BNP: The Hard Bigotry of Terrorist Expectations

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 11/11/2009 10:08:00 AM
There was a media firestorm here in Britain a few weeks ago when Nick Griffith, head of the far-right British National Party, was invited to speak on the popular political programme Question Time [1, 2, 3]. The argument was that, having placed two European members of parliament, the BNP had a right to represent its views in this public forum. (The BBC famously charges all UK TV viewers £139.50 or about $230 annually.) I suppose it's the equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan--which he is unsurprisingly supportive of, by the way--appearing on Nightline. Naturally, he tried to backtrack from his racist views practically all programme long.

For some reason, I visited the BNP's webpage concerning immigration and was not in the least surprised to find the tasteful and subtle graphic above. So immigrants bring rocket launchers into the immigration queue, eh? For some weird reason, I don't think the graphic artist here was the brightest of chaps. Along with the text, I guess it's all you need to know about what the party stands for.

The last I checked, migration applications to the UK were falling for expected economic reasons.

Still, there may be circumstances when such naked racism is preferable to mainstream parties eliciting similar sentiments but painting a veneer of respectability over it [1, 2]. All I can say is that sour times generally elicit similar sentiments as it's always easy and convenient to blame politically marginal foreigners. It certainly isn't a noble sentiment but a pervasive one seemingly hard-wired into human nature.