BNP on Question Time

M

martin

----
Yeah, only whites were going on the tour, so the government closed it down. Shortly before they banned Xmas.

Warsi missed a trick though, when the IRA / criminals-on-QT/ "well, you're criminals too" bit came up - would have been an ideal opportunity to bring up Popeye's past mishandling of firearms, as well as Richard 'Richey' Edmonds' and Tony 'Bomber' Lecomber's rather extensive assault charge collections.
 
G

gumdrops

Well-known member
huge let down.
everyone looked tense at the start.
but instead of the usual format, it was the fucking bnp show.
all very contrived really.
and he was, as hes said himself today, stitched up.
seemed a bit pathetic of the bbc to - after all the fuss - just get him on to basically let him embarass himself on the points everyone knows the bnp already embarass themselves on. almost like an apologetic response to the people who werent happy about him being there. leaving the last 5-10 mins to discuss the actual reason for the show itself was even worse and a real waste of time imo when they could be discussing something more important.
really a bit of a hatchet job all in all.
they should have gotten him to talk about other issues to see how they fare on those things. he would prob have choked over those too.
but this was just too easy.
and a bit smug complicit between the audience and the panel.
i thought they would at least have some people who would have voted for the bnp in the audience but it didnt seem like it. it was awfully one sided.
and to not really broach the reasons most people vote for them, or why they think they support their concerns was quite lazy.
almost as if they didnt want to really touch on why the bnp are gaining a foothold with white working classers, which almost made them seem to be well, not that diff from what the bnp supporters prob already assume they are - liberal, a bit elitist and not listening.
not really a great day for politics imo.
funny how they all seemed to agree on the problem of immigration too.

bonnie greer handled him really well though - and LOL at calling their website content 'wacky'. ha!
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
"Audience members taking part in the programme were escorted in through the front entrance after showing their passports."

Priceless.
 
S

scottdisco

rip this joint please
Griffin able to play the martyr this afternoon and making three formal complaints (to Cameron, a formal UNITE signatory, among others).

some Guardian political editor on SKY News really doesn't get that outside the Crouch End/Clapham/Dalston/Balham/Whitechapel bubble (delete as applicable) in which he probably lives there is a lot of bigotry and ill-feeling in this country.

he was of course correct to say you can't censor Griffin (he got that much right in an adversarial interview format on SKY w some guy from the UAF), but in general he came across as woefully naive.

Gumdrops OTM.
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
scottdisco said:
some Guardian political editor on SKY News really doesn't get that outside the Crouch End/Clapham/Dalston/Balham/Whitechapel bubble (delete as applicable) in which he probably lives there is a lot of bigotry and ill-feeling in this country.
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i think social apartheid is VERY much alive and kicking in Dalston right about now! never been anywhere in london with 'black pubs' and 'white pubs' to quite the same degree.

Edit: but this is not accompanied by visible tensions in the same way as other areas afaik. but still.
 
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Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
scottdisco said:
some Guardian political editor on SKY News really doesn't get that outside the Crouch End/Clapham/Dalston/Balham/Whitechapel bubble (delete as applicable) in which he probably lives there is a lot of bigotry and ill-feeling in this country.
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Well if Whitechapel includes Brick Lane let's not forget that the Pride Of Spitalfields was firebombed a few years ago... :(

Edit: yeah sorry Scott, I get what you mean: obvs there are plenty of areas where race/culture relations are much better than others, and white journalists are more likely to live in the former than the latter.
 
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S

scottdisco

rip this joint please
sorry guys, i think you know what i was driving at, my apologies on a few airily chosen bad examples to try and garland what i meant to be a serious point :slanted:

Griffin's suggestion to speak the next time in Thurrock, Stoke, or Burnley chimes w something i said several pages ago.

actually, the most multiethnic and miscegenated British pubs i've ever drank in are in inner Brum probably (though i've not drank that much in London, mostly central, Hammersmith & F, Lewisham and Lambeth), FWIW
 
S

scottdisco

rip this joint please
am watching SKY News: Ken L just made a nice point about tensions arising in times of rapid change but then - citing the Brixton of his youth, then the Brixton of ten years later, and today's Brixton - over time tensions are resolved.

let's hope he's right. i just fear now this Rubicon has been forded for Griffin his party can become even more vocal outriders for hostility and - in their own, less eloquent way (not that it was the greatest act of oratory ever or anything) - gee up even more people who thought 'the rivers of blood' was a prescient bit of wordsmithery, as opposed to patent nonsense.

it's not going to be storm-troopers on the streets as Ollie would rightly point out, but it might be more squeezing of asylum seekers, might even be a re-negotiation of European rights standards, or UN rights charters to which we are party, it might be............
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
scottdisco said:
sorry guys, i think you know what i was driving at, my apologies on a few airily chosen bad examples to try and garland what i meant to be a serious point :slanted:

Griffin's suggestion to speak the next time in Thurrock, Stoke, or Burnley chimes w something i said several pages ago.

actually, the most multiethnic and miscegenated British pubs i've ever drank in are in inner Brum probably (though i've not drank that much in London, mostly central, Hammersmith & F, Lewisham and Lambeth), FWIW
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yeah sorry, wasn't trying to be obtuse. What you were saying is entirely correct wrt the general Guardian-type attitude towards the whole thing, without doubt.


