How reformed is the BNP?

Justin T. writes:

After your numerous blog entries describing the British National Party (BNP) reformation taking place under Nick Griffin’s leadership, I decided to look more closely into the issue and look to see if the BNP is, in fact, undergoing such a reformation or if it is merely an attempt to change their primary public image away from one that was once primarily anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American, under the leadership of John Tyndall, to one that is more-or-less neutral towards the US, Israel, and Jews. The axiom, “actions speak louder than words,” was my guide throughout this entire process. Why did I do this? It is my belief that we should be sure of ourselves and be completely informed before we throw our support behind such an entity, especially one with as troubled a history as the BNP, and ensure that this is not mere political posturing.

On one hand, the BNP has purged the late John Tyndall, who was so anti-Semitic that he would praise radical Muslims and who was the primary British national socialist contact to William Pierce and the National Alliance here in the US. The party has shifted its emphasis from Jews to Muslims and has suppressed anti-Semitic elements from publicly representing the party. The party also appears to have been attempting to attract Jews and some minorities into its ranks via their Ethnic Liaison Committee, although its success in the matter is difficult to gauge. They are also attempting to attract Anglicans opposed to the church’s liberal positions with another front group, the Christian Council of Britain. The website of the BNP has also been purged of anti-Semitic elements.

On the other hand, the BNP’s book service still sells anti-Semitic books, such as:

Jewish History, Jewish Religion by Israel Shahak
Churchill’s War, Volumes I and II by David Irving
Nuremberg by David Irving
The Zionist Connection, II by Alfred Lilienthal
The Eleventh Hour by John Tyndall

They also still sell Crimes and Mercies by James Bacque, a debunked book which accuses the Allies of genocide against the Germans. There is no other indication that the party apparatus itself is anti-Semitic, although it should not be confused as being philo-Semitic. Nick Griffin himself still continues to associate with anti-Semites from his past involvement in the International Third Position movement. He spent a great deal of time with David Duke last time he visited the US at the American Renaissance conference, and toured Washington DC with him, and participated in Duke’s 2005 conference in New Orleans. He regularly works with the German National Democratic Party, which is very anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian, pro-Hezbollah, and pro-Iran. He was also responsible for updating the Holocaust denial book, Did Six Million Really Die?. So, Mr. Griffin still has a lot to do before he can be considered to have reformed.

In light of this, my conclusion is that the BNP, while not outwardly anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic, or anti-American, still has a long ways to go and we must continue to apply pressure to this organization to ensure that the reforms continue and it disassociates itself from organizations whose goals are dissimilar from our own. In the mean time, we should keep watch over developments within the party, such as Lee Barnes’ commentary recently on Israel, and continue to withhold support for the party until Griffin comes clean or appoints a leader with a cleaner past than himself.

I think you should consider all of this carefully in future postings on your blog. Thank you.

LA replies:

Thanks to Justin for doing this research, but what is his own conclusion as to what position we should take on the BNP? As samples of my previous treatments, here I discuss the local elections last spring. Here I discuss Peter Hitchens’s off-the-mark critique of both the BNP and Britain’s immigration policy. And here I list the main planks in the BNP platform, concluding:

I like the whole thing. I’m still leery of the BNP as people, based on what I’ve heard about them, but how could I not wish a party well whose platform is right on so many points, in a different galaxy from the major parties? Even if the BNP candidates are unqualified for political office, wouldn’t the success of a party with such a platform represent progress for those principles?

I wonder which BNP planks Peter Hitchens, author of the hard-hitting-sounding The Abolition of Britain, who urges people not to vote for the BNP, opposes? Does he oppose the ending of immigration into Britain? Does he want all the recent immigrants to stay? Does he oppose the removal of illegal immigrants? Does he want to keep all the anti-discrimination legislation? Does he want Britain to remain in the EU? Does he want Britain to have trade policies that put its workers on the same level as workers in third-world countries?

