love to vandalize Jewish cemetaries and paint swastikas on synagogues. They smear the doors of Asian owned business with dog shit, and attack the people cleaning it up.
Fuck debating them. If they put out 100 on the street, we need to put out 1,000 to let them know this is OUR community, and they aren’t welcome here. If they put out 1,000, we should put out 10,000. There are more of us than there are of them, and we should make them as scared as they try to make their victims.
And in case you think I am one of the Americans who doesn’t have an interest in this - I am British, just living here. And I spent a lot of my life fighting against these assholes.
You think they care about looking stupid? I am sure you feel better about beating them in a good old debate, but it doesn’t do a lot of good for the 80 year old Bangladeshi man they kick half to death on the way home.
If people standing up for their neighbors and their community makes them as bad as the BNP, then so be it. The police sure as hell haven’t been successful protecting people from these scum.
villa and I were both born and raised in Britain, and I’m still a British citizen. My brother and my two nieces stand to be “repatriated” if the BNP ever comes to power. Perhaps it’s not my problem, but it certainly hits close to home.
Shows of solidarity and rallies and things like that are fine, but groups like the BNP thrive on an us-vs-them mentality, so physically attacking them (especially outside of the law) plays right into their hands.
How do you physically attack someone inside of the law?
Ask the police; they did it pretty successfully defending the BNP at Welling.
And Mr. Moto, we ar egoing to disagree on this. The BNP members I have come across are essentially cowards. They attack the weak, and they attack in groups. They don’t respond to rallies or shows of solidarity (not that there isn’t a place for those) but they do stop their shenanigans when met with direct opposition.
All animals are equal, some are more equal than others?
It seems like there are different kinds of resistant activity being described all at once including 1) something like egg-throwing and 2) disrupting a rally by organizing a counter-rally (which can become violent though not necessarily).
I would distinguish those kinds of clearly politically motivated acts from, say, organizing attacks on isolated BNP members as they walk home from work in order to intimidate them.
Although I can imagine some people taking part in politically motivated activities like #1 and #2 with something less than the most high-minded commitment to social justice in their heads, I do not see these tactics as capitulating to fascism.
I’m not sure villa if you think this is an important distinction but if you do I think it would help to clarify where you’re at for some others…
I was at school in the 70s and 80s so I met plenty of skinheads and NF supporters, most of whom were barely literate. I’ve not spoken to anyone from the BNP as they didn’t canvas us in the elections and to be honest I don’t seek them out.
If they act outside the law, that’s why we have the police, the police may defend their right to speak at a rally, but they would arrest them if they were attacking anyone I’m sure. Even the UK police are not that racist and corrupt yet.
I still find your position very strange, Walker in Eternity. No one is exhorting you to take to the streets against the BNP or reprimanding you for your relative political passivity. But at bottom your position is a kind of self-assured “see no evil” and, much more strangely, you want to argue that this very passivity is superior to and more effective than the position of those getting “wound up.”
Whether or not BNP activists break any laws their policies and positions are reprehensible. Have you checked out their website and seen their ideas about repatriation, for example? Now this reprehensible platform enjoys the legitimacy of an electoral success.
Do you remember a few years back when Le Pen was in danger of winning an election and people in France said that the “honor of France” was at stake. Well the honor of Britain is at stake.
And your attitude seems to be well, if he folks just do as I do and ignore the problem it will go away.
But maybe the problem will go away (as did fascism in Britain back in the 1930s) because others are willing to take a more activist stance than you.
I can understand your thinking that it’s all to sordid for you personally but I can’t understand your needing so much to dismiss and diminish others’ stronger commitment to the political process.
I think there are a lot of different methods that should be employed when dealing with the BNP. I understand your distinctions and think they are valid. I don’t discount any of the methods, because I believe in the right to self defense.
I don’t support any kind of government action against the BNp, unless they break existing laws (and I would get rid of many of the laws used against them). I don’t trust the government to do it. I do support such tactics as outing BNP members and supporters to their communities and employers. Of informing the owners of meeting places who has rented them for rallies and concerts. Disrupting fascist activities at all levels.
Now when it comes to making the BNP member who goes out of his way to make Asian residents of a community scared to walk the streets equally squared to walk the streets, I can’t say I feel a great deal of sympathy for the Nazi fuck in that case.
And yet your mode of opposing them to to out debate them. Does that work well with barely literate people?
If I am holding a political debate with a monolingual French person, it would be foolish of me to speak in English - I would get nowhere. A similar situation applies here.
If the police had the desire to stop the BNP and their fellow travellers’ crimes (which the vast majority of police do, I am sure), they don’t have the manpower or budget to do it.
