Maybe, just maybe, I was subjected to a little too much of the work of Mill and Milton in my formative years, but their effect on me is something which I will never even consider bearing to bring myself to apologise for, and it’s with this background I find myself appalled by the backlash which the BBC is facing for decided to allow a political leader on a television show fundamentally concerned with the issues of the day in politics.
Yes, Nick Griffin is essentially a thug in a suit with some abhorrent values and ideals; but he is also the head of a party with a fair amount of mainstream electoral support in this country. Any complaints from those who would be impassioned to do so that his appearance on national television would somehow do anything to further ‘legitimise’ the party are empty. All on its own, without the support of a multinational broadcasting company, the BNP has seen electoral rises (in both numerical and percentage terms) in every general election since 1987; thus the legitimacy of the party is fairly embedded into our system of liberal democracy: if a party stands and people (en masse or not) vote for them, it’s fair to say that their validity as an organisation is not in question. This is not to mention the 58 council seats, London Assembly seat and two seats on the European Parliament that the party also holds. Such is the nature of a system where people can vote freely and representatively of their views.
A second criticism of the populist outrage of the liberal intelligentsia of the Left over this matter would be the obvious hypocrisy behind the oh-so intelligent critique of the BNP that is, ‘They’re Nazis.’ The mildly amusing thing I find here is that it is the Left (generally) who would have these ‘Nazis’ silenced: clearly the silencing and banning of the KPD in 1933 is a speck to be regretted on the tapestry of history, but to wish the same upon the BNP is a matter of mere good conscience. I can’t say: maybe old rivalries die hard and seventy-five years isn’t too long to wait for a bit of revenge. Add to this the fact that the BNP is fundamentally not a party of Nazis: the Third Position ideology and embracing of them by Think-Israel (a transparently pro-Israeli, pro-Jewish publication) in 2005, after John Bean of the BNP denounced ‘Judeo-obsessivism.’ The only thing that can come out of continuing to call the BNP a ‘Nazi’ party is that there will be a massive swing in support towards them once they, somehow, manage to show the public that they are indeed not a Nazi party: ‘You see these people who told you that we were Nazis? They were wrong, and you should feel bad for believing them.’
It is also somewhat galling that people seem to have no faith in what is termed the ‘working-class’, to whom the rhetoric, apparently, is most appealing: hearing the argument that people will be taken in because this man is on television, the poors up North (as the argument generally goes around here, anyone from north of the northernmost edge of the M25) will lap up everything he has to say. Coming from the North I previously described, I honest to any deity you may care to imagine believe that deference to any authority which may have at some point been embodied in politicians died, as it did down here, in the 1960s with the start of the run of That Was the Week That Was. If there was any left after thirty years of satire, it was definitely finished off by Steve Milligan, thank you very much. These people aren’t stupid: they’re desperate and unemployed through structure in what I would think to be a majority of cases; we’re out of mines to mine, ships to build and textiles to manufacture. The depressing fact is that the BNP is the only mainstream political party to offer anything to them: the Big Two and the Lib Dems are too busy fellating big business, which is now pretty much all tertiary, to care about the common man who has always made a living with his hands.
The worst part of all of this for me is that the protests which are to surround this appearance are going to make the Left as a whole look intolerant and worse than the BNP. It’s lovely to see the various factions of the Left getting together for a love-in of sorts in White City next week (SWP members holding hands with CPGB members, singing songs around a flaming oil barrel would be my ideal imagined outcome), but it’s a bad thing to be behind: all that is going to result is arrests and PR disaster.
Fundamentally, this is an issue that needs to be debated: the BNP and Nick Griffin are now an undeniable part of our political landscape, and are likely to be immovable for a while. I see no fault with having someone who is a legitimate politician appear on a political television show in order to talk about and debate his politics, and this is the crux of the issue: the BNP’s policies on race are indeed repulsive, but this will be debated on the show; it simply has to be – for this reason, the appearance of Griffin should not be prevented because of BNP party policy. Debate is the greatest method of exposing doubt for beliefs: a method which has endured from the times of Socrates to now must be effective.
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- Will they make the trains run on time? – 1
- Make time for Timeless
- Part-time party
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on Friday, October 23rd, 2009 at 07:21 and is filed under Comment.
