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Would you CONSIDER voting for the BNP |
YES |
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25% |
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NO |
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50% |
[ 8 ] |
MAYBE |
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18% |
[ 3 ] |
DON'T KNOW |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
DON"T CARE |
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6% |
[ 1 ] |
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Total Votes : 16 |
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patongpanda

Joined: 06 Feb 2007
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Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 4:45 am Post subject: Brits: Would you CONSIDER voting for the BNP? |
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From the Guardian:
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Main parties unite to tackle BNP threat in European elections
The three main political parties will meet tomorrow tomorrow at Westminster to try to agree common ground rules on how to fight the British National party in the European election on 4 June.
The meeting will look at a loose code of conduct, including an early warning system if any party finds a rival candidate is resorting to semi-racist remarks or literature.
The idea of imposing a blanket policy of refusing to share a platform with the BNP, something the Tories oppose, will also be discussed.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/11/bnp-european-elections
http://www.bnp.org.uk
I wouldn't actually vote for them because I'm not on the Electoral Register, but I am intrigued by their policies.
EXCEPT that they believe British-ness to be defined by race, which might have been a sane idea in the 1950s but it's not viable now, or desirable by 90% of the population.
My thinking is that if regular people joined the party, and as they gained political power their more wacko aspects would be abandoned.
What do you think? (And no name-calling). |
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ED209
Joined: 17 Oct 2006
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Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 7:08 am Post subject: Re: Brits: Would you CONSIDER voting for the BNP? |
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patongpanda wrote: |
My thinking is that if regular people joined the party...
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That would be regular white people. What appeal does the BNP have to these people now? Why would they join, sabotage?
What needs to be addressed is public concern over immigration, in particular from Muslim countries. This does not necessarily mean adopting polices of the BNP or even tightening immigration. [/quote] |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003 Location: I walk along the avenue
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Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 7:27 am Post subject: |
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What needs to be addressed is public concern over immigration, in particular from Muslim countries. This does not necessarily mean adopting polices of the BNP or even tightening immigration. |
Assuming you're from the UK, how would you characterize this "public concern over immigration"? What sort of specific issues does it focus on? |
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Big_Bird

Joined: 31 Jan 2003 Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 8:35 pm Post subject: |
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Urgh. The BNP.
I once knew a BNP member. A strange contradictory character married to (and still madly in love with) a half-Turkish lass, who didn't seem to mind his white supremacist nonsense.
She was an old friend of my boyfriend, and one day they came round and they had just watched Schindler's List. He was quite teary-eyed and emotional about it. He'd found it awfully sad. Those poor people. He never knew! But he then went on and on about how sure he was that Hitler was a good guy and never knew anything about such terrible happenings. How I tried not to laugh. They're not usually terribly bright, these BNP members.
Anyway, I was just reading this article and thought I'd contribute it to the thread:
The BNP represents Britain's workers? They don't even represent basic British craftsmanship
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was born in the 70s and grew up in a tiny rural village. There was, I think, only one black kid in my primary school. One day, someone pushed him over and called him "blackjack". The headmaster called an impromptu assembly. It involved the entire school, and took place outdoors. No doubt: this was unusual.
We stood in military rows in the playground. I must have been about six, so I can't remember the words he used, but the substance stuck. He spoke with eerie, measured anger. He'd fought in the second world war, he told us. Our village had a memorial commemorating friends of his who had died. Many were relatives of ours. These villagers gave their lives fighting a regime that looked down on anyone "different", that tried to blame others for any problem they could find; a bullying, racist regime called "the Nazis". Millions of people had died thanks to their bigotry and prejudice. And he told us that anyone who picked on anyone else because they were "different' wasn't merely insulting the object of their derision, but insulting the headmaster himself, and his dead friends, and our dead relatives, the ones on the war memorial. And if he heard of anyone - anyone - using racist language again, they'd immediately get the slipper.
