February 02, 2006
Nick Griffin, The
U.K. Government, And The U.S. Media Blackout
Nick Griffin is the head of the
British National Party in England. The British
National Party is small, but a real political party,
with which elects local politicians, especially in
places where
immigrant rioting has occurred, like Bradford.
As a result of a
BBC spy operation which was made into a program
called
The Secret Agent, Griffin was charged with
"using words or behaviour intended to stir up racial
hatred" or, in the alternative, "using words or
behaviour likely to stir up racial hatred."
I wrote about this in
December, 2004.
The law’s delay—it has taken this long for them to
reach a verdict, on February 2 2006, a combination of
"not guilty" on some counts, and a hung jury on a
couple of others.
But apparently the hung jury means
that the British Government's political correctness
enforcers are able to have another go at them. [BNP
duo to face race hate retrial, BBC,
February 2, 2006]
The point here is
that Griffin was arrested on pure speech grounds (oddly
enough, for criticizing Islam). And that he is
the leader of a dissident political party in Great
Britain.
This got no
American media coverage when he was arrested, and is
receiving
none now, even though it's being reported everywhere
else where English is spoken, including the
Hindustan Times,
which claimed that
"The
leader of the far-right British National Party Nick
Griffin fabricated a lie to claim in a speech, to his
followers, that Asian men were
seducing and
raping white girl [sic] as part of a
Muslim plot to conquer Britain and expand their faith."
You might think it was interesting
that Tony Blair's government was trying to lock up the
leader of a competing political party for what amounts
to criticism of Labour's immigration policies.
(Technically the Crown Prosecution service is supposed
these decisions on a non-partisan basis. So it may be a
coincidence that Griffin was arrested just before the
last election.)
The BBC's website has a piece
by Mark Simpson called
What now for the BNP? asking what the political
effects of this trial will be. The BBC is also a
(theoretically non-partisan) government agency.
It's possible that
the U.S. media is ignoring this story because they think
the BNP is evil. In the past it did show slight traces
of evil (let's put it this way,
Sam Francis called it a fringe party). But it is
now reforming to meet the
actual facts of the 21st century.
“The
most interesting is, they have dropped antisemitism. On
a word-association test with ‘Far Right,’ a lot of
people — including, I think, most of my NR colleagues —
would come up with ‘antisemitis’ as a first response.
This is now seriously out of date. In Britain, the old
street-fighting, Jew-baiting National Front has morphed
into a collar-and-tie party named the BNP — that is,
British National Party. Nick Griffin, the BNP head, has
been conducting a purge of Stalinesque ruthlessness
against the old antisemitic National Front types.
FrontPageMag's Robert Locke tells the story
here. All the BNP's xenophobic propaganda is
now concentrated against Muslims. Jews are OK, on the
principle that my enemy's enemy is my friend.” [John
Derbyshire, November 30th, 2005]
Since the crime
the two BNP officials were accused of involved
criticizing Islam, the prosecutors tried to turn this
into racism by pointing out that most Muslims are
"Asian", which in Britain usually means from
Pakistan. But Griffin said in court that he was
criticizing their religion, which he described in
court as a
“vicious, wicked faith”.
Islam is proselytizing faith which will take all races,
including e.g. Marin County's
John Walker Lindh.
Of course, that's
not just Griffin’s opinion, many people seem to feel
that way: like
me,
Ann Coulter, and of course the entire staff
Commentary
and the
Weekly Standard, plus a million zillion bloggers.
Also various
victims of Islam, including
Christians,
Jews,
ex-Muslims, and
Hindus.
The
problem with equating criticism of Islam with hate,
is that when it comes to Islam, the truth hurts.
And in the
meantime, the idea that Islam is a “vicious, wicked
faith” seems to have been used by the defence
in the U.K. trial of a radical imam named Abu Hamza,
known as "Captain
Hook" because of his
carelessness with explosives.
“Edward Fitzgerald, QC,
for the defence, said that Abu Hamza’s interpretation of
the Koran was that it imposed an obligation on Muslims
to do jihad and fight in the defence of their religion.
He said that the Crown case against the former imam of
Finsbury Park Mosque was “simplistic in the extreme”.
“He added: ‘It is said he
was preaching murder, but he was actually preaching from
the Koran itself.’”'Offensive'
remarks taken straight from Koran, defence says,
The Times [UK] By Sean O’Neill, January 20, 2006
A little over a
hundred years ago, Great Britain had blasphemy laws—laws
that wouldn't let an
atheist named
Charles Bradlaugh be seated in parliament because he
wanted to affirm rather than swear an oath.
At the time, the British decided in
favor of tolerance, even though it was their own
religion that was being attacked.
It's strange that their descendants
might be sent to jail for disrespect to the Koran.
The United States still has freedom
of speech, and of religion, which includes, as any
Ulster Protestant or Irish Catholic could tell you, the
right to disapprove of other religions.
But how much longer?
