Fighting back against the BNP: Why we shouldn't just ignore them

The BNP, of course, look at it differently. Apparently, 12,000 people rang up to offer support to the party after watching the BNP's party political broadcast last week (that was the one with the hopelessly poor production values and even poorer grasp of history).

And therein lies the danger with the BNP. Taken in isolation, the BNP's literature, publicity and broadcasts don't reveal the whole truth about the BNP, because that's what they are designed to do. And as with most things which go unchallenged, party propoganda can soon become fact in the eyes of the public.

For many years, many media organisations have operated a policy of "not giving the BNP the oxygen of publicity" in the hope the BNP will just go away, but I would suggest perhaps doing that simply allows the myths put out by the BNP to become reality.

This provides the BNP with two advantages. The first is that it can say what it likes, playing to the fears which locals may have and whip up outrage over issues which simply don't exist, or can play up the fact it is overlooked and ignored by the media, by politics at large and therefore it is all a conspiracy to maintain the current order.

So when newspapers like the Halesowen News this year decided to print adverts by the BNP, were they doing anything wrong? Listen to the National Union of Journalists and various other campaigners, and the answer is yes - they shouldn't be taking the adverts.

But the placing of an advert does not also bring with it the right to guide editorial policy. Is the Halesowen News suddenly a flag-waving supporter of BNP policy? Of course not. Will it publish anything offensive in those adverts? Again, no. If the BNP is daft enough to advertise in the mainstream media it is so fond of criticising, then why stop them?

Simply ignoring them doesn't work.

In Blackburn in 2002, Robin Evans took the Mill Hill seat in a by-election. Throughout the build-up to the election, the local newspaper had operated the "no oxygen" policy, which was supported by many in the town. And so the claims the BNP put out - that a local nursing home was going to be turned into an asylum centre (despite a planning application which would have made this possible getting refusal) and a random one that the town planned to replicate the famous Saddam Hussein swords gateway went unreported, and therefore unchallenged. (The link takes you to a story written 48 hours after the election result).

The latter claim had no substance at all - it was pure fantasy, but it went unchallenged. Likewise, earlier in the year, when the party grabbed its first seats in Burnley, one of the main planks of its electioneering was that the white areas of Burnley which were among the most deprived in the UK were in such a state because all the regeneration money was going to the Asian areas. By the time the elections came around, the council had produced statistics showing this wasn't the case - but it was too late.

Interestingly, of the three councillors who won for the BNP in Burnley in 2002, none are still councillors in the town. Burnley currently has four BNP councillors, down from six at one point. So when the BNP boasts that its councillors are dedicated to their communities, they fail to mention the high turnover. Yet, if you simply ignore the BNP, this sort of fact goes unreported, as does the fact it is trying to drag the expenses row into local politics by claiming its councillors "won't have their snouts in the trough." Put bluntly, neither do the vast majority of local councillors from the mainstream parties, either.

So how does the BNP respond when challenged? Over the last week, the Manchester Evening News has run a series of articles called "BNP: The Truth." Over the course of the week they covered all manner of issues, including the racist rants of a candidate on Facebook, the convictions collected by members and, indeed comments made by Nick Griffin prior to his election as leader.

It also reminded readers of the BNP's racist roots, and the fact its founder John Tyndall once described Adolf Hitler's autobiography as 'my bible' - a tad ironic given that the BNP's current European elections TV broadcast was based around the idea that the EU is bad because it has effectively created what Hitler wanted.

The BNP's response hasn't been to challenge the newspaper, it has been to try and get its members to ring the MEN's advertisers and complain about the fact they advertise in an anti-BNP publication. Doing that is, presumably, a much more favourable option for the party than putting its policies under close scrutiny.

In the current European election TV advert - which you can find on YouTube - the BNP basically argues that our war soldiers would be spinning in their graves if they saw they way the EU had apparently turned us into "second-class citizens." Somehow, it then leaps to the fact that "immigration has become an invasion" apparently denying us houses, jobs and piling up tax burdens.

Going further, it narrows down the "invasion" to militant Islamists, who have brought contempt towards women, vandalism of churches and attacks on Jews to this country, apparently.

Nick Griffin, sat in a very bizarre office, then says he doesn't blame the immigrants for this, but the politicians for letting them in, although he doesn't retract the statements about the problems his party say immigrants have caused. He grandly says "It's not about racism."

How can it possibly not be about racism when you're scapegoating people based on the fact they are foreign? The broadcast says it is not a matter of colour - then Griffin goes on to talk about putting British people first because it is English, Welsh, Scottish and so on names on the war memorials of the UK.

In a nutshell, Griffin is trying to scapegoat a section of society and blame it for all the ills in our country at a time of recession - sound familiar?

Hopefully, by now, it's becoming obvious how easy it is to pick apart the BNP's arguments - arguments which go uncontested if they aren't challenged in the open. When the BNP says it isn't racist, it overlooks the fact it doesn't allow non-whites into the party.

We shouldn't be afraid to discuss the BNP, because time and time again it will lead to their myths being shattered. Simply choosing to ignore them just allows them to grow unchallenged. They currently sit at five per cent but continue to cloak themselves with a false cover of respectability. Not challenging them only heightens the risk that they add to that five per cent.