Wednesday, May 21, 2008

In fairness to Robert Spencer...

... it looks like he was as taken aback by the blurb at frontpage that I reported on, too. At his blog at Jihad Watch, he says.

The subhead on FrontPage's front page reads: "Accidentally shooting a Qur'an was stupid; the way we apologized may have made matters worse." This line was apparently based on the Qur'an-shooter's denial that he knew the book he was shooting at was a Qur'an. I noted his denial in the article, but in fact I think it's much more likely that he did know what book he was shooting at, and that the shooting was in no way an accident.

So noted, and I retract my criticism of what appeared to be his playing both sides of the fence.

I still think his larger point - that apologizing to the extent that we did was bad - was in error, though.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Robert Spencer's "Accidental" Apologia for Qu'ran Shooting

I'd ask how credulous he could be... but then I think we already know the answer to that.

By now you've probably heard the story of the unnamed American sniper who decided to use a copy of the Qu'ran for target practice.

A bullet-holed and graffiti-scrawled edition of the Islamic holy book was discovered by Iraqi police last week.

The soldier responsible has been sent home. Before he went the unnamed staff sergeant apologised to the military calling his actions "shortsighted, very reckless and irresponsible — but not malicious".


While a shocking example of back-biting (and effort-destroying) stupidity in the field, it's pretty much an open-and-shut deal. A soldier did something very stupid, his superiors dealt with him, and then they apologized to the local tribes for their soldier's stupidity so as to mollify their anger and secure their further cooperation.

Ah ah ah! Here comes Islam "Expert" Robert Spencer to save the day. Guess what? It was just an accident, and it was bad of us to apologize as thoroughly as we did.

No, really.

An accident? At Frontpage Magazine, where I found the article, the lead-in blurb read: Accidentally shooting a Qur'an was stupid; the way we apologized may have made matters worse.



How does a copy of the Qu'ran wind up on a firing field by accident? How did the graffiti get there? Accident? Give me a break.

Now, to be fair, it's possible that Spencer didn't write the blurb himself. It may have been the work of one of Frontpage's editors, who, as we know from past experience, can be a little slap-dash about things.

But when we read the article, we have to wonder:Inside, Spencer writes The soldier said he didn’t know that the book he used was a Qur’an, but military brass rejected this and announced plans to reassign the soldier to duty within the United States ... Assuming that the soldier really did know that the book he was shooting at was the Qur’an, this story illustrates many things ... If he knew what the book was, the soldier was stupid

"Assuming" and "if." How could the soldier not have known? Spencer seems pretty quick to play both sides of the coin on this one in order to make his larger point: that we really shouldn't have bent over backwards to apologize, because the reaction on the other side was "Hysterical."

The possibility that Muslims worldwide might be incited to murderous rage because of an incident like this can never be discounted. Major General Hammond and his staff are trying to head that off. That’s fine, but it also just plays into the mentality that to riot and kill because of something like this is a perfectly natural and rational reaction to it. At a certain point, someone is going to have to have the guts to stand up and say, “Wait a minute. The incident that set you off may indeed have been offensive, but your reaction is insane. If someone insults you, that is no justification to kill him or anyone else, or to destroy anything.”

This is true, and it would be nice when that day comes around. Unfortunately, we are nowhere near it. We probably won't be near it for a good long while, either, so long as attitudes like Spencer's (Islam=Terrorism, Prophet Mohammed=Terrorist) are predominant in the media, and he constantly stirs things up along those lines, ensuring a steady stream of insult-incident-insult-incident that keeps things at a near-boiling point, until the inevitable occurs.

Until then, we have to handle the situation with kid gloves, which means sometimes we have to grovel today to fight better tomorrow. Given that we have been enmeshed in a stupid, go-nowhere war that has no easy exit, and no clear end in sight, we may have to do a great number of grovels just to get the job done.

Spencer won't acknowledge that, though: he'd rather try and make excuses for callous snipers who didn't get the memo.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Hello, Stormfront/BNP Friends!

I wondered how the BNP Supporters found my article about the truth about their beloved party so quickly. Well - I guess I've got my answer! I merited a thread at Stormfront - an infamous gathering place for the "White Nationalist Community."

This is a two-way street, lunchbox. ... Without being clever enough to realize it, you have asked us to justify our very existence.

While the indigenous people of Britain only ask that non-Whites leave a White nation, you condemn our race to death for our inability to answer why it is we should exist, as if your fat ass were the Creator.

