Gabbing about the BNP

At Vdare Sean Gabb posted a libertarian defence of the BNP’s right to be White.

On Monday, August 24th 2009, the British Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) began legal proceedings against the British National Party (BNP). Its cause of action is that the BNP restricts membership to white people…

This is a politically-motivated prosecution. The BNP has long upset the people who now rule Britain. Its denunciations of mass-immigration and of multiculturalism disrupt what would otherwise be an almost smooth wall of praise—or at least of caution—by the other parties.

Despite universal condemnation in the media, the BNP has made considerable gains during the past few years in local elections, and managed to win two seats in June this year to the European Parliament. It may win a seat in the British Parliament at the next general election. Stopping the BNP is high on the agenda of the powers that be.

All well and good, and support from all quarters is welcome, but I take issue with some of Dr Gabb’s subsequent comments:

This being said, shutting down a political party simply because it dissents from the established multicultural faith is not something that is yet done in Britain. It is too openly an attack on freedom of speech… [The] authorities are frightened to make a direct attack on freedom of speech. Instead, they are relying on laws that abolish freedom of association.

Doesn’t this imply, contrary to Dr Gabb’s claim, that ‘freedom of speech’ is not so fundamental an issue as freedom of association? Good luck winning your right to free-speech from a hostile state if it only permits you to act individually.

There are no white equivalents of Operation Black Vote or other ethnic advocacy groups.

This should be fleshed out a bit, it is the very reason for this attack on the BNP: the regime cannot allow a collective public voice to Whites as a whole or the native Britons specifically because our settled opinion is “No more race-replacement please!” How would the regime respond to such a demand on our behalf from the BNP? “But your race-replacement is necessary because ...” -- Because what? The BNP must be silenced because the establishment cannot justify its programs the BNP opposes.

The next Conservative Government will fail to reverse the disasters that Labour has brought on the country. This is because the Conservatives do not even intend to try for a counter-revolution. When the failure has become manifest, people will turn to the only alternative party that has forthrightly denounced the Labour revolution and has an existing electoral base. This will be the BNP... I fear that the BNP will, by default, become the only viable champion of counter-revolution… I can easily imagine how the BNP might replace the useless Conservatives as main opponents to what has been done to this country.

Become? Replace? The BNP already IS the only viable champion of counter-revolution. So why doesn’t Dr Gabb get behind them now? He explains:

The problem is that the BNP and much of its leading personnel used to be national socialists. There are too many published statements in praise of Hitler or denouncing the Jews...

Of course, people change their opinions over time. Middle-aged men are not necessarily to be judged on what they said or wrote in their late teens. That excuse has been made and accepted for the Ministers in the Labour Government. Many of these in their younger days were Trotskyite street bullies. Peter Mandelson, who is effectively deputy Prime Minister, joined the Young Communist League three years after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and used to sell the Communist Morning Star. John Reid, who was a Home Secretary in the Blair Government, was a member of the Communist Party in his late twenties, and was noted for his admiration of Josef Stalin...

A man can deny the Soviet holocaust—or even admit that it happened but try to justify it—and remain in good standing with the media and educational Establishments. The slightest whisper of approval for the lesser horrors of National Socialism, and a man is tainted for life… I can also imagine how the movement then led by the BNP might be smeared and discredited out of existence.

This is an absurd excuse for not backing the BNP. Dr Gabb is way too savvy to think it makes sense. The double standard does not enforce itself for its own ends. It is a tool of human agents pursuing their own ends thereby. Enoch Powell could not credibly be labelled a Nazi or former Nazi but after the ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech his career was smeared and discredited out of existence. Dr Gabb is right that for many people this strategy puts nationalism beyond the pale, but our response should not be to wait until the regime stops doing it -- it won’t -- the answer is to defy their smears and threats and get wholeheartedly behind the most prominent public champions of counter-revolution: the BNP.