Should the BBC give the Neo-Nazi British National Party's leader Nick Griffin airtime today?

[pampango]

The BBC has decided that it will include Griffin in its regular politics question-and-answer TV show, Question Time. After a late night meeting BBC executives decided that since the BNP won two seats in the European parliament it has enough legitimacy that only the British government could ban it from the airwaves, not the BBC by itself.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8319596.stm

It is an interesting free speech issue which doesn't have the same constitutional protections in England that it does here, but many people still value it.

The BNP's policies, which will probably come up on the show, are pretty eye-opening. They're an interesting mix of far-right wing stuff with a sprinkling of almost progressive positions probably to attract the disaffected.

http://bnp.org.uk/policies/

1. IMMIGRATION – time to say ENOUGH!

On current demographic trends, we, the native (white) British people, will be an ethnic minority in our own country within sixty years.

We will abolish the ‘positive discrimination’ schemes that have made white Britons second-class citizens. We will also clamp down on the flood of ‘asylum seekers’, all of whom are either bogus or can find refuge much nearer their home countries.

Relax, Nick, caucasians will be a minority in the US in a lot less than 60 years. Besides it's nothing to worry about. What difference does it make?

2. EUROPE – back to British independence!

...we stand for British withdrawal from the European Union. In place of the EU, we intend to aim towards greater national self-sufficiency, and to work to restore Britain’s family and trading ties with Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and to trade with the rest of the world as it suits us.

Fear of multilateral obligations and commitments along with open intra-European borders must be kind of scary to Nick.

3. LAW AND ORDER – crack down on crime! (Nothing worth copying under this. The usual conservative spiel. :) )

4. ECONOMY – British workers first!

Globalisation, with its export of jobs to the Third World, is bringing ruin and unemployment to British industries and the communities that depend on them. Accordingly, the BNP calls for the selective exclusion of foreign-made goods from British markets and the reduction of foreign imports. We will ensure that our manufactured goods are, wherever possible, produced in British factories, employing British workers. When this is done, unemployment in this country will be brought to an end, and secure, well-paid employment will flourish, at last getting our people back to work and ending the waste and injustice of having more than 4 million people in a hidden army of the unemployed concealed by Labour’s statistical fiddles. ... We also call for preference in the job market to be given to native Britons.

Some of this would fit well with many DU posts (substituting "American" for "British", of course). Deal with immigration and keep out "foreign-made goods". The big difference from DU is that when Nick says "British", he means white Britons, of course.

5. EDUCATION – discipline, standards, achievement! (Nothing worth copying under this. :) )

6. AGRICULTURE – quality before quantity!

Priority will be switched from quantity to quality, as we move from competing in a global economy to maximum self-sufficiency for Britain.

7. HEALTH – first-class healthcare for all! (Even the BNP can't oppose the very popular National Health Service.)

8. TRANSPORT – time to invest! (Pro-public transportation, pro-car, pro-everything

9. ENVIRONMENT – a cleaner, greener future! (They're for it.)

10. FOREIGN AID – time to spend our money on our own people!

We reject the idea that Britain must forever be obliged to subsidise the incompetence and corruption of Third World states by supplying them with financial aid. We will link foreign aid with our voluntary resettlement policy, whereby those nations taking significant numbers of people back to their homelands will need cash to help absorb those returning. The billions of pounds saved every year by this policy will also be reallocated to vital services in Britain.

British money for British people not for those Third World slackers - unless the Third World country agrees to take back its immigrants to England.

11. PENSIONERS – pensioners before asylum seekers! (Nobody opposes pensioners and getting in a dig at immigrants at the same time.)

12. NORTHERN IRELAND – an end to sectarianism!

13. DEFENCE – no more cuts!

We will bring our troops back from Germany and withdraw from NATO, since recent political developments make both commitments obsolete. We will close all foreign military bases on British soil, and refuse to risk British lives in meddling ‘peace-keeping’ missions in parts of the world where no British interests are at stake – a position of armed neutrality. We will also restore national service for our young with the option of civil or military service.

14. FOREIGN AFFAIRS – Britain’s interests first!

Britain’s foreign relations should be determined by the protection of our own national interest and not by our like or dislike of other nations’ internal politics. We would have no quarrel with any nation that does not threaten British interests. We will maintain an independent foreign policy of our own, and not a spineless subservience to the USA, the ‘international community’, or any other country.

15. DEMOCRACY – letting the people decide!

On issue after issue, the views of the majority of British people have been ignored and overridden by a Politically Correct ‘elite’ which thinks it knows best. On immigration, on Capital Punishment, on the surrender of British sovereignty to the EU and in numerous other areas, democracy has been absent as Labour, Tories and Lib-Dems conspire in election after election to offer the British people no real choice on such vital issues.

It sounds progressive to complain that the major political parties don't offer a real choice on vital issues, but Nick's goals are very different from a real progressive.
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I've never heard Griffin speak. I imagine that he is a firebrand when he's speaking to a BNP crow, but I wonder how smooth he is at papering over the BNP's far RW racist views and talking instead about a few more "progressive" policy positions that might be more popular with a larger more independent crowd like a national TV show.