While you may be God amongst your purse full of Barbie Dolls, here, in the real world, you're just another scrawny internet-punk.

I'd like for you to come and pay me a visit out here, and we can conduct a little experiment to see just how long you'd remain living while hanging with your brothas from anotha motha.


Well, tempting as it might be to take up Stuka1488's offer, I'm a little leery of paying visits to people who name themselves after a Nazi warplane. Call it a hunch that I'd be dealing with someone like this at best. And at worst...

But while I've got you all here, watching, I sure hope you could clear a few things up for me. The previous folks who stumbled over this way did a cute song and dance about how bad immigration is, how awful non-White people are, and how the "White Race" is supposedly going to be extinct in so many years, but they really didn't touch the big questions in a meaningful manner.

So, let it not be said I'm not listening. Can someone out there from Stormfront and/or the BNP please enlighten me as to the following?

* What is so special about the White Race that we have to protect it from extinction?

* Please provide links to evidence that the White Race is in danger of being wiped out.

* The Guardian Reported that the BNP tells its members to refrain from racist and antisemitic language in public. Shouldn't that be a warning flag that there's a real concern of it occurring because many, if not most, of the members of the BNP are likely to engage in that kind of talk?

* The BNP allows Jews in, now. How do you feel about that?

* Please give me your straight-up, no-chaser definition of the Holocaust, including how many people died in it.

* Why should we believe that Nick Griffin has recanted his previous views on the Holocaust when, just last year, he was quoted as saying that he only believed in the Holocaust because European law required him to do so?

* Nick Griffin, speaking to Wales on Sunday, 1996: "All black people will be repatriated, even if they were born here ... We must preserve the white race, because it has been responsible for all the good things in civilisation”. Now he says he's for voluntary repatriation of non-Whites. Should we believe him?

* Given that the BNP isn't exactly accepting of homosexuality, how does it feel to have a man who directed a gay-themed 'Art film" as your representative on the London Assembly?

Hit us up at your leisure, Stormy boys. Me and the Barbie Dolls would love to hear from you.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Obama as Monkey T-shirt on sale in Georgia



Just in case the "B. Hussein Obama" shtick was getting old, you can now be Islamophobic AND racist at the same time with the purchase of this amusing t-shirt. You'll have to drive to Cobb County, Georgia to get one, though.

Marietta bar owner Mike Norman says the T-shirts he's peddling, featuring a look-a-like of cartoon chimp Curious George peeling a banana, with "Obama in '08" underneath, are not meant to offend.

Norman acknowledged the imagery's Jim Crow roots but said he sees nothing wrong with depicting a prominent African-American as a monkey


Of course, those out protesting are wrong to demand he stop selling them, just as they're also wrong to demand he stop putting up pieces of "Wisdom" on his sign (one example: 'I wish Hillary had married O.J.') He's got his right to free speech, too, even if it's racist swill.

I found this bit interesting, though: "Someone — "probably a customer, I don't know" — from Arkansas sent him the shirts, Norman says."

Arkansas? I wonder who that might have been...

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

BNP-Like

You know, you’d be surprised how angry some people get when you just tell the truth.

When I wrote about the BNP’s recent electoral wins, and the truth about what the organization was, and still is, I got quite a few upset comments from people who “supported” the party, but weren’t members for some strange reason. There were a lot of hurt feelings about supposed suppositions on my part, as well my pesky claim that the primary reason the party is concerned about increased non-White immigration into the UK is racist in nature.

Of course, the fact that, in their responses, those persons revealed that I had been telling the truth was somewhat gratifying. It’s hard to not laugh when they prove you right while trying to prove you wrong. But there are some legitimate points that had been raised, and these should be addressed.

1) If you’re really worried that unchecked mass immigration is going to make the White Race… *cough* excuse me, TRADITIONAL Britons a minority in the UK in 50 years and extinct in 200, then maybe you should consider cutting back on the amount that people are taxed. I think it’s telling that a large number of people who leave the UK are Britons heading for Spain or France, where they can live without being punished by onerous taxes. Most of the Brits I knew from my time in the UAE were working overseas because they didn’t want pay through the nose, anymore. Just a thought!

2) Being swamped with immigrants is NOT genocide. And trying to conflate it with genocide is a slap in the face to anyone who’s ever been the victim of genocide. You can monkey around with the UN’s definition of genocide all you like, but it’s not going to help you on that one.

