The BBC on the BNP - Radio 1's Newsbeat interview is shameful

'Young' BNP members Joey Smith and Mark Collett

Regular readers of this [New Statesman] blog will know that I tend to harp on about the self-serving, right-wing "myth" of the BBC's supposed "liberal left bias".

For those who remain unconvinced, let me point you towards Radio 1 Newsbeat's "interview" with two "young BNP members", on the BBC website. It is so staggeringly soft, woefully weak and uncritically unchallenging that I feel sick to my stomach. Here, in full, is the absurd attempt at rigorous and impartial journalism on the BBC (I mean, Radio 1, what is the point of it?):

'Do you think it's OK for people who aren't white in this country to call themselves British?

Joey: Civicly British they are. You cannot say they are ethnically British. It's denying our heritage. It's taking that away from us.

At what point do they become ethnically British? How long do they have to be here?

Joey: Well I think it would be an awfully long time before someone would become ethnically British.

So when you see someone like Ashley Cole play for England, are you happy to watch him?

Joey: If he wants to come to this country and he wants to live by our laws, pay into society, that's fine.

But if he wanted to call himself British that would be a problem?

Joey: He cannot say that he's ethnically British.

Why is the idea of races mixing such a bad thing?

Joey: If everybody integrated it would take away everybody's identity.

Mark: I would be upset if there were no more giant pandas, I'd be upset if there were no more lions, if there were no more tigers, so equally I'd be upset if white people weren't here any more.

But we're the same species which makes it a bit different, doesn't it?

Mark: You could say that but if all of a sudden there weren't any sparrows and there were only crows, I'd still be sad there weren't any sparrows.

Can you understand that some people are happy to mix?

Mark: No, I think people have been brainwashed. I think the media, the government, have forced it down people's throats and they've indoctrinated people.

You don't think people are bright enough to decide themselves?

Mark: I think when people are bombarded 24 hours a day to force multiculturalism upon them, people are going to succumb to that. We shouldn't have to bend our ways to people who've been here five minutes.

You're talking like people here are on holiday. They've lived here, some of them, for a generation, some of them for longer. Doesn't that count?

Mark: Are you trying to compare somebody, or a group of people who've lived here for maybe 30 years, to people who've lived here for 40,000 years? There's a vast, vast difference in time scale there, my dear.

My point isn't the difference in times between one group of people and another, it's saying they're not visitors, they are not holidaymakers, they are people living here.

Mark: If I went to live and work in another country, then I would still adhere by their culture and they should adhere by ours.'

Is anyone else as shocked as I am by the soft, naive, piss-poor questioning? Why the pleading tone from reporter Debbie Randle? Where in the interview are these two BNP "kids" properly challenged - on the criminal convictions and dubious backgrounds of leading BNP figures; the party's nakedly racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic discourse; the BNP's policies on (voluntary) repatriation and mixed-marriage bans, etc? Why is the piece headline "Young BNP members explain their beliefs", as if they are innocent members of, say, Amnesty International or on an Alpha course, rather than of a party whose members are banned from becoming police officers or prison officers?

In May, the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) published "race reporting guidelines" for the media, which included this particular point:

'When interviewing representatives of racist organisations or reporting meetings or statements or claims, journalists should carefully check all reports for accuracy and seek rebutting or opposing comments. The antisocial nature of such views should be exposed.'

Does anyone think reporter Debbie Randle stuck to those (voluntary) guidelines, or even to basic common sense (i.e. if you're interviewing young members of a racist party, those members' views should be challenged and their racism exposed)? According to her profile on the BBC website, she is a "Senior Broadcast Journalist" and someone desperate to interview Prince William, who once wanted to be a singer, cites Jon Snow as her favourite "reporter" because "he's so cool" and had a first job working in a bingo club. Judging by this abysmal interview, and the pass she gives the odious BNP and its "young" members, she should probably head back to that bingo club while her Radio 1 bosses hang their heads in shame for commissioning this awful feature.

The normalisation of the BNP in our political and media discourse continues apace - aided and abetted, as usual, by our public-service broadcaster. It's disgusting and depressing.

Mehdi Hasan writing in the New Statesman

BNP wants to hang criminals live on TV – secret television schedule discovered on Welsh pig farm

6.00. Early Morning Noose: Catch up on all the important overnight hangings.

7.00. Good Morning Bigots: Presented by popular comedy duo Dave and Mark. This morning: Book cooking for beginners. KKKrafters KKKorner: Mark shows how to design BNP election leaflets using pictures of Italians and Americans. Romantics Rendevouz: Dave and Mark show how easy it is to smuggle under-age girls into your hotel room. Also includes Lee’s Legal Advice Surgery: today “Ten f*cking reasons why the BNP isn’t racist despite what the fuzzy-wuzzies say.” Tomorrow: “Why the moon landings, 9/11 attacks, 1066 and Simon Darby’s blog were faked by The Jews. It’s really f*cking creepy, man.” Friday: “What to do when you when you find yourself incarcerated in a padded cell.”

