Who Reads The Truth About The BNP?

An Internet, earlier today.

At the moment, I'm having a bit of a Dark Night Of The Soul about the point of all this internet malarky. Well, maybe not a “Dark Night”; more of an “Overcast Brunch”, but I was pondering a simple question: With all the evidence that's out there already of Griffin and Dowson's cheap, barely-disguised criminality, and with all of the new revelations that surface on an almost daily basis, Why Does Anyone Still Support Them?

Socially insulated by having little contact with people who, if they aren't already active Anti-Fascists, would certainly help out if we're ever short-handed, it's easy to fall into the trap of assuming that there must be Amazonian Tribes, as yet untroubled by Missionaries, who've heard of the endless Griffin begging letters and who fall around laughing at the mere mention of “Truth Truck”.

Some of the continued Supporters can easily be put in the “wilfully delusional” camp. The likes of Paul “Green Arrow” Morris and his shrinking band of “Kinsmen” have, by now, invested so much self respect (a curious concept where he's concerned, I know – but hear me out) and fervour in their shrill support of the BNP and its Leadership that they might suffer total mental collapse, and the noose beckon were they to ever finally accept the evidence of their own eyes (indeed, he was suspiciously quiet on the matter of the Dowson Creditor's Letter...).

Then there are the “Rank & File” of the BNP's support. Those people (often elderly, it must be said), who, incensed by a shocking expose they've read in the Daily Mail, outraged by something they heard at Lunch Club That-Happened-To-My-Friend-Enid's-Daughter-Or-Was-It-Her-Milkman-Well-Never-Mind-It-Happened-To-Someone-And-It's-All-True-And-It's-A-Bloody-Liberty-It-Really-Is, or impressed by seeing That Nice Young Man With The Wonky Eye on an Election Broadcast, fire off their fifteen quid to Belfast, (or Nuneaton, or Welshpool, or wherever else it is this week) and (having calmed down, had a nice cup of tea and had some sense talked into them by the Grandkids) let their membership lapse after a year.

As do almost 60% of Memberships.

According to a 2008 survey conducted by Researchers at Edinburgh University, BNP Voters have the lowest I.Q of all political parties, at an average of 98.4. This, in itself, may account for something.

But then it dawned on me (my own I.Q reaches 98.6 on a good day) just where the evidence of the corruption within the BNP appears. Blogs like this one. Any number of Right-Wing talkboards and chat rooms. Everywhere, in fact, except where Griffin's mercilessly fleeced Supporters are likely to actually look.

A few years ago, I set out on an ill-judged crusade to turn my late mother into a Silver Surfer. Safe in the knowledge that my 86-year-old Uncle was merrily tapping away and chatting with old Wartime Buddies the World over, I thought it couldn't be too difficult, could it?

Picture, if you will, the Taliban trying to launch a Space Shuttle.

After several hours, many exasperated coffee breaks, enough cigarettes to resurface the M1 and giving careful consideration to taking up Crack-smoking as a way of calming down, I had shown her the basics and she had constructed a basic list of Bookmarks.

The Guardian Online. BBC Food & Drink. Wikipedia. Derby Evening Telegraph. Derbyshire County Cricket Club. Royal Horticultural Society.

All was right with the world.

A few months later, I checked her list of Bookmarks. The Guardian Online. BBC Food & Drink. Wikipedia. Derby Evening Telegraph. Derbyshire County Cricket Club. Royal Horticultural Society. Nothing else.

At this point I gave up. I now have a nervous tic and a £200 a day Crack habit.

The thing is that, had she been a typical online BNP Supporter, her sole knowledge of the Party would extend only to their Official Website, where all is Sunny, Griffin is working tirelessly to save the Nation with His Team of Experts by his side, and Exciting New Initiatives and Political Breakthroughs are always just around the corner.

At this year's LMHR Festival in Barnsley, a handful of bedraggled BNP braved the Yorkshire weather and gleeful derision of just about everyone to set up their paste table in a shopping precinct under the watchful eye of the local Constabulary.

An enjoyable hour spent politely chatting with the (largely elderly) shoppers approaching the Stall was all it took to turn many potential supporters away, simply by telling them the truth and where they could find out more.

What my Colleagues here at LU (I'm tempted to call them “My Kinsmen” just for the wind-up value) do is invaluable: An authoritative, exhaustive, searchable online record of the goings-on of the Far Right going back more than five years. It's hardly any wonder that a substantial proportion of our Readership consists of the Enemy wanting to get the lowdown on what's going on with their own Party.

It's also true that the tiniest sidebar in a National Newspaper is going to be read and talked about by more people than the likes of us can even dream of.

