Leon – I’m not saying we should stop trying to counter the BNP. I’m just saying that we shouldn’t lose sight of the other parties adopting BNP-esque policies.

For example, Labour’s ever increasing authoritarianism and the march towards a police state, and the Tories being unafraid to scapegoat immigrants where it will win them votes.

The BNP are undoubtedly among the worst fascists, but that doesn’t make them the only ones with fascist tendencies. They’re just the most fascist in a pile of fascists, really.

We should be exposing and dismantling fascism, racism and other nasty authoritarian tendencies wherever they occur.

So, while I applaud the asking of difficult questions in the BNP’s direction, I personally don’t see them as enough of a threat to lose much sleep over. (Which isn’t to say I don’t engage in anti-fascist activism on a regular basis anyway.)

While it’s unlikely that the BNP will ever gain power, they certainly are agitators.

I’m not sure what you’re saying here. On the one hand you say you don’t see them as a threat (I’m sure minority ethnic people in this country might feel otherwise) but then saying they manage to influence all the main parties into following if not their policies but rethoric?

Read Micro Trends by Mark Penn then tell me if we should stop trying to counter them…

Conscientious objectors who refuse to undertake military service would be allocated other constructive work for the community, but would not receive the citizen’s right to be armed, or the right to vote.”

Reminds me of Starship Troopers – only without the jokes. Or the giant alien bugs.

Dave S: If the BNP ever do manage to get into government in the UK (which they won’t, not even close), the entire country would collapse in a matter of a few weeks. – it’s not national government I’d be worried about; it’s local government – the social/political/economic collapse following a BNP administration could easily occur in somewhere like Stoke.

And it would also be interesting to have further information on whether the right to bear arms and the right to join the military would also be extended to non-white & Jewish British citizens, or if both of these matters would be restricted solely to white/Caucasian British citizens.

This can actually be taken further:

If non-white & Jewish British citizens will not be allowed to join the military, then that means they will not be given the right to vote under a BNP government either. Bear in mind also that the BNP plan to scrap all laws involving the protection of minorities against racial discrimination, harassment etc.

And since the right to bear arms (the “Citizens’ assault rifle”, to use the BNP term) will also be contingent on military service, the following situation will result: An armed majority population, and an unarmed & massively outnumbered minority population consisting of non-whites and Jewish people, in a BNP-ruled country with an explicitly racist agenda being promoted from the top-down, with the aforementioned minorities having no legal recourse for their own protection against persecution or harassment either.

Whether this is by accident or design, and whether the result will be given a nudge, a push, or be allowed to occur of its own accord, this situation will have several outcomes in Britain. One of them involves non-whites and Jews being driven out of the UK because of the sheer level of harassment and discrimination they will receive and will have no defence against.

The other involves the BNP setting up the chess pieces for something even more “final”. Join the dots.

And this scenario should be coupled with the threat/warning to the United States not to interfere in the BNP’s “nationalist political agenda” as detailed in the extract from the BNP’s 2005 manifesto in #18, taking into consideration that the BNP uses the term “nation” to mean “race” or “ethnic group” (as confirmed by this morning’s “The Big Question” on BBC1, involving two representatives from the BNP including Andrew Brons).

If the BNP ever do manage to get into government in the UK (which they won’t, not even close), the entire country would collapse in a matter of a few weeks.

So, while I applaud the asking of difficult questions in the BNP’s direction, I personally don’t see them as enough of a threat to lose much sleep over. (Which isn’t to say I don’t engage in anti-fascist activism on a regular basis anyway.)

While it’s unlikely that the BNP will ever gain power, they certainly are agitators. The tabloid press loves to echo their rhetoric, which then gets somewhat adopted by the other political parties in an attempt to “look tough” on things and avoid losing disenchanted voters to the BNP. Adoption of BNP-esque policies and increasing authoritarianism by other political parties is definitely a big concern. The mainstream parties love to point at “the fascists” on one hand, while with the other, they are drafting-up only marginally de-clawed carbon-copies of plenty of the fascists’ policies!

