Bizarre Logic

The British National Party Chair Nick Griffin is not someone I take too seriously too often, though there is a real danger that the party will make gains from Labour, particularly in the poorer, heartland areas, where they can sell themselves as, well, a sort of nationalist socialist party - ring any bells? The party is distancing itself from being racist, and so is tying itself up in knots trying to be non-racist but be nationalist in a racial supremacist manner. The BNP's "Language and Concepts Discipline Manual" for the simple reason that such persons do not exist". Instead the party argues that the term used should be "racial foreigners". In a BBC interview, Griffin argues to call such people British was a sort of "bloodless genocide" because it denied indigenous people their own identity. So the argument is that describing someone as British denies them their own identity: "These people are 'black residents' of the UK etc, and are no more British than an Englishman living in Hong Kong is Chinese." The aim remains to repatriate these 'racial foreigners'.

But this logic is so bizarre to me and simply twists words. Firstly it ignores any notion of birth, if you are non-white (who seem to be the targets of the term racial foreigner) but born in Britain does that still make you a foreigner and where exactly would someone be repatriated to. What if you are mixed race etc etc. Then there is that more profound question, if we really decided that everyone who was not indigenous to these islands should be classified a racial foreigner and singled out for repatriation who would actually remain. What about those of Roman, Norman, Angevin, Viking descent, or if that is too far back what about the Dutch immigrants of the eighteenth century. What the position tries to cover up is that the targets appear not to be immigrants generally, as lets face it most of us can trace our roots back to some form of immigrant, but those of a different race as opposed to nationality.

In some ways it is good the BBC give an airing to Griffin and his arguments, personally I would like to see the party given greater air time. Why, because the problem with the BNP is that they are able to take the high ground and say they are branded as racist and neo-fascist and so are unable to give their side of the story. But if they are given air time more people may be able to see through this thin veil of rhetoric and see that by classifying people born in Britain as racial foreigners you are creating apartheid, segregation by colour, and not making any move toward preventing a 'bloodless genocide'. Griffin could be an MEP in the matter of a month, sitting on the same group in the European Parliament as the Conservative Party (a bad decision by Cameron), only 3% more votes are required - there's a thought