I won the local cyber-activity award, as detailed both here and on the main BNP website. Thank you folks, that makes me feel good. Really. It might not put any bread on the table, but as it’s said: “Man does not live by bread alone”. Why do you think they give medals to soldiers?
What do I do on the Web? Well yes, of course I go to websites friendly to us where I pick up useful information; I also visit the Daily Telegraph, The BBC, The Times and the Observer/Guardian every day – and the Sunday versions. They are all sites moderately hostile to us – except the Observer/Guardian which is very hostile to us … and where I spend the most time, arguing in the comment columns (where the hard sell does not work, so though I have in the past declared my BNP membership, I don’t push it too hard, and I’m not constantly commenting. Frequently, less is more). Here I just drop the occasional little seed when I see an opportunity and a possible audience. For instance, I dropped the following little seed, in amongst a longer comment, in Catherine Bennet’s column, in Sunday’s Observer. First I extracted small bits from other people’s comments, then answered them. Note that Guardian readers are mostly of the leftie, Labour-supporting sort. Remember – you wont win any converts by talking to people already on our side – if you want to get active on-line, you have to argue with people, and in places, that are hostile to us. They are the only places where it’s even possible to win converts, or at least sow seeds of doubt. We just happen to be a bit better at it than our very own pet troll, Red, is. Thing to remember is – in places like the Guardian etc. the readers are far from stupid – before you start mixing it with them you have to get widely knowledgable on history and current affairs – and a bit of philosophy and logic helps too - and learn that with these sorts of people a rapier or stiletto is usually better than a broadsword or machete. A little dig is far better than a major rant. Don't try to convert people in one go - just try nudging them into shifting a little our way, or at least into conceding that though they disagree with us, we do at least have a valid point of view. Softly softly catchee monkey. When you decide to start mixing it on the cyber side of our campaigning – read the places you plan to get involved in for a while first, learn the way they speak and their general attitudes – then adjust your language and your arguments to the people you are mixing with – it might be seriously foul and crude in some, genteel in others – but adapt your style to the people you’re with. Remember, less is often more. There are others doing this too on our behalf, and I'm getting to recognise them (though I didn't recognise any in these comments).
@JohnRennie
" They haven't learned their lesson - they never will. That is until we have a Labour Party that has the guts to restore some of Labour's old values e.g. re-nationalise electricity, gas, water and the railways for a start. Why not? "
You might find the BNP manifesto to be of interest ... all of that is covered, along with such things as support for small family businesses, workers co-operatives, independent landOWNING (as opposed to tenanted) farmers, manufacturing ...
@MAM
"Because if one thing has been proven it is that State-management is a bad idea. It does not work."
Seems to work well for the railways in France.
@Maidmarion
"I'm ashamed to say this but I now read the site bloggers and not the articles."
Well yes, me too these days (except for the ashamed bit). But Katie is one of a very small number of exceptions; she's always worth reading. Even on the odd occasion that she writes sh1te, it's always good, well-argued, quality sh1te.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/28/hazel-blears-dont-get-it
I also visit neutral sites on a daily basis, both in the UK and abroad, mostly just to gather information and get an idea of the things concerning people outside the party. EU Referendum and Brussels Journal are daily must-reads – especially EU Referendum if it’s the EU and/or military matters that interests you. Probably the best source on the net, certainly better than the EU Parliament website, which I also visit when I feel like boring myself stupid. For other European general and anti-Islamic information I visit the Dutch site Klein Verzet and – strangely enough – the American site Gates of Vienna. To find out what Libertarians are thinking and thinking about, I visit Devils Kitchen, Old Holborn and most especially of all, the site of the chairman of the Libertarian party, the PJC Journal (a very important site to read), and for American Libertarians, the Western Rifle Shooters Association. I get my Islam info from Jihad Watch, Dhimmi Watch, Religion of Peace – and I’m quite partial to a daily read of Winds of Jihad. Conservative viewpoints are an important strand to keep up to date with – for this I read View from the Right in America, and Cranmer, here in the UK – daily, of course. Other places I visit regularly are Geert Wilders’ blog, the Army Rumour Service, Inspector Gadget. To keep up with real events in South Africa I’m a regular on SA Sucks. There are plenty of other place I visit on a fairly regular basis – too numerous to list – and when you’re reading something particularly interesting, do follow any links provided; you can find yourself in some seriously weird and wonderful places, but also pick up some incredibly interesting, sometimes vital, pieces of information. I also have an Index covering the English Language newspapers in every country of the world – occasionally visit other countries to find out what their obsession of the day is, and I regularly visit Russia and read the English version of Pravda. All good stuff, even if much of it is really dreary to read. Somebody has to do it. And last but not least, I pay special attention to the enemy – as they say, “Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer”. I visit the LabourList site (seriously, it’s junk, but we do need to know what they are doing and planning, or trying to do and trying to plan – they aren’t the brightest stars in the sky), I visit the British Antifa site – not knowing what THESE people are planning can literally cost you your life. I reasonably regularly visit Searchlight, and I visit Lancaster UAF daily. Indeed, today’s post comes from there. And here are some extracts from it – seems they are finally starting to realize that the way they’ve been opposing us hasn’t been working. Ah well, who would have thunk it? :)
There are three clear facts that need to be remembered at the outset of this article. The first is that the British National Party has won two seats in the European Parliament. This provides it with the platform, financial clout and semi-respectability from which it hopes to build future success at a local and even parliamentary level over the coming year. Secondly, their election is a game changer. Debates around no platform, access to the media and political representation will change whether we like it or not and we will need to adapt accordingly. …
… It is also important to dispel two widely (though separately) held assumptions. Firstly, this is not the protest vote against mainstream parties and useless locally elected representatives that many politicians would like us to believe. It is an increasingly hard and loyal vote …
… the almost universal dislike of even moderate Islam and the contempt and suspicion many of their voters have towards a liberal and multicultural society show how hardline much of the BNP support is and how it will take more than a more progressive economic policy to win them back fully.
