All the public demonstrations of conspicuous nose-holding by MPs and the media, along with the repeated invocation of anti-voodoo phrases such as ‘fascist’ and ‘far right’, serve to obscure one or two salient matters. These terms are misleading. The philosophical antecedents of the BNP lie not on the right but on the left. Labour MPs are shocked that it is their own voters who have turned to the BNP. They are shocked because it is a mantra of the left that it stands in heroic and historic opposition to fascism. This is untrue. Both fascism and communism have their roots in counter-Enlightenment, obscurantist thinking which replaced reason by emotion, Judeo-Christian ethics by paganism, and the rejection of the primacy of the individual in favour of collectively imposed authority. Read Ze’ev Sternhell’s classic work, Neither Right Nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France to get the picture. Not for nothing were the Nazis called ’national socialists’. In similar fashion, the BNP fuse ultra-nationalism and racism with economic ideas which would sit well on the left of the Labour party. It is more helpful, and more accurate, to regard the BNP as opportunists. In the tradition of all fascist and neo-fascist parties, they prey upon a decaying body politic by taking up genuine grievances which are of overwhelming concern to the public but which, for one reason or another, mainstream politics is ignoring. By doing so, they serve to camouflage their own anti-democratic and noxious ideology. The BNP under Nick Griffin have been particularly skilled at this, getting their people to grow out their shaven heads and get into suits, and sanitising their literature of anything that might frighten the voters off. They remain, however, a deeply and truly racist and antisemitic party, as is demonstrated by the fact that they will not allow black people or Jews to be members because they don’t regard black people or Jews as properly British. Nevertheless, they have been able to seize their opportunity – and not just because of the expenses scandal. No, the rot in our culture that has let in the BNP goes far, far deeper than that. It is because it has turned attachment to national identity itself into a crime. Anyone who objects to multi-culturalism is called a bigot; anyone who wants to curb immigration is called a racist; anyone who objects to the Islamisation of Britain is called an Islamophobe; anyone who wants to leave the EU and regain the power of national self-government is called a xenophobe; anyone, in short, who wants to retain Britain’s national identity rooted in the shared particulars of religion, law, history, traditions and culture and its powers as a self-governing nation finds themselves ostracised as a pariah. Voters have been told in effect that there is nothing standing between national suicide on the one hand and racism on the other. If you don’t want the former, you are automatically branded with the latter. And so the BNP have been able to make hay. What’s more, the BNP have had a further devastating impact upon public discourse. Because they do indeed stand for beliefs that are beyond the pale, they toxify everything they touch. So because they take up causes such as the loss of immigration controls, EU membership or the Islamisation of Britain, this makes such causes radioactive. Mainstream politicians are terrified that if they touch them, they will instantly be tarred as ‘BNP- lite’. All mainstream parties have colluded in this lamentable state of affairs. The nation-wrecking ideology of multiculturalism and the Marxist redefinition of racial prejudice into racism – ‘prejudice plus power ‘– which have turned our society inside out are the product of the left. However, haunted by its own past shading-off at the fringes into ultra-nationalism, prejudice and antisemitism the Conservative party has been at pains to show itself plus royal que le roi by signing up to multiculturalism and running a mile from the issues of immigration, Islamisation or EU membership. As for the LibDems, all the above applies with knobs on. So now the public have given their reply to this collusion. Working-class areas are particularly vulnerable to the BNP because they bear the full brunt of these policies. They are areas of very high immigration where the transformation of the ethnic, religious and cultural landscape has made indigenous inhabitants feel strangers in their own country -- and yet they are told they are racist for saying so, not least by the MPs who are now wringing their hands over the BNP success. The willed loss of control of this country’s borders, the blind eye to Islamisation, the refusal to allow the people to vote against the Lisbon treaty and the surrender of self-government to the EU – these are the things that have brought the BNP electoral success. If the shocked MPs now address those issues properly, the BNP will shrivel and die. But if MPs continue to regard such concerns as intrinsically illegitimate and as evidence that the public are themselves simply a bunch of racists, then the BNP will continue to grow. It’s as simple as that.
The Real Reason For This
Well, they were warned over and over again but they didn’t listen. This morning, the mainstream political parties are shocked by the unpalatable fact that, after the elections to the European Parliament Britain now has two British National Party MEPs. And as usual, the rending of garments by MPs over this development has far more to do with attempting to demonstrate their own unimpeachable anti-racist virtue than honestly facing up to the real cause of this debacle – themselves.
Monday, 8 June 2009
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