There is an important factor in the victory of parties like the BNP in England this past week. First some commentary starting with Mark Steyn:
The British results are the latest forlorn thermometer reading of Gordon Brown’s long goodbye. Yet, while the Labour Party is shriveling before our eyes, David Cameron’s Tories are not obviously the beneficiaries. In the English council elections the Conservatives got a lower percentage of the vote than last time round, and, insofar as there was a (one per cent) swing to the Tories in the European elections, in the end their vote was only a a handful of points higher than the combined tally of the two beyond-the-pale parties, the openly xenophobic* (well, anti-European) UK Independence Party and the openly racist British National Party. If Gordon Brown’s rotting zombie of a ministry can’t drive voters into the embrace of David Cameron, what can? The Conservatives should have been the beneficiary of both the broader two-party electoral cycle and the more immediate internecine warfare in Brown’s cabinet. But they weren’t. If I were a Tory strategist, I’d be none too thrilled with what the entrails are saying.
Andrew Suttaford:
The relative success (it won two seats) of the unlovely British National Party (a party with, at the very least, as David Pryce-Jones points out, a fascist core) in the U.K. slice of the EU elections is best seen primarily as the product of five factors: (a) the largely accurate perception that the Blair-Brown governments were enablers of mass immigration; (b) not-unconnected fears over the rise of militant Islam within the U.K.; (c) dislike of the EU; (d) the economic crisis; (e) globalization (on economics & trade policy the party is quite some way to the left) and; (f) the widespread perception, flowing in no small part from points a-e, that no parliamentary party is prepared to stick up for the interests of the white working class, a perception that explains the BNP’s recent success in finding support amongst former Labour voters. Throw in the the way that the expenses scandal now roiling parliament has discredited much of the existing political class, and there you have it . . .
David Price Jones:
However, this voting pattern does not derive from nostalgia for Hitler and Mussolini, but far more simply from the way that every European government has bent over backwards to favor Muslim immigrants over local populations. In one country after another, the government has privileged Muslim immigrants in matters of welfare benefits, housing, communal subsidies, concessions over customs that are illegal and brutal but supposed to be untouchable because sanctioned by Islam, and even in the practice of law. The ensuing Islamization of the continent is the source of immense popular anger, hitherto unexpressed. Put another way, European governments may have had benevolent intentions towards Muslims, but in practice they prove to be efficient fascist-making machines.
Charles is understandably worried, but why is this happening, likely due to stuff like this:
Joanie de Rijke was released by the Taliban in Afghanistan after a ransom of $137,000 was paid to the terrorist group. She was repeatedly raped by her captors but today believes they also respected her
And this:
It is a racially mixed estate, and there is no telling what the ethnicity of the voter opening the door will be. But the first, a young white man in his thirties, is a quick success. ‘You’re the guy who sorted out the rat infestation for us,’ he tells Mr Dunne. ‘You’ll get my vote. I’m BNP, and so is everyone I know.’
This is the first important point to note: there is no explicit talk of race, immigration or the death penalty (which the BNP supports). Just rats. This chap had a problem; his councillor fixed it and secured at least one vote. This is a significant and new aspect of the BNP’s strategy. Just as Lib Dems talk about holes in the road, not holes in the nation’s finances, the BNP (in spite of its nationalist identity) focuses relentlessly on the local. It targets councils with huge (normally Labour) majorities which have, for whatever reason, lost the will or capacity to campaign and govern well. The BNP then seeks to make itself useful: most recently, by sending squads to clear litter in strategic locations. It is a devious ploy: distracting public attention from the racist reality of the BNP by presenting itself as the ‘helpful party’.