As for the rest of what I had to say regarding the BNP’s racism, I stand by my comments 100%. And I’d like to end this missive with a song for my new BNP supporting friends. It goes to the tune of “Parklife” by Blur. Sing along, boys…

BNP-Like

There’s genocide of British Whites, and that isn’t quite alright, and that’s why I’m with the (BNP)
But nasty looks can pass you by if you just alter your words and lie, like we do these days in the (BNP)
Nick Griffin’s got a plan to rid the UK of dirty, Non-White types, just stick with it and you’ll see (BNP)
Don’t say “Throw the Wogs out” … just talk about voluntary repatriation… you’d be surprised how well that works, these days.

(Chorus)
SAVE OUR PEOPLE
THE BRITISH PEOPLE
IF YOU’VE GOT OUR GENOTYPE
YOU’RE JUST RIGHT -- BNP-LIKE

Let me show you what I mean:
If you can say with a straight face that you just love the British race, you’re just the sort of bloke that we need (BNP)
No racist talk in public, and no bad words about Jews. We’ve got a couple around here, too, somewhere. (BNP)
Use cooked demographic studies, and horror stories from the news. It makes it look like we’re really on to something (BNP)
And if they still call you racist, well, your dictionary proves them wrong. Separatism isn’t supremacy, now is it?

(Chorus)

BNP (BNP)
BNP (BNP)

If I want to see quaint foreign customs, I can always go on vacation.
And if I want proper curry I can always figure it out myself, you know?

(Chorus) X2

Sunday, May 11, 2008

This Time It's Fiction? James Frey Returns

Remember the brouhaha surrounding James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces"? Well, he's back, and this time it's fictional. Apparently it's also crap.

Newsweek has the story, and a rather uncomplimentary review

Give James Frey some credit. If you had been humiliated by Oprah Winfrey on television in front of who-knows-how-many-million viewers, you might still be hiding under the bed. If your name became cultural shorthand for "man who invents lots of details in his memoir," you might change that name and permanently move to another country, preferably one that didn't carry "Oprah." But the author of "A Million Little Pieces"—the questionable memoir in question—is made of sterner stuff. In the wake of that public shaming two years ago, he picked himself up, got another agent, landed a new book contract and completed a novel, "Bright Shiny Morning," which is being published this month.

That's the good news—good, as in nobody likes a quitter. The bad news is the novel's no good.


I wrote about the Frey blowup after it, and the baffling case of "J. T. Leroy" ("Author" of "Sarah"), erupted. Apparently, Frey's memoir was originally written as a novel, but it didn't get anywhere when cast as such. Back then, I reported that:

"A Million Little Pieces" ... just tells us what we already "know" - any white junkie can kick the habit (even if he never really kicks it) with a lot of toughness and grit.

That's what Frey's novel was about, apparently. The 17 publishers who turned it down did so because they'd heard it all before. Then - according to Frey - someone at the 18th hole in the golf course said "say it's all true, Jimbo," and he did.


What's Newsweek's beef with "Bright Shiny Morning?"

Frey's first two books, including "My Friend Leonard," strained credulity on almost every page—the dental surgery without painkillers, the lovable gangster in rehab who adopts the author. Such incidents, you kept thinking, must be true, precisely because they seemed so unbelievable. But when you put that same writer's talents to work in a novel without the crutch of purported truth, things wobble between threadbare and preposterous.

*ahem* Some of the best fiction out there is preposterous, lest we forget the stylings of Chuck Palahniuk (whose new novel, "Snuff," comes out May 20th). So why is it so bad that what he's written is so unbelievable?

I'm wondering if Frey's comma-less, slappy style just works better for the "truth" you find in a memoir, but sounds terrible when cast as fiction. Non-fiction should have a certain immediacy to it: you're not telling some fish story, after all, you're telling _the_ story that actually took place. On the other hand, while fiction can be told in that same style, it often works better if you don't write it as a memoir, unless you've got a real knack for that kind of style. It's hard to pull off, these days.

Still, it's Newsweek. I'll have to crack a look at it when it comes in to the store and see if it's really that bad, at least now that I know I'm not supposed to believe it.

Thursday, May 08, 2008

He's a Witch! Fire him!

Did a Florida substitute teacher get fired for doing a magic trick, or was it just the bunny that broke the tophat?

Jim Piculas says he was accused of "Wizardry" and fired.