Corporal punishment was still alive and well, see. The slipper was his nuclear bomb.
It was the first time I was explicitly told that racism was unpleasant and it was a lesson served with a side order of patriot fries. Or rather, chips. Our headmaster had fought for his country, and for tolerance, all at once. That's what I understood it meant to be truly "British": to be polite, and civil and fair of mind. (And to occasionally wallop schoolkids with slippers, admittedly, but we'll overlook that, OK? We've moved on.)
But according to the BNP, I'm wrong. Being British is actually about feeling aggressed, mistrustful, overlooked, isolated, powerless, and petrified of "losing my identity". Britishness incorporates a propensity to look around me with jealous eyes, fuming over imaginary sums of money being doled out to child-molesting asylum-seekers by corrupt PC politicians who've lost touch with the common man - a common man who, coincidentally, happens to be white.
They're wrong, obviously. None of these qualities has anything whatsoever to do with being British, but everything to do with ugly nationalist politics. And ugly nationalist politics are popular all over the world. Just like Pringles. Every country has its own tiny enclave of frightened, disenfranchised, misguided souls clinging to their national flag, claiming they're the REAL patriots, saying everyone's out to get them. It's an international weakness. For the BNP to claim to be more British than the other British parties is as nonsensical as your dad suddenly claiming to have invented the beard.
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JMO

Joined: 18 Jul 2006 Location: Daegu
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Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 10:53 pm Post subject: Re: Brits: Would you CONSIDER voting for the BNP? |
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patongpanda wrote: |
EXCEPT that they believe British-ness to be defined by race, which might have been a sane idea in the 1950s
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This was not even a sane idea in the 1950s. If you mean white..then most of Europe was just as white and basically identical genetically in 1950. That would define 'Britishness' as 'same as most of western europe'. |
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Neil
Joined: 02 Jan 2004 Location: Tokyo
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Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 11:51 pm Post subject: |
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No, if you want a curbing or a stop to immigration, there are many choices, UKIP is stongly against it, most of the Conservative party will make noises about how bad it is (they are smart enough to understand it's good for the economy so won't ban it outright but will make token gestures to appease the mail) and you might even find an old Labour MP with a 'British jobs for British workers' attitude.
With this amount of options for your vote, there's no need to go for a party with a track record of violence and holocaust denial.
With regards to Islamic immigration, I'm actually more on the mises way of thinking than BBs, but unlike the BNP I've got no problems with Polish, Indian, Chinese or Australians coming over, good luck to them. |
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Sergio Stefanuto
Joined: 14 May 2009 Location: UK
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Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 12:16 am Post subject: |
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They're unelectable, so no. That's not the only reason, but even if I did share the BNP's views, I wouldn't vote for them anyway. Any enjoyment I get from seeing them become more popular, as a nice big screw you to the moral and cultural relativists (and the religious left), is more than offset by the racist nature of the party. |
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patongpanda

Joined: 06 Feb 2007
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Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 1:39 am Post subject: Re: Brits: Would you CONSIDER voting for the BNP? |
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ED209 wrote: |
patongpanda wrote: |
My thinking is that if regular people joined the party...
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That would be regular white people. What appeal does the BNP have to these people now? Why would they join, sabotage?
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I was thinking of an analogy to the non-Socialists who joined the Labour Party prior to the amendment of Clause IV in 1995.
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"To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service."
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clause_IV
Why did they join the Labour Party if they didn't agree with it's constitution?
Probably 'cause they wanted the Conservatives out and they thought the Labour Party was the best option?
Lo and behold new people joined the party, socialist principles were thrown out and we have all enjoyed a decade of glorious New-Labour government.
