Nick Griffin on Question Time, a liberal view

Nick Griffin on Question Time, a liberal view

October 23, 2009  |  General

Last night, Ques­tion Time: the BBC’s ‘polit­ical debate’ show, invited the leader of the BNP onto the panel. This caused a lot of furore in the papers and calls for the gov­ern­ment to refuse to appear or send in a ‘bug gun’ to shoot the BNP down. The res­ult was that vet­eran politi­cian Jack Straw was dis­patched to inform what the gov­ern­ment think of the BNP. They were not happy about being on such a panel with him.

How­ever, I say they should be.

The most import­ant thing for a demo­cracy to be is open. Open­ness is the armour and the sword that truly defeats racism, or indeed any sort of ‘ism. What open­ness says is that, “you may not skulk in the dark throw­ing angry lies or extreme opin­ions about without hav­ing the spot­light put on you.” This has led to a pecu­liar creature being born in the halls of power; politi­cians who are not allowed to have their own views. That is to say, they are not allowed to express them. They must toes a party-line, or stand as an inde­pend­ent. Keep­ing quiet and “on-message” is so import­ant that it is almost impossible to get a straight and dir­ect answer from any politi­cian and the attempt to do so is the format of many a new pro­gram and debate show.

Ques­tion Time is such a show and, for the pur­poses of pre­tend­ing to host real debates, it has a panel.  Pan­els are a format that pitches the polit­ical group dir­ectly towards the audi­ence. This is not the plat­form for debate between the people in the panel as they are not truly facing each other. Rather it is sup­posedly a way of answer­ing the audience’s ques­tions on a one to one basis. The entire panel are allowed to sound off on a sub­ject and they are sup­posed to answer only for them­selves. How­ever, often, and this is not dis­cour­aged, they actu­ally sound off on the people who have spoken before them. There­fore, a Labour MP may go first and a Tory then spends 3 minutes try­ing to blow the Labour argu­ment to pieces. There is very little time for coun­ter­ar­gu­ment, so basic­ally the exper­i­enced politi­cians have no choice but to be very ‘safe’ in what they say and even more ‘on mes­sage’ than normal.

Enter Mr Griffin.

bnp-leader-nick-griffin-pic-pa-115460673

Leader of the far-right party; the BNP

All coun­tries have a broad spec­trum of polit­ical opin­ions. In the aver­age European coun­try, the major­ity opin­ion will be Chris­tian Demo­crat. This means two things. Firstly, the Chris­tian part refers to the eth­ical frame­work of their moral and legal sys­tem being based on the Christian-religious mor­als of the pre­vi­ous ages. The demo­crat part is a state­ment of belief in the powers of a demo­cracy, some­thing most Europeans strongly sup­port and have fought for in the viol­ence of Europe’s past. How­ever, this is the major­ity. Amongst the rest of the people there will be a more frac­tured sub­set and inde­pend­ent groups of people who want to be dif­fer­ent. There are the Lib­er­als, the Com­mun­ists, the Anarch­ists (all very sim­ilar in nature) and many oth­ers, includ­ing the Mon­ster Rav­ing Loon­ies, the True Nat­ural Law party and even the ‘far right’. The BNP are a far right party that define them­selves by want­ing, what is at the very least, a “strong” change in Britain:

Non “nat­ural” Brit­ish out. As if being Brit­ish can be defined by mere genes.

They say that this change is to defend against the mod­ern gen­o­cide of the Brit­ish people, but the truth is this is not a Brit­ish ques­tion. In fact, it has been with us (and all nations) since the dawn of time.

It is the Ques­tion of “foreigners”.

The Magna Carta, England’s first doc­u­ment of rights and lauded at all levels as the first step towards demo­cracy, actu­ally con­tained dir­ectly racist views in it. In its case against the Jew­ish people, who it advised against bor­row­ing from. Such sen­ti­ments against so called “for­eign influ­ence” have always been debated and indeed inflamed by the racist policies con­tained within a minor­ity. How­ever, hav­ing such people in the demo­cracy is a vital part of the polit­ical process.

