This is a cross post by Edmund Standing
Nick Griffin has rightly been described as a political chameleon, having been, as his former International Third Position friends put it:
a conservative, a revolutionary nationalist, a radical National Socialist, a Third Positionist, a friend of the ‘boot boys’ and the skinhead scene, a man committed to respectable politics and electioneering, a ‘moderniser’.
In the last few years, following the plan he laid out in 2000 to use ‘saleable language’ in order to increase support for the BNP, Griffin has picked up on a number of issues of importance to many voters: immigration and asylum seekers, Islamist terrorism, and most recently, British involvement in the war on terror. Fully aware that the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and neo-Nazism he and his party formerly advocated were getting them nowhere, Griffin has sought to turn the public image of the BNP from a white supremacist neo-fascist movement to a populist nationalist party. The problem is, the twists and turns this has involved have inevitably led to disillusionment amongst the more hardline elements in the BNP, some of whom have now left for the National Front.
For some time, in particular following 9/11 and 7/7, Griffin has presented the BNP as anti-jihad movement and sought allies on this basis, hiding the racial ideological undercurrent beneath Little Englander language and a kind of Robert Spencer on speed view of Islam, presenting it as a ‘wicked and vicious faith’ whose adherents are on the verge of taking over Britain. This approach has served the BNP relatively well, with the ideological racists for the most part realising that getting rid of Muslims would be only stage one of the BNP plan for an all-white Britain (even if the apparent ‘pro-Israel’ turn left some of them none too happy), and with some of the people who take hyped-up media scare stories as Gospel also getting on board.
Griffin currently finds himself in a difficult position, however.
Part of this has been caused by him being forced to accept that the BNP’s whites only membership policy will have to be abandoned as a result of action by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which has angered many of the BNP old school who are so blinded by their racism that they can’t see that Griffin really has no choice in the matter, and seem to think he should be consulting them on whether or not to change the membership criteria. The latest example of this can be seen at the loony anti-Semitic Colonel Buckshot blog, whose author is now advocating a switch to the NF:
Did I miss something?. I’m still waiting for ballot papers whereby I am supposed to have a say in this matter. It would seem to suggest that it has already been decided and the dismantling of the BNP has already begun..
Want my oppinion? [sic], join the National Front. It’s going places…
So, Griffin is angering the BNP’s racist hardcore (not all of them are jumping ship just yet, of course), but his latest attempt at wooing the popular vote – turning the BNP into an ‘anti-war’ party – is also causing ripples of discontent amongst some of the more recent additions to the BNP flock who signed up because they thought the BNP was fundamentally a party for paranoid anti-Muslim bigots such as themselves, as opposed to the fundamentally racist party it really is.
Griffin’s Christmas 2009 video message focussed almost entirely on the BNP’s new policy of surrender to the Taliban and immediate troop withdrawal. Griffin is now steering the BNP into a white racist version of the Stop the War Coalition, with talk of Afghanistan being an ‘illegal war‘ and posturing about the real Muslim haters being those whose ‘illegal’, ‘murderous’, and ‘pointless’ wars have led to the death of Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq. The strong rhetoric of anti-Muslim bigotry and anti-‘Islamification’ is gradually being replaced with an almost conciliatory tone regarding Muslim grievances over the war on terror and towards the ‘Islamic world’.
Griffin and Brons are now reviving an old strategy which Griffin made use of in his time with the ‘Political Soldier’ wing of the NF, and the International Third Position. In the late ’80s, Griffin’s NF faction put forward the idea that the best way to promote racism was to present it not as an idea opposed to non-white peoples, but one that should be embraced by them as well. So, Griffin attempted to befriend various despots and extremists, including Colonel Gaddafi, the Ayatollah Khomeini, and the black seperatist Louis Farrakhan. Griffin’s idea was that these men ‘speak for their people’ and he ‘speaks for whites’. For Griffin, races and cultures should exist within separate countries and were equally valid and ‘special’ so long as they remained separated from each other. If this ‘pact’ was kept, thought Griffin, he could appear tolerant of non-white people and cultures while at the same time forcibly removing them from Britain.
Griffin’s new rhetoric of ‘respect’ for the ‘Islamic world’ – also being regularly pushed by Andrew Brons – is really a variation of this same approach. An article posted on the BNP website following the failed Christmas Day 2009 aeroplane bombing states:
The latest terrorist attempt to blow up a trans-Atlantic airliner has once again highlighted the twin causes of Islamist terrorism: mass immigration into the First World and European nations’ biased foreign policy in the Middle East.
[…]
Until mass Third World immigration into Europe is halted — and reversed — and until Western nations adopt unbiased foreign policies with regard to the Islamic world (and that includes halting all illegal and immoral wars such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan), Islamist terrorism will continue.
The British National Party alone amongst all the political parties understands the real issues and has the willpower to address the root causes of the problem.
The BNP will strike an accord with the Islamic world: in return for a commitment never to interfere in the internal affairs of Muslim nations, the Islamic world will agree to halt its attempts to colonise Europe through immigration and the cradle — and to take back its excess populations.
