The BNP - disappointingly ordinary

Andrew Gilligan's article in yesterday's Evening Standard has a slightly snobbish tone but his main point, that the establishment has over-reacted to the BNP, is well made.

Now that the statisticians have picked over the leaked BNP list, they have discovered what many of us suspected all along. The BNP members are actually a pretty ordinary bunch. The typical member is a bloke called John, David or Paul living in the North Midlands, Lancashire or Yorkshire.

Journalists have been scratching around trying to find celebrities on the list but have succeeded only in coming up with people that few of us have heard of. They haven't even found any major villains.

There was a similar sense of disappointment when the Guardian's nine-month undercover operation revealed only the membership of a vaguely famous ballet dancer. Despite becoming a BNP official, Ian Cobain found nothing else of any interest. No torch-lit Nazi rallies, no secret arms caches, no plans to foment unrest by firebombing mosques, no swastika arm-bands, no Luger-packing Himmler wannabes. It was all run of the mill political activism with a bit more paranoia about security than usual. A paranoia which turns out to have been justified.

The leaked lists show the BNP to be barely more than half the size National Front was in its late 1970s heyday, although, thanks to cleverer tactics, it has had much more electoral success.

As I've said before, despite its relatively small membership, the BNP seems to have an almost hypnotic effect on lefties. Whenever it is mentioned, many of their usual political principles seem to fly out of the window.

Lefties usually argue against all forms of physical punishment. They justify the actions of criminals and even terrorists by reference to poverty, abuse and the terrible environments in which people grow up. Criminals aren't born evil, they argue, they become that way because of what happens to them in life. Education, persuasion and winning hearts and minds, they say, are the ways to stop crime. Excessive punishment never works.

That is until you mention the BNP. Then, suddenly, they are telling you how these people are evil, vile scum who should have their heads kicked in and must be forcibly driven from the streets. All that stuff about persuasion and the immorality and ineffectiveness of draconian punishment is conveniently forgotten.

Workers rights get short shrift too as the left demands the summary dismissal of all BNP members.

When discussing the BNP, lefties start to sound like Daily Mail readers. I've never actually heard them call for BNP members to be castrated but it wouldn't surprise me if they did.

The wider political establishment has been drawn into this hysterical over-reaction. For example, the police are specifically banned from being members of the BNP but, curiously, are allowed to be members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Al-Mujaharoun and Sinn Fein.

It always makes me laugh when the major parties talk about uniting against the BNP. Do the Labour and Conservative Parties, each with more than a quarter of a million members and huge funding, really need to combine against a party with 10-12,000 members? If they do, it's a pretty poor show.

Perhaps now that the membership list has been published, the BNP will lose some of its mystique. It is a small-ish political party underpinned by a crazy ideology but which has policies that strike a chord with a lot of people. Most of its members are ordinary pissed-off British people. While its founders were neo-Nazis, almost certainly most of its members are not. It raises political issues that are embarrassing to most other parties but which are of concern to many voters. It should have the right to be heard along with other parties and its members should enjoy the same protection in the workplace as anyone else.

For its own reasons, the left will continue to react hysterically to the BNP. That doesn't mean that the rest of us have to follow suit. We can still disagree with them and dislike them without endowing them with a greater level of power and evil than terrorist groups. Hopefully, the information in thatleaked membership will help us to put the BNP in perspective.

Comments

[Bobby BNP]

Interesting post.

Not quite sure what point you are trying to make though, do you think that BNP members are "ordinary pissed-off British people"as you state or do you think they aer "criminals and even terrorists" as in

.." They justify the actions of criminals and even terrorists by reference to poverty, abuse and the terrible environments in which people grow up. Criminals aren't born evil, they argue, they become that way because of what happens to them in life. Education, persuasion and winning hearts and minds, they say, are the ways to stop crime. Excessive punishment never works.

That is until you mention the BNP."

Pray tell me, what are these crimes that I have committed that should be excused by lefties in the same way they excuse terrorists and criminals? What monstrous acts have I perpetrated that should also receive exemption from excessive punishment?

