Griffin: Mythical beast – 50% lion, 50% eagle………… Nick Griffin: Racist twat – 100% weasel.

I thought I’d write a follow-up post regarding Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time. You know, strike while the iron’s hot. Of course, the best time to have done that would have been yesterday, but I didn’t get time. So now the iron isn’t so hot, but it’s still very warm. It’s on the two setting: not hot enough to iron cotton shirts, but still too high a setting for your delicates. You definitely wouldn’t go near silk with this heat, but it would be hopeless on, say, linen. I think you get my drift.

Anyway. I’m happy to report that my hastily compiled predictions were mostly correct. Griffin was hopeless. I thought he would be bad, but not as bad as this. I’d read pieces saying that he’s an educated man (he is – gasp! – a Cambridge graduate), a skilled orator and debater. Well, there was little evidence of that on Thursday: he made a complete hash of his big moment in the spotlight, looking like someone who wasn’t even able to convince himself of his own arguments, let alone anyone else.

When the leader of a nationalist, right wing organisation like the BNP is embarrassed about the very words coming out of his own mouth it underlines the fact that there is very little to fear from these people. He was most excruciating when defending his past comments on the Holocaust (“I can’t tell you why I said those things I said”) or when confronted on his meeting with David Duke, the leader of the Ku Klux Klan, in 2000 (Duke is the leader of “a” KKK, not “the” KKK apparently, and additionally, they are “almost entirely non-violent”. That’s right, just the odd lynching here, a burning cross there, tarring and feathering limited to public holidays, etc).

At times it was just painful to watch – like some sort of bloodsport. At other times I almost felt sorry for the man. But then I remembered that he’s a hate-mongering racist twat and the emotion passed. It was excruciating though: his nervous body language, his constant smile/grimace whenever he answered a question. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to make himself look friendly or if he was suffering from acid-reflux. Either way it was just sinister.

The BNP are claiming a bumper rise in new membership applications, but when this is defined as 3,000 people that’s really not a worrying statistic. The general populace could never support a party like this on a grand scale – their appeal is limited to the pathologically racist and a minority of white working class who believe their pernicious lies about immigration. Once the economy starts to turn around and unemployment drops the BNP will once more be consigned to the very fringes of society – their natural home.

Like it or not, Nick Griffin has a right to appear on Question Time

The British National Party is a detestable organisation. Dimwitted troglodytes in thrall to Nazis, they are an affront to everything that is truly British. They are a minority movement of racist thugs coated with a paper thin veneer of political respectability and they are worthy of nothing but contempt and derision. Nonetheless, they are a legal political party with a smattering of representation at a local and European level and as such are entitled to represent themselves on the BBC’s Question Time. Democracy isn’t served by slamming the door shut in the faces of those with whom we vehemently disagree, so those who argue that the BBC are obliged to pretend the BNP does not exist, that an increasing number of alienated and disenfranchised people are not voting for them, that they are not winning local council elections, that they will just go away if we ignore them are wrong. Well meaning, perhaps, but wrong.

The throng of protesters who have gathered at the BBC Television Centre this evening to demonstrate against Nick Griffin’s appearance are also exercising their democratic rights. But they are not helping and, given that the majority of them are almost certainly a rent-a-mob comprised of members of the Socialist Workers Party, they are little better than the fascists they are so opposed to anyway.

Griffin will thrive on this and will attempt to take the moral high ground: here he is, trying to engage in democratic discourse and violent lefties are laying the BBC building to siege and attempting to stop the show being recorded. As pointed out at Harry’s Place, the protesters are simply providing film footage for the BNP’s next party political broadcast. They’re playing right into their hands.

But no matter. While Griffin and his imbecilic cohorts are no doubt terribly excited about their upcoming appearance, they really shouldn’t be. Apart from some short-lived publicity, they are not going to benefit from this. Griffin will try and put up a good fight but his arguments cannot stand up to scrutiny. He will be torn apart by reason and subjected to what he fears the most, what all fascists fear the most: ridicule. He will be battered in this debate and he will be revealed for the intellectual lightweight he is, because apart from his poisonous views on race he has nothing else to talk about, nothing else to offer. I can think of no better way to expose the BNP for what it is than to have Griffin demonstrate his stammering ignorance on national television.

Nobody will be converted to his cause, while opposition to it will be hardened immeasurably.

Looking forward to it.

Daily Mail chief displays poor understanding of political ideology

Catching up on old news, did anyone else see our old friend Paul Dacre’s bizarre rant last week about the BBC and the ‘assault’ on British values? (Dacre is, for anyone unaware, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail. He usually keeps a very low profile, rarely giving interviews. He’s like the Willy Wonka of the British newspaper industry, although more sinister.) Most curious of all was his comment that the BBC is “exercising a kind of cultural Marxism”. Which doesn’t make a lot of sense, really. I suppose what he really means is that there is a leftist slant in the BBC’s news coverage (although I have always thought that such a charge is overstated a lot of the time – considering the sheer volume of news that the BBC covers, it remains neutral for the most part in my opinion). Norm has counter-argued this point better than I could, but to describe the Beeb as ‘Marxist’ is intellectually incoherent. There is no textbook definition for the term ‘Marxist’ anyway, but the defining characteristic would be an economic interpretation of history, with particular emphasis on who controls the means of production and the subsequent inherent contradictions of capitalism. Now, I can’t claim to consume all of the BBC’s daily output, but I don’t think they do this very often. By all means, accuse the BBC of having a left-wing bias, but please, if you’re going to brandish the term ‘Marxist’ at least demonstrate a basic understanding of what that means. I suggest, Mr Dacre, that you sign up for a course covering basic political philosophy.