BNP to appear on Question Time. - Page 2

PAPA LAZEROU · 19th October 2009, 5:03pm

Maybe the media is giving the bnp loads of publicity to try and make the rest of the shirking mps get their collective shit together and actually run the country a bit better than it has been for the past 25 years.......or maybe they are all secret nazis with 'hidden agendas', side-flick hair cuts, small moustaches and a penchant for large rallys with big red flags and lots of shouting in foriegn lingos

broken · 19th October 2009, 6:28pm

I think that he should be given a platform. I'd like to think that people would watch it and from it, at least be informed and disagree, but I don't think it will pan out like that. I do worry that a lot of people who voted for them in the summer didn't really know what their vote meant (or they did& they're bastards) I know people apparantly want a change, but THAT'S NOT IT.

PAPA LAZEROU · 19th October 2009, 6:45pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by broken

I think that he should be given a platform. I'd like to think that people would watch it and from it, at least be informed and disagree, but I don't think it will pan out like that. I do worry that a lot of people who voted for them in the summer didn't really know what their vote meant (or they did& they're bastards) I know people apparantly want a change, but THAT'S NOT IT.

Ach come on, give them a wee shotty of running the country......at the very lest, if (when) they fail miserably at it, people can get all uppity on high-horsey and say 'I told you so...thats what you get for voting in the likes of them!!!!'.

Of course...there is the worst case scenario of.............they do absolutely brilliant and sort out the mess this country is in(whilst at the same time pissing off three quarters of the planet and starting about a gazillion race-hate wars) and then get the boot at the next 'general erection' only for the tories to get back in and fuck all the good up...........but thats a highly unlikely scenario.....everycunt knows the tories have no chance of running GB again

Semprini · 19th October 2009, 7:07pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by PAPA LAZEROU

they do absolutely brilliant and sort out the mess this country is in

Unless you equate 'the mess this country is in' with 'not enough whites', I don't see them sorting a lot out.

**djtoast** · 19th October 2009, 10:17pm

i guess if they are gonna be on, now is a pretty good time given the bountiful ammunition against them served up by their constitution woes.

in general though, it makes rather little difference i'm sure - most of us will watch and think "bunch of cunts" ; their own supporters will watch and think "mon the whities" - few minds are changed by political debate on tv at that end of the political spectrum i'd think.

**Shannow** · 19th October 2009, 10:19pm

Uh ohes

Mwezzi · 19th October 2009, 10:42pm

I'm looking forward to this, if I'm honest. Whenever I see interviews with Griffin he always seems reactionary, blustery, and unable to answer a straightforward question. Hopefully he'll come out of this looking like an even bigger tit than before, all on his own.

erithromycin · 20th October 2009, 1:31pm

I too am getting some beers in. The fact that the membership list has apparently been leaked again is comedy gold.

The thing to remember with Hain and a lot of the Labour apparatchik is that they came up out of the NUS, who operate what's known as the "No Platform" policy. They refuse to engage with the BNP, to allow the BNP to speak at their unions, and will leave the stage if someone reveals themselves as a BNP member. How this travels with their general willingness to tolerate it when ostensibly pro-Palestinian rhetoric becomes ant-Zionist and then anti-semetic I don't know. Anyway, I think it's more of the same.

The sad thing is when it comes to reactionary minority parties that make truck of prejudices against them, you can't win, at least if you allow them to frame the terms; allow them to speak, and you've granted them "legitimacy", prevent them from doing so and you are persecuting them. As with most forms of extremism the BNP are popular because people don't see any other option - the trick is not to worry about the BNP, but the people who feel driven to vote for them. I'm not going to say that they are idiots, at least not in this sentence, but they are expressing dissatisfaction with something. Labour's retreat from its traditional working class roots, indeed, the very erosion of the concept of 'working class' and the attendant (if not causally related) increase in the complexity of modern life have left a lot of folk grasping. The BNP have thrown some of them a rope. That it's got a noose on the other end isn't what they're concerned about - they're drowning.