[get the red out]

1. Rush is on the radio every day here

:shrug: Some neo-Nazi European would probably be mild by comparison.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. Griffin tries to sound more reasonable

but that's his job - to put an acceptable face on the racist policies. Deep down, he's worse than Limbaugh. He has convictions for inciting racial hatred, and in the mid 1990s authored a pamphlet claiming 'The Jews' were in secret control of the British media. He has said that Hitler just 'went too far', and has cast doubt on the size of the Holocaust.

He now tries to keep away from these aspects of his past as much as possible, since he has a new enemy: Muslims. The BNP is concentrating on demonising Muslims as much as possible, especially since 9/11. They have claimed that all the drug trafficking into Britain is done by Muslims, and that Muslims go around grooming impressionable white girls to become prostitutes. And they continually claim Muslims get special tretament by councils, and that they all want to turn Britain into a place ruled by Shaira law.

BNP councillors do stupid things like make up scare stories about murders.

The BNP is against 'miscegenation', ie mixed-race relationships. Their current constitution only allows white members; they've just been had up for this, and have been told to rewrite it so that they don't officially discriminate, and they're not allowed to get new members until they do (whether anyone non-white would want to join a bunch of bigots is another matter).

BNP members are frequently thugs with convictions for violence.

Via the UK forum, 10 things you should know about the BNP when you watch Question Time tonight. And Twenty questions for the BNP.

[LeftishBrit]

3. Exactly

The BNP's nearest current American counterpart would probably be David Duke and his movement; though I suspect that there are some Republican politicians who are not that far off it.

[pampango]

11. I had never heard of the "American Friends of the BNP" before. Thanks for the link.

According to wiki, it only lasted from 1999 to 2001 when it disbanded after legal attacks from the SPLC.

Griffin visited in 2000 and met with the "American Friends" including David Duke and James W Von Brunn, the white supremacist who killed a security man in an attack on Washington's holocaust museum earlier this year.

"During Griffin's visit, he outlined his blueprint for making his party electable by dropping its lexicon of "racial purity" and Jewish conspiracies: "The BNP isn't about selling out its ideas, but we are determined to sell them. Basically, that means to use saleable words such as freedom, identity, security, democracy." "

""Once we're in a position where we control the British broadcasting media, then perhaps one day the British people might change their mind and say, 'yes, every last one must go'. But if you hold that out as your sole aim to start with, you're not going to get anywhere. So, instead of talking about racial purity, we talk about identity." "

[Forkboy]

4. I say yes.

This stuff thrives in the shadows, not in the light, and for every person he sways his way odds are that about 10 more will be swayed the other way.

Famous last words, I know. :)

[enlightenment]

5. Question Time is a tough show to survive -

a US politician would probably choose to eat glass rather than face David Dimbleby and the audience. I doubt it will take long for Griffin's veneer to crack and expose his disgusting, rotten core.

[Forkboy]

6. It usually doesn't take long for these types of people to show their inner selves.

Almost makes me wish I could watch it. :)

[AlienGirl]

7. There's a Latin proverb: "Qui male agit, odit lucem.." "Roaches scurry when the light goes on."

(Yeah, I know that's not a translation exactly, but you get the idea.)

Tucker

[Forkboy]

10. The translation works for me!

:)

[HipChick]

8. Enoch Powell laid the groundwork...

[Gold Metal Flake]

9. Give Griffin a shovel.

When he digs up and defuses the last unexploded Nazi bomb in the UK he can make a statement.

[pampango]

12. This Times story on "Question Time" portrays Griffin as not being very smooth at all.

Good thing that the other speakers put him on the defensive and questioners in the crowd kept him there.

He must be better in smaller and more friendly formats.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/world/europe/24britain.html

"The early reading by many of Britain’s major newspapers was that Mr. Griffin lost heavily on points. While he gained a mass audience for the first time, for a party that usually meets in cramped backstreet halls, he appeared shocked by the pounding he took from other panelists, by repeated booing in the studio and by infuriated interruptions from Mr. Dimbleby. On Friday, he said he would make a formal complaint to the BBC about “the venom” and “sheer unfairness” of the discussion. “That was a lynch mob,” he said.

Mr. Dimbleby led the charge. Quoting liberally from Mr. Griffin’s past remarks about the Holocaust, Islam, lesbians and homosexuals, as well as restoring Britain to its “indigenous” white population, he demanded Mr. Griffin say whether he stood by the remarks. After the B.N.P. leader said he was “the most loathed man in Britain in the eyes of Britain’s Nazis,” the presenter interrupted brusquely: “Do you deny the Holocaust?” he asked. When Mr. Griffin hesitated, he repeated the question.

The B.N.P. leader also sought to mollify anger in the studio audience — many of whom were Asian or black — at the party’s stance on saving Britain for whites, saying it was not a matter of color but of preserving the rights of Britain’s “indigenous peoples,” who he said could trace their origins back 17,000 years. “We are the aborigines here,” he said. That brought a black man in the audience to his feet. “Where do you want me to go?” he said. “I love this country, I’m part of this country.”

The B.N.P. leader also said that to earn the right to remain in Britain, Muslims should “acknowledge that Britain always has been and must remain fundamentally a British and Christian country.” On lesbians and homosexuals, he said that “a lot of people in this country find the sight of two grown men kissing in public really creepy.” That brought to her feet a woman in the audience who said she was a lesbian. “I have to say the feeling of revulsion is mutual,” she said."