9.00. The Andrew Marr Show: Hard-hitting journalist Andrew Marr gets to the bottom of why BNP President For Life Nick Griffin is such a nice guy. “We’ve heard the stories,” says Andrew, “but how true is it that Mr Griffin likes little puppy dogs and will go out of his way to help a distressed sheep? We investigate!” Includes film of Nick Griffin tickling the tummy of a puppy dog and going out of his way to help a distressed sheep after saving the life of a cute little bunny rabbit while on his way to visit an orphanage.

10.00. The Jeremy Piles Show: “I’m not in MI5,” says Simon, but Dick Barnbrook is suspicious and demands a DNA test. Tomorrow: “I’m not a paranoid schizophrenic,” says Lee. Friday: “I am a paranoid schizophrenic,” says Lee.

11.00. Farming Today: A Welsh pig farmer shows you how to survive the recession by running your very own political party. “It’s the best thing I ever did,” says wily Nick, trousering a wad of notes. “I just send a few emails and the money comes rolling in. Fantastic!”

12.00. Angler’s KKKorner: Find out which members of the Advisory Council are sleeping with the fishes.

12.45. Lunchtime Noose. Find out which members of the Advisory Council are next.

1.00. The AntiKKKes Roadshow: Dust off that old Nazi memorabilia and bring it along for a valuation. You’ll be surprised how much that old letter expelling you from the BNP is worth!

2.00. Women’s Hour. Presented by Lynne Mozar and Marlene Guest. Today Lynne explains the various uses of the word “Paki”, while Marlene goes to Dachau to explore the roots of modern cosmetic dentistry.

3.00. CBNPTV – including: The Billy Brit Show (replaces The Sooty Show); followed by Blue Peter: Aunty Val and Uncle John show you how to make your very own working concentration camp out of a Corn Flake packet and an empty margerine tub. You’ll need plenty of glue for this, children. Next week Val and John show you how to make your very own cattle trucks so that you can transport your very own prisoners to your very own concentration camp on your very own home-made Death Railway, so have your scissors and double-sided sticky tape ready.

4.00. Record Breakers: Today, members of the Young BNP break the late Lily Allen’s records.

5.00. Nooseround.

5.15. Strange Hill: School-based drama. Last week a shocked Nick and Simmo discovered that one of their teachers had a black girlfriend and asked new boy Bob Cottage for help. This week, as the school rebuilding project gets underway, Nick and Simmo discover that their English teacher is both gay and Jewish and seek advice from first-formers Dave Copeland and Tony Cucumber.

6.00. Evening Noose - public hangings from around Britiain.

6.30. Regional Noose - public hangings from places of interest in your area. Includes local weather forecast.

7.00. History Today: In this edition we visit some of Britain’s best known graveyards to find out who’s been history since the BNP took power.

7.30. KKKoronation Street: All is not well in the Racist’s Return as Nick suspects Christian of plotting against him (violence and language caution).

8.00. Wild Down Under: Absorbing documentary from Australia all about wildlife in Sydney’s Sutherland Shire. Watch the desperate efforts of the Hodges Dingbat as it attempts to stuff 500 nuts into its pouch. Also features rare footage of the endangered Hanson’s Bigot.

8.30. World In Faction: Current affairs programme on the political life of Nick Griffin. Part 45: “The National Front Years: Disaster strikes” - Patrick Harrington joins the National Front.

9.00. Build A New Life In The Sun: Ahmed doesn’t want to leave his comfortable Oldham home, but some men with shaven heads try to persuade him otherwise. Will Ahmed choose sunny Pakistan or a rope around the neck?

10.00. Noose at Ten

10.30. Noosenight: Tonight, Kirsty Wark and Jeremy Paxman get theirs. Includes interview with a Very Important Benefits Claimant and Fake Trade Union Leader, plus a review of tomorrow’s noosepapers.

11.00. Spooks: Episode 643, “Those demmed blecks”. Arthur’s cunning plan to infiltrate his ex-wife into the antifascist movement has been rumbled. An angry Bep tells Arthur he should have remembered that email headers give the game away. Caution: contains very strong Serth Efricen eccents (subtitled).

12.00 Epilogue – presented by his Holiness the Archbishop of Holbeach, the Reverend West. Tonight, “Why God says it’s okay to hate darkies” Tomorrow: “Why God says it’s okay to hang antifascist bastards”. Friday: “Why God says it’s okay to love Odin but not darkies or antifascist bastards.” Next week: “Why Odin says ‘There is no God but if there was he would say it’s okay to hate darkies and hang antifascist bastards (and the scum who never voted for me in Norwich North)’.”

