English nationalism vs. the BNP

At the English nationalist site Steadfast can be found a 2004 article by Tony Linsell with some interesting criticism of the British National Party, or at any rate of many of its members (see jpegs of the scanned article here and here). He claims that the BNP has been backing what he sees as a dying horse in the form of British nationalism, which is based on an artificial British political identity, as opposed to English nationalism, which arises out of a true ethnic identity. "Britishness" has become identified with a multicultural society holding little appeal to Scottish, Welsh or English nationalists, while English nationalist feelings seem to be on the rise. BNP-style British nationalism appears, meanwhile, to be linked to a sense of White racial identity which Linsell rejects as "shallow and contrived" . . . . CONTINUE

Candid opportunism from the BNP

The Wikipedia article on the British National Party attributes the following tidbit to party leader Nick Griffin, in a speech from March of this year. (I haven't verified the quotation against the video record of the speech, which is available through a link at Wikipedia, but the article appears to be a more or less even-handed one.)

We bang on about Islam. Why? Because to the ordinary public out there it's the thing they can understand. It's the thing the newspaper editors sell newspapers with. If we were to attack some other ethnic group—some people say we should attack the Jews ... But ... we've got to get to power. And if that was an issue we chose to bang on about when the press don't talk about it ... the public would just think we were barking mad. They'd just think oh, you're attacking Jews just because you want to attack Jews. You're attacking this group of powerful Zionists just because you want to take poor Manny Cohen the tailor and shove him in a gas chamber. That's what the public would think. It wouldn't get us anywhere other than stepping backwards. It would lock us in a little box; the public would think "extremist crank lunatics, nothing to do with me." And we wouldn't get power.

Isn't Griffin openly admitting here that the BNP's policies towards both Muslims and Jews are dictated simply by political expediency, and that he would be quite prepared to switch to a pro-Islamic and/or anti-Semitic line if this appeared more likely to win votes? (Much as fellow far-rightist Jean Marie Le Pen appears to have done, across the Channel.) What is the source of this imperative of achieving political power, running deeper than mere expedients such as the reviling of particular ethnic groups?

Such opportunism is probably par for the course in politics. But it seems a great deal more dangerous where the party in question is one which openly embraces radical policies—when it is outside the Establishment, which, if it no longer seriously holds any principles, remains predictable by reason of inertia.

See also:
      EU Referendum: BNP is the new mainstream
      Comments on the BNP constitution

"EU Referendum": BNP is the new mainstream

This is a must-read article for anyone interested in British politics. Richard North, the astute editor of the blog "EU Referendum", begins by listing a number of Labour politicians who have warned in recent months that there is a groundswell of support developing for the extreme-right British National Party among working-class English whites, who feel forgotten about or betrayed by the Labour Party that formerly represented them. North backs this up with an array of respectable election results for the BNP in recent British elections; in particular, he notes that in the 2004 European Parliament elections, the BNP and another so-called "fringe" party, UKIP, between them scored 32.6% of the vote.

Parties which can do this well at the polls should no longer be dismissed as irrelevant. Yet that is precisely what the mainstream British media persist in doing, North observes. "[N]ewspapers (and other media organs) which were once the bellwether of public opinion have so far diverged from their readers, listeners and viewers that they now represent the opinions only of themselves." And the political class (perhaps because they get their information from those media) has "lost the ability to 'read' its own electorate." An editorial in the latest Sunday Telegraph blithely asserts that "No reasonable person disputes that . . . the British National Party is repellent." But, repellent or not, the BNP is the sole party that is seen to be serious about dealing with the growth of militant Islam in England—a growth that has now, for example, produced 30 simultaneous Islamic terror plots that MI5 says it knows about. The BNP, North concludes, is not only becoming representative of the actual opinion of the British public, as opposed to that of its élites; it is becoming the only party representative of that opinion.

It is leaving our politicians and their parties like beached whales, stranded on the shores of their own ignorance, complacency and arrogance, supported by a media which itself has completely lost the plot.
      That puts us in uncharted waters but, amazingly, the politicians still think they are in command. So insulated from reality are they that they haven't even begun to realise that they are heading for the rocks and that the passengers have disconnected the wheel from the rudder.