Would that be the crime of entering into the democratic process and putting forward our policies to the electorate to be either approved or dismissed as is the statutory right of any legally mandated party. Would that be the crime of fielding candidates in elections who can be voted for or rejected by the electorate? What matters our heinous policies if no one votes for us?

Yes criminals indeed , and so very very evil!

[Steve]

Bobby BNP - The flip-side of Lefties behaving like right-wing reactionaries is BNP supporters adpoting the tactics of the left and playing victimhood poker.

Why is it that, whenever I write something like this, if it doesn't praise the BNP to the rafters, some BNP supporter will go through it to find something about which they can be offended?

How the hell anyone could read this and infer that I am saying BNP members are criminals and terrorists I have no idea.

You are clearly determined to play the victim here. If that's what turns you on fine but don't twist my words to do it.

[paul maleski]

WHY THE BNP EXISTS!
I believe that millions of ordinary people are fearful of the future of this country; due primarily, to excessive/reckless non white/moslem immigration. This does not make these individuals evil, mad or even bad; it is a natural reaction, to what many of them see as (the liberal, one world-do gooders/jewish) monopoly of immigration legistation. The right to reside in the UK, must be decided by the indigenous population, preferably by referendum; and not by a do as we say chosen few. The BNP is a small party but packs a big punch; for 2 reasons: the members believe in their ideology and the party speaks on behalf of millions of disenfranchised voters.

[Richard]

I think the UK will soon have a major political party that will draw massive support from traditional, that is nearly all the British, Tory or Labour voters.

Look at Boris's views on an amnesty for illegals. He seems to think that he can not only make laws but have them applied in London only!

[Haw Haw Harry]

Don't be deceived by all that humdrum suburbia. Everyone knows that the BNP's SS-Griffin Division are experts at camoflage. Where are they hiding?

[chachi]

nothing new there harry, all cowards do is hide, the bnp is no different, times have changed, if SS division want a fight, the'd get hammered, so they hide........
If SS division whant to express they're views verbally, the media humiliates them on the basis of their very limited language skills, being pround to be english, expectings 'foreigners' to learn english & rightly so but they themselves being born & bred in england refuse to learn their own language themselves......the hypocrasy!
SO THEY HIDE!

[George Miller]

“Don't be deceived by all that humdrum suburbia. Everyone knows that the BNP's SS-Griffin Division are experts at (camouflage). Where are they hiding?”

Same reason the counterrevolutionaries of communist countries hide: none too forgiving opponents! The BNP has been universally demonized and vilified by the press and the otherwise dull and boring people who took an interest in the party, all 12,000 of them, will now be labelled as Nazis, fascists, etc. If I hated Stalin while living in 1940s Soviet Russia I'd sure keep quite about it!

Well, looks like the implicit calls for vandalism, violence and vigilantism from worthless rags like the Guardian have fallen on death ears. Few people, if any, have taken up the challenge of "finding the Nazi (see) on your street" and doing... well whatever you want!

[George Miller]

And on the subject of cowardice and hypocrisy, if the people behind Wikileaks are so proud of their views why do they keep hidden? Probably because they’d face a life behind bars, or behind the needle, for revealing all the private civilian and government documents they have over the years! The BNP seems pretty harmless by comparison; even though Wikileaks (a.k.a. Redwatch for the Left) are praised as heroes and BNPers are vilified as Nazis.

[terence]

! My doctor is a coloured man! I would be reluctant to change him! He is good at his job! I hate no one! I am not a fascist! Racist! Buddhist! Communist! I hate no one! I am not right not left! I am a nationalist! I love my country its people its culture! The one my family have defended for a thousand years! The culture where people under stand my slang!I am a fully paid up member of the BNP!!

[paul maleski]

Ask the British people!
If a majority of the electorate want a multi:cultural/racial/ religious society. I will reluctantly accept their choice; however, I would never ever put a bomb on a bus in protest.