But what worries me most is the inherent authoritarianism of the entire of mainstream politics in the UK – in the way that our so-called “democracy” is a sham and a lie, and that even if one votes for the least authoritarian political parties or independents, it’s merely an exercise in changing the puppets of authoritarian global capitalism.

We do not have any say in the running of our lives, and are unlikely to while multinational corporations are more powerful and more mobile than governments.

Not having any say in the running of our lives is a massive problem, and the resulting dissatisfaction is, I believe, the principle reason many people can quite easily be manipulated into voting for racists and fascists.

People are looking for an outlet for their general dissatisfaction, and along come the fascists with their “simple” solutions. It doesn’t matter if those solutions are completely brain-dead, because they aren’t asking people to think for themselves anyway! They are saying: “You have problems, and we have the solutions – all you have to do is vote for us and we’ll sort everything out for you, so you don’t have to waste time thinking about it.”

Of course the BNP are not interested in whether their solutions would actually work – the only thing they are interested in is power, and lots of it. They will say almost anything against almost anybody to get disenchanted people to vote for them – including playing those disenchanted people off against each other if they can get away with it.

The BNP vote is a direct product of ordinary people being downtrodden, ignored, exploited, and not having control over our lives – it’s really not much more complicated than that.

The real global fascists are corporate capitalists, and politicians are their lackeys. It doesn’t make any difference under a “communist” (read: “state capitalist”) style government either, so authoritarian socialist anti-fascists (SWP, Searchlight magazine etc.) can get stuffed every bit as much as the BNP!

While we have authoritarians of any type ruling from within a sham “democratic” system – and especially with capitalists pulling their strings – there can be little hope of sorting out all manner of societal problems, and thus the BNP vote will remain.

Environmental destruction is our guarantee that this system won’t continue forever. We’re already at (or probably even past) the point where the imbalance between dwindling, finite natural resources and imaginary debt based on the assumption of “infinite” natural resources is starting to cause the wheels to fall off capitalism bigtime.

The “credit crunch” is only the tip of the iceberg. I shudder to think what the human and ecological costs are going to be, if we allow the natural long-drawn-out death of capitalism to take place. We don’t have time to wait for capitalism to die – it really needs to be euthanased en masse by anybody with half an ounce of sense.

Governments can’t sort this out, and thus voting is a waste of time*. We have to take meaningful collective action now, because nothing else will save our backsides in the timeframe available to us.

It is for these reasons that I am an anti-authoritarian anti-capitalist, or more simply an “anarchist”.

It is a shame that word is so misunderstood, when all it really means is that I believe that human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable way without having to be forced or bribed to do so. But of course, that is an idea that the rich and powerful find extremely dangerous, so it’s no wonder they go to extraordinary efforts to convince us that without allowing them to protect us from ourselves, we’d all “descend into anarchy” and kill each other.

* Incidentally, I did vote in the EU elections against the BNP, but this was a pragmatic (and long-considered) decision based on the presence of a system which was likely to let them in. Which indeed it did – despite the fact that 66% of the UK electorate and 57% of the total European electorate voted for nobody at all!

“Proportional representation” my arse!

As well as having a Stoke BNP councillor phoning in (who showed his true colors by stating that he was unconcerned by the label ‘racist’ and that it was just a word), most of the other callers to the programme seemed to show ‘concern’ that immigration had ‘got out of hand’, and some parts of the country were ‘particularly affected’.
But as one caller said, ”not so much in Devon where we are, but in ‘other’ parts of the country”.

I’m really not so concerned about the BNP. I know it’s great to trash them because they are such a jucy target, but I find them to be (not that they aren’t scum) ‘low hanging fruit’.

I know elsewhere, that Sunny has refered to Sir Andrew Green (of Migration Watch) as ”rent-a-gob”… and I wish (just personally) that as much time and energy was spent ‘going after’ their views and opinions, as was spent on the moronic BNP … who even when getting attacked (by eggs) outside parliament, the thing that you notice most on TV are the goon minders in suits, trying to protect their leader.

