What Now for the BNP?
- Thread starter intersol32
- Start date
It is a good rant, and I did not agree with those who said the BNP would recover from previous problems - I always said that there was a very good chance of them entering a spiral of decline.
However as always the danger of a big electoral defeat and virtual collapse of the main far-right party masks the real issues for many anti-fascists: there is not especially a need for anti-fascism but a need for build a pragmatic, broad and progressive movement for working class power - these elections were not a defeat for far-right ideas or a victory for working class anti-fascism, the turn out was low, and thousands of people still voted for far right candidates.
The ideas that brought the BNP to prominance and the social issues driving them have not gone away, and infact all the evidence seems to show that they have worsened.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
The NEED to VOTE tusc
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
What stuff? Name names. Quote posts.
PlaidDragon
We don't need money to have a good time
Hilariously he tried to claim that his right to 'defend his property' was his under 'common law'. I don't suppose he was so bothered about that when he was mouthing off about being a Freeman of the Land when he got nicked in Liverpool a couple of months ago. The video of him getting nicked is on the BNP website, it's well worth a watch. The bloke is genuinely deranged. The sad thing is, he lives literally 5 minutes walk away from me and ran for community council this week. At 110 votes he's lost over 150, but it's still sad that 110 people in a small, close-knit village with strong benefits from immigration (very friendly nice shops run by a Sri Lankan family, Turkish kebab shop, Indian restaurant) would entertain this lunatic.Just to complete the madness, he appears to be a fucking Freeman.
malatesta32
Not Serb. No, Really!
from hope not hate facebook:
'good news bnp Adam walker is in hospital wing of Holme House Prison, where he is serving an 18-week prison sentence chasing kids with a knive he is now a ruined man and he should be.'
cant find anyone else to substantiate it tho!
'good news bnp Adam walker is in hospital wing of Holme House Prison, where he is serving an 18-week prison sentence chasing kids with a knive he is now a ruined man and he should be.'
cant find anyone else to substantiate it tho!
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
That's from a year ago.
malatesta32
Not Serb. No, Really!
no wonder i cant find owt about it. hope not hate eh? cor!
malatesta32
Not Serb. No, Really!
ta badgers and butchers! thought i was losing me touch!
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
It's always a danger to assume that the ruin is complete.
I haven't seen a rubbishing of "anti-fascist organisation in its many forms". I've seen some rubbishing of the Searchlight/UAF axis for fighting with tactics that don't suit the times or the occasions, and for generally eschewing physical force anti-fascism, but the Searchlight/UAF axis hardly encompass the entirety of anti-fascist organisation, do they?
You imply that the analysis is static, it isn't. You imply that it was wrong, while simultaneously admitting that it was right. IF the BNP were in the "complete ruins" you speak of, I might agree, but they're not. They've suffered a severe reverse, but they've recovered from those before, and if not the BNP, then some new organisation will come along, loaded with the same old character under a slightly different flag (of convenience).
And whom do you propose socialists fall in behind/support?
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
Is the Hope Not Hate site correct that the BNP has now gone from 57 councillors to three? (Presumably not counting Parish councillors).
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Yes, but they have lost those seats over the last 3 or 4 years, not all this week. 57 was the high point of the last 10 year, since the cycle of their success began in Burnley in 2002. A cycle now over. For them anyway, not for the far right full stop as the social issues that drove the BNP still exist and still inform public political debate.
You've created an entire catalogue of Straw Men positions supposedly based on my post ,Violent Panda. If you read back on this extensive thread it is perfectly clear that the supporters of the "Filling the Vacuum" analysis, and other co-thinkers, are stuck in a rigid position that is now simply outdated , and also turned out to be WRONG, ie, that the , for a long period very successful, turn to "respectable" electoralism by the BNP would lead to its unstoppable rise as a political force - mirroring the rise of the Far Right in Europe - and that this electoral strategy would negate any return to "violent street action" by the Far Right. There is quite enough hard evidence on this, and other threads, of a rubbishing of any attempts by the Left/anti fascist movement to confront the re -emerging "street action" by the EDL fascists and others, without me needing to detail it here. Just re-read this thread.
The reality is simply that the BNP's " respectable electoralism" strategy has hit the buffers - it can't deliver results to its supporters in the new social crisis following the 2008 Crash. It's previous success was based almost entirely in its role, IN AN ERA OF ECONOMIC PROSPERITY, as a protest voting platform for those opposed to the growing multicultural reality of modern Britain. The BNP has no answer to the "austerity" measures following the 2008 Crash.