Why do dyed-in-the-wool Socialists remain in the Labour Party? I guess lots of people don't agree with major policies of the party they belong to or vote for, they are just making the best of a bad bunch. |
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Big_Bird

Joined: 31 Jan 2003 Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 1:57 am Post subject: |
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Neil wrote: |
With regards to Islamic immigration, I'm actually more on the mises way of thinking than BBs, but unlike the BNP I've got no problems with Polish, Indian, Chinese or Australians coming over, good luck to them. |
Hi Neil,
would you mind giving me a brief outline of my views on immigration please? That would be great. |
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Neil
Joined: 02 Jan 2004 Location: Tokyo
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Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 2:31 am Post subject: |
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I'm not going to be that guy who spends hours trawling through someones posting history to find something that backs up his opinion.
I simply assumed from the tone of your posts that you were in favour of it. If I was presumptuous then I apologise. |
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Big_Bird

Joined: 31 Jan 2003 Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 2:39 am Post subject: |
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Neil wrote: |
I'm not going to be that guy who spends hours trawling through someones posting history to find something that backs up his opinion.
I simply assumed from the tone of your posts that you were in favour of it. If I was presumptuous then I apologise. |
Apology accepted. I don't believe I have ever discussed my views on immigration on these forums, so I was very surprised to discover you knew of them!
I deal with the issue of how to treat the people who have already immigrated, not with whether or not their immigration was prudent in the first place. We, for reasons of economics, invited them here. Not for their benefit. For ours. It's not an issue I'm particularly interested in discussing either. |
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Big_Bird

Joined: 31 Jan 2003 Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 2:54 am Post subject: |
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Neil wrote: |
I've got no problems with Polish, Indian, Chinese or Australians coming over, good luck to them. |
When Muslims were invited to come over and 'rebuild the mother country' nobody expected any trouble from them, and frankly there wasn't for decades. [Still, I don't believe the majority of them are that problematic, either.]
So how do you know that Indian Hindus or some element of the Chinese population wont become a concern in the future? Are you able to predict which demographic will become troublesome decades from now?
The Hindu fundamentalists are absolute f***ers in India, massacres are not uncommon there. Every few years there seems to be a big flare up, with innocents being slaughtered in quite horrific fashion. The Chinese triads have been a problem in Australia. Etc etc. How are you able to determine which populations will give rise to trouble years into the future?
I'm not arguing against immigration (I'm not interested in going there). But I'm asking how you arrive at your choices. |
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Neil
Joined: 02 Jan 2004 Location: Tokyo
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Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 5:11 am Post subject: |
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Because Hindus and Chinese have been coming to the UK for the same amount of time as Muslims but they seem to have left any cultural baggage behind. I can't think of any 'honour killings' or anti British protests from the Chinese or Indian populations. North America has huge Indian and Chinese communities in all of their major cities, yet their are no far right NA movements who have the same electoral sucess as the BNP.
I don't think multi culturalism is a bad thing, if one looks at the countries with the highest standard of living all bar Japan (where ironically enough I am an immigrant!) have some degree of multicultarism...how I arrived at my choices was simply living in Pakistani parts of town and seeing their level of assimilation was far less than those of other groups. I don't advocate any discrimination against Muslims and I think immigration is a good thing (even through you don't want to talk about it) but I just favour alternatives to Islamic immigration.
In general I don't think most of the world is that different, I moved from England to Korea and yes I did the usual esl monkey whining about Koreans at first, after I grew up a bit I realised Koreans aren't that much different from us, we work hard, we play hard...Koreans need to lighten up regards to their xenophobia but they aint bad people it'll come in time....I've probably broke bread with 30 different nationalities in my time, and have felt they would all settle fine in my country and I would in theirs given the opportunity, never felt that way about the Pakistanis I encountered, even the secular guys have such a degree of anti semitism, homophobia and sexism I felt uncomtable drinking (yes they were that secular!) with them.
