{"id":1867,"date":"2009-05-31T15:27:19","date_gmt":"2009-05-31T14:27:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/mt.php\/2009\/05\/31\/the_two_faces_of_the_bnp"},"modified":"2009-05-31T15:27:19","modified_gmt":"2009-05-31T14:27:19","slug":"the_two_faces_of_the_bnp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/mt.php\/2009\/05\/31\/the_two_faces_of_the_bnp","title":{"rendered":"The two faces of the BNP"},"content":{"rendered":"

The rise of British racism may be horribly close — The Spectator<\/a><\/p>\n

Fraser Nelson goes “on the stump” (meaning, out knocking on doors) with BNP activists in Hertfordshire and discovers that people are no longer convinced that the BNP are the same racist thugs they were ten years ago, and that even local Black people are receptive to parts of their message (see page 3<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

As Mr Dunne continues down the road, this is his pledge. \u2018I\u2019ll work for you, the Lib-Lab con will not.\u2019 In itself, it\u2019s a bland and unremarkable democratic proposition. But what strikes me is that the letters BNP are not in themselves off-putting. I wonder why until we meet a lady in the next house. \u2018Only ignorant or illiterate people think the BNP is about black vs white,\u2019 she says. \u2018The BNP principles are absolutely fine. The issue is about immigration \u2014 and this government is soft in letting everyone in.\u2019 To hear this from a swing voter is disarming, to say the least. But what makes the remark so staggering is that the woman who utters it is black.<\/p>\n

She immigrated from Jamaica aged three, and proudly considers herself British, \u2018which is why I wasn\u2019t happy when they sprayed \u201cNF\u201d on my car.\u2019 Mr Dunne sympathises. \u2018My parents came here when they said \u201cno dogs, no Irish,\u201d\u2019 he said. \u2018But you work your way up, obey the laws.\u2019 The lady nods. The question of racism and anxiety about immigration \u2014 so often conflated in Westminster \u2014 are totally separate matters in her mind. Not only does she not regard the BNP as racist, she believes this to be a slur.<\/p>\n

That the BNP is racist is, of course, not a matter of opinion. It has a whites-only membership policy, for example, and while it no longer supports compulsory repatriation, there are no prizes for guessing its definition of \u2018indigenous population\u2019. But there is no hint of this on the campaign trail. The letters BNP are, to me, hatefully synonymous with racism and all its sickening implications. But the people who have BNP posters in their windows regard this primarily as a gesture of defiance, a protest, a means of throwing stones at the glass of the Palace of Westminster.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The BNP play up their so-called record on local issues (in fact, BNP councillors are notorious for incompetence) and the corruption of Westminster, and replace anti-Black rhetoric with a focus on Muslims and “political correctness” (actually, most of these stories are exaggerated), and thus do well in areas with a substantial Muslim population (however, they lose support in areas with a heavy Black population).<\/p>\n

What the BNP really think of Black people<\/a> is revealed in some of their blogs and Facebooks: one of their candidates set their Facebook status to read “Wogs go home”, while an organiser in Essex headed a blog entry about a stabbing in London with “Another teen stabbed in Coon Town” and showed a racist mock-up of the US dollar labelled “Obama Wog Dollar”. Several of their activists, including Griffin, have criminal convictions for violent and racist actions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The rise of British racism may be horribly close — The Spectator Fraser Nelson goes “on the stump” (meaning, out knocking on doors) with BNP activists in Hertfordshire and discovers that people are no...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52],"tags":[700,709,710],"class_list":["post-1867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-far_right","tag-bnp","tag-fraser_nelson","tag-nick_griffin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p17bgV-u7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}