John Woodhouse: BNP leader Nick Griffin on Question Time
A THOUSAND protesters outside Television Centre – Nick Griffin and mainstream TV don't mix awfully well. Let's face it, if he was on I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, the insects would walk off.
Nice to see him wearing a poppy though. It's important at this time of year that we remember the ultimate sacrifice made by hundreds of thousands of British people in the fight against fascism.
Beforehand, Griffin, had claimed his Question Time appearance could send his BNP into "the big time". But with the "big time" comes big exposure. And exposed Griffin certainly was.
"The vast majority of this audience finds what you stand for disgusting," one man told him. "You'd be surprised how many people would have a whip round to buy you a ticket to the South Pole," said another. "It's a colourless landscape and it'd suit you fine."
Griffin's difficulty in trying to enter the mainstream political arena comes not just from placard waving hecklers, but from the spectre of his inglorious past.
Under cross examination, for example, he admitted he'd shared a platform with a leader from the Klu Klux Klan, but he was "a totally non-violent" one. Because of course the Klu Klux Klan spend most of the time skipping through the meadows of the American deep south with a butterfly net.
He also once denied the Holocaust, dubbing it the 'Holohoax'. He smiled when quizzed by David Dimbleby on the matter. It was ill-advised. "Why are you smiling?" snapped Dimbleby. "It's not a particularly amusing issue."
The best Griffin, pictured right, could come up with by way of an answer? "I cannot explain why I used to say those things".
The subject overlapped with Griffin's recent claim that "if Churchill were alive today his natural place would be in the BNP".
"Winston Churchill put everything on the line so that my ancestors wouldn't get slaughtered in the concentration camps," said one young Jewish man, "but here sits a man who says that's a myth, just like a flat world was a myth."
Griffin, though, claims he is not a Nazi. "There are Nazis in Britain and they loathe me," he stated. It must have come as a shock to a good proportion of the viewing audience that they have something in common with Nazis.
Perhaps what annoyed the Nazis was Griffin's assertion, which he disputed saying, that Adolf Hitler went "a bit too far".
Mr Griffin blamed the "political elite" for imposing "an enormous multicultural experiment on the British people".
Apt I suppose. In mythology, the griffin has the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion.
Sometimes it has a long snake for a tail. Oh how it must grate, Nick. You're the ultimate mixed-race legend.
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by David, S-O-T
Monday, October 26 2009, 3:12PM
“Very true what you say of our politicians Paul. Charlotte Atkins brainchild ideas at the Immigration centre in Hanley have meant that the disabled have had to show for Disability Tribunals outnumbered and surrounded 25 to one by asylum seekers. If that's how they intend to encourage fairness and rationallity then they need to be voted out.”
by Paul, Chesterfield
Monday, October 26 2009, 7:51AM
“I do support the BNP ,or indeed, the right but defend their right to air their views , after all isn't that what 200 plus British lives have been lost for in Afghanistan . The sucess of the BNP lies squarely at the feet of the apathists who cannot find the time ,or energy , to go to the polling station. They ( the BNP) pander to every little paranoid, and often ill-informed , concern, they are cheap, tabloid politics. If your MP isn't working get off your duff and vote them out. Only then will the mainstream parties realise how tyhey have arrogantly taken for granted our support .”
by Anthony, Home
Sunday, October 25 2009, 8:23AM
“The fact is that the middle class intellectuals who have been critical of Griffin probably voted for the NU Labour garbage we are all suffering. Over a million people do vote for the BNP like it or not it is democracy.
I think it will cause the other parties to sort their acts out. You have to be a cretin to think the current immigration and asylum policies are sustainable, fair, acceptable to the majority.”
by JOHN, STAFFS
Friday, October 23 2009, 6:33PM
“Well he right on london being ethnically cleansed and what a hole and i know having work all over london and that the trouble
with some who've commented on here you wont to get about
a bit more and see the likes of Bradford bolton Leeds Birmingham Coventry Leicestershire ect and then you will see what real Multiculturalism and intergration means.”
by E.B., Stoke
Friday, October 23 2009, 6:12PM
“It was not so long ago people were disgusted that our leaders were in dialogue with the IRA.
LOOK HOW THAT ENDED.
The last thing we should be doing is making martyrs out of the BNP,We should talk to them in open debate,and let the people see what they truly represent.”