I lived in the UK for 25 years (in London not a northerm city where I understand tensons are higher) and on more than one occassion on this forum I've spoken out against the "UK is finished brigade" who usually have never been outside NA or the ROK as I only see Islamic immigration as a minor problem, it is still a tiny % of the population. |
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bigverne

Joined: 12 May 2004
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Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 6:56 am Post subject: |
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On the other hand wrote: |
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What needs to be addressed is public concern over immigration, in particular from Muslim countries. This does not necessarily mean adopting polices of the BNP or even tightening immigration. |
Assuming you're from the UK, how would you characterize this "public concern over immigration"? What sort of specific issues does it focus on? |
Overpopulation. Wage deflation. Islamic terrorism. Creation of inner-city ghettoes. Islamic extremism. The transformation of once identifiable British urban areas in multi-cultural melting pots. Importation of ethnic criminal gangs and poverty.
Immigration has been running at record levels for the last 10 years, yet none of the main 3 parties are really interested in addressing it, so opposition is left to a bunch of race obsessed arseholes like the BNP. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007 Location: retired
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Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2009 9:32 am Post subject: |
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Why do Brits vote BNP?
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The images of the walkout at Total's Immingham refinery are easily sold as semi-skilled workers unable, and unwilling, to deal with the nature of globalisation. But for many across the country the situation of the Total workers are their worst fears made animate, a situation that speaks of a government that will not look after its own citizens but rather prioritises foreign workers.
For these people, the silence of politicians on immigration is indicative of their lack of care for their workers.
The effects of this are striking. The BNP vote was easily passed off as a protest vote, but the council and European election results stand alongside the Immingham strikes as a product of the vast, cloying silence on migration and employment that covers the centre ground: a silence that has done nothing but produce disenchantment and alienation among many.
Regardless of whether they are baseless or not, many people hold fears on the effects of immigration. A recent Harris/FT poll showed that over 55 per cent of people were opposed to citizens of other EU countries becoming employed in the UK, a figure you feel would rise higher if the poll took opinions on those from outside the EU.
A 2008 YouGov poll, commissioned by Channel 4, indicated that 83 per cent of people felt there was an immigration crisis at present. Eighty-four per cent were in favour of stopping immigration completely and a further 66 per cent felt their livelihoods were being 'undercut' by migrants.
It is not that immigration isn't debated, but that it has become a tool for, at best, political point scoring: an issue upon which much is said, but very little ventured.
Among the parties, there is an uneasy alliance on points-based migration, but one feels that it is a reactive measure designed to paper over the cracks in each party's policies, rather than provide a well thought out and pragmatic response to flows of immigration and the tides of people's concerns.
Frontbench MPs have studiously avoided the limelight on this issue, political strategists on both side aware that speaking freely on migration is akin to walking on hot coals. Speaking outside the party line on immigration is, it seems, an issue solely for backbenchers, those unafraid that they may be 'contaminated' by the ill winds that presage debates on immigration.
Consequently, the parameters of the debate have become increasingly narrow. Among both frontbenches there is an almost unspoken agreement that nobody will light the fuse on the powder keg. Yet the nature of representative politics is failed by this. While immigration is being discussed openly in the streets, the pubs and the clubs of Britain, it has not translated into the discourse of British political parties, the ill effects of Powell's 'rivers of blood' speech still holding sway over today's front bench. But those who feel that they are being ignored in mainstream debate are finding parties that speak for them: even if it is with a forked tongue.
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http://www.politics.co.uk/interviews/communities-and-local-government/comment-silence-on-immigration-fails-us-all-$1307013.htm
I've been saying this for years now. If you take some of the most important problems to the people out of the realm of public discussion then the people will turn to aggressive political organizations, as only they will speak about the concerns of the people.
Steyn is much more articulate than I:
http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/2178/
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To promote a greater sense of Euro-harmony, the European Parliament�actually, make that the European �Parliament��is organized into ideological blocs, ensuring that French liberals sit with Slovene liberals, and Belgian greens sit with Latvian greens, rather than hunkering down in their ethnic ghettoes. The largest bloc is the �centre-right,� the second-largest are the socialists, and the third is now the �non-inscrits,� the bloc for people who don�t want to belong to blocs. As a result of this month�s election, this Groucho Marxist grouping of �Others� tripled in size to just under a hundred seats. So, if they�re not liberals, socialists, greens, �European democrats� or the �Nordic Green Left,� what the hell are they?
