Re: And how did you celebrate 1 May?

David Friedman wrote:
> In article <woSdncL34KBe_4DVnZ2dneKdnZydnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
>  Graham Woodland <gray@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> 
>> Checking their current leader Nick Griffin will offer a somewhat 
>> different picture:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Griffin
> 
> Thanks. According to that:
> 
> He was prosecuted for saying that Islam was "a wicked and vicious 
> faith." I don't agree with him, but it hardly seems much like Nazism. 
> 
> He was acquitted of the charge of "using words or behaviour intended or 
> likely to stir up racial hatred," which suggests that British jurors are

> more in favor of freedom of speech than British prosecutors. 
> 

I'm not defending the prosecution -- it was a needless gift to a 
very nasty cause.

> Judging by the description of the Oxford Union Debate, it was the 
> opponents who were acting like Nazis--using force to try to prevent 
> their opponent from speaking. 
> 

Agreed: they should have simply demolished him in debate, or 
permitted people endowed with actual cerebral cortices to get on 
with that job unmolested.  The BNP has usually been its own worst 
enemy when allowed into respectable company, so I really don't 
know what -- if anything -- the protestors were thinking.  There 
are reasons why you don't necessarily want the BNP and its fan 
club turning up to a weakly secured public meeting; but it's not 
like they could have got away with pulling any strong-arm stuff 
at the OU, even if they'd been stupid enough to want to.

> He apparently is, or at least was, a holocaust denier, but while I don't

> think that is a defensible position I also don't think it is equivalent 
> to being a Nazi.

Not by itself, but it's a pretty good clue.  When a fellow has 
spent much of his career peddling loud anti-Semitism in addition, 
and done it through a party which has its recent origin as the 
political wing of a Hitler-fetishising skinhead movement, then I 
would say that reasonable people will draw their own conclusions. 
  I've seen one BNP political broadcast, and it just confirmed my 
existing opinions of them -- though it didn't, of course, say 
anything overtly illegal or _suicidally_ unpopular.

The BNP can't in any case become really equivalent to the Nazis 
until and unless they become strong enough to get away with the 
same sorts of crap on a large scale.  I'm not really anxious to 
put this to the only possible test.

And yes, I do agree that the better way to prevent that is 
counterargument, impartial intolerance of violent aggression, and 
peaceable but open contempt for the moral and intellectual manure 
they're peddling.

As with extreme political Islam, that plus a readiness for 
self-defence ought to be plenty enough to bury them as a serious 
force.  A rush to methods more like their own suggests that the 
open society is being defended in bad faith.  The sneaking 
implication is that it's intrinsically feebler than its noisily 
swaggering enemies, and can only be simulated for us as a 
conditional privilege by a group of more benevolent strongmen. 
The man from Old England, he say, 'Bullshit!'

-- 
Cheers,

Gray

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