Another week, fascism still undefeated
Just a couple of quick links to BNP-related stuff. Might add through the day, so check back. First, Jim J has added to this list, which I already linked to. From Jim J, I also got to Nick Griffin's bad science. Here's Sunny on the right's response. Sunny links to more science from The Enemies of Reason: 1, 2, 3, and from Channel 4. Alex Massie makes the pro-immigration case here.
For some comment on the QT debacle, here's Coatesy, Voltaire's Priest and Jim D. Meanwhile, Flesh found something far better to do.
Update: How did Question Time affect the BNP vote? A YouGov poll given much publicity suggests that it has, a tiny bit. However, Lancaster Unity reveals YouGov were defrauded by the BNP, undermining the results' credibility. (Summary from Edmund S).
One person who benefited from the show is Baroness Warsi. However, Edmund gives reason to pause (although I disagree with him on immigration...)
Update 2: A number of commentators are making the point that, as Richard Seymour puts it, "Just because antifascists watching this thought Griffin came across as a sleazy dishonest windbag doesn't mean that everyone thought the same." That is completely true. There is a disconnect, I think, between how us here in the activist ghetto, or from non-white backgrounds, or in liberal professions, or in cosmopolitan London,view the world and how most people in wider society view the world.
However, it is the wrong inference to draw from that, as Seymour does in the same post, them out there are "racists", or that politicians (like Straw and Warsi) who say they need listening to are pandering to racists. The labeling of people as "racists" is, in my view, utterly unhelpful. What is important is to expose how the things people say or do act in a racist way or have a racist effect. Racism is not something that afflicts people, like a mental condition; it is something that functions in society. Or, as Jim D puts it much more succinctly: "Don't trust the working class: they're too stupid. Us university-educated lefties will tell you proles what you can and can't be exposed to."
For some comment on the QT debacle, here's Coatesy, Voltaire's Priest and Jim D. Meanwhile, Flesh found something far better to do.
Update: How did Question Time affect the BNP vote? A YouGov poll given much publicity suggests that it has, a tiny bit. However, Lancaster Unity reveals YouGov were defrauded by the BNP, undermining the results' credibility. (Summary from Edmund S).
One person who benefited from the show is Baroness Warsi. However, Edmund gives reason to pause (although I disagree with him on immigration...)
Update 2: A number of commentators are making the point that, as Richard Seymour puts it, "Just because antifascists watching this thought Griffin came across as a sleazy dishonest windbag doesn't mean that everyone thought the same." That is completely true. There is a disconnect, I think, between how us here in the activist ghetto, or from non-white backgrounds, or in liberal professions, or in cosmopolitan London,view the world and how most people in wider society view the world.
However, it is the wrong inference to draw from that, as Seymour does in the same post, them out there are "racists", or that politicians (like Straw and Warsi) who say they need listening to are pandering to racists. The labeling of people as "racists" is, in my view, utterly unhelpful. What is important is to expose how the things people say or do act in a racist way or have a racist effect. Racism is not something that afflicts people, like a mental condition; it is something that functions in society. Or, as Jim D puts it much more succinctly: "Don't trust the working class: they're too stupid. Us university-educated lefties will tell you proles what you can and can't be exposed to."
Comments
That's as succinct a definition of Leninism as I've heard in a long time.
Cheers Jimbo!
There's clearly been so many different Question Times broadcast that we need someone to review them all!
spot on in relation to 'activists' in general
(although i'd seriously question whether most activists of this type today are anywhere near to 'belonging' to their communities, other than their own cosily wrapped introspective ones which they create for themselves, unsullied by actual material events,conditions and attitudes on the ground that get in the way of their orphaned theory/ideology)
Flesh is G and Ross - completely right.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4