23 October 2009
A racist on the BBC
The rest of the country is blogging and tweeting about Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time last night, so let me join in. For those who have the good fortune not to know, Nick Griffin is the leader of the far right British National Party who was elected to the European Parliament in June, and who had hitherto been excluded from mainstream political broadcasting on the grounds that he himself was not in the mainstream.
Now that he has been elected as an MEP and has started collecting the £76,000 salary that goes with it, things are different. The BBC offered him a slot on its flagship political discussion programme Question Time, where he took a place alongside four other political and public figures in front of an agitated studio audience.
Opinions differ as to how well he performed: the people who oppose him say he did badly; those who support him say he did well. To me, I think the most important thing was that he was laughed at. His attempt to present his racist views just looked ridiculous. And so it should.
The central proposition of the BNP ideology is that human existence is a contest between different races. This is wrong, on two counts. First, there are no races. There is a diversity of racial characteristics – take a look at any Premiership football team over the weekend – but it is not possible to divide humanity into discrete racial groups. There is a spectrum in which each of us has a place, but where no definitive lines between people or groups of people can be drawn.
The second error is that there is no contest between groups. He has misunderstood evolutionary theory. In fact, there is not even competition between individuals: the competition upon which natural selection is based takes place between genes. Nick Griffin’s idea of race has nothing to do with it.
Even they were scientifically founded, his ideas would not have to be accepted morally; but the science doesn’t stack up either. Would you buy a round-the-world air ticket from someone who thought the earth was flat?
The division of humanity into groups based on ethnicity or nationality is a cultural notion, not a biological one. (I wrote about this on the blog in the context of Somalia two weeks ago.) It is not an immutable force before which politics must tremble: it is a fact of the way we live that politics, if it wishes, can change.
Now that he has been elected as an MEP and has started collecting the £76,000 salary that goes with it, things are different. The BBC offered him a slot on its flagship political discussion programme Question Time, where he took a place alongside four other political and public figures in front of an agitated studio audience.
Opinions differ as to how well he performed: the people who oppose him say he did badly; those who support him say he did well. To me, I think the most important thing was that he was laughed at. His attempt to present his racist views just looked ridiculous. And so it should.
The central proposition of the BNP ideology is that human existence is a contest between different races. This is wrong, on two counts. First, there are no races. There is a diversity of racial characteristics – take a look at any Premiership football team over the weekend – but it is not possible to divide humanity into discrete racial groups. There is a spectrum in which each of us has a place, but where no definitive lines between people or groups of people can be drawn.
The second error is that there is no contest between groups. He has misunderstood evolutionary theory. In fact, there is not even competition between individuals: the competition upon which natural selection is based takes place between genes. Nick Griffin’s idea of race has nothing to do with it.
Even they were scientifically founded, his ideas would not have to be accepted morally; but the science doesn’t stack up either. Would you buy a round-the-world air ticket from someone who thought the earth was flat?
The division of humanity into groups based on ethnicity or nationality is a cultural notion, not a biological one. (I wrote about this on the blog in the context of Somalia two weeks ago.) It is not an immutable force before which politics must tremble: it is a fact of the way we live that politics, if it wishes, can change.
Posted by Richard Laming at 14:06
Racism, like a lot of other controversial behavioral traits, depends entirely on community interest for survival. As long as a community, or a portion of a community supports it, it will flourish above ground. As long as a community or a portion of a community tolerates it, it will lurk underground, waiting for an opportune moment to reemerge.
Electing Mr. Griffin to the European Parliament is the clarion call that the time is ripe for Racism’s reemergence, and the BBC’s giving him air time only sets that clarion call in concrete.
It is only justice that his appearance has reduced him to a small minded clown, and trying to explain where his rhetoric went wrong only improves on his importance.
I now only ever buy the Daily Express news paper and today they are just about half way correct. On page 5, in the bottom right hand corner is a report on the "Labour immigration plot". And how this government intended to swamp the country with immigrants and swell the Labour Party voter base. But it was all with the best intentions in the world. Or so they say, never mind the cost of the Benefit Payments funded by the poor b***dy Taxpayer, as with MPs exess, "if you can get away with it, do it.
I would like to point out to the Federal Union, that as the law stands, it is possible for just about all of Europes direct Taxpayers to change the way they work and are paid so that no Government in Europe can impose any
Direct Taxation. Income Tax would be a thing of the past. The alternative, is for the Workers the wage earners, to construct their own system of Public Service Funding to provide the essential Public Services as required.
Kind Regards, ATFlynn,
"Norfolk's Mutineer"
We wrote about the rise of racism in an open letter to the European convention:
http://www.federalunion.org.uk/europe/fedletter/FL3_210502.pdf
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