Okay, here goes. The members of the non-bloc bloc include: one member of the �True Finns� party; one member of the Slovak National Party; two members of the British National Party; two members of the Austrian Freedom Party; two members of the Vlaams Belang, the �Flemish Interest� party; two members of the Civic Union, which sounds like a gay marriage in Vermont but is in fact an offshoot of the Latvian nationalist For Fatherland And Freedom Party; three members of France�s National Front; three members of Jobbik, the Hungarian nationalist party; three members of the Greater Romania Party . . .
Well, you get the picture. The European Parliament isn�t exactly working out as Lord Tennyson foresaw:
�. . . the war-drum throbb�d no longer, and the battle-flags were furl�d / In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.
�There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe / And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.�
A Federation of Euro-harmony filled by ultra-nationalist xenophobes is almost too droll a jest. My favourite of these new national parties is Ataka, which is a Bulgarian word meaning�oh, go on, take a wild guess. That�s right: �Attack.� What a splendidly butch name. The Attack party was formed from last year�s merger of the Bulgarian National Patriotic Party, the Union of Patriotic Forces and the National Movement for the Salvation of the Fatherland, and in nothing flat managed to get 13 per cent of the vote.
Like Attack, many of these lively additions to the political scene favour party emblems that slyly evoke swastikas while bending the prongs in different directions just enough to maintain deniability. Other than that, they don�t have a lot in common with their colleagues in the no-bloc bloc. I don�t just mean in the sense that the leader of the Slovak National Party said a couple of years back, �Let�s all get in tanks and go and flatten Budapest,� which presumably is not a policy position the Hungarian nationalists in Jobbik would endorse. But there are broader differences, too. The SNP is antipathetic to homosexuals, whereas Krisztina Morvai, the attractive blonde Jobbik member just elected to the Euro-parliament, is a former winner of the Freddie Mercury Prize for raising AIDS awareness. I can�t be the only political analyst who wishes that, instead of a victory speech last Sunday, Doktor Morvai had stood on the table in black tights and bellowed out, �We Are The Champions.�
Like our chums at Canada�s �human rights� commissions, Doktor Morvai is a �human rights� activist�and, indeed, a former delegate to the UN Women�s Rights Committee. One thing a woman has a right to is an uncircumcised *beep*. In the course of her successful election campaign, the good doctor told Hungarian Jews to �go back to playing with their tiny little circumcised tails.� I don�t know what Krisztina has against circumcised penises, but it�s probably not her pelvis.
It�s unclear whether any member of the Austrian Freedom Party has won the Freddie Mercury Prize, but its late leader, J�rg Haider, wound up pushing up edelweiss eight months ago when he flipped his Volkswagen limo after leaving a gay bar in Klagenfurt somewhat the worse for wear. �He never helped his family man image by turning up at rallies and local events with an entourage of young blond men,� reported the Daily Mail. �Newspapers in his homeland said they were reluctant to publish �full details� of his homosexuality fearing an outburst of hate toward the gay community would overtake hatred towards foreigners.�
Er, if you say so. So hard to know who to hate first, isn�t it? And you�ve gotta be able to prioritize.
In Austria�s Euro-election, two explicitly anti-immigrant parties won 18 per cent of the vote. In the United Kingdom, meanwhile, the new nationalist vote was divided between the British National Party and the UK Independence Party, which favours British withdrawal from the European Union and managed to elect 13 members to the European Parliament, winning 17 per cent of the vote and pushing Gordon Brown�s Labour Party into third place. The two seats won by the BNP represent the first victory in a national election by any British Fascist party, however squishily one cares to define that term. Seventy years ago, under Sir Oswald Mosley, a far more charismatic leader than the BNP�s Nick Griffin, the British Union of Fascists never managed to elect a single local councillor.