Why?

Because demo­cracy only works is it is totally rep­res­ent­at­ive of all the views in the coun­try rather than just the majority.

There comes a time when the pre­vail­ing winds and tribu­la­tions require a change in lead­er­ship in the Com­mons. This tends to drift between the two main Chris­tian Demo­cratic parties, but in the past has drif­ted the way of the Lib­er­als or fur­ther. This is in response to gen­eral feel­ing in the coun­try and the situ­ations and chal­lenges to be found in the world. Such change become mean­ing­less without free­dom to debate it. People like Griffin throw the oth­ers into 3d, his views provide the con­trast for the others.

For example, Churchill is often exposed as a Tory hero. How­ever, keep in mind that his actions dur­ing WWII (such as the bomb­ing of Dresden) would be illegal today. I am not sug­gest­ing that they were any­thing but neces­sary back then, rather that we could not real­ist­ic­ally judge where he would stand today. In fact, it is import­ant to remem­ber that Churchill was a mem­ber of a Lib­eral gov­ern­ment as well as a Tory Prime min­is­ter; he was able, as was more accept­able in MPs back then, to change his point of view as needed.

225px-Churchill_portrait_NYP_45063

Churchill, con­sidered the greatest ever Brit­ish politi­cian.

Such chan­ging is not wel­comed today.

The parties in a demo­cracy are an indic­a­tion of the dis­tri­bu­tion of the views held by the col­lect­ive. There­fore, there will always be a ‘nation­al­ist’ view­point and in fact that is import­ant. Without a rep­res­ent­a­tion of such views, groups of people, per­haps large groups, would be feel­ing sig­ni­fic­antly mar­gin­al­ised and pos­sibly become more viol­ent. Bring them into the lime­light and such beha­viour will not stand the scru­tiny. This worked with the Irish Ter­ror­ist parties far bet­ter than ignor­ing or ban­ning them did. To me, the real danger in a demo­cracy is that the sys­tem will degen­er­ate into a two-part state. An issue found cur­rently in the US, where the two parties are essen­tially identical and all non-mainstreamed voices are silenced. What silen­cing them does is dis­en­fran­chise minor­ity opin­ion and lead to a sys­tem where the major­ity party has no checks and bal­ances what­so­ever. This leads to agen­das being for­war­ded, without chal­lenge, and that can be mon­strous. Con­sider the US inva­sion of Iraq, all dis­sent­ing voice, all of it, was viciously attacked in the press. The fact that the major­ity had whipped itself up into frenzy and stopped listen­ing to any other voices meant that the dis­astrous inva­sion went ahead with enorm­ous backing.

This lead to over 500,000 people being killed.

Half a million.

Minor­ity opin­ion is vital to a healthy run­ning demo­cracy. It is a way of tak­ing the pulse of a nation. It does not need to be feared or encour­aged; it just needs to be heard.

So, if that is enshrined in the demo­cratic sys­tem, what is the problem?

The prob­lem is over-exposure. The parties that appeared on the Ques­tion  Time panel know all too well that it is not a debate show. None of them treated it as such and all of them attacked Griffin. By allow­ing the BNP onto the show, they feared that it will expose the racist minor­ity view to more people than it nat­ur­ally appeals to. What Mr Griffin said on the show was illu­min­at­ing: he said very little. He stayed away from the cent­ral mes­sage of his party, a mes­sage that car­ries the expli­cit notion of the “nat­ural superi­or­ity” of the “whites” and instead focussed on a view that is only the tip of that ice­berg: immig­ra­tion.
Not sur­pris­ing really.

The panel attacked Griffin relent­lessly for what they claimed he said in other formats and at other times, while at the same time cri­ti­cising him for defend­ing him­self using the same meth­ods. He did not rise to it at all and that was a wor­ry­ing sign for it shows that he isn’t just a racist idiot; he is also a politician.