"I get a call the middle of the day from the supervisor of substitute teachers. He says, 'Jim, we have a huge issue. You can't take any more assignments. You need to come in right away,'" he said.

When Piculas went in, he learned his little magic trick cast a spell that went much farther than he'd hoped.

"I said, 'Well Pat, can you explain this to me?' 'You've been accused of wizardry,' [he said]. Wizardry?" he asked.


As you might expect, the School Board says there's more to it than any outrage over the trick (which was making a toothpick appear and disappear)

In the letter sent by Pat Sinclair, who manages the substitute teacher program in Pasco schools, "wizardry" was not the only accusation against Piculus. He was also charged with not following lesson plans and allowing students on computers even though they had been instructed not do so.

Piculus denies that, saying only two students were allow to go on computers to study FCAT spelling words.

He was also charged with allowing a fifth period student peer to be in charge.

...

WMNF talked to a spokeswoman for the Pasco County School District, Renalia DuBose. She did not want to go on the air, but said the magic trick was minor, and just one of many issues that that school officials had with Piculus. She said there were concerns about his classroom management and that the classes he taught were "very unruly."


Since Florida is an "At will" state, they can fire you anything and you have little or no recourse. As such, Mr. Piculas doesn't have much of a chance to get his job back with that district, regardless of how frivolous the real reason for his firing may be.

h/t William Timmins

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Steve Rosenfeld: There is no clear "Nuclear Option" for Hillary

With the Democratic Primary all but sealed for Barack Obama - as it's been for some time, now - there's word on the internets that Hillary might unleash some kind of "Nuclear Option": seeing to the seating of the self-disenfranchised voters from Michigan and Florida, which would get her enough delegates to squeak out a last-minute victory, since she "won" victories in those states (In Michigan, this was possibly due to Obama's name not being on the ballot).

The problem is, as Steve Rosenfeld (co-author of What Happened in Ohio) explains on Alternet, the process isn't that simple, and has too many obstacles in the way to be considered a viable strategy.

The problems with this report -- and other speculative pieces like it -- is that the Rules and Bylaws Committee is not the last stop in the DNC committee process on the question of seating Florida and Michigan delegates. The DNC Credentials Committee is, and there, according to members interviewed throughout the nominating season, many delegates seem to believe following the party's rules -- i.e., winning delegates state by state -- is paramount, as is respecting the primary season's popular vote winner.

In other words, there is a bigger picture and more to the process than the next hurdle in the horse race coverage, namely, the Rules Committee's meeting on May 31.


The best thing at this point would be for Hillary Clinton to drop out, and let Obama coast to victory, so as to not present the electorate with a deeply divided and acrimonious party throughout the rest of the year. But it's highly doubtful that will happen, now.

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

The BNP – As Bad as You Think They Are

Now that the British National Party has actually gotten somewhere in its drive to win respectability, and elections, it’s time to pull the curtain away from the propaganda and reveal them for what they were, and still are -- White Separatists with a racist agenda.

While the American press continues to purl and knit about whether it’ll be Obama or Clinton, a momentous occasion took place in England. The rightly-controversial, whites-only British National Party (BNP) scored promising electoral victories in the most recent election, most notably electing a member to the London Assembly Seat, and holding a total of 100 council seats for the first time ever.

This has been a while in coming. For the past few years, since Nick Griffin took control of the organization, the BNP has drastically reworked its image. Gone were the obvious links to racism and violence that plagued it in the past. Word substitution and careful rephrasing of ideas became the new way, and the more boisterous members were told to leave and join the National Front. Recent world events -- most notably 9/11 and an increased understanding of the dangers of radical Islam -- have made some of their less-changed messages seem much more palatable, even sensible. And, given the short memories of the electorate, that’s been more than enough to gain the BNP support and votes from people you’d think would be more sensible.

On the surface, it seems as though the BNP have risen from a questionable past to a better future. The truth is not too deeply hidden, though; if you know where and how to look, it’s clear that the party has only changed its language, and not its heart. It remains to be seen if the BNP’s remarkable -- but still modest -- gains will pave the way for future successes, or give them a chance to shoot themselves in the foot in front of the cameras, rather than behind them. But no one should be fooled by the hype -- past the propaganda, this is still your father’s BNP.

These days, the BNP packages itself behind a slick -- if overly busy --web page that has just about every answer you could want, except for the truth. The real face of the party leaks out, though, thanks to undercover work by The Guardian (in 2006) and the occasional embarrassing photograph from David Duke’s European American Conference (in 2005). So much for learning from errors of the past!

