Post by Hickman on Oct 22, 2005 3:46:49 GMT -5
[shadow=red,left,300]The British National Party Goes Straight [/shadow]
By Robert Locke (10/20/05)
The depth of the crisis facing Israel and other Western nations from Moslem terrorism, and more profoundly from Moslem immigration, is such that some unconventional political allies deserve a glance they would not otherwise merit. The small hard-right nationalist parties of Europe are among them, if only because they are sometimes the only political forces that are serious about this crisis in nations where the mainstream left is deluded and the mainstream right feckless.
The destruction of America by mass immigration is mirrored in most Western nations. The temptations of cheap labor for the business class that dominates rightist parties, and of electoral cannon fodder for the permanent-government class that dominates leftist parties, are the same everywhere. Even Israel has been affected, in the form of a not-so-secret addiction to cheap Arab labor that has created behind-the-scenes pressures to hang onto[1] a dangerous population.
Although mainstream anti-immigration groups in most Western nations have had no particular association with anti-Semitism in recent years, this has unfortunately not been true of the political parties that have taken opposition to immigration as their raison d'être. With some exceptions, these parties -- which exist in all Western nations except Ireland and the USA -- have tended to base themselves on old-school ethno-nationalism that is at best suspicious of Jews, and at worst sympathetic to Hitlerism[2]
But this is, fortunately, changing, which may eventually make such parties useful participants in the Clash of Civilizations. Let's take Britain as our example, and look at the changes in the British National Party (www.bnp.org.uk.)[3]
The BNP's origins are utterly unpleasant. It began as something called the National Front (NF) in the late 1960's, a noisy and occasionally violent protest group known for shaven heads and combat boots. If the NF wasn't formally Nazi -- this is Britain, after all, within living memory of the Blitz -- it clearly at least sympathized with Nazism. It was correct about immigration -- for which there is absolutely no conceivable reason in a small overcrowded island like Britain -- but otherwise a colorful horror show. Its rump version (natfront.org.uk)[4] still exists, and its founder, John Tyndall, recently died, unrepentant to the last.
The NF had no lasting accomplishments, though it was at one point in the early 70's the 4th-largest political movement in Britain, after Labour, the Conservatives, and the Liberal Party. But in the late 1990's, elements of the British National Party, as a faction of the NF had renamed itself, sought to break out of fringe politics and go mainstream. They believed the country needed to be saved from immigration and the submersion of Britain in the EU[5] before it was too late.
Objectively, the immigration situation in the UK is not as bad as in the US, though deteriorating fast. Britain is currently 93% British, but decaying at about 1% per year. At present rates of immigration and demographic change, the British people will be a minority in Britain by 2050, as they already are in London. The present Blair government has done everything it can, lawfully and unlawfully, to increase immigration.
In the BNP, matters came to a head in a leadership struggle in 1999, in which the aforementioned Mr. Tyndall was ousted and replaced by Nick Griffin, a charismatic Cambridge-educated lawyer. Griffin set about reshaping the party into an organization capable of waging mainstream politics without abandoning its core convictions.
The party's core conviction has always been, in whatever incarnation, a fairly straightforward "Britain for the British" message: foreigners out, national sovereignty in. What is new is that today it is, by world standards, a fairly conventional right-wing populist ethno-nationalist party, having abandoned the fascistic trappings, tendency to violence, and weird obsessions that once characterized it.
The party's transformation is not wholly complete as of this writing. Some of the rank-and-file membership is clearly not as far along as its leadership. But, after four years of reform, the BNP seems to have managed a decisive break with its past and become a credible "major minor party," as they say in Britain. (In the UK, minor parties are considerably more important than in the US, both electorally and ideologically, though not as important as in Israel.) CONTINUE........
www.americandaily.com/article/9797
By Robert Locke (10/20/05)
The depth of the crisis facing Israel and other Western nations from Moslem terrorism, and more profoundly from Moslem immigration, is such that some unconventional political allies deserve a glance they would not otherwise merit. The small hard-right nationalist parties of Europe are among them, if only because they are sometimes the only political forces that are serious about this crisis in nations where the mainstream left is deluded and the mainstream right feckless.
The destruction of America by mass immigration is mirrored in most Western nations. The temptations of cheap labor for the business class that dominates rightist parties, and of electoral cannon fodder for the permanent-government class that dominates leftist parties, are the same everywhere. Even Israel has been affected, in the form of a not-so-secret addiction to cheap Arab labor that has created behind-the-scenes pressures to hang onto[1] a dangerous population.
Although mainstream anti-immigration groups in most Western nations have had no particular association with anti-Semitism in recent years, this has unfortunately not been true of the political parties that have taken opposition to immigration as their raison d'être. With some exceptions, these parties -- which exist in all Western nations except Ireland and the USA -- have tended to base themselves on old-school ethno-nationalism that is at best suspicious of Jews, and at worst sympathetic to Hitlerism[2]
But this is, fortunately, changing, which may eventually make such parties useful participants in the Clash of Civilizations. Let's take Britain as our example, and look at the changes in the British National Party (www.bnp.org.uk.)[3]
The BNP's origins are utterly unpleasant. It began as something called the National Front (NF) in the late 1960's, a noisy and occasionally violent protest group known for shaven heads and combat boots. If the NF wasn't formally Nazi -- this is Britain, after all, within living memory of the Blitz -- it clearly at least sympathized with Nazism. It was correct about immigration -- for which there is absolutely no conceivable reason in a small overcrowded island like Britain -- but otherwise a colorful horror show. Its rump version (natfront.org.uk)[4] still exists, and its founder, John Tyndall, recently died, unrepentant to the last.
The NF had no lasting accomplishments, though it was at one point in the early 70's the 4th-largest political movement in Britain, after Labour, the Conservatives, and the Liberal Party. But in the late 1990's, elements of the British National Party, as a faction of the NF had renamed itself, sought to break out of fringe politics and go mainstream. They believed the country needed to be saved from immigration and the submersion of Britain in the EU[5] before it was too late.
Objectively, the immigration situation in the UK is not as bad as in the US, though deteriorating fast. Britain is currently 93% British, but decaying at about 1% per year. At present rates of immigration and demographic change, the British people will be a minority in Britain by 2050, as they already are in London. The present Blair government has done everything it can, lawfully and unlawfully, to increase immigration.
In the BNP, matters came to a head in a leadership struggle in 1999, in which the aforementioned Mr. Tyndall was ousted and replaced by Nick Griffin, a charismatic Cambridge-educated lawyer. Griffin set about reshaping the party into an organization capable of waging mainstream politics without abandoning its core convictions.
The party's core conviction has always been, in whatever incarnation, a fairly straightforward "Britain for the British" message: foreigners out, national sovereignty in. What is new is that today it is, by world standards, a fairly conventional right-wing populist ethno-nationalist party, having abandoned the fascistic trappings, tendency to violence, and weird obsessions that once characterized it.
The party's transformation is not wholly complete as of this writing. Some of the rank-and-file membership is clearly not as far along as its leadership. But, after four years of reform, the BNP seems to have managed a decisive break with its past and become a credible "major minor party," as they say in Britain. (In the UK, minor parties are considerably more important than in the US, both electorally and ideologically, though not as important as in Israel.) CONTINUE........
www.americandaily.com/article/9797
