Nick Griffin may have been trying to improve the image of the BNP, but (unsurprisingly) he might as well try to polish a turd
given the pond life rabble that the party attracts. Yesterday’s
Observer ran an article highlighting some of the “wit and wisdom” of key BMP members:
Salford-based BNP Euro election candidate Eddy O’Sullivan set his Facebook status to read "Wogs go home". O'Sullivan wrote: "They are nice people - oh yeah - but can they not be nice people in the fucking Congo or... bongo land or whatever?" O'Sullivan denied that the comments were racist and insisted they were made in private conversations between individuals. "I also may have had a drink at the time," he added (definitely a case of in vino veritas, methinks)
Anti-fascist organisation Searchlight has spent months infiltrating the far right's network of websites and chatrooms and found that many BNP activists share O'Sullivan's views.:
Jeffrey Marshall is senior organiser for the BNP's London European election campaign. Following the death of David Cameron's disabled son Ivan, Marshall claimed in an internet forum discussion: "We live in a country today which is unhealthily dominated by an excess of sentimentality towards the weak and unproductive. No good will come of it." Later, Marshall is alleged to have written: "There is not a great deal of point in keeping these people alive after all." Marshall claims that the comments were private and some had been paraphrased and taken out of context (Hmmm)
• Garry Aronsson, Griffin's running mate for the European parliament in the North West, posts an avatar on his personal web page featuring a Nazi SS death's head alongside the statement, "Speak English Or Die!" He lists his hobbies as "devising slow and terrible ways of paying back the Guardian-reading cunts who have betrayed the British people into poverty and slavery. I AM NOT JOKING."
• Barry Bennett, MEP candidate for the South West, posted several years ago under a pseudonym in a white supremacist forum the bizarre statement that "David Beckham is not white, he's a black man." Bennett, who is half-Jewish, added: "I know perfectly respectable half-Jews in the BNP... even Hitler had honorary Aryans who were of Jewish descent... so whatever's good enough for Hitler's good enough for me. God rest his soul." (being half Jewish would not have just got you half-killed under the Reich...)
• Dave Strickson, a BNP organiser who helps run its eastern region European election campaign, carried on his personal "Thurrock Patriots" blog a recent report of the fatal stabbing of a teenager in east London beneath the words "Another teen stabbed in Coon Town".
When confronted in the past about the extreme views of some of its members, the BNP senior hierarchy has often tried to dismiss them as unrepresentative of the party's core membership. But it appears that they run right to the top of the party. Lee Barnes, the BNP's senior legal officer and one of Griffin's closest allies, has posted a video on his personal blog of a black suspect being beaten by police officers in the US and describes it as "brilliant". Barnes adds: "The beating of Rodney King still makes me laugh." Barnes told the Observer his comments were "nothing to do with colour" but were merely a reflection of his belief that the police should have more powers to punish perpetrators of crime by "giving them a good thrashing". (I wonder if he would enjoy it as much if the victim had been white...)
Simon Darby, Griffin's deputy and the BNP's spokesman, accused Searchlight of "distorting the BNP's message". "When you put it in the context of what's been happening at Westminster, a few scribblings on Facebook hardly seems something to get worried about," he said
What can I add except to say that they have been damned by their own words. The prospect of one of these scumbags getting elected horrifies me. It is one thing to protest against the mainstream parties, especially in the light of recent revelations, but I hope people are not so bloody stupid as to cast their votes for this rabble.