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Huh?
The gnostic wankers of the British police state are suddenly finding themselves at a loss to explain why they're losing their traditional support, Labour finding their voters disgusted and willing to vote instead for labour. The English, no great democrats in practice, are finally realising that the world is going down and taking them with it; and the only way to save themselves, if they can, if they will, is to cut loose from the sinking Ship of State and find a lifeboat to live in. Good luck. With the majority of Brits so hooked on the dole it's unlikely they'd be able to beat the French out of bed in the morning if the place caught fire. And the fire is coming, washing over the waves, coming soon to a district near you. Will there be any islands left of sanity and sense?
The BNP, the British National Party, is moving slowly. Are they fascists?
Are they thugs? Or are they working class people in a place where the working class is seen as unwashed and unlikeable and unworthy of serious consideration? Strip away the class snobbery and pretensions, discount the p.c. slanders of any who don't outdo other p.c. slanderers, and perhaps the BNP is no more than working class people. We're talkin' Britain here, and in Britain the working class is not a good thing, it's members not respected, the people despised by those any class above. Combine that with the gnostics on the Left, the fools who know it all and will tell all to listen and obey and believe and be silent. Is the BNP a racist gaggle of thugs with lovely plumage, a dead thing nailed to the perch? Or is the BNP a reaction against too much mindless intellectualist activism by the upper class twits of the year?We have to ask ourselves if the BNP is the party of labour or the party of the lumpen-proletariat as Labour would have us believe. We have to know if we can support the BNP because we have to know who we in our nations can support against the gnostics and the p.c. Philosopher Kings.
How much liberal socialism do we discard before we find ourselves as fascists? What do we define as fascist? Do we allow the Left to define that for us?
Below we have a number of recent articles on the rise of the BNP in Britain. We have to look at them to examine our own nations and see if we must turn away from traditional parties and turn to our own lives and privacies in the public realm to reclaim our rights as democrats and people of worth in ourselves. How hard is the hard line? And where do we draw it?
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BNP set to win seats as support surges
By George Jones, Political Editor
(Filed: 21/04/2006)
Local elections factfile
The British National Party is on course to make significant gains in the local elections in England in two weeks time, according to a YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph today.
It shows that seven per cent of voters are ready to back the far-Right party and that 24 per cent have considered voting BNP in the past or are thinking of doing so now.
In the eyes of almost three-quarters of potential BNP supporters, Britain "almost seems like a foreign country". The poll underlines the recent warning from Margaret Hodge , the employment minister, that white working-class families felt so neglected by the Government and angered by immigration that they were deserting Labour and flocking to the BNP.
Mrs Hodge told The Sunday Telegraph that eight out of 10 white people in her east London constituency of Barking were threatening to vote for the BNP on May 4.
The surge in support for the BNP - which displaced the National Front as Britain's main far-Right party in 1982 - could damage the Conservatives in the local elections, which will be David Cameron's first electoral test since becoming Tory leader.
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The Tories are now no better off than they were under Michael Howard at last year's general election....
The strong showing for the BNP, which has already achieved more success than any other far-Right party, will alarm all the mainstream parties. At the general election last year, the BNP won 4.3 per cent of the vote across the 116 seats it contested. It polled 16.9 per cent in the Barking constituency.
The poll confirms the fears of Labour MPs that Mrs Hodge's warning about the support for the BNP among white working-class voters has given the party a valuable boost. In recent months, almost no one had been telling YouGov they would vote BNP, but publicity following her comments has highlighted the party's existence.
A report by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust this week said that up to 25 per cent of voters indicated they "might vote" for the party. It claimed that support for the BNP from skilled and semi-skilled workers reflected voter "tension" about multi-cultural Britain.
The BNP has said it is putting up more candidates than ever before - 356 - for the local elections. At present it has 15 councillors across England and hopes to win up to 40 seats on May 4.
Lord Tebbit, the former Conservative Party chairman, in a letter to The Daily Telegraph today, challenges the widely held view that the BNP is an extreme Right-wing party. He said that he was unable to find evidence of "Right-wing tendencies" in its 2005 manifesto.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
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One in five people in England have said they would consider voting for the far-Right British National Party, according to a survey published yesterday.
In London, where all council seats are up for re-election on May 4, the number of voters ready to consider supporting the BNP is one in four.
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It showed that support for the far-Right did not come from places where the poorest and most deprived people in British society lived.
