BNP on Question Time

[scottdisco]

incidentally - to address something that i think's been raised ^ - the BBC have to let the BNP on QT as it's within their rules to let all legitimate political parties on the show. (IIRC.)

as John has so rightly noted, the contemporary BNP are good at getting away with it, and they're certainly operating under electoral law atm (i don't know the status of that challenge to their constitution, but for now they're fine AFAIK).

of course we can debate whether they should be allowed on (i admit i know plenty of folks who think not), but at the end of the day (and to re-hash this old joke for a second time on Dissensus) the Beeb often remind me of this Onion headline in a lot of their operating practice

 

[benjybars]

is Bonnie Greer really on there with Nick Griffin?

wow, that is one shit line-up.

 

[Martin Dust]

By your logic, if 70% of people who voted for the BNP were men, then I would be calling men (all of them) retards. That's why you are patently talking mince.

The actual % is 61% men but I was trolling you a bit to see if you actually meant what you said.

 

[baboon2004]

spot on.

Also reminds me of some comedian who said, post 9/11 something along the lines of "Some have suggested that the West try to work with Al-Qaida to understand their point of view. However, since their point of view involves the destruction of the entire Judaeo-Christian civilisation, a compromise seems unlikely" (apologies for crap syntax)

 

[Martin Dust]

That's a nonsense argument. Does anyone know what logical fallacy is afoot there?
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/composition.html ?

You've ignored everything else I did say and focused on something I didn't say.

There's a difference between saying that people who vote BNP are idiots and working class are idiots. A huge one. I'd happily include the other 20% of WHATEVER CLASS.
Besides of which, I had no idea what % of what class voted BNP anyway, so bolt.

11% professionals.

 

[Martin Dust]

Can we diffuse this whole situation by saying "uneducated" instead of "thick" or "retarded"? A lot of working class people are uneducated, and this isn't a slur on anyone's personaly qualities: it's an inescapable result of underfunded and mismanaged state schools in poorer areas, (plus a whole matrix of related socio-economic factors) and the ever-increasing cost of a university education which makes it more and more unappealing to anyone who can't rely on substantial parental contributions.

I'm not heated about it but as much as I support Freedom of Speech I know the "reds" on the panel are going to blow it because on a local level I know how fevered they are when faced with the BNP.

 

[john eden]

car crash telly.

 

[you]

Ive watched a bit of the coverage including the Jon Snow interview on C4 today. Some of nick griffins points or at least his sidesteps were almost good - unfortunately.... A lot of people say that the BNP are racist in that they only accept white british as members.... Is this right??? Is that illegal - it is right? So are the BNP just all white totally by co-incidence - in that if challenged they just explain that non white british applicants will get turned away for other reasons like subtle differences in opinion? So that by policy they are legally nationalist but a also group that consistently harbour racist opinions that each member agrees with??

 

[craner]

The Beeb asked Douglas Murray, by the way, but backed out at the last minute.

 

[scottdisco]

to answer you's question, the BNP are a racist, neo-nazi party. latterly they have allowed Jewish Britons in; their big recent thing is anti-Muslim bigotry so this fits their agenda of making it look like they have got over their bread and butter Jewish obsession (their leadership haven't, they're just glossing over it).

in their own words

In its constitution, the BNP says it exists to represent the "collective National, Environmental, Political, Racial, Folkish, Social, Cultural, Religious and Economic interests of the indigenous Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Norse folk communities of Britain and those we regard as closely related and ethnically assimilated or assimilable aboriginal members of the European race also resident in Britain"

It says membership of the BNP is "strictly defined within the terms of, and our members also self define themselves within, the legal ambit of a defined 'racial group' this being 'Indigenous Caucasian' and defined 'ethnic groups' emanating from that Race".

this story and this short YouTube are also relevant (i can't embed in Politics threads it seems, but it's worth watching as it's only 1m49s)

i nicked the quotes for the constitution from Matt B. the link and the video were nicked from Craner: all in this earlier thread

this might also be of interest - it lays things out clearly (from the same organisation that Craner linked to.)

 

[craner]

Shall I roll out the history again, Scott? You know I love to...the NF/BNP split, Julius Evola, Roberto Fiorie...all this stuff is so transparent, and accessible! All Straw has to do is 2 hours of homework, with the help of Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (I mean, a short tutorial), and he could obliterate this fuck for eternity! All this stuff about Griffin being a great debater or talker or even close to a quasi-intellectual is laughable! He's so easy to expose, has no charisma, no depth to anything he says. Even Mosely would've given him about 2 minutes of his time before moving on.