The fixing pothole business is a basic political rule. All politics are local said Tip O’Neil and he was dead right, but that isn’t enough. The mainstream pol can fix the roads and has the government to help him do it. The real clue comes from Geert Wilders comment on the Rape story…:
“This story is a perfect illustration of the moral decline of our elites. They are so blinded by their own ideology that they turn a blind eye to the truth. Rape? Well, I would put this into perspective, says the leftist journalist: the Taliban are not monsters. Our elites prefer to deny reality rather than face it. One would expect: a woman is being raped and finds this unbearable. But this journalist is not angry because the Muslim involved also showed respect. Our elites, whether they are politicians, journalists, judges, subsidy gobblers or civil servants, are totally clueless. Plain common sense has been dumped in order to deny reality. It is not just this raped journalist who is suffering from Stockholm syndrome, but the entire Dutch elite. The only moral reference they have is: do not irritate the Muslims – that is the one thing they will condemn.”
…and the reaction to it:
Wilders’ words caused instant fury on all benches except those of his own party. Parliamentarians and government ministers reacted furiously to his reference to Joanie de Rijke. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” Femke Halsema of the far-left Green Left Party yelled. Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, a Christian-Democrat, called Wilders’ statement “extremely painful and tasteless.” The PM said the opposition leader was “shamefully abusing” the journalist by turning her “once again into a victim unable to defend herself.”
The Dutch media, too, attacked Wilders. “Everybody is angry with Wilders” the Amsterdam daily Het Parool wrote. Even the conservative weblog De Dagelijkse Standaard headlined: “Geert Wilders insults journalist raped by Taliban.”
This is the problem in a nutshell. Wilders statement was demonstrably true yet he was attacked by left and right for it. If a mainstream right party was willing to say bluntly what Wilders said above he would be marginalized. If in England the Tories were willing to stand up to Creeping Sharia and the moves of the far left, the BNP wouldn’t get a 2nd thought. This can be done as shown later in the Spectator article:
The BNP presents a conundrum for the Conservatives. They argue that the BNP prospers in neglected Labour fiefdoms and is best regarded as the beneficiary of a left-wing splinter vote. Yet there is no denying that Margaret Thatcher destroyed the National Front by showing herself sensitive to the cultural anxieties of whites who felt ‘swamped’, never coming close to the incendiary rhetoric of Enoch Powell but using plain language which spoke directly to working-class voters. Suddenly, people like Mrs Higham in her council house felt they had a tribune — and no need of the far Right parties.
The voters don’t want the baggage of the BNP, but if nobody else will say aloud what everyone is thinking and seeing what are they to do? Charles is right to point out what parties like Pro Koln and Vlaams Belang are. It is a shame that they a gaining legitimacy but not a surprise.
The disgrace isn’t that Wilders, Vlaams Belang , BNP et/al are addressing the elephant in the room. The disgrace is that nobody else is willing to. The solution isn’t to attack these parties for addressing these issues, the solution is for mainstream non racist parties to address them instead. If they would then these guys wouldn’t get the time of day.
The bottom line is illustrated in this comment concerning the de Rijke case:
The phenomenon illustrated by the case of Joanie de Rijke is that of people who for ideological reasons deny the existence of danger and subsequently put themselves in danger. Unlike ordinary Stockholm syndrome sufferers they do not begin to shown signs of loyalty to the criminal while in captivity, but have already surrendered to the criminal before their captivity, and, indeed, have ended up in captivity as a consequence of their ideological blindness.
And so, in a way Joanie de Rijke is right. She did not develop Stockholm syndrome while in captivity. She had the syndrome even before she left for Afghanistan. It is natural that she should resent her state of mind being described as Stockholm syndrome, because she considers it to be the state of mind of a righteous and intelligent modern intellectual. It is the state of mind which she shares with almost the entire political and intellectual class of Europe today, that of the hostage to political correctness.
Remember the line from the Godfather, your enemies always grow strong on what you leave behind. As long as the Tories and other conservatives in Europe leave these issue behind, these guys will grow fat on it. You would think the examples of the French Revolution, Communism, and Fascism and the disasters that came from all of them would convince Conservative elites to act before these groups rise.
Apparently you would be wrong.
Update: Apparently the Anglican church didn’t get it either.
