The BNP versus the rulers of the Dead Island
Melanie Phillips says it is horrible that support for the BNP is increasing, even as she notes that the BNP’s rise is due to the fact that the main parties in Britain are doing nothing to stop the destruction of Britain:
Like all populist, neo-fascist parties, the BNP is opportunistically exploiting the failure by the political establishment to address issues of pressing and legitimate concern to the public. [LA asks: Is the BNP “opportunistically exploiting” the failure of the establishment to address vital issues, or is it addressing those issues?]
It is making hay with the terminal alienation of the British electorate, not merely from the current Government but from the entire political mainstream. Many voters have concluded that ‘they’re all the same as each other’. [LA asks: Is the BNP “making hay” with alienation, or is it actually proposing doing something about the very issues that have made people alienated?]
… At a more profound and altogether more explosive level, however, is the fact that all three parties not only refuse to address the issues that concern the public most deeply and emotionally, but also demonise those who express such anxieties as racists or fascists.
In particular, they have colluded in a refusal to acknowledge that nationalism—or attachment to one’s own country and its values—is a perfectly respectable, even admirable, sentiment.
Instead, anyone who maintains that British culture and identity are rooted in the history, language, literature, religion and laws of this country—and must be defended as such against erosion, undermining or outright attack—is vilified as a racist or xenophobe.
This effectively presents such people with a choice—between being demonised as racists and standing silently by as their culture evaporates.
… The fact that all these issues are deemed to be beyond the pale gives the BNP its opportunity to pose as the champion of these legitimate concerns while concealing its true thuggish agenda.
For the BNP is truly a racist party which stands for a racially pure Britain. Pretending that it merely wants to preserve British culture, it actually believes that anyone who is not white or is a Jew will pollute that culture.
Its constitution says it is committed to ‘stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration’, that it opposes any form of racial integration with non-European people—and restricts party membership to people of white Caucasian, Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Norse stock.
Phillips then goes on to cite Nick Griffin’s holocaust denial statement in 1998 and other extreme statements of his. She says that the BNP is now covering up its true nature in an effort to win support. She doesn’t acknowledge how profoundly the BNP has changed itself in recent years. (See my articles
below on the BNP’s self-reform.)
Now let’s look again at the reasons, in Phillips’ view, the BNP is so bad:
Its constitution says it is committed to “stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration,” that it opposes any form of racial integration with non-European people—and restricts party membership to people of white Caucasian, Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Norse stock.
Phillips, of course, doesn’t ask how the current Islamization of Britain—to which she has devoted a book and innumerable columns to decrying—began. It began when the British (a) opened their Island to mass non-white immigration; (b) insisted that their country has no racial identity and that it’s evil to say that it has; and (c) said that in the new Britain all peoples must integrate and blend together, or, alternatively, that all peoples and cultures must be separately recognized and subsized by the govenment, which is just a different phase of the same multiracial project. .
When we put these facts together with the BNP positions that Phillips lists and condemns, we realize that the BNP represents the opposite of the beliefs that are leading Britain to Third-Worldization and Islamization. Phillips, like so many unserious people, denounces Islamization with great ardor, but refuses to oppose the principles and policies that have made Islamization inevitable. I remind readers that Phillips, who criticizes the main British parties for not addressing issues of vital concern to the British people, has herself never called for the reduction of Muslim immigration into Britain by even one Muslim per year. See below.
This doesn’t mean that one must embrace the BNP. But when a party is seriously addressing a mortal threat to one’s society, a mortal threat that the ruling powers are either ignoring or empowering, and when, moreover, that party has gone to great lengths, including expelling many former members, in an effort to leave behind its anti-Semitic past, doesn’t that party at least deserve some positive acknowledgment? No, it doesn’t, not if you’re a liberal, for whom the most evil thing in the world, more evil than allowing your country to be taken over by Islam, is to want to preserve the white race and, with it, the civilization it created.
* * *
Here are VFR entries on the BNP:
How reformed is the BNP?
BNP leader criticizes anti-Semitism
Explaining the BNP
BNP chairman criticizes his followers’ anti-Semitism
BNP writer comes out 100 percent for Israel
Does the BNP oppose Islamization only out of electoral calculation?
Griffin on Gaza; BNP rank and file strongly in favor of Israel
Here are my articles on Melanie Phillips and Muslim immigration:
An exchange with Melanie Phillips about Islam
Phillips comes out as an immigration restrictionist [A one sentence entry notifying about the news in the previous entry]
Who misrepresented Phillips’s position on immigration? [Revealing what she actually said in her book as distinct from what she sent me.]
Establishment Islam critics continue their serious but unserious rants [This is where I say that she lied to me.]
