Hakluyt
02-05-2006, 11:34 PM
http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/index.php?link=template&story=155
Goodbye, racial nationalism, hello, ethno-nationalism
The British National Party is proposing a policy change which has significant implications both externally and internally. It appears that all is not well with “Racial Nationalism” in Britain, as the BNP calls it, and something has to be done about it.
Simple minds
It has been a given for both BNP supporters and opponents that what they liked was white people and what they didn’t like was black people (and Jews, gay people, etc, etc). Things were simple, for the simple mind of your average BNPer, and that’s how they liked it: black and white.
Before delving into the new policy shift, it is worth recalling that the BNP is no stranger to a big strategy change. Some years ago the party announced that it longer believed in the repatriation of non-white people, sending shockwaves through the organisation as it rescinded what for many was a sacrosanct principle.
The repatriation policy change was for external consumption particularly, a makeover, and certainly more than a few people were taken in by the new image. Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, made it clear in an article that the problem with repatriation was that it conjured up images of people being forced onto trucks to be driven out and that this was not something that the British people would wear. It was really a case of ditching a policy that was giving the BNP a bad image.
The move met with some success. The media seemed to lap up the policy change and the accompanying new journalist-friendly approach of Griffin and his coterie. And in turn, the BNP picked up support. The sub-sequent recruitment of the odd (very odd) Asian and Jewish member also helped iron out the kinks from the BNP’s swastika image. The BNP presented itself as an organisation that had shed its past hardcore racist and antisemitic views and was now just a normal political party standing up for the rights of white people. A post-fascist party in a post-modern world.
Anti-immigration and racial nationalism
The problem for the BNP is that its past still hangs around its neck, constantly holding it back. It is hard to imagine a worse situation for a political organisation to be in than to have a nazi past and criminal leadership. The BNP has come far, its councillors are testimony to that, but even Griffin and co realise that a score or so of councillors is not going to “save Britain” – not from the “immigrant invasion”, at least.
Long before the current BNP came into existence, its founder John Tyndall and his friends were campaigning against “coloured immigration”. Playing on people’s worries about jobs and their ignorance of foreigners gave the fascists, by the end of the 1950s, something else to bang on about apart from the Jews. Unemployment, crime, whatever the ill, black people were to blame.
Immigration and colour became bound up in every racist’s mind. In political discourse they became synonymous. Most people who joined the National Front and the BNP no doubt did so because they believed that non-white immigration into Britain was our greatest problem. Certainly both organisations in turn have been the brand name of organised racism in Britain.
For the BNP all white peoples are their kinfolk, regardless of where they come from. This idea is of course not unique to the BNP and across the world there are similar organisations who see their struggle as inter-national. Adherents of this ideology, which stands above party or country, often describe themselves as racial nationalists.
White immigration and ethno-nationalism
The problem for the BNP is that its black and white world does not fit the reality. In spite of what they have been saying for years, there is no large-scale non-white immigration into Britain and they know it. There are significant numbers of people coming to Britain for work from eastern and southern Europe, illegally and legally as EU citizens. The BNP has had to face up to the hard facts that the people that its supporters complain are coming into the country and undercutting wages, etc, are often white.
Nobody likes to admit they have been wrong, not least fascists whose rightness is a defining characteristic that courses through their veins rather than their brains. So as being wrong is not a possibility, a new policy has to be created, which supersedes the old one that has become outdated. It’s out with racial nationalism and in with ethno-nationalism.
It was left to BNP “Legal Eagle” Lee Barnes (don’t forget the LLB, Hons) to fly the kite with a new direction for the BNP in an article on the BNP’s website at the end of November last year.
Barnes dazzles his readers with some “science”. He argues that racial nationalism is based on a pre-Victorian notion of Europeans that predates genetic research. For Barnes science has proven that there are genetic differences between dif-ferent European peoples and these differences need to be “treasured”.
From a strategic point of view he is basically arguing that political battles will be won not by a notional international whiteness but by national ethnic struggle in democratic nations. “Think tribal: act national” he says. Barnes goes on to point out that this is not some mirror image of the heresy of Marxist revisionism, nor fascist reformism or gradualism, but rather the best way to proceed strategically with the added bonus of being grounded in supposed scientific fact. Just to show that the BNP hasn’t gone soft, for internal consumption Barnes makes reference to the “14 Words”: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children”. The 14 Words were written by David Lane, a member of the US-based nazi organisation “The Order”, who is currently serving a life sentence for the murder of the Jewish disc jockey Alan Berg in 1984.
Barnes makes great play of the facts about race and genetics, though proffers no evidence. The following quote shows how far the article is going to annoy some BNP supporters:
“A Europe with no Anglo-Saxons, or Germans, or Poles, or Spaniards but just one misceginated [sic] mass of mixed up ‘white’ tribal genes is as much a racial disaster for Europe and our peoples as a Europe swamped with African genes.”
