Andrew Stuttaford is surely right that having agitprop thugs hurling eggs and busting up press conferences by the newly elected British National Party members of the European Parliament will prove counter-productive. If you wanted to devise a strategy guaranteed to drive more and more of the “Old Labour” vote into the arms of the BNP, putting up a plonking leftist drone hooting halfwitted slogans on behalf of something called “Unite Against Fascism” (backed by David Cameron and all the other biens pensants) would seem to be the easiest way to do it. If the UAF board isn’t on the BNP payroll, it ought to be.
Andrew is also wise to be wary when the agitprop drones use words like “legitimate.” What this means is that a small politico-media coterie in fashionable London postal districts decides the bounds of public discourse, and, if the knuckledragging masses have other topics they’d like to discuss, tough: they should know their place. It’s the narrowness of Donna Guthrie-defined “legitimacy” that has helped create Britain’s first electorally viable fascists.
I’m glad to see some folks are already wearying of the huffin’ an’ a-puffin’ of mainstream pols professing their “horror” at the BNP’s electoral success. James Delingpole has a sharp piece in the Telegraph, mocking the plaints of those for whom “multiculturalism” is merely a societal fashion accessory. I like this comment by Ed West:
I was just saying how awful the BNP were to my Polish cleaner yesterday. She agreed, as did my Chinese nanny, Wen or Yen, or whatever her name is. My Brazilian catamite wasn’t that bothered.
As Andrew has also pointed out, many of Europe’s new and thriving neo-nationalist and quasi-fascist parties are (in line with the Goldberg thesis) broadly “left-wing” on the economy. No doubt most of them would prove entirely incompetent wielders of the levers of power. But in present circumstances economic protectionism plus cultural protectionism is a potentially potent combination. And, if Ms. Guthrie and her celebrity supporters are anything to go by, the establishment is too stupid to come up with an effective response.