More importantly, and regularly overlooked by politicians, activists and commentators alike, are issues around identity. As I have discussed before, the BNP is emerging as the voice of a forgotten working class, which increasingly feels left behind and ignored by mainstream society. As the YouGov research confirms, the majority of BNP voters feel that the Labour Party, for many their traditional political home, has moved away from them and is now dominated by a middle-class London elite who care more for Middle England and the interests of minority groups than for them.
Class politics exists but not as we once knew it. The Labour Party, in line with many other centre-left parties across western European and Scandinavia, draws the bulk of its support from the middle class, public sector workers and minority communities, especially in the big cities.
The BNP, on the other hand, is the voice of a section of the white working class, particularly in those areas of traditional industry that have experienced the greatest economic and social upheaval over the past twenty years.Most of the local authorities with the biggest BNP vote are in areas once dominated by the car, steel, coal or ceramic industries. All have gone, and those people able to leave have left. While some new jobs have replaced those lost, the work is generally lower skilled, short-term and further away from their home.
In addition to economic difficulties the identity of the areas has collapsed, leaving behind a confused, resentful and alienated minority. This is the cultural war that the BNP has cleverly exploited, particularly by tapping in to people’s paranoia that outside forces are deliberately conspiring against them and giving preferential treatment to others …
… We will go into the 2010 local elections with an emboldened and financially secure BNP and we believe the number of council wards at risk is now over 150 across the country. …
… A proper local strategy requires us to localise our campaigning. What works in one area will not work in another. Talking to principally Conservative voters requires a quite different leaflet to what would be put out in a traditionally Labour area. Localising our approach allows us to deal with local issues and also to target our message depending on what we are trying to achieve.
And mobilising the anti-BNP vote is sometimes quite different from trying to suppress the BNP vote.That is why the HOPE not hate campaign will be encouraging and supporting local groups to begin their own local anti-BNP newsletters. We hope that by starting this summer and focusing on the key wards for 2010 the newsletters will become a crucial tool to defeating the BNP at the ballot box.
To begin to undermine local BNP support we also have to build alliances within the community. Local anti-BNP groups need to be accepted and even respected. Every community has key movers and shakers and spending a bit of time cultivating relationships with these people will open new opportunities, allow our message to be widened considerably, potentially increase our activist base and give us a regular flow of information to rebut BNP myths and lies.
We also need to be cleverer in how we present our arguments. The YouGov survey shows the complete lack of respect BNP voters have towards authority – way beyond those of other parties. That means dogmatic or one dimensional arguments on anti-fascist leaflets are likely to fail.
We have to recognise that we might not always be the best messenger to get over an argument. One of the most successful leaflets we have ever produced was in Halifax where we got quotes from local doctors and pensioners to dismiss BNP claims that asylum seekers were forcing old people off GP lists and causing hospital operations to be cancelled. The strength of getting other people to speak up for us, particularly those respected by local people, is also evident from the survey. Local GPs, at 82%, came out as the most trusted professionals among BNP voters.
We also have to accept that the political landscape has shifted. Searchlight comes from a proud tradition of No Platform, a belief that fascism should not be allowed to air its politics of hate publicly. We have always opposed legitimising fascism through public debate and where fascists try to incite hatred within communities through provocative marches and actions, we have backed mobilisations against them.While I still adhere to this in principle I also believe that we have to accept a new reality. Firstly the BNP has MEPs and whether we like it or not Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons will appear more regularly on television. …
… Likewise, we also have to change our tactics on the streets. The hammer attack on a BNP activist in Leigh, Greater Manchester, in March was an unmitigated disaster. …
… what should have been a great media story, showing the strength of people power against the BNP, became three days of appallingly negative local headlines after an anti-fascist struck a BNP member in the head with a hammer.
