Re: And how did you celebrate 1 May?

Jette wrote:
> David Friedman wrote:
>> In article <memo.20080503135219.3756B@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
>>  prd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (Paul Dormer) wrote:
>>
>>> In article <ddfr-8B06C3.00280603052008@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
>>> ddfr@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (David Friedman) wrote:
>>>
>>>> There were some Nazi supporters outside of Germany, but I don't 
>>>> think they were ever anything close to comparable in number or 
>>>> importance.
>>> Note that the BNP, considered to be a Nazi-like party, has won a
number
>>> of seats in the local elections in the UK this week, and even have a
>>> seat on the London Assembly.  I don't believe any communist party
>>> candidates won.
>>
>> Checking Wikipedia, they seem to get under 1% of the vote. They appear 
>> to be nationalists and anti-immigration--but it wasn't opposition to 
>> immigration that defined the Nazi program.
>>

Checking their current leader Nick Griffin will offer a somewhat 
different picture:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Griffin

> 
> You get the cleaned up official polite version of the BNP from
Wikipedia.
> 
> Think skinheads with swaztikas tattooed on their foreheads, wearing Doc 
> Martin boots and kicking the living daylights out of anyone "of a funny 
> colour".  Now give them some laser surgery on those tattoos (the visible

> ones), put them in a suit and a bit of elocution to improve their 
> vocabulary.  Same words, said in a posher voice.  (they're not just 
> "anti-immigration", they're "pro-repatriation")
> 

That pretty much describes the BNP as I've known them, yes. 
Since their recent drive for electability, I suspect a lot of 
their current members aren't actually drawn from the old skinhead 
core, though.  For one thing, a bunch of the most hardline 
neo-Nazis broke away ten years or so ago, and started violently 
targeting their former colleagues for the 'betrayal' of standing 
in decadent democratic elections.  I haven't heard anything of 
that for a long time.

There are plenty of non-skinhead right-wing 
nationalists/anti-immigration groups who fit David's vanilla 
description -- UKIP, the United Kingdom Independence Party, comes 
chiefly to mind.  UKIP have usually done better -- sometimes much 
better -- than the BNP in British elections.  I wouldn't want to 
contemplate their getting into power, but they've never shown any 
more violent tendencies to my knowledge than any other party. 
Similarly with the even more fringey wibblers of the English 
Democrats, Christian People's Alliance, Veritas, and so forth.

The BNP, by contrast... well, their doorstep canvassers' famous 
catchphrase 'We know where you live!' has been a running joke in 
this country for a long, long time.  I knew a guy they actually 
tried that on in the 90s.  And about the time I was being born, 
their predecessors in the old National Front tried to ensure my 
grandmother's vote in the same charming way.  (That has gone down 
in family legend, because it wasn't actually her door she was 
answering...)

The present BNP leadership, having -- rather regrettably -- 
several brain cells to its credit, noticed some while back that 
stomping around kicking and threatening all and sundry is neither 
particularly healthy nor an effective means to real power, nor is 
Adolf Hitler's name a very potent rallying-cry in Britain.  Like 
the smarter fascist revivalists elsewhere, they have trimmed 
their sails accordingly.  This may mean that they can no longer 
bring out quite as many street troops as they could in the 
mid-90s, but I'd hate to bet the safety of anyone I cared about 
on that -- in particular, that of the gay, black, and/or Jewish 
members of my extended family.  The BNP may be of mainly nuisance 
value, but they are a *nasty* nuisance, in direct ways that the 
non-Nazi authoritarian right-wing nationalist fringe is not.

The surviving groups calling themselves the $QUALIFIER National 
Front, however, seem essentially to be those parts of the BNP's 
parent movement that didn't get custody of the ganglion.  They 
count for little in the modern scheme of things, except perhaps 
outside certain pubs on a Saturday night, and strongly resemble 
the communist fringe or the Judaean People's Front in their 
bewildering and pointless fissiparousness.  They would doubtless 
object to these comparisons quite energetically; fortunately, I 
have no reason to suspect that they know where I live.


-- 
Cheers,

Gray

---
To unmung address, lop off the 'be invalid' command.