Nick Griffin

What a dick.

Happy St George's day everyone!

Genius!

Look I know I wrote to say that I was uncomfortable with the release of the BNP membership list but sometimes you've just got to laugh.

Enjoy!

The cloud inside the silver lining

A list of BNP members and their contact details has found its way onto the internet. Like many others I am some what lacking in sympathy for those listed. This party has persistently sought to victimise minorities and seek to focus the justifiable anger of many in deprived areas at completely the wrong target just for the sake of promoting their own agenda. They are a vile bunch of utter arseholes and anyone that has supported them will get short shrift from me should they suddenly find themselves rather unpopular. In fact it rather says something about the party in general that they would want to keep their membership secret at all.

Obsolete and the Enemies of Reason both give similar views on this however the whole thing does leave me rather uncomfortable.

In this country we have freedom of speech. I may not like what some people have to say however I think that the situations in which anyone should be censored or in anyway prevented from saying what they believe are few and far between and should in pretty extreme situations. Hence the BNP is a perfectly legal organisation, and in my opinion quite rightly. I believe that the way to deal with nasty bits of work like Nick Griffin is through open and reasoned debate and not through censorship.

Similarly while their are certain jobs that I think are incompatible with membership of the BNP such as the police and military (would you want a BNP member trying to reach the hearts and minds of Afghans?) I think that anyone losing their job over because they are a member is not justifiable and neither are threatening phone calls etc. Yet these things are happening. I may struggle to come up with sympathy but there are also very practical reasons, over and above the head over ruling my hearts desire to point and laugh, for these members not to be victimised.

If we end up with a situation where BNP members are now outed, sacked, attacked etc we could end up with a massive wave of sympathy being directed towards them. Can you imagine if say an elderly man or woman is suddenly beaten up by a lynch mob? A single mum loses her job? Can you imagine if these incidents mount up? It will cause a wave of sympathy. You must remember that the BNP has gained in popularity less because of racist views of those that are members or vote for them but more because the popularity has become increasingly alienated from main stream politics. People are leaning towards them to hurt the major parties as they all look increasingly the same. And if BNP supporters end up being victimised because of something that is, or more importantly is perceived as, the result of the actions of the main stream it is going to entrench extreme views and lean more people towards them.

So while I will have no great sympathy for those being outed on an individual basis I do worry that this sliver line is hiding a very dark cloud.

Just how much of a total arsehole, and I mean total human slime of the highest order does someone have to be before you can solemnly swear that you could not stand next to them on any issue?

I ask this because of a conversation I had yesterday with a friend of mine about the one and only Richard Littlejohn.

Mr Littlejohn, as is well known, is a “journalist” who writes (at the moment) a column for the Daily Mail. It is typically full of badly thought out right wing diatribe that at times borders on the racist and is regularly utterly offensive. It is though genius in that it appeals straight to the mob culture that normally only the Sun and the News of the World get anywhere near.

At the end of last year RL wrote a piece in his column that plumbed new depths of utterly offensive crap. It concerned that prostitutes who were being murdered at an alarming rate in Ipswich. He basically said they were of no great loss, no one cared, it was an occupational hazard and that they chose to be there.

It was so utterly vile in its tone that at that moment he passed into that category of people who I utterly loathed, who’s total lack of humanity in receiving money for writing something that offensive sent him of the scale in terms of how much of an utter prick he really is.

Yesterday however I was told that he had made a very well made, sensibly thought out and sensibly reported film on the rise of anti-Semitism in western Europe. He was trying to draw attention to how it was on the rise and no one was challenging it while the likes of the BNP were spreading it.

Now the BNP are an utterly vile organisation, who’s leader Nick Griffin is the very epitome of human slime. He spreads hate, division, racism and homophobia where ever he and his cronies go. And he and Mr Littlejohn have had a very public falling out over the film (not that they got on anyway RL once describing NG as “knuckle scraping scum”).

Now my friend who had similar opinions on RL said that on the basis that my enemy’s enemy is my friend it made RL one of his closest friends.

I could never go that far but it has made me stop and think, how quickly should we push someone away who’s views and actions we may find contemptible when they could be a very useful ally against someone far worse?

I don’t have the answers to that one I’m afraid, but it’s worth sleeping on!