Category Archives: Far right racists

BBC gives free publicity to Nazi

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nick_GriffinNot content with launching a witch-hunt against Hizb ut-Tahrir on Newsnight, the BBC has further disgraced itself by giving BNP leader Nick Griffin a platform on this week’s Moral Maze on Radio 4 (listen here). The subject was “race, religion and free speech” and Griffin was allowed full rein to spill out his anti-Muslim bigotry.

Needless to say, the fascists are celebrating – “what a show it was”. They add: “What makes interesting listening is the evidence of other guests from disparate sources who largely agreed that ‘hate speech’ laws are unnecessary and that existing legislation prohibiting incitement to violence and murder should be used.”

BNP news article, 16 November 2006

The BNP must have been particularly pleased by the contribution of panelist Claire Fox, who called for the abolition of the law against incitement to racial hatred and went on to denounce the government for “using the BNP as a pretext for another political clamp-down on free speech – that’s more worrying than anything Nick Griffin could throw at us”.

Mind you, there is a moment of light relief when Griffin, in all seriousness, informs his audience that racism is a term “invented by Leon Trotsky”!

‘The man leading the Christian fightback’ – fascists applaud Sentamu

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“How ironic that the man who is coming to the rescue of the Anglican community should be a recent immigrant from Africa. In contrast to his domestic but effete and supine colleagues in the Anglican hierarchy the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, appears to have the backbone to robustly defend the Church and has today accused the BBC of bias against Christianity and says the broadcaster fears a terrorist backlash if it is critical of Islam. He may not think much of the BNP but we back his robust manner of championing traditional Christian values.”

BNP news article, 14 November 2006

Rage as Nick Griffin walks free

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Fascist scum (3)Anti-fascist campaigners reacted with outrage on Friday of last week as Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party (BNP), and his sidekick Mark Collett were cleared of charges of incitement to racial hatred.

Griffin and Collett had been prosecuted over speeches at a BNP meeting in Keighley, West Yorkshire, that was secretly filmed by the BBC.

Griffin claimed that gangs of Asian men were drugging and raping white girls as part of an Islamic plot to take over Britain. He spoke of “Muslim thugs and perverts”, “young paki street thugs” and Britain being “mongrelised out of existence”. Collett made similar allegations about “gangs of Asian males”.

In court Griffin argued that his comments were intended as criticism of Islam, rather than being directed at Asians in general. “This isn’t a racial thing. It’s not an Asian thing. It’s a cultural and religious thing,” he said.

His defence team argued that Griffin’s views on Islam, expressed in 2004, had since become more acceptable. They cited recent comments by Jack Straw and other senior politicians to argue that such views were now legitimate public debate. These kind of arguments regularly appear in both the right wing press and its “liberal” counterpart. They have directly fuelled the atmosphere of anti-Muslim racism around this case.

Jon Cruddas, Labour MP for Dagenham, east London, was quite right to say that the government’s “tough” stance on race and Muslims had played into the hands of the BNP. He said, “We have to be honest in saying that the debate over the veil, talking tough on immigration and race or the language used in the ‘war on terror’ does not reassure people but actually makes the situation worse.”

Weyman Bennett, joint national secretary of Unite Against Fascism, said it was “tragic that a fascist organisation can hide behind free speech”. But the verdict highlighted the need to build a united grassroots movement against the BNP that could challenge the fascists politically, he added. “We need to be campaigning against the fascists in our workplaces and communities. The vast majority of people are opposed to the BNP – and we need to mobilise that force against them.”

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Attorney General backs rethink on race hate laws

Posted on by Bob Pitt

New race hate laws are likely to be needed following the acquittal of BNP leader Nick Griffin, the Attorney General signalled today. Lord Goldsmith said the court result exposed a “gap” in the law that left Islam without the same protections as other faiths. British National Party leader Mr Griffin was cleared last week of stirring up racial hatred after describing Islam as a “wicked, vicious faith”.

Asked if he backed a rethink, Lord Goldsmith told BBC Radio’s Today programme: “The prosecution does show that there really is a gap in the law and we need to look to see whether the new law is actually going to fill that gap or not.” Mr Griffin’s defence was to say that he was attacking Muslims and not Asians – and so had not broken race hate laws, Lord Goldsmith pointed out.

Evening Standard, 14 November 2005

Religious hatred is no more than a variety of racism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Soumaya Ghannoushi2“After his acquittal on the charge of inciting racial hatred, Nick Griffin was asked whether he was a racist. He replied that he was no longer one, that he is now a ‘religionist’. But should we believe that Griffin has really abandoned the racism that frames his ideology and that of the party he leads? Of course not. All Griffin has done is stretch from one category of racism to another – without breaking with the former: from a discourse founded on racial hatred to one based on religio-racial hatred.

“In the speech for which he and his assistant, Mark Collett, were taken to court, the two shifted effortlessly from referring to Islam as ‘this wicked, vicious faith’ that ‘has expanded from a handful of cranky lunatics about 1,300 years ago’, to speaking of Asian ‘muggers’, ‘rapists’, ‘bastards’, ‘cockroaches’ and ‘ethnics’ who need to be ‘shown the door’.

