BNP Ascending

My pet theory is that the BNP would have nowhere near the amount of political traction and publicity they have if it wasn't for Labour ministers repeatedly talking about them to the media.

That said, a new study has come out saying the BNP's gains are real, via People's Republic of South Devon:

"The British National Party has grown more rapidly than any other in 21st-century Britain, and is on the brink of an electoral breakthrough which would bring media attention and serious European cash.

That’s according to a new study by Matthew Goodwin and Robert Ford to be published later this year.

Titled The New Extremism in 21st-Century Britain, the study posits that the modern-day far right has positioned itself to the left of Labour.

Anxiety about immigration may have fuelled the BNP’s rise, but under the leadership of Nick Griffin the party has developed a full manifesto of policies, including large increases in state pensions; more money for the NHS; improved worker protection; and state ownership of key industries.

According to the study, the BNP is gaining new support from older, less educated, white working-class men – voters from Labour’s historical base who feel they have benefited little from the past decade of Labour government."

A few questions: if the BNP are positioned to the left of Labour, and have a full raft of policies to the left of Labour, doesn't that make them, well, "to the left", as opposed to the "far-right". Just sayin' ...

Secondly: what does it say about the party in government that their natural "historical base" of voters has progressed (or regressed) towards supporting a party who believes in preserving the integrity of "the indigenous peoples of the British Isles"? I suppose this is where "British jobs for British workers" came from, eh, Gord?

Apparently, "roughly one-fifth of white British voters share the BNP’s views." If this is even close to being true, we as a nation need to ask ourselves some serious and probing questions.

This brings to mind an extremely thought-provoking post from Devil's Kitchen a while back, in which he advanced the theory that the government is subtly attempting to foment an ugly, insular sort of nationalism in the British public, by creating the sense of being in a "state of siege" and restricting us from interacting with foreign cultures : -

"Well, let us ask ourselves what is required for a real nationalist fervour to set in; well, the population should think of anyone else as "outsiders", "foreign" and, if possible, somewhat inferior.

One of the best ways in which to do this, is to stop your population from ever actually interacting with foreign cultures. The British are already pretty adept at this, usually being "British" wherever they go and making little effort to appreciate or blend into said culture.

The next thing is to ensure that your population remains ignorant of said foreign cultures at all; in this way, they can be caricatured as "bloody foreigners" or "not like us" (for which read "inferior") and not, actually, human beings (like yourself) at all.

The final stage is to convince your population that they are under a state of siege: that all of those foreigners are only out to destroy your population's native (and, of course, innately superior) culture.

Sounding familiar yet?

OK, let us move onto some examples, shall we? For keeping people in ignorance, few things are better than to ensure that they have no knowledge of foreign tongues. This government has made a step towards that—as Jon Worth points out—by removing the requirement for schoolchildren to learn a foreign language (not that language teaching, in our state schools at least, was anything other than fucking abysmal in the first place).

And as for convincing the population that they are under a state of siege... Well, where should I begin? After all, if the government isn't enacting draconian legislation to convince us all that we are about to be blown up by disgusting foreign Muslims, then they are planting scare stories about how all of these Poles are coming over here and taking our jobs and women.

Of course, there are a number of countries that speak our language, and might not seem that foreign. Well, that's easy: make sure that very few of them can stay in the country through yet more draconian foreign labour laws, and ensure that they are marked out as foreign by having to carry an ID Card that (at present) the natives do not have to have.

Climate change, of course, offers yet another prime opportunity. After all, they are already trying to imply that flying anywhere is going to kill Gaia: if you cannot fly anywhere, then your chances of interacting with any foreign culture is pretty small. It is even smaller when travelling anywhere, by any means, is socially unacceptable.

And if importing anything is frowned upon for the same reasons—that it racks up "food miles" or "toy miles", etc.—then the number of people doing business with any filthy foreigners is also reduced.

And, of course, if importing things is bad then we really are going to have to rely more and more on our own resources. And, if that includes food, as I pointed out at the top of this increasingly long essay, then inducing the population to believe that they are under a state of siege is going to be a piece of piss: after all, when no one has enough to eat (although just enough not to descend to anarchy), who are they going to blame it on? Why, the filthy foreigners, of course.

So, we end up with a country in which the natives know little of foreigners and their culture beyond the fact that they are inferior, and which believes themselves to be under a state of siege. And there, my friends, you have the perfect conditions for some real, good, honest-to-goodness, paranoid, dangerous Nationalism."

Certainly some chewy food for thought ...

Add our economic problems - caused, of course, by them Yankees - to that maelstrom, and the social unrest that will undoubtedly follow, and electoral breakthroughs for the BNP don't seem too far-fetched - and not just in the European elections.