Oct 20, 2009 22:12
I hate Fascism in general and Nick Griffin in particular. Griffin is the head of the British Fascist party, the BNP, and as clever a villain as any in politics. I repeatedly said that he is the cleverest party leader in Britain - unfortunately. He has been ruthlessly positioning his party - whose core is made of unrepenentant thugs and Jew-bashers - on the right position of the culture wars, taking in a vast number of disgruntled and disenfranchised conservatives-with-a-small-c who post in conservative websites asking, if I cannot vote for the BNP, who can I vote for? Well, recent footage shows the bastard in the company of friends, making the point very clearly that he is using social conservatism as a cover to get the rubes in and win votes. Then, he said, he would start to get people around to think more and more his way. And he did not mean conservatively.
This is a fairly sickening situation to anyone who follows politics closely enough. In spite of all that is known about his past and his associates (he said he had been reading Mein Kampf since he was 13), every election, national, local or European, showed the party - originally little more than a fringe association of psychopaths who regularly got a few dozen votes per seat - becoming a more credible electoral force. They now have councillors all over England and two Members in the European Parliament. And the trouble is that every time the establishment tried to show their moral unworthiness and political fraudulency, it blew right back in their faces. To put it very simply, the whole societal leadership of the United Kingdom has no moral credibility left with anybody. Anybody. If the leadership of the Labour or Tory Parties, the press, or the churches, stand up and denounce the BNP, the majority of the public pays no mind, and a minority is actually motivated to search them out.
This time, though, they may have gone too far. Griffin may be a smart thug, but he is still a thug after all; and he has an unfortunate (for him) belief in the theory of the Big Lie. The Armed Forces are the one institution in Britain that have been gaining rather than losing respect, thanks mainly to their sacrifice in Afghanistan. Obviously, the BNP has been trying to capitalize on their reputation present and past; they even had the nerve to invoke Churchill and the Battle of Britain, obviously thinking that their public would not pay attention to the enormous absurdity of a bunch of Fascists claiming Churchill of all people for their own. But the armed forces have reacted. A group of present and past chiefs of staff, distinguished officers, and medal holders, have signed a declaration against the BNP. Griffin, who was on a hiding to nothing trying to argue against the military, has then compounded his error by telling a demonstrable lie live on screen (that wounded servicemen in Birmingham's Selly Oak hospital were forced to pay to watch TV programs). This was inevitably refuted within minutes. One hopes that Griffin has for once met something that he cannot subvert to his own odious cause.
bnp,
fascism,
british politics,
nick griffin