BNP on the BBC
Posted on October 21st, 2009
by Freddy Gray |
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Tomorrow night, the leader of the British National Party, nasty Nick Griffin, will appear on the BBC’s “Question Time”, a political TV show in which panelists field questions from a studio audience.
The country has worked itself into an absurd state of mass hysteria about this televisual showdown. Upper lips are wobbling throughout the Isles. There have been long and exhausting debates about whether the Beeb should let such a notorious creep espouse his unpleasant party’s policies on the air; nervous spokesman are warning of riots in the cities.
The three leading political parties, each of whom will have their own representatives on the show with Griffin, can sense an opportunity to score valuable PC points by fulminating against the BNP on prime-time. Expect lots of hammy expressions of outrage and pious odes about the blessings of multiculturalism. (The Conservative Party, eager to flash its progressive bona fides, has picked Baroness Warsi, a woman of Pakistani descent, to speak on their behalf.) Reports suggest that plans are afoot to plant holocaust survivors in the studio audience.
In short, the right-minded and silly people of the UK are getting very excited — salivating, even — at the prospect of being offended and disgusted by an even sillier man on TV. As a result, of course, tomorrow’s episode of QT is all but guaranteed to get the highest ratings of any political show in British broadcasting history. As Rod Liddle puts it,
This liberal chattering class terror … has succeeded in building up Nick Griffin’s appearance next week into one of the television events of the year - when it should be no such thing. The paroxysms over the initial BBC decision, the Labour Party’s desperate wrestling with its conscience over whether it should appear at all, the inordinate care taken in choosing over who should go up against Griffin within each party – hell, the man is being built up into a political colossus, an amalgam of De Toqueville and the Anti-Christ, when actually he is simply an affable but not terribly bright chap who is very easily thrown by the manifest illogicality of his party’s policy on race (and indeed on several other issues).
Exactly.
My prediction: the show will quickly degenerate into farce, as the non-extremists, frantically vying to outperform each other in the moral purity stakes, tie themselves into all sorts of hilariously self-defeating verbal knots.
PS Surely the best approach to handling nasty Nick would be to adapt Bertie Wooster’s wonderful rebuke to the fascist Spode, leader of the Saviours of Britain (his character supposedly modeled on Oswald Mosley) in P G Wodehouse’s The Code of the Woosters and apply it to Griffin:
The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting “Heil, Spode!” and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: “Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?
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“Nasty Nick”, really? In any case, isn’t it better to address Griffin’s politics than to mock him for not being part of the in crowd? Your tone sounds rather like that of the beltway insiders who mocked Ron Paul for daring to voice opinions out of step with the political elite. I suppose we mustn’t acknowledge “fascists” who advocate such evil things as a halt to the mass immigration of non-western peoples.
This is why the American Conservative is a joke.
Man, the leader of the BNP is a fascist who marches around in silly uniforms and heiling! What a buffoon. Except for the fact that he isn’t and he doesn’t.
The fascism in the UK is directed against the BNP, complete with government repression, restrictions on free speech, attacks by government funded thugs, and smear jobs by state media. The fearless Mr. Gray limits himself to a tut-tutting of the establishment for not knowing how to handle him.
This is just like Peter Hitchens approach — pointing out that Britain is falling apart but then viciously attacking anyone who actually does something about it and studiously ignoring the actual fascist tactics practiced against the BNP.
I think Nick Griffin has more serious things to tell us about a real future (or any kind of future) for Britain than Mr. Gray. Furthermore, as he has done repeatedly, Griffin will easily win this debate against the real buffoons of Lib/Labor/Con.
Freddy, you are completely out to lunch, I agree with the three above comments criticizing you. The UK is totalitarian, you can go to prison for denouncing your insolent Pakistani
waiter and also for holocaust revisionism, while not specifically outlawed in the UK, many people have been jailed
for racism and offending certain legally privileged groups.
Your tone sounds rather like that of the beltway insiders who mocked Ron Paul
I think becoming beltway insiders is the goal of most contributors here.
Frankly, I think this is precisely the position to take on the matter. The BNP is clearly silly people (who would be dangerous if competent) and the best way to deal with them is to mock them. However, the moral outrage will be in full force for this appearance, which will give the BNP far more credit than they deserve.
Pretty fair article. Griffen and his BNP are a nasty little joke of a movement, and though he’s already got all of the PR he wanted out of the mayhem, he’s still going to have to sit there in front of a hostile audience getting ripped to pieces by professional politicians of all parties who are - overjoyed - at the prospect the opportunity of debating someone even further to the right than they are.
I mean, Jack Staw must be wetting himself at the opportunity, it comes along so rarely for anyone who’s served in a British Government over the last three decades.
The only thing absolutely guaranteed tonight is that at no point in the proceedings will anyone on the panel address the question “How, exactly, has a group as amateurish and fringe as the BNP even been able to garner enough protest votes in a badly-attended European Election for it to become an issue?”
Because then Griffen might be pissed off enough to point out that he’s not saying anything that much more outlandish and race-baiting than 90% of what the British Press indulges in on a daily basis. And that maybe people are voting BNP because, for years now, they’ve been the targets of a relentless barrage of anti-immigrant, anti-Europe, anti-muslim, anti-socialist, anti-Human Rights, anti-anything vaguely ‘foreign’ or ‘politically correct’ bullshit every time they pick up the Sun, or the Star, or The Daily Mail, or The Express. Are people supposed to believe what they read in their newspapers or not?
That would shut the rest of the panel up no problem. And half the audience would find themselves caught between automatically booing the prick and applauding him for telling the truth, for once.