Phillips on Britain’s appeasement—Physician, heal thyself! [A succinct description of Phillips’s absurd position. Also mentions Bill Warner as a rare Suspect who acknowledges that he doesn’t discuss immigration.]
Phillips, heal thyself [Phillips—Phillips!—criticizes the Tories for having gone silent on immigration.]
Melanie Phillips: still fantasizing—or lying—about her stand on Muslim immigration
Phillips is shocked, shocked, that there are Islamists employed in her country
Between the fear of Islam / And the love of liberalism / Falls the Shadow [About Melanie’s “brain-lock” in wake of Bombay attack and revelation of Al Qaeda plan to laucnh low intensity terror war in countries with substantial Muslims populations.]
- end of initial entry -
Karl D. writes:
There is something about people like Melanie Phillips that I truly do not get. They just can’t seem to let go of those last vestiges of liberalism. It is as if they would rather stay in the womb where it is all warm and comfy rather then face the cold reality and the slap on the bum by the doctor. They have a point. Once you are truly out of the cult (liberalism) with no way back, you get called bad names and it can be particularly unpleasant. I myself find it liberating.
Boris S. writes:
Dear Mr. Auster:
I don’t know much about Nick Griffin beyond what has been posted at VFR. But I strongly suspect that the conciliatory posture you have taken toward the BNP is largely a product of wishful thinking on your part. I know that you care deeply about the fate of the Jews and denounce those whom you see as antisemitic. Yet in the VFR entry titled “BNP Leader Criticizes Anti-Semitism” you approvingly write of what you characterize as an intellectually serious effort by Griffin to criticize antisemitism.
But what does this effort consist of? Griffin writes,
“Those who automatically blame “the Jews” for everything are blinded by their knee-jerking to a multitude of other factors, not least the age-old facts that “power corrupts” and that the monopolising aggression and greed which are the flip side of the short-term efficiency of capitalism know no borders or ethnic distinctions.”
In other words, blaming Jews for everything that’s wrong with the world is wrong merely because one ignores “other factors”. That the Jews are a force for evil seems to be accepted a priori. If one were to blame the Jews AND “the age-old fact that ‘power corrupts’”, along with “monopolizing aggression and greed,” for everything that’s gone wrong with the world, then presumably one would meet with Griffin’s approval. Then:
“Those who claim to believe that no Jew ever does anything wrong, or that to criticise any Jew or group of Jews is a mortal sin against a group singled out by God or Hitler for special treatment and in consequence entitled ever-after to carry a globally valid ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card, are clearly in the grip either of PC self-censorship or the last misguided upholders of the late 19th century ‘Master Race’ fantasy.”
Aside from the disgusting, obviously intentional pairing of Hitler with God, Griffin insinuates that Jews disapprove of any criticism of anyone who is Jewish, without giving a single example of this absurd (yet oft-repeated by antisemites) claim. He goes even further, comparing these fictional Jews to the antisemitic German racial theorists who paved the way to Nazism. Then:
“But equally, those who believe that only Jews are capable of abusing great power for their selfish personal or group benefit are sadly lacking in any grasp of the realities of human nature. Give an elite—any elite—power, especially over decades or generations, and that elite will abuse that power, and scheme, cheat and kill to maintain and extend it.”
The implication is that the Jews constitute, or have constituted, an “elite” which, just like any other ruling elite according to Griffin, “will abuse that power, and scheme, cheat, and kill to maintain and extend it.” Given the context of the actual history of the Jews in Europe, one of exploitation, expulsions, and violent oppresion, Griffin’s inversion here is absolutely vile. Then:
“Sometimes Gentile elites even find in individual Jews a useful cover for their own greed: In medieval Europe, and pre-revolutionary Russia [sic] for instance, assorted Kings and Princes and Nobles used Jews as money-lenders and tax-collectors, knowing that this would lead to popular anger against the exploitation which they sanctioned and grew fat upon would be deflected onto their Jewish functionaries.”
Consider the meaning of the “even” in the first sentence. Apparently, Griffin sees it as out of the ordinary, surprising, ironic, that powerful gentiles have used Jews as scapegoats. The “individual” is dishonest as well, since historically the “popular anger” of which he speaks has been directed at the Jews—not “individual” Jews. Then:
“Similarly, while a number of Jewish intellectuals and lobbyists—including the Frankfurt School and most of the leaders of the Civil Rights movement—have played a key role in providing the academic and ‘moral’ justification’ for the multi-racial assault on the survival of separate races and cultures, it is utterly wrong of anti-Semitic bigots to overlook the fact that the key practical motor for mass immigration is and always has been the greed of wealthy individuals, companies and corporations.”