Comments on the BNP constitution

BNP leader Nick Griffin (see this earlier post) gave a speech in which he appeared to announce that a BNP government would take direct control of the British TV and newspapers. By contrast, the provision of the party constitution (2004 edition; pdf file here) dealing with free speech and other civil liberties seems to be the most liberal part of that document. . . . CONTINUE Section 1, Article 2f says:

The British National Party will introduce a Bill of Rights, establishing as absolute the right of all British people to effective freedom of speech, assembly and worship. The undemocratic power of the mass media and vested interest groups will be curbed by the introduction of a statutory right of reply and tougher penalties for corruption in public affairs. We favour a devolved, democratic system in which political decisions are made by ordinary citizens at the most local level of government possible. We are pledged to extend and rejuvenate democratic government by means of electronic media and Citizens' Initiative referenda, and by returning to Parliament the powers that have been appropriated by the EU.

Thus, according to this statement, the mass media would suffer nothing more than being forced to give airtime or space to those it criticized, or so I interpret a "statutory right of reply". It is not clear how one should interpret what appears to be such a flagrant contradiction. If Art. 2f were merely for public relations purposes, why would the BNP publicize a speech contradicting it? The article is also part of a constitution which seems to be a serious document, not a propaganda device—at least where it deals with internal party affairs. Perhaps, as is often the case with opposition political parties, there is no coherent policy position in this area.

Ordinarily, the effect of such incoherence is to leave the status quo intact in the event that the party comes to power. Would this be the case with a BNP government? It seems difficult for an outsider to say. Presumably, though, any government trying to direct a mass media previously dominated by liberals would require a fairly large number of personnel dedicated to this task. The kind of contradiction just noted would seem to work against establishing such a group within the BNP, unless it was generally understood at upper party levels that Article 2f was only "for show"—that is, unless there was a second, secret constitution alongside the public one (which seems implausible). For comparison, one might look to the German Nazi Party, which, I think, never made any bones about its intention to abolish such "decadent" liberal institutions as freedom of the press.

The internal party aspects of the constitution, meanwhile, strike me as a curious mixture of Anglo-Saxon political tradition and the Führerprinzip. A great deal of power is given to the party leader (the Chairman), including even the power to make constitutional changes (Sect. 14). One might think that this would render the constitution meaningless, and the power of the Chairman absolute. Yet many of the provisions of the constitution describe working legal forms. Most importantly, there is an annual election, by the party membership, to the Chairmanship, in the event that anyone challenges the incumbent (Sect. 4); the procedures for holding the election are laid out in some detail, and Nick Griffin himself won his position in a contested election. There is also an "advisory council" which may call a general membership meeting, over the opposition of the Chairman, by a two-thirds majority, and this general meeting can then make changes to the constitution (Sect. 14). Thus the advisory council would seem to provide a potential check to the power of the Chairman—if not a very strong one, given that the Chairman himself appoints the advisory council. In Section 3, the Chairman is given "full executive power" over all party appointments and policies, yet has to remain within broad policy guidelines spelled out in Section 1 (at least, presumably, until he announces that those guidelines are to be amended). Such provisions as the vetting of all parliamentary candidates by the Chairman (Sect. 11) are not in the traditional parliamentary spirit, but then neither are they unusual among contemporary centrist parties.

Who can say how such a constitution might evolve as the organization approached power?

Update (08/10): Some recent discussion of the BNP at the American blog View From the Right:

• Explaining the BNP
• How reformed is the BNP?
• BNP writer comes out 100 percent for Israel

And a 2005 article by Robert Locke: BNP goes straight

Previous post on the BNP

BNP commentator: "Israel is the model"

Lee Barnes has a rather mind-boggling opinion piece at the BNP website, in which he unreservedly sides with Israel in its fight with Hezbollah. The only rational Western policy towards Hezbollah, he writes, is to seek its destruction. He favorably contrasts Israel's restrained tactics in Lebanon with the bombing of Serbia, where NATO did not first drop leaflets warning civilians to get out of harm's way.

Barnes accuses the British media of being "the European propaganda wing of Hezbollah", a phenomenon which ought to discredit far-right conspiracy theories about Jewish control of the media. The media's agenda, he says, is the destruction of nation-states and of nationalism, and Israel is a prime target because "Israel is the model for a nation that understands the importance of putting the interests of the nation and the people before all other factors .... Israel is the only living organic nationalist state on the planet." Thus support for, or at least sympathy with, Israel is convincingly integrated into Barnes' nationalist worldview.