(still, went to four places in dalston recently in a night. in two of them there wasn't a white person aside from me, and in the other two there were, aside from staff, one or two black people out of several hundred people in total. there's something a bit wrong with that kind of extreme separation within an area.)
 
CHAOTROPIC

CHAOTROPIC

on account
It's difficult to watch stuff like this. I think a lot of it comes down to whether you believe bigotry & hatred are like kinks or knots in the natural channels of goodness that flow through people's brains & that reason & dialogue can smooth them away. Or, whether such beliefs are a can of worms that need to be firmly sat upon to stop the maggots from spreading. There's definitely a danger that opening up the debate allows people to think that there IS a debate ... that bigotry is something that it acceptable to express. & history seems to show that legitimising hatred is a slippery slope.

Nick Griffin is such a stupid weirdo. A complete kook. He went to my college too. The admissions tutor must've been drunk.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Something that a lot of people seem to hint at is that there are two kinds of BNP supporter, indeed perhaps two kinds of racist generally: the core constituency of genuine frothy-mouthed Hitler-admiring white supremacists (including of course the actual party members) vs. disenfranchised w/c whites who may be voting BNP 'despite themselves' to some* extent. It's the same with other kinds of extemism, eg. your actual bomb-happy hate-preaching Islamentalists vs. alienated young Asian men who feel (justifiably, of course) angry about Gaza, the Iraq war and so on and have probably experienced racism themselves, and feel powerless to do anything about it through the mainstream political channels.

So: a small, though perhaps not *that* small, core of incorrigible bigots and a periphery of contingent bigots whipped up by propaganda, disinformation and ignorance - does that sound plausible? Or am I being naive about how many people willfully and wholeheartedly support the BNP's ideology and would-be policies?



*I don't buy the argument that people who "aren't really racist" would vote the party: if you're not racist, you don't vote for the BNP. But they may been seduced into racism by propaganda of various kinds, either from the BNP themselves, the tabloids (scott's talked at length about the Express) and even rhetoric from MPs from the major parties. But there's still a big gap between that and being a dyed-in-the-wool neo-Nazi.
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
CHAOTROPIC said:
It's difficult to watch stuff like this. I think a lot of it comes down to whether you believe bigotry & hatred are like kinks or knots in the natural channels of goodness that flow through people's brains & that reason & dialogue can smooth them away. Or, whether such beliefs are a can of worms that need to be firmly sat upon to stop the maggots from spreading. There's definitely a danger that opening up the debate allows people to think that there IS a debate ... that bigotry is something that it acceptable to express. & history seems to show that legitimising hatred is a slippery slope.
Click to expand...

Totally. That more people (in total, not referring to Dissensians alone) aren't saying this, is, to me, a disgrace.

I personally believe that a lot of people are fundamentally weak/amoral (as opposed to immoral), and will follow the line of least resistance, whether that be liberal views or fascistic views - the content of the view is irrelevant, as long as it's not socially 'awkward' to express it. History has shown this time and again. Loads of British people would vote for the FN if they had lived in France, as it's more 'acceptable', or would've voted for Haider if they had lived in Austria. The idea that Britain is 'different' is a really dangerous one (and, getting historical on yo collective ass, mirrors the discredited historical line of thought that the Holocaust could only have happened in Germany due to something specific in the Teutonic character, which is itself a product of the same dangerous essentialism* of the kind that many have criticised over on the 'Thought' threads very recently).

Sorry to bleat on, but "The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it," and its variations are among the truest things ever said. That quote was on the UAF placards yesterday, and it would've been great if the overall message had been as clear ie anti-BBC, and those who 'do nothing about it'/passively encourage it.


* I realise that I am 'alleging' something essential about human beings as a whole, but not in the sense that this is fixed/cannot be broken out of/fought against.
 
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G

gumdrops

Well-known member
just heard a phoner with tessa jowell on LBC. she rightly described QT as a 'savage hour', but seemed to be somewhat in denial about the bnps potential power and how they have the sympathy of various voting groups. its so easy to just say that its only a small minority of people who voted for them, or that the vote is purely to express disatisfaction with the main parties, and that we should take pride that the majority of people are fair minded, but it just seems like naive avoidance of what is happening around the country that makes people feel the bnp have their interests at heart. cos people ARE concerned about things like immigration. and the debate around it is now more nuanced. its not just a case of keep the foreigners out, well not for everyone, but well meaning liberal types in their own little cosy circles who tend to have a snobbish attitude towards the WWC arent really always the best people to argue against the bnp in this sort of debate. they arent listening.
 
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