BNP thuggery?
I do not know what to make of this, but to an American vaguely inclined to sympathize with the British National Party, well, it does not look too good. Context is lacking but it looks, more or less, as though hot-tempered BNP stormtroopers had gratuitously roughed up an invited guest at a BNP event—and then as though the party, rather than to apologize and graciously to make amends, had pugnaciously defended the act.
Read the article and watch the video here.
Note the siege mentality evident in this highly placed BNP response.
The guest’s name is Dominic Kennedy, a reporter for the Times of London.
The mainstream English media have “covered” the BNP for so many years with so flagrant a disregard for objectivity that it grows hard to sift the competent reporting from the adolescent preening masquerading as reporting. Persistently bad news coverage of a political party however does not in itself make the party good. However many party-meetings anarchists might in the past have disrupted, you don’t invite a reporter from a leading newspaper and then rough him up after he arrives. You just don’t. Not even if he stalls a bit when you ask him to leave.
The BNP’s Fuehrer Nick Griffin naturally accuses the Times of lying. (Fuehrer is a loaded term, is it not? Can’t help that. The term here is not actually an insult but an informed description.) Nick Griffin does that. A lot. If among the past ten years you can identify a single month during which Mr. Griffin did not loudly accuse at least three perceived political foes of lying about him and his party, well, Mr. Griffin was probably on vacation that month. You might not identify so much as a single week. I don’t know about you, but for my own part I tend not to trust folks so ready to accuse others of lying, even if the accused are liars. Mr. Griffin need not worry about me, of course, but the principle at stake does seem to be something Mr. Griffin does not understand.
Taki Theodoracopoulos has described the relationship between Nick Griffin and the English media as an encounter respectively of the unsuitable and the inappropriate. It seems that Taki may be right. Too bad.
We Americans naturally will not worry much about this, one way or the other, for the most excellent and fortunate reason that it is not our problem to worry about. I have often thought however that I would cheerfully vote BNP if I were English. This particular event stands in another light.
Considering not Messrs. Griffin and Kennedy in particular, incidentally, but Englishmen generally, have you not observed that that most famous of English modes of expression, understatement, seems to have become a thing of the past? It is hardly to be believed that Americans do it better now, but do it better we do.
It is a bad time to be English, a good time to be an American.
HJH
March 2nd, 2010 at 8:12 am
Howard, I have a lot of sympathy of the BNP myself, and when I saw this article, I wrote to a friend in England who is a member of the BNP. I’d like to quote her reply to my inquiry:
No I was not present when that occurred but I know all about it and I am really shocked by it. I could not believe my eyes when I saw the picture of the Times reporter being ejected from the conference. Yes, he deserved it, but that is not the point, there was nothing he could possibly have written which would be as damaging as that picture.
That particular journalist specialises in attending BNP events and then lying about them. He was asked to leave, refused and the security officers ejected him a bit too roughly. However, it looks absolutely awful. The BNP need tough security people because there is always a serious threat of violence from the Communists who regularly attack BNP gatherings, but unfortunately those men were too tough.
We despair over such stupidity. It gives the opposition a very negative immage to use against us.
The BNP is the only hope the country has, but they need to learn about politics.
So, there you have it from an intelligent member of the BNP, one who evidently was not present at this particular event, but that is pretty familiar with events overall.
In many respects, politics is a far less civil affair than it was 50 years ago. At that time, a man campaigning for office would travel from place to place, stop to make a speech, and those who were interested would gather to hear him and those who were not would simply go on about their business in most cases.It was rare to have speakers disrupted; people wanted to hear what they had to say, so that they coulld decide how to vote in November, and the people had enough respect for each other to allow everybody to listen. This is not so any longer.
It appears to me that the UK is much further advanced down this road of uncivility than the US is, although we are struggling to catch up. For generations, it has been accepted practice in Parliament to make ad hominem attacks, etc. a rather vile practice, something we are only now seeing with regularity in America. You will recall the threat from the muzzie “peer” Lord whatever, to have 10,000 muzzies demonstrate in the streets outside Parliament. That was a genuine threat of violence against Parliament itself. We have not yet had a member of Congress threaten to have 10,000 of his personal guard invade the Capital grounds, but it is probably coming.
My point in all of this is simply that rough handling is becoming a much more common event, and I think the British are further down that road than we are. Therefore I suggest that what the BNP did was not that surprising, but rather fits into the general picture of the world, and the UK in particular.
March 3rd, 2010 at 7:58 pm
Howard, because I know that you are a serious economist, I wanted to recommend this blog to you:
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/
I am finding it rather interesting. You might well not agree with what the writer says, but he says it pretty well, I think. He also has some mouthwatering pictures of fine food on the side.