How far do we tolerate the extreme right?

Solaris

Solaris

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I've been thinking a lot about the BNP and how they should be treated by groups such as UAF and the ANL. These groups organise mostly peaceful counter demonstrations at BNP events. Recently in Birmigham they surrounded a BNP march and the other week they blocked roads so people couldn't get to a BNP festival.

My questions is, is it fair game to utilise violence to oppose such groups?
BNP marches tend to be mostly peaceful on their side, (They do their violence through their proxy group the English Defence League).

I think violence is probably counter productive, although I have no problem with throwing eggs and flower etc. at people like Nick Griffing. (see this)

At what point, if any, however does violence become the best option. The communist party effectively allowed the Nazis to take power when they could have probably, in alliance with the social democrats, brought the country to it's knees if need be, through strikes and maybe even civil war.

I for one would never live under a BNP government, I'd rather die, but I don't believe that's likely. However, it is very possible the BNP could take control of some councils in the future. What tactics should be taken to avoid this?

I'm a big fan of the 'no platform policy', which is UAF/ANL enforced. This is where normal politicians may not hold debates with the BNP as it makes them look like a legitimate party.

What do you think?
 
I think violence is the best action against Nazis. These ones in particular.

Seriously though thats probably the best idea, just ignoring them and attempt to belittle them as a party and make sure they have as little effect as possible.
 
Presuming we're talking about planned and organised violence here, rather than "we was at this march and, well, things got hairy".

So what exactly would justify that?
 
Violence should never be the catalyst of change...the most it would do is serve to aid the BNP with sympathy (however insane that might be). Although, I have zero problem with people chucking eggs at griffin, that guy just plain sucks.
 
violence is always the catalyst of change. civil rights, women's sufferage, hell even abortion, homosexuality issues were brought about as an response to violence; stonewall riots, abortion clinic bombings etc etc
 
The BNP are such a weak and irrelevant force in British politics that for them to ever make a significant grab for power would be a 'change' in itself, probably requiring some kind of bizarre and improbable armed coup from the minority extreme Right. Good thing that British extremists don't have any arms!

Regardless of their successes in European and council elections, they are still a fringe group. Such recent successes have come less a result of any real growth in sympathy for the racist BNP cause, but rather as a result of the homogenisation of all the mainstream parties. Mainstream British politics is just a cluster**** of out-of-touch, vaguely-right-of-centre, nebulous Neo-Liberalism with not enough tangible differences to inspire a sense of certainty in the voting public. It's all well and good to talk about the choice that the Liberal Democrats offer, but their fierce pro-European stance is still not very palatable to the significant numbers of people who are wary of encroaching EU bureacracy. They also chose as their leader a slick, synthetic-looking public schoolboy very much after the style of David Cameron (who himself was selected for being a youngish, slimy PR chameleon a la Tony Blair). Then you have the Expenses Scandal, which was a failure on the part of all the main parties.

So what you're seeing in the growth of the BNP is simply a symptom of the dearth of choice. People feel less and less well represented by the mainstream, so they feel driven to the fringe in the form of parties like the BNP, who hide their real manifesto while bleating about 'traditional British values'. People haven't suddenly grown more racist - they have (entirely justifiably) lost all trust in the parties which they once felt represented them. I mean the BNP have culled a significant portion of their new voting force from former Labour voters...! You're talking white, working class, people who at one time might have been voting out of left-wing socialist sympathies!

You can only beat down such a fringe force with superior ideology - ideology being something noticeably lacking from any of the mainstream parties, who seemingly vote themselves into Gordian knots of contradictory moral interests in parliament. Since this is a problem that has arisen in the first place due to lack of choice, the further removal of choice is not a workable tactic against the BNP. They are here to stay, due to the self-interest and incompetence of the mainstream politicians in failing to provide anything obviously better. Now that they're established, they can't simply be removed by wishful thinking. Violence against them would simply be defeating fascism with fascism, and the excuse 'well our side is in the right and that's all there is to it' just doesn't wash. Refusing to engage with them is almost as bad, since it is an insult to the (perhaps meagre) intelligence of wavering voters; these people are given the message 'we don't trust you not to vote for a big party like us, so we're just going to pretend that this other little dirty party doesn't exist'. The BNP will only grow in strength via that tactic - in fact, I'm convinced it was that attitude on display from zero-credibility Labour and Tory MPs which propelled the BNP to their minor successes in the European and council elections last time.

