Nick Griffin, MEP
News breaks in Europe. The quinquennial election returns to the European Parliament roll in by the minute, when the mildly fascist British National party (BNP) looks set to capture not one but two of Britain’s 72 seats. Party leader Nick Griffin is in for Manchester. For the first time, the BNP is going to Brussels.
The Daily Mail reports,
The far-Right British National Party won their first ever seats in a national election last night as Labour crashed to poll humiliation.
The triumph for the neo-fascist party, which will now send two MEPs to Brussels, sent shockwaves through Westminster and increased pressure on [prime minister and Labour leader] Gordon Brown.
Labour MPs were horrified that their party’s vote had collapsed so dramatically that it opened the door for the far Right.
They said the BNP victory in EU elections increased the likelihood of a new attempt being mounted today to force the Prime Minister out.
Nick Griffin and the BNP seek explicitly to represent the interests of Britain’s indigenous, white majority, halting new U.K. immigration and having the British state help existing immigrants and their old countries to repatriate such immigrants from Britain homeward voluntarily. The BNP also opposes Islam in Britain, and pointedly refuses to be intimidated by accusations of racism.
Gains for the Western right are not limited to the BNP. The BBC reports,
In addition to British National Party, right-wing and extremist parties have increased their share of the vote in several other European countries. In the Netherlands, the Eurosceptic, anti-Islamic Freedom Party of the controversial politician Geert Wilders came second, while in Austria the far-right Freedom Party doubled its share of the vote. There were also gains for the right in Hungary and Finland.
The anti-European Union but antiracist U.K. Independence party (UKIP), not even represented at Westminster, roars into second place at about 13 seats, achieving parity with the governing Labour party and pulling two ahead of the Liberal Democrats. The Conservative party, ambiguous on the European Union, leads at about 25. Final returns will adjust these numbers in marginal seats. [Update 12 June: The Conservatives have narrowly captured a 26th seat.]
One ought naturally to hold such results in perspective. The new European Parliament will have 736 members, among whom Mr. Griffin will exercise marginal influence at most. The implications for U.S. politics of Mr. Griffin’s victory, if any, are indirect. Times change, though. The BNP’s modest but unprecedented triumph, which the English-speaking world can hardly ignore, may be a harbinger of something to come.
HJH
June 9th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
I have read over and over again that the BNP is fascist. But then all any one ever says concretely is such as you have said here, Howard:
Nick Griffin and the BNP seek explicitly to represent the interests of Britain’s indigenous, white majority, halting new U.K. immigration and having the British state help existing immigrants and their old countries to repatriate such immigrants from Britain homeward voluntarily. The BNP also opposes Islam in Britain, and pointedly refuses to be intimidated by accusations of racism.
To my mind, that is not fascism. That is nationalism, and I would certainly like to see something very similar here in the USA. The BNP seems to be the only party speaking up for the indigenous Brits who are rapidly being beaten down and displaced in their homeland. What is fascist about that?
They oppose izlam and want to reduce the massive numbers of foreign born people in the UK. I think this is a perfectly reasonable position to take. What is fascist about that?
I am absolutely delighted that the BNP won those seats, and I hope that they do a great job with them and win more in every election to come. Labor and the Conservatives have betrayed the UK totally, much as the Democrats and Republicans have betrayed the USA. The parallels are truly striking.
I think it is dishonest to characterize the BNP as fascist but never provide a shred of hard, documented evidence that supports this. I have looked and looked, and I can find nothing. I have found more accusations than I can count, but nothing in writing that supports it. It is all libel.
June 12th, 2009 at 6:16 am
Dr.D:
Thank you for posting your insightful remark, with which I would associate myself in the entirety, excepting only maybe in the semantics of the term fascism.
Unlike the sordid smear racist, a term to which it is impossible to lend concrete, operational definition, I wonder whether the term fascist does not actually mean something concrete. Though I am as cheered by the BNP’s prosperity as you are, well, words mean things; and if the BNP cannot in fact be described as a mildly fascist party then I am left unsure as to what fascism is.
As far as I am aware, fascism is an authoritarian, antidemocratic, muscular, militarist, corporatist, anti-antiracist phenomenon of the populist, nationalist right, respectful of tradition but generally uninterested in constitutional law and economic theory. Excepting only in the antidemocratic point, the BNP seems to fit this bill—and, indeed, fascists have always used democracy as a foil when it suited them to. Actually, I don’t believe that the BNP is antidemocratic, but it cannot be asserted that the party had yet proven itself on this point.
Nick Griffin’s threat to try members of Parliament for war crimes for having voted the wrong way (as he sees it) in authorizing the use of force in Afghanistan and Iraq is a classic fascist maneuver. Hitler’s defiant defense testimony in the 1924 treason trial that locked him in Landsberg illustrates the point beautifully.
Though my German used to be pretty good, I admit that I have never been able to work my way all the way through Mein Kampf in the original vernacular, but I have read parts in German and most of it in English translation. I have read that eminent Antinazi, Shirer, right through several times. When Nick Griffin selectively borrows successful Nazi tactics, I find it hard not to notice.
This of course does not make Mr. Griffin a Nazi. Hitler was a cruel tyrant and a wicked man; in Griffin I see rather a fascist in the honorable tradition of Augusto Pinochet and the badly misunderstood Benito Mussolini. Believe me, I understand why Mr. Griffin finds it convenient to label his opponents fascists, because in the country that won the Battle of Britain the political label fascist does not sell; but Mr. Griffin himself pretty clearly knows better.
Were I English I should have cheerfully voted BNP last week. I am unpersuaded however that the BNP were not, in fact, fascist.
I do not ask you to agree with me, Dr.D. I only wanted to explain myself, so that you would not think that I were duped by liberal media (who seldom know what a fascist actually is), on the one hand, or that I were deliberately libeling the BNP, on the other. I cannot truthfully deny that the fascist shoe seems to me to fit the BNP foot tolerably well.
If this led you to conclude that fascism—as distinct from its notorious mutant strain, Nazism—might be a good thing rather than a bad, then I would say that you were on the right track.
Howard
June 12th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
A very interesting response, Howard, and far more substantive than I have found anywhere else. Thank you. I see more clearly where you are coming from, and that helps a lot. I’m not at all sure that what you have said is what most people mean, however, when they say that the BNP is fascist; I’m not sure they know what they mean actually.
Thank you for the helpful comment.
June 14th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
There are some very interesting comments on fascism at this site:
http://tinyurl.com/nt49po