Monday 8 June 2009

the bnp

so we're waking up today in a country that has representatives voted in from the bnp. doubtless there's a an argument, certainly the bnp maintain it, that this is somehow good for a representative democracy, that it gives voice to racists and jew haters and at last a position for that traditionally under-represented group, the white man.

the only comparable experience i can remember is when the news that thatcher was gone came. i can't remember who phoned, only that they did phone. i needed an hour away i told my co-workers, then went off to find someone else british. thatcher's gone i said and a few of us took ourselves away, much to the bemusement of our colleagues, and we sat looking out at the park, not speaking as if at last, something was over.

which of course it wasn't. regardless of anyone's views on thatcher her views changed a generation. labour mutated into tony blair and while in scotland socialism remained a word in the form of the ssp they did what socialists do best and concentrated on fighting each other, their 'radicalism' staring and finishing with tommy sheridan's ability to keep his trousers on. meanwhile the leaden bipartisan nature of british politics was entrenched and 'single issue' politics was somehow presented as 'a good thing'.

and so it somes to this. and almost no-one in the hospital seemed to care. i told them stories about the old days, of fighting with the nf, anti fascist action and the like but, even to me, it sounded like another world, another person. finally one of my colleagues, who's ages with me, noticing i was a bit absent, asked me what was the matter. i told her and she agreed. i can't believe it she said, people should be rioting in the fucking streets.

i'm profoundly depressed. what was i doing all those years. my dad talks about 'darkies' as a freedom of speech issue, my mum thinks the bnp 'have a point', many of the twenty somethings at work can say, without a trace of doubt, that we have 'too many rights'. how did it come to this? i have an odd feeling as i sit looking out at my garden, all those history books at the back of me, all that story telling, that it was all superfluous.

10 comments:

Rachel Fox said...

Yes.

We got one of their leaflets through the door which really surprised me (does anyone in Scotland vote BNP?). The first time we got one (in Yorkshire) I wrote to everybody I could think of to complain ('I don't want this filth in my house' etc.). They're just repulsive. But of course some people like hate and always have. There's never any shortage of people queuing up to join in whatever atrocity they decide on when it comes to it, is there?

Rachel Fox said...

I was just looking at the BBC election page...according to that 27,174 people did vote BNP in Scotland. Am I reading that right?

swiss said...

i can't find that stat but i'd be unsurprised

Rachel Fox said...

Although of course compared to the 100.000s voting for them in England... It's one of the things I was more and more repulsed by when I last lived in England (t'north)...so many 'white' people assuming that (like them) I would 'hate pakis' (and 'paki' seemed to have become a fairly loose term).

Marion McCready said...

479 people in my constituency voted BNP, makes you rage doesn't it. I'm not a firm believer in democracy though because of this kind of thing.

Anonymous said...

I was raised by white people and the message I was given by my family was that pakis, niggers, chinks n redskins were stupid, lazy and a detriment to lovely clean white society. As a native child, I was an exception... Barely...

Try being called paki by your brothers!!! Another hilarity was when they talked to me in the stereotypical drunken Indian accent. My parents thought it was a good laugh, too until the neighbors started in on me. Then the tide changed and now the lot of them can even talk to the gays without using a baseball bat to do it.

Don't ask me why these types of people decided to adopt a native Indian girl.... I guess my initial cuteness got to them.... But the fact is Alberta was pretty much a Canadian Dixieland in those days. Now we are a rich mosaic of cultures.... And my city does everything to tone them down, all the colors. It is a tradition to give visiting dignitaries a big white cowboy hat, as we are living in cowboy country. That dickwad who was in charge when tiannamen square happened was given one. Loads of taxpaying people complained but bah, what do they matter.

I get scared cos I am seeing more swastikas around than ever. There was a white pride parade not too long ago. Talk about stereotyping, a load of scuzzy skinheads who look like they can just about count to five.


Our current prime minister is a sweatervest login calgarian who is doing everything he can to keep Canada gay free. He is so vocal about it that I suspect that he tried picking up men in the bushes at the Zoo but after numerous rejections he decided if he can't join them he will use his powers to deny them their rights to have civil unions! LOL


Anyway, at the white pride parade (possibly funded by our cowboy milquetoast mayor) the police outnumbered the protesters 10 to 1 and the anti racists outnumbered them both. Things are looking up!

Anonymous said...

P.a. I do not think it's ok to use all the nasty racist terms that I did, but it is truly the lingo of my childhood. It makes me cringe to see them in type.

swiss said...

i know that england's different and i can't really speak for them not having lived there since i was too wee to notice but i have this sense that i live in some sort of lala land where i'm lucky enough to work with people from all over and to pretend to myself that really, we all just get along, when in fact we don't.

in scotland one only has to look at an old firm game or go out on the streets if it's the anniversary of the battle of the boyne to see all the old bigotries paraded.

not that if i lay the guardian reader inme aside there isn't plenty of new ones to see with a bit of effort. in my last hospital we had significant problems with muslims bullying each other on faith grounds. it was tremendously difficult to deal with not only because of language and faith but because the people involved were either racists or embarassed.

the most 'amusing' incident i had, again same hospital was when i ahd some of the (indian)boys round after a night out. i thought i'd play them some indian music to surprise them, which it did, except for one who declared if i was going to listen to indian music i should make sure it wasn't punjabi music because 'those people, they're thieves and liars'. what was interesting was not that such views were expressed but, tho i was the only whitey in the room, they shouldn't have been expressed in front of me.

even so, i like my whirly birly life and i hate a dialogue that suddenly casts us into 'us' and 'them' but what to do?

swiss said...

certainly not, as happened today, prevent the bnp from speaking as protestors did today. not only did they halt any opportunity to expose the bnp for the vacuous racist idiots they are. not only did these 'protestors' express the same contempt for free speech and public assembly that those they're protesting against would surely quickly curb but they gave nick griffin such a golden pr occasion it was almost as if they'd been paid by him beforehand.

not that griffin needed to do this. instead he had a platform where he can point the finger at the protestors, say again how much he is picked on and claim without a shade of protest from a passive media that the protestors were 'organised by the labour party and funded by the taxpayer'

Anonymous said...

gross!!!