Dazed In The Life

The man in that video uttering those hateful words is Nick Griffin, leader of the British Nationalist Party. On Saturday night, he was elected as an MEP. I watched in absolute horror as he and another member of his racist band of violently right-wing bigots were given enough votes by the British public to go forward and represent that nation in the European Parliament. This vile creature has been given a legitimate political soapbox from which to speak for the next 5 years, his party’s profile and public funding will go through the roof and they will be in a position to spread their messages of evil to a wider audience.

These words I have used to describe Nick Griffin are the sort trotted out daily by The Sun and similar newspapers to describe every criminal that goes throught the justice system, but are as liberally applied to sports cheats. In the case of Nick Griffin, however, they are fully justified. It simply appals me to think that nearly 1million Britons voted for this man’s party and that people could listen to speeches like the one he made in the above video, like the ones he makes daily, and APPLAUD. There are those in Britain who AGREE with him, who voted for him, who think like him.

Now, the elections for Europe in Britain were, rather stupidly, mired in the MPs’ expenses scandal and proper European policy debate was lost in a welter of duck-houses and moats. The BNP ran a low-key campaign, reigning in some of their firebrands, keeping their message more akin to that of UKIP (another, slightly less hateful party) who spend most of their time complaining about those eternal scapegoats “European bureaucracy” and ” Faceless Brussels lawmakers”. They campaigned on petty local issues like potholes and bin collections. Devastatingly, people forgot that they were voting for a EUROPEAN candidate and, in the desire to vote against the major Westminster parties, far too many forgot the difference between a protest vote and voting for bigots and racists.

The rhetoric of Griffin’s speech above is chilling, with the resonating “THEY” used over and over again to describe black people, and a picture is painted of blacks as an under-race to be kept down. His condemnation of black brotherhood is awfully hypocritical given his essentialist view of Britain. He fires accusation after accusation at Barack Obama, couching them in “probably” to save himself from slander issues. He points to Obama’s “probable” anti-semitism and he has claimed not to be anti-semitic himself, despite his repeated denial of the Holocaust in the late 90s.

Nick Griffin has blamed “immigrants”, and especially the Muslim minorities, for causing Britain’s inner city drug problems. He sees gangland issues as black-centric, with black gangs attacking white people which lead to white gangs being formed to protect themselves. He sees no reason to institute anti-racist laws. He would close the borders of Britain to any migrants from Europe or farther afield and would “send home” all those who were not, in his eyes, “real Britons”. He preys on the poorer members of British society, blaming those of different colour skin or language for their plight, pulling them around the simplistic emblem of “BRITAIN”, something which they should protect from invaders.

It is scaremongering. It is the age-old tactic of the great dictators. Griffin has been dubbed “Fat Hitler” by some unflattering souls, but then again this is a man who is scarcely deserving of flattery. Some bemoan the fact that he has been given the oxygen of publicity – I’m not thrilled he has been given the oxygen of oxygen, truth be told, and those are words I would be loath to use of anyone. But those is a truly loathsome man. The horrifying thing is that there are those who support him. It made me cry to think of this as I watched this beaming lizard wave from his platform in Manchester.

In the same year as Barack Obama became President of the United States and it seemed that perhaps mankind had finally reached some sense of closure with its past differences, the BNP garnered 1million votes. 65 years after D-Day, when Europe seemed ready to unite under a banner of peace, 20 years after the Berlin Wall fell and borders were opened, now people seem more keen than ever to dismiss the European ideal and to turn inwards. Sure, it is a fairly natural reaction to be protective of ones heritage and no one in Ireland wants to hand away their Irishness, whatever that really is, but for people to fall time and again for worn-out words of bureaucracy, red-tape, faceless legislators, immigrants, THEY, it utterly depresses me.

We live in a time of supposed open-mindedness and open-heartedness. We should embrace difference, share our culture as we cling to it and sample other cultures as they sample ours. Our modern world is a melting-pot, full of what Gerard Manley Hopkins called “the grandeur of God” - whether you believe in God or not, the world certainly is grand. Or so I thought. It would appear that the hatred and elitism which humanity hoped to leave behind itself at the end of World War II still remains. Perhaps elitism, racism, the desire for national ideals (for that is where the term Nazi came from) are an ingrained human condition. I would hope, as I’m sure the majority of you do, that this is not the case. But while there are Nick Griffins and the BNP in this world, I’m not so sure.

Hatred breeds hatred. That is what Nick Griffin and his cohorts will continue to do unless people stand up and denounce them eloquently and effectively. Do not ignore the mistake you have made, Britain, but rectify it. Sadly, we have to wait 5 years to get these monsters out of office. By that time, who knows how many they will have recruited to their despicable cause. The fact that this cause still exists – and exists in other countries across Europe too – makes me weep for mankind’s inability to love one another. I mean that.