1.00. BNPTV Noose 24 - overnight hangings live from Hampstead Heath. Includes Market Report from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Norfolk Unity

BNP targets children as recruits for party's youth wing

YBNP annual training camp 2008 - Mirror story
Inside the tent adorned with the Union Jack and St George’s flag, Peter and Anthony are on a recruiting drive. They hand out leaflets telling potential converts that their organisation is not racist, merely “helping to resist the racist colonisation of Britain”.

Their table is scattered with postcards of young, white women draped in the Union Jack, holding placards with the reminder that “nationalism is for girls too”. The pair tell The Times that the British National Party is great for the country and that they are proud to support it.

However, they are unable to articulate why they are attracted to the far-right party, and they squirm in their seats when asked about their understanding of issues such as racism, nationalism and discrimination. They may be simply too young to appreciate such concepts: Anthony is 14 and Peter just 12 years old. Nevertheless, the pair spent the weekend recruiting for the youth wing of the BNP at the party’s annual gathering in Derbyshire, which attracted several hundred families.

Peter, whose mother brought him to the event, said: “Young BNP is just about making sure that we are going to have a good place in the normal BNP when we’re older, and that’s what we want. It’s cool, we play lots of sports and stuff.” Several events at the Red, White and Blue Festival, which was picketed by protesters, were geared towards youth in what anti-fascist groups said was “disturbing indoctrination” and an attempt to create a new generation of nationalist sympathisers.

Young children’s faces were painted with the Union Jack and many sported BNP T-shirts and fake tattoos of crusaders and the St George’s flag. They were encouraged to throw wet sponges at a man in the stocks, who was dressed in Islamic clothing and wearing an Osama bin Laden mask. Even infants were exposed to the nationalist cause, with toys and blow-up furniture in the children’s tent being decorated with the Union Jack.

Simon Darby, the deputy leader of the BNP, told The Times that the younger generation was “very important” for the future of the party. “We don’t think short-term, we think long-term,” he said.

Mr Darby denied that the party was indoctrinating youth: “We’re just pointing out another side of things — that it isn’t a good idea to completely destroy our own culture. We are making sure they know that white people aren’t inferior, because that’s what they are being taught in schools.”

However, anti-fascist groups whose blockade of the event, near Denby, resulted in 19 arrests after clashes with police, said that the BNP’s approach was “very dangerous”. Weyman Bennett, joint national secretary of Unite Against Fascism, said that the BNP was actively trying to recruit the young in a new drive because so many of its members were from older generations. “It’s really dangerous. They are trying to normalise their politics among young children. It is very concerning — do we really want this to be going on in our playgrounds?”

Alongside Peter and Anthony, Tristan Simekins, 18, had travelled from Corsham, Wiltshire, to recruit for the BNP’s student wing. His leaflets explained that the movement provided advice to young people on dealing with “anti-white discrimination”. He said: “My problem is with the indoctrination of Islam. I admit not all Muslims are evil, but I feel Islam is.”

Times Online

Billy Brit, The Racist Shit

This vid was done by one of the users of the godlike B3ta called Manic.
Please use the tag #theBNParetwats if you use Twitter. I'm an old decaying sod but it may mean something to younger users


Thanks to Manic and the original thread can be found here.

Mein youth kampf

BNP targets kids in weekend training sessions

The BNP is setting up a Britler Youth to indoctrinate children, we can reveal. Party chiefs are trawling internet chatrooms to lure kids as young as 13 to weekend camps where they will be taught shooting, self-defence and nationalist ideology. And some aged eight are being targeted by a new British National Party comic. It features a venom-spouting racist puppet called Billy Brit. who praises Enoch Powell's infamous Rivers Of Blood speech.

Last night a spokesman for anti-racist group Searchlight stormed: "This is sickening. Every parent should be warned that it could be your children these extremists are after."

Top of the far-right party's sinister new recruitment drive is their version of the Hitler Youth. Members start off as "junior patriots" at 13 and are given ID cards, a newsletter and a training book with lessons in "ethno nationalism". They are invited to the BNP's annual youth camp and two training camps where they have to keep records of their improvement in shooting, self defence, flag drills and ideology. They must carry out between four and eight hours of "political activism" a month.

"Patriots" must attend all three events to become leaders of the Young BNP.

The camps are held over weekends in the countryside. The last one was held in Derbyshire. Similar camps run by Germany's far-right group, the Youth Faithful To The Homeland, were recently outlawed for trying to indoctrinate kids with Nazi ideology.