Little Britain
There is nothing like the anonymity of an internet forum, an avatar and a few drinks to get what people really think. The nazi Stormfront Forum, whose slogan is “White Pride World Wide”, has been veritably buzzing with bedsit weirdoes tapping their night-time keyboards giving a view on Barnes’s submission. Amid the abuse Stormfront descends into a veritable pseuds’ corner on the topic as they discuss mumbo-jumbo with no basis in any fact, scientific or otherwise.
But even British fascists who are so proud of their identity that they sign themselves in with German names can be right sometimes. After all, a stopped clock is right twice a day. One poster writes:
“… he [Barnes] is definitely talking ********, if I didn’t know better I’d say he was trying to stop white European immigration, or at least suggest that it should stop.” Other posters point out the many contradictions in Barnes’s piece. If instead of making analogies with Marxism he had applied some Marxist methodology in his own article, he might have been better off. Contradictions are meant to be identified and resolved, not the staple for an article. At points Barnes’s writing is reminiscent of the Little Britain TV character Vicky Pollard: “No but yeah but yeah but yeah no but yeah no but yeah”.
The significance
There can be no doubt that the main reason for the shift in BNP policy is to enable the organisation to oppose white immigration into Britain of people such as Poles and other east Europeans, and those from southern Europe who were always deemed inferior in nazi ideology anyway. Now when BNP members complain of immigrant Polish labour undercutting wages, the BNP is in a position to campaign against it. Race and immigration will no longer go hand in glove. The BNP may well be one of the only organisations to argue in the future – as an organisation that is opposed to the EU – that people from different EU countries as well as from outside the EU should not be allowed to take up residency in Britain.
The new policy is also a way of defeating the internal dogmatists, supporters of the deceased Tyndall who define themselves as racial nationalists and will have great difficulty accepting the new term ethno-nationalism. If there is no pretext for expelling them and they won’t leave the party then the party is simply going to try and leave them ideologically without a home.
What is clear is that the BNP will make great play of the policy shift, as it did when it dropped repatriation as a policy. It will use it to further the idea that the BNP is not a racist party, that it just wants to defend British jobs and services and that colour is not an issue. Without other interested organisations, trade unions and the political parties addressing issues such as migrant labour, the BNP will have a free hand to garner support.
© Searchlight Magazine 2006
Goodbye, racial nationalism, hello, ethno-nationalism
The British National Party is proposing a policy change which has significant implications both externally and internally. It appears that all is not well with “Racial Nationalism” in Britain, as the BNP calls it, and something has to be done about it.
Simple minds
It has been a given for both BNP supporters and opponents that what they liked was white people and what they didn’t like was black people (and Jews, gay people, etc, etc). Things were simple, for the simple mind of your average BNPer, and that’s how they liked it: black and white.
Before delving into the new policy shift, it is worth recalling that the BNP is no stranger to a big strategy change. Some years ago the party announced that it longer believed in the repatriation of non-white people, sending shockwaves through the organisation as it rescinded what for many was a sacrosanct principle.
The repatriation policy change was for external consumption particularly, a makeover, and certainly more than a few people were taken in by the new image. Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, made it clear in an article that the problem with repatriation was that it conjured up images of people being forced onto trucks to be driven out and that this was not something that the British people would wear. It was really a case of ditching a policy that was giving the BNP a bad image.
The move met with some success. The media seemed to lap up the policy change and the accompanying new journalist-friendly approach of Griffin and his coterie. And in turn, the BNP picked up support. The sub-sequent recruitment of the odd (very odd) Asian and Jewish member also helped iron out the kinks from the BNP’s swastika image. The BNP presented itself as an organisation that had shed its past hardcore racist and antisemitic views and was now just a normal political party standing up for the rights of white people. A post-fascist party in a post-modern world.
Anti-immigration and racial nationalism
The problem for the BNP is that its past still hangs around its neck, constantly holding it back. It is hard to imagine a worse situation for a political organisation to be in than to have a nazi past and criminal leadership. The BNP has come far, its councillors are testimony to that, but even Griffin and co realise that a score or so of councillors is not going to “save Britain” – not from the “immigrant invasion”, at least.
Long before the current BNP came into existence, its founder John Tyndall and his friends were campaigning against “coloured immigration”. Playing on people’s worries about jobs and their ignorance of foreigners gave the fascists, by the end of the 1950s, something else to bang on about apart from the Jews. Unemployment, crime, whatever the ill, black people were to blame.
Immigration and colour became bound up in every racist’s mind. In political discourse they became synonymous. Most people who joined the National Front and the BNP no doubt did so because they believed that non-white immigration into Britain was our greatest problem. Certainly both organisations in turn have been the brand name of organised racism in Britain.