We are in a new era of struggle , post 2008, with both opportunities for a growing Radical Left, and obviously, continuing opportunities for the Fascist Right. This fascist Right is going to be increasingly represented by diverse "street action" and provocations ("March and Build") as WELL as continuing electoral action - but by a splintered and much more internally competitive Far Right. For the Left to fail to build up its defensive structures and anti fascist activity levels to tackle the rise in "street activity" would be as foolish as not continuing to build up grass roots activity against the cuts in local communities.
I'm surprised you find this controversial, Violent Panda. Simply sneering at the current weakness of the Left in its many forms, is pretty pointless I would suggest. The point surely is to support the broadest range of Left activities and initiatives so as to build up the left ? Unless, like the miniscule IWCA rump of RA nowadays , Socialism itself is now seen as politically impossible and undesirable ? No-one is suggesting that us old grandads have to get back into our big boots and go back onto the streets - but a new generation of young anti-fascists are doing-- and we should encourage them to do so.
The reality is simply that the BNP's " respectable electoralism" strategy has hit the buffers - it can't deliver results to its supporters in the new social crisis following the 2008 Crash. It's previous success was based almost entirely in its role, IN AN ERA OF ECONOMIC PROSPERITY, as a protest voting platform for those opposed to the growing multicultural reality of modern Britain. The BNP has no answer to the "austerity" measures following the 2008 Crash.
We are in a new era of struggle , post 2008, with both opportunities for a growing Radical Left, and obviously, continuing opportunities for the Fascist Right. This fascist Right is going to be increasingly represented by diverse "street action" and provocations ("March and Build") as WELL as continuing electoral action - but by a splintered and much more internally competitive Far Right. For the Left to fail to build up its defensive structures and anti fascist activity levels to tackle the rise in "street activity" would be as foolish as not continuing to build up grass roots activity against the cuts in local communities.
I'm surprised you find this controversial, Violent Panda. Simply sneering at the current weakness of the Left in its many forms, is pretty pointless I would suggest. The point surely is to support the broadest range of Left activities and initiatives so as to build up the left ? Unless, like the miniscule IWCA rump of RA nowadays , Socialism itself is now seen as politically impossible and undesirable ? No-one is suggesting that us old grandads have to get back into our big boots and go back onto the streets - but a new generation of young anti-fascists are doing-- and we should encourage them to do so.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Really? A whole catalogue? Don't you mean a field, or a meadow?
Mmm, because a three month-old thread reflects what posters have got to say better than any of the older ones that make positions a lot clearer, and contain more nuance, don't they?
Stop shouting, there's a good chap.
A few points:
1) To claim that the BNP's role in modern British politics was "based almost entirely" on the BNP being a convenient protest vote flies in the face of the BNP being elected consistently in some wards, and misses the fact that if "hard right" policies were sought by the electorate, then a more credible and socially-acceptable protest vote in the shape of UKIP exists. We didn't see UKIP gaining many council wards, for some reason.
2) The BNP has few answers to the "austerity" measures. Then again, no "mainstream" political party does, for the very good reason that they acknowledge having to function inside of the current political and economic systems, and by doing so restrict themselves to solutions that those conditions find amenable.
I've seen "new eras of struggle" come and go every couple of years for the last 40. Guess what? We're still fighting the same struggle, with the same enemies, as we were then. The only difference between then and now is that the sort of social solidarities we had back then are dormant now, put in a coma by Thatcherism and its' descendents.
We have a "left" which is faced with a quandary of massive proportions - how does it do what you ask when the traditional basis by which it/we did so, has been eroded from under us?
The answer, of course, is that people struggle on and do what they can. That might not suit the various prescriptions people and organisations make for "the left", but the real world seldom does.
Who's sneering? Not me. I'm saying that the idea or expectation that "the left" will coalesce into a united front, or that there will be a hegemonic left organisation any time soon that disparate socialists can unite behind, is pudding-pulling. "The left" is weak because much of the ideology of those elements of the left that support electoral politics (most of them, nowadays) may have a coherent vision of what they'd like to do "in power", but they have neither the strategy, or the tactics, to get there. Forget about numbers for a minute, and think on how many on the left actual give a monkey's dick about grassroots activity beyond swelling the ranks or occasionally engaging with a local issue? The SP, perhaps, but that's about it round here. Labour certainly don't give a fuck, and we haven't seen a Swappie on the doorstep for 15 years. There's loads of potential out there, but nothing to bring it together in the way that the old community structures (even the lowly "Tenants Associations") did.