In fact, the most ironic thing about the BNP’s much-vaunted page proving they’re not racists or White Supremacists is that it proves them, by their arguments, to be White Separatists, which is also a racist philosophy. (It also shows they can’t debate worth a damn, which is why they may have so many problems getting elected, until now).

For example, lifted straight from the page:

i. Why do you disapprove of mixed marriages?

We believe in human diversity and in preserving the individuality and identity of all different ethnic groups. It is sad when a unique human genotype becomes extinct - as has happened around the world in the past and is happening today in the Amazon and in New Guinea. While a small number of mixed marriages – or mixed race children - in Britain won’t, in themselves, make any difference, if this is encouraged however as it is at present by politicians and the media then inevitably the traditional British genotype will be endangered in the long-term. Environmentalists are always keen to preserve unique animal species in the wild, so why shouldn’t the same principle apply to people? We believe that Britain’s proud history of glorious achievements demonstrates that the British genotype is a valuable one and deserves to be preserved.

iv. If you believe that the races are different then you are racists.
Not at all. The definition of a racist is someone who hates people of other races. We do not hate anybody. Anyone who says the BNP is racist is either misinformed or a liar.

v. Why don’t you let blacks and Asians into the BNP?
For the same reason the Girl Guides don’t allow boys to join. Does that mean they are sexist? Does it mean they hate boys? Of course not, it’s just that their aim is to cater for the interests of girls, and similarly the BNP isn’t racist, but our purpose is to cater for the interests of the indigenous British population. The indigenous population of Britain is now the only group which is facing systematic, legalised and institutionalised discrimination, harassment and oppression. That’s precisely why the British people need the BNP - because we are the one and only organisation that has their interests at heart. There are hundreds of organisations exclusively for blacks or Asians, but only one organisation for the indigenous population - the BNP.

viii. Do you accept or deny that blacks/Asians born in Britain are totally British?
People are partly the product of their environment, but mainly of their genes. Spike Milligan and Joanna Lumley were born in India – do you think they are Indians? It was the Duke of Wellington who said that just because someone is born in a stable that doesn’t make him a horse.
To be truly British one has to have a British genotype, as well as to have fully adopted British culture. Blacks and Asians born here are legally British and should be treated as such, but they are not genetically British. Indeed, most blacks and Asians do not see themselves as wholly British, and often refer to themselves as British Asians, or British Pakistanis, etc.

xi. Do you want an all-white Britain?
We have no objection to a limited number of people of different races or cultures, but they shouldn’t be so many that they actually change the area they live in. Ethnic minorities should be just that – minorities, making up no more than 2-3% of the population of any given area. In some areas their numbers have become too high, and there are parts of our towns and cities which have become visibly foreign. We want a traditional Britain.


Note the use of “indigenous” for White. Note how they very carefully say that they aren’t racists because they don’t hate, but won’t acknowledge directly that the reason they want a more “traditional” (that is, mostly White) Britain is because they think that immigrants bring crime and hate with them, to say nothing of freaky religions they can’t understand. On a more visceral note, they’re terrified of a creeping, brown shadow turning their cities and towns non-White, one filled flat at a time.

Is it White Supremacy? No. But it is White Separatism, which is just as racist as hating someone because of the color of their skin, or thinking them inferior. In this case, you’re stating, through your desire to keep non-Whites out, or at least to 2-3% of the population, that there must be something wrong with non-White people, otherwise you’d be accepting them with open arms.

Then there’s the old Nick -- Nick Griffin, who spearheaded and managed the BNP’s conversion from overt racism to coded racism. One of his chief detractions is that he’s a denier of the Holocaust, which is another matter that the party would like swept under the rug. And to his credit, Griffin has done most of the sweeping.

As the BNP says on its “Truth” page:

vii. Your leader is on record denying the Holocaust ever happened and claiming that Jews control the media -- you are clearly an anti-Semitic party.
Not at all. Dredging up quotes from 10, 15, 20 years ago is really pathetic and, in a sense, rather fascist. Everyone knows that people’s political philosophies evolve and change as they develop – at least three Labour ministers were previously Communist Party members, for instance - and Nick Griffin has repeatedly stated that he has changed his views since then. The BNP is in no way anti-Semitic nor do we deny the Holocaust. We have many Jewish members and are pleased to have a Jewish councillor in Epping, who is, indeed, the group leader there.*


The 10 years ago is a very significant number, as that’s the last time that Griffin really got caught with his trousers down on the subject. Since his conviction for incitement for what he wrote in The Rune, long ago when he and his colleagues weren’t aiming for respectability, he has been very, very careful about how he couches things.

