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A disturbing and thought provoking contribution on labourlist.org

http://www.labourlist.org/very_low_turnout_in_some_areas_so_far#Comment24278"The problem is that it's very hard to get over to many voters just how unpleasant and stupid the BNP are. And the left has problem that it has devalued the language to the point that it's no longer easy to mark the BNP out from the average voter.Consider. They're racist: but the word nitty-gritty is racist, and objecting to genital mutilation is racist, and believing that women are entitled to vote in a voting station rather than under the watchful gaze of their husband if they have brown skin is racist. Everyone is racist. So what makes calling the BNP racist effective?They're fascist. But the Israeli government is fascist, George Bush is fascist, the US is fascist. Everyone is fascist. So what makes calling the BNP fascist effective?They're homophobic. But a lot of the Muslim `community leaders' that the Labour Party have cosied up to lately are pretty homophobic too, and they get funded by Labour councils. What makes the BNP's homophobia worse than your local iman's?They're sexist, too. But then, as Labour now regard mutilating young girls' genitals and forcing them into marriages where they are raped as merely cultural difference and declines to either legislate or take action, that the BNP regards women as suitable only for Kinder, Küche, Kirche is hardly a mark against them, as Labour are relaxed about their new friends who believe similarly for `their' women.They're anti-semitic. Here it gets worse: we have SWPies going around saying that they're being persecuted by people funded by the money `they' stole from Lehmann Brothers, and unions jumping to the defense of anti-semitic nonsense taken from KKK websites as being progressive. So calling the BNP anti-semitic doesn't cut it: anti-semitism is no longer the taboo it was.So as `racist' is now something people are inured to, as Labour activists use it of pretty well everyone, and `fascist' ditto, while `anti-semitic' is pretty much Labour policy these days (all those Birmingham MPs hanging around with Hamas activists), what makes the BNP uniquely dangerous?And let's not even start on how `british jobs for british workers' is Labour conference policy as well as the BNP slogan. How can that be bad, when Gordon Brown is calling for it?I know they're an appalling racist fascist party for whom violence is a second language who are incapable of articulating a policy that isn't dangerous and bigoted. You know that too. But sadly, the left has devalued those words to the point people aren't listening any more. I couldn't get over to my BNP-voting neighbour who the BNP are, because he's fed up of being called racist and sexist and homophobic..."Tokyo Nambu @ 8:49 pm, Thu 4th Jun 2009

Colin Murphy ● 6201d8 Comments

That's the moral of the post.

Colin Murphy ● 6201d

In Germany they first came for the communits, I didn't  speak up because I wasn't a communist.Then they came for the jews, and I diidnt speak up because I wasn't a Jew.Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I was protestant.Then they came for me-And by that time no one was left to speak up.

Dave Hughes ● 6201d

Okay then, Colin. Enjoy the rest of the thread.

Robin Taylor ● 6201d

You did say they should be thrown out. I said they already left (as I did 7 years ago).

Colin Murphy ● 6201d

It's what you do all the time.

Colin Murphy ● 6201d

What on EARTH has that got to do with it?Why start a thread on one subject and so quickly veer onto something else?

Robin Taylor ● 6201d

They've probably already left. They've been driven (or more appropriately ridden). Lies, broken promises, deceits.Perhaps by asking what people want instead of telling them, will invigorate an electorate.To my mind, and at the root of many of the problems we face today, was the abject failure of a historical Labour government to embark upon the biggest social housing construction project the country has ever seen, instead of vanity projects, crusades and authoritarian diktat.I believe that the LDs will become the party of opposition, with Labour consigned to a generation as the third party (not fourth, per the prescient Prescott).

Colin Murphy ● 6201d

Whoever wrote that s**t should be thrown out of the party (if, indeed, they are really a member of the Labour Party - which I doubt).Who says that "objecting to genital mutilation is racist"? I have never heard anyone say that. Certainly no anti racist would claim such a thing. As for "believing that women are entitled to vote in a voting station rather than under the watchful gaze of their husband if they have a brown skin is racist". Well, it's pretty obvious that whoever made that remark is an anti-anti-racist. They are simply seeking to insult and malign those of us who hate racism.The implication of the above remark is either (1) that they think people with brown skins are genetically predisposed to ill-treat women (a racist remark if ever there was one); or (2) that those of us who are on the left somehow try to justify these medieval cultural practices in the name of anti racism.This is the latest in a long line of mischievous and contemptible efforts at trying to discredit the entirely worthy cause of anti-racism. It all began in the 1980s with the Daily Mail and Ray Honeyford.By the way, people know exactly what we in the Labour Party mean when we attack the BNP for being racist. Any normal person would agree with us.

Robin Taylor ● 6201d