The BNP knows that merely being invited onto Ques­tion Time was a suc­cess. The other parties know it too and unfor­tu­nately turned the pro­gram into an attempt to dis­credit the view­point of the BNP and not debate them. Per­haps the BBC really knows that any proper debate comes from the people watch­ing the show at home. In my house­hold, the pro­gram lead to a ser­i­ous debate that went on for hours and con­tin­ued this morn­ing. Debate that turned angry and upset. Debate that was per­sonal and like the draw­ing of a wound. In other words: debate that was vital. I sus­pect that this was a pat­tern repeated all up and down the country.

That is good for the whole demo­cratic pro­cess itself.

At the moment, the gov­ern­ment does not want debate on any­thing. They sign up to things like the European Treaty without ask­ing the people or any­one else.  They never asked if we should go to war with Afgh­anistan. They are not inter­ested in actu­ally enga­ging with any dis­sent­ing voices and do everything they can to silence them. They never engage in debate at all when not in par­lia­ment, they instead focus only on “message.”

By put­ting Griffin on this pop­u­lar show and hav­ing MPs attack him, the BBC has allowed the real debate to open.

So what is my opin­ion on all this?

I am a philo­sopher and my polit­ical opin­ion is quite close to anarcho-syndicalism or per­haps social liber­tarian. My polit­ical hero’s are Voltaire, Ghandi and Lao Tzu. What I believe in is egalitarianism:

a polit­ical doc­trine that holds that all people should be treated as equals and have the same polit­ical, eco­nomic, social, and civil rights

As a moral philo­sopher and hav­ing trav­elled around the world, I find myself becom­ing more lib­eral. I find myself dis­lik­ing the cor­por­ate ruled world we are in, ser­i­ously dis­lik­ing wars in other coun­tries for reli­gion and oil, not afraid of any­one what­so­ever and against the aggress­ive over poli­cing of the people in the UK.

I remain pro choice, pro gays, pro Europe, but anti news­pa­pers, anti celebrit­ies and anti globalisation.

I have many friends (about 40% of my chums) from eth­nic back­grounds, but to me they are all Brit­ish. Not black, not “them and I”, but British.

I do not care for Mr Griffins views, and I will not argue them here nor link to them (rais­ing his pro­file on the web — try goggle for the worst of it). I do not believe in the hate filled mani­festo he has writ­ten, but on the other hand; I feel that such voices are not only to be heard, but also to a cer­tain extent pro­tec­ted. Griffin may have abhor­rent views, but I would rather he has the chance to spout them in pub­lic, where he can be chal­lenged, than in a private room where all debate is lost and with it: our cul­tural love of democracy.

As Voltaire him­self said, “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”

Regards,

Basho

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  1. Got to say I LOL’d hard at the idea we are primar­ily a Chris­tian Demo­crat coun­try and that Lib­er­als, Com­mun­ists and Anarch­ists are all closely related. Also the idea that there are eco­nom­ists as a sep­ar­ate entity. Does some­what miss the point of social­ism, no? After all even in an anarcho-syndicalist soci­ety there is going to be an economy!

    Pro-Europe but anti-globalisation is an inter­est­ing one too but I’d like you to expand that in another blog post.

    I’m cer­tainly not going to argue with egal­it­ari­an­ism though. :)

    The Ques­tion Time per­form­ance was such a loss for the BNP. Griffin looked stu­pid and has shot him­self in the foot with his com­ments on Lon­don being “eth­nic­ally cleansed”.

  2. “The first per­son to describe him­self as a liber­tarian was Joseph Déjacque, an early French anarch­ist com­mun­ist. The word stems from the French word libertaire, and was used to evade the French ban on anarch­ist pub­lic­a­tions.” — WIKI

    See the link?

