Should we ban the BNP?

[Wildcat 10]

Banning them would be a slippery route to intolerance on a whole. They could get worse as a result. If they were banned though, perhaps they'd become a terrorist group (if not already? I remember hearing of racial attacks before in Burnley etc.). If they want to be racist / fascist which are 2 of their major problems, then better they be open about it than just discriminating. Although I'm sure they are already flouting that law - or perhaps no-one of colour or maybe gays or gypsies? have attempted to join them Like the idiot party let them continue. Otherwise we'll be no better than they are.

 

Although if banning them was a failsafe option yes ban them, but it's not so don't.

 

So we should allow the BNP because they are a safety valve for malcontents that pose no danger because of the leaderships obvious transparent incompetence?

 

The alternative view is they are a stepping stone to more dangerous views. Like the way Marlene Guest was given a book on holocaust denial, or less humorously* cases like Robert Cottage or David Copeland that moved on to collecting weapons in preperation for a race war and in David Copeland's case using them.

 

There is truth in both views and the balance is probably somewhere in the middle.

 

* I am not saying giving Marlene Guest a holocaust denial book is humorous at all, just that everything she does inevitably looks tragi-comic.

Edited November 16, 2009 by Wildcat

[LordChaverly 10]

Despite all your words where is your response to, his introduction of a market economy in grain into Russia?

 

As for Licence's opinion whether an academic at oxford or not, the issues raised against him of misleadingly using Stalinist sources make me distrust what he says on the issue when everything I have read about him says the opposite. And that within the historical context of a civil war and a country under invasion in the early part of the nineteenth century, he was not the monster you or Licence make him to be.

 

 

 

I have never said he wasn't morally responsible, indeed he himself claimed moral responsibility for the examples you have given. Rather than argue against a straw man fabrication of my views you might cite the examples of "Trotsky’s penchant for on the spot executions" that I have merely said I would like evidence of because I am unaware of them?

 

I am really not that bothered about Trotsky. In just the same way that criticisms of Oliver Comwell, don't refute aspirations for a fairer society based on our liberal and radical traditions. But it is an interesting historical debate. And when I finish reading my George Soros book I might look out for Kolakowski's book.

 

 

 

Collective interest was used in the sense of a political party. Rather than simply try to bludgeon my view with the authority of a figure like Popper, perhaps you could actually try to explain what you find so offensive about an expression that is fundamental to all our institutions whether it be the collective interests of shareholders, Tories, businessmen or workers? Because until you do you have no argument just a lot of hot air, an offensive manner and another patronising appeal to authority argument.

 

As I have been pointing out limitations on freedoms and rights have been a part of the intellectual liberal discourse and practice within the UK since they began including Locke and Mill (the harm principle). Hardly Tyrants, they were the founders of our understanding of liberalism and current democracy.*

 

 

 

I haven't defended his views on East Germany. I just don't think they are that important.

 

To call Franco's Spain merely Autocratic is an abuse of language, it is only Totalitarian regimes that violently suppress all opposition. Jones was right not to want anything to do with a regime he had fought physically alongside Orwell, the irony is that he was inconsistent in his application of those principles when it came to East Germany.

 

However, his choice of holiday destination is rightly not what he is remembered for which was his leadership of the TGWU, his role in the TUC, his role in the creation of ACAS, his defence of attacks on his members, the union movement and working people as a whole. He then went on to lead the National Pensioner's Convention, ending his life as he lived it sticking up for the poor.

 

His regretable views on East Germany in the context of everything else he stood for are in any balanced assessment of him inconsequential.

 

......................

 

* returning to the point of the thread which of all the themes you have raised, I can only see any relevance to from the Popper point.

 

Can you tell me how you think you are defending democracy by placing limitations on what a democratic body can do, where the limitations proposed aren't totalitarian ones of preventing any legitimate opposition and are merely about setting a basic standard for our representatives to meet as an essential requirement for the job, ie impartial treatment of their constituents?

 

Because that has been my point, something that is a part of the EU constitution and for which reason (membership policy racist) the BNP remains illegal in the UK.

 

There is a mountain of highly credible evidence concerning the brutality, viciousness and tyrannical mindset of Trotsky (indeed, some of it contained in his speeches and writings) and am mystified as to why you appear to be still in the grip of the thoroughly discredited myth that he (and presumably Lenin also) eschewed the system of violent repression associated with Stalin. I suggest you read some literature on the subject by distinguished Western and Russian historians rather than Marxist hagiographers (such as Deutscher) who have enwrapped Trotsky in a moral mantle he most certainly does not deserve.

 

As for your reference to him ‘introducing a market economy in grain’, what a travesty this statement is when judged against his role (along with other Bolsheviks) in completely wrecking the Russian and Ukrainian economies, through for example the policy of ‘pumping over’ resources from the peasantry into the urban areas and by policies of dispossession and forced labour (which was essentially a form of mass slavery). The truth is that Trotsky (along with other Bolsheviks) had absolutely no understanding of economics and had contempt for the peasantry. Moreover, he was more than ready to impose a system of violent repression and murder on them if they showed the slightest resistance to his edicts.