God, I'm itching to do it, but I won't, alas, be asked onto QT. I was hoping Murray was...I was going to contact him and give him tips. He'd have done it.

 

[craner]

The roots and heart of the BNP elite remain in European fascism...their basic ideology is there. It's inimicable to all our traditions...even our jingoistic or Tory extremist ones (say, Enoch Powell). It's always been an exotic import. It's simply fed the vanity and ambition of it's main advocates.

The rank and file are lazy thugs and cranks.

This is true of the most successful Fascist party ever to exist on these islands...Mosley's fascists: all laid bare in this great biog. Mosley was an appalling man on many levels, but doomed himself to even more awful company as soon as he took the plunge into extremist politics. So, fuck him, fair enough, what a disgusting idiot. My point is, he was never successful because the impulses that drove fascism in Italy, Germany, White Russia, the smaller Eastern European countries, Spain to an extent, and parts of Latin America do not exist here or in the USA.

But that kind of control and uniformity is central to certain parts of the far right elite, and, as I said, the rest are subcultural thugs and cranks.

The more prominent they are, paradoxically, the less effective or successful they will be.

I think Ukip have far more chance of gaining a constituency...they could've had farmers and the fish industry on their side by now if they weren't such weirdos.

 

[craner]

BNP activists wouldn't have cut the mustard with SA bootboys, let alone the SS. You get me?

 

[don_quixote]

So do I!

Maybe it's not such a surprise that the BNP is 'popular' considering the fact that Mark Collett's parents live in Charnwood. I think his mother stood in the last council election. If they can't raise some cronies in the party here then they are screwed... It does mean I get their retard publicity through my door though... joy.

collett is hardly working class either.

he comes from swithland lane in rothley and went to the fee-paying school in loughborough.

 

[scottdisco]

beautifully put Oliver.

i must admit the last time i saw Griffin on the TV he was being interviewed by BBC News man Matthew Amroliwala (a rather bland, MOR kind of guy, or at least that's what he plays to every day), and Griffin was kicked all over the shop, i was almost embarrassed for him.

 

[john eden]

Having said that, Griffin certainly held his own against Paxman.

This piece in the times is quite good -

Ten steps to put Nick Griffin on the wrong foot

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/david_aaronovitch/article6881553.ece#

I think the point about mixed race relationships is a better route to go down than calling them nazis.

 

[scottdisco]

I think the point about mixed race relationships is a better route to go down than calling them nazis.

very true, they should certainly stick to practical basics (all our history ^ aside).

that said, the time Paxman didn't do so well with him was Paxo asking him about mixed-race relationships, no?

that Cohen piece where he said it would be good if they got rid of Dimbleby for the night and put Andrew Neil in the chair: yes!

 

[john eden]

that said, the time Paxman didn't do so well with him was Paxo asking him about mixed-race relationships, no?

Quite possibly - the thing I remember is Griffin going on about "peace walls" in Oldham (like in Gaza) and how muslims were behind all drug dealing. He was on a roll. Paxman didn't exactly pull him up on any of this shit.

 

[vimothy]

OT Question: Can you make tables in Dissensus?

 

[vimothy]

Two for immigration and the British labour market:

IS THE NEW IMMIGRATION REALLY SO BAD? David Card

This article reviews the recent evidence on US immigration, focusing on two key questions: (1) Does immigration reduce the labour market opportunities of less skilled natives? (2) Have immigrants who arrived after the 1965 Immigration Reform Act been successfully assimilated? Overall, evidence that immigrants have harmed the opportunities of less educated natives is scant. On the question of assimilation, the success of the US-born children of immigrants is a key yardstick. By this metric, post-1965 immigrants are doing reasonably well. Even children of the least educated immigrant origin groups have closed most of the education gap with the children of natives.

THE IMPACT OF IMMIGRATION ON THE BRITISH LABOUR MARKET Christian Dustmann, Francesca Fabbri and Ian Preston

Using data from the British Labour Force Survey this article provides an empirical investigation of the way immigration affects labour market outcomes of native born workers in Britain, set beside a theoretical discussion of the underlying economic mechanisms. We discuss problems arising in empirical estimation, and how to address them. We show that the overall skill distribution of immigrants is remarkably similar to that of the native born workforce. We find no strong evidence that immigration has overall effects on aggregate employment, participation, unemployment and wages but some differences according to education.

Looks like Bassnation and the neoliberals were right: "the overall skill distribution of immigrants is remarkably similar to that of the native born workforce".