The legitimising of the BNP

An interesting debate occurred this morning. It was in response to a letter by Norman Tebbit in the Daily Telegraph. Yes, the Chingford Skinhead himself, making one of his rare appearances in modern life, explaining how the BNP are, in fact, a dangerously left wing organisation. He was countered by Billy Bragg (eh? Since when have pop singers been the main voice of opposition to peers? Oh... But I digress...) who eloquently pointed out how most of his stance was just Norm trying to shore up support for the Tory right, which is leaking away to UKIP and the British Nazi Party. But he did miss a key point, which was to emphasise the difference between Socialist economics and Fascist economics. And whilst both may advocate nationisation, the point is that with Fascism, this is to use the resources of the state to shore up Capitalism, whereas with socialism, it is as part of taking control of the economy out of the hands of a small number of people, and placing it in the hands of the majority of society.
Which, of course, is another aspect missed by the BNP - they completely ignore the needs of huge swathes of society, based upon wholly pseudo-scientific beliefs about "race".
And this is to completely ignore the obvious argument that the so-called "British" Nationalist Party has no connexion with Britain - it espouses a philosophy developed in central Europe sixty-odd years ago, and which Britain fought against in the last world war.
A harder line needs to be taken in the media against Nick Griffin and co. They've been getting away with spreading their lies for too long. Unfortunately, the likes of the Daily Mail seem to propogate the same opinions, demonstrating that Fascism is, essentially, a middle-class disease.
But that probably deserves an entry all to itself....

When dominant ideologies are challenged...

It's instructive to observed the reaction of adherents to dominant ideologies when their orthodoxy is challenged. They not merely don't like it, they like to pretend that they're defending a minority position, and are assailed from all sides by legions. Thus, we can have racist bigots pretending they are simply defending their "right" to be "politically incorrect" when people complain.
Or, more trivially, we can have pop singers whinging. This week, Louise Wener, the former singer with 90s student band, Sleeper, was given a column in the Guardian to defend parenthood. Now I don't know about anyone else, but I haven't seen parenthood under attack much. There's plenty of books from "lifestyle" columnists about how to cope with having babies and writing newspaper columns, and so on (precious little about how to be a single mum and hold down a job in Tescos, with possibly a second job somewhere else, since your first one isn't paying you enough to bring up your child, but that's a whole different kettle of squirrels).
However, amongst all these books, Louise took offense at two, which called into question whether parenthood was all that great. That's right, two books amongst countless show that parents are an oppressed minority.
Well boo-fucking-hoo, Louise. I really feel for you. I feel for you, as your child screams its way over Europe on my plane. I feel for you as your child races up and down the railway carriage, stealing everything and yelling, as I'm trying to have a conversation. I feel for you as your child mugs another pensioner. But please, leave the fucking victimhood to those who it really applies to...

Guardian Article

I would like to recommend the following piece by Ian McEwan which appeared in Saturday's Guardian.
Apart from his espousal of David Deutch's book "The Fabric Of Reality" which was flawed by his lack of understanding of mathematical logic, and relative computability in particular. But I won't go into that here.
The article is at:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1743898,00.html