Why the establishment fears the BNP

As I said yesterday, the election of two BNP members has stirred up the political establishment and the media. For most of this week, commentators have exhorted the main parties to fight the BNP by addressing the grievances which lead people to support it.

So, we must crack down on immigration to stop the BNP. We must build more houses to stop the BNP. We must create more jobs to stop the BNP. We must tackle deprivation in white working class areas to stop the BNP. We must change the electoral system to stop the BNP. If even a fraction of what the pundits say should be done actually does get done, the BNP, with its 943,598 votes, could turn out to be the most influential minor party of all time.

The political establishment's, and especially the left's, obsession with the BNP is something I find perplexing. The relatively small party provokes a reaction out of all proportion to its size. Just look at the column inches over the last week.

As Ian Jack remarks, some of this may be because the BNP enables the other political parties to take the moral high ground. Just as prisoners who have committed terrible crimes look down on sex offenders, comforting themselves with the thought that, whatever they have done, they are not as bad as the nonces, so the main political parties can look down on the BNP. Sure they may be riddled with low-level corruption and have presided over economic and social collapse, but at least they are not Fashiiiists! 

But there's something else going on too; a much deeper fear that the BNP engenders.

It's not the fear of an imminent electoral challenge. After all, other minor parties like the SNP, the Greens and, especially, UKIP look more threatening to the big three.

The comparison between UKIP and the BNP is illuminating.

When UKIP gained its first three European seats in 1999 it caused only a minor stir. Even its jump to twelve MEPs five years later and its thirteen in last week's election have not been causes for alarm among the major parties. There were no Stop UKIP articles in the papers last week. Journalists and politicians didn't rush to attack the party. They are clearly far more relaxed about UKIP's 16.5% of the vote than they are about the BNP's 6.2%.

Perhaps this is a reasonable assessment of UKIP's electoral threat. UKIP is a quinquennial party. It erupts in a riot of colour once every five years then lies dormant, sometimes looking as if it is dead, for the next half-decade.

It is easy for the establishment to write UKIP off. Its MEPs, most of its activists and, probably, a large number of its voters are comfortably off financially. They might rant about foreigners, regulation and the EU but none of these things are an immediate threat to them. They may sound angry but really they're not. They're just a bit cross. Once they have sounded off at the golf-club bar and cast their votes for UKIP, they will go back to relatively secure and comfortable lives. That is why UKIP never capitalises on its Euro-election successes. Despite the rhetoric, its members are just irritated, rather than genuinely threatened, by what they see going on around them. Most have no real interest or motivation to change the status quo.

The BNP, on the other hand, represents something much darker. For at least the past 200 years, the political establishment has been terrified of an angry working class. This is as true of the ruling elite's new left-wing members as it is of its old Tory ones. They are especially scared of working-class dissent that falls outside the control of the trade union movement. History shows that aggrieved peasants and artisans make bloodier revolutionaries than the more disciplined unionised proletariat.

Unlike UKIP's activists, many of these aggrieved workers are not just having a moan for the hell of it. They have seen the places where they live change beyond all recognition as immigrants have moved in around them. Their children are being taught alongside pupils speaking a multitude of languages. Teachers struggle just to maintain order in the classrooms. When their children leave school they have to live at home or move away because of the shortage of housing. As the community breaks up, criminals move in, unchecked by an ineffective punishment system. Then, to cap it all, a further wave of EU migrants arrives, driving down wages and stretching services to breaking point.

BNP activists and voters are angry in a totally different way from those in UKIP. Their comfort and security really are under threat or, in some cases, have disappeared altogther. This fear and fury is far more widespread than the six percent of the population that voted BNP. Nearly a million people are so angry and afraid that they are prepared to vote for a party that excludes some of their friends from membership and which is led by a man who once tried to do a funding deal with Gaddafi. Many more people are just as fearful and enraged yet they are still not prepared to vote BNP. At least, not yet.

In a sense, the combination of BNP and the proportional electoral system has sounded an alarm. As Michael Collins says, many working-class people feel disenfranchised; sidelined and demonised. Add to that the fears about crime, jobs and the loss of the social scaffold that their communities once provided and you are faced with some very angry, very frightened people with very little left to lose.

