NIck Griffin tells BBC that boats carrying immigrants should be sunk

[spokette]

I think his victory in the EU elections makes him think that he can reveal more of his true true heinous side.

How long before he starts extolling the virtue of gas chambers?

[monkeytrousers]

I have just remembered a funny incident - when I was doing my undergrad degree, there was a group of girls - young, from wealthy families, highly groomed if not beautiful (not that I think it matters - grooming might be the most important way in which all animals attept to show 'genetic' superiority) and all had been privledged with very a expensive and exclusive education. They were doing a presentation on art and cutlture and put up a slide of a very-dark skinned black man. They explained that obvioulsy the artist had taken some liberties with the painting, as 'we all know black people aren't really that black in real life.'

I did lol

[daftpunk]

saintmaybe...yes, i think you may have understood me...i'm a fascist fighter.

[AitchTwoOh]

thing is, though, i think if you quizzed BN voters about that manifesto very few of them would even have seen it before far less be able to engage in a discussion about it.

most people i saw who admitted to voting for them were looking to justify their vote along the lines of 'well i heard that nick griffin speak/read a campaign leaflet and he didn't say anything racist and Something Must Be Done about immigration cos we're a small country etc etc etc etc'. same lines as you've been coming up with, which by and large have been successfully refuted.

so imo it's their pre-existing racism that makes them so happy to swallow this terrible immigration 'problem' and regurgitate it as a vote for a legitimate party that makes their racist viewpoint feel okay in a wider society for once. but it doesn't stop them, or the BNP, being racist. imo.

[monkeytrousers]

or palpable insecurity? I don't think very meny people are genuienly hateful of other cultures. They might resent them for many reasons. Or many people just looking for someone to blame; the government, the media, the Jews, the immigrants...?

Or if you're right, is the way people seem very comfotable denoucing Israel as a rogue state, actually an expression of their pre-existing hatred of the Jews, which now has a convenient and seeminly legitimate 'problem' to cover it?

I think the answer is probably both, but it will be the people pulling the strings that are truly racist, etc rather than the people having their buttos pushed.

I can honestly say that when I followed the idea of the Palestinian state as a David to Israels monstrous Goliath, it was not motivated by antisemitism. I did then and still have a horror of the systemic violence Jews have suffered through the ages. What I didn't do do my shame today, is look into the motives of the people and orginisatiosn who pushed this anti-Israeli doctrine. Had I done so, I would have found that I was being the puppet of people saturated with anti-semitism. It makes me very ashmed that I was so gullable and stuipd, and that, even though I wasn;t aware of it, probably anti-sematic.

I think there are still many people who are stuck in this halucination and I think many people will also be suffering from the same delusions when they vote BNP. That's why it's vital they be engaged with and not condemned out of hand. Nick Griffin is an unequivable and proud, racist, facist and antisemite. The devil comes bearing gifts and all that.

[daftpunk]

Israel and palestine.....too much for me..

[AitchTwoOh]

you have a habit, MT, of replying to posts that haven't been made. did i say hateful? did i mention hate at all. did anyone? it's a debating tactic, that, replying with a dramatically upped ante to make your opponent look less cogent. you've done it repeatedly on this thread. just so you know i've clocked it.

wrt israel, the way they're treating the ordinary palestinians is inhumane. i do think people give the jews a harder time, though, because they like to imagine that having been through the holocaust should have made them less likely to punish vulnerable people. of course that's not really human nature, but i think that's the higher standard that israel and its jews are held to. perhaps that does come from age-old ingrained anti-semitism, but the way they're treating ordinary palestinians is shittier than your average government.

[monkeytrousers]

That's because I'm not just replying to single posts. As the thread has got longer so has the range of debate. I don't think you are talking about me all of the time, I know people (including you and I) think and talk in abstracts sometimes. It is not a debating tactic for me at all. This is not that kind of debate. Ask me to clarify who I mean, yes, but don't just assume I mean the worst.

[policywonk]

Ooh look, coincidentally someone has just sent me this link: Royal College of Midwives flatly denies that immigrant mothers are causing problems for maternity services - here

[daftpunk]

aitch;

do you like Omid Djalili..?

[monkeytrousers]

wrt Israel, the way Hamas treat the ordinary citizens of Israel is also inhumane. Israeli kids also aren't taught that Palestinians are pigs, or that ordinary Palestinians kidnap kids randomly to murder them and use their blood in religious rites. Or that 9/11 was a Palestinian conspiracy.

