To the young believers
We will train our blue-eyed men
To be young believers
The Clash, "Clampdown,"
1979. Turnout was low for today's European Parliament elections, and yes, the body in Strasbourg doesn't have much power, but there is troubling news from England--two members of the British National Party, a fascist organization, won seats.
One of the new BNP Euro-parliamentarians is Nick Griffin, the party's leader, who will represent a Manchester constituency.
Europe is in for a rough ride, the far right and the far left may soon dominate there--with no center to keep the continent together.
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4 comments:
John, I must respectfully disagree with you onis one. Literally speaking, Barack Obama and most members of Congress are fascists in the strict, economic policy context of Big Government nationalizing private sector entities. As for the British National Party (BNP), calling them "fascists" is a bit of an exaggeration. From BNP's web site, we get this, which could be wrongly interpreted as "fascist":
"To ensure that this does not happen, and that the British people retain their homeland and identity, we call for an immediate halt to all further immigration, the immediate deportation of criminal and illegal immigrants, and the introduction of a system of voluntary resettlement whereby those immigrants who are legally here will be afforded the opportunity to return to their lands of ethnic origin assisted by a generous financial incentives both for individuals and for the countries in question.
We will abolish the ‘positive discrimination’ schemes that have made white Britons second-class citizens. We will also clamp down on the flood of ‘asylum seekers’, all of whom are either bogus or can find refuge much nearer their home countries." http://bnp.org.uk/policies/immigration/
Troubling? Yes, in ways it is. But is it any more "fascist" than calls in the U.S. for repatriation of illegal immigrants in this country? I'm NOT saying I agree with all or much of BNP's policies, but to call them "fascist" is not quite accurate, either in the economic policy context nor in the larger historic context of "fascism" as associated with Nazi Germany's sad history.
And now for a more balanced view than the far-left Guardian:
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/06/07/gordon-brown-on-the-ropes/#more-4359
Oh, they're fascists alright...
From their site:
The British National Party exists to secure a future for the indigenous peoples of these islands in the North Atlantic which have been our homeland for millennia.
http://bnp.org.uk/about-us/mission-statement/
I couldn't find anything on that site about this, but I'm fairly certain non-whites can't join the BNP.
I chose the Guardian link for a couple of reasons, it's strongly linked to Manchester, and coverage of the BNP victories was pretty similar accross the board in the UK.
The BNP has cleaned up their site, note the use of "descendents" in this passage from 2005:
http://www.politics.co.uk/news/bnp-publishes-manifesto-$30633.htm
The BNP claim that immigration leads to crime and says it would reverse historic immigration and give financial incentives to legal immigrants and their descendents to "to return to their lands of ethnic origin".
The manifesto sets out plans for criminal justice including a return of corporal punishment for petty criminals, and the use of capital punishment for paedophiles, terrorists and murderers.
Other proposals include "abolition of income tax", "a radical shift" in food production, and "abolishing multiculturalism". It also proposed eliminating "neo-Marxist egalitarianism" from education, to be replaced with acknowledgement of the "scientific fact" that people are "born with different abilities and potentials."
Wiki states "No common and concise definition exists for fascism and historians and political scientists disagree on what should be in any concise definition" so I guess we must agree to disagree.
I and apparently T Mannis (pardon me for being presumptive) were thinking in the strict economic sense.
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