Uncritically? That appears to be what you're saying.
It's neither impossible or undesirable. What it is, though, is a lot more difficult, on a multitude of levels, than your remarks portray. I made a point on another thread a few days ago about differences between the economic situation now and 30-odd years ago: Back then we had plenty of community and local organisations to help us get by, especially in terms of welfare and financial advice and assistance. This time round, those things are going to the wall, and people with them, and what have "the left", as a force, done? Nowt, because building from the grassroots, rather than riding the coat-tails of disaffection, is too much like hard work. The good work the few do is undermined by that, and guess what? You then get good "lefties" burning out because they're struggling to take up the slack of the fair-weather comrades.
TremulousTetra
prismatic universe
lol
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Most informative post you've ever made.
Joe Reilly
Well-Known Member
It used to be the Black Hand who routinely delivered evidence of such slightly bi-polar wishful thinking, but he to be fair did fall off the back of bus a couple of years previously, or so the story goes. You, on the other hand, as far as I know, have no excuse for repeatedly posting (while typically ducking any awkard questions) the same politically illiterate twaddle.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
There are many stories about The Black Hand, and to be honest, do we care whether they're true, as long as they're entertaining?
Joe Reilly
Well-Known Member
As Matthew Goodwin put it in the Guardian - 'The question that remains is what will emerge to fill the vacuum?'
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
Yes. The failure of the BNP to take advantage of favourable conditions does not imply that conditions all of a sudden aren't favourable for the far right to grow.
It is interesting though just how badly they seem to have botched their opportunities over the last three years. And the implosion of the BNP, with the subsequent rounds of demoralisation, fragmentation, bitterness and bickering may well have serious consequences in terms of limiting the ability of any other far right faction to take advantage of those same opportunities. Unfortunately for the far right you have to work with the human material you've got, and they really do attract a large proportion of incompetents, fantasists and oddballs, and there's likely to be less of a leavening of relatively serious and ambitious recruits in the near future.
Just because opportunities are there doesn't mean that there's anyone capable of taking them. Here in Ireland, for instance, at least in the South, we've been blessed by the low quality of our far rightists. There have been opportunities for them, but they are incapable of even getting a small, stable, group going, let alone holding public events or building public support.
TremulousTetra
prismatic universe
so the failure of Fascists in the UK was down to the quality of Fascists in the UK?
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Pretty much so
love detective
there's no love too small
It seems like something more wider, something about the quality of those outside the political mainstream in general in the UK.
As what you say above applies equally to the left as it does the right. Meaning the few individuals scattered around the various organisations that do have the right mixture of qualities have to bear a disproportionate burden of organisational activity across all spheres of that activity. Which not only restricts the ability of organisational activity to expand beyond a certain point (and places huge stresses on those individuals), but also exposes the whole venture to 'key man/woman' risk as everything is so dependent on a handful of key people
I think the points been made on here before, in relation to one of the reasons why the BNP has stumbled and that's because it didn't have a sufficiently embedded strata of capable 'middle management' in place at the time when it really needed them (one potential reason for this was that militant anti-fascism up to the mid 1990's ensured that the type needed were never likely to get involved with the far right at the time in any great numbers)
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
All political organisations attract some odd people and some lonely people, fringe and mainstream parties alike. But in general, I don't think that the far left is lacking quite a lot of reasonably serious and competent people. Its problems are of a rather different sort. The far right, by contrast, does seem to be missing a capable cadre.
I don't think that the BNP would have had to be all that much more competent in order to have done considerably better from their position a few years back. The opportunities were there, and they had a workable political strategy to capitalise on them.
love detective
there's no love too small
the problems of the left do not emanate from within the left itself then, in your opinion?
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
The BNP did embark on building the middle management cadre that you describe. A series of conferences , training and development took place at the same time they were purging and banning some of the 'nutzis'. Most of these were fairly new recruits , some had been political travellers but many hadn't been politicised before. I guess that a lot of them just didn't have the political backbone or experience for the widespread faction fighting that broke out and the haemorrhaging of some of the better BNP cadre to other organisations.
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