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CfSC BNP report underplays anti-Muslim prejudice

Tuesday, 21 July 2009 10:14

The Centre for Social Cohesion last week published a report entitled, ‘The BNP and the Online Fascist Network’, which it claims, 'reveals that members and supporters of the BNP and its online activists display significant ideological affinity with key tenets of the neo-Nazi ideology. This included: support for violence; antisemitism and an admiration of the Third Reich; extreme racist views; and Holocaust denial.'

The report catalogues at length the prevalence of anti-semitic material on blogsites of BNP activists and neo-Nazi sympathizers, but the report’s blunder, and it’s a gaping one, is the near absence of mention and documentation of the BNP’s explicit anti-Muslim bigotry. The report’s executive summary mentions BNP support for violent attacks on Muslim women, but in subsections headed 'Support for violence; Antisemitism and an admiration of the Third Reich; Extreme racist views and Holocaust denial', the BNP's anti-Muslim racism warrants no subsection title, or section, of its own.

The report introduction states that, ‘The [racist] ideology is fuelled by a hatred which is very often directed specifically towards Jewish and Muslim communities and homosexuals as well as all non-white races’, but you will be at a loss to find commensurate documentation of anti-Muslim racism in the report.

While chapter and verse are cited of anti-semitic vocabulary, references and comments on the various blogsites associated with known BNP activists and neo-Nazis, the mention of anti Muslim bigotry on the same websites is virtually absent.

Take, for example, the section on Elizabeth Walton and her ‘Red Squirrel’ blogsite (p28). The report details the racist themes that pepper Walton’s ramblings and details various mentioned links which similarly carry references to racist, anti-Semitic material. But no mention of this, the homepage of Elizabeth Walton and the welcome that readers visiting the website will stumble on first and foremost: ‘England is being invaded by fast breeding hostile Islamists whose barbaric practices will one day sweep our heritage and culture if away! If we don’t stop them! Like the red squirrel was over run by the non indigenous grays, we could become isolated in small pockets and face extinction! Vote BNP, Stop the invasion!'

Or, the section on Lee Barnes (p46) and his ‘21st century British nationalism’ blog. The section details at length Barnes’ crude nationalism, his championing of pagan religion and disdain for Europe’s Judeo-Christian heritage, his obscene language and insults to various public figures. But no where in all the citation is there any mention of the Muslim target of Barnes’ racist diatribes. No mention of ‘Islamism Regroups’, ‘Britain has Diversity’, or ‘Salma ‘reprisal attacks’ Yaqoob’.

In the section on the BNP’s online promotion of fascist and racist literature (p 59), we find mention of various books that outline the BNPs obsession with ‘racial purity’ and their promotion of Arthur Kemp’s book, ‘March of the Titans: A History of the White Race’. But, lo and behold, no mention that the online shopping site has a subsection on books published on Islam, where, top of the list, one will find this ‘Jihad: Islam’s 1,300 Year War on Western Civilisation’, by Arthur Kemp.

The CfSC’s dismissive attitude towards and downplaying of anti-Muslim bigotry comes as no surprise. The CfSC's director is none other than Douglas Murray. Murray’s own vile and bigoted remarks on Muslims in Europe are indistinguishable from those of some of the fascists cited in the CfSC’s report. And given that citations are also taken from blog entries on the anti-Muslim website Harry’s Place, it is unsurprising that little mention of the ‘Islamist threat’ on BNP linked websites would feature in this report.

The CfSC report is a pathetic attempt to portray the anti-Semitic threat posed by the BNP as by far the greatest challenge to the UK’s community relations. Anyone familiar with the BNP’s activities of late will be in no doubt that for BNP supporters Islam and Muslims are the new targets. Nick Griffin has said so in the past and neither his victory speech on June 4th, in which he said ‘This is a Christian country and Islam is not welcome’, nor his recent interview on Channel 4 News where he described Islam as a 'cancer eating away at our freedoms' will leave any in doubt that his anti-Muslim racism remains intact and undiminished.

Why then should the CfSC lamely attempt to whitewash this and focus on anti-Semitism, racial purity and Holocaust denial? Why single out the Jewish community as targets of the BNP's fanatical hate and not give similar prominence to Muslims, who share their concerns on the election of two BNP MEPs and the prospect of growing xenophobia in the UK?

Islamophobia Watch usefully enlightens on the credentials of the report’s author:

‘It's also worth noting that the author of the CSC pamphlet is one Edmund Standing, a regular contributor to the notoriously Islamophobic website Harry's Place. Standing helpfully provided a list of his own articles supposedly exposing "what the BNP and its members and supporters stand for" here. Check through them, and you'll find that there's plenty of stuff attacking fascist antisemitism (which has now disappeared almost entirely from the BNP's public propaganda) and anti-Black racism, but not a peep about the BNP's anti-Muslim racism. Indeed, Standing has dismissed "Griffin's turn away from anti-Semitism and towards anti-Muslim vitriol" as "little more than a superficial political trick" – rather than recognising it as a fundamental change in fascist strategy that poses a major threat to Muslim communities.

‘Standing's views on the Qur'an ("I hope to demonstrate to the reader quite what a divisive, primitive, and insulting book it actually is") can be consulted here, by the way. He condemns "the hateful attitude it takes towards those who do not accept Islam", and demands: "how can texts like those I have just cited do anything but instill a negative or contemptuous attitude towards non-Muslims?"

‘Standing would no doubt claim that, as an atheist, he is against all holy books. However, in a post at Harry's Place addressing press reports that the IDF rabbinate had issued a publication entitled "Daily Torah studies for the soldier and the commander in Operation Cast Lead", which claimed to provide religious justification for Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people (something also mentioned in the Breaking the Silence report), Standing's response was not to denounce Jewish religious texts for giving scriptural authority to hostility towards non-Jews. He merely appealed to the IDF to "keep religion out of it".’

Prosecutors in the UK have already expressed their concerns on the limitations of current legislation on incitement to racial hatred which they say makes it difficult to secure prosecutions for BNP material that is overtly racist. In ignoring that a large target of this racist literature are Muslims, the CfSC report deliberately glosses over the present challenges British Muslims face against the BNP and its online fascist network. Such couldn’t possibly be the CfSC’s objective, could it?

Comments

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Ralph Musgrave - Mr

|2009-10-10 17:37:53

So the BNP have “neo-Nazi” tendencies. One of the defining characteristics of Nazism in the 1930s/40s was invading other countries for no good reason ( like – er – doctored intelligence reports and a pack of lies, let’s say). Labour plus Tories backed this policy in respect of Iraq, whereas the BNP opposed the Iraq war. Who exactly are the Nazis on the above criterion?

And then there is the small matter of the million Muslims and Kurds killed as a result of the above war. The BNP are going to have to slaughter an awful lot of Muslims before they can match the Labour and Tory racist genocide record.

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