The only way to beat them is to engage with them. The problem is that most of our mainstream politicians (and indeed our media pundits) are so ideologically and intellectually crippled that they're too scared to enter into the simplest of debates with what would be the easiest of targets. Get a BNP councillor on Question Time or on any political talk show and ask them why they have no members of ethnic origin, how they could possibly advocate repatriation, why many of their members have links to violent extremist groups - ask them about their actual manifesto, which they always try to play down - and they wouldn't have a leg to stand on. At the same time, provide a non-racist voting choice for lower-class, traditional 'patriotic' types, and I think you'd see people flock away from the BNP just as easily as they flocked towards it with their 'protest' votes.

Just generally, if politicans stopped trying to arrogantly engineer votes and appeared to be making more of an effort to win them, then this kind of thing wouldn't be a problem.
 
I'm always going to be bitching about violence, whether it's from the right or the left.

Lay down some examples of when you think violence is appropriate. Obviously there are super extremes, like when the other side utilizes violence, and using it back to protect yourself... but really using violence on people you disagree with is ****ing retarded.
 
just show the world how dumb they are,after all that guy didnt recomended to sink boats whit africans to stop ilegal inmigration?

just keep pointing that so they dont look like a serious political party
 
Ironic, seeing as the BNP are in fact very socialist and left-wing.
 
Solaris said:
Elaborate...
Click to expand...

Protectionist and anti-big business economic policies.

Aiming for a self-sufficient economy, rather than competing in the global economy.

Focus on industrial/vocational education.

Increased expenditure on the health service.

Re-nationalisation of and greater investment in public transport.

Strict environmental laws.

National service.


Nationalism isn't always right-wing...
 
repiV said:
Ironic, seeing as the BNP are in fact very socialist and left-wing.
Click to expand...
These kinds of parties are populist and will choose any policies on the economic left-right scale that they think will gain votes. Thus it is very hard to place them using the standard political voculabary, and "far-right" is a rather stupid term to use, although I don't think its usage will go away very soon.

Very good points btw, Laiv, I would just like to add that we shouldn't read too much into the BNP:s success in the EU parliamant election, for two reasons. First off, the turnout was very low in the UK as in the rest of Europe. That typically favours minor and "odd" parties, as the majority of the abstainers would have voted for the major parties, and will almost certainly do so in the national parliamant election. Secondly, in the EU parliamant election voters tend to be more experimental and less predictable than usual, and will vote for the "odd" parties, as they hold these kinds of election to be less important than the major ones. (This can probably account for the Pirate Party's success in Sweden in the EU election.) BNP:s sucess should be viewed in the light of these two factors, and I think that fears that they will grow as large in the major elections as they have in the minor are unfounded.
 
Llama said:
National service is left wing?
Click to expand...

Its part of many left wing countries, Cuba, USSR/Russia, the Nordic states, Germany, Venezuela etc.

Also national service does not always translate directly to conscription (I'm not familiar with the BNP's policies) as in some countries a person has the option to undertake work in anotehr elemt of government services or in the peace corps (or local equivelant).

It, in my view, fits in with the left wing idea of loyalty to the state, it has provided you with so much so it asks you to pay it back by "doing your bit".

To be honest, I've a live and let live view on this sort of thing. You don't see me going out and busting commie's heads open now do you? If for no other reason that extreme view points simply don't have enough weight in the political world right now to warrant any kind of extreme reaction (unless they start it, in which case go nuts)
 
I think Solaris is using a narrow definition (a purely social definition) of left and right. Possibly he means 'how far do we tolerate the extreme authoritarians'.
 
Sulkdodds said:
I think Solaris is using a narrow definition (a purely social definition) of left and right. Possibly he means 'how far do we tolerate the extreme authoritarians'.
Click to expand...

I think when vile words lead to vile actions, then all of those involved need to be brought to account. Preaching hate to incite should be treated as a capital offence as well (I'm looking at you Bill O'Reilly with your Tiller the Killer BS).
 
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean?

We tolerate them until we catch them breaking the law. Then we throw the book at them.
 