This is a typical example of antisemitic language: a blanket accusation, just vague enough to seem halfway plausible (to some) yet without allegations of any specific wrongdoing that could be addressed and refuted. So the Jews could not have succeeded in their conspiracy to destroy the gentiles without the help of (unspecified, faceless) “wealthy individuals, companies and corporations,” and “anti-Semitic bigots think otherwise.” Talk about false dichotomy. Talk about loaded language. Personally, I’d be willing to excuse those Jews who fail to be convinced that such “criticism” of antisemitism is entirely sincere. Then, further down:
“In modern times, the insistence of the naive and the bigoted that “the Jews” are to blame for everything that goes wrong in the world and their own lives allows those of us who do criticise genuine abuses of power and influence by some Jews (and, contrary to liberal mythology of the second half of the last century, they are not all blameless saints) to be painted by the media as crazy “anti-Semites”.”
At best, this could be construed as criticism of the belief that Jews “are to blame for everything that goes wrong in the world and [one’s own life].” Since outside of the Muslim world this applies only to a fraction of neo-Nazis (even if that), to maintain that Griffin is criticizing antisemitism in general here is to give him far too much credit. And he once again undercuts himself by invoking a supposed liberal mythology that holds all Jews to be “blameless saints”. Let’s not kid ourselves—only antisemites believe this stuff. In reality, Jews are the one minority that liberalism permits to attack and demonize (see campus left, see the “Islamo-socialist” regime in Europe), let alone “criticize”.
“The paranoid mentality that blamed “the Jews” for causing the Black Death by poisoning wells, and which now blames them for the soaring price of oil, only allows those who clipped coins or who promote the anti-white mind-rot of MTV to escape justified criticism by convincing ordinary people that those with genuine criticisms are as misguided as the paranoid cranks. If Professor Kevin MacDonald’s writings are not evaluated sensibly and fairly, it is partly because his realm of study has been discredited by drivel about conspiracies by “Learned Elders” to use Underground tunnels to blow up our cities.”
There isn’t much to add—he really does speak for himself here. Griffin criticizes the “paranoid cranks” because they allow the Jews “who promote the anti-white mind-rot of MTV” to escape the justified criticism of … “Professor Kevin MacDonald”! Griffin does not entertain the possibility that MacDonald’s writings on the Jews are self-discrediting by virtue of their being wildly (and deliberately) ahistorical, by their adding up to nothing more than incitement to genocide couched in scientific language.
For someone who has been so consistently critical of Israeli politicians who delude themselves about the “Palestinians”, and of conservatives who talk hopefully about “moderate Muslims”, you seem to be surprisingly eager to accommodate “moderate antisemites” who happen to have some sensible positions on immigration. The BNP should be held to a higher standard than this.
Best,
Boris
LA replies:
Dear Mr. S.
I think you badly misunderstand the significance of what Griffin has done and is doing, because you’re not seeing him in a true context. Please take in this fact: he started out as a serious anti-Semite. For the last several years, he’s been engaging in serious criticism of anti-Semitism. As I wrote in one of my past articles, the world is filled with bigots who make cosmetic changes in previous objectionable positions. I have never seen anyone do what Griffin has done, engage in an extended, intellectually cogent refutation of his own past beliefs and those of his party members. So that’s not mere positioning; it’s real. For which he deserves credit. Has he gotten rid of all his and BNP’s anti-Semitism? No. His praise of MacDonald shows it. And that bothers me. And for this and other reasons, I’ve never embraced the BNP per se. But for you not to recognize the distance between where Griffin used to be and where he is now shows a failure to grasp the big picture.
Also, some of your supposed proof of his anti-Semitism is way off. For example, you quote him:
“Similarly, while a number of Jewish intellectuals and lobbyists—including the Frankfurt School and most of the leaders of the Civil Rights movement—have played a key role in providing the academic and ‘moral’ justification’ for the multi-racial assault on the survival of separate races and cultures, it is utterly wrong of anti-Semitic bigots to overlook the fact that the key practical motor for mass immigration is and always has been the greed of wealthy individuals, companies and corporations.”
To which you reply:
“This is a typical example of antisemitic language…”
Well, you’ve completely lost me here. His statements about the role of Jews in the Frankfurt School, the civil rights movement and the general campaign to advance the “multi-racial assault on the survival of separate races and cultures” is accurate. If that’s an anti-Semitic statement, then it turns out to be true than any criticism of Jews is anti-Semitic. If there is to be a distinction between rational criticism of Jews and anti-Semitism, which I have been arguing for for many years, then rational criticism of Jews has to be possible. If you deny the leading role of Jewish intellectuals and organizations in advancing the multiracialism and anti-discrimination ideology that are sinking the West, then I wonder what you would consider legitimate criticism of Jews to be? “Madoff is really a bad guy”? “Charles Schumer, what a jerk”?