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Will they make the trains run on time? – 2
by Alexander Young on 23 Oct 2009 in Comment
Maybe, just maybe, I was subjected to a little too much of the work of Mill and Milton in my formative years, but their effect on me is something which I will never even consider bearing to bring myself to apologise for, and it’s with this background I find myself appalled by the backlash which the BBC is facing for decided to allow a political leader on a television show fundamentally concerned with the issues of the day in politics.
Yes, Nick Griffin is essentially a thug in a suit with some abhorrent values and ideals; but he is also the head of a party with a fair amount of mainstream electoral support in this country. Any complaints from those who would be impassioned to do so that his appearance on national television would somehow do anything to further ‘legitimise’ the party are empty. All on its own, without the support of a multinational broadcasting company, the BNP has seen electoral rises (in both numerical and percentage terms) in every general election since 1987; thus the legitimacy of the party is fairly embedded into our system of liberal democracy: if a party stands and people (en masse or not) vote for them, it’s fair to say that their validity as an organisation is not in question. This is not to mention the 58 council seats, London Assembly seat and two seats on the European Parliament that the party also holds. Such is the nature of a system where people can vote freely and representatively of their views.
A second criticism of the populist outrage of the liberal intelligentsia of the Left over this matter would be the obvious hypocrisy behind the oh-so intelligent critique of the BNP that is, ‘They’re Nazis.’ The mildly amusing thing I find here is that it is the Left (generally) who would have these ‘Nazis’ silenced: clearly the silencing and banning of the KPD in 1933 is a speck to be regretted on the tapestry of history, but to wish the same upon the BNP is a matter of mere good conscience. I can’t say: maybe old rivalries die hard and seventy-five years isn’t too long to wait for a bit of revenge. Add to this the fact that the BNP is fundamentally not a party of Nazis: the Third Position ideology and embracing of them by Think-Israel (a transparently pro-Israeli, pro-Jewish publication) in 2005, after John Bean of the BNP denounced ‘Judeo-obsessivism.’ The only thing that can come out of continuing to call the BNP a ‘Nazi’ party is that there will be a massive swing in support towards them once they, somehow, manage to show the public that they are indeed not a Nazi party: ‘You see these people who told you that we were Nazis? They were wrong, and you should feel bad for believing them.’
It is also somewhat galling that people seem to have no faith in what is termed the ‘working-class’, to whom the rhetoric, apparently, is most appealing: hearing the argument that people will be taken in because this man is on television, the poors up North (as the argument generally goes around here, anyone from north of the northernmost edge of the M25) will lap up everything he has to say. Coming from the North I previously described, I honest to any deity you may care to imagine believe that deference to any authority which may have at some point been embodied in politicians died, as it did down here, in the 1960s with the start of the run of That Was the Week That Was. If there was any left after thirty years of satire, it was definitely finished off by Steve Milligan, thank you very much. These people aren’t stupid: they’re desperate and unemployed through structure in what I would think to be a majority of cases; we’re out of mines to mine, ships to build and textiles to manufacture. The depressing fact is that the BNP is the only mainstream political party to offer anything to them: the Big Two and the Lib Dems are too busy fellating big business, which is now pretty much all tertiary, to care about the common man who has always made a living with his hands.
The worst part of all of this for me is that the protests which are to surround this appearance are going to make the Left as a whole look intolerant and worse than the BNP. It’s lovely to see the various factions of the Left getting together for a love-in of sorts in White City next week (SWP members holding hands with CPGB members, singing songs around a flaming oil barrel would be my ideal imagined outcome), but it’s a bad thing to be behind: all that is going to result is arrests and PR disaster.
Fundamentally, this is an issue that needs to be debated: the BNP and Nick Griffin are now an undeniable part of our political landscape, and are likely to be immovable for a while. I see no fault with having someone who is a legitimate politician appear on a political television show in order to talk about and debate his politics, and this is the crux of the issue: the BNP’s policies on race are indeed repulsive, but this will be debated on the show; it simply has to be – for this reason, the appearance of Griffin should not be prevented because of BNP party policy. Debate is the greatest method of exposing doubt for beliefs: a method which has endured from the times of Socrates to now must be effective.
Related posts:
This entry was posted on Friday, October 23rd, 2009 at 07:21 and is filed under Comment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.