It is easy to quote ‘I disagree with what you say but I defend your right to say it to the death’ as a principle if you only think about it in an abstract manner and never in any concrete situation.

If people such as Tory had ever tried systematically campaigning against the BNP they would soon realise the BNP are not like any other democratic political party – they aim in fact to be – to quote Nick Griffin himself, ‘a strong, disciplined organisation with the ability to back up its slogan ‘Defend Rights for Whites’ with well-directed boots and fists. When the crunch comes, power is the product of force and will, not of rational debate.’
http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/the-real-bnp/the-BNP-in-their-own-words.php

If Tory or fresher has themselves been on the recieving end of such fists and boots of BNP thugs for arguing against the BNP then I of course apologise. But that is why seasoned anti-racist campaigners tend to understand the BNP do not deserve the ‘right to free speech’ because they do not win arguments and persuade people through rational argument normally – but rather through intimidation of any opponent. Take for example the death threats and violence meted out to members of UAF recently for example.

The tragedy of course is that giving Hitler a free platform to try and counter him was a strategy that was tried in Weimar Germany itself – and it failed. There were people who went to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps still arguing fascists should have the right to free speech.

But ‘the right to free speech’ does not exist in a vacuum – it exists alongside other ‘rights’ – such as the ‘right to be free from racial harassment and intimidation’. Wherever the BNP organise and operate racial attacks go up in that area. That is in part why NUS – the National Union of Students – has as policy the no platform policy which has kept the BNP’s presence on university campuses in britain to a minimum. It has also meant that university campuses are generally safe places to be – places where black asian and jewish students can walk around without fear of violence.

No one is in favour of absolute free speech when they really think about it. If you were in a crowded cinema or lecture theatre would you have the right to shout out ‘fire – everyone out’ if there actually was no fire? Would your right to shout out an untruth override everyone else’s convenience and feelings? No.

Or if I went around putting up posters around campus saying ‘The head of the Tory society on campus is a paedophile’ would ‘Tory’ say – ‘those posters are fine – leave them up there – you may not agree with the view expressed but lets tolerate it being up there as it is only a point of view’? I suspect not – I suspect indeed those posters would be taken down immediately as they would be blatantly untrue. And rightly so – because in any civilised society we have a modicum of respect for the truth and a sense of common decency.

And yet Tory would apparently be willing for a BNP member to stand up in a debate or be on question time and spout out racist untruths for example ‘All Muslims are paedophiles’ or ‘all Muslims are terrorists’ or some other blatant untruth while people should just all sit and listen in silence and respect for the speaker? Please.

In a society where racism is on the increase and people are looking around for scapegoats in the midst of the economic crisis as ‘Anon’ says above, many people are going to be sympathetic to the BNP because of their anti-immigrant policies. The BNP are desperate to try and portray themselves as just a respectable anti-immigrant party that has nothing to do with fascism but is instead say ‘conservative nationalist’ or something – the BNP would love to be thought of as ‘conservative nationalist’ rather than fascist – and would be very pleased some people like fresher have been taken in by their propaganda.

Lets try and learn from history though – we know now what people did not know in the 1920s – about where fascism leads and what fascism is about. Lets not give modern apologists for fascism and fascists like the BNP the credibility and respectability and publicity they so desperately crave – lets instead work to expose and unmask their attempts to portray themselves as a ‘political party’ instead of a bunch of racist thugs and Hitler lovers.

Well, that doesn’t seem to work. It doesn’t work because first of all people are not perfectly rational and because racism is not a set of ‘misguided policies’, it is a collective psychological need that results from certain social circumstances. When facing hardship, people will always need to rationalise and the easier way to do that is to find a scapegoat to blame for their problems. No logical argument can stand against this psychological defense mechanism; it would be a great mistake to underestimate people’s ability to fool themselves.

To ban freedom of speech – as essentially you are proposing – would remove the point of our democracy. We can not fly that flag over the BNP if we do not uphold that simple value.

Secondly, I think that we should let the BNP talk. They’ll make fools enough of themselves when they open their mouths. We don’t have to do that for them. Plus, if they are an elected party, the only way to hold them to account is to allow them to speak.

Thirdly, I don’t care if the BNP deny the Holocaust: EVERY child in Europe knows that it happened. It’s just not something that could be faked and the BNP have not presented one single convincing argument as to why they believe the Holocaust never happened, just as they do not present convincing arguments about their own policies.

Fourthly, to ‘Freshers’ comment. He is right. Your name, UAF, is technically incorrect, thus making your patronising remarks towards “Fresher” rather funny, really. Perhaps you should rethink your name if you want people to take you seriously. Perhaps you should also stop throwing eggs at elected politicians in one moment, and then in the next waving the flag of democracy.

‘Having read the manifesto’ – dear lord – if you think you know about the BNP because you have read their website then…well. Did Hitler’s Nazi party say ‘we are going to crush all democracy and build concentration camps for anyone who disagrees with us and try and murder the entire Jewish population’ when they were running for election before 1933? No. Just as the BNP today don’t say ‘we admire Hitler and his Nazis and we want to be like them’ in their manifesto either.