Justin is implying that I’ve been too approving of the BNP through all this, without his actually saying so. So I’d like to ask him: Have I been too approving, and how should I speak of the BNP, differently than I have done? I suppose one thing I could do is, whenever I say anything positive about them, to add more caveats, such as mentioning the books they sell and so on. However, to be fair (to myself), I have never discussed the BNP positively without adding lots of caveats. In my most enthusiastic blog entry on them, praising the pro-Israel article by Lee Barnes, I made it clear that this was an individual writer who is respected in the BNP, not the official voice of the BNP, and that the BNP as an organization is not pro-Israel though it is not anti-Israel either.

Justin replies:

“… but what is his own conclusion as to what position we should take on the BNP? … I’m still leery of the BNP as people, based on what I’ve heard about them, but how could I not wish a party well whose platform is right on so many points, in a different galaxy from the major parties?”

Of course their platform is right on many points, as are the platforms of many far-right parties. I’m sure that if you removed the anti-Semitic and anti-American elements from the NPD’s platform in Germany, it would seem to be a perfectly decent party, even though those elements only make up a small fraction of their overall platform. Should we support the NPD in Germany, even though they are openly anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli, anti-American, etc. because those make up only one part of their overall platform? No, of course not, because one can’t go point by point on a party platform and weigh each equally, because each point is not equal to other points.

It’s always a few issues that define the party, not the overall platform, and those issues have the heaviest weight in the platform, whether they make up a larger percentage of verbiage than other points or not. People didn’t vote for the GOP in 2004 because they agreed with the vast majority of their platform; they voted for them because they were perceived to be strong on national security. I would argue that people don’t vote for the BNP because they weighed each point in their platform carefully; rather, they voted for the BNP because they agree with their anti-immigration stance. I’m sure if you polled the people who voted for the BNP you would find very few who voted for them because they agreed with their stance on healthcare (which is similar to Labour’s), or their stance on the environment (which is similar to the Liberal Democrats), or their stance on defense funding (which is similar to the Conservatives).

The BNP, historically, was the political vehicle of John Tyndall, until he was kicked out, at which point it became Griffin’s. In light of this fact, one must weigh the positions and attitudes of Griffin with that of the platform equally.

I have hope for the BNP. I’m just saying we must be very careful and be sure that we aren’t falling for political posturing posing as “reform.” Underlying attitudes could exist within the organization itself that are being consciously suppressed for reasons of political expediency, and we must be sure that these underlying attitudes are not hostile to our own objectives.

LA replies:

You haven’t really answered my questions or gone beyond what you already said. I understand your point that we need to be continually cautious with the BNP and not assume they are clean. But you still have not told me how my actual treatment of them thus far has been objectionable and how it should be different.

Justin writes:

For example, you have stated that Griffin, “is clearly disapproving the whole mindset of anti-Semitism,” with the note, “This is not an endorsement of the BNP. The jury is still out on that subject.” If he is so clearly disapproving of the whole mindset of anti-Semitism, then how can he not see that Kevin MacDonald is the anti-Semite that he is, writing entire “studies” based on highly selective research? Why does he continue to associate with hard-core anti-Semites, like David Duke and the NPD? I realize you have not made any endorsement of the party, but we must remember that his actions speak louder than words.

By doing this little mini-”assessment,” I am attempting to fill a gap that you revealed in a post on the issue, in which you said, “I have not personally made a study of the party and its statements.” If you can write off (justifiably so) Jared Taylor as “refus[ing] to condemn anti-Semitism,” how can you not use the same criteria you applied to Taylor in your analysis of Griffin? If you were to do that, I think you would find that Griffin has not only refused to condemn anti-Semitism by his actions, but he has gone much farther than Taylor by consciously collaborating with them on a regular basis (although, it should be said, Taylor once allowed Tyndall to stay with him on one of his visits to the U.S.).

LA replies:

I think Justin is demanding too much. Not only must Griffin say certain things himself, and to cleanse his own organization of anti-Semitism, but he is obligated to condemn other people unconnected with his organization whom Justin thinks ought to be condemned. This is not a realistic or fair demand.