You don’t use debate with scum like the BNP. You hold their views to the light of public scrutiny and ridicule them.
You should try reading some of the blogs by UK police officers who despair at the amount of red tape, paperwork, and interference that stops them doing their basic job.
I think you’re probably right. However, they never explain how they will do this, and to qualify as ‘socialist’ one would think they’d mention redistribution of wealth.
But they just bang on about how much we spend on bogus asylum seekers and the EU.
telebox - you make me sick you racist fuck. I don’t vote Labour, in fact I hate their policies, but I hate you and thugs like Nick Griffin as well. Your comments about gypsies are disgusting.
Not true, I can see the evil, I just choose not to lower myself to their level in orer to combat it. If I am “politically passive” it’s because in my lifetime I’ve never found a political, party that actually speaks for me. I’m not on benefits, so gain nothing from old Labour and am not wealthy so Tory tax breaks do nothing for me and as for the wishy washy Lib Dems…
True, but you have to think why they have electoral success. For years the loony left have supported and protected the islamofascists who stand against most of what the left actually stands for. The BNP gives them a voice against this as none of the major political parties dare to take a stance against this kind of behaviour.
People feel that their jobs are being given to people from abroad, particularly eastern europe. Not sure what the BNP policy on white immigrants is, do you?
I don’t believe that everyone who voted for them is a moron, many possibly made a protest vote against the mainstream parties. Plus low voter turnout was the main factor in them gaining seats.
If you want to combat the BNP, be an activist to change the things that enable them to get votes and explain that these things can be achieved without resorting to mass deportations or “voluntary repatriation”.
I’m not ignoring the problem, I just don’t think sinking to their level is the way to resolve it.
If I was going to be an activist I would concentrate on a real problem like islamic extremism rather than a small number of BNP supporters who will never hold any real power.
How many of you who are complaining actually live in one of the regions with either a BNP MEP or Councillor? Not many I suspect, so they are not representing you, they are representing the view of those that put them there.
Dealing with the real issues rather than the symptom is the way to move forward.
Yes, but if they are doing so* in order to *tar the Conservatives, then that conflation is a lie. If they honestly believe that the conflation is accurate, or that there is no conflation at all, then they are saying so because they believe it and not in order to tar a political party.
IOW, either the BBC honestly disagree with you, or they agree with you but are being deliberately misleading. All i’m asking is why it is you appear to have gone for the latter - why, in your opinion, does the opinion expressed reveal an intent to tar a politcal party rather than just disagreement with you?
I find it almost breathtaking Walker, how quickly you move from a) understanding the BNP’s support as caused by a mixture of economic insecurity and political disaffection to b) concluding that the actual root of the problem is Islamic extremism.
Far be it from me to say that Islamophobia and racism aren’t part of the appeal of the BNP to some. But if the secret of their more mainstream success is economic how exactly is a focus on Islam going to rectify that problem?
If you stand back from what you are saying you might perhaps notice the lesson implicit in your own analysis: as in Nazi Germany so in Britain today–economic insecurity creates conditions rife for racial scapegoating.
I don’t mean to say that you might not, like telebox, have some issues with the way that Islamic fundamentalism is treated by the British media, the authorities, or both. But is that constituency really all that much larger than that for the BNP? And even if you believe that it is, why does concern about the BNP–a party that claims to speak for all indigenous Britons–have to be pitted against supposed non-concern about the latter. Can people only be concerned about thing at a time? (If I told you I was concerned about global warming would you tell me I can’t be because I should be concerned about increase of cancer instead?)
Why can’t reasonable people share the same concern about Islamic extremism that, according to posted Pew report posted above, a full 77% of British Muslims feel? Indeed, if 77% of British Muslims are concerned about Islamic extremism can’t we hope and expect that at least 77% of non-Muslim Britons will be concerned about the BNP?
Bricks would have been more amusing.
You seem to be either purposefully or otherwise misunderstanding me.
I’m not saying not to be concerned, I am just not advocating violence on BNP members because it makes us like them.
What I fail to understand is why it seems that the BNP are singled out as the only racists in town. There are plenty of black, white and asian racists, I’ve met a few.
Why no ire for the Sinn Fein who were the political wing of the IRA for years and supported the murder of many more than the BNP will ever kill?
Why no ire against islamic fundamentalists, who have killed many in this country and others?
I’m sure there are plenty of similar groups I’ve missed out.
Surely we should treat all these groups with equal contempt? But is throwing things at them and intimidation the answer?
If so, then ignorance reigns and on this issue at least the SDMB has failed.