Barnes' article does not represent official BNP policy, and it is fairly clear from comments in the article that his BNP milieu is still teeming with anti-Semites. It is possible to interpret the article as espousing an extreme form of nationalism, unmitigated by considerations of common humanity, which Israel does not in fact exhibit. The article will also be of little comfort to those British nonwhites worried about their fate under a future BNP government. Nevertheless, it seems a hopeful sign that a pro-Israel "maverick" (see Galliawatch) like Barnes is tolerated within BNP ranks.

Previous post on the BNP | Next post on the BNP

Some leftist self-examination

While googling for information on the Keighley video (see preceding post), I came across the site of leftie Londoner "Holly Finch", a passenger on the Piccadilly subway line on the day it was bombed in 2005. (From the single post I read it looks as though she was probably seriously injured, but this is unclear.) She and one of her readers have some observations comparing their reactions to Islamic and BNP extremism which may be enlightening. . . . CONTINUE

On a rational level, Ms. Finch finds that that the Islamist bombers and BNP leader Nick Griffin are fundamentally the same kind of extremist, "locked head to to head, differentiated only by their chosen enemy." She neglects to point out that the BNP, unlike the Islamists, have not actually killed anyone—let alone launched an indiscriminate terror attack—and she seems to blame Islamic extremism on BNP-style racism, which is largely incorrect in my view. But let us accept for the sake of argument that the extremism of the BNP and of the Islamists are morally equivalent. (This is not too far-fetched, as the BNP leadership apparently has at least associated with Italian terrorist train-bombers, for example.) How, then, does she react on a gut level to these two extremisms?

I have engaged in various debates with people since 7th July, many of whom have found it hard to understand my lack of anger towards the bombers. I don't hate them, I don't know how to . . . . I have tried to understand Mohammed Sidique Khan and his compatriots [sic]. In my most 'leftie liberal' moments I have even tried to blame our society for allowing them to grow up in an environment which enabled such hatred to germinate and bloom.

By contrast,

The seedy secret videos of BNP leader Nick Griffin froze my heart and sickened my soul . . . . I do not feel the same way about Nick Griffin [as about the tube bombers], but should I? I do not have any urge to understand him. When I heard his words I felt the first early rumblings of hatred.

Commenter "Yorkshire Lass" says she has similar reactions, and doesn't know why this should be. Holly Finch can suggest only that it has something to do with sympathy for the underdog.

I think this illustrates rather well a basic difference between leftists and rightists. Other things being equal, leftists will hate "their own people", that is, those of their own culture or nationality or race; rightists will prefer to hate foreigners.

As Ms. Finch's post suggests, the leftist reaction comes from a deep emotional level. The rightist, xenophobic reaction is also deeply rooted. But it is the natural one. People are at first, as children or in primitive societies, naturally loyal to what they perceive as their own group, and have to be taught to take the interests of outsiders into account. In a properly ordered society, this education is at a conscious, rational level: one remains emotionally tied to one's own primary group in preference to others, and only intellectually admits the rights of outsiders to fair treatment. When one gets carried away there is then always the danger that one will forget about the outsiders' point of view. (One's view of who is defined as belonging to one's primary group may also become more elevated, even on a "gut" level.)

On the other hand, it seems to me that the leftist gut reaction, in favour of outsiders as such, represents the triumph of a kind of brainwashing, an inversion of natural feeling. It can be maintained only by rigorous ideological control of education and the media, and even then is liable to collapse suddenly. Leftists are not aware of the pervasiveness of self-hatred in contemporary cultural messages, so the source of their hatred of "their own people" is mysterious to them. Probably it is rare for them to acknowledge it the first place, as Ms. Finch does. (Though I imagine that she would indignantly deny that the BNP were "her own people".)

Both leftist and rightist attitudes to outsiders can have evil consequences. These are obvious in the case of right-wing xenophobia; perhaps less so in the case of leftist self-hatred. We do not really know other groups as we know our own. Thus, focusing our benevolence on outsiders is likely to be wasted or counterproductive. Self-hatred also leaves a society defenceless against aggression by other societies which believe in their own values and which are prepared to impose them on others. As xenophobia is likely to destroy others, self-hatred is likely to result in the destruction of one's society, and of whatever good is in it.

It is insane for a society to adopt self-hatred as a principle, rather than as a reaction to specific flaws in one's society. While recognition of genuine flaws should lead to social improvement, principled self-hatred logically leads only to suicide. But the West has chosen principled self-hatred, which is merely rationalized on the basis of perceived flaws. This is why Western education now has the character of propaganda.

