‘Dog bark’ politics
This is a guest post by Dave Rich of the CST Blog
On Wednesday Nick Griffin, BNP leader and newly-elected Member of the European Parliament, told the BBC that boats carrying illegal immigrants to Europe should be sunk as they cross the Mediterranean. In an attempt to show his humane side, he insisted that he did not want anyone to actually die: “they can throw them a life raft and they can go back to Libya”.
He has followed this up with an interview four Channel 4 News, in which he described Islam as a “cancer” that needed to be treated with “global chemotherapy”:
In an interview with Channel 4 News, Mr Griffin, who has just been elected to the European Parliament, said there was “no place in Europe for Islam”.
He added: “Western values, freedom of speech, democracy and rights for women are incompatible with Islam, which is a cancer eating away at our freedoms and our democracy and rights for our women and something needs to be done about it”.
The BNP leader said he agreed with a candidate for the Flemish far right party, Vlaams Belang, who had declared: “We urgently need global chemotherapy against Islam to save civilisation.”
This is the opposite of the ‘dog whistle’ politics that some mainstream politicians are accused of employing when they talk about immigration. Griffin is barking as loudly and as often as he can, in the knowledge that he will attract the attention of an outraged media every time he expresses a yet-more shocking opinion.
The BNP, for all its electoral success, is still a relatively small party. There are large parts of the country where they have few activists and the growth in their vote has been far from uniform across Britain. Griffin and the BNP now have a platform in Brussels from which they can circumvent any lack of local resources, or the no-platform policies deployed against them, and speak directly to their supporters via the media.
Griffin’s words also give an indication of who he is trying to speak to. He is unlikely to be ignorant of the numerous recent reports of violent attacks on Muslims in Britainand abroad; the BNP tracks these news reports assiduously. Searchlight’s recent polling, while identifying the expected socio-economic reasons why people vote for the BNP, also gave a sobering insight into the racism of many of their voters. If not quite a return to the open incitement of Griffin’s days in the National Front, this new rhetorical assault shows clearly where the BNP’s priorities and prejudices lie, and what they think they need to be saying to satisfy their current supporters, and attract new ones.
Comments
| 10 July 2009, 4:08 pm |
I wouldn’t get too het up about it. Elected BNP officials rarely last longer than one term, I doubt Griffin will be any different.
The interesting thing will be to see how he combats the inevitable media indifference. Eventually they’ll go off him, stop being outraged and end up ignoring him. The only way he’ll be able to get their attention is by becoming ever more extreme in his pronouncements, which will surely undermine his attempts to market the BNP as a mainstream party
| 10 July 2009, 4:19 pm |
I like dogs. Why compare them to Griffin?
| 10 July 2009, 4:29 pm |
“If you just took everyone from the BNP and everyone who votes for them and shot them in the back of the head, there would be a brighter future for us all” Jeremy Harding of the BBC
…Jewish settlers of the West Bank are Nazis and racists and should be shot dead….Paulin…another frequenter of the BBC.
These 2 recent statements clearly show the BBC’s true agenda – violent repression of illegal occupation and a war against the BNP. Truly a fascist agenda.
| 10 July 2009, 4:34 pm |
Western values, freedom of speech, democracy and rights for women are incompatible with Islam, which is a cancer eating away at our freedoms and our democracy and rights for our women and something needs to be done about it
Imagine that had been said by, say Aayan Hirsi Ali: would your knee jerk in the same way?
| 10 July 2009, 4:36 pm |
belm!
It’s a good thing that Griffin is spouting such shite, what I was afraid of was that he’d continue with the “kinder, gentler Nazi” bollox that got him elected in the first place. I confidently predict the electorate will flush him down the toilet of history.
If they don’t I’m going to seriously consider emigrating. I really don’t want to live in a country where a cunt like that gets elected more than once.
| 10 July 2009, 4:43 pm |
“Western values, freedom of speech, democracy and rights for women are incompatible with Islam”
If we are talking about Islam based on the Koran and Hadith, isn’t the above statement pretty much true?
