Re: BNP and C18
Date: 26th July '02
Name: LLETSA
W. Joyce:
Whatever else they may campaign on, the BNP will ultimately seek to bring the issue back to race. That is because they believe that the only solution to the problems of society is a racial one. That so many of them have bought into this is a tragedy for the working class of Oldham - who are not only white, as you well know. Both the BNP and the race industry have an interest in 'racialising' every possible issue - they need each other.
Wherever ethnically - based politics have been unleashed the result has been
a catastrophe for working people. Ethnically - based politics usually leads to ethnic warfare,
and the working
people of both sides are the ones who suffer overwhelmingly in the horrors that
inevitably follow. We don't have to look back a very long way for evidence - Yugoslavia or Rwanda
spring readily to mind.
Some BNP voters are doubtless die - hard racists who would hate non - whites under whatever circumstances, but those others who have thrown in their lot with those who call themselves 'nationalists' may be unaware of the fascist backgrounds of such people, and their links to crazed, pseudo - academic racial theorists/ conspiracy theorists and other dubious characters (how many Oldham BNP members are aware of Griffin sucking up to Gadaffi, for example?) or even understand what these things mean?(not entirely their fault.) It could be, however, that even where people do hear about all this, things have reached such a situation that they don't much care. I am, therefore, prepared to believe that there are plenty of 'protesting' people in places like Oldham who are well - meaning in their own way and have voted BNP in the belief that they stand for a 'fair deal for the whites' and so on. It is my belief, however, that most of these people have based their vote on their dislike of other races much more than the criticisms of the overall sytem that the BNP now makes (not all of which are wrong.)
The roots of all this lie in the growing polarisation of the different Asian communities and the white population in Oldham. This began in the mid - 1980s, and grew almost without anybody noticing it. It is partly due to a new generation of Pakistani and Bengali youths, some of whom have taken it upon themselves that they 'will no longer take any shit off the whites.' They interpret this as dishing out to the white people of the town the kind of thing that has always been given to 'their own' by white racists. In the past 'Paki bashing' was as prevelant in Oldham as it was in other, similar places - although no more so. The Asians largely took this passively, the only exceptions being when the NF tried to march (1980 and '87) when their mobilisation was remarkable in both its level of organisation and militancy; the difference in those days was that this was done in unity with white anti - fascists and the only white targets were fascists and open racists. Generally, though, there wasn't a serious problem in the town, although large sections of the white and Asian populations viewed each other with mutual (usually passive) suspicion.
Asian youths, as much as their white counterparts, are as prey to all the nonsense that engulfs us all in this consumer society - the drivel churned out by the media and advertising. They are just as much prey to the drug dealers and other criminals who flourish amidst poverty. They are just as influenced by the gang culture that the media and advertising simultaneously glorify and bemoan. That some amongst the Pakistani and Bengali populations of the town have started their despicable anti - white campaign of attacks -usually against outnumbered and isolated white males - should be no real surprise in a society that both hypocritically pushes a 'everybody love each other' message alongside the glorification of the kind of system that, more than it has ever done, leads to obscene inequality and poverty, and is now doing so when people are increasingly cut off and isolated from each other, and encouraged to see each other as rivals more than we ever have before.
It also exacerbates the perception that has always existed among whites that 'the Pakis get everything.' This is untrue, as anybody in his right mind who walks through an Asian area of the town would be able to see - is Westwood in any better state than neighbouring white districts, for example? The attitude is a reflection of white working class demoralisation; the idea that 'they' give money away to everybody but us. It is based around the acceptance of your own powerlessness towards the actions of 'them,' and is rooted in the absence of visible political alternatives. Lacking any real self - confidence, you wait in vain for 'them' to come to your aid with more and bigger grants for your area, and so on. Now the BNP seeks to provide whites with that alternative, but while not genuinely believing that 'the Pakis get everything' they secretly revel in such attitudes, picking out the instances where an Asian district got favourable treatment (yes, it does happen, just as it does in reverse, although it isn't part of an overall plan to do down the whites.) In convincing whites that 'us' and 'them' don't belong in the same society, such perceptions are vital, helping them to portray a society where unnatural race - mixing costs millions to enforce.
The alternative to this unfolding disaster is to rebuild soldarity across the working class - the de - racialising of problems that plain common - sense tells you are class issues, based on the exploitation of labour by the rich. Even if it were true that different races don't belong in the same society (which it is not and never has been - there have never been any racially pure societies), the fact is that we do - and to reverse this - don't fool yourself, W Joyce, into thinking that there are not many, many, among the minorities who would not leave without resistance, especially those born here - would involve horrors to great to contemplate - at least to all but the real psychos. There is simply no choice but to rebuild that solidarity as a tool to creating a different kind of society where people wouldn't nees to be at others throats all the time, for whatever reason, racial or otherwise.
By the way, W.Joyce, the BNP may talk class politics now, but that is merely tactical; their view of hierarchies between races leads inevitably to hierarchies within them -and the working class would not be at the top. This fact is also rooted in the classic fascist view - to be found in articles on the BNP site about 'natural' abilities within and between races and the inevitablity of struggle in every aspect of life etc, etc.
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