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There was no simple relationship between far-Right support and racially mixed areas.
The BNP did well largely in wards where white people lived rather than where there were people from the ethnic minorities.
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The Democratic Audit report, The British National Party: the Roots of its Appeal, shows that the BNP goes into the May elections seeking to win up to 40 seats on local councils across the country.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
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The BNP leaflets are still getting delivered. We have received around 100 reports so far. This week the complaints we are getting are that they are reaching a lot more multiracial areas although some postal workers are refusing to deliver them. Please - if you or anyone you know receives the leaflet - DO NOT BIN IT - take it to the police station, insist that you want to make a complaint and say you are concerned it could stir up racism and incite racial hatred.(See Note 1 below).This is very important, the more people who complain, the more likely it is that the Lord Advocate will be forced to act. Don't accept that the BNP are a legitimate political party. The BNP are fascists masquerading as a legitimate political party. Please send copies of your emails to home@paih.org .
(In October 2002, a man was convicted of inciting racial hatred under the Public Order Act by sending hundreds of hate-filled leaflets in Pollokshields. He was found guilty of distributing "threatening, insulting and abusive" literature and stirring up racial hatred, contrary to he Public Order Act. The sheriff said the claims in the leaflet were inaccurate.").
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Positive Action in Housing is a Scottish wide anti-racist organisation working with communities and others to enable everyone to have an equal chance to live in good quality, affordable and safe homes, free from discrimination and the fear of racial harassment and violence. Since 1995, we have taken a centre stage role in challenging racism and supporting the human right of everyone to live in a safe home and neighbourhood. Then, we were fighting the legacy of years of discrimination in housing against immigrant communities. We still are. Today that fight has shifted to challenging the forced dispersal, segregation, imprisonment and destitution of refugee communities. Our work is not just about housing discrimination; it is also about human rights or the abuse of it by a country that is supposed to champion civil liberties, democracy and freedom. We operate the only accommodation service for asylum seekers made destitute after being evicted from Council, YMCA and SRC emergency accommodation.
scotland.indymedia.org/...
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White voters are deserting us for BNP, says Blair ally
By Melissa Kite, Deputy Political Editor
(Filed: 16/04/2006)
White working-class families feel so neglected by the Government and angered by immigration that they are deserting Labour and flocking to the British National Party, a minister admitted yesterday.
In a sensational claim, Margaret Hodge, one of Tony Blair's closest allies, said that eight out of 10 white people in her east London constituency of Barking are threatening to vote for the far-Right party in next month's local elections. Once traditional Labour supporters are angry at a lack of affordable housing - and blame immigration, and Labour, for the changes.
Margaret Hodge: white families are angry
"They can't get a home for their children, they see black and ethnic minority communities moving in and they are angry," said Mrs Hodge, the employment minister. "When I knock on doors I say to people, 'are you tempted to vote BNP?' and many, many, many - eight out of 10 of the white families - say 'yes'. That's something we have never seen before, in all my years. Even when people voted BNP, they used to be ashamed to vote BNP. Now they are not." Mrs Hodge said the pace of ethnic change in her area had frightened people. "What has happened in Barking and Dagenham is the most rapid transformation of a community we have ever witnessed.
"Nowhere else has changed so fast. When I arrived in 1994, it was a predominantly white, working class area. Now, go through the middle of Barking and you could be in Camden or Brixton. That is the key thing that has created the environment the BNP has sought to exploit." Mrs Hodge claimed the anger is not down to racism. "It is a fear of change. It is gobsmacking change."
She also complained about a "lack of leadership" from her party on race, and said the "political class", including Labour, was frightened of the issue. "The Labour Party hasn't talked to these people. This is a traditional Labour area but they are not used to engaging with us because all we do is put leaflets through doors. Part of the reason they switch to the BNP is they feel no one else is listening to them."
Labour is so worried about the rise of extremist parties that 50 of its MPs have joined a campaigning group to counter the threat. Privately, ministers fear that BNP candidates could poll up to 25 per cent of the vote in some areas. The BNP is mounting an aggressive challenge in Barking and Dagenham and, it is feared, will win seats in May's elections.
The BNP is mounting an aggressive challenge in Barking and Dagenham and may win seats.
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While she rejected talk of the far-Right being on the verge of a major breakthrough, Mrs Hodge conceded that they were likely to win seats from Labour on May 4. "I think we could lose one or two [seats].