**djtoast** · 20th October 2009, 2:13pm

Quote:

Labour's retreat from its traditional working class roots ... ha[s] left a lot of folk grasping.

i'd have thought that most people found their way to the BNP from the other side of the political compass, no? it's true that labour has left a hole where there used to be a left-wing political party, but BNP members (toads though they may be) probably can't jump that far.

surely they've always been flag-waving, mail-reading (or worse yet, express-reading) british-goods-buying queen-loving sorts, and since such overtly intollerant people like tebbit and hestletine have dwindled in the public persona of the tory party, making way for friendlier faces, i'd think it's been easy for people at the far right of the tory mindset to slip a bit fuhrer further right still into the welcoming arms of the fascisti for their insular, hateful needs.

*LesMTS* · 20th October 2009, 2:20pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by erithromycin

I too am getting some beers in. The fact that the membership list has apparently been leaked again is comedy gold.

After an acute pang of cognitive dissonance after contemplating the BNP list leak in the context of my attitude to things like "Megan's Law" and NOTW name-and-shame campaigns, I've withdrawn my tent from the "membership list being leaked is a hearty lawl" camp.

erithromycin · 20th October 2009, 3:22pm

I think that the BNP are strongest where there was a sense of community which has been eroded by the loss of heavy industry. Those are traditional Labour areas, but the disconnect as the New Labour project made the party more of the middle-classes (and it was electorally successful) has been signficant. While many of the BNP's "policies", if their witless rantings can be treated with such respect, are vaguely similar to those of the Conservatives, they do have a vague 'communitarian' ethos to them. The Tories used to claim there was no such thing as Society, the BNP that it is threatened by the other.

The projects like "political compass" and the like with regards to the left/right bias do tend to get used to put a gloss on right wing organisations, but they raise an important point - the BNP might well be fascists, they are certainly authoritarian and brutal, but they are also necessarily populist - the thing about their model of wealth redistribution is that it's not from the 'haves' to the 'have-nots' but from the 'not-us' to the 'like-us'. Identity politics disguised as quasi-socialism. They're also a party of fear, of the ostensibly downtrodden - Labour might well have appealed because they offered a path up and out, but the BNP appeal because they say that the bad situation is someone else's fault. Rather than offering franchise (a traditional Labour ideal) they reiterate disenfranchisement, assign blame, and then offer to take care of it. Abrogation is always more tempting than effort.

As for the list being leaked, it's funny, but it is tragic. These people do have a right to join a political party, but while their membership of that organisation isn't necessarily a secret their addresses and the like should be. So it's funny, but only funny so far - like initially laughing when someone falls over and spills their shopping, then feeling a bit bad because they are killed by wolves.

*LesMTS* · 20th October 2009, 3:50pm

Griffin is not going to come across as the frothing racist caricature that some people are anticipating. He'll avoid controversy like the plague and will calmly respond to questions with platitudes and populist rhetoric.

Mwezzi · 20th October 2009, 4:00pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by LesMTS

Griffin is not going to come across as the frothing racist caricature that some people are anticipating. He'll avoid controversy like the plague and will calmly respond to questions with platitudes and populist rhetoric.

I saw him trying to do that on Channel 4 once. He still came over as a blustering tit.

*LesMTS* · 20th October 2009, 4:06pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mwezzi

I saw him trying to do that on Channel 4 once. He still came over as a blustering tit.

Yeah, he'll bluster and obfuscate and lie, but no more than any of the mainstream politicians on QT do.
My point is: don't expect The Hitler Show. He'll probably be quite boring.
It'll be brilliant if someone does manage to back him into a corner, but experience shows that he's rarely controversial when (he knows) the cameras are on him, he simply falls back into populist bluster.

XMachina · 20th October 2009, 4:21pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by erithromycin

I think that the BNP are strongest where there was a sense of community which has been eroded by the loss of heavy industry. Those are traditional Labour areas, but the disconnect as the New Labour project made the party more of the middle-classes (and it was electorally successful) has been signficant.

Today's guardian has a constituency breakdown of membership as per today's leaked list. With Lancashire proving to be a hot spot I'd say you're not far off the mark. It's definitely worth a closer look.