For the BNP all white peoples are their kinfolk, regardless of where they come from. This idea is of course not unique to the BNP and across the world there are similar organisations who see their struggle as inter-national. Adherents of this ideology, which stands above party or country, often describe themselves as racial nationalists.
White immigration and ethno-nationalism
The problem for the BNP is that its black and white world does not fit the reality. In spite of what they have been saying for years, there is no large-scale non-white immigration into Britain and they know it. There are significant numbers of people coming to Britain for work from eastern and southern Europe, illegally and legally as EU citizens. The BNP has had to face up to the hard facts that the people that its supporters complain are coming into the country and undercutting wages, etc, are often white.
Nobody likes to admit they have been wrong, not least fascists whose rightness is a defining characteristic that courses through their veins rather than their brains. So as being wrong is not a possibility, a new policy has to be created, which supersedes the old one that has become outdated. It’s out with racial nationalism and in with ethno-nationalism.
It was left to BNP “Legal Eagle” Lee Barnes (don’t forget the LLB, Hons) to fly the kite with a new direction for the BNP in an article on the BNP’s website at the end of November last year.
Barnes dazzles his readers with some “science”. He argues that racial nationalism is based on a pre-Victorian notion of Europeans that predates genetic research. For Barnes science has proven that there are genetic differences between dif-ferent European peoples and these differences need to be “treasured”.
From a strategic point of view he is basically arguing that political battles will be won not by a notional international whiteness but by national ethnic struggle in democratic nations. “Think tribal: act national” he says. Barnes goes on to point out that this is not some mirror image of the heresy of Marxist revisionism, nor fascist reformism or gradualism, but rather the best way to proceed strategically with the added bonus of being grounded in supposed scientific fact. Just to show that the BNP hasn’t gone soft, for internal consumption Barnes makes reference to the “14 Words”: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children”. The 14 Words were written by David Lane, a member of the US-based nazi organisation “The Order”, who is currently serving a life sentence for the murder of the Jewish disc jockey Alan Berg in 1984.
Barnes makes great play of the facts about race and genetics, though proffers no evidence. The following quote shows how far the article is going to annoy some BNP supporters:
“A Europe with no Anglo-Saxons, or Germans, or Poles, or Spaniards but just one misceginated [sic] mass of mixed up ‘white’ tribal genes is as much a racial disaster for Europe and our peoples as a Europe swamped with African genes.”
Little Britain
There is nothing like the anonymity of an internet forum, an avatar and a few drinks to get what people really think. The nazi Stormfront Forum, whose slogan is “White Pride World Wide”, has been veritably buzzing with bedsit weirdoes tapping their night-time keyboards giving a view on Barnes’s submission. Amid the abuse Stormfront descends into a veritable pseuds’ corner on the topic as they discuss mumbo-jumbo with no basis in any fact, scientific or otherwise.
But even British fascists who are so proud of their identity that they sign themselves in with German names can be right sometimes. After all, a stopped clock is right twice a day. One poster writes:
“… he [Barnes] is definitely talking ********, if I didn’t know better I’d say he was trying to stop white European immigration, or at least suggest that it should stop.” Other posters point out the many contradictions in Barnes’s piece. If instead of making analogies with Marxism he had applied some Marxist methodology in his own article, he might have been better off. Contradictions are meant to be identified and resolved, not the staple for an article. At points Barnes’s writing is reminiscent of the Little Britain TV character Vicky Pollard: “No but yeah but yeah but yeah no but yeah no but yeah”.
The significance
There can be no doubt that the main reason for the shift in BNP policy is to enable the organisation to oppose white immigration into Britain of people such as Poles and other east Europeans, and those from southern Europe who were always deemed inferior in nazi ideology anyway. Now when BNP members complain of immigrant Polish labour undercutting wages, the BNP is in a position to campaign against it. Race and immigration will no longer go hand in glove. The BNP may well be one of the only organisations to argue in the future – as an organisation that is opposed to the EU – that people from different EU countries as well as from outside the EU should not be allowed to take up residency in Britain.
The new policy is also a way of defeating the internal dogmatists, supporters of the deceased Tyndall who define themselves as racial nationalists and will have great difficulty accepting the new term ethno-nationalism. If there is no pretext for expelling them and they won’t leave the party then the party is simply going to try and leave them ideologically without a home.
What is clear is that the BNP will make great play of the policy shift, as it did when it dropped repatriation as a policy. It will use it to further the idea that the BNP is not a racist party, that it just wants to defend British jobs and services and that colour is not an issue. Without other interested organisations, trade unions and the political parties addressing issues such as migrant labour, the BNP will have a free hand to garner support.
© Searchlight Magazine 2006