This is a cross-post from Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens
The Times reports today that former London Mayor Ken Livingstone will spearhead tomorrow’s Unite Against Fascism protest against Nick Griffin’s appearance on BBC’s Question Time. Considering his role in giving Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal a platform in the New Statesman, his objection to giving the same treatment to the BNP smacks of the double standards we have come to expect from the far left-Islamist alliance.
Quoted on the UAF website, Ken tells us that:
The BBC should withdraw its invitation to Nick Griffin to appear on Question Time. A court ruled this week that the fascist BNP’s membership rules illegally discriminate on grounds of race. This is only part of the picture. When the BNP is given a major media platform for its message of bigotry, race and religious hatred, hate attacks by thugs on the streets increase.
The public do not pay license fees to have them abused by the BBC to help people spread hatred and intolerance. If the BBC continues with this policy it will share responsibility for the crimes against minorities which will follow.
There are a couple of things to pick up on here. Firstly, it is true that a court ruled against the BNP’s membership rules. But, as Ken is well aware, the European Union have ruled that Meshaal’s organisation is a terrorist entity. Ken may or may not agree with that ruling, but by his standards as laid out in the above quote, surely Hamas must also be boycotted?
Ken has also given his backing to George Galloway’s ‘Viva Palestina’ initiative, which has broken UK law in the past by giving money directly to Hamas. Ken cannot realistically pretend to care about UK court rulings, and no one should fall for his charade.
In Ken’s fawning interview with Khaled Meshaal in mid September, the Hamas Politburo head came out smelling of roses. This was mainly down to Ken’s avoidance of any incisive or hard hitting questions on, say, his party’s extreme reaction earlier that month to the prospect of teaching the Holocaust to children in Gaza. For anyone who missed that story, Hamas MP and cleric Yunis al Astal said that his party refused to take part in "marketing a lie". Or perhaps Ken could have made more about the little problem of the hardcore antisemitism on Hamas’ official TV station, al-Aqsa TV, where children are indoctrinated to hate Jews and love death.
On Question Time tomorrow, Griffin, like Meshaal before him, will try to present a moderate and sensible side of the BNP. It is the responsibility of his co-panelists to prevent him from doing so and therefore succeed in exposing his fascist ideology. Were he not an apologist for Islamic fascism, Ken would have done the same with Meshaal. Rather than accusing the BBC of "sharing the responsibility" for the crimes that will follow what he sees as an endorsement of the BNP, he should look at the role he has played in helping Hamas deceive the west while they impose strict religious codes on their citizens, kill political opponents and murder Israeli civilians.
Yunis al Astal:
