BNP chairman criticizes his followers’ anti-Semitism

I posted Robert Locke’s report last October indicating that the once seriously anti-Semitic British National Party has been in the process of reforming itself, and I quoted a column by BNP chairman Nick Griffin last December in which he criticized anti-Semitism at length. However, I also heard that Griffin socialized with David Duke and other Nazi types at the end of the recent American Renaissance conference. Some people tried to excuse this by saying, “How can he reform these people unless he talks with them?” The excuse didn’t work with me; were we really to believe that Griffin was spending time with Duke to try to convince him to be less anti-Semitic?

Well, based on this long article by Griffin published this week, perhaps he was. As distant observers of, not participants in, the anti-Semitic right, we need to be realistic about these things. Many people on the white right are distasteful or worse. Yet it is precisely such people that Griffin is arguing against, and in order to argue against them he needs to take their beliefs seriously enough to discuss them. He needs to discuss, for example, the moonbat anti-Semitism—embraced by Duke and many other “far whitists”—that sides with Muslims because the Jewish neocons are (supposedly) against Muslims. In the same article Griffin tries to persuade the anti-Semites in his own ranks that Muslims, not the Jews, are the real threat. You and I may not want to hang out with the people who hang out with the people Griffin is addressing, but the fact remains that if Griffin can rid his movement of the more serious anti-Semitism and get his followers to focus on the real threat to the West, that is obviously all to the good.

Unlike BNP, American Renaissance has never been anti-Semitic. But Jared Taylor has never criticized anti-Semitism either. Thus, ironically, Nick Griffin of the roughneck reputation is now more of an anti-anti-Semite than the famously civil Jared Taylor, who has always had Jews subscribing to AR and attending AR conferences.

The Griffin article is about turning the bizarre anti-Semitic thought process into something more reasonable. Instead of reactively supporting Muslims because neoconservatives oppose them, Griffin is recognizing that the West’s (so-far) neocon-led confrontation with Muslims is increasing tensions with Muslims, which is helping wake up the West to the Muslim danger. Thus he writes:

Clearly the neo-cons/oil companies/vain or stupid politicians, etc hope that they can have their Clash in the Middle East without paying any price closer to home. Perhaps they can pull this off, but past historical examples and a commonsense appraisal of the situation suggest this is very unlikely. The price they could easily pay for that war propaganda and pressure for the West to do their bidding in Middle East could be to so destabilise multi-racial Western societies that nationalists will stand a real chance of winning political power.

Our job is not to apportion blame for the chaos, but to position ourselves so as to take maximum advantage of it. There is no point standing like King Canute, ordering the tide to go and flood a different beach; rather, we must ride the wave of public opinion and harness its power for our own use.

A VFR reader comments about the above: “This is very well said. The Bush administration has, probably inadvertently, made the situation (war/immigration) worse and created the conditions for a backlash.”

Another reader writes:

Apparently the people over at Stormfront are none too pleased with Nick Griffin’s article. They’re saying essentially that he’s no different from GWB now:

Well, we certainly now know what Nick Griffin thinks about us Americans, if we didn’t already.

Plainly speaking, I’m not a bit fond of a British Nationalist telling us Americans how we HAVE to do things in our country. Obviously NG doesn’t have a clue as to the stranglehold that the two party system has on us. If he has a remedy for that, I’d love to hear it.

And,

The whites you say “are responsible” (Rumsfeld-Bush) are taking money from the Jews who run the Federal Reserve (Greenspan) banking system.

What is the difference, now, between Griffin and Bush?

Big question, take your time answering it.

And,

If Islam is Nick’s peeve, perhaps he should join the Clergy.

Concentrate on Race, not Class or Religion.

Again, some readers may be offended that I am even taking notice of such people as Stormfront followers, but the interesting fact remains that Griffin’s criticisms of anti-Semitism and of Islam have opened up a divide on the white right.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 23, 2006 09:44 PM | Send