That's what really scares the politicians, journalists, business leaders, civil servants and opinion formers who make up the political establishment. Which is why they have spent so much time over the last week discussing a very small party that only got 6.2% of the vote.

Comments

[Tim Worstall]

"There were no Stop UKIP articles in the papers last week. Journalists and politicians didn't rush to attack the party."

You should have seen the view from inside the press office! Anti-UKIP all over the place.

[Laban]

There's an item in the Financial Times to the effect that HMG intend to change the law so that the BNP will have to allow non-white members. With heavy fines if there's any evidence of discrimination ?

[Dave]

Not to disagree 100% with what you say, I voted UKIP and I am mad as hell.
A lot of people would say I have no reason, I live comfortably at the moment.
But I feel the EU is a genuine and very real threat to this country, the fact that the danger has barely materialised yet doesn't matter, all the pieces are in places for something awful.
I feel like we are watching our downfall in slow-motion.

[Pat]

As Laban pointed out- HMG is proposing law which will in effect open up BNP membership to men of colour. Seeing as there are a lot of settled, similarly pissed off, coloured people out there, it seems that if the legislation has any effect at all it will be to strengthen the BNP.

[Greg]

"As I have said before, the political establishment's, and especially the left's, obsession with the BNP is something I find perplexing"

I think it's a classic irony. Many of the anti-BNP fanatics seem to use the party as a release valve for their own hatred, anger and obsession. In other words, they become everything they accuse the BNP of. The guys in Whitehall knock the BNP so they can present themselves as having a moral high ground.
http://theantipolitician.wordpress.com/

[Mr Curious]

Posted by: Greg | 14 June 2009 at 11:34 AM

"In other words, they become everything they accuse the BNP of."

Very true. Whenever I am browsing through a CIF piece on the BNP, all the HATE seems to coming from the antifash. Perhaps they should remember it is hope, not hate.

[Esmerelda Weatherwax]

I often wonder what the "Hope" stands for in the Hope not Hate franchise.
Hope that we won't be swamped?
Hope that life as a dhimmi won't be as bad as the history books suggest?
Hope that it will all work out?
The need for hope indicates that the trotskists who run the scam know that situation is bad.

[Guessedworker]

UKIP is an Establishment safety valve. It is there to bleed the pressure. If you support it you are only half-way to where you need to be - a clear understanding that the assault on the English is existential, and can only be repulsed with extreme measures, including total repatriation (and I mean total) and a suspension of the constitution.

The political and media classes have been jumping up and down like made jack-rabbits about the BNP because they have betrayed their own people, and don't wish to be brought face to face with that betrayal. It is a morbid psychological condition:

http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/violence_by_proxy_the_preferred_politics_of_a_cowardly_establishment/

http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/paranoia_at_a_neck_tie_party/

[Lurker]

"a very small party that only got 6.2% of the vote."

6.2% of the total vote but a larger %age of the white vote.

For all the talk of multiculturalism, in the end only one group counts, only one group *has* to comply with its strictures. And if they take their ball away the game is over. Hence the fear of the BNP.

Part of the reason for mass immigration must be to render whites a minority. Once they are a minority then their political rights can be stripped away (see Serbs in Kosovo, whites in SA + Zimbabwe). After all, its not fair for a minority to dominate a majority.

[BNP Supporter]

If you've been cheerleading (or just plain leading) genocide for any length of time the number one thing you're going to fear is anyone coming to power who might recognize your crime for what it is.

[fellist]

Pat said "men of colour"

A minor point in the context of race-replacement immigration, but have you ever thought how strange it is that the 'people of colour' are deemed to be all those groups in which the skin, eyes, and hair is almost uniformly brown through black; while the presumably 'colourless' ones are the single racial group with eyes of blue, green, grey, brown and black; whose skin is every shade from purest white to deepest brown; and whose hair is blonde, red, brown and black and all shades in between.

What an upside-down world we live in.

[chachi]

Putting the bnp on the same level as nonces seem about right, i wonder how many of its members have avoided being added onto the child sex offender list which they rightfully belong on but haven't got caught YET.

You want to talk about immigrants & areas changing beyond recognition? Well europeans know more about that than any other race, europeans went around the world robbing, raping & creating chaos everywhere, your ancestors went to other lands & more or less completely replaced the entire native population through mass murder changing entire continents beyond recognition.

