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opinions on last night's question time
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grufty jim
grufty jim
1978 posts

Re: opinions on last night's question time
Oct 25, 2009, 14:36
pooley wrote:
A Question of FreedomSo Nick Griffin has finally ‘graced’ Question Time with his presence. And guess what? We didn’t turn into the Third Reich overnight!

And who suggested we would? The BNP do appear to have received a bump into the opinion polls as a result of Griffin's appearance, and splinter factions within the party are now calling for "white riots" as a response to the programme (hopefully with little effect). But I don't know anyone who was worried about a major overnight shift to the Far Right. Nobody said that would happen.

What I -- and many others -- worry about is the slow, 30 year evolution of the NF. It's taken them only a generation to move from racist football hooligans to participants in mainstream political debate. Given the likelihood of economic contraction in the face of Climate Change and resource depletion and the fertile ground that often provides for fascism, society should be trying to marginalise the BNP, not normalise them.

pooley wrote:
I’m being flippant, I know, but I was firmly on the BBC’s side in the recent furore over the BNP leader’s appearance. Yes, I find his politics – and his party – repugnant, but like it or not, he’s an elected representative, and in a democracy is therefore entitled to a say. To effectively censor him would be to stoop to the very tactics that he himself might espouse.

Again, who the hell is censoring him? How can anyone who is regularly interviewed on the BBC and who is entitled to make Party Political Broadcasts on all terrestrial channels be censored? This is NOT a free speech issue. It's an editorial one. I don't cry "censorship" every week because I'm not invited on QT. To do so would be fricking insane. Yet people don't see the insanity in claiming that Griffin is being censored by the same decision. Are we to assume that Griffin has a right to publish a weekly column in every newspaper in the land? And if they don't let him he's being censored? Does he have a right to be invited onto Have I Got News For You? and the Jonathon Ross show? And if he isn't, is it a free speech issue?

The guy gets more goddamn airtime than his two MEPs warrant already! Why is this being framed as censorship?

pooley wrote:
Not that people didn’t try. Inevitably, a large group of well-meaning – but in my view rather naïve – anti-fascist protestors were firmly camped outside the gates of Television Centre, blithely oblivious to the fact that their very presence was ensuring far more media coverage than Mr Griffin might otherwise have enjoyed. Having to be sneaked into the studio past an angry mob also lent him an unfortunate air of martyrdom, and lent unwelcome credibility to his claims of being demonised.

Absolutely right. And the anti-racism demos I went on in the late 80s / early 90s merely gave more publicity to racists. We should simply allow fascists and racists to do whatever the hell they want and keep our mouths shut while they do it. Up until now I was under the impression that this was an ideology to be actively opposed. Now I realise the error of that position. The BNP should be treated with respect and allowed to get on with their business unhindered. After all, there's never any danger in allowing neo-Nazis to stand unopposed, right? Ignore them and they'll just go away.

Bloody ridiculous argument.

Fascists should be actively opposed. And it should be as public as possible. Every time a BNP member gets up to speak on a public platform there should be a hundred anti-racists telling the media, telling the world, that this is a repulsive and objectionable ideology. When something is as objectionable as the BNP, then it should be objected-to loudly.

Oh, I can't be arsed with the rest. I think my position is clear, for the little it's worth.
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Re: opinions on last night's question time (pooley)
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