When you cross the line into extremism.

The recent British National Party leadership challenge couldn’t have ended in a worse way for them with the incumbent leader Nick Griffin winning by the narrowest of margins 50.2% - 49.8%, or a mere 9 votes. It has effectively split the party right down the middle with talk already from the losing half of forming a rival but respectable ethno-nationalist party.

There lies their problem because ethno-nationalism and respectability do not come out in the same breath. “Respectable ethno-nationalism” is an oxy-moron of the greatest type. In fact ethno-nationalism itself is a BNP phrase to make their brand of politics look acceptable. For the uninitiated, ethno-nationalists believe in dividing up the inhabitants of their country according to their skin colours. It is disrespectful and never respectful and the country has shown this at the ballot box over and over again. To further justify themselves they call the rest of us civic nationalists. Civic becomes a redundant adjective in front of nationalist because to be a national you have to be a citizen (civic).

Nationalism in its simplest form is showing support for your nation, country or culture. The ethno-nationalists as they call themselves have gone one step further to include people and that makes them ultra nationalist for they have crossed the line from respectability to extremism.

The recent sad events in Norway has given some of these ultra nationalist a chance to come out of their shell with some trying to find justification for the tragic events by blaming the Norwegian government, the media, the new world order and the Muslims. In fact blaming anyone but Anders Behring Breivik himself, clearly a psychopath and nutcase spurred on by right wing rhetoric on the internet particularly from the English Defence League and the British National Party. Whether one has sympathy for the EDL’s cause or not you have to remember that they were formed out of the football hooligans’ organisation Casuals United with its leader being a former BNP member with a conviction for assault on an off duty police officer. There are close ties between the EDL and BNP.

Even the newly formed British Freedom Party who pretends to have a degree of respectability have close links with the EDL with their own web master being the designer of the EDL’s web site and the BFP leader Peter Mullins is on record as seeing the EDL as a voter base and claimed in an email to supporters that Breivik couldn’t be a far right neo nazi because he was wealthy, upper middle class, university educated, business owning, multiple property owning, middle ranking free mason. A perfect description of BNP leader Nick Griffin.

Anders Behring Breivik didn’t only cross the line; he jumped into another dimension rarely seen in peace time. One of the island survivors is quoted as saying “He walked tall and proud just like a Nazi.” Without even being there most of us can imagine from that description the fear those young people must have gone through.
The young people he killed were up and coming potential politicians. Regardless of what you think of their views, they believed in the ballot box. Anders Behring Breivik believed in the bullet and the bomb. There is no excuse for murder.

It is what happens when you turn your hatred of something into a hatred of someone. Where nationalism may show a dislike for Islam, the EU or multi-culturism, ultra nationalism turns itself on the people.

The Freedom Democrats brand of modern nationalism is anti Islam but it doesn’t hate Muslims. We would prefer them to leave Islam and would offer support to those that do. It is anti European Union but doesn’t hate Europeans. It wishes to see a mono-cultural Britain but accepts that people previously from other cultures now live here. More importantly it recognises that Britain is now a multi-racial society and no amount of flag waving, rhetoric or violence is going to transform us back to a pre 1948 era.

Some BNP members looking for a new political home would not fit in to the Freedom Democrats without a radical shift in ideology. However those members with a BNP history will know of many, just like us, with a moderate outlook and are far from extreme, merely wishing to change the country by political means into one that is mono-cultural, independent from the EU nation and protected from mass immigration and colonisation by Islam. They would be welcome.