Fisking The Beaver
The LSE’s weekly student newspaper, The Beaver, seems to have gone into a right panic about Michael’s assertion that the BNP are in fact an extreme left wing organisation, and not a product of the political right.
The crux of the argument is that the BNP are a nationalist, authoritarian and protectionist party – all of which are extreme left wing ideas. They are also a vile racist party. Does “National Socialists” ring any bells? Anyway, I thought I’d go over the article in question.
The leader of the Conservative party’s youth wing has refused to join a LSE [sic] Students’ Union campaign against the British National Party unless it is identified as a left-wing party.
So there you have it – Conservative Future is more than ready to join the LSE’s campaign, just as long as the LSE talk about it in accurate terms.
Michael Rock, the national chair of Conservative Future, declined to support a Union drive against the BNP ahead of European parliamentary elections in June.
Unless, as stated, the correct political terminology is used.
Rock was on Houghton Street to discuss coordinating the Union’s anti-ID card stance with the Conservatives’ national NO2ID campaign.
We’re involved with NO2ID because we are libertarians – a key part of conservatism. Authoritarian left wing organisations, like the BNP, believe in this kind of state control. We as conservatives, do not.
Rock told the Beaver that he “would find it very difficult to authorise a coordinated campaign against the BNP if the terms of discourse and engagement are not properly defined.”
So define them properly then. Problem solved.
“The BNP are a party of hate and have their roots in the left-wing traditions of fascism,” he said.
Along with other National Socialists like Hitler and Mussolini.
“The consistent mislabelling of extremist parties is very damaging to liberal democracy, as it creates false tensions and misaligns people with causes they do not understand fully,” Rock added.
As demonstrated by the Beaver’s mistaken belief that the BNP are right wing.
Union Education and Welfare officer Emmanuel Akpan-Inwang said that Rock had declined to run an anti-BNP campaign unless the BNP were outed as a far-left party. Akpan-Inwang said that he was “shocked and appalled” that Rock had refused to pledge Conservative Future’s support, and that the Students’ Union would “pursue this campaign with organisations that recognise the danger that the BNP present.”
Conservative Future certainly recognise the danger that the BNP present – that’s never been in doubt. We also recognise the danger of creating false political arguments in order to increase the ‘moral superiority’ of the left wing.
Union Residences Officer and Conservative party member Helen Roberts, who had introduced Rock to Akpan-Inwang and suggested the meeting, said she disagreed with Rock.
Roberts said that it was wrong to impose “pre-conditions on promoting an anti- BNP message” and that she denounced fascists “regardless of where they stand on the political spectrum.”
“On the one hand this, on the the other hand this…” Roberts tries to keep the peace.
Rock posted his position on the BNP on his blog on the Conservative Future website. The comments generated attention in the Conservative blogosphere over the weekend.
Rock was defended by political commentator Iain Dale and criticised by Welsh Assembly Member for Plaid Cymru Bethan Jenkins. Other LSE Students’ Union officials reacted angrily to Rock’s comments. Union General Secretary Aled Dilwyn Fisher said that it was “politically, historically and morally disgusting” to see the BNP as a far-left party. “If Conservative Future don’t want to join us in fighting fascism and racism, we will get on with it ourselves. I am shocked that he is more interested in bogus theoretical debates than the possibility of a fascist being elected in London to the European Parliament,” Fisher added.
Politically, historically and morally disgusting? Let’s deal with those individually. Politically disgusting? Well that’s just a matter of one’s politics – and whilst we all find the BNP disgusting, I don’t think it’s disgusting to debate political terminology. Historically disgusting? Well, the most disgusting periods of world history (Nazism, Communist oppression and totalitarianism) have all come from left wing ideology. As for it being morally disgusting, I stress again that the BNP’s politics may upset our morals but discussing the origins of their mistaken beliefs should not.
The BNP is regarded as racist and fascist across Britain’s political spectrum and the mainstream media. The party is committed to ending nonwhite immigration and to “voluntary” repatriation of immigrants and their descendants.
Its domestic policies include capital punishment and workers’ cooperatives. Party officials have said they would fight terrorism by banning Muslims from flying in and out of the country.
Workers’ Cooperatives: defined as having their political origins in
- The alleviation of alienation in the workplace, especially in regard to Marxist thought
- Radical but popular-democratic strategies for the overthrow of capitalism, for example, several strains of anarchist thought.
Sounds rather left wing to me.