The BNP and a controlled media

I have been updating last month's post on the British National Party with information as I come across it. One piece of information seems quite significant, but doesn't seem to appear on the Net: BNP leader Nick Griffin's statement in the "Keighley" video (2004) indicating his ideas about the media under a BNP government. If my transcription is accurate, Griffin said that once the BNP is in power at Westminster,

. . . then we make the laws, then we control the television and the newspapers, and we can make sure that what has been happening in Keighley is on television, in documentaries, night after night after night after night, until the British people really realise the evil of what these people have done to our country, until they say right, now we really are going to sort it out.

The significance of this is that the main distinction between a so-called elective dictator, such as a contemporary British Prime Minister, and a full-fledged dictator is that an elective dictator is subject to criticism from an independent media. Thus it seems that Griffin was envisaging something close to a full-fledged dictatorship. Periodic elections are of limited use if the airwaves are pounding the virtues of the ruling party (among other things) into the voters' heads, "night after night after night".

Admittedly, the existing mainstream media also lacks political diversity, and this has probably enfeebled democracy rather drastically. Nevertheless, because it is controlled by a different set of people from the government, it can hold the ruling party accountable for corrupt practices, for example.

Anyone who expects the traditional moderation of the British people to ensure restraint in the policies of a BNP government should probably bear in mind the apparent intention of the BNP to assume control of the media. Voters endlessly bombarded with the BNP view of the world would probably approve of almost anything the BNP wanted them to.

Update (07/17): There is a long argument about the nature of the BNP in this 200-comment Dhimmiwatch thread which started on June 28th. (Also covers "memic penumbras".)

Update #2 (07/25): Here is the website of a new "Popular Alliance" party that appears to be attempting to fill the gap in the British political spectrum between the Conservatives and the far right. So far the Popular Alliance is sufficiently minor that there is not much information available on it on the Web other than at its own site. There have apparently been a number of attempts to make a go of such parties in Britain in recent years (UKIP, Veritas, English Democrats) with little success to date.

Update #3 (07/26): (Deleted)

Next post on the BNP (7/31)

More BNP background

Here is a list of criminal convictions of prominent BNP members (see preceding post). It comes from Black Country Boy, where it it apparently does not have a permanent link address, which is why I'm reproducing it here. (One should note that Tyndall, referred to below, is actually no longer a BNP member, for example, if I'm not mistaken. Still, the general impression seems fairly clear.)

Who says today's politicians lack convictions. The British National Party is brimming with them -- all of a criminal nature. "The BNP will crack down on crime and restore public safety and confidence," its website states. But despite claiming to be a party of law and order, the BNP is home to criminals, racist thugs and football hooligans. The ranks of the criminals extend to the very highest level of the party. . . . CONTINUE They include:

Nick Griffin (Party Chairman) Received a two-year suspended sentence in April 1998 for inciting racial hatred. His magazine The Rune carried obscene anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial material as well as crude racism.

Tony Lecomber (Group Development Officer). In 1985 he was convicted on five counts for offences under the Explosives Act, including possession of homemade hand-grenades and electronic timing devices. Sentenced to three-years imprisonment. In 1991 he was sentenced to another three years imprisonment for unlawful wounding for his part in an attack on a Jewish schoolteacher whom he caught trying to peel off a BNP sticker at an underground station. He has a total of 12 convictions.

Colin Smith (South East London organiser). Has amassed a total of 17 convictions for burglary, theft, stealing cars, possession of drugs and assaulting a police officer.

John Tyndall (founder of the BNP). Six convictions. In 1962 he was jailed for organising a paramilitary organisation. Four years later, he was again sent to prison for possession of a loaded gun. In 1986, he was convicted for incitement to racial hatred under the Public Order Act and sentenced to 12 months imprisonment.

Warren Bennett (Chief Steward). Supposed to keep order in the party yet has convictions for football hooliganism. In 1998, he was deported from France with over 50 other Scottish hooligans, including several BNP members.

Steve Belshaw (East Midlands BNP organiser). Was convicted in 1994 for assaulting a lawyer in his home-town of Mansfield. At the time, Belshaw combined his BNP membership with Combat 18 activity.

Kevin Scott (North East Regional Organiser). Was convicted in 1993 for hurling a glass at a black customer in a pub.

Alan Gould (Waltham Forest Organiser). Was convicted in 2000 for racially abusing people in a local pub. He told the court that it was the drink getting the better of him.