“We are witnessing the emergence of a new type of hatred, where religion and culture overlap with race and ethnicity. The climate generated by the war on terror – stoked further by the inflammatory speech on Friday of the MI5 director general Eliza Manningham-Buller –  has allowed the far-right to redirect its poison of exclusionism from specific racial minorities to specific religio-racial minorities: from the black and Asian, to the Muslim black and Asian.”

Soumaya Ghannoushi in the Guardian, 13 November 2006

Mad Mel rejects ‘Jewish/fascist axis’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“In the Communist Party’s Morning Star newspaper last September, Geoff Brown cited both the BNP’s support for Israel against Hezbollah, and chairman Nick Griffin’s support for the Jewish writer Bat Ye’or who has warned of an Islamist takeover of Europe, as evidence of a Jewish/fascist axis. As was clear from this article, such a vicious attempt to link the Jews with the fascists was prompted in large measure by an attempt to bury the link between Islamic fascism and the left.”

Melanie Phillips in the Jewish Chronicle, 10 November 2006

In fact Brown’s article was mainly a critique of the ludicrous claim made by the All-Party Parliamentary Committee on Anti-Semitism (under the influence of Searchlight) that the far right has allied itself with Islamists in order to incite hatred against the Jewish community. Brown pointed out that, as far as its public propaganda is concerned, the BNP has almost entirely ditched anti-semitism in favour of inciting hatred against Muslims, and in doing so openly promotes the Islamophobic rantings of Bat Ye’or.

Addressing the future evolution of the BNP under Griffin’s leadership, Brown wrote that “the possibility of the BNP making a pitch for the support of a right-wing minority within the Jewish community on an anti-Muslim programme, as the far-right party Vlaams Belang has successfully done in Belgium, cannot be excluded” (emphasis added). How exactly does that amount to “a vicious attempt to link the Jews with the fascists” or to “smear Jews … as being the neo-fascists’ natural allies”?

You can understand why Mad Mel might be a bit sensitive about the idea of fascists finding common ground with right-wingers in the Jewish community. Last year a BNP writer name-checked Phillips as one of the newspaper columnists whose opinions BNP supporters “feel most closely match their own”.

Politicians ‘left vacuum for BNP’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jon Cruddas (2)Mainstream politicians have left a vacuum for the British National Party to get votes, a contender in Labour’s deputy leader race is due to say. Backbench MP Jon Cruddas says the acquittal of the BNP leader, Nick Griffin, on a charge of inciting racial hatred is a wake-up call.

In a speech to the Searchlight conference for Labour and union activists, he will say: “Some communities have been badly affected by a decline in traditional industries, a shortage of affordable housing and changing migration patterns.”

He will also say: “We have to be honest in saying the debate over the veil, talking tough on immigration and race or the language used in the ‘war on terror’ does not reassure people but actually makes the situation worse. It creates fear, tension and suspicion. It divides communities and plays into the hands of extremism.”

BBC News, 11 November 2006

Cabinet rethinks race hate laws after jury frees BNP leaders

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Race hatred laws may have to be revised following the acquittal of the British National party’s leader, Nick Griffin, for the second time on incitement charges, senior government figures said last night. Gordon Brown, the chancellor, and Lord Falconer, the lord chancellor, said the laws may have to be looked at, while a spokesman for John Reid, the home secretary, said he would be “taking soundings” from cabinet colleagues about changing the laws.

“Mainstream opinion in this country will be offended by some of the statements that they have heard made,” said Mr Brown. “If there is something that needs to be done to look at the law then I think we will have to do that,” he told BBC News 24. Lord Falconer told the BBC that it was time to rethink the race hate laws. “What is being said to young Muslim people in this country is that we as a country are anti-Islam, and we have got to demonstrate without compromising freedom that we are not,” he said.

Guardian, 11 November 2006

See also the Independent, 11 November 2006

And BBC News, 11 November 2006

Netherlands moves toward total ban on Muslim veils

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Netherlands may become the first European country to ban Muslim face veils after its government pledged yesterday to outlaw the wearing in public spaces of the niqab, or veil, and the burka, or full-length cloak covering the head.

The right-leaning coalition said last night that it would look for a way to outlaw the wearing of all Muslim face veils. The grounds for a ban were laid last December when parliament voted in favour of a proposal to criminalise face coverings, as part of a security measure proposed by a far-right politician, Geert Wilders.

Rita Verdonk, the immigration minister, signalled that the government would now push for a total ban, even though the legislation would be likely to contravene Dutch religious freedom laws.

“The cabinet finds the wearing of a burka undesirable … but cannot at present enforce a total ban,” the Dutch news agency ANP quoted her as saying after a cabinet meeting.

Ms Verdonk suggested that existing legislation which limits the wearing of burkas and other full-body coverings on public transport and in schools did not go far enough, and that the cabinet would discuss as wide a ban as possible in the coming week.

“The government will search for the possibility to provide a ban,” her spokeswoman told the Reuters news agency.

Guardian, 11 November 2006