But BNP leader Nick Griffin is determined to lure even younger children to his party's beliefs-with a puppet and a comic called The Comet aimed at children from the age of eight. The sinister "Billy Brit" is already featured on the BNP website where he reads his "educational poems". In one called Heroes he praises MP Enoch Powell for his infamous speech about immigration in 1968.

Racist Billy rants: "He gave a speech called Rivers Of Blood and never gave up the fight. Enoch Powell spoke for me. And Enoch Powell was white." Youngsters are sent signed photos of Billy.

There is also a website for Young Supporters with quizzes, games and events. It includes the BNP demand for an official White History month. They even have kids posing in BNP T-shirts on their merchandise site and are selling Enoch Powell T-shirts emblazoned with his face on the front alongside the Union Jack.

The Comet comic is sent out to kids between the ages of eight and 12. It says it is delivered to "all you eight to 12-year-olds out there who love your country, Great Britain. Yes that's Great as in Grrrrrrrreat!!! With the British National Party it can become great again."

It tells kids: "Your job is to find out the truth about what's going on in the world (and of all the political parties in this country, the only one you can count on to tell you the truth is the British National Party)."

The party is also targeting children's chatrooms on the internet as part of its campaign to lure youngsters. Anonymous BNP chiefs befriend unwitting users on sites like Bebo. They operate under the user name "Young Brit". The sinister strategy has led to a flood of complaints. One youngster on the site wrote in reply: "What a sad and pathetic life you lead." Another branded Young Brit a "perv."

The revelation comes after the News of the World exposed BNP plans to use internet blogs to spread damaging stories about rivals. Labour fears the BNP is stronger than ever and could win seven seats in June's Euro elections.

News of the World

A quick peek at the dark side...

Newspaper turns down BNP advertising

The Croydon Advertiser has turned down advertising from the British National Party, despite accepting political adverts from other parties. Editor Ian Carter said: 'The BNP are a legitimate political party and will no doubt argue they should have the same right as the others. But we've turned them away on the basis I'd feel deeply uncomfortable with any of their material appearing in our publications.'

Bravo. Let's hope other papers follow suit.

The Young BNP keeps up the usual standards

Readers may recall the article we had a week or two ago on the establishment of the new Young BNP group and its new website. Since then, the BNP's young bloods have been busy creating new pages all over the place, including on Facebook and Bebo. Sadly, nothing changes, and the racism and contempt for anyone who doesn't conform to the party's bizarre ideas of perfection are prominent.

Listed related groups for the Facebook site include 'I Was Born In The Uk. So Why The Fuck Do I Have Less Rights Then Immigrants' and 'If you don't like England then fuck off back to where you came from!'

Nice. Just what you want your youngster to be reading. Although perhaps we shouldn't worry too much, as most of those in the BNP, young or old, tend to be barely literate. The gem below appears as the tagline on the Bebo page.

'I will only add you if I can see your profile, just purly because we dont want extreamist on here'.

Er, quite.

Recipe time

Take a roomful of anti-EU obsessives, brought together by Ukip members and particularly by our friend the former tennis player Buster Mottram, who as a short-lived talisman for the National Front did so much for multiracial Britain. Add into the mix Richard Barnbrook, the mayoral candidate for the BNP, who joined them all last weekend at the Hurlingham, the private members' club in London, for supper and lively discussion. Allow them to stew in their own juice while we consider again the notion that there is as much to unite the two parties as to divide them. And what do you get? Something pretty unsavoury. Hugh Muir

What does the BNP's Advisory Council actually do?

According to Nick Griffin, it 'has the right to look at the accounts...and in the event that the Leader appears to be going stark, staring bonkers, to call a vote of no confidence...that hasn't been necessary so far - but I'm working on it.'

So true. He IS working on it.

Lee Barnes' blog - a look at his own comments

'Four threads on stormfront all about me on 19th march - thats gotta be some sort of record.'

'Blimey its FIVE threads on me on stormfront - thats more then Hitler got on his birthday. He got a cake though, I didnt. BLIMEY - thats gotta be a record.'

'SIX threads now. Blimey i think a strange form of Stormfront Autism has broken out.'

'SEVEN THREADS - Is their no end to their obsessions ! Amazing. I must be the most debated nationalist on the planet at the moment. If anyone wants an autograph then e mail me and I will send you one.'

I don't think we'll bother, thanks all the same.

And finally...

The near-defunct rebel group within the BNP, headed by Sadie Graham, Matt Single, Steve Blake and Uncle Tom Cobbley, has cost the taxpayer a lot of money one way or another. An application under the Freedom of Information Act reveals that Notts police force had to cough up £12,000 worth of policing for the first Voice of Change 'conference'. Why? To protect them from the thugs of the BNP, of course.

If you didn't laugh, you'd cry for a week.

More info here.