    By Eco­nom­ists in a polit­ical sense, I mean the type of per­son who changes polit­ical views based on fin­an­cial mat­ters. Usu­ally the ultra rich who are “above” the res­ults of any social pro­gram other than fin­an­cial ones. An example would be, a news­pa­per mag­net chan­ging his views and party sup­port based on a gov­ern­ment bring­ing in legis­la­tion that would effect him.

    Also, your com­ment, “in an anarcho-syndicalist soci­ety there is going to be an economy!”

    Not one you would recognise!

    “Syn­dic­al­ism is an altern­at­ive co-operative eco­nomic sys­tem. Anarcho-syndicalists view it as a poten­tial force for revolu­tion­ary social change, repla­cing cap­it­al­ism and the State with a new soci­ety demo­crat­ic­ally self-managed by work­ers.” — WIKI

    “Pro-Europe but anti-globalisation”

    I agree this is for another post, but in simple terms I like the idea of being more European, but I do’t like the idea of unleash­ing the cor­por­a­tions on other coun­tries. Have you seen the film, “The Corporation?”

    I would not be sur­prised that even by only turn­ing up, the BNP will do good out of QT, espe­cially because he was bul­lied some­what. Not sur­prised, but disappointed.

  3. Lib­eral != Liber­tarian, espe­cially in the com­mun­ist sense of the word. Look at the polit­ical tra­di­tion of Lib­er­al­ism espe­cially in this country.

    Your defin­i­tion of eco­nom­ist is wack and makes no sense. If you mean rich per­son say rich per­son. Eco­nom­ics and eco­nom­ists are entirely dif­fer­ent. Mur­doch is a rich chap that changes opin­ion with the polit­ical wind and what will make him richer, Keynes is an economist.

    As for the eco­nomy of an anarcho-syndicalist soci­ety of course it wouldn’t be one we’d recog­nise based on cur­rent eco­nom­ics. I know that and never sug­ges­ted it would be. I think it’s a uto­pian eco­nom­ics unlikely to wed well with humans but there you go.

    You real­ise there is more to glob­al­isa­tion than cor­por­a­tions right?

  4. Just to add this skin is much bet­ter than the pre­vi­ous one. I can actu­ally nav­ig­ate round the site now. :)

  5. Lib­eral != Liber­tarian is not cor­rect. There is a very clear asso­ci­ation between the two. Indeed the major UK Lib­eral party (Lib Dems) has a large Liber­tarian bent and many Liber­tarian con­cepts in its core. Con­sider Lem­bit Öpik! There is also a clear asso­ci­ation with com­mun­ism, espe­cially what would be called “neo-communism”.

    I wrote a whole paper once on the idea of “Eco­nomic” as polit­ical pos­i­tion, I will try and find it and post it. Its is my own idea, and per­haps not some­thing this art­icle needs. I shall remove it.

    REMOVED: “there are the eco­nom­ists (groups of people ded­ic­ated to the church of ATM, these people often float between parties based on their expressed eco­nomic views)”

    The desire of the post human lib­er­als is basic­ally a com­bin­a­tion of a one-world gov­ern­ment with uto­pian eco­nom­ics. The basic premise is to move away from “earn­ing” money, to a sys­tem alloc­at­ing resources. An example in fic­tion would be The Cul­ture in the Iain M Bank’s nov­els. A sort of Enlightened Communism.

    “You real­ise there is more to glob­al­isa­tion than cor­por­a­tions right?”

    Abso­lutely, there is gov­ern­ment in bed with cor­por­a­tions too! In all ser­i­ous­ness, glob­al­isa­tion is mostly based on eco­nomic factors, but social and cul­tural move­ments are pre­val­ent too. My prob­lem is with the uncon­trolled mar­kets mak­ing decisions that effect human lives. The mar­ket is not a good judge, and is stacked only to make its play­ers richer.

    I don’t mind “the rich”, by the way. Inher­ently. I guess my issue stems from my job, which is the build­ing of pro­cess solu­tions; I recog­nise that the mar­ket pro­cess is not in humanity’s long term favour.