It is fairly obvious that Griffin is packaging ideas like the above, which most people can understand, inside more inflammatory statements and then allowing the ‘outraged’ liberal and left press to spread his message for him.
What is the point of a site like HP getting exercised about the horrible nature of his comments? Everyone knows he is a horrible man. What purpose do posts like this serve except to spread his messages yet further?
| 10 July 2009, 4:46 pm |
@Alan Stoddart
Um, Jeremy Hardy isn’t ‘of the BBC’. He’s a comedian who has appeared on bbc panel shows, and had a series on radio 4 in the 1980s. Tom Paulin, respected literature professor, isn’t also ‘of the bbc’.
Unless of course you believe that anybody that the bbc has had on any of its programmes ever constitutes ‘BBC’s true agenda’. In which case Griffin is part of that agenda !!!11!!!!!1!!
| 10 July 2009, 4:48 pm |
“Imagine that had been said by, say Aayan Hirsi Ali: would your knee jerk in the same way?”
Doesn’t really need to be imagined. She’s said similar things a few times.
But then Aayan Hirsi Ali isn’t Nick Griffin. We’re supposed to believe that Griffin actually gives a flying fuck about western values and women’s rights? Let’s not get silly.
I agree with badnewswade – it’s good to see cunts like that revealing their true colours. Cuddly Cameron next.
| 10 July 2009, 5:01 pm |
Paul:
But then Aayan Hirsi Ali isn’t Nick Griffin. We’re supposed to believe that Griffin actually gives a flying fuck about western values and women’s rights? Let’s not get silly.
This is completely missing the point. You can waste your time arguing about whether Griffin himself cares about Western values, it doesn’t matter. He is communicating with voters who DO care, and who are looking for serious answers from politicians to the problems they perceive in e.g. the increased legitimisation of Sharia courts.
To defeat his appeal to voters requires mainstream politicians to engage Islam on an ideological level. Otherwise the pitch is just abandoned to Griffin.
| 10 July 2009, 5:03 pm |
I know of people from various backgrounds, including Afro Caribbean and Sikh, who agree with Griffin about Islam. There is a definite danger here that so long as he sticks to just that one strand of his racism he might manage to gain votes from people who otherwise would never consider voting nazi.
| 10 July 2009, 5:06 pm |
@Right Not Racist
Do you also have a problem with the Beth Din?
| 10 July 2009, 5:15 pm |
But then Aayan Hirsi Ali isn’t Nick Griffin. We’re supposed to believe that Griffin actually gives a flying fuck about western values and women’s rights? Let’s not get silly.
So when Aayan Hirsi Ali opposes Islam’s attitudes to women, we support the women, but when Nick Griffin says the same thing, we should support the Imams? Or what?
Of course Griffin is a racist thug who is blowing on his dog whistle. But the practical consequences of critiquing things you agree with on the grounds the wrong people are saying them is that you appear to agree with things that you don’t.
| 10 July 2009, 5:20 pm |
JOHN HOWARD, EX PM OF AUSTRAILIER SAID THE SAME THING SO NOW ALL THOSE WHO SNUB GRIFFIN ARE HYPOCRITES AND ON THE BNP WEB SITE THERE IS THIS
“The leader of the Italian Northern League, Umberto Bossi, called for invader boats from Africa to be sunk with gunfire in June 2003, and yesterday’s comments by British National Party leader Nick Griffin MEP were merely echoing Mr Bossi’s sentiments, observers have pointed out. The Northern League is allied to UKIP.
THIS MAKES HIS CRITICS LOOK SILLY AND VINDICTIVE ADDING TO THE IDEA THAT HYSTERICAL ANTI BNP PEOPLE DONT GIVE A DAM ABOUT WHAT THE BNP SAY OR DO OR THEIR POLICIES, THEY SEEM TO BE BRAINWASHED WITH THE IDEA THAT IF ANYONE WHO TALKS ABOUT IMMIGRATION AND BELONGING TO A WHITE GROUP MUST WANT TO START GASING PEOPLE, GROW UP.
| 10 July 2009, 5:27 pm |
I suspect anyone who hasn’t mastered the effective use of the caps lock key isn’t really in any position to tell anyone to grow up.
| 10 July 2009, 6:01 pm |
Griffin and one of his apes were accused of incitement by saying that “Islam is a wicked and viscious faith”. They were tried (twice) and cleared by a jury.
