Mail now accusing others of racism? FIGHT!

I'm not a big fan of Nick Griffin, to be honest, but if there is one good thing to come out of his upcoming Question Time appearance, it's that there's a certain joy to be had in watching right-wing commentators squirm as they try to distance themselves from Griffin and his party, who they understand aren't very well-liked. This can be a little tricky when your own writing and that of your newspaper is to a large extent based on stoking up the kind of fears Griffin's BNP are feeding off, as Enemies Of Reason recently noted.

Last week, the Mail rain an article entitled Is political correctness to blame for lack of coverage over horrific black-on-white killings in America's Deep South?, which helpfully reproduced, in full, a white supremacist group's propaganda pamphlet. The police in the story suggest that there was no racial motive for the horrific crime in question, but the Mail doesn't really believe that cop-out, and attributes to 'campaigners' a flyer produced by 'govnn.com'. If you go there (and I'd advise you not to, especially at work), you'll get taken to the Vanguard News Network, an absolutely notorious white supremacist site, run by this charming fellow. The most recent stories on VNN concern 'Deciphering Jewish Intellectual Movements', revising the Auschwitz death totals, and celebrating the recent and shocking decision of a Lousiaina judge to refuse a marriage licence to an interracial couple. VNN helpfully divide their news articles with tags like 'nigger crime', 'nigger mentality', 'niggers', 'jewish lies', and, rather more simply, 'jews'. I'm not saying the Mail endorses these cunts, but it does get kind of troublesome for them when their areas of interest overlap with those of the more balls-out racists.

Today, Richard Littlejohn explains why he didn't want to go on Question Time alongside Griffin...

Best case, you monster him and come across as a bully. Worst case, he challenges you to disagree with some of his views, perhaps on something as straightforward as demanding a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, and you're immediately tarred as guilty by association.

Once you've said he's a racist, where else is there to go?

And there you have it. A Mail writer simply accusing someone of racism instead of engaging them in the debate? Isn't that the sort of thing Mail writers constantly accuse everyone else of doing with them? Imagine if Griffin challenged you to disagree with his views! Here's Littlejohn from back in January praising Trevor Phillips;

Those of us who argued at the time that it was ludicrous to accuse the entire police force of racism [he's referring to the Macpherson report], over what was a bungled murder inquiry, were ourselves slandered as 'racists'.

The phrase was seized upon by those Trevor identifies as ' guilt-tripping white folks' as a potent stick to batter every public institution in the country.

They have used the catch-all cliche; of 'racism' to advance their own agenda, silence dissent and bully the paying public into submission.

The distinction, it soon becomes clear, is that Nick Griffin is an ACTUAL racist, even though, like Littlejohn, he constantly claims he's just sticking up for British identity, whereas Littlejohn is just someone who agrees with the BNP about a lot of things but wouldn't vote for them because they're racist thugs, unlike him.

Melanie Phillips wrote a similar 'Fuck the BNP!' piece this week:

But that is not the reason for [Griffin's] appeal. Those who support him do not in the main do so because they are racially prejudiced. It is because he also opposes mass immigration, Islamisation and the loss of sovereignty to the EU.

The message, then, is that if only the two main parties started opposing immigration and 'Islamisation' and started getting out of the EU, the BNP would go away. If we just adopt the BNP's policies, they won't be needed after all! Huzzah! Phillips continues;

The BNP really is racist.

Do you see?

But because legitimate feelings about national identity are also deemed to be racist, Griffin has been able to present the entire political mainstream as a conspiracy against the interests of ordinary people.

By cleverly sanitising the BNP message over recent years, he has thus been able to pose as a victim of political correctness.

I can't help feeling that I'm witnessing the truly absurd here. Mail commentators essentially saying 'Guys, come on, don't listen to him, he's racist!'. There's just something inherently amusing about Melanie freakin' Phillips decrying others for 'pos[ing] as a victim of political correctness'. It's the basis for your entire fucking career! You would have thought the Mail would take care not to toss around accusations of racism when their whole shtick is complaining that others are unfairly accusing them of it, but hey, here we are. The irony of Melanie Phillips talking about 'legitimate feelings' is brilliant. Could you imagine if a left-wing columnist had been chastising her by implying her feelings were illegitimate? She'd fly into a fury.

Let me make myself clear; the BNP are much worse than Phillips and Littlejohn, and I'm not trying to suggest their views are identical. But when Mail columnists like them constantly bang on about political correctness stifling debate, and depict accusations of racism as underhand tricks to create 'thought crimes', when you repeatedly say, as Phillips does, that "The hallmark of a liberal society is the toleration of offensive views", can they then realistically simply dismiss the BNP as racists? As Five Chinese Crackers wrote, these extremist groups seem to be at least partly fuelled by the relentlessly negative stories about Muslims and immigration and overbearing political correctness that the Mail churns out. I can't help but feel that when Mail writers lash out at the BNP, maybe somewhere in there should be a little twinge of guilt. There won't be, of course, they simply blame it on the left.