If you read through all my past articles on the BNP’s efforts at self-reform, you will see how often I express doubts about it, and say that the end of this process is not clear. But one thing is indisputable: they are not the BNP they once were. They have many intelligent members, people who are not anti-Semites at all, and whose concerns are to defend Britain and the British people that are now under total assault. So I hope that you would think about this further.
However, if you believe that the statement,
“a number of Jewish intellectuals and lobbyists … have played a key role in providing the academic and ‘moral’ justification’ for the multi-racial assault on the survival of separate races and cultures…”
is an anti-Semitic statement, then I’m afraid we’re not going to find any common ground, because, by that criterion, I am an anti-Semite as well.
Regards,
Lawrence Auster
Posted March 5
Boris S. replies:
You wrote:
I think you badly misunderstand the significance of what Griffin has done and is doing, because you’re not seeing him in a true context. Please take in this fact: he started out as a serious anti-Semite. For the last several years, he’s been engaging in serious criticism of anti-Semitism. As I wrote in one of my past articles, the world is filled with bigots who make cosmetic changes in previous objectionable positions. I have never seen anyone do what Griffin has done, engage in an extended, intellectually cogent refutation of his own past beliefs. So that’s not mere positioning; it’s real. For which he deserves credit. Has he gotten rid of all his and BNP’s anti-Semitism? No. His praise of MacDonald shows it. And that bothers me. And for this and other reasons, I’ve never embraced the BNP per se. But for you not to recognize the distance between where Griffin used to be and where he is now shows a failure to grasp the big picture.
Then why not wait to see if Griffin completely renounces anti-Semitism? Why not hold your praise until that happens? At the very least, why not withhold criticism of mainstream conservatives such as Melanie Phillips and Peter Hitchens when they attack the BNP? Griffin is not influential in mainstream British politics, and probably never will be, so I don’t understand why the fact that he’s merely less objectionable than in the past is notable, let alone a cause for excitement. Do you not think that the VFR immigration platform is far more likely to be adopted by European countries when mainstream conservative parties become restrictionist as the realities of Muslim immigration become increasingly unbearable and impossible to hide, than due to “rehabilitation” of ex-Fascists like Griffin?
You wrote:
Well, you’ve completely lost me here. His statements about the role of Jews in the Frankfurt School, the civil rights movement and the general campaign to advance the “multi-racial assault on the survival of separate races and cultures” is accurate. If that’s an anti-Semitic statement, then it turns out to be true than any criticism of Jews is anti-Semitic. If there is to be a distinction between rational criticism of Jews and anti-Semitism, which I have been arguing for many years, then rational criticism of Jews has to be possible. If you deny the leading role of Jewish intellectuals and organizations in advancing the multiracialism and anti-discrimination ideology that are sinking the West, then I wonder what you would consider legitimate criticism of Jews to be? “Madoff is really a bad guy”? “Charles Schumer, what a jerk”?
I don’t think that his criticism of Jews is the same as your criticism of Jews (though I may be wrong). This is one of those cases where a statement has to be interpreted in the context of what else has been said. It is one thing to say that one effect (even if it turned out to be the most significant one) of the civil rights movement and the Frankfurt School has been to weaken the Western, white majority culture. But Griffin, being an apparent admirer of MacDonald, seems to believe (and seems to be saying) that these were Jews who intentionally sought to gain power over the gentiles, who used multiculturalism and multiracialism as weapons in order to secretly advance narrow Jewish interests. In this view, there is no allowance for the possibility that these Jews were acting to advance what they perceived, mistakenly, to be the True and the Good, in other words to be noble universal values——and hurt both themselves and the white majority in the process.
Here’s a more general explanation: On the one hand, one may claim that Jewish leftists pursue what seems to them to be morally sound and to the ultimate benefit of humanity (although in fact they end up doing harm), and that the peculiarities of Jewish history and thought makes Jews more likely to adhere to this leftist worldview than the general population. On the other hand, one may claim that Jewish leftists are seeking to harm non-Jews in order to advance an ethnocentric agenda. The latter view is anti-Semitic and false; the former is not anti-Semitic and may be true. Which do you suppose did Griffin have in mind? And more significantly, which interpretation would his intended audience naturally think of?