In a legal sense does that give permission for Griffin to say this again without a charge?
Griffin is of course a crude racist. We suspect that if he calls Islam a ‘cancer’ he’s really attacking all Muslims from the perspective that they are from immigrant stock.
I think he has a point – but NOT if said from his perspective. If some mainstream right-wing commentator said something like “I think Islam has the potential to create wide discord in our European society” then wouldn’t that be a true statement based on various incidents across Europe?
The use of the word “cancer” is not only highly emotive but evokes links with Nazi Germany demonisation of Jews with its vermin and insects graphic images.
Why we find Griffin’s idea so repulsive is because of what heppened in Nazi Germany.
However, the status of Islam is different. Because of Nazi Germany we have learnt greater tolerance of different faiths and cultures. But, Jews in Europe never attacked and killed local Europeans. They never protested and threatened them that one day Islam would dominate them. They never had over 250 Jews found guilty of terrorism related offences in eight years.
We can’t project the aims of politically inspired Islam and Jihad against what we know about how minorities have been treated and persecuted. There is a message that we need to beware and that there is something to be combated. But NOT through the likes of Griffin and his knuckle scrapers.
I am currently reading Dershowitz, “The case against Israel’s enemies” and he has a great phrase “Winning the argument in the marketplace of ideas”
| 10 July 2009, 6:04 pm |
…TO A WHITE GROUP MUST WANT TO START GASING PEOPLE
Gasing, or top spinning, is a traditional game popular among Malays in the olden days. In rural areas, gasing contests were held during the rice-ripening season. Kampung folks believed that the spinning tops would help bring good harvest. Infopedia
Why would they want to spin people?
| 10 July 2009, 6:14 pm |
Why we find Griffin’s idea so repulsive is because of what heppened in Nazi Germany.
Oh behave. There are plenty of organisations in Europe which pander to holocaust denial, minimise its impact while quietly being rather exciting by the idea of industrial killing of Jews. Griffin and his ilk are certainly amongst them. But a at least as many of them are Muslim. Muslims are very quick to equate their position with that of Jews 1933, without seeing the irony that they are more often to be found circulating the propaganda popular amongst Nazis in 1933. Griffin might think that the Protocols are a genuine document, but so do a huge number of Muslims. Many Muslim organisations are openly anti-semitic, so waving a 1943-shaped shroud around in their defence isn’t wildly convincing.
| 10 July 2009, 6:38 pm |
Let’s be clear: Griffin doesn’t give a damn about Islam. He probably agrees with Hitler that it is in many ways a fine martial creed for a vigorous people and recalls with some fondness its role in World War 2, with the Grand Mufti giving a real lead.
Islam is simply, for him, a code in the UK to talk about black and brown people and generally confuse the issue.
By identifying Anti-Shariah movement with racism he of course completely undermines the movement, and that is all to the good as far as he is concerned since he doesn’t want it to succeed. He wants White Britons to become so disillusioned and angry about hyper immigration into their country by people out of sympathy with its way of life that they will become fighters for a racist ideology. One of his main aims to increase racial tension, so he doesn’t mind at all if he confuses the debate and help rack up that tension by ensuring we don’t do anything effective about immigration or Islam.
And of course the militants of Islam are also happy to see the debate of Islam confused with one over race – thus providing them with excellent cover to advance Shariah.