Our response to any BNP activity is a tactical issue. Just as we always consider what is possible, so we have to think about the possible outcomes. With large chunks of local people supporting the BNP something that gives the party media sympathy is often counter-productive. In a 24-hour-communications world every small event that in the past would have gone unreported can be headline news on television, the radio and on the internet within minutes. With the BNP leaders far more politically savvy than in the past it is not difficult for them to spin a story to their advantage.
There is also a need for an honest debate about the use of rallies, marches and pickets. While one could argue that it is important continually to oppose the BNP gaining any legitimacy, such protests are increasingly ineffective and, probably more importantly, a distraction from the real work required in the communities. …
… Over the next few months our priority is to build anti-fascist groups in every community in the country. …
… Matching groups and activists in one part of country where there is no BNP threat to an area where there is one can help us raise money for local material. …
A new survey into the attitudes of BNP voters has produced some startling revelations. Unsurprisingly BNP voters are overwhelmingly opposed to immigration and asylum seekers but a sizeable number also share the BNP’s hardline attitudes …
… The study tells us that men are twice as likely to support the BNP as women, 44% of BNP voters are aged 35 to 54 and 61% are drawn from the social groups C2DE. One third of BNP voters read The Sun or the Daily Star, whereas only 13% read the Daily Mirror and those reading The Guardian and The Independent are statistically insignificant. One fifth claim to be members of trade unions or trade associations and 36% identify themselves as skilled or semi-skilled manual workers.
On one level the report tells us little new. More BNP supporters regard immigration as one of the key issues facing the country at the moment – 87% compared to 49% among all voters. Again unsurprisingly, 94% of BNP supporters believed that all further immigration should be halted. This compares with 87% of UK Independence Party voters, 68% of Conservative voters, 46% of Labour voters, 43% of Lib Dem voters and even 37% of Green voters. …
… What is more startling is the strength of the racial attitudes of many BNP voters. In a result that gives the lie to the BNP vote simply being a protest, 44% (compared to 12% of all voters) disagreed with the statement: “non-white British citizens who were born in this country are just as ‘British’ as white citizens born in this country”.
Among BNP voters 21% strongly disagreed with the statement compared to just 1% of Greens and Lib Dems and 2% of Labour and 3% of Conservative voters.
More disturbingly, 31% of BNP voters believed there was a difference in intelligence between the average black Briton and the average white Briton.
Although only 2% of BNP voters deny that six million Jews, Gypsies and others died in the Holocaust, a further 18% accept that the Holocaust occurred but believe it has been exaggerated. …
… We should be under no illusion that a long and hard struggle lies ahead.
Original complete article:
http://lancasteruaf.blogspot.com/2009/06/way-forward.html
All party members and voters should read the whole article. All I have done here is publish extracts from it. There is an enormous amount of information in it that is useful to us in the coming years – and to everyone, not just activists. You see, our opponents have at last gotten around to doing a reasoned analysis on us. They haven’t quite got it right – indeed they are nowhere near right - but they are beginning to get a little genuine insight, and will accordingly be changing tactics, as described in the original article. As Wigan and Leigh produced more BNP votes than any other community in the NorthWest – including the cities of Liverpool and Manchester – you can all bet your bottom dollar that we, and Wigan and Leigh, will be particularly targeted.
They will be playing with the insides of our heads – but that only works on unprepared people. So prepare yourselves.
Information is vital: if you are a BNP voter or otherwise support us, but not a member or otherwise known to be voters or supporters, you can provide wonderful service to the party. The UAF (CAP, SWP, Respect, etc – with particular attention to Peter Franzen and Stephen Hall) will be holding local meetings around Wigan to build an anti-BNP local organization. ATTEND those meetings! Then pass on all information gleaned from them. They have their spies at our meetings, so there is no good reason why we shouldn’t have ours at theirs.
Charles has his contact details posted on this page. And to contact me, I can be emailed via my contact details at the bottom of this page (click on my contributor button, then on the profile page that will appear, click on the email button on the left hand side of the page). There is no good reason why you should not remain anonymous; indeed, it might be mutually advantageous if you do so.
My next post will be in two or three days, and will comprise a paragraph by paragraph fisking of the entire UAF document linked to here. So if you think this post is a long one, check out the next one. Some people try to tell me that I shouldn’t write long posts as readers very quickly lose interest. I don’t agree. That is just people internalizing our opponents’ view that BNP members and supporters are thick knuckledraggers. I have rather a higher opinion of our supporters. Make it interesting and you will read.
It will take me two or three days .
Morg
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