    Thanks for your com­ment on the site tem­plate, I will pass them onto Cesca; who designed it.

  6. “Lib­eral != Liber­tarian is not correct.”

    Indeed it isn’t but Liber­tarian in the sense of the Paris Com­mune and com­mun­ism has fuck all to do with the polit­ical tend­ency of Lib­er­al­ism. Take a look at Clas­sic Lib­er­al­ism, the Lib­eral Party and the mar­riage between them and the Social Demo­crats to form the Lib Dems. These are basics.

    “I wrote a whole paper once on the idea of “Eco­nomic” as polit­ical pos­i­tion, I will try and find it and post it. Its is my own idea, and per­haps not some­thing this art­icle needs. I shall remove it.”

    I rather figured this was the case. Not really an idea that caught on out­side of you though was it? Eco­nom­ics is a key part of polit­ics. Try­ing to sep­ar­ate it out as a polit­ical pos­i­tion on it’s own seems to miss the point some­what. The main issue isn’t that you have your own idea just that you didn’t com­mu­nic­ate it was some­thing dif­fer­ent to the norm.

    What you seem to be get­ting at is this:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement

    Mind you I have a prob­lem with the idea of post-Human any­thing. Err… hello we are still Human!

    • Well, I am not a post-humanist, I am more inter­ested in post-scarcity. After all a post scarcity soci­ety, or bet­ter yet planet, has no need of resource wars, aggress­ive eco­nomic prac­tice or terrorism.

      As for “eco­nom­ics as polit­ics”, I took the idea out because it needs explan­a­tion to some and was con­fus­ing the issue, it is actu­ally a well known idea in aca­demic circles and my expres­sion of it merely required more than the space allowed.

      I agree that “post human” is mis­named uto­pian wish ful­fil­ment. How­ever, I also get the point that it is far enough from us now that a new name would be necessary.

  7. Banks is one of my favour­ite authors though!

  8. Not yet. Am on a strict diet of get­ting through my cur­rent read­ing list which with my rather pro­lific book buy­ing habits is hard work! It’s on my Amazon wish­list though.

  9. hellloooooooo dude…

    i found this art­icle and the ensu­ing debate very inter­est­ing, quite sim­ilar to other dis­cus­sions i have had with you previously…

    just some points i thought may help..

    the bnp party scores every time they get any pub­li­city. it doesnt mat­ter whether they get good press or bad. every time any­one prints, posts, airs or dis­cusses any­thing, you raise its pub­lic pro­file, so in essence, even with this post, you are help­ing to sup­port the bnp… sorry.

    ( by the way, they actu­ally came to my door cam­pain­ing… was the funny­est thing ever, there were 2 of them, a very severe, yet mod­ern look­ing 20 some­thing woman, who actu­ally held very astute pos­tions on mor­al­ity and eco­nom­ics and is clearly the new ” face ” of the mod­ern party.… she was in fact very con­vin­ing… it was how ever spoiled by her hand­ler, a fifty some­thing guy, in a cheap suit, who suffered from bnp tour­ettes. every time the lady made a point, he chimed in with a lovely bark, some thing along the lines of ” send em back where they came from” and i swear once, a muffled ” kill them all..” the fun parts was listen­ing to all this while my nor­mally pla­cid dog attemp­ted to chew through the wall to sav­age them…

    • Actu­ally, I feel that I am help­ing demo­cracy. I may dis­like the view­point, but I should not ignore it.

      The danger is that we will become everything we hate. Once a friend, incensed by the BNP, said to me that, “All fan­at­ics should be taken out and shot”. He spoke without think­ing. The danger of the BNP is not that they will gain power, they won’t, but that our reac­tion to them will be so severe that they will gain unspoken sup­port and we will no longer be the good guy.

  10. “All fan­at­ics should be taken out and shot” — I won­der who that was.…haha.

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