From start to finish it was pathetically misguided, and poorly executed. It became, inevitably, a demonising exhibition of Nick Griffin and his values. No issues were tackled, the Conservatives seem to think an immigration cap is a viable or practical platform on which to conduct their immigration policy; I am completely bemused as to what Labour feel towards it. Straw mentioned the impossible nature of putting a cap on population: Well, they're not the same thing there. The show should have been a platform for us to vilify the abhorrent bigotry of the BNP and their values; it should not have been us attacking Nick Griffin.
You want a reason to galvanize an underground for support of someone? Antagonise their electorate by berating their leader; instead of showing how obtuse and unpleasant the policy is.
The Baroness' only argument was ad hominem towards Jack Straw: It demonstrated absolutely nothing about what the conservatives would 'do' for us. Greer made some fairly transparent and surrealist cherry-picked arguments, which bore no real relevance to the issues that were being discussed. Chris Huhne, at least, attempted to show Nick Griffin and the BNP for what they really were, and are. Fortunately, he made the heinous mistake of admitting the classic fascist line: 'Moderation to win votes, extremism once in power'. Hopefully the people watching have been able to see the party for what they are; hopefully the British public realise that electing anyone who holds such hypocritical, contradictory, and baseless views, should never be allowed to gain even a modicum of power.
Why have we been left in a situation of such baseless idiocy within our mainstream political parties? Straw was as obtuse as any politician I have ever seen; he answered nothing with any real grace or zeal. His best answer used an image of the BNP "transmogrifying" from 'The National Front' etc., and that was apparently the answer to the question 'Have your parties' failings lead to the increased popularity of the BNP?' Wow, Jack, wow. Truly sublime. Ms. Baron-face or whatever her 'title' is made a terrible error in her assessment of civil-partnerships, and the entire panel managed to show its ignorance towards homosexuality. Whether it be Straw's demarcation between "gay and lesbian" (News just in: They're the same thing), or the Baroness's weird hypocrisy surrounding her views of civil partnerships. The only person who at least gave an honest answer, was Griffin: Granted it was a mindlessly bigoted, overzealous vilification of the teaching of sexuality to minors, but, well, at least it was honest. I'm not sure why he'd stand over here in extremist myopic policy, oh, no, wait, that's the foundation, oh, OK.
They kept making terrible allusions to associations between Griffin and leading extremist figures, such as Gadafe, or a former sub-sect leader of the KKK, but they never pressed home the advantage. You take the insult to the personality, and use it to show the ramifications to the party policy. You don't just laugh and belittle a man for holding fascist views: All that does is show people why you're spineless. It was terrible interrogation born from ignorance of the other panellists: They all seemed ill-equipped to deal with the questions put to them, instead choosing to cherry-pick the questions and answer their own self-appointed ones. It was classic politics, but it wasn't demonstrably useful to the goal of the show. The BBC was right to give Griffin this platform - the censoring of fascism is an irony too great to ignore - but the booker was not right to get such uneducated, and ill-informed guests.
On the issue of Jan Moir, they were all utterly terrible. Unlike the US, where they basically have free reign, we have alluded caveats which stipulate that any article needs to avoid latent ability to insight any hatred born from inequality. In the printing of the article, and the writing, not only were they in breach of moral standards set down within any cultured society (or at least until the BNP come to power), but they also failed to live up the PCC's code of conduct. The sub, if there is one in such a paper, should have realised the shit-storm that kind of inaccurate and prurient journalism would have produced.
Grievous errors. Indefensible stupidity. Demonising masquerading as politics.
I will say, however, that by attempting to ostracise Griffin himself, they did manage to show him for the monster that he is - so that's good. They managed to draw out the hypocrisy and inconsistency of his ideologies (mainly re: Homosexuality and civil partnerships); they also managed to show what would happen to the country if we were to elect this kind of person to power. He said it himself, it was the beginning of any tyrannical leadership throughout history: 'Moderation > Facism'. Was that not how the Nazi's got in? What they also did, on the other hand, is show themselves to be spineless and weak. No wonder we've got such widespread disenfranchisement and voter apathy: Partisan politics fought solely on one-upmanship.
No comments:
Post a Comment