The Jews are not punbishing vulnerable people. They are defending themselves. It is Hamas that puts its own citizens in the warzones, that uses them as human shields - and shoots them if they try to leave.

[monkeytrousers]

And actually, I think you will find that Hamas treats its own citizens much shittier than Israel treats Arab Israelis, who have equal rights in Israel. Jews are not allowed in Palestine.

Unless people begin to see through this collective hallucination, discussions like these are meaningless.

[Watt]

Surely Israel gets the harder time because they are the ones with (by far) the biggest guns and bombs, and so also have the greater responsibility?

[AitchTwoOh]

it's not a fair fight, mt, not by a long chalk. it's also not a conversation particularly relevant to the topic in hand. but for the record i have pals in israel and i have palestinian pals (albeit over here). guess which ones are the poorer and have the most dead relatives? but yes, i hear the day-to-day rocket stories from israel, i am not hallucinating.

and off the top of my head no-one mentioned hate, no-one mentioned the noble savage, you were the one who came up with it all being the fault of the left... you're simultaneously raising the stakes while refuting them. it makes it a bit difficult to have a discussion with you if half of the debate is goiing on in your head, tbh.

[daftpunk]

breaking news;

trouble kicking off in N.Ireland again.....problems never really go away do they...

[monkeytrousers]

A Fair fight? Have a look at a map of the middle east. Israel is surrounded by states that are commited to its extermination. Having been the victims of one Holocaust, they might be forgiven for taking their enemies at their word.

As for the word 'hate' - we are this is a thread abou the BNP - about racism. These are synonymous with hate. If you say people are racist, you are saying they hate another race. If they don't hate them, it's not racism. I don;t have a clue what you find contentious about it. This discussion doesn't exist in a vacuum.

The post that seems to have gotten to you want a response to some things you said. I was not attacking you. I was positing different scenarios of the phenomena you described. Not saying you were wrong. You?ve made the mistake of taking my posts personally on this thread when there is no hint of accusation in them. Like I?ve said, if you suspect I am having a dig, ask me. If I am I will tell you.

No one mentioned the words 'noble savage' except me. So what? Am I not allowed to mention things that other people haven't? Again, I don't get the beef.

"you were the one who came up with it all being the fault of the left" Is this the nub of it? I had the temerity to criticise the left? Well my goodness. Is it sacrilege? And where did I say it (wherever ?it? is) is all the fault of the left?? What is this ?all??

What I said that if the left refuses to listen to people with genuine worries about immigration they are failing these people on a political level. Politics is about dialogue. If movement that calls itself political refuses political dialogue, they are failing at that level. I said it will marginalize these people and make it more likely they will be seduced by the far right. . I said the left will need to take some responsibility for that. .

?it makes it a bit difficult to have a discussion with you if half of the debate is goiing on in your head?

Sorry, but this is just ludicrous. Just where is it supposed to be? In my arse? I am not writing a thesis. I am posting whilst doing opther things. If some things are vague, that?s because tjis is MN not Question Time. What happpend to just asking ? what do you mean?

[AitchTwoOh]

lol at the left thing being the nub... hardly.

we're writing on a screen here, we can only go by what you WRITE. so if you write something as a response to something that hasn't actually been written... no wonder it's confusing.

if you're talking in general to the thread (which is what i thought, btw, i'm not taking this personally, how odd that would be) then it does rather make things easier if you respond to things that are written on it rather than advance the discussion ten paces while simultaneously dismissing it. that's all. but let's not make this the MT and Aitch show, this thread was quite interesting there for a while.

[monkeytrousers]

"Surely Israel gets the harder time because they are the ones with (by far) the biggest guns and bombs, and so also have the greater responsibility?"

And how do you know they aren't showing greater responsiblity, Watt? Have the Israel launched thousands of rockets at random targets, in the hope they will hit as many civillians as possible? No, Isreal gets criticised for targeted attacks - do we hear about all the times the IDF pull out of attacks because civillians are put in the way of Hamas bombers? No. Yet they happen much more frequently than otherwise.

It is all there for people to find out if they want to. The fact is they don't want to.