The BNP has cultivated a moderate image in public since Nick Griffin became leader in 1999. Griffin was convicted in 1998 of incitement to racial hatred. Several other party members have criminal convictions. Griffin and other members have a history of antisemitism and Holocaust denial.
BNP candidate Richard Barnbrook won a London-wide seat in the London Assembly and gained 5.3 per cent of the mayoral vote in the May 2008 local elections.
So there you have it. A good old session of “Fisking the Beaver.” I hope it straightens one or two things out. I look forward to their response.
Thumbnail image: The Beaver
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spot on sir spot on!
Quite right too. I just wish our own commentators (Boris Johnson in Tuesday’s telegraph springs to mind) would stop labelling the BNP “extreme-right”.
Someone else who agrees with the Rock – speaking the same day as he was at the LSE:
http://thebeaveronline.co.uk/2009/02/controversy-stoked-at-liberal-fascism-talk.html
Good post, but I think you missed the point a bit. The one bit you didn’t respond to was the quote that you are “more interested in bogus theoretical debates than the possibility of a fascist being elected in London to the European Parliament”. Nobody said that debating where the BNP sit on a theoretical spectrum was itself wrong, although labouring this point seems to be the aim of this post. The problem that’s been identified is that you wouldn’t support a campaign until the terms were changed. I think its a case of knowing which fights to pick. If I weigh up the risks of mislabelling the BNP versus them actually getting some success, I certainly know where my priorities would lie.
I dont care much to get involved in the current ideological debate here,just the historical one: trying to back up your arguments by referring to the NSDAP and Italian Fascists as inherently socialist parties is gross revisionism.
Of course they displayed, in pure ideological terms, “socialist” tendencies (Mussolini’s dalliance with collectivism/corporatism, for example, Hitler’s nationalisation of key industries, gleichschaltung etc.) but they were utterly at odds with the political left. Both, in fact, defined themselves in no small part in opposition to communism (the NSDAP rose to power in no small part because of its promise to eradicate the red threat to Germany – a message that the mittelstand flocked to back).
And indeed, both Mussolini and Hitler’s parties were foisted into power by the complicity of the political and conservative right – Hitler by von papen, Mussolini by the King.
Both nazism and fascism found their roots too in nationalism, which historically, was a preserve of the right. Forget not that throughout the early half of the 20th century, socialist parties almost exclusively defined themselves by their internationalist agenda.
None of which is to say you can’t have socialist fascists (Stalin) just that Hitler and Mussolini were certainly not left wing.
The trouble is that you’re forgetting the longer history of conservatism – it wasn’t always a political movement driven by liberal market values, as todays UK conservatives might be.
All very nice and fluffy. However instead of participating in such discussion, is it not best to focus our efforts and attention on addressing the problems caused by the British National Party. Instead of the left and right seeking to point the finger at one another regarding who is to blame for the emergence of extreme nationalism in this country, is it not best to work together and support those working in areas blighted by the presence of extreme nationalism regardless of whether they are socialist, liberal, libertarian or conservative.
As for the notion that nationalism, authoritarianism and protectionism are somehow left wing concepts…and that libertarianism is a key part of conservatism – Your gonna have to expand on that one Christian. I think that is a slight oversimplification to be honest…
[...] Rock has decided to withold the organisation’s support for an anti-BNP campaign at the LSE. According to Deputy Chairman Christian May, this is because the student’s union rejected their demand that the BNP be reclassified an [...]
“Both nazism and fascism found their roots too in nationalism, which historically, was a preserve of the right”
Not particularly true, nationalism had distinctly liberal connotations in its original formulation as an expression of popular sovereignty, but was subsequently jumped on by elites and harnessed to “right-wing” ends.
@ Benjamin Gray – point taken. E.g. nationalism as anti-imperialism in the Austro-Hungarian empire / Eastern Europe.
I think though, the liberal/intellectual history of nationalism was quite quickly extinguished. For the most part, I’d say it has had a far greater association with the political right than the liberal centre. And certainly, till Stalin, hardly any with the left.
I suppose the point – going back the above post – is that it’s never so easily black and white.
I’d also agree completely with John Moorcroft above… all of this debate is, literally, academic. The point that conservative future have missed is in offering support against the BNP irregardless of a rather insular debate over politcal etymology (albeit one that gives us something to talk about)
Just because we’re having an academic debate (one that I feel is important) it doesn’t mean that we’re no longer against the BNP. You can take it as a given that CF is against the racist and authoritarian politics of fear and hate – but that doesn’t mean that we can’t discuss and debate the ideas and issues behind it, so that they are viewed in a correct political context.
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