Tel-Chai Nation

Melanie Phillips warns that the British National Party is gaining ground in Britain - they know quite well how to take advantage of the situation there, what with radical Islam on the rise and mainstream politicians not doing their job well. But the fact remains that, whatever face they're putting on now, they are still a racist party to their rotten core, and you can't fight bigotry with bigots.

The BNP’s chairman, Nick Griffin, and another activist, Mark Collett, were accused of stirring up racial hatred. Griffin was accused of describing Islam as a ‘wicked, vicious faith’ and saying Muslims were turning Britain into a ‘ multiracial hell-hole’.

Earlier this year, a jury cleared the pair of similar charges but failed to reach verdicts on others. Last Friday, the debacle was all-too predictably repeated when Griffin and Collett were acquitted for the second time. Griffin had run rings round the prosecution by turning the proceedings into a purported trial of Islam, selecting passages from the Koran which he claimed justified terrorist attacks.

There was never any chance of a conviction, for the simple reason that such statements were an attack on a religion rather than a race. It is perfectly legitimate, after all, to say that the enforcement of extreme Islamic precepts poses a threat to the lives of millions of Asians — including, in fact, many Muslims.

It didn’t take a genius to work out that this trial was a win-win situation for the BNP. If Griffin and Collett had been convicted, they would have posed as martyrs to free speech. Their acquittal, on the other hand, has provided a tremendous boost for their repellent platform.

The truly galling thing is that the BNP is indeed a rabidly racist and anti-semitic party, and its attacks on Islam are a fig-leaf for prejudice against all Muslims, Asians and minorities. Griffin is on record as saying that ‘non-whites have no place here at all’ and that he ‘will not rest until every last one has left our land’. In 1997, after he co-authored a pamphlet alleging Jewish conspiracies to brainwash people in Britain, he was given a two-year suspended prison sentence for inciting racial hatred.

If I didn't know better, I'd say that the mainstream politicians in Britain were actually helping the BNP to gain a foothold in politics by making them seem as though they were being discriminated against for protesting Islamic extremism while at the same time refraining from actually convicting them. Either way, it is clear that this is exactly what the BNP was hoping for, as it will enable them exploit it in and out, and try to trick people into legitimizing them much more than need be.

[Gordon] Brown is doubtless keen to burnish his credentials as a Prime Minister-in-waiting by displaying his toughness against all extremism. Hence his further statement that, as Prime Minister, he would take personal charge of the fight against terrorism.

But he doesn’t seem to realise that outlawing hatred of religion would undermine this fight, by shutting down crucial debate about Islam and its role in global terror.

Mr Brown said that most people would find some of Mr Griffin’s words offensive. Undoubtedly true. But criminalising those who give offence is oppressive. Religious believers across all faiths are offended virtually every day. Mr Brown’s view plays directly into the hands of those Muslims who try to stifle debate about Islamic terrorism on the grounds of ‘Islamophobia’.

And at the same time, this is undoubtably what the BNP is hoping to cash in on as well in future elections.

...although a Muslim was convicted last week of stirring up racial hatred at last February’s ugly demonstration against the Mohammed cartoons, others are still bafflingly allowed to continue preaching hatred of Jews, Americans or the West.

Now Griffin is milking this for all he is worth. The BNP already poses as a respectable party, alarmingly pulling the wool over the eyes of increasing numbers of people. It exploits legitimate concerns that the public feel mainstream politicians are ignoring — which currently include militant Islamism.

In fact, the BNP is not respectable, but remains a deeply racist party with abhorrent views, and no decent person should have anything to do with it. But it is making headway because voters feel betrayed and abandoned by the entire mainstream political class.

John Cruddas, the Labour MP for Dagenham in Essex, where the BNP won 11 council seats in last May’s local elections, has warned that it is ‘beginning to establish itself as a rival to Labour in many of our traditional heartlands’, drawing support not from hardcore racists but voters who have simply lost faith in mainstream politics.

It most certainly is disturbing. Unlike Jean-MarieDhimmi Le Pen, whose attempts to make his platform more friendly to Muslims and other anti-semites, including the black "comedian" Dieudonne, have backfired (already, he hinted in one news report that he may not run for presidency, because he couldn't get enough signatures from some sources), the BNP appears to be taking a much more clever approach, and frighteningly enough, it appears to be working.

There is darkness awaiting the blighty alright. Look out.

Labels: londonistan