[nooka]

The Israeli Palestinian conflict is decades old and highly complex. I studied it as part of my degree many moons ago with some of the leading experts (at the time). The conclusion I came to was that the one thing that can truly be said is that no one behaved very well from the establishing of the Middle East countries (a old colonial division of the spoils along no sensible historical or geographical lines) to the allowing/not allowing of the original Jewish settlers, consideration of the Palestinians (dismissed as pretty much irrelevant because they weren't "civilised" enough), post WWII settlements, Arab aggression or Israeli retaliation.

The only thing that is very clear is that the current trajectories will lead to more bloodshed. The Palestinians live pretty wretched lives, and the Israelis are split between those who long for peace and those who feel attack is the only possible defense.

It is very sad however that saying anything negative about Israeli policies is to be at risk of being considered antisemitic, and somewhat ridiculous considering that many Israelis are very unhappy about some of the decisions made by their politicians (as you would expect in any modern democracy).

[monkeytrousers]

yes it is decades ole. and much more complex than people seem to think.

However Israel was created (or Pakistan foe that matter) that is not the issue now. Palestine was an occupied land previous to Israel; they only objected to occupation when it was by Jews - I can't follwo what you mean from "9a old colonial division..." to "retlaiation".

There is not 'leading' to bloodshed at the moment; this is the pit we are in. The only questuon is how we get out. The Palestinians do live pretty retched lives. The main responsibily for this lies with the Palestinian Autority however, not Israel. There is a hard line Jewish bidy, but they do not constiture an equal split in the Knesset - they are a vocal minority, as one would expect in highly finctioning democracy. Israel is probably the pinnical of this. Not that anyone wnats to hear this. So your dichotomy is false.

As for your last para, I would ask you mearly to look at what I actually posted. Not what you imagined I did.

[monkeytrousers]

Typo - However Israel was created (or Pakistan for that matter) is not the issue now.

[nooka]

Actually I think how Israel and the Middle East were created is fundamental to the situation across the Middle East, and it is foolish to suggest that the British, American and French actions post the World Wars (and afterwards too)did not have a huge part to play in the mess there is now (as is true in most post-colonial parts of the world). That doesn't absolve local actors or current movements, but out of the past comes the future. If you don't understand that then your grasp of history is fairly poor.

My final para was not particularly aimed at you except that you did say that those who "pushed" any idea of Palestine being the Goliath to Israel's David as being motivated by antisemitism. In conflict there are very rarely total rights and wrongs, and of course there will be some commentators motivated by antisemitism, but there is also a whole (fascinating) body of historical analysis that looks at Israeli (and PLA, Jordanian, Egyptian, Syrian and Iranian) actions and I think that there is blame to be spread all around, including to the West and many other countries in the world that have dabbled in the area. It will take the will power and actions of most of them to find a solution for the area.

NB I didn't suggest that there was any dichotomy, just that there are splits in thinking (and you are right Israeli politics just in the Knesset are fascinating in their diversity), and I said more bloodshed, of course there has been plenty already, including several wars and the intifadas.

[nooka]

Anyway a long long way from Nick Griffin, except that his antisemitism is appalling - along with his virulence and ignorance towards Muslim beliefs.

[monkeytrousers]

Out of the past comes the future yes. We also cannot change the past - only the future. So navel gazing about it is useless. If, as you say, blame is spread around, what's the point of trying to say Israel has more onus not to defend itself after what the Jews have suffered? How do people equate Israelis and the Nazis without a hint of shame? There are no gas chambers in Israel. Israel is probably the most highly functioning and fair democracy in the world ? precisely because its enemies are visible to it, where as we live in a fools paradise.

Pakistan was created from the very same conditions. Do we hear calls that Pakistan is an illegitimate state?

The Palestinian refugee problem was caused by surrounding countries attacking Israel. Israel didn't attack them. The whole call for 'right of return' is wholly fallacious as Israel did not displace the refugees.

There is a quite vast body of modern analysis about the problem. One of them is that the very creation if Israel was borne from anti-Semitism. There had to be a homeland created because no one actually wanted the Jews (UK, USA, etc).

To me the hypocrisy is revealed by the simple fact that if people support a two-state solution this means being both pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian ? yet many people still parrot that Israel does not have a right to exist.

Following this through to it?s logical end however means another Holocaust.

Re the David and Goliath metaphor - if people can be racist by proxy for simply voting BNP even if they don't think they are racists, people can also be anti-semetioc by proxy by parroting inaccuracies about Israel and never checking their own sources other than to bolster their own prejudice - can't they?

[daftpunk]

MT you are so damn clever

[monkeytrousers]

I'm not. I'm pretty average.