The only answer has to be a careful adherence to the truth. We need complete condemnation of racism coupled with a refusal to given even one centimetre to the advance of Shariah.
| 10 July 2009, 7:22 pm |
Maybe someone should inform Nick Griffin that the trouble with chemotherapy is that it destroys good, healthy cells as well as cancerous ones.
| 10 July 2009, 7:23 pm |
Nick Griffin would have Ayaan Hirsi Ali deported because her presence in Europe contaminates it, and considers her to be sub-human because she is of African descent. That’s the difference between them. He is an old school true political nazi and racist, and his rhetoric about Islam is opportunistic.
| 10 July 2009, 7:25 pm |
Whereas Ali’s criticisms of Islam come from personal experience and even if you do not agree with them, they do not subscribe to any racist ideology or hatred or impulse. She is scrupulous on this matter. How anyone can confuse the two I don’t know.
| 10 July 2009, 8:28 pm |
Alan Stoddart:
“If you just took everyone from the BNP and everyone who votes for them and shot them in the back of the head, there would be a brighter future for us all” Jeremy Harding of the BBC
…Jewish settlers of the West Bank are Nazis and racists and should be shot dead….Paulin…another frequenter of the BBC.
These 2 recent statements clearly show the BBC’s true agenda – violent repression of illegal occupation and a war against the BNP. Truly a fascist agenda.
How do you define ‘recent’?
The first was made on a Radio 4 comedy programme in 2004, and the second was made in a 2002 Al-Ahram interview. It should also be noted that Radio 4 released a statement saying Hardy’s comment was unacceptable.
Be careful where you get your information about ‘recent statements’ before dreaming up BBC fascist campaigns.
| 10 July 2009, 8:34 pm |
“I think he has a point – but NOT if said from his perspective. If some mainstream right-wing commentator said something like “I think Islam has the potential to create wide discord in our European society” then wouldn’t that be a true statement based on various incidents across Europe?”
If someone is making a valid point, that point is valid regardless of who he is, or his what his general predispositions are. If someone you detest is telling the truth, it is still the truth. If someone you worship is telling lies, they are still lies.
I do not disagree with his assessment of the islamic religion, but I do take issue with his prescription for blowing people out of the water. That would be murder wouldn’t it?
| 10 July 2009, 8:52 pm |
Jeremy Hardy and Tom Paulin: have they made appearances on the BBC since their ‘unacceptable’ statements? If so, then their statements cannot be considered unacceptable to our pro-gay, pro-muslim (?? yes, I’m wrestling with that one!) BBC. How about Kilroy-Silk? Has he been on the BBC recently?
On Nick Griffin’s comments, what was factually incorrect about them? I see posters getting worked up because it’s nice to get oneself into a lather about the BNP – almost therapeutic to some, I’d reckon. But what redeeming features does islam have and who is opposing its spread (like cancer) within Europe?
| 10 July 2009, 9:09 pm |
Anyone who voted BNP as a supposed “protest vote” needs to face up to what they have done. They have let an overt fascist into the European Parliament.
Anyone who voted Labour, like I did, needs to face up to what they have done. They have supported a party whose utter failure to exert any control whatsoever over immigration has led to overt fascists in the European Parliament.
| 10 July 2009, 10:57 pm |
“But what redeeming features does islam have and who is opposing its spread (like cancer) within Europe?”
One redeeming feature of Islam is that you are not a Muslim.
Field, be careful, Sharia is there, no, there, and there, and there, and look there it is, no there, and there. Fuck, its. its………..everywhere aaaaaaaah!
You are delusional if not stark raving mad!
Love the way you distinguish yourself from the BNP. You probably think you’ve succeeded, for the rest of us, you’re not fooling everyone (I think also that none of your best friends are Muslim).
| 10 July 2009, 11:03 pm |
Griffin predicts that the future of politics in Britain will be communal, and the BNP seeks to represent the Saxon/Celtic community.Logical forecast, logical aim.
| 10 July 2009, 11:36 pm |
Griffin talks balls. Britain isn’t communal, despite efforts to divide us into communities with specific needs. We’re not going to turn on each other; we just think it’s getting crowded here.
| 11 July 2009, 12:57 am |
Britain isn’t communal Wardy? Really?
