They may have some similar views, but the UK Independence Party (UKIP)
does not and has never had the same politics as the British National Party
(BNP). Surprised? Did you think UKIP was just a little less rough around the
edges, perhaps? The BNP was – probably still is – a ‘Nazi’ party. I’m not
waving a noisy placard as I write this or planning on abseiling through the
roof into one of their branch meetings above a pub somewhere to catch them all
in “the act” of being Nazis. The BNP was formed as a Nazi-oriented party (in
1982), and practiced and preached overt Nazism until Nick Griffin took over the
leadership in 1999.
Between that pinnacle moment and July of last year (when the BNP sacked
and then later expelled him), Nick Griffin and the BNP merely flirted with
Nazism. They also avoided it, denied it, hid it and to the chagrin of those who
stayed along for a 40 year long ride, occasionally forgot about it.
Nor are the English Defence League (EDL) a new BNP. With a million
votes, scores of councillors and two MEPs in 2009, how the EDL managed to rise
right under the BNP’s nose and begin a process of destroying the party is still
a mysterious misery for them. The EDL’s not even a political party.
Britain First – a vehemently anti-Muslim, Christian fundamentalist group
– is a political party. Admittedly, it’s one of the smallest in the United
Kingdom – but one with the largest Facebook following of any political party,
including Labour, Lib Dems and the Tories. Facebook is how so many people have
actually heard of them. Fluffy animals, dead soldiers, poppies, Jesus on a
cross-on a Union Flag, caricatured, liked and shared by millions of people,
often quite innocently and infuriatingly.
What should be nameless and faceless individuals and organisations are
not entirely that, however. One criminologist last year exclaimed (having gone
in search of racism and Islamphobia – and found it) that the far right had
“invaded” the internet. Type “Islam” or “Muslim” into a search engine and
you’ll get a fair idea what sort of form and purpose that “invasion” has taken.
The long-term rise of the BNP was long before Facebook and Twitter
occupied our evenings in front of the television. It was actually a symptom of
changing and hardening attitudes towards race and immigration in some of the
most desperately ignored parts of the country. And yes, Islam was subjected to
both those hardened attitudes, particularly post-7/7. As any Muslim hater will
proudly tell you, Islam is not a race. Despite that, it is subject to scrutiny
and antagonism by racist values and attitudes.
The BNP’s rose to ignorant bliss between 2001 [9/11] and a peak in 2009.
By 2010 it was limping off and onto life support whilst the still new EDL was
kicking in shop and pub windows as it marched up and down England carrying cans
of lager and dressed in matching EDL “hoodies.” The BNP’s demise was covered
admirably by the print and news media. It had all the ingredients of a classic
British soap opera and the public tittered that the BNP was apparently not very
important anyway, as we now had the EDL being racist and horrible about and to
foreigners.
The media hated the BNP (ever seen Nick Griffin excoriated on Question
Time in 2009?). The EDL on the other hand – rough, brash and hedonistic – was
like a hooligan’s cast off of TOWIE. Its leader, Stephen Lennon, was a darling
of some red-top newspapers and his followers, initially, were black, white,
straight, gay and even in one bizarre case, a Muslim.
To give a brief and rather underdone summary of their mutual dislike of
each other, the EDL called the BNP racist and Nazi (which it was) and the BNP
called the EDL “Zionist” in return. The BNP wanted Muslims deported from the UK
while the EDL wanted Muslims assimilated, forcibly, and without their religion
in tow.
The EDL revolutionised social media. The only way to contact the EDL was
on Facebook or to abuse them or their leader on twitter. Even we at HOPE not
hate barely touched our Facebook page until the EDL turned up.
By the time Gunner Lee Rigby was murdered by Islamists on the streets of
South London in May 2013 hardly anybody was aware that the EDL’s bubble had
also long burst. It had splintered into some five or six different groups in
the previous two years and ground to an almost halt. As their founder and
leader would later lament, it had also become just another tiny Nazi group.
Britain First was the next group to emerge. It is, of all things, a
“hybrid” of the BNP and the EDL. The smaller of the three, it burst into life
in 2013 by mimicking both the BNP’s Nazism and the EDL’s heavy boozing and lust
for uniforms. Understandably, the BNP and the EDL both hated it. Britain First
broke every rule; it invaded mosques as well as the internet. Its activists
wore green uniforms and waved bibles and cans of lager outside mosques. And
most importantly, it bought some 200,000 “likes” on Facebook and actually
tapped into the symptoms of Britain’s moans, groans and fears, by mass produced
“memes”: of Jesus, half-eaten dogs and beloved dead actresses. It now has over
half-a-million Facebook followers but few actual activists.
It actually tells people, as does Nick Griffin, to vote UKIP. All the
splintering, all the arguing, all the confusions and yes, the growth of UKIP
has actually left the ultra-extremists quite bereft of members, and yet they
are super-stars on social media and the focus of bloggers. I shouldn’t
complain, I make my living writing about them, but at least I do investigate
them. Last year my report into Britain First caused their founder to leave the
group and Britain First to issue threats to journalists using the research.
The far right is actually now tiny. No amount of scare stories can
change that. Suggestions that Rigby’s murder and the outrageous grooming
scandal in Rotherham were helping rebuild the extreme far-right were just that
– rumours – and desperate hopes in some cases.
The Sun reported last month that Britain First had “six thousand
members” despite its marches attracting fewer than 50 people and being beaten
at the polls by the Monster Raving Loony Party. The Sun got the figure after a
lie by Britain First to the BBC about its membership figure went unchallenged
the month before.
The BNP, like the EDL, limps on without recognisable or charismatic
leaders. The once great Nick Griffin, now bankrupt and out of work, tweets and
blogs to a disinterested public about how much he hates Muslims, and Jews too,
obviously.
What people are seeing, is not a massive far right growing in strength.
They’re looking at an angry and disillusioned country in part and discovering
that there is an awful lot of far-right and fascist groups. The extreme
far-right has never had to be big to be nasty. Large it ain’t, increasingly
nasty it is.
