The BNP is a genuinely neo Nazi party in Britain that could be on the verge of gaining real electoral political power. Harry’s Place says the way to defeat them is by opposing them and the Islamist far right at the same time.
What is needed is an antifascist campaign that combines fighting the neo Nazi far right with the Islamist far right. I’m convinced that this is the only way to defeat both.
Part of the reason – not the only one – that the BNP has risen is that the cordon sanitaire that surrounded far Right thought has been fatally compromised by the accommodation between the far Left and the Islamist far Right. Organisations which say pretty outrageous and extreme things have got op eds in the Guardian and have cultivated links with Labour (and LibDem and occasionally Tory) MPs. This allows the BNP to say: “We’re the only ones who are standing up for *you*”.
Both groups [far right Islamists and BNP] share a common racist hatred of Jews – including Holocaust denial – but yet the Islamists have been given a pass on this by large sections of the Left.
This is primarily due to the silly delusion of some lefties that if a group shows any opposition to what they deem as capitalism or imperialism, then that group must be an ally and should be supported – or at least not criticized. Of course, in the real world, when Islamists take political power the first people they eliminate are the leftists. Only the deeply naive or fanatics believe the enemy of a enemy must be a friend.
The way to turn this around is simple. To cut through the Gordian Knot, we need a centrist anti-fascist campaign, that takes on both the BNP and the Islamists.
I would qualify that staement with, ” take on the neo-nazi far right and the RELIGIOUS far right. Too often in the West we don’t see the parallel between the Christian far right and the Islamist far right.
I think the way to deal with them is the same way the EU dealt with the Austrians flirtation with fascism a few years ago. You draw a clear line that this sort of politics is unacceptable, and you threaten to end any number of treaties and trade agreements immediately unless action is taken. Lo and behold, someone will call a snap election and everyone quietly forgets it ever happened.
Note this is NOT the way you deal with Islamist parties, as they’ve been shunned so long they don’t have any leverage to use against them. Rather, you allow them into the process and allow power to corrupt as it usually does, that way if they TRY any of their crazy Islamist policies, you have some sort of credible leverage to stop it.