"It's an incredibly serious issue. It's the big issue. We need very much stronger leadership nationally to promote the benefits of the multi-cultural society. We have got to do it, the Labour leadership have got to do it. All the political parties have got to do it.
"I think if we are not careful and we don't respond and learn the lessons from Barking and Dagenham we could see that same fear of change trickle out elsewhere."
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Worried Labour MPs open new front to fight BNP threat on their doorstep
By Toby Helm, Chief Political Correspondent and Matt Barnwell
(Filed: 15/04/2006)
Labour MPs worried about the rise of the British National Party (BNP) are setting up a parallel campaign organisation because they fear their own party is not doing enough to counter the far-Right.
More than 50 MPs in areas where the BNP is strong are working closely on tactics with the new organisation - Labour Friends of Searchlight - before May 4's local elections, in which it is feared the extremists will at least double their number of council seats.
The counter-attack came to light as the BNP launched its election campaign yesterday with calls for segregation in schools of children who do not speak fluent English, for benefits to be repaid by asylum seekers being put to work to clean up the streets, and for compulsory school checks for head lice.
Its "12-point" plan also included plans for "low taxes", "action against corruption", and the ending of "trendy failure" in schools.
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Every Labour MP has been sent a letter alerting them to the need for a more highly organised anti-BNP strategy.
Jon Cruddas, the Labour MP for Dagenham ...expects the BNP to gain six seats in his own constituency.
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In the last elections the BNP took 22 council seats. It now has 24. It is said to be a potential threat in 80 wards across the country next month.
Nick Lowles, of the anti- fascist Searchlight group, said that "beyond the basic sentiments, like saying the BNP is awful" Labour was not doing enough.
Support for the BNP, he said, was rising in traditional Labour areas because of disillusionment with the Blair Government, the rise in the number of immigrants, tensions over terrorist attacks and the recent controversy over anti-Muslim cartoons.
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Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, chose a spot next to a Sikh temple in Grays, Essex, for yesterday's campaign launch in which he said his party was "standing for local freedom, security, identity, democracy" and putting "Britain first". "Everyone living in our country should have to learn English," he added.
His party manifesto reads: "If minorities want to teach their own children their native languages, they should do so in their own time and at their own expense."
It adds that "foreign" pupils with poor English should not be "allowed to drag down standards and hold back native English-speakers".
It also says that "BNP councillors will do everything in their power to prevent asylum seekers being dumped in our areas".
Mr Griffin said that neither he nor his party was racist.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
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Hodge has done the BNP a big favour
By Anthony King
(Filed: 21/04/2006)
Analysis
The British National Party will not achieve a military-style breakthrough in the local elections next month but YouGov's latest survey for The Daily Telegraph suggests that the far-Right's present standard bearers will probably make significant gains.
The BNP is in a stronger position than at any time since it displaced the National Front as the main post-Fascist party in 1982.
Asked how they would vote if there were a general election tomorrow, seven per cent of YouGov's respondents said BNP.
That is a higher proportion than the BNP or any of its predecessor parties have obtained in any national survey.
Its national percentages since last May's general election have seldom risen above zero and in recent months almost no one told YouGov they would vote BNP.
Margaret Hodge and others who have warned of the BNP threat have probably done it a favour by reminding voters of its existence.
YouGov's findings suggest that the party draws its support more from the Conservatives than from Labour, with BNP gains also coming at the expense of the UK Independence Party and the Liberal Democrats.
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The sudden - if possibly temporary - emergence of the BNP as a serious political force is a remarkable phenomenon. It testifies not merely to Mrs Hodge's success in drawing attention to the party but to millions of voters' alienation from the whole political class and their sense that the country is drifting in a direction they do not want it to take.
YouGov asked respondents whether they had ever voted BNP or seriously considered doing so. As the chart shows, 24 per cent - the equivalent of three million people - said they had voted BNP or were thinking of doing so now.
But that percentage, however startling, will not be translated into huge BNP gains on May 4. It is fielding too few candidates in the local elections and only a minority of those who said they "seriously considered" voting BNP will actually do so on the day. The BNP surge is also likely to encourage the major parties' supporters to turn out to stop its candidates.
Even so, a figure as high as seven per cent indicates a restless and unpredictable electorate, one more inclined to shift to the far-Right than the far-Left. Despite George Galloway's personal success last year, his far-Left party, Respect, is nowhere.