The English are totally p*ssed off at the Scots because of the iniquitous Barnett funding scam. The Scots have hated the English for centuries.
The private sector is totally p*ssed off at the public sector, viewing them as parasites.
The workers hate paying tax to support the welfare queens.
The net savers hate the irresponsible debt ridden borrowers who should have known better.
Everybody hates the bankers, the MPs, the House of Lords, the BBC, cabbage, and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Except me, I like cabbage.
People are lining up.
| 11 July 2009, 1:18 am |
Oh, well I don’t feel like that particularly. I mean, I hold many council workers and John Game in low regard, and know that they do nothing of value, but I don’t get why this should mean we all go fisticuffs. If it does, Monty, be assured I am English, private sector, working, and a saver. You don’t need to slay me.
| 11 July 2009, 1:23 am |
he described Islam as a “cancer” that needed to be treated with
“global chemotherapy”:“Western values, freedom of speech, democracy and rights for women are incompatible with Islam, which is a cancer eating away at our freedoms and our democracy and rights for our women and something needs to be done about it”.
Perfectly true. More people should say so.
It’s the racism and Lefty shiite that makes the BNP odious. If the media ignore that and focus on the perfectly reasonable Islamopohobia, his party’s popularity will increase.
| 11 July 2009, 2:08 am |
If I wanted to ramp up support for the BNP I’d find an issue that all polling data showed was massively important to voters – immigration or something. Then import 200,000 people every year into a massively over-crowded country. Hang on surely this isn’t happening? This is bound to result in disaster.
| 11 July 2009, 9:27 am |
All I can do is commend the police for not making things worse and playing into the hands of the likes of Griffin. At least someone is doing their bit to heal the community.
“TAKE IT EASY ON MUSLIM EXTREMISTS, POLICE TOLD”
POLICE will be ordered not to charge Muslim extremists in many hate crime cases – to stop them becoming more militant
Examples of crimes to which a blind eye may be turned include incitement to religious hatred or viewing extremist material on the internet.
Disaster averted!
This is going to lessen tensions and give these extremists time to reflect on how wonderful UK society is that we are prepared to be MORE tolerant to things like religious incitement. Will it cut both ways I wonder, not that anyone should ever be allowed to break the law we already have on religious incitement? Hang-on, wouldn’t that give Griffin a license? I guess not, unless he converts to Islam.
| 11 July 2009, 9:28 am |
Sorry, link, http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/113182/Take-it-easy-on-Muslim-extremists-police-told
| 11 July 2009, 10:08 am |
Just so we all know where we stand, Allan@Aberdeen is a BNP supporter and in his own words ‘quite a reasonable donor’ to the party. Here he is on the BNP site stating this and asking if he can come to their ‘Red, White & Blue’ festival.
| 11 July 2009, 12:17 pm |
Allan –
We don’t have to engage with Griffin’s comments. All we have to note is that he leads a Nazi front organisation and that his primary aim to is to create racial tension. He therefore uses legitimate concerns about Islam and hyper immigration into Europe to try and pursue his own agenda.
He is best ignored – or prosecuted.
| 11 July 2009, 12:40 pm |
Maybe someone should inform Nick Griffin that the trouble with chemotherapy is that it destroys good, healthy cells as well as cancerous ones.
Spot on, Israelinurse. Griffin’s prognosis must be that Western values are pretty near dead and he wouldn’t mind it being him that delivers the coup de grace.
It isn’t so long ago that Griffin was bumming round Libya and other points Islamic looking for funds.
| 11 July 2009, 2:03 pm |
If the BNP is the only group that will discuss Islam as a problem then they will be the ones to define how it is discussed. And if they’re smart they will continue to use it as a wedge issue. They must assume that what they say out loud is that many people say to themselves. If so, why should this not be discussed? As one poster mentioned, 250 Muslims have been arrested on terrorism charges and the British government has said there are thousands of British muslims who support terrorism; polls have shown widespread support among British Muslims for anti-gay sentiment; for Shari’a, etc. Why is this not a problem? This is how a Nazi party takes hold; when it and it alone give voice to the voiceless it will be the only one occupying that space.
| 11 July 2009, 3:13 pm |
Chemorherepy with Cymag – The new name for Zyclon B.