Only in this way will terrorism from Islamic extremists be halted. It is our moral duty to ensure that this happens.
With the race issue leading to disquiet amongst BNP traditionalists and some defections to the NF, as well as the debacle that is the BNP’s accounting also leading to considerable anger, the last thing Griffin needs is to annoy any more BNP members and supporters, however the new ‘moderate’ approach towards Islam is doing just that.
Over at ‘The Green Arrow and Friends’, a blog which normally slavishly supports Griffin and the ‘modern’ BNP, the cracks are beginning to show. ‘Reconquista’, a fanatical anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist, writes:
But what about the only real hope Britain has, the BNP? Well with the 2010 election looming large, the BNP’s campaign to pull British troops out of the Muslim cesspit of Afghanistan (and quite right too) might sound like appeasement to some when they say:
“The BNP doesn’t start wars against Muslims. The BNP hasn’t killed any Muslims and the BNP won’t interfere with Muslim nations”
But it is in fact, a sound “political” move, however, others will say that the BNP are totally missing the point and that the whole crux of Islam is war between Dar al Islam – the House of Islam and Dar al Harb – the House of War, the lands of the kuffars – and always will be until the whole world belongs to Islam and that it is Muslims led by oil-rich Saudi Arabia who have declared war on Britain as part of this, the third global Islamic jihad. Let me spell it out loud and clear so even the dumbest of the dhimmis can understand:
Muslims are INTERFERING with BRITAIN, they are dramatically CHANGING Britain and they are CONQUERING Britain into Dar al Islam without so much as a shot being fired in defence. And some Nationalists are saying “we won’t interfere with Muslim nations”?
[…]
Something Is Missing
When I was shedding my liberal multi-coloured glasses, one of the few voices speaking the horrific and uncomfortable truth about Islam was the British National Party. It is why I chose to support the BNP, indeed I really believed I was going to be part of the British Resistance that would, one glorious day, send the demented Muslims and their vile totalitarian death-cult packing, right back to the sewers of the third-world where they belong.
Now I’m asking: Where is the British resistance?
It seems to me that the BNP is now falling over itself to become a mainstream political party – and this worries me – but I just don’t see any real resistance, any fight, any strong action to stop the ongoing Islamisation of Britain. British Nationalists have high hopes for winning one or two seats in the general election and I believe they are putting all of their eggs in one basket, desperately hoping to win something out of a corrupted “democratic” game now controlled totally by the enemies of Britain.
I believe that is one very big mistake to make. And the bad news is that British Nationalists simply don’t have the luxury of time to make mistakes. The political fight is but one front in this war – and please, it IS war – against the British people and battle needs to waged on several fronts and it needs to be waged hard. Britain is in very serious trouble, make no mistake about it.
Another version of this article, cross posted at the ‘Barnsley Nationalists’ blog, contains even harsher sentiment (perhaps this was the original Reconquista text and the one now online at the Green Arrow blog has been edited?). Compare the sections:
Barnsley Nationalists version:
But what about the only hope Britain has, the BNP? Surely, the BNP will never bow before Islam? Think again because with the 2010 election looming large, the BNP campaign to pull British troops out of the Muslim cesspit of Afghanistan (and quite right too) is sounding an appeasing almost apologetic tone of:
“The BNP doesn’t start wars against Muslims. The BNP hasn’t killed any Muslims and the BNP won’t interfere with Muslim nations”
Totally missing the point that the whole crux of Islam is war between Dar al Islam – the House of Islam and Dar al Harb – the House of War, the lands of the kuffars – and always will be until the whole world belongs to Islam and that it is Muslims led by oil-rich Saudi Arabia who have declared war on Britain as part of this, the third global Islamic jihad.
Current GA version:
But what about the only real hope Britain has, the BNP? Well with the 2010 election looming large, the BNP’s campaign to pull British troops out of the Muslim cesspit of Afghanistan (and quite right too) might sound like appeasement to some when they say:
“The BNP doesn’t start wars against Muslims. The BNP hasn’t killed any Muslims and the BNP won’t interfere with Muslim nations”
But it is in fact, a sound “political” move, however, others will say that the BNP are totally missing the point and that the whole crux of Islam is war between Dar al Islam – the House of Islam and Dar al Harb – the House of War, the lands of the kuffars – and always will be until the whole world belongs to Islam and that it is Muslims led by oil-rich Saudi Arabia who have declared war on Britain as part of this, the third global Islamic jihad.
This aside, even the current ‘Reconquista’ post strongly suggests that the more fanatical and paranoid anti-Muslim elements in the BNP are unimpressed by Griffin’s latest apparent ‘selling out’ of the BNP.
Having to end the whites only membership policy, screwing up the party’s finances, and now offending the BNP’s anti-Muslim bigots: Griffin is skating on thin ice. While many BNP cultists will undoubtedly continue to support Griffin no matter what, it seems that there is, nonetheless, trouble brewing in the ranks.
