BNP Leader on Question Time

[The Doctor]

Well, I think it was right for the BBC to have him on, for he did an absolutely splendid job of destroying any credibility the BNP may have had with some viewers every time he opened his mouth. For the benefit of anyone in doubt, he was revealed as a grinning, bumbling fascist moron barely able to string sentences together - and did a better job of highlighting the BNP's abhorrent views than any of his opponents. Well done. Now he can slither back to the shadows where he belongs.

I especially enjoyed Jack Straw destroying him over his views on the Holocaust.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8321683.stm

-Ralph

[grahamthomson]

I watched QT with great interest (more so than normal), and my opinion of the BNP and my revulsion at their policies remains unchanged.

[The Doctor]

I was repulsed by the BNP previously. My repulsion remains, but I no longer fear them. Watching their leader being unable to frame any kind of coherant argument considerably lessens my worries that people will take them seriously.

EDIT: And then I read some comments online in the BBC feedback thread which defended him. My worry returns.

-Ralph

[jonathan85]

The fact that some people might hear him and think he was presentating a reasonable case was alway a worry. But I think it was the right decision, as not giving the BNP any coverage is only going to make them seem more interesting and intriging. Better to let them speak, and show just how thin they are on actual policy...

Jonathan

[grahamthomson]

Apparently the BBC, with its impartial and fair coverage (at least to me and my lefty wefty view), is viewed as being far too left-wing so a lot of right-wing supporters tend to hover over their Have Your Say forums and post en-mass on subjects like this. I don't think it represents the general view, however.

[Andy Turnbull]

It was good to see him destroyed last night. Hopefully now when people want to register their disgust with the mainstream parties they might think more about the implications of voting on these racist scumbags.

Andy

[Cullen]

Agreed. It was very amusing to see him destroy himself. Some of the stuff he came out with left me gaping.

[The Doctor]

Now, he's making a complaint:

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8322322.stm

What a deplorable excuse for a human being.

-Ralph

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Criticising the BBC for putting him on is nonsense. If politicians don't think he should be on the telly, they should ban the party outright. As it is a legal party and a million people voted for it in the EU election, they have to treat it the same as they do other small parties and let them on from time to time.

I agree with what's been said about the way he came across to _me_, but because I have a hard time getting inside the mind of the million people who voted for them, I honestly don't know whether he came across as badly to them. I also wonder how it would have turned out had it been held somewhere up north rather than in London.

I sincerely hope they lose support as a result of it. I also hope that the fact they are now on the telly will scare non-voters into turning up and voting for whoever they consider the least worst option of the rest of the parties in future elections, so that the BNP share of the vote isn't as great in future.

Martin

[Deleted]

I'd never support the BNP even if somebody paid me to do so but the party's core following comes from people who work in factories such as mine. At my workplace the English workers are outnumbered by Polish workers 3 to 1 and these Poles are more than happy to accept the minimum wage in this country because it is higher than the minimum wage in their own country. As a result more Poles are being recruited in favour of English workers and the current crop of English workers at the factories feel like they are in a minority. Furthermore, some of the Poles (especially the ones at my workplace) do a sub-standard job and generally hinder other people in theirs. This has been reported many a time but has been ignored by the management because they don't want to victimise the Polish workers due them being such excellent cheap labour for them.

I've got no problem with the Polish in general and the Poles I work with don't cause me any problems but I have noticed that they cause problems for other workers especially when they down tools just before the end of their shift leaving the place untidy which generally falls back on the English workers who are forced to stay behind and tidy everything up.

The BNP stands for everything I despise and I'll never vote for them despite working in a place that breeds BNP members.

[kayevcee]

Oct 23, 2009 10:32:20 GMT The Doctor said:

And then I read some comments online in the BBC feedback thread which defended him. My worry returns.

As Graham says Ralph, the BBC HYS forum is a haven for the right wing-tip. In my experience the average commenter hates the Labour party, immigrants, charity (particularly those dealing with Africa, which should apparently be left to rot), the Middle East, every form of religious belief or expression, criminals, trade unionists and each other with the passion of a thousand blazing suns. There are exceptions as there are on even the most vitriolic message board, but the 'most recommended' answers always swing very hard towards the 'bring back hanging' fraternity.

It's also worth pointing out that massive, established internet nutter sanctuaries like Fark.com regularly descend on BBC threads en masse like a swarm of badly spelled locusts. Pay them no heed.

-Nick

[Bogatan]

I wish there had been a bit less bullying (or what ever you would call it) He did more than a decent job of looking foolish any time he was allowed to take part in proper discussion. He was cut of far too often when diging himself ever deeper.

Andy

[Deleted]

The BNP strikes me as a modern day incarnation of the Monster Raving Looney Party in that the leader of the party is more well known than anything else in the party.