YouGov asked the 24 per cent of voters who indicated they may vote BNP which of a number of statements about Britain they sympathised with.
The findings, set out in the chart, suggest that discontent is fuelled partly by racial animosity but even more by the sense that Britain as a whole is changing in undesired and undesirable ways.
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In the eyes of almost three quarters of potential BNP supporters, Britain "almost seems like a foreign country nowadays". Roughly two thirds said "we should take tougher action against Muslims who want to destroy this country".
Palpable anger underlies the sentiment: "I just want to let the people who run this country know that from now on they will have to pay attention to people like me."
Labour's standing under this heading is no higher than the Tories' was at the end of the scandal-ridden 1990s.
The proportion thinking Labour is sleazy and disreputable today is almost identical to the 63 per cent who saw the Conservatives in the same light during the last gasps of John Major's administration.
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With a government as ill-regarded as Tony Blair's is, the principal opposition party should be at least 10 points ahead. At this stage in 1992, Labour led by 19 points.
The core problem for the Conservatives is that, while a party can change its leader and can announce intended policy changes, it cannot easily shed a negative image acquired over years.
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• Anthony King is professor of government at Essex University.
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14 March 2006: Mayoress forced to quit for joining BNP
24 January 2006: I never blamed ethnic groups for race problems, claims BNP man
Insignificant but very sinister
19 April 2006: One in five 'would consider voting BNP'
16 April 2006: White voters are deserting us for BNP, says Blair ally
15 April 2006: Worried Labour MPs open new front to fight BNP threat on their doorstep
Frank Field: Labour loses working class
Analysis: Its strongest position yet
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The English elites, the uni. crowds from Oxbridge, will dismiss any independent working class action as fascistic. We have to understand and accept that the British are deeply anti-social people. We have to ask ourselves how seriously we take the slanders against the BNP. Is it more of the endless class hatreds of the usual Brit? Is Griffin a would-be Oswald Mosley? More importantly, what are we to become if we move away from Left dhimmi fascism? What are we if we abandon the Ship of Multiculturalism for the safer shores of reason and nation? How far do we go before we find ourselves us unlikeable as the last lot?
7 comments:
A revivified nationalism can be far more inclusive than the current ship of multiculturalism which is just a gnostic confusion that raises suspicions and separation and spiritual failure (we don't find the universal by being open to all things). People naturally want a sense of order and standards and progress towards higher truths (a progress towards the universal that, paradoxically, can only happen within a particular, bounded tradition). This desire for order is inherent to beings defined by their possession of language, by the possession of signs that brings order.
If some immigrants cling to their ways it is because they rightly see any sense of a transcendent order is lacking in the western society, or because they don't yet know how to assimilate to it; it is always easier for the second generation, at least when religion, the only significant cultural force to survive immigration - and a key institutional guarantor of the transcendent - creates obstacles that cannot be navigated.
“Is the BNP a racist gaggle of thugs with lovely plumage, a dead thing nailed to the perch? Or is the BNP a reaction against too much mindless intellectualist activism by the upper class twits of the year?”
Why limit the possibilities to either/or? It seems more likely that the party is both a racist gaggle of thugs AND stridently anti-establishment. The BNP appears to be a garden variety European new-right party: anti-elite, anti-integration, anti-foreigner, mildly anti-capitalist.
What strikes me as amusing is your reluctance to call this fascism. Me, I don’t use the word that much and am comfortable to take this group on its own terms. There are certain fascist similarities, yet the BNP lacks (or embodies only limited amounts of) some of the key fascist characteristics (war grievance; imminent fear of the left; explicit criticism of the liberal-democratic system, etc).
You tend to be very quick with the fascist label though (“Left dhimmi fascism”; “All Muslims are fascists.”) So when you hesitate using the fascist term here and call for a deeper analysis of the BNP I have to wonder where your new found caution comes from.
na
"You tend to be very quick with the fascist label though (“Left dhimmi fascism”; “All Muslims are fascists.”) So when you hesitate using the fascist term here and call for a deeper analysis of the BNP I have to wonder where your new found caution comes from."
na
NA, although I doubt, to put it mildly, your sincerity in questioning fascism I will put in a few words here to clarify my postion.
There is nothing quick about my "labelling" of all Muslims as fascists. If Islam is a fascism, then all Muslims are fascists.