He used to talk about the “Holohoax.” Now?

“Then we have an hour plus of Q&As and debate … several of the leftists try to sidetrack the debate down the Holocaust road although that does at least allow me to set the record straight and deal with the combination of Wikipedia lies and out-of-context propaganda and to put on record the fact that -- while I used to be very angry at (and rude about) the way the left-liberals use the Holocaust as a moral club to silence debate on the key issues of our time -- I have never denied the fact that the Nazis murdered huge numbers of Jews in one of the great crimes of a century of terrible inhumanity.”

Angry and rude? Oh, definitely. And he isn’t lying when he says he never denied the fact that Nazis killed huge numbers of Jews. However, as with so many things the BNP, or their spokespeople, say, that’s a rather slippery half-truth.

The truth is that, as someone who does not like Jews and non-White people in his Britain, he denied the full verifiable, historical record of the Holocaust in order to support his dislike when faced with being likened to the Nazis. The old argument, most often prompted by claims that “If you hate Jews and non-whites, and don’t want a multi-racial society, you’re like the Nazis, who killed six million Jews in the Holocaust” was “They didn’t kill six million Jews. They only killed a thousand, maybe a few hundred thousand. More people died on the battlefields. The Holocaust simply did not happen as described.”

An example of the old argument can be seen on the Cook Report, just over a decade ago. He trots out the “hundreds of thousands” number at 36 seconds in. Gas chambers? “Nonsense,” he says: “exposed as a total lie.”

The new argument can be seen in action during this talk-turned-shouting match at Michigan State University, when MSU’s infamous chapter of Young Americans for Freedom brought him in to speak about the “dangers” of Islam.

Using the careful language that he’s employed in recent years, Griffin spouted the line that he once said “very rude things,” because he was upset that the Holocaust had been “used as a business” and as a “huge moral club to prevent any discussion of things such as the preservation of nationality” and problems with mass immigration. But that said that “I have never doubted that vast numbers of entirely innocent Eastern European Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their allies during the Second World War.”

So far, he was on message. But then he made the mistake of allowing himself to be tired down to actual numbers, rather than saying “vast.” How many dead? He said that he believed that 20 million were killed, according to what was stated at Nuremburg. (Video is here. He starts talking about the Holocaust at 4:02)

20 Million? Where on earth did he get that number? The best estimates we have -- bolstered in part by the Nazis’ excellent record-keeping -- is around 11 million, when all victims, including the Jews, are totaled together. The only number I can find in reference to 20 million killed in a Holocaust would be the 20 million killed by Josef Stalin in the 1930’s while remolding the Soviet Union to fit his desires. (Lest anyone forget that, in terms of sheer bodycount, Stalin was much worse than Hitler)

Again, this isn’t a “recanting” or “retraction” of his earlier, stated beliefs but a dodge, and a rather slippery and slimy one at that. Nick Griffin hasn’t changed his views: he’s just learned to parse his statements, and hopes that no one can remember that he did deny something quite important. The fact that he won’t seriously answer how many died in the Holocaust is a sign that he hasn’t really put any thought behind the gravity of his previous errors.

Indeed, according to a rather intriguing article by Searchlight magazine -- which chronicles Griffin’s career with the National Front, before coming on board with the BNP in 1995 -- “As recently as April 2007 Griffin told a reporter that he did believe in the Holocaust but only because “European law” required him to do so.”

Let it be resolved, then: Nick Griffin’s BNP is, was and will most likely always be bad news. Still, as a nose-broken Geraldo Rivera once said (after dealing with the sort of people Nick Griffin and the BNP might clasp to their bosom), Sunlight is the best disinfectant. One can only hope that having a BNP man in full view on the London Assembly will show the British people exactly what they’re dealing with, and lead to the party’s swift fumigation the next electoral cycle.


*(Note: The BNP does have Jewish members, yes. However, they appear to be non-practicing Jews if the reports are correct. Also, we should remember that, in the case of genuinely anti-Semitic Jews, Black Confederate soldiers, and Gay Republicans, that no one is immune to drinking the kool-aid when it comes to joining an organization that doesn’t like you.)