Question Time
Oct. 25th, 2009 12:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thessalianSo I watched Thursday's Question Time on iPlayer, featuring Mr Nick Griffin, head of the British National Party. Google is your friend if you want to look it up - I don't want to give the site any more traffic. Suffice to say that, despite recent rules that mean that the BNP now has to accept members from other races, mainly the British National Party does what it says on the tin: its predominant platform is "Britain for Britons". Unfortunately, to Mr Griffin and his bunch, "Britons" doesn't mean ... y'know, people born here. No, it means 'indigenous natives' - I dunno how far back they're going, but basically, it means white people, preferably Christians, whose entire family tree is centred in the British Isles.
You know what really creeps me out about the BNP? It's not the hate. It's not the hypocrisy. It's the lunacy. Because if it came down to it and there was a 'reversal of the flow of immigration' and 'reclaiming Britain for the British' ... I'd have more right to stay in this country than people who were born here.
Because, yeah, I'm not a Christian, but I was baptised as one (Anglican, no less), and have the certificate to prove it. My entire maternal line is Catholic, albeit predominantly lapsed. My entire paternal line is Anglican. I went to Sunday school and the summer day camp and (the horrific slice of hell that was) Christian summer camp affiliated with said Sunday school. I was raised 'Half-Arsed Christian', anyway. And sure, I wasn't born in this nation, but three out of my four grandparents were, and I think my father was a technicality. (Born in Canada, sure. Conceived in Canada? Eh...) What little I know about my father's side of the family is that we date back to when Vikings were raping women in Saxon villages. My mother's maternal grandmother is Scotch-Irish, and by 'Irish', I mean 'Northern'. Though that's a bit of a debatable point because ... well, put it this way: I had great-uncles who got really bitchy if you call it 'Londonderry'. And then there's the tiny matter of my skin colour. There's a lot of case to be made for my being an 'ethnic' Brit.
Thing is, I wasn't born here. I'm not a citizen, though I could be easy as blinking. I'm not really sure I want to be, but that's one I'm still mulling over. I'm not British. A lot of my heritage is, but my maternal grandfather's line was Russian and Polish, and frankly, none of that matters that much to me anyway. That's not what I am. I am a second-generation Canadian, and I am damn proud of it.
But if Mr Griffin had his way, I wouldn't be thrown out, more than likely. The people who would be thrown out, after the illegal immigrants, would be second-generation Britons with skin the wrong colour. And I'd stay because I'm 'ethnically indigenous'. Whereas: "The BNP leader first publicly referred to a 'bloodless genocide' when commenting in April on the language in the party's "Language and Concepts Discipline" manual, which says that black and Asian Britons should be called 'resident foreigners', saying recent mass immigration was denying the English their ownidentity, and that the children of migrants did not become British simply by being born in Britain: "In a very subtle way, it's a sort of bloodless genocide." So they'd be obliged to leave and I could stay. And I wasn't even born here.
(Well, no, actually, if Mr Griffin had his way, I would beg, borrow or steal the money to get off this hunk of rock and go back to my own sane country, but you get the idea; they wouldn't make me leave.)
I missed a lot of the furore about Nick Griffin being allowed on Question Time, but if I'd been in on it, I'd have said he had every right to appear there, and laughed at him for saying that the BBC appearance would break him into "the big time". Because of that, or perhaps just because he's a crappy politician who has bought far too much into the hype of his 'appealing to the mainstream' and put too much weight on the BNP's two seats in the European Parliament, went in entirely unprepared. He tried to state that he was misquoted and found himself entirely unable, at first, to quote chapter and verse. He cited some poll that showed that 80-some percent of Brits agreed with him on a certain point but couldn't tell people who had conducted the poll. When asked whether he still believed that the Holocaust didn't happen, and if not, what had changed his mind, he stated that there were certain laws that prevented him from answering any of that question - again, without quoting the exact law. He looked, frankly, like a moron. Then there was the bit about "many people find the sight of two grown men kissing frankly creepy". If you're going to say a thing like that, Mr Griffin, quote your source, or the audience and the rest of the panel will bludgeon you over the head with it. Like the nice lesbian who, on behalf of the homosexual community, stated, "The repulsion is mutual".
That said, I thought the whole thing was a bit shambolic. It would have been nice if people had actually asked more questions and spent a lot less time just commenting on how disgusting Nick Griffin and the BNP were. Sure, it's nice to be able to say it to the man's face. Not the point. You want to strike a blow against the BNP who's maligning your race, your religion, your sexual preferences? Don't just shoot disgust at him. Ask him more questions that he can't answer without looking like the scumbag he is. Come on; let's have some class.
Still, his own party's turning against him now, and doing it by sounding like violent nutters. The BNP's legal advisor - legal advisor, mind you - has been quoted as saying that perhaps 'white riots' are required to wake this country up before it's too late. Or something to that effect, but the fact is that a legal advisor is saying that rioting isn't such a bad idea.
Yeah, so now the BNP looks stupid ... but to be fair, so did Jack Straw, a time or two. All the same, I don't think that the Question Time appearance was 'an early Christmas gift for the BNP'. Particularly not when he called the Beeb 'part of a thoroughly unpleasant ultra-leftist establishment'. That was funny.
You know what really creeps me out about the BNP? It's not the hate. It's not the hypocrisy. It's the lunacy. Because if it came down to it and there was a 'reversal of the flow of immigration' and 'reclaiming Britain for the British' ... I'd have more right to stay in this country than people who were born here.
Because, yeah, I'm not a Christian, but I was baptised as one (Anglican, no less), and have the certificate to prove it. My entire maternal line is Catholic, albeit predominantly lapsed. My entire paternal line is Anglican. I went to Sunday school and the summer day camp and (the horrific slice of hell that was) Christian summer camp affiliated with said Sunday school. I was raised 'Half-Arsed Christian', anyway. And sure, I wasn't born in this nation, but three out of my four grandparents were, and I think my father was a technicality. (Born in Canada, sure. Conceived in Canada? Eh...) What little I know about my father's side of the family is that we date back to when Vikings were raping women in Saxon villages. My mother's maternal grandmother is Scotch-Irish, and by 'Irish', I mean 'Northern'. Though that's a bit of a debatable point because ... well, put it this way: I had great-uncles who got really bitchy if you call it 'Londonderry'. And then there's the tiny matter of my skin colour. There's a lot of case to be made for my being an 'ethnic' Brit.
Thing is, I wasn't born here. I'm not a citizen, though I could be easy as blinking. I'm not really sure I want to be, but that's one I'm still mulling over. I'm not British. A lot of my heritage is, but my maternal grandfather's line was Russian and Polish, and frankly, none of that matters that much to me anyway. That's not what I am. I am a second-generation Canadian, and I am damn proud of it.
But if Mr Griffin had his way, I wouldn't be thrown out, more than likely. The people who would be thrown out, after the illegal immigrants, would be second-generation Britons with skin the wrong colour. And I'd stay because I'm 'ethnically indigenous'. Whereas: "The BNP leader first publicly referred to a 'bloodless genocide' when commenting in April on the language in the party's "Language and Concepts Discipline" manual, which says that black and Asian Britons should be called 'resident foreigners', saying recent mass immigration was denying the English their ownidentity, and that the children of migrants did not become British simply by being born in Britain: "In a very subtle way, it's a sort of bloodless genocide." So they'd be obliged to leave and I could stay. And I wasn't even born here.
(Well, no, actually, if Mr Griffin had his way, I would beg, borrow or steal the money to get off this hunk of rock and go back to my own sane country, but you get the idea; they wouldn't make me leave.)
I missed a lot of the furore about Nick Griffin being allowed on Question Time, but if I'd been in on it, I'd have said he had every right to appear there, and laughed at him for saying that the BBC appearance would break him into "the big time". Because of that, or perhaps just because he's a crappy politician who has bought far too much into the hype of his 'appealing to the mainstream' and put too much weight on the BNP's two seats in the European Parliament, went in entirely unprepared. He tried to state that he was misquoted and found himself entirely unable, at first, to quote chapter and verse. He cited some poll that showed that 80-some percent of Brits agreed with him on a certain point but couldn't tell people who had conducted the poll. When asked whether he still believed that the Holocaust didn't happen, and if not, what had changed his mind, he stated that there were certain laws that prevented him from answering any of that question - again, without quoting the exact law. He looked, frankly, like a moron. Then there was the bit about "many people find the sight of two grown men kissing frankly creepy". If you're going to say a thing like that, Mr Griffin, quote your source, or the audience and the rest of the panel will bludgeon you over the head with it. Like the nice lesbian who, on behalf of the homosexual community, stated, "The repulsion is mutual".
That said, I thought the whole thing was a bit shambolic. It would have been nice if people had actually asked more questions and spent a lot less time just commenting on how disgusting Nick Griffin and the BNP were. Sure, it's nice to be able to say it to the man's face. Not the point. You want to strike a blow against the BNP who's maligning your race, your religion, your sexual preferences? Don't just shoot disgust at him. Ask him more questions that he can't answer without looking like the scumbag he is. Come on; let's have some class.
Still, his own party's turning against him now, and doing it by sounding like violent nutters. The BNP's legal advisor - legal advisor, mind you - has been quoted as saying that perhaps 'white riots' are required to wake this country up before it's too late. Or something to that effect, but the fact is that a legal advisor is saying that rioting isn't such a bad idea.
Yeah, so now the BNP looks stupid ... but to be fair, so did Jack Straw, a time or two. All the same, I don't think that the Question Time appearance was 'an early Christmas gift for the BNP'. Particularly not when he called the Beeb 'part of a thoroughly unpleasant ultra-leftist establishment'. That was funny.
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no subject
Date: 2009-10-25 01:55 am (UTC)I'd be joining you I think. If my family weren't being thrown out for inter-racial adoption anyway.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-25 11:13 am (UTC)Which is stupid, because they were a bunch who rolled onto the island like so many have done before and after, and because with 17000 years since, everyone with any even a tiny bit of vaugely British Caucasian heritage will be slightly related to them, and no-one will have a particularly strong lineage of them.