The Centre for Social Cohesion is unlikely to be the first place we look to seek to make common cause.

But a report published recently by the right of centre think tank provides a forensic analysis of the online activities of BNP members and supporters that not only pulls back the BNP’s mask of ‘respectability’, it shatters it into millions of pieces.

Its examination of the BNP on blogs, internet forums and YouTube – carried out over three weeks in June – reveals an accepted culture of extreme racism, Holocaust denial, anti-semitism, homophobia, sexism, incitement to race hatred and violence, and an undimmed admiration for the Third Reich.

In the introduction, researcher Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens says one of their major findings is that “many members of the online BNP network share, to some extent, a neo-nazi ideology, based on the notion that European nations should be ‘purged’ of their non-white populations”.

Those highlighted in the report, ‘The BNP and the online fascist network’ (pdf), are at best tolerated by the BNP leadership. In some cases they are promoted through official BNP channels and, in the case of blogger Lee Barnes, a part of the party hierarchy itself. This is the true face of far right politics in the UK.

This research is important. Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons were elected to the European parliament in May on the back of a conscious campaign by the BNP to shield from public view its links to violence and neo-nazism, and to promote itself as a more or less benign party of ‘civic nationalism’ based on ‘identity’, ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’.

The authors analyse in detail the close links between the official BNP YouTube channel, and official YouTube accounts of the Thurrock and Burnley BNP branches, and “ideologically driven racial supremacist” activists and organisations.

They also highlight Covert Tactics, a group of British neo-nazis who operate a YouTube channel, a blog, an internet TV programme, and an online discussion forum, and whose allegiance to the BNP is unquestionable.

Its members discuss their attendance at the BNP’s annual Red, White and Blue festival, and any BNP members who oppose Griffin’s leadership soon become the targets of sustained hate campaigns from the Covert team.

One member, Tommy Williams, appears on the recently leaked BNP membership list and another, Peter “Sid” Williamson, was effectively forced out of the openly nazi British People’s Party last year for what the BPP described as a “long term slavish devotion to the sacrosanct policy of never criticising Nick Griffin and his notorious gang”.

The argument that the BNP has no control over who supports it holds no water when the party makes no attempt to distance itself from such violent extremists.

A chapter in the report about Lee Barnes is particularly telling. Barnes is head of the BNP’s legal team, a party spokesman, a speaker at BNP meetings, a writer for the BNP website, and a researcher for the party.

His blog, 21st Century British Nationalism, is enough to dispel any myth about the BNP as mainstream and respectable. His writings exude racial hatred, sexism and homophobia, and he analyses the BNP’s relationship with the National Front.

It is important to remember that Barnes is a senior figure in a party that has successfully persuaded sections of the white working class that it has their interests at heart. Yet he displays a misanthropy that borders on the sociopathic.

He accuses those who protest against the BNP of being child molesters, and he claims that lesbians who oppose him “are in fear of their own repressed sexual feelings” for his “rampant virility”.

Providing irrefutable confirmation that, far from reforming, the BNP continues to promote a racist and white nationalist ideology akin to its formation under founder John Tyndall, the report deserves to be read by everyone who identifies with our core values of solidarity, equality and anti-racism.

It also provides further proof that our reporting of the BNP must be more vigorous than it is with other political parties.

The BNP is not like other political parties; its representatives must not be given a free platform from which to speak without confrontation and challenge.

Posted by Rich Simcox

Tags: anti-fascist, anti-racist, ethics, journalism