Sunday 7th June, 2009, was a remarkable day in British politics, not least due to the election of two British National Party candidates, including the leader of the party Nick Griffin.

Their election caused outrage: mainstream politicians expressed resentment, journalists expressed disgust and liberal activists took to the streets in protest. It is clear to most that the BNP are an anti-intellectual, heavy handed and barely masked pool of racist and fascist sympathisers, similar in many ways to the National Socialist party of Germany.

Despite the obviously unjust nature of the BNP policy and ideology, the mainstream politicians, analysts and intellectuals find themselves utterly unable to defeat the ideas of the BNP. Why?

To defeat an idea, one must first prove it wrong. To prove it wrong, one must understand it. What is the nature of the BNP ideology? The BNP’s policy can be summarised as follows[1]:

• Immigration: The BNP advocates a halt to immigration, the deportation of illegal immigrants and the “voluntary resettlement” of ethnic minorities.
• Economy: The BNP campaigns for protectionist measures, such as the restriction of imported goods, the end of free trade agreements and the priority-allocation of jobs to “indigenous” people. They also advocate government support of workers’ cooperatives and worker-shareholder schemes, as well as the redistribution of the property of large corporate entities.
• Education: The BNP advocates an education delivered by the state, with an explicit aim of instilling pride and patriotism.
• Environment: The BNP advocates punishing “polluters”, and replacing “brutalist modernism” in architecture with traditional buildings.
• Foreign policy: The BNP calls for an end to what it dubs “spineless subservience” to the USA.
• Democracy: The BNP supports democratically directed policy.

From the party’s manifesto, as well as from comments from their leader and members, we can identify that their policy is based upon two distinct premises.

The first is altruism. The party seeks to impose laws forcing Britons to make sacrifices. Education is not to be for the purpose of equipping the individual to deal with life, but to make him into a lover of his brothers and his nation. The individual is not to change the environment for his own ends, but should sacrifice his pursuits for the sake of the environment itself. He is not to build the buildings most suitable to his needs, but is to build the style of building that looks best by the standards of the state. He is not to succeed in business, but must share the spoils of his efforts amongst cooperatives and unions.

He is not to buy goods from abroad, regardless of their suitability: he is to produce everything in Britain, for the good of whoever needs a job. Altruism runs rife through the manifesto and ideology of the BNP. The recurring theme is that man should not live for his own sake, but should exist to further the interests of his race and his nation.

The second premise is collectivism. Not a single BNP policy is concerned with the welfare of the individual, only with the collective. In BNP ideology, race is the source of rights – the state exists to defend not the rights of individual citizens, but to plunder on the behalf of the “indigenous” race. Wealth exists not for the benefit of those that produced it, but for the benefit of the working class as a whole.

A corollary of the collectivist premise is the BNP’s belief in the legitimacy of public opinion, as embodied by their democratic policy. An idea is right or wrong, legal or illegal, not based on its objective merits and fallacies – but instead because “the people” voted for it.

Understanding the nature of the BNP’s ideology makes it instantly clear that the mainstream politicians and intellectuals are helpless to defeat it – they share the same basic premises.

For example, no party pays greater lip service to tolerance, community cohesion, race relations and “human rights” than the Labour party. Most in the Labour party are disgusted by the election of the BNP, yet they cannot mount a convincing argument against them. The very first accusation brought to the table by Labour, and other mainstream activists alike, is that the BNP are a ‘racist’ or discriminatory organisation. This is clearly true – the BNP support different rights and privileges based on racial background, and do not let black or Asian Britons join their ranks. Yet the Labour party, with its all-women shortlists, also peddles collectivist discrimination.

Another common criticism of the BNP is that they are protectionist. Mainstream detractors will point out that protectionism is economic lunacy, that free trade agreements and globalised economies have allowed people to produce unmatched quantities of wealth. Yet the BNP can now point out the protectionist tendencies of their opponents. “British jobs for British workers” is a phrase peddled by our ruling Labour party, and most political parties and commentators would respond negatively to news of an industry outsourcing a factory or a call center abroad. “You believe in jobs for British workers:”, they will cry, “we are delivering it”. In this instance, the BNP’s position is different from the political mainstream only in the degree of consistency. The BNP would put into practice what the mainstream considers ‘good’.

The BNP’s radical economic policy shares the collectivist premises of the British mainstream left. The Labour party claims to be the champion of the working class: their traditional support of trade unions, socialised industries and wealth redistribution are the concrete manifestations of this goal. Yet it is now the BNP who are proposing new waves of nationalisation, powerful trade unions, workers cooperatives and the redistribution of corporate property. They are again consistently practising the policy of their mainstream opponents.

Finally, and perhaps the most potent premise of all, the BNP agree with the mainstream that democracy is equal to justice. A government is good if it is “democratically elected”, say the mainstream. A dictator in the Middle East is said to have “democratic legitimacy”, and our domestic government is right because it has “democratic mandate”. The BNP have this blessing, now that they have elected representatives, which for so long the mainstream has considered sacred.

Outside of debate, the BNP are often called “thugs”. The implication is that they resort to intimidation instead of debate, that they try to scare voters instead of winning them over. This is, to some extent, true. However, it is now the BNPs opponents who are most notably engaging in such acts. When they fail to debate the party, they block their access to election counts, pelt eggs at the leadership, scream meaningless insults and attempt to silence their communications. The public is given the choice between one group who argues by force, and another.

Sharing the basic ideological premises of the BNP has made the mainstream totally unable to defeat them. The only way to counter the BNP is to reject their basic premises on principle.

Their racial policies can only be defeated if one accepts that collectivism is wrong, on principle. It is futile to argue that racial collectivism is wrong, yet cultural and economic collectivism is acceptable.  Instead it is necessary to reject all collectivist ideas, to accept that race, culture or economic status have no bearing on the merit, rights or benefits of an individual. Yet the mainstream parties often flaunt their collectivist ideology, notably with the sexually-collectivist “all-women shortlists”[2].Only by consistently opposing racism, including the multi-culturalist policies of the mainstream left, can racism be defeated on the ideological battlefield.

Their policies on unprecedented waves of nationalisation, redistribution and protectionism cannot be defeated by suggesting that the best course of action is to advocate lesser forms of the same policies, but by denouncing the moral status of such actions. Only by declaring that a man has the inalienable right to trade with whoever he chooses, to keep whatever he produces, and to form any private industry he pleases, can one defeat the crippling economic policies of the BNP.

Their claims of democratic legitimacy cannot be countered by suggesting that democracy is right, but only when it elects the right people. Instead it must be held that public consensus is not the same as justice, that ideas must be judged on their merit according to the facts of reality, and not according to popular opinion. Popular opinion does not prove an idea, either in science or politics. It was consensus that derided Galileo as a heretic and exalted slavery as an economic necessity: public approval does not justify tyrannical actions. Democratic mandate is a legitimate method for choosing governments, providing those governments are objectively limited by constitutional constraints – a concept held firm by the founders of the United States.

In conclusion, the BNP are succeeding in political persuasion because they share the ideological premises of their most vocal opponents. The only way that British culture can rid itself of such parties is to recognise that the premises that both the BNP and mainstream analysts take as correct are in fact morally wrong. Such premises must be opposed with an uncompromising moral conviction – any substitute is to hand the country to groups like the BNP on a silver platter.

[1] BNP Policy Pages, http://bnp.org.uk/policies, (June 2009)
[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-big-question-are-allwomen-shortlists-the-best-way-to-achieve-equality-in-parliament-412987.html

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