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quinaraIt could have gone a lot, lot worse, I think. Reading bits around newspapers this morning I find myself disagreeing with quite a few comments (which isn't surprising; I get practically all my news from the BBC because I don't know a single newspaper that presents news the way I want to read it). I still think it should have happened, because I don't believe in No Platform policies. I can sympathise with the view that this wasn't actually free speech so much as invited/subsidised speech, depending on where you want to take the metaphor, but at the same time the BBC and Question Time can't just re-write their rules/charter/whatever at a moment's notice. Equally I don't agree with the people who are saying that the git was 'bullied' or that it should have been a 'normal' version of Question Time. Because in my view the BNP existing is always a current affair. It would have been farcical to have him comment on the postal strike rather than the (much more important in my opinion) issue that he gets to sit on my TV/computer screen.
For possibly the first time ever I agreed with something in The Sun, which was impartial as ever and decided to go with "smug bigot" as an epithet for Griffin right from the get go. If anyone deserves a smear campaign, it's Nick Griffin, especially since it's not actually smearing so much as taking a veil off a pile of shit...
Because, yeah, I actually had a lot of respect for the politicians going in with the specific aims of talking Griffin down. Jack Straw essentially reading off his piece of paper was awkward, but frankly if you're sitting within five feet of Nick Griffin and not expressing your disgust for him and the hateful things he stands for you're letting everybody down. Sometimes you can't fight bigotry with elegance. There was a comment in The Times that the politicians should have just ignored Griffin as a lightweight who meant nothing to them, but personally I think that would have allowed his ideas too much breathing space. The strategy of blunt and emotive facts that seemed to be shared around the table sat very well with me. And it was nice, for once, to see the Romans used (by Bonnie Greer) as both a proof and an example in a positive argument, because, yes, anyone could be a Roman citizen and for all their bad points the Romans do not deserve to be appropriated only by fascism. (As she said, and it bears repeating, Britain has certainly not been 99% white, as the BNP wants it, since the first century AD.)
Anyway, I went in hating the tosser and I came out hating the tosser. But I was also thinking he's not half as clever as I thought, since to me he came across as stupid as he is ignorant. Will this have a negative effect on his level of support? I can only hope so.
[PS. Feel free to disagree with me on anything here, though if you don't think Nick Griffin is a hateful bastard leading a disgustingly horrible party we're going to have issues.]
For possibly the first time ever I agreed with something in The Sun, which was impartial as ever and decided to go with "smug bigot" as an epithet for Griffin right from the get go. If anyone deserves a smear campaign, it's Nick Griffin, especially since it's not actually smearing so much as taking a veil off a pile of shit...
Because, yeah, I actually had a lot of respect for the politicians going in with the specific aims of talking Griffin down. Jack Straw essentially reading off his piece of paper was awkward, but frankly if you're sitting within five feet of Nick Griffin and not expressing your disgust for him and the hateful things he stands for you're letting everybody down. Sometimes you can't fight bigotry with elegance. There was a comment in The Times that the politicians should have just ignored Griffin as a lightweight who meant nothing to them, but personally I think that would have allowed his ideas too much breathing space. The strategy of blunt and emotive facts that seemed to be shared around the table sat very well with me. And it was nice, for once, to see the Romans used (by Bonnie Greer) as both a proof and an example in a positive argument, because, yes, anyone could be a Roman citizen and for all their bad points the Romans do not deserve to be appropriated only by fascism. (As she said, and it bears repeating, Britain has certainly not been 99% white, as the BNP wants it, since the first century AD.)
Anyway, I went in hating the tosser and I came out hating the tosser. But I was also thinking he's not half as clever as I thought, since to me he came across as stupid as he is ignorant. Will this have a negative effect on his level of support? I can only hope so.
[PS. Feel free to disagree with me on anything here, though if you don't think Nick Griffin is a hateful bastard leading a disgustingly horrible party we're going to have issues.]