London – The British
National Party has long suffered from image problems. Now, they have
another image problem. It is on their website (see here), subtitled “arrested on the orders of
international Zionists” and looks like this:
The
shadowy background figure is taken from the well known 1922
German horror film, Nosferatu: a Dracula take off. The Star of David
and ”TRANSNATIONAL JUDENSTADT” (Judenstadt – Jewish state)
are not in the film. Neither is Nikos Michaloliakos,
leader of the notorious Greek neo-Nazi group, Golden
Dawn – he is the
chump clutching the manbag, arrested by two masked law enforcement
officers.
The
anti-racism group Hope not Hate suggest that
the BNP took this image from a dreadful antisemitic website called
endzog that thinks Jews run the world. In its skinhead (pre-Internet)
marching days, the BNP was not too shy about this kind of thing. More
recently, with elections to be fought, the BNP has aped ”anti-Zionism“,
tending to avoid hook-nosed Jewish blood-suckers imagery.
It is
hard to think of the BNP as having been affected by political correctness over
the years, but that is exactly what has happened. This once overtly
neo-Nazi party now tries to appear respectably nationalist, not
even racist: but the BNP’s instinctive groping for the
bosoms of Greek and Hungarian neo-Nazis and fascists (ie Golden Dawn and
Jobbik) says far more about its true nature than any amount of PR spin
ever can.
Groups
such as Golden Dawn and Jobbik have strong, charismatic leaders.
These men and their groups tell it like it is, and if that makes them
sound a bit Nazi, or like dangerous
revolutionaries, with ugly antisemitism and racism chucked in for good
measure, daring them to arrest you, shaking up the system, scaring
minorities and those in power – then so what. Isn’t that what its all about?
Of
course, there is also opportunism. It has been a while since BNP leader
Nick Griffin had the opportunity to go on BBC Question Time. If a Golden Dawn
or Jobbik leader had been given such an opportunity, you can be sure that
afterwards nobody would have mocked them for
sounding like David Brent.
Squeezed
between the EDL and UKIP, the BNP’s opportunities had been shrinking
faster than a vampire in daylight. Whatever the BNP was trying to be,
hoping to be, or pretending to be, it has simply been losing its
relevance. The more powerful and dangerous these European neo-Nazi
and fascist groups become, the more the BNP will be drawn towards them: it is a
matter of genetics.
