Is "no platform" appropriate for the BNP?

I don't see why not. They have varying degrees of success trying to make off like a "legitimate political party" (Gerry Adams impression), but they still use violence and intimidation to stir up racial hatred.

Hi

Let the market decide.

Love

Chris

They should not be allowed a chance to open their mouths, propogate their shit. The BNP is not just anotehr political party, its a fascist organisation, instead of blackshirts and readings from mein kempf at the beginning of meetings its all suites and trying to look respectable, they are still fascists, and if they had a chance they would be sending in squadiristi style fuckers against the working class. We should not give them a chance.

A platform with a gallows on it may be appropriate

Hi

Political parties are like firms. When a firm brings a product to market which is dangerous or against the public interest then consumers have a right to see it withdrawn, even if they’ve no intention themselves of buying it.

Same goes for the BNP. If the public think it’s best for them to have their ideology forcibly curtailed, then so be it. Same as NAMBLA or whatever. I’d personally vote for the BNP to be “outlawed”. Having said that, it’s a partisan rather than principled decision based on the knowledge that the BNP promote authoritarianism and irrational hatred, and it’s this particular component of an idea that warrants the suppression of its platform.

I’d be interested to hear others’ opinions of what facets of an ideology make it so dangerous as to require special proscription.

Love

Chris

The BNP have, quite carefully, moved out of the 'street' area of operations, and now mainly do local government work. I agree that they must be stopped from organising, but think we have to be aware of the very different situation that exists now, and the possible negative outsomes from attacking BNP activists. And there's the fact that, in many areas of the North West, the locaol support for the BNP makes such a guerilla approach very difficult. We're not dealling with an isolated bunch of boneheads any more, and have to adjust tactics accordingly. Who would want to disrupt a BNP jumble sale in Burnley, attended by many of the local community, for example?

Hi

I would. Any members of the "local community" that attend are fair game, they know what they're buying.

Love

Chris

Chris - that would be stupid. The point about the BNP is that they are a secret fascist core with a pseudo-respectable left-wing ultra-authoritarian party around them.

Hi

I appreciate where you’re coming from there John. I hadn’t realised that that’s the way it looked to you wherever you happen to be. Here, the BNP aren’t remotely acceptable and are largely synonymous with the NF, drawing their support from the same milieu.

The notion of the BNP doing a jumble sale here is actually pretty weird, they really would be run out of town. Maybe it’s because we’re such honkies down here, we cherish what little racial diversity we have.

Sorry if I pissed you off.

Chris

That's interesting, where's that? Usually you don't get NF/WNP and BNP in the same areas...much like you don't usually get mice where there's rats. IN the areas where the BNP have a real presence they've usually done so by ditching their thuggish practises in favour of addressing everyday concerns -- and so not everyone who's a BNP sympathiser is neccessarily a fascist or understnads the BNP's entire policy aims.

Hi

I'm somewhere on the South West peninsular my friend. I’m surprised at what you have to say, I can see the BNP are trying to look respectable, but always assumed, obviously incorrectly, that they’d increased their support by gathering up disaffected right wing Tories.

I’ll have to concede the issue to you guys, ‘coz you’re bound to know more about it than I do, but I’m finding it hard to accept that BNP supporters aren’t nasty small minded bigots who’ve come out of the closet due to the BNP’s respectability rather than new converts as such. That is to say, they are complicit in the camouflage rather than duped by it.

Thinking about it, John., I don’t know if I'm sorry if I pissed you off at all…

If it’s OK to picket such popular bastions of respectability as Tescos for underpaying Poles, it must be OK to disrupt BNP jumble sales for spreading racial hatred.

What am I missing my friend?

Love

Chris

I don't think that was John's point. He wasn't saying we should let the BNP get away with their jumble-sale exploits, just against the idea of lumping in the locals who went along in with the scumbags who organised it.

As to whether the idea of a BNP jumble sale is realistic - well it's possible I guess, but not very likely they would make it especially open or public. About a year ago here in Essex they put on a "family fun day", purportedly a public event. There were a few leaflets going around, but you had to ring a number to find out the exact location, and it was basically just a gathering for the fash and their families.

Hi

If you disrupt this hypothetical BNP jumble sale than you are going to be spoiling a family fun day out for these “members of the local community”. That’s what I meant when I said they were fair game.

So we’re agreed then, it is OK disrupt a BNP jumble sale after all. What have you got to say to that Laz?

Love

Chris

What do you mean by disrupting, though?

Shouting abuse at everyone there including people who just want cheap stuff and don't know much about the BNP or handing out leaflets?

Hi

That's an extremely good point there, Refused. Obviously I would be looking for “effective disruption”, not necessarily violent or offensive. If the event could be blocked before it got off the ground, then all the better.

I agree that the tactics you describe are ineffective, but then the same could be said of something like Tescos' pickets, although I appreciate the clear differences between those two situations.

Still, fair point.

Love

Chris

We could just steal all the good stuff and then everyone would go home. And we might get some cool stuff too.

Hi

Precisely. How could this be bad? Come on Laz, set your stall out. Or were you just playing devil's advocate alongside John.? In which case, well done.

Love

Chris

Cool, count me in.

I'm there! <3333333333

I've got dibs on the hats and scarves.

'The odds on them getting elected in the near furture is pretty slim'.