As for Griffin’s associating with Duke and so on, I’ve written about that before. I don’t like that and I wouldn’t personally associate with someone who is friends with David Duke, if that is what Griffin is. At the same time, I’ve said Griffin needs to be seen not in a static sense but in light of where he has come from. The change is significant and dramatic.

Which brings us to Justin’s question, “If you can write off (justifiably so) Jared Taylor as refus[ing] to condemn anti-Semitism, how can you not use the same criteria you applied to Taylor in your analysis of Griffin?” The answer is that AR and BNP are coming from two completely different places. AR was never an anti-Semitic organization, but in recent years has been increasingly open to anti-Semites, culminating in the February 2006 conference. Long-time members of AR suddenly found themselves surrounded by anti-Semites and they appealed to Jared Taylor to cleanse the organization of such people so that they could feel comfortable continuing to attend conferences and participating in the online forum. Taylor contemptuously turned them down. By contrast, BNP started out as a hard-core anti-Semitic organization, yet Griffin has now written intelligent and searching critiques of anti-Semitism utterly beyond anything Taylor—who has never been an anti-Semite—has ever done or been capable of contemplating.

To repeat, AR, having never been anti-Semitic, has moved toward welcoming Nazi-type anti-Semites in its conferences and its online forums culminating in the huge round of applause at a speaker’s neutral mention of the possible death of Israel at the AR conference and in Taylor’s refusal even to mention that disgusting behavior in his article about the conference, let alone to criticize it; Taylor will thus not even take a stand against mass expressions of exterminationist anti-Semitism at his own conferences. BNP—whose conferences neither I nor anyone I know has ever attended—has evolved from an anti-Semitic organization to one whose leader explicitly and intelligently condemns anti-Semitism and has kicked hard-core anti-Semites out of the party, even though BNP and Griffin have still not gotten rid of all their past anti-Semitic associations.

These are thus two very different situations which are to be judged by different criteria.

And the main difference between them is this: With Taylor, the question was, are long-time AR readers going to remain associated with him and AR? Therefore there was a higher standard.

With Griffin, none of us is associated with him, he’s a more distant figure whom we’re reading about and trying to understand. We’re not members of BNP, therefore the question is not, are we going to be associated with him, but do we find him and his party making a noteworthy and valuable contribution to British politics and the protection of the West?

Again I repeat that I have not engaged in any close study of the BNP. I have reported on various positive developments and always added caveats. I don’t know what else I can do to satisfy Justin, other than to say that nothing positive should be said about BNP until it has utterly cleansed itself of all its anti-Semitic baggage. And that would mean ignoring a unique and remarkable phenomenon of our time: a past serious anti-Semite engaging in serious—not cosmetic—criticisms of anti-Semitism.

Robert Locke replies to Justin’s point about anti-Semitic books being sold by the BNP:

This reminds me of a few years ago, when a girlfriend got hysterical on me when she found some books on homosexuality on my bookshelves. I told her, “I also have books on Soviet submarines; that doesn’t mean I leak radiation.”

The BNP are the most ideologically voracious people I’ve ever run across. They will read anything, from Mao Tse Tung to Michael Porter, that they think they can get something out of. Unfortunately, a lot of the non-mainstream criticisms that they want are only to be found in books that are compromised in one way or another. The fact that they sell a book does not mean they endorse its entire content. It can’t possibly mean this, given that half the books they sell, contradict other books they sell. They know they have this problem, which is why their weekly bulletin sometimes carries this disclaimer:

“Please note that the inclusion of this article in the bulletin does not constitute an endorsement by this party of the entirety of its content. Articles, from many ideological points-of-view, are included if they will inform the reader of important facts, whatever liabilities they may have. In particular, articles from non-mainstream sources may express racist views that this party no longer holds.”

The party leadership has made quite clear to the membership that they must reject anti-Semitism. This article originally appeared in their main party print magazine, and is by one of their oldest gurus, so it may be assumed authoritative, especially because their chairman has echoed its sentiments. (I realize some readers won’t like its logic, which evaluates anti-Semitic canards as if they were serious arguments in order to explain why they are false, but that’s the only way to refute them.)

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 06, 2006 06:55 PM | Send