I can't help thinking they only gain strength from being called 'extremists' and being the only party which the BBC is willing to refer to in openly villanous terms (which are of course the appropriate terms...)
 
I don't like their racist views, but I somewhat understand their rationale.
 
Yes, and we shall grind them to dust.
 
We allow unozero to post here.

I don't know if that's tolerance of the right or tolerance of abject stupidity.
 
Eejit said:
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean?

We tolerate them until we catch them breaking the law. Then we throw the book at them.
Click to expand...
Yeah, literally. Then they'll understand they're breaking the law when it hits them upside the head and leaves a big knot or two.
 
Bob_Marley said:
Its part of many left wing countries, Cuba, USSR/Russia, the Nordic states, Germany, Venezuela etc.

Also national service does not always translate directly to conscription (I'm not familiar with the BNP's policies) as in some countries a person has the option to undertake work in anotehr elemt of government services or in the peace corps (or local equivelant).

It, in my view, fits in with the left wing idea of loyalty to the state, it has provided you with so much so it asks you to pay it back by "doing your bit".

To be honest, I've a live and let live view on this sort of thing. You don't see me going out and busting commie's heads open now do you? If for no other reason that extreme view points simply don't have enough weight in the political world right now to warrant any kind of extreme reaction (unless they start it, in which case go nuts)
Click to expand...
Just thought you might wanna know, in Sweden there are more people that wanna do military service than it is that get to do it.

And by the way, Sweden isn't left-wing these days, it's centre-right.

Russia isn't left-wing either these days, if anything it's almost right-wing extremist authoritarian.
 
Bob_Marley said:
Its part of many left wing countries, Cuba, USSR/Russia, the Nordic states, Germany, Venezuela etc.

Also national service does not always translate directly to conscription (I'm not familiar with the BNP's policies) as in some countries a person has the option to undertake work in anotehr elemt of government services or in the peace corps (or local equivelant).

It, in my view, fits in with the left wing idea of loyalty to the state, it has provided you with so much so it asks you to pay it back by "doing your bit".

To be honest, I've a live and let live view on this sort of thing. You don't see me going out and busting commie's heads open now do you? If for no other reason that extreme view points simply don't have enough weight in the political world right now to warrant any kind of extreme reaction (unless they start it, in which case go nuts)
Click to expand...

is by national service you mean forced recluitment there is no such thing in venezuela yet

closest is something called "pre-military education" which is practically how to learn to march cuz when the teacher mentioned that there is supossed to be a visit to a barracks it was cancelled because someone made a accident whit a gun

but offcourse when chavez talk about forming a "peoples militia" while cursing the usa for being such a "warmongerer" country where kids learn to shoot weapons,things may change
 
I see nothing wrong with the BNP. England for the English.
 
The BNP will never get above 5% of the vote stop worrying. Same is true of the left wing nuts.
 
Mr Stabby said:
The BNP will never get above 5% of the vote stop worrying. Same is true of the left wing nuts.
Click to expand...
And right-wing nuts as well hopefully.

Let's make one thing clear, any form of extreme is bad, be it left or right.

Both the left-wing extremist and right-wing extremist ideologies have committed horrible atrocities in their name.

For the left-wing extremists we can take the PRC, especially during the culture revolution.

For the right-wing extremists we can take El Salvadore during the 80s, when they with the aid of CIA military advisors, systematically murdered and raped tens if not hundreds of thousands of Salvadorian civilians suspected to have, and this is a quote from their own reports "Socialist sympathies".

Heck I recall this particularly gruesome case, the Salvadorian military arrested a young male(early 20s) suspected of having socialist sympathies, they tortured him to get him to admit it.

The things they did, in no particular order - Burnt his eyes with cigarettes, shot off his kneecaps with a shotgun, cut off his hands, and finally cut off his head.
 
We tolerate the extreme right only as far as we tolerate the extreme left.

and I agree Gargantou.
 
If Violence has been proven as the catalyst of change, it's only been when the oppressed minority have fought against the dominant majority (in terms of numbers or power). For people to get violent against a minority party would just massively derationalise the mainstream, give them their martyrs and start them on their road to something approaching credibility. It's much safer if they remain the punchline of a political system that's a rather tired joke.
 
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