Well. it won't happen next week I grant you. We have to look further ahead than this. If we look at the campaign of derision,and downright hate that has been poured upon the BNP over the last few years the wonder is that they have got anywhere at all. But they have! They are in the process of getting a base for their nazi policies. But who would have thought, before the millenium, that they would, or could get so far? Where I live they have maintained their vote at least since that time. The local Bolshies would have died for that success! It could very well be a case of being in the right place at the right time, at least for the BNP and Capital! Their success is built on hard work and dedication,always,to my mind respected by a lot of working class people. This is strengthened by failure of the political left, and anarchists, to put forward practical support against the failure of the Labour policies . There is a collapse of political will to deal with working class problems by the political parties. The real question is what can we do, the problems are ours.

The BNP in Burnley don't have BNP jumble sales for christs sake, they have instead infiltrated residents associations, and they work to spread their hate through community politics with the cover of community do gooding. In Burnley they had a long campaign running over rubblish pileup for ages.

Fighting it involves exposing their hidden agendas of hate - fortunately in Burnley the fascists have given us a hand in that department as the veneer of their suits and boots respectability could not quite contain the fascist violence bubbling under the surface - and this has been exposed recently over the last couple of years in the local press. But they are still there in community politics, in the residents associations and in local web forums and no doubt more areas I haven't discovered yet.

Fighting the BNP in local communities has to involve exposing their hidden agendas - and it's important to get involved in community work to put forward alternatives not just to fascists, but also to those that facilitiate fascist activity in local communities - in Burnley it has & will be tackling years of neglect by a labour council, and I think it has also been criticising the negative effect of Swerp & ANL activity in the past which swoops in, polarises and essentially has served the BNP well.

The BNP in Burnley are in the Police, the CPS, local residents groups - and I hate to say it in unions. The GMB made efforts to challenge fascism and racism within there union ranks - they got letters of complaints defending the BNP from some of their members. The BNP are decentralised in communities, and so the fight is everywhere in the day to day - workplaces, community work and so forth.

You have to look at also fighting what facilitates fascist activity in communities - and anarchists must every day be putting forward alternatives whereever they can. That's my view anyway.

I've never quite been happy with this analysis because their 'secret fascist core' is just so unsecret. Either I'm severly overestimating people's intelligence or their voters are entirely aware that Griffin is a fascist.

Interesting to wonder whether if they spent long enough being respectable the left would start to treat them like just another party, in the same way as most people here at least no longer consider the Labour Party to be fundamentally different to any other party. There's also a chance that pretending to be respectable will actually make them respectable in a right wing version of the cooption of revolutionary parties who spent too long in parlimentary politics.

Oh fuck right off, what do you think they are doing then? Making a credible parlimentary organisation with fascist underpinnings. The odds of Mussolini getting power was slim to begin with, the only way fascists have ever survived long enough to reach power is becuase people have either looked upon them as a joke, or if your a rich right wing politician tried to use them as an ally.

Yes, but they are deceptive, think for yourself if you can, love, xx, |E

It would be monumental if i did think for myself.

part of the problem with the bnp issue is that other more mainstream political parties shore up/reinforce/promote the ideology of the bnp. for example in the rhetoric and legislation of immigration and asylum policy and because of this it makes me cringe when i see stanch labour mps denouncing the bnp. the bnp are seperated out from the rest of the herd because they are crasser than the rest who are quite capable of using racist shit when they choose to. this doesn't mean that i don't oppose them.

what tactics do you suggest then if we are to tread carefully? and actually i don't see why we can't disrupt a jumble sale as has already been said, depending on how its done.

Wouldn't it be more important to disrupt a jumble sale attended by many from the local community than a closed meeting attended by those already in the bnp?

You'd need to be careful that the message was clear though and not end up looking like the violent thugs ourselves and thus putting further distance between us and the local community.

I think how the BNP operate depends what part of the country it is and what the demographic of the target, if you like, is; it is not the least bit contradictory for the BNP to be both simultaneously an insidious 'grassroots' political movement, and a party political grouping. The labour party, for instance, has always been both, hasn't it?

I think what we can conclusively say about the BNP is that it is led by Eton schoolboy types, draws support and core membership from petit bourgeois types and the labour artistocracy and has a following both in the working class and the middle class. Its message is classically fascist - ie it ain't got one; BNP speakers say whatever the fuck they think will increase their sphere of influence - to one group they rant about imperialism, capitalism and the liberal power elite, and to another group the dereliction of British way of life by a bunch of liberal immigrant loving blah blah... I think it's a fundamental mistake to see them as growing increasingly part of the establishment. Their behaviour is frightening, cunning, and 'revolutionary'. They are pursuing a strategy of dual power, using electoralism as a way of winning over sections of the middle class, with an outside chance of also gaining a political empire.

I don't feel the jumble sale example is a particularly realistic one; for what it's worth I would say ignore the jumble sale or scupper it using cunning tactics. I think it is a mistake to give the BNP the chance to present themselves as embattled community people. I'm not too sure that kicking BNP activists in the head is a good tactic. I think that if there was a left to speak of then I'd be completely in favour of rounding them up and dealing with them in some manner. This makes sense. I don't know however if we have the power to do that, and I think our current strategy should be to build our power and tackle the problem when we actually can. Otherwise I feel that we'll be running around like blue-arsed flies getting arrested etc for beating up/killing fascists, leaving no time for the harder part of the struggle - building a working class mass movement. This is especially true now, where we could say that less than a fraction of comrades are actually paying more than lip service to this, the most critical part of our activities, the part which should take up nearly all of our time.

Solidarity,

Nick Durie