Religious matters will be discussed in detail in the subsequent section “Religious impact of a BNP government”.

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I believe a comprehensive answer from the BNP regarding the following would also be constructive:

BNP’s General Election Manifesto 2005, page 52, re: “National Defence”, specifically point 6:

Quote:

“If Britain is attacked by rogue states or terrorists then we will respond with maximum force until the threat is eradicated.”

On what basis can the BNP credibly claim that, upon the election of an explicitly racist, explicitly and aggressively anti-Islam, explicitly and aggressively anti-Muslim BNP government, the risk of an Al-Qaeda or Al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist attack against the British civilian population is not actually INCREASED considerably ?

Page 52, “National Defence, point 8″:

Quote:

“The compulsory National Service system discussed elsewhere in this Manifesto would begin at the age of 18 with a period of basic training in the army. This would include full training with the citizens’ assault rifle. Conscientious objectors who refuse to undertake military service would be allocated other constructive work for the community, but would not receive the citizen’s right to be armed, or the right to vote.”

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The right of citizens to vote is a basic aspect of the modern democratic system — in the UK, even the homeless have the full right to participate in this process. The only British citizens who are ineligible to vote are people with certain mental disabilities which render them incapable of making an informed voting decision, certain specified types of prisoners (by no means all), and those guilty of voting malpractice.

If you have any doubts about the anti-democratic aspirations of the BNP, particularly in conjunction with the increased militarisation of British society under a BNP government, this should give you further material to think about. The BNP is already planning various ways to strip British citizens of their established democratic rights.

And it would also be interesting to have further information on whether the right to bear arms and the right to join the military would also be extended to non-white & Jewish British citizens, or if both of these matters would be restricted solely to white/Caucasian British citizens.

Page 50, re: “Post-EU Foreign Policy”

Quote:

“…..Therefore, however much we may dislike the present American regime, and see the need to resist American cultural imperialism, we still need the USA as a counterweight against a European superstate. Therefore, while we should politely but firmly refuse to fight America’s wars, we would give serious consideration to allowing the Americans to keep their bases in the UK so long as they refrain from interfering with our nationalist political agenda along the lines of what they (and others) recently did in Ukraine.

Under this policy American bases would be essentially hostages to America’s good behaviour (if the Philippines can expel its American bases, it would certainly be possible for us to do so.) As long as Britain allows American bases, the American government will have every incentive to cooperate with a future BNP regime. If Britain threw them out, they would have every incentive to try to overthrow such a government to get back in.”

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Page 52, re: “National Defence”

Quote:

“We will bring our troops back from Germany and withdraw from NATO,…..”

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Not exactly a promising indication of an intention to maintain the transatlantic “special relationship”, is it ?

In fact, the tone and some of the language is actually more reminiscent of the anti-American rantings of the current North Koreas regime and the Iranian authorities’ “Great Satan” propaganda.

Given that this description matches a number of world leaders in much closer proximity to Israel than Britain, I think a nuclear attack by Israel is somewhat unlikely.

Maybe. On the other hand, those other countries don’t (yet) have nuclear weapons. Britain does.

Which also happens to be a similar theme in relation to the sabre-rattling between the United States and North Korea & Iran, for example. Or, even more obviously, the dynamic between Israel itself and Iran — we all know about the jitteriness in various corners about a pre-emptive Israeli attack against Iran whenever any noises about the latter’s “nuclear reseach facilities” and “proximity to the production of nuclear warheads” are made. And Ahmedinejad’s rantings about denying the Holocaust and “wiping Israel off the map” certainly haven’t helped matters.

So you can imagine a similar rapid deterioration in the situation between Israel and Britain upon the election of a BNP government — because the latter really will have ready access to an arsenal of nuclear weapons, along with being explicitly anti-semitic white supremacists and confirmed admirers of Nazi Germany.

Check this leading story

there was a terrible mix-up when the wrong sperm was mistakenly used by the hospital fertility clinic the couple attended in their hope of becoming parents.

The result is that while Keith, 47, and his 46-year-old wife Catherine are white, their son is black.