So the electors of the United Kingdom crossed a dark Rubicon this month. For 40 years, London�s Europhile politico-media elites have attempted to impose a �European identity� on the masses, condescendingly assuring the British people that they are, indeed, European, they�re just too parochial and ill-informed to realize it. Thus the paradox: in its rejection of Europe, the British electorate has never been more European. The Brits have finally got with the program: just like the Continentals, they�re voting for fascists.
Woody Guthrie used to have a label on his guitar: �This Machine Kills Fascists.� Not true, of course. Just the usual self-flattery to which singing Commies are prone. But, in the room where they cook up European conventional wisdom, they could easily pin a sign on the door saying: �This Political Machine Creates Fascists.� One can forgive Bulgaria its wackier demagogues: they are, after all, only two decades removed from one-party totalitarianism. But, in the western half of Continental Europe, politics evolved to the point where almost any issue worth talking about was ruled beyond the bounds of polite society. In good times, it doesn�t matter so much. But in bad times, if the political culture forbids respectable politicians from raising certain issues, then the electorate will turn to unrespectable ones. Europe has taken a worse hit than North America in the first crisis of economic globalization: unemployment in Spain, for example, is over 17 per cent. To the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, this �crisis of capitalism� is the biggest event since the fall of the Soviet Union. But, if it�s a �crisis of capitalism,� why did the mainstream Euro-left take the electoral hit rather than the mainstream Euro-right? Instead of turning to socialist parties promising more state booty, voters boosted the fortunes of the neo-nationalists. Many of these groups are economically protectionist (and in some cases more �left wing� than, say, the British Labour Party) but they�re also culturally protectionist in a way the polytechnic left most certainly isn�t.
On the day of the European elections, the Toronto Sun�s Lorrie Goldstein responded to my observations about his recent column accusing Tamilphobic Canadians of racism. �I wish,� sighed Mr. Goldstein, �Steyn would spend more time disagreeing with what racists say and less time defending their right to say it.� But that�s kind of a crowded market for a pundit to get a piece of the action in. I mean, Canada surely doesn�t need one more delicate flower shrieking �Racism!� at every affront to the multiculti pieties. That hypersensitivity is what�s helped deliver more and more of the European vote to �fringe� parties. You want to talk about immigration? Whoa, racist! Crime? Racist! Welfare? Racist! Islam? Racistracistdoubleracist!!! Nya-nya, can�t hear you with my two anti-racist thumbs in my ears!
Already, the European political class is congratulating itself at holding the tide of neo-nationalism to the low double-digits. I�d say some of these results are pretty remarkable given that these parties are all but excluded from the public discourse and that even a relatively mild dissenter from the consensus such as the Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders has been banned from setting foot in Britain and is undergoing prosecution for his views in the Netherlands. What makes the Labour Party �mainstream� with 15 per cent of the vote and UKIP the �fringe� with 17 per cent? Nothing, other than the blinkers of the politico-media class. But if you want to drive the electorate toward the wilder shores in ever greater numbers, keep crying �Racist!� at every opportunity.
Things are not going to get any prettier in the next European electoral cycle. Aside from professions of �horror� at the success of the neo-nationalists, there is now talk of shutting down these parties by using the legal system (as was done in Belgium) or by denying them the public funding to which their share of the vote entitles them. Subverting democracy to suppress neo-nationalism doesn�t seem a smart move. But then if the political class were that smart it wouldn�t be in this situation. The problem in Europe is not a lunatic fringe but a lunatic mainstream ever more estranged from its voters. |
It the mainstream won't touch mainstream concerns the mainstream will get marginalized. Expect much more from Wilders and the BNP. We're just getting started. |
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