Tuesday, February 09, 2010
The danger of liberal intolerance
It has long been known that the BNP thrives on the perception that the 'liberal elite', particularly the metropolitan kind, does not merely disapprove of its politics, but is actively intolerant towards it. However, I suspect that some people in the BNP have worked out that they can use liberal intolerance to smuggle their views around, under the cover of anti-BNP activism.A rather crude example can be found — and I warn readers that this link is very crude — at a Twitter stream claiming to be from a UAF member (link). Regardless of the supposed political provenance, it is rather difficult to believe that an individual claiming only a matter of days ago to be a Muslim wanting Islam and Shari'ah law to take over the UK would now be posting the material which is presently on that stream. A split personality? Perhaps, but I rather suspect both sides are attempts by the BNP to garner positive publicity by painting its opponents negatively. (I raise this because although the attempt is transparently crude, it has on occasion caught people out. A Tory PPC was treating this individual with undeserved seriousness only recently.)A more sophisticated example can, I believe, be found at the following link, which is a petition calling for 'Britain for the British' (link). The preamble declares that the organisers are not racist and declares that the vote for the BNP will rise until certain policies are enacted. The policies proposed are either BNP policies or very congenial to the BNP; it is my belief that the petition is an attempt by the party to convince people that its ideas are mainstream.Liberal intolerance of the BNP has bred a situation where every 'right-thinking person' knows that they oughtn't support the BNP, but doesn't know what the BNP says (partly because the same liberal elite is scared stiff of giving them airtime) and doesn't know why the BNP's policies are so unremittingly awful and destructive of all that is good about the United Kingdom (because, frankly, those same liberals are all too often incapable of doing so). In short, we need to build a positive case for all the things the BNP hates, rather than simply indoctrinating people into opposing the three letters B-N-P.
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4 comments:
Sadly, it is not "liberal intolerance of the BNP" that has brought this situation about, but liberal intolerance.
It is now in Britain an offence to criticise Islam. It is an offence to say anything that might be thought disparaging to ethnic minorities.
If you are charged with either of these 'crimes', it is not a defence that what you say is true.
In other words, it is an offence to speak the truth.
I do not have much time for Nick Griffin, but I would ask you to remember that the last time he was up in front of the beak, he was charged with READING OUT ARTICLES FROM THE LOCAL PAPER.
Geert Wilders is currently being tried in the Netherlands for the offence of speaking the truth. To make doubly sure he is convicted, he is not allowed to summon witnesses for the defence, and the trial is being held behind closed doors.
It is not the BNP who are a threat to British democracy; it is the liberal establishment.
Denying people freedom of speech is always going to cause problems. It's the division of society into 'sides' and then the playing off of one 'side' against another, divide and conquer tactics. One of the Rand quotes I quite liked from Daniels' review I linked to earlier is good on this: the notion of collective rights, she wrote, would 'disintegrate a country into an institutionalized civil war of pressure groups, each fighting for legislative favors and special privileges at the expense of one another.'
Ain't dat da troot?
The BNP are little different to any other bunch of National Socialists that ever dragged their knuckles across the surface of the planet. They've done a fabulous job of accentuating the bits of their policies with appeal to the self-proclaimed "working man" (i.e. those who'll vote in favour of a client State at the next election, again) without actually talking about how they'd make it happen.
Has it occurred to many of those who like what they hear from the BNP to ask things like *how* they'll know you're British, or not British, when it comes to getting a job? All these populist soundbite schemes imply the most extraordinary amount of State involvement in the most mundane of everyday activities.
If we have enough of an education system left to allow people to read for comprehension the BNP manifesto, and then think about it, maybe that'd do the trick. Unfortunately I have no confidence that we do.
It seems the Social Engineering Project is almost complete, comrades.
I think Brian might be more right than he realizes.
Hayek writes that, far from being late-stage capitalism, National Socialism is the natural evolution of "liberal socialism." Liberal ends (such as freedom of movement, freedom of association, and equal rights) are so fundamentally incompatible with socialist means that they are bound to break down into pure chaos. Out of this chaos, the populace (which by now has been thoroughly indoctrinated with socialist ideas) demands order and stability.
Liberal socialism cannot give it because of its contradictory aims. In this example, a controlled economy & welfare state is completely incompatible with free migration. As Rand noted, collectivism results in a civil war of interest groups. Ultimately, the largest interest group will struggle to the top and seek to dominate if not destroy all the others.
And then you get real fascism.
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