 

You implicitly concede that Trotsky gave orders for mass executions following the Kronstadt mutiny (even though he ‘wasn’t there’). You ask me to provide evidence of him ordering ‘on the spot’ executions’. The following order, translated verbatim from the Trotsky archives, was given by him in response to setbacks on the Voronezh front in November 1918 (moreover, this is no ‘one off’, because he issued a stream of similar orders during this period):

 

‘ORDER No.65

by the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council of the Republic to the troops and Soviet institutions on the Southern Front, November 24, 1918, No.65

I declare that from now on an end must be put to this, by ruthless means.

1. Every scoundrel who incites anyone to retreat, to desert or not to fulfil a military order, is to be shot.

2. Every soldier of the Red Army who voluntarily deserts his post is to be shot.

3. Every soldier who throws away his rifle or sells part of his uniform is to be shot.

4. Battle-police units are to be stationed along the entire front-line zone, in order to catch deserters. Any soldier who tries to offer resistance to these units is to be shot on the spot.

5. All local Soviets and Committees of the Poor, are obligated, on their part, to take all measures to catch deserters. Deserter-hunts are to be carried out twice in every 24 hours, at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Captured deserters are to be handed over to the headquarters of the nearest unit or to the nearest military commissariat.

6. Persons guilty of harbouring deserters are liable to be shot

7. Houses in which deserters are found will be burnt down’.

Death to self-seekers and traitors!

Death to deserters and agents of Krasnov!

Long live the honorable soldiers of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army!'

 

Trotsky, like Lenin and most of the other prominent Bolsheviks, acted as though their belief in the ‘revolution’ gave them licence to commit any crimes, however vile (like, for example, the murder of the Russian royal family, including the children, ordered by Lenin and later justified by Trotsky) . No doubt they too thought they were ultimately acting in the ‘collective interest’ or (to use a phrase associated with Rousseau), according to the ‘general will’ (which they of course defined). In other words, this subjective notion has provided tyrants (and those of an autocratic bent) throughout modern history with a justification to do anything they want.

 

As for your references to autocracy and totalitarianism, you don’t appear to understand the differences between the two – there is a difference, despite the degree of overlap between them, even in ideal-type formulations (I suggest you take a look at any first year undergraduate text on ‘Political Science’). You should also take a look at academic works on the nature of the Franco regime in the 1970s (when Jones was seeking to impose travel restrictions on his members). I think you will find that most of the authors of these works came to the conclusion that the totalitarian model didn’t really fit Franco’s Spain, despite its authoritarian, autocratic form. But even if it did, it in no way excuses Jones’ double standards in cuddling up so closely to the GDR, which indeed was a highly repressive, totalitarian state by any standards. You might find this aspect of Jones’ record ‘inconsequential’. I do not – far from being an inconsequential aberration, it was the measure of the man.

Edited November 18, 2009 by LordChaverly

[Linesman 10]

You tried to imply that a racist political party .

The BNP are not racist it is the Muslims who are racist.

[Greybeard 10]

The BNP are not racist it is the Muslims who are racist.

 

Which Muslims ? White Muslims, black Muslims, Asian Muslims, Chinese Muslims ?

 

Are they all racist ?

[Berlin 10]

The BNP are not racist it is the Muslims who are racist.

 

 

Banque Nationale de Paris is not racist.

 

The British Nazi National Party is racist.

 

Spot the difference?

[Linesman 10]

Banque Nationale de Paris is not racist.

 

The British Nazi National Party is racist.

 

Spot the difference?

I think that they're both identical as they're both in the saving business.

The Banque Nationale de Paris save money.

The BNP want to save Great Brittain.

 

Simple really.

[jeremyjh1 10]

I think that they're both identical as they're both in the saving business.

The Banque Nationale de Paris save money.

The BNP want to save Great Brittain.

 

Simple really.

 

Simple for a simpleton - who can't even spell the name of his beloved homeland do'h!

[Longcol 597]

The BNP are not racist it is the Muslims who are racist.

 

My family and the Muslim family next door have got along just fine for the last 18 years.

 

Quite happy to have them as neighbours - I can think off hand of plenty Brits I wouldn't like as neighbours - I can think of some Muslims I wouldn't want as neighbours - can think of plenty Brits I'd be happy with as neighbours.

 

Most of us can rub along together without being prejudiced - how hard is that?

[jeremyjh1 10]

The BNP are not racist it is the Muslims who are racist.

 

I think Linesman needs his medication

[Berlin 10]

I think that they're both identical as they're both in the saving business.

The Banque Nationale de Paris save money.

The BNP want to save Great Brittain.

 

Simple really.

 

 

You obviously know as little about financial matters as you do about political matters.

 

Zongamin is right. Go away.

[boyfriday 21]

I think Linesman needs his medication

 

I think Nurse Adebayo should first administer an anal thermometer to confirm the diagnosis.

[Aim4 10]

You obviously know as little about financial matters as you do about political matters.

 

Zongamin is right. Go away.

 

You told ME to go away yesterday as well! whats up, has Thierry Henry put you in a bad mood? :hihi: