On Liverpool BNP's response to last Saturday's events

The Liverpool branch of the BNP have taken their time offering a write-up of their being run out of town on Saturday. They have obviously taken their time putting just the right spin on events to serve their purposes ... and still come up with semi-coherent garbage.

The new Liverpool BNP blog is far better presented than the Merseyside BNP one now controlled by the party's dissident "reformer" faction. But it is still a mess, not least because whoever writes it often forgets how to use hyperlinks and the text becomes clunky as you try to wade through web addresses thrown, seemingly at random, into the middle of sentences and paragraphs. If their aim is readability, they're self-sabotaging.

But anyway, returning to the main point, they begin with what is now a common refrain;

My companions and I are members of a legal, democratic political party and in our opinion the only alternative to global politics and world domination. Our Leader and local MEP Mr Nick Griffin has a mandate from nearly a million to serve the people of Merseyside and the North West. In fact it has just been announced Nick is the 2nd best performing MEP. Of course this to us is common knowledge but, of course media bias avoided this!
http://www.nickgriffinmep.eu/content/nick-second-best-performing-north-west-mep

It goes almost without saying that nobody has ever claimed that the BNP are "illegal," since to qualify as such you have to be proscribed by the Home Secretary. And if they want to believe that the BNP is the only viable alternative to the status quo, that's up to them - though I and many others beg to differ.

But the idea that they are "democratic" needs to be challenged. The recent farce of their leadership challenge demonstrated just what a dictatorial stranglehold Nick Griffin has on power in the BNP. Though I'm no fan of them either, the Labour Party had an open and fair leadership election, and many of the failed contenders will now be part of Ed Miliband's shadow cabinet.

Not so the BNP. Those who supported Eddy Butler have been suspended or expelled. The other challenger, Richard Barnbrook, has been booted. High-profile critics of Griffin - such as Lee Barnes - have jumped ship. And Griffin's personality cult has been cleansed of "spies," "homosexuals," and "cranks."

As for Griffin's "mandate" to represent Liverpool - it was only that the vote was across the entire North West that he scraped in. Those million votes didn't come from this city.

I pointed this out at the time of his "victory;"

In the North West, the increase in BNP support was marginal. They barely upped their share of the vote to 7.96%, just ahead of the Greens' 7.63%. In Liverpool, meanwhile, the locale of the defining moments in their North West campaign - from the arrest of 12 activists for inciting racial hatred in distributing the Racism Cuts Both Ways leaflets to prominent Merseyside BNP members Peter Tierney and Steve Greenhalgh's vicious assault on local anti-fascists - they polled at just 6.4%.

Moreover, "an incredibly low overall turnout, contrasted with the generally high turnout the BNP pushes for amongst its supporters, suggests that 6% may be an overestimation of BNP support in the city."

The events of this Saturday, and the similar occurrence a fortnight before that, bear this point out.

But the BNP, as you might expect, tell that differently too. The fact that "the general public are in full support of this campaign and most flock to sign our petition" can be boiled down to the fact that the public - including antifascists - are overwhelmingly anti-war.

But whilst those on the left try to do something about it, from enormous marches and support of deserters to direct action such as that of the EDO decommissioners, the BNP use the issue to hide their politics.

To labour the point, the "petition" they're touting is not a petition at all. As Griffin admits on the BNP website, it is part of a recruitment campaign, and those who sign up will only succeed in lining themselves up for his begging letters and BNP postal votes. Not to mention that, per their election manifesto, they would happily still leave "our boys" to die in that war if they felt it "in the national interest."

But I often wonder whether the BNP activists involved in this are deliberately masking the truth or  if they are utterly delusional.

They consider the chants of antifascists to be "government induced." And, despite the disproportionate arrest and harassment of antifascists and youth, their post rails against "the (left-wing, common-purpose ordained) Police," "the baying ‘Sponsored Anarchist’ crowd," and "the obvious ‘State protected’ confidence, which has been bestowed on these Anarchists." [sic, ad infinitum]

Hyperbole and excessive use of randomly-aligned adverbs aside, this betrays the cultish, barnpot mentality of those deepest in the mire of the far-right.

For them, there are only two sides: themselves, and the student-liberal-hippy-ethnic-politically-correct-common-purpose-communist-Marxist-anarchist-unwashed-left. Who are, naturally, all sponsored by the state. And "middle class" - despite being "unwashed."

Liverpool BNP tried to articulate this reasoning in "Meditations on a Lefty Mob "Demo""[sic];

all the UAF and Socialist librarian gimps had concentrated at the Echo Arena to perform a demo for the public and Media against the ConDem ‘Government’ in No. 10. However, on hearing that the nefarious BNP had the audacity to hold a Day of Action in Liverpool Town Centre Comrade McFadden hastened into the town centre. Surely enough there was the BNP! How dare they confront this glorious regime! http://www.stopcp.com/index.php Comrade McFadden was on the phone immediately.

...

Now whilst most ordinary folk seem to agree with the sentiment ‘Bring Our Boys Home’ the elite had other ideas and by mid morning Comrade McFadden had arrived and was on the phone to his government rent-a-mob. ... Then lo and behold The Government cash funded UAF and Socialist Workers Party and a few of the old Hatton Militant hard-liners abandoned the [Liberal Democrat] Party Conference to perform a merry dance around the BNP table top instead!!! Thus exposing the public to a performance of what it really is-a Thespian parade for the controlled Tabloids and Media.

So, because left-wing activists had abandoned a protest against the Liberal Democrats to protest the BNP, we are all of course in the pay of David Cameron and Nick Clegg. And protesting against them as a show for the media.

In reality, the "demo" was actually a small gathering aimed at lobbying attendees of the conference, attended by 20-ish people. The main march and protest was the next day and attended by a throng of several thousand people. But the idea that somebody can oppose both the present government and a fascist party such as the BNP is apparently really far-fetched. Or something.

Likewise, it would seem that opposing the BNP makes you no longer a local to anywhere they happen to be. Unless you're a member of an ethnic minority.

According to the wisdom of the BNP;

only about 5% of them are actually from Liverpool, and that 5% are ethnics. The rest are students from outside so they can by no means speak on behalf of the people of Liverpool!

Except that I am a white, working class person who holds a full-time job, was born in Liverpool and has lived here all his life, and I was amongst the crowd opposing the BNP. Unless I and my fellow white, working class, antifascist Scousers imagined the whole thing, of course.

I'd also point out that, as an anarchist, I was no doubt in a minority amongst the antifascist crowd. But it would no doubt fall on deaf and wilfully ignorant ears.

I'm not going to Fisk the entire article, because I have better things to do with my time. But it should be pointed out that there were no "indiscriminate[?] members of the public standing in the crowd observing this situation and then fearlessly challenging this mob’s week[sic] argument."

The BNP themselves would only get in the faces of kids, whilst members of Liverpool Antifascists would engage with passers-by and could hold our own in debate easily enough. Far from "watch[ing] the agitators shrivel when confronted with common sense debate," all the BNP could do was shout "fuck off" and call us "paedophiles."

Likewise, when "one of the protesters was caught by one of our group, and by the Police, vandalising our equipment," it was actually a young lad who hooked his mp3 player up to their loud-hailer so that it played rap! Whether it should be classed as "vandalism" or music is entirely subjective, I guess.

Thus, the writer of this pathetic diatribe may "honestly believe the UAF are above the law and they know it," but I wouldn't take his word for it since I doubt his grip on reality.

He rounds of his semi-coherent rant thus;

Is this the price we pay for being a Patriot in Britain today? The true concept of ‘democracy’ has been lost. Anyone who supports an opinion different from the Government/State is demonised. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx2YLFyp43Q&feature=player_embedded The media have aided the Government in the sanctioning of attacks on Nationalists/Patriots. There is and has always been a media bias against Nationalistic endeavours. http://www.nuj.org.uk/innerPagenuj.html?docid=1253

We are now, no-longer safe in our own land. Am I frightened? Yes, I am terrified for our Country’s future but I am awake and I cannot turn away from what is happening to my beautiful Land.

This ‘politically–correct’ Regime, is empowering alien cultures, at the expense of our’s. Are we not the Host-Nation ?

My Grandfather went to War for this Land and my Great Grandfather was in the trenches. I cannot stand by and let Traitors and fiends deliver this Land into the hands of foreigners. I will not apologise to Blacks for my Great British History. If I am to be condemned for loving my own culture, so be it! And if you want to call me names for trying to stop MY People becoming second class citizens in our own country, feel free. I don’t care.

In MY heart I am a Patriot-British till the end. The blood of the ethnic English runs through my veins. Onwards and upwards!

Well, he may be right about a couple of things. But the manifestation of the state demonising dissidents, i.e. left-wing activists being filmed, photographed, and documented as "domestic extremists," is utterly at odds with his view of us being "above the law."

If the BNP wants to think of us as "government-sponsored" and "traitors," that's their call. But the evidence doesn't bear it out.

We're not asking them to "apologise to Blacks for my Great British History," or "condemn[ing them] for loving [their] own culture." We're challenging their advancement of a fascist ideology rooted in bigotry and political violence.