Robert Bennett. A leading activist in Oldham BNP during the 2002 elections campaign, Bennett has served five years in prison for the gang rape of a woman. He has also served seven years for armed robbery and has over 30 convictions in total.

Mick Treacy. The Oldham organiser has five convictions for violence, theft, and handling stolen goods

Darren Dobson. Found guilty of racially aggravated assault at Oldham magistrates in November 2001. Fined 300 [pounds]. Connected to football hooligans in the Oldham area, and has links to the nazi terror group Combat 18

Darren Hoy. April 2002, the BNP supporter was sent to prison for 3 months for racially abusing people as they left an anti-fascist rally in Oldham.

In spite of this imposing list, when pressed by the BBC Panorama team in September 2001 on the convictions of its leading members, party leader Nick Griffin just lied. He claimed Tony Lecomber, his deputy merely had a conviction for handling fireworks. He also claimed that party chief steward Warren Bennett had a minor conviction "some 15 years ago" but had not been in trouble since. The truth is that Bennett has been named in the Scottish press for violence as recently as 2002. Griffin also tried to claim that Colin Smith had no convictions.

Update (05/29): See also 'Senior BNP official suggested assassinating prominent politicians' (Sunday Herald, Scotland).

Update #2 (06/06): Here is an impressive investigation by the blogger Ministry of Truth into the real beliefs of one BNP councillor, who it seems has been posting under an alias at the neo-Nazi site Stormfront. (See also subsequent posts at Ministry of Truth. Ministry has a somewhat alarming home page, and I'm not sure about his own politics, as I didn't go through his other material.)

Update #3 (06/08): BNP leader Nick Griffin gets kid glove treatment from Srdja Trifkovic in a Chronicles interview which is nevertheless worth reading, if only because it demonstrates that Griffin is very smart.

Update #4 (06/11): (a) From the "Keighley" video of a Nick Griffin speech against Islam, available from the BNP site: Griffin anticipates that once the BNP wins power at Westminster,

...then we make the laws, then we control the television and the newspapers, and we can make sure that what has been happening in Keighley is on television, in documentaries, night after night after night after night, until the British people really realise the evil of what these people have done to our country, until they say right, now we really are going to sort it out.

(I may have mistranscribed a word or two.)

(b) I just came across what is presumably the original source for the list of BNP convictions above, at the site of the British anti-BNP group Searchlight. This is a left-wing outfit with "alleged links with the British security forces", according to a disputed Wikipedia article. I have not verified the information on this list from other sources. (In the comment section at the end of the Chronicles interview linked to in Update 3 above, Frank B. Lee points out a discrepancy between the Sunday Herald and Searchlight(?) descriptions of Tony Lecomber's conviction for assaulting a Jewish sticker-peeler. Searchlight says he was taking down a "BNP sticker", the Sunday Herald says it was "Neo-Nazi stickers". One does not expect the mainstream media consistently to draw fine distinctions between the BNP and neo-Nazis, and one should regard media reports with this in mind. The Searchlight version, which I suppose reflects somewhat less badly on Lecomber, sounds more plausible to me.)

Next post on the BNP ("The BNP and a controlled media", 06/15).

Peter Hitchens on the BNP

In a few days' time there will be local council elections in Britain in which it appears that the anti-immigration, get-tough-on-crime British National Party may make some significant gains—though probably largely thanks to protest votes rather than genuine support. The leader of this party has only recently distanced himself from earlier anti-Semitic and other neo-fascist statements and associations, so it is far from clear that the relatively moderate face he is now presenting is anything more than an opportunistic move to win votes from a broader social-conservative base. That base is in despair over the general breakdown of the rule of law in England, the admission of ever larger numbers of apparently unassimilable immigrants, and the attempt by the entire ruling élite to demonize anyone who questions their disastrous social-engineering policies. The disconnection from reality of the major British parties has produced an incredible state of affairs in which many moderate voters may be voting for a (possibly) neo-fascist party. Were such a party ever to gain power nationally, one might add, the present British political system, lacking in any kind of constitutional checks, would offer little resistance to being converted into a dictatorship.

Peter Hitchens has a Daily Mail article which seems to assess the situation more or less accurately, as far as I can make it out. The comments are worth reading too. H/T: Relapsed Catholic.

Update: Here's an allegation that party leader Nick Griffin (who has a farm in Wales) has named two of his pigs "Anne" and "Frank".