Which is why it won’t happen. The heavy hand of Murdoch is as strong over here as it is in the US, and there are some things you just - don’t - talk about if you want to have a career in the morning. Griffen knows that he can continue to profit from a small minority of angry, white, working class voters driven to him by a right-wing Press, he’s not going to risk offending that golden goose by drawing attention to the fact that the bulk of the Press attacking him are complicit in his movement’s rise.
Well, I’ll defer to Mr. Gray as to the nastiness of Mr. Griffin. If correct, it sounds like the paleos have no respectable party to represent them in England, either.
Why is it that no one has actually laid out why a conservative should oppose the BNP? all that its opponents can do is slander the party and its leaders.
“Tony J” for example is living in a complete fantasy land. Anyone who honestly believes that the government and press in the U. K. is racist is surely witnessing a much different reality than I.
Granted, I don’t live in the U. K. but all I see is a people so inculcated with guilt and hatred of their own culture, that not only do they refuse to stand up for themselves, their descendants, and their fathers, they actually cheer for those who seek to destroy the heritage that is their birthright and threaten those that do have the temerity to speak up with physical violence and imprisonment.
@James - their website doesn’t say what they actually stand for, so I went to Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_Party#Policies
A biggie under economic policy:
“In its 2005 manifesto, the BNP declared its opposition to “globalism, international socialism, laissez-faire capitalism and economic liberalism”" (obv. the last two are where conservatives will have a problem)
And there’s the whole only-whites-need-apply bit which is more than a little tacky.
If this magazine was published in Britain, we’d probably get pieces like “Why Harold Wilson was a Conservative.”
Please tell me who Britons should support if not the BNP?
It would be useful for Americans to have access to a recording of this event. Anyone know where to find it?
If the press coverage in the Telegraph is correct Griffin made a fool of himself, saying kind things about the KKK, and answering the inevitable holocaust question in a bizarre way. If this is true all sympathy for the BNP would be misguided. And they are the only ones defending the interests of native Britons and their culture. A pity.
“Anyone who honestly believes that the government and press in the U. K. is racist is surely witnessing a much different reality than I.”
Oh? And what reality would that be?
“Granted, I don’t live in the U. K.”
Oh, I see. You mean ‘that’ kind of reality, the one you have to invent.
Credibility fail. Please try again.
Given that the American Conservative’s resident expert on British Conservatism David Lindsay defines his conservatism as Supporting the Economic Patriotism and Economic Populism of Barack Obama (No I’m not kidding http://www.amconmag.com/postright/2009/08/20/what-kind-of-conservative-am-i/ )
I don’t see how the BNP not parroting the economic policy of David Cameron should disqualify them as an acceptable party–certainly not justify calling Mr. Griffin “nasty nick.”
Frankly I think preserving the historical identity of Britain is more important than who owns a few factories. If there’s a free market party in the UK that wants to do something about immigration, then we can quibble over the BNP’s economic policy.
When I first read this, considering the website it was posted on, I thought maybe the author was trying to be facetious and was actually criticizing the clownish PC preeners in the other parties. But unfortunately I do not believe that was the intent. The intent was to play more PC than thou and criticize the BNP.
I know the BNP is not American style conservatism. Conservatives in England are not necessarily real big on that whole limited government thing. Just ask Dave Lindsay. And I as a Southern conservative object to the Nationalism and the opposition to Welsh and Scottish independence. But clearly American paleocons have more reason to be sympathetic to the BNP than they do Labour or the “Conservative” Party. Does any paleo think halting the immigration onslaught and the demographic decline of England is unimportant?
I have often taken up for TAC against those who claim it is just drifting left and/or engaging in nothing more than I’m not a movement con axe grinding, but that is getting harder and harder to do. First Limbaugh gets hounded out of the NFL by a bunch of PC spouting thugs and the outrage is directed at him, and now this. If I didn’t come here knowing the background of this magazine and just read a post without context, I often would think the opinion was more Noonan and Parker than Buchanan and Fleming.
[...] This post bashing the British National Party is just awful. Below is the comment I posted. When I first read this, considering the website it was posted on, I thought maybe the author was trying to be facetious and was actually criticizing the clownish PC preeners in the other parties. But unfortunately I do not believe that was the intent. The intent was to play more PC than thou and criticize the BNP. [...]
It is unfortunate that there are people with the same views as Griffin. They should not be allowed to be in politics.
The most divisive, dishonest and inhuman aspect of tyrannical, left wing extremism seems to be beyond the reach of most peoples ‘radar screens’ at present - even people like Nick Griffin. But more and more people are becoming aware it as more and more people are being hurt by it - it is simply known as radical feminism and it is the back bone of the entire Left wing fantasy world . Tune in - circumstances will require it eventually.
This is why I let my subscription to the American Conservative lapse. If you’re too afraid to support the BNP, at the very least there should be some mention that the issues they promote are important.
It is unfortunate that there are people who do not understand Great Britain is being destroyed and the BNP is the only opposition.
It is unfortunate that there are people who think that one of the few people attempting to stop the cultural degeneration of the U.K. should not be allowed to be in politics.
Wow, some of the people commenting on this seem to think that immigration is the only issue that matters.
I must be missing the point here, why is anyone suggesting that conservatives should be supporting the BNP? They’re not at all conservative, they’re socialist.
Tut tut, AmCon. You should be praising Hitler, he was the only standing up for the German people.
For anyone who’s interested in Conservatism in the U.K. (not Great Britain) and is concerned about immigration there’s UKIP.