LA replies:
Without going into details, I think you’re simply missing the larger picture, which is that Griffin has clearly and strongly told his party that Jews are not the problem, that there are other problems much bigger than the Jews. He has kicked out long-time party members who persisted in anti-Semitism, and Holocaust denial. He has stopped attacking Israel. BNP is not now supportive of Israel, but they are not hostile to it either, as they used to be. They simply say that their concern is with Britain. At BNP discussion boards which I’ve linked, there was much support for Israel, and people who attack Israel have been put down by other commenters. As I said about this, this is not your mother’s BNP.
Please note that the entire, leftist continent of Europe thinks that Israel is the cause of Muslim terrorism because of the “occupation,” while the supposedly anti-Semitic BNP does not take that anti-Israel position.
Your failure to grasp or acknowledge this basic fact of the change in BNP suggests a pre-judgment on your part that prevents you from seeing what is happening.
As for why I criticize P. Hitchens and Phillips over this, it’s because, as I said, BNP is at present the ONLY organization in Britain that is opposing Islamization, Third-Worldization, and immigration. To continue denouncing them totally, ,as though they were still the anti-Semitic party they were ten years ago, is wrong. I personally want to see BNP candidates win elections, as they are the ONLY alternative at present to the treasonous and dhimmi major parties. If BNP starts to win some elections, the larger political system will respond and start shifting toward immigration restriction and anti-Islamization. To demonize and exclude completely from consideration the ONLY alternative to the present parties of surrender is wrong. It assures continued surrender.
And besides, Hitchens and Phillips are hopeless and unserious, as I’ve shown many times. They both whine endlessly about Islamization, but never call for reduction of Islamic immigration. They are both racial liberals who want Britain to becomes a multiracial, nonwhite country, and think that that can happen while Britain keeps its culture. And Hitchens passionately denounces as racists (it seems to be the single thing he is most passionate about) people who think otherwise.
Boris replies:
I understand where you are coming from. Thanks.
LA replies:
Thank you. One other point.
You write:
“On the other hand, one may claim that Jewish leftists are seeking to harm non-Jews in order to advance an ethnocentric agenda. [This] view is anti-Semitic and false…”
But there’s much evidence that it is true. Numerous Jewish spokesman have said, not just in recent times, but in past decades, that America’s white Anglo-Saxon Christian majority is oppressive to Jews and other minorities, and even that it poses a potential threat of much worse oppression, and that the only way for the Jews to be safe in America is to reduce the percentage and power of the white Christian majority by means of diverse immigration. To seek to turn the historic non-Jewish white Christian majority of this country into a minority, out of the conviction that that majority is oppressive and malign, is certainly to seek to harm non-Jews.
Philip M. writes:
Nick has in interviews accepted that the baggage he carries may mean that at some point in the future he will have to stand down. But Boris S. is neglecting the point that at this present time the “far-right” movement in Britain is not exactly over-burdened with political talent. I have a keen interest in the media and politics, and I have not come across anyone who has the capacity or credibility to take the BNP further. I have heard Nick speak several times, I read almost everything he writes, and I have attended “activist” conferences where he has spoken very frankly, and he has never given me any reason to doubt that his public utterances are genuine or that I am being subtly coerced down another road.
We simply have to accept that the kind of man who has the guts and the determination to do the most difficult job in Britain may have a chequered, extremist past. He has proved his mettle in a way that frankly Boris S has not and deserves to be cut some slack. People change, they grow up. I for one can see how a frustrated and probably angry young man could fall into the trap of saying “oh to hell with you, if you want me to be a Nazi, I will be a Nazi.” Can Boris S provide some alternative names who would want to be BNP leader?
I fundamentally disagree with Boris S. when he says:
“Griffin is not influential in mainstream British politics, and probably never will be, so I don’t understand why the fact that he’s merely less objectionable than in the past is notable, let alone a cause for excitement.”
Boris S. may not feel that way but the political establishment and the media are a lot more switched on. The BNP and Nick Griffin are a constant threat to the Labour party’s core white working-class vote, and to the status quo, and many of the decisions they make in this financial crisis are being driven by a fear of the slumbering white working class finally awakening. There has been a marked shift in this country over the last few months. I see it when I go out leafleting. The BNP recently got its first council seat in the leafier counties south of London. For the first time since workers marched for Enoch Powell in ‘68, ordinary trade-unionists have taken it upon themselves to organise strikes against the wishes of their own unions in support of “British jobs for British workers.” When MP’s are questioned on immigration, terrorism or the economy, the unmentioned name of the BNP lingers awkwardly in the air as the elephant in the room.
Ideologically, we are at the centre of politics. We are the only opposition to the three-in-one-party elite. For the first time in my adult life I am starting to feel optimistic for our future, for the first time I feel we are in a better position than America.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 02, 2009 02:30 PM | Send