Whats happening here in the west is nothing in comparison & it can't be stopped as immigration is the only thing thats stalling the demise of western power, the chickens are comming home to roost & its people like you guys who can't accept it, you reap what your ancestors sow, thats how the world works.

[George Miller]

Angry chachi, angry young man. Yeah we lousy crackers are to blame for all the world's problems aren't we? Well Muslims have never attempted colonisation before have they? Let's see how well they do on their first attempt. Doucehbag.

[brian]

Islam is a backward ideology - that's what makes it weak - too weak to ever be a threat to the West!

Chachi always harks after the past glories of the muslim world - in that sense he has a lot in common with the idiots in the BNP who hark after Britian's empire.

The simple fact is that Europe & our society change Muslim immigrants and indeed migrants in general far more than they do European society. So go figure which is the stronger more powerful influence in this world!

[chachi]

Brian, you ain't too smart & make it too easy for me, lets see here:

"Islam is a backward ideology - that's what makes it weak - too weak to ever be a threat to the West!"....This ones so simple, weak things are things which are taken over & replaced by more powerful things, in this case the 'thing' is ideology, & incase you didn't know Islam is the fastest growing ideology in the world, especially here in the west, so your wrong there brian.

"Chachi always harks after the past glories of the muslim world"......Forget about the muslim world for a minute, Islam is what i'm all about, the most beneficial way of life for all of society unlike the system we have here which favours the rich & exploits the poor. But even if we were to compare the muslim system against the western system, Islam stil wins, its only relatively recently that the west has practiced real democracy (women being able to vote, racial equality etc), infact only within the last 100 or so & already we can see the signs of breakdown in western societies, not only that but the same loss of morals, discipline & respect in countries which adopt western culture.
compare this to Islamic civilisations which followed a set way of life in accordance with the word of god for over a thousand years then Its western democracy which is proven to be very,very, weak, another point which backs this up is the fact that so many westerners are choosing Islam over western hypocrisy, again brian, your wrong.

"The simple fact is that Europe & our society change Muslim immigrants and indeed migrants in general far more than they do European society. So go figure which is the stronger more powerful influence in this world!".........Your partially right here but not in the way you think, yes western culture changes muslims & all other immigrants to an extent but mostly it has a negative effect making them lazy, reducing their morality & integrity hence mentally weaker, encourages greed & hence weakens the bond between fellow human beings in favour of personal gain, there are positive elements to western culture but overall, as far as apersons character is concerned, western culture has a negative impact on those who accept it, hence the rapid breakdown of western society we see today & more & more people choosing to leave this chaos & embrace Islam including scientists & other intellectuals, anyway as far as muslims go, when they get older they realise the truth & usually return to the ways of their parents. Look at european youth, who do they idolise? who do they look up to? what type of music has the most influence? who do they try to emulate? tell you who, its hip-hop, rap, r&b, reggae & other black artists, thats right, IMMIGRANTS! And maybe you've noticed the trend within many of these artist, they have converted to ISLAM, once again, who are european youth most influenced by?
So you go & figure it out brian...your so very wrong again!

Arguing against the truth is always futile brian, you'll always lose.

[Lurker]

Chachi says - immigration is the only thing thats stalling the demise of western power

Right, so immigration is a great thing, it enriches and strengthens the west, hurrah for immigration, the racists are wrong!

But wait whats this - in the very same paragraph?

the chickens are comming home to roost & its people like you guys who can't accept it, you reap what your ancestors sow

Hang on Chachi, I can't quite keep up here. This second statement seems quite clear. Immigration is a punishment, we are suffering because of it. But, but...thats exactly what the nasty nationalists say and yet you've already told us that immigration is strengthening us.

So lets gets this straight immigration is great, so great its the only thing keeping western powers going, a bold claim.

But then you tell us that its payback for the crimes of our ancestors. Its real nice of you guys to help us out, the only thing stopping us collapsing is you. Wow, you must be sooo forgiving about the fate of your ancestors.

Or are you admitting that immigration really is a punishment for our ancestral crimes by destroying our nations. Which is hardly comnsistent with your assertion that its you guys who are the only thing keeping us going at all.

In conclusion, Chachi, I surmise that you are full of shit.