Have no doubt that is what thr Briyish Nonces Party have in mind for Blacks, W*gs. disidents, lefties and all us other subhuman creatures.
Old Sailor
| 11 July 2009, 4:19 pm |
Think of England –
There’s nothing wrong with Islam or immigration being discussed. But we don’t have to do it in relation to comments from ex, current or faux Nazis.
| 11 July 2009, 5:07 pm |
Ignorance is Bliss –
I’ve lived in the same household as a Muslim for two years, so they are not creatures from another planet as far as I am concerned. The issue is not whether they are Muslim but how much they believe in Islam. The same goes for other religions and ideologies.
I don’t have any friends who are fervent believers in Islam and I don’t have any who are fervent members of the BNP. I very much doubt I could have a friend who was an ultra Orthodox Jew or a strict Baptist.
My friends tend to be open minded people.
If you’d like to indicate which part of Islam you find attractive and would like to see adopted in the UK as a matter of public policy, please let me know. Is it the ban on visual representation? Murder of apostates? Cruel punishments for criminals? Oppression of women? Intolerance of criticism of the Prophet? Polygamy? Commitment to global Jihad until the victory over the whole planet is secured?
Do let us know…
| 11 July 2009, 6:55 pm |
Wardytron:
a party whose utter failure to exert any control whatsoever over immigration
Seriously, take your head out of your arse. Being a teenager is no excuse for this kind of air-headed, bullshit-swallowing nonsense. This government has exerted more draconian controls over immigration than any other peace-time government in British history. There is no way to make our immigration system any tighter, tougher, harder or whatever tabloid-pleasing epithet you want to use. There is no way to further stem the tide of illegal immigration unless we start shutting down all points of entry and exit – unless we impose Soviet-style restrictions on anyone leaving or coming in. You’re not a complete idiot and you shouldn’t be coming out with this kind of nonsense. Grow up.
| 11 July 2009, 8:33 pm |
Correct Edmund, I’m a BNP donor but I’ll bet that I spend much less time on the BNP’s website than you do. Clearly the amount of time that you spent trawling through the BNP’s comments in order to ‘out’ me means that I must have written something that you found difficult to argue with, hence the ‘outing’. BTW, does that mean that I should be banned, censored or similar? It would be a pity because I quite like reading and engaging with the more open-minded leftists found on this site.
| 11 July 2009, 10:11 pm |
Actually, Allan@Aberdeen, what you wrote on the BNP website was as follows:
“I’m not a member but I am quite a reasonable donor – can I get in if I come down?”
And the editor replied:
“You need to be a cardholder or a guest of a cardholder, AA. – Ed.”
Ah, how sweet!
So, did you get a bonehead to hold your hand and get you in?
| 11 July 2009, 11:01 pm |
Unfortunately you weren’t there, ermintrude. So I had to give it a miss.
| 11 July 2009, 11:46 pm |
Allan –
Here’s a simple equation for you:
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
You don’t like Islam – it seems because you think it’s a violent totalitarian movement that wants to dominate the planet.
But do you like Nazism – a violent totalitarian movement that wants to dominate the planet?
Do tell…
| 12 July 2009, 11:36 am |
Allan@Aberdeen
Ah, you play the old “the real Nazis are everyone who opposes/exposes us” gambit beloved of the BNP!
Somehow I don’t think I would be very welcome at the BNP’s pathetic annual garden fete cum Nuremburg Rally.
I’m very proud of that, actually – obviously I’m doing something right… whereas you are simply very wrong and have absolutely nothing to be proud of whatsoever.
Anyone who voted BNP as a supposed “protest vote” needs to face up to what they have done. They have let an overt fascist into the European Parliament.
These 2 recent statements clearly show the BNP’s true agenda – violent repression of illegal migration and a war against Islam. Truly a fascist agenda.