When anti-fascists call the BNP fascist or neo-Nazi it is not because we think they are just racist or nasty. There are lots of racists and nasty people in society – indeed you can find individuals like this in all the mainstream political parties. No, we call them fascists because the BNP is led by hardcore fascists who admire the Nazis, deny the Holocaust and hate black, asian and particularly Jewish people with as much venom as Adolf Hitler. That distinguishes them quite considerably from ‘conservative nationalists’:

‘Griffin, one of two BNP candidates narrowly elected to the European parliament in June, denies six million Jews were murdered by Hitler’s Nazi regime in the Holocaust.

He has a conviction for this.

One of Griffin’s best friends is the hard-line Italian fascist Roberto Fiore, who was a member of the terrorist group that carried out the 1980 bombing of Bologna rail station killing 85 people.

Fiore was welcomed by the BNP at last month’s “Red, White and Blue festival”.

Andrew Brons, the BNP MEP for Yorkshire and Humberside, was convicted in 1983 after attending a march in Leeds where Nazis were chanting “white power” and “death to Jews”.’

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=19009

Surely what is good about what you call ‘the British way of life’ are things that ordinary working people in Britain – black and white – immigrants and what you call ‘British born and bred’ – have fought for and built up together – like the NHS – or the right to vote which had to be fought and won by ordinary people against the governments of the day. No wonder the BNP hates the NHS – precisely it is a symbolic reminder that different ‘races’ can live and work side by side together day after day and so provides living proof of the fallacy of their racist ideology.

This response to that attack from the latest UAF mailing:
http://www.uaf.org.uk/news.asp?choice=90717

BNP leader Nick Griffin used his first speech in the European parliament this week to attack Unite Against Fascism.

In a bizarre and paranoid rant he described UAF as a “militia” that “routinely deploys intimidation and violence against nationalist dissidents against Britain”.

Strangely enough Griffin didn’t find time to mention the BNP membership card that was picked up recently during police raids on suspected neo-Nazi terrorists – raids that netted rocket launchers, grenades, pipe bombs and dozens of firearms.

Neither did he mention Simon Sheppard, the former BNP organiser jailed last week for whipping up race hatred over the web, nor Robert Cottage, the former BNP candidate jailed in 2007 for bomb-making.

The truth is that it is Griffin’s BNP that “routinely deploys intimidation and violence” against its opponents, black people, Muslims, gays – and anyone it doesn’t like the look of.

But Griffin was right about one thing: UAF is completely dedicated to driving him and his gang of Nazi thugs out of our lives.

That’s why we’re calling everyone who opposes the BNP to come to our Stop Britain’s Nazis conference on Saturday in Manchester – and to get down to Codnor, Derbyshire, on Saturday 15 August to protest against the BNP’s fascist rally being held there that weekend.

Quoting a few loony-left fascist web links, including your own and one, which is run by a convicted burglar and fraudster is proof of your naivety. You should give the York students more credibility, as they will not be fooled by you or any other SWP front group.

The answer to their bogus claim can be found here:

http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/4405043.BNP_organiser_may_sue_over____racism____arrest/

http://www.civilliberty.org.uk/newsdetail.php?newsid=626

Interesting the Northern Echo and Phil Wilson, Labour MP for Sedgefield were the perpetrators of the Auschwitz misquote and hurriedly copied by reiterated and distorted by the useful idiots.

The real quote was, “The present-day Auschwitz Memorial Museum is run and marketed more on the lines of a theme park”, and in no way refers to the terrible suffering of the inmates by the atrocities committed by the Nazis during the 1930s and 40s until liberation.

But then, Tony Dowling and the North East UAF will never let the truth get in their way.

Listen to Tony Dowling at a North East UAF meeting here: http://www.civilliberty.org.uk/resources/uaf_newcastle_20090609.wav

Back to the Nouse article – Even though the paper is sickeningly anti-BNP by your own admission and blatantly obvious by the various adjectives etc thrown in. However, you still offered us the courtesy of our viewpoint, though biased and selectively edited. Still it was a small positive sign in keeping with democracy and the individuals right to decide when making their own choices.

With reference to sectarianism, did you forget to mention that I am a Catholic or did the dark underbelly of your thinking get in the way? Perhaps the overzealous cut and paste effort suffered to many cuts in the remedial edit.

On a brighter note now I have the updated figures, the BNP newspaper, The Voice of Freedom circulation and subscription figures are at an all time high and so is the party’s popularity.

Having two elected MEPs should see a knock-on effect in the next round of local elections and general election, as it has definitely boosted our voter credibility.

And also Ken Booth has compared the death camp at Auschwitz to Disneyland: http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/index.php?link=template&story=211

A quick google search told me this – and yet Nouse apparently still thought it appropriate to allow the Nazi Booth to promote the myth of BNP ‘respectability’ in their paper – why?

Also if Booth is a second year at York Uni – isn’t Nouse at all worried that the BNP regional organiser for the North East around on campus? How might Jewish, black, asian or international students feel about their safety now – given racist attacks have already gone up after the BNP breakthrough?
See here: http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=18366

Finally, why does Nouse allow BNP members like ‘BNP man’ and others above to comment on stories like this – fascists should be banned from student sites like this. If Booth is a student at York University, I also hope the student union and University take appropriate action to ensure that the safety of jewish, black and asian students on our multicultural campus come first – there is no place for Nazi scum like Booth at a place like York University.

Just to let you know, you printed a large part of the article above twice. Other than that, it was an interesting read.