Melanie Phillips: The true cause of the BNP’s rise
Melanie Phillips had this article published yesterday in the Daily Mail (also on her home page) and she comes out with her usual line about the BNP being a vile, racist party, but that politicians are to blame for its rise because they do not address the supposedly legitimate questions they raise. This is, of course, a fairly typical position of Phillips’s particular kind of right-wing bigot.
Phillips alleges that Griffin and his party have an appeal not because of their racism or because those who vote for them are racist, but because “he also opposes mass immigration, Islamisation and the loss of sovereignty to the EU”. He also opposes loss of sovereignty to the USA and involvement of British troops in American wars, but Phillips doesn’t, so she doesn’t mention that. She mentions her own personal hobby horses, none of them factually based, but ‘Islamisation’ had to be in there somewhere.
And there hasn’t been any, at least not unless you count increasing numbers of actual Muslim people, mosques and (in some places) Muslim schools. Yes, they look different and often dress differently, but so do certain other minorities. Of course, the nonsense about “Shari’ah courts” causes some concern, but they are only private tribunals for settling civil and family disputes as allowed by law, not criminal courts empowered to chop hands and heads off. It is all a storm in a teacup cooked up by the media to cause a sensation and thereby boost ratings and sell papers. Our supposed “loss of sovereignty to the EU” is also highly exaggerated; besides Ireland we are the only country that has not signed the Schengen accord, which would free us from having to use a passport to travel in the EU, as has already happened for citizens of other EU countries as well as Norway. This kind of isolationist nonsense won’t stop any invading army; it just avoids displeasing editors of mid-market tabloids with provincial readerships.
It may be true that the political classes are to blame for the rise of the BNP, but not for these three reasons. It is the commercial press which is to blame for whipping up resentment against Muslims and immigrants with exaggerated stories about “Muslim demands” based on dubious sources or the antics of one or two individuals or small groups. Besides the party’s own falsifications, including claiming murders in which the alleged victim turns out to be still alive, this is what the BNP feeds on, and it most likely can’t be refuted in a one-hour Question Time session.
She promotes Douglas Murray as an appropriate figure to oppose him on the grounds that he agrees with the bits of the BNP’s platform that she agrees with herself, but opposes the “nasty” bits, i.e. the racism and anti-Semitism. Douglas Murray is an anti-Muslim bigot with a dubious record on free speech, advocating in his Pim Fortuyn memorial lecture in February 2006 that “all immigration from Muslim countries must stop”, that any Muslim who condones violence against western troops anywhere in the world be forcibly deported, and that if he were born in the UK then he should be ‘returned’ to a parent’s or grandparent’s country of origin. As I noted here in July last year, Murray responded to assertions by Peter Oborne that various reports about violent Muslim behaviour were baseless with a story about a small group who plotted to murder a soldier, and an individual, a Muslim dentist, who tried to dictate a dress code to his Muslim female patients. Murray conveniently overlooked the fact that incidents involving tiny numbers of people, or outright trivial incidents, were given exaggerated importance; in fact, he was doing the same in his article.
I’m not sure if Bonnie Greer would be any better as an opponent, but it’s all academic, because Griffin should not be on the programme anyway. They need to be exposed as fascists who are looking to exploit any crisis and using dishonest rhetoric, such as talk of “identity” rather than race, which is what they say they are when they think nobody unsympathetic is listening. It’s true that there are other parties which have their fair share of bigots, but no other party seems to have such a high proportion of violent, racist criminals. To oppose him with the likes of Douglas Murray, who confirms Griffin’s currently most prominent prejudice while decrying the anti-Semitism and anti-Black racism he is trying to play down, is to play into his hands and both insult and risk injuring the targets of his prejudices. The policy should remain “no platform”.
Possibly Related Posts:
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- JPost editorial tells Europe how to deal with Muslim women
- Mad Mel: ban Shari’ah to stop terrorism
- How the 2006 niqab affair popularised the BNP
- BNP on the BBC: stupidity or deception?
Mooslems are outnumbering Joooooos; that is basically it. We should close their shops in Israel so they could all come back and live happily ever after.
Salam alaikum,
Though there is much in her article that I disagree with, it did seem to be one of her better attempts. However, I agree with you that the rising appeal of the BNP has more to do with horror stories in the media than to anything that politicians have failed to do.
I get the impression from various comments that my neighbours are leaning towards the BNP, which surprised me at first as they are the loveliest of people. When I noticed that The Express often sits on their coffee table, though, I was somewhat less surprised.
If politicians have failed in anything (although whether it is their role is another matter), it is in not challenging spurious tales. Someone with influence really needed to say something about the case of St John’s Longsight, for example, to counteract the streams of chain-letter emails currently making their rounds. We’ve reached some low when you hear ordinary people talking of the genocide Muslims are carrying out in our midst.
Still, I do think Philips has a point about the panelists, even if her prime choice is somewhat wayward. William Hague, perhaps, might have been a good choice. Right-wing and white, I’m sure his challenges would carry more weight in the eyes of viewers.
Griffin’s appearance at all, though, is clearly questionable. On the one hand there is the feeling his views should be exposed, but the fear is the publicity will do for the BNP what media coverage did for LePenn’s party in France in the 1980s. I don’t know the platform well enough to judge. I do listen to Any Questions on BBC Radio 4 on Friday evenings, but without a TV, Question Time has passed me by. I’d like to think the audience is intelligent and analytical. I fear that might be too optimistic a hope. Tim´s last blog ..Extinguishing the fires of fitna
Salaams Tim, I’m sure you could watch Question Time on iPlayer. Perhaps wait until afterwards, though, because demand is likely to be huge.
This is a phenomenon that the philosopher Slavoj Zizek has talked about. Mainstream journalists/politicians saying that we need a little xenophobia in order to prevent greater xenophobia.
Rabbi Medan: Moral Weakness Allows Islam to Take Over the World http://www.israelnationalnews......spx/133952
str8 from the mouth of Melanie’s teacher. Mooslems are taking over!
Salaam Alaikum,
Your last line sums up my feelings exactly: No Platform for fascists.
I nearly died laughing at the last para of the above article. It says of the BNP “no other party seems to have such a high proportion of violent, racist criminals”. Nonsense: Labour and the Tories have vastly more violent racist criminals.
Labour plus Tories invaded an Arab country on the basis of doctored intelligence reports and a pack of lies (more or less the reasons Hitler invaded Poland). A million Muslims and Kurds died as a result. And no, they didn’t die peacefully under anaesthetic: most of them died “violently” to use your phraseology.
In contrast, the BNP always opposed the war. That makes Labour plus Tories about a million times as racist as the BNP. Though under pressure I might reduce the latter million to a “mere” hundred thousand, or even, at a push, to ten thousand.