The British National Party Replies

British National Party Salute72 hours after I posted an item in which I accused the British National Party of treason, I have received 3 items which heartily disagree with my views. I am rather disappointed. I thought that having poked the BNP with a stick, there would be a lot more squealing.

What is particularly interesting about these three items is that they all have a familiar echo; I’ve seen much the same said at other websites, with just a few changes in word order or emphasis. It would not surprise me, given how inarticulate the average British National Party member seems to be, if there was a document which provided a standard set of responses to posts like mine. That said, a public service may be achieved by repeating them here: at least the propaganda gurus down at BNP headquarters might realise they need to come up with something new. Being wrong is one thing, being dull is quite another; the pro-BNP responses I’ve received managed to be both.

The first bit of “diss mail” comes from someone who identifies himself as Colin Davies. He writes:

I think that you are totally miguided by the BNP priorities. It is ok for the likes of you to accept all immigration from Europe Asia and the rest of the would as most of these people would like to kill our Queen and are traitors. I as now have always opposed entry into the EU from the 1970’s and my grandfather fought for the likes of you to be able to live in a free country. But he fought to free us from German occupation in WW1. Now we are being infested by people from abroard who take British jobs and our benefits. Keep Britain British and our defenders like the Ghurkas who will defend who system not try to bomb it. If we were striker on immigration the London bombings etc would not have happened. I can only hope that your family are a not a victim of terrorist attacks before you come to your senses.

This post is a good example of how the BNP substitutes paranoia and phony history for reason and fact. First and foremost, the idea that “most” immigrants want to kill the Queen is patently absurd; it is a “fact” for which there is no proof. Indeed, the vast majority of migrants to this country work, pay taxes and live quietly. Given the security lapses around Her Majesty, if Mr. Davies was correct, surely she would have been killed already. The numbers he suggests make it logically impossible for it to be otherwise.

Now let’s deal with his assertion that his forebears fought for liberty; as I have previously mentioned in my blog, my forebears did their bit too. However, the idea that what they fought for in World War II is preserved by an ideology whose heritage lies with the people they fought against is patently ridiculous. It may be worth recalling how the most visible symbol of the resistance to fascism during World War II, Winston Churchill, felt about Hitler. He stated this clearly in a speech to the Allied delegates in June 1941:

…nothing is more certain that every trace of Hitler’s footsteps, every stain of his infected, corroding fingers will be sponged and purged and, if need be, blasted from the surface of the earth.

The British National Party, perversely, has tried to claim Churchill as one of their own; however, Churchill’s own grandson has labelled this hijacking as “disgusting”. Just so.

In short, Mr. Davies’ missive is a crude appeal to patriotism and shame. It’s trying to substitute emotion for facts; such an exchange is not a particular tradition of these Isles.

The next piece of negative commentary which flowed my way came from a Dennis Whiting:

If the BNP is racist” (that weasel word!) then the whole of our British literature and culture is “racist”. Shakespeare in Henry V saw the Englishman as distinct from the Scotsman the Irish man and the Welshman and certainly from the French foe. Why then today is it impermissible to see the Englishman as distinct from the Pakistani the black African or the Chinaman? G..K. Chesterton hit the nail on the head when he wrote in his poem The Secret People
“But we are the people of England and we have not spoken yet”
It is unfortunate if the BNP in our attempt to play the demeaning party political game come across as a bit vulgar and strident, but we have a lot to be strident about! And incidently that dismal clown Gordon Brown stole the slogan BRITISH JOBS FOR BRITISH WORKERS from us, not the other way round.

This has a number of false assertions to begin with – first and foremost, racism is not the same as identifying a place of origin. What is racist, however, is to discriminate against someone because of where they come from. Furthermore, it is also racist to exclude someone from the national community on the basis of their place of origin, or indeed, where their parents or grandparents came from. Mr. Whiting, it would seem, would like to salve whatever passes for his conscience by bandaging it with Shakespeare’s text.

As for “vulgar and strident”: this is not how the British National Party “comes across”, vulgar ideas on racial superiority were part and parcel of the founding ideology of its predecessor, the British Union of Fascists. Vulgar ideas which prejudge Muslim citizens are inherent in the BNP’s present creed. Furthermore, one can’t come across as more “strident” than by being a paramilitary organisation, as the BUF was; it is also telling that the modern BNP have attacked anti-racist demonstrations, such as in Hull, last December. Such “stridency” is not just immoral and undemocratic, it’s illegal.

The final bit of post was sent by a respondent who calls himself by the curious moniker of “Decent” and hails from Australia. He wrote the following:

You may harp and whine over the BNPs pedigree[which is rather horrid], you may waste away the hours on your imagined steady ground of a cultural “Britishness” that cannot exist when the people who made that culture die out, but in the end you cannot do anything to stop what is coming.

And thanks to people like yourself the BNP probably cant either.

Because for all its faults both real and imagined its the only group in the UK who seems the slightest bit interested in representing the indigenous population.

And before you carp on about the “nation of immigrants” rubbish the last major population transfer to the UK was some 1400 years ago, if this does not qualify as “indigenous” then neither do the Maori of New Zealand, and I dare you to argue that with them.

The Indigenous population of the UK will be replaced, and the culture of openess and tolerance you seem to worship will die out with them, currently the only contender to form the next culture of the British ilses (sic) is Islam, I hope you live long enough to realise just how very wrong the choice you have made was.

While I commend him for realising the history of the BNP is horrible, the author of this missive has a rather curious manner in responding to a post which he says is “harping and whining”; the same accusation could be legitimately levelled at him.

In any event, he (purposefully?) ignored the history that I laid out before him: that Britain was made by waves of immigration, sometimes mass immigration, and its culture now was realised through an eventual working through the event with the new arrivals. For all his concerns that British culture is being somehow “swamped”, which is rather curious considering his distance from it, he has failed to learn its cardinal lesson: Britain is a flexible, adaptable country that evolves over time, and gets ever richer in its heritage as time goes on. The United Kingdom is not alone in this, in fact, no culture is ever set in stone: trying to harp back to some mythical golden age is unfounded, because it never existed. The Saxons weren’t happy about the arrival of the Normans either, and unlike the recent arrivals, the Normans carried all before them by use of the sword. Some immigrants will bring downsides with them; there is no denying this. However, plenty of “native” citizens have downsides too: if he doesn’t believe this, he should see what happens outside some of the pubs in London after 11 PM on a Saturday. To hit on race and ethnicity as the central problem of the age is to ignore and obscure the main problems that face society such as poverty, education and law enforcement; far from helping, embracing the BNP would accelerate the decline, because their priorities would distract from actually doing any good. Furthermore, they would stigmatise a large portion of society, at a time when the emphasis should be on pulling together. Finally, catering to a simplistic prejudice is not how a civilised society operates, nor is compromising its morals; indeed, if we surrender to the BNP approach, we give up one of the principal achievements of Western society, namely, a consciousness of when it does wrong and ought to do better.

I have no doubt other such messages will come my way. However, if they merely repeat the same themes, they will not be worth repeating here.

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