If you, like the fool earlier who quoted a dictionary definition of fascism, declare that Islam is not a fascism, then our dialogue is over. If you have the sense to look to the reactionaries counter to the French Revolution to see from where the roots of modern fascism come, then we might continue. If you look for example at Herder and then at Fichte's nationalism you will see the beginnings of our fascists showing so clearly today in the Left. Refuse to do so and our dialogue is over.
If you look at modern agriculture in opposition to feudalism, and if you look at ecology in oppostion to Humanism, and if you then claim that the Left is not fascism, then I must decline to discuss with you anything further.
As you know too well, I didn't begin this blog last week. You can examine the historical documents as well as anyone. Many of those relevant to the arguement are here, and if you refer to them you will likely see, possibly see, that my defence is honest and verifable.
I hesitate to paint the BNP as fascist for the simple reason that I wonder if they do in fact rather than in phantasy fall under the broad beams of fascism. I suspect they are instead populists, what in America we might refer to as trailer trash. Class snobbery aside, those people are not fascists, regardless of how little time we'd like to spend associating with them.
Your definition of fascism as a specific historical phemomenon does nothing to convince me that you have any valuable contribution to make to the discussion. I might be wrong and you might not care to spend any amount of time posting a comment than I in response.
Dag:
I linked your article on my Blog:
http://ronbosoldier.blogspot.com/2006/04/british-national-party-bnp-grows.html
Excellent work as usual.
So you see the British in hopeless decline?
Thanks, Ronald.
Britain has a history of class division that Americans don't understand the depths of and the effects of, both nations being democracies but democracies so different they should find new terms to descrribe their respective forms of government. Britain has a history of feudalism, not so deeply ingrained as it is in France, that still vitiates politics to the point the people often defer to the lords and ladies of privilege and who still harbour resentments of class antagonisms long after any such thing is remotely acceptable. It's history, it's habit, it's culture. The learned and postively stoked resentments give some kind of meaningful identity to a number of British, and even though it's a harmful and dangerous identity, one that is self-defeating and is ruining the lives of all British, they persist. The BNP probably delve into historical hurt feelings as deeply as do the SNP. It's up to the nation to decide their future as a nation; and the look of things from here is that there must be a revolution as total as was the Industrial, French, and American revolutions. The revolution to come must be Coperinican, and it must be a revolution of attitude and emotion. It'll have to be a revolution of Mature Adulthood.
So long as the British and the French and so many others continue to cry and sentimentalise and complain and blame, then the tantrums will persist till they find themselves banished from the world of adults, orphaned, and dismissed from the banquet of life. I'll quote again the Church Father Tatian who wirtes of the savageries of the Roman arena, of people who could not and would not examine their own lives and destinies because they were obsessed with evil and: "the cannibal banquet of the soul."
I don't know. My guess, my hope, my expectation is that there will be a civil war across the world between the Modernist Revolutionaries and the primitives of Islam and the Left. If the Modernists beleive in the rightness of the goal, then we will win-- no question. The question is whether we want to win at all.
Basic problem: our definitions of fascism differ. I was probably too specific is some of my defining characteristics. ‘Fear of the left’ can probably be generalized to ‘belief in societal decline’ or something close to that. ‘War grievance’ is maybe too historically rooted; though the grievances paved the road for the militaristic fantasies that were proposed by all the fascist movements.
I’m not going to dive into Ficht and Herder to figure out where your ideas come from. To generalize for a moment, I haven’t been overly impressed with work that traces the intellectual heritage of fascism. There are some insights. Sternhell’s work is certainly provocative, though some of unusual conclusions are produced by his method. So perhaps the dialogue is over.
I’ve read some of the posts from your archives. I still haven’t grasped how you’re defining fascism. You seem to have some sort of rationalism/irrationalism, modernity/primitivism classification system. Maybe I’m off there. It’s broad enough to include most of the left, Islam, and sections of the extreme right (David Duke, Le Pen). That’s a disparate group. I can’t figure out what prevents the BNP from falling into the large-tent definition.
na
N A, you raise enough points of concern that I'll make a central post to try to cover at least some of your objections. I think you raise concerns that others will find useful if not to find out about at least to question as well.
I'll try to respond to you by tomorrow evening.
Thank you for your interests, and I hope you'll excuse my shortness in the previous responses.
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