[dyrl]

For the benefit of anyone in doubt, he was revealed as a grinning, bumbling fascist moron barely able to string sentences together

So he was revealed to be just like probably 7 out of 10 random people pulled off the street?

No wonder in a democratic election this fellow and his party get votes.

But don't worry - in Poland, we had a similar phenomena and the conservatives managed to kill them off by making their party leader minister of agriculture.

Just give them a little bit of power and they suddenly find it impossible to govern with stupid platitudes.

As "chilling" as it might sound - I think the best way for the BNP to go away would be for this Griffin fellow to be made...oh...say...Minister of Immigration - if you have such a post?

This is because he's going to quickly find the situation far more complex than his very simplistic views, which I would categorize as neither right nor left, but mostly just ignorant. I don't even detect much real hatred in anything he says - it's just ignorance and a good dose of resentment.

But I do agree - can't censor it, shouldn't bar it from public forums - all views must be given equal time and all candidates must be allowed to voice their opinions, no matter how stupid people might find them.

Finally - I am personally outraged by what 99% of politicians usually have to say.

So just focusing all the outrage on this BNP fellow is kind of missing the point - it's almost like politicians like having this sort of bogeyman to take peoples eyes off of the real harm that they are often doing to a country or society.

Pete

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Nov 3, 2009 21:25:46 GMT dyrl said:

all views must be given equal time

That can't be quite right. You can't give every fringe view the same time as mainstream views. It's not possible. There isn't enough time to go round. The BNP earned their time on the telly by winning enough votes in the last election, not by sticking their hand up and saying "I've got a view that nobody's expressing, so let me on the telly."

And on scientific issues, even though minority dissenting views are occasionally right, when they are given equal media time to views held by the majority of scientists it just confuses laypeople.

In both politics and science, media time should be weighted to give the lay viewer/reader a correct impression of how widely a view is held. I realise that leads to a certain amount of feedback that makes it hard for new views to take hold, but to do otherwise leads to total confusion.

In the USA, politics is too dominated by two parties and big money, and third parties don't get a look-in. In this country things are better because there is no guarantee that the top party will have an overall majority in Parliament, and what with devolution and their coalitions we can have five or six parties in power at a time. Small parties are then worth voting for, and do get media time - as the BNP have now done. But until they make that first step and win at a local level somewhere in the country, they won't get on the telly in a big way, and rightly so.

Martin

[dyrl]

Re: "all views must be given equal time"

OOPS.

Sorry. I misspoke -or in this case mis-wrote. You are of course right.

I meant to say all people have an equal right to free speech - which is something altogether different from what I wrote.

Oops.

Also - I agree with you about the benefits of proportional representation as it is in Europe rather than the two party system in the USA.

I actually see one other important benefit to proportional representation - namely it keeps government limited. Precisely because there are more than two parties, and the big parties often need the smaller parties to form coalitions and get legislation through, this helps gaurd against the centralization and aggrandizement of power - because the more groups and view points you have at odds with one another - the more chance there is that legislation will be moderated and that there will be some checks and balances.

As to the USA... well... yes - the two party "system" stinks. But I would just remind everyone that no where in the US Constitution or even in state or Federal law is there anything about a "system" of two parties.

Instead, there are just arbitrary guidelines that third parties must meet to get on ballots - guidelines grafted by the Two-Party elite. In terms of presidential races, to get a spot in the presidential debates - you need to be polling at 15% - but it's not really clear WHO does these polls and what the criteria are.

And even if you somehow "get in" to the debates, like Perot did - there's no guarantee that the debates will take place. After all - there is no law that says "candidates must debate" - and in fact there have been cases where there were no Presidential debates held (for example in 1968, Nixon refused to have a presidential debate because he remembered how his performance on TV in 1960 tilted the wind in Kennedy's favor).

But on the local level...it's almost impossible for a third party to get on the ballots.

I actually have come to view the United States like the Soviet Union and its' satelittes, which often also had two parties. For example, under Communism in Poland - there were actually other parties in Parliament. There was the Communist United Workers Party, but there was also the Peasant Party and even a "Democratic Party" - all of them of course were just facades; none of their members were democratically ellected - but the point is that it is not unheard of for dictatorships to have more than one party - at least formally or on paper.

But then again - if you read the constitution of the USSR, I think most social democrats would agree with much of it, and many conservatives and liberals would also find praiseworthy elements.

But so what - it was just on paper. The reality was startkly different.

And that's the situation in the USA today. It's a formal democracy - except you can never vote for anybody who isn't approved by the Two-Party system. You'll never hear about them, nor will you ever see their names on the ballot. When you do - it will be for positions like your town council or the local dog catcher - aka - meaningless positions.

I do appreciate though, that in the situation with Griffin - the BBC has a bit of a dilema - don't let him on, and you're being biased and not giving voice to someone a portion of the people have voted for. Let him on and you're risking giving voice to "bad" opinions.

But this is just one of the million contradictions that politics forces on people.

Pete