Griffin on Gaza; BNP rank and file support for Israel

British National Party chairman Nick Griffin has quite an interesting statement on the Gaza situation, posted at a pro-BNP site in Wigan, England. Supporters of Israel will not be pleased with all his points (he says that what’s happening in the Mideast is of no concern to Britons), but overall his statement is pro-nationhood, pro-the right of self-defense, pro-Western civilization, and utterly realistic about Islam and what needs to be done about it—and thus, in effect, strongly pro-Israel. The level of thought in this article is lightyears beyond anything heard in mainstream British politics.

At the end of the article there is a link to the same article at the main BNP site (a direct link to the site doesn’t work). Below the article, there are well over a hundred comments. If you thought the BNP was anti-Semitic, you should read this stunning thread. The commenters, at least the ones I’ve read so far, are overwhelmingly and strongly pro-Israel and anti-Islam. Not only that, but on a couple of occasions when a commenter makes the typical anti-Israel comment filled with the usual lies, another commenter immediately comes in and corrects him. This is not, so to speak, your mother’s BNP.

January 7

I asked Morgan, the BNP member in Wigan who sent me the Griffin article, if the commenters at the BNP site are BNP members, and he replied:

For the BNP site, anyone can comment, but there is a requirement to register with the site itself—this is a precaution against what you might imagine might be posted by our political opponents … who are not the most ethical of people.

So we can assume that the commenters at the BNP site are at least friendly to BNP and thus reflect BNP attitudes more or less.

Morgan replies:

As a general rule yes, the commenters at the main BNP site are at least friendly to the BNP (and we assume that translates into votes), and most are indeed members. Hostile commenters and comments are allowed in, provided they stay within civilised bounds in their criticism. A bit like your place really. We will not accept abusive lefties, and neither will we accept neo-nazis.

The main BNP website is the most popular political party website in all of Britain. If you scroll down to the bottom of the main page they list the relative positions on site hits for all the parties. I’m led to believe (though I can’t guarantee the accuracy) that the BNP site gets about seven times the hits of all the other political party websites in combination.

A measure of our progress would best be measured after the June 1st European elections because that will be an opportunity for the entire British population to vote for the BNP, rather than just those constituencies where the BNP puts forward a candidate at general elections. General elections are difficult for us because every candidate must be accompanied by a deposit of £500. The deposit is returned if the candidate gets more than five percent of the vote … but less than five percent and the deposit is lost. At 646 parliamentary constituencies nationwide, that is an awful lot of money for such a small party to come up with and risk losing. And campaign funding is in addition to that.

However, there is not such a financial strain with the Euro-elections, there are only 12 EU electoral regions in Britain, and a system of proportional representation is used to decide winning candidates. Also, no election deposits are required so all costs are campaign funding only. We put forward candidates in every region—so everyone in the country has an opportunity to vote for us. It will be very interesting to measure the size of our vote nationwide. There is historically a low turnout at Euro-elections, but because PR is used, there is an incentive for supporters of smaller parties to turn out. At the last Euro-elections four years ago, we had something like 900,000 votes, on a 30-odd percent turnout.

And people are a lot angrier than they were four years ago.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 06, 2009 10:47 PM | Send