Today's snippet in the Guardian (which has, predictably, sent Morris and his Idiot Disciples into a frothing tumult of astonishing (and entirely libellous) naked racism), a forthcoming piece to look out for in the next edition of a Popular Satirical Magazine and other mainstream reports currently on the horizon, will reach a huge number of people who've never given the BNP a second glance; probably even falling into the trap of thinking of them as "Just Another Political Party", if "a bit of a cranky one" (the sort of people who might think of Ebola as "Just Another Virus",if "a bit worse than a dicky tummy").

Given that the Facts are only just beginning to receive wider, mainstream coverage now that things are in the final death-spiral it can't hurt to start getting the truth out to more mainstream media outlets - they're generally always on the lookout for a good story.

And with a saga like The Last Days Of The BNP, with its embarrassment of twists, turns, outrageous revelations and mad characters that make Dickens at his most hyperactive read like Proust on Mogadon, this is certainly a cracker.

Can't hurt, can it?

French to block porn, terror, hate web sites

The French state and Internet service providers have struck a deal to block sites carrying child pornography or content linked to terrorism or racial hatred, Interior Minister Michel Alliot-Marie announced Tuesday.

The plan, part of a larger effort to fight cybercriminality, is to go into effect in September when a "black list" will be built up based on input from Internet users who signal sites dealing with the offensive material, the minister said.

The announcement comes on the heels of a similar deal in the United States, also announced Tuesday. There, three service providers — Verizon, Sprint and TimeWarner Cable_ have agreed with New York state officials to block child pornography sites nationwide.

Alliot-Marie said all service providers in France have agreed to block offending sites but did not name them.

"We can no longer tolerate the sexual exploitation of children in the form of cyber-pedopornography," Alliot-Marie said. "We have come to an agreement: the access to child pornography sites will be blocked in France. Other democracies have done it. France could wait no longer."

Among other countries that have already implemented similar measures include Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Canada and New Zealand.

Under the French plan, Internet users, via a platform, will be able to signal inappropriate sites and the state, receiving the complaints in real time, will then decide whether the sites are to go on a so-called black list to be passed on to Internet service providers to enforce site blocks.

Sites containing what appear to be blatant crimes will be referred to judicial authorities, the minister said.

As for offending sites hosted in other countries, France will pass on the information via Interpol or Europol, the two police agencies, or seize judicial authorities there, Alliot-Marie said. She insisted that the plan would not "create a Big Brother of the Internet" and pledged her support for the "fundamental liberty that is Internet access."

France's upcoming presidency of the European Union will be a chance to coordinate efforts between countries, she said, adding that efforts are often needlessly duplicated and sites shut down in one country often pop up in another.

Associated Press

Braindead in cyberspace

Anybody who has ever posted to an internet forum will be aware that these are prime targets for manipulation by the Braindead Neanderthal Party (BNP). In some cases this can be subtle, in most cases it's as subtle as a sledgehammer. BNP members routinely flood forums with threads on race and immigration, then support themselves with a multiplicity of sock puppets.

Sock puppets are operated in a variety of ways. There is usually an attempt to pretend that more BNP members exist on a forum than is really the case. Some sock puppets are deployed as "ordinary members of the public" who invariably support the BNP line. Some are deployed to hunt with the hounds and run with the foxes. Some will appear to mildly question the BNP and its policies - the questions posed in an easily rebutted manner, as was the intention.

Many BNP posters adopt a tone of sweet reason, and are capable of dressing up their vile propaganda in some handsome clothes. But most of them will simply post with a link to a news story - so long as the story is crime-related and has a picture of a black or Asian face, they're satisfied. Then the sock puppets come in to do their duty.

The majority of BNP posters being notably unintelligent, they frequently revert to gutter language and have few inhibitions about making personal attacks on other posters. This frequently leads to them being banned - but they always come back.

What is remarkable to many is that abusive BNP posters fail to understand that for every person posting on a forum there are many more "lurkers" - people who simply like to browse forums but who do not feel inclined to contribute. Members of other political parties might have a care for what these unseen lurkers make of them, but the braindead BNP rarely do.

Illustrative of this is the curious case of the Oxfordshire and Brighton Argus forums.

For some years the Brighton Argus forum has been targetted by various BNP supporters, who, true to form, began thread after thread on their favourite subject and got on with the business of abusing their gainsayers. This led to a pattern of bannings and reincarnations that has continued to this day.

Somewhere along the line, the Argus BNP contingent discovered the Oxfordshire forum, where they began their familiar pattern. Though moderation of the Argus forum is at best feeble, at the Oxfordshire forum it is virtually non-existent. Very quickly the language and the abuse reached new depths, and what was by all accounts once a very active and lively forum began a steady decline as regulars deserted, tired at the endless immigration threads and the certainty that questioning or opposing the BNP supporters would bring a shower of foul-mouthed abuse raining down upon them.

Today the Oxfordshire forum is a sterile, inert place, populated only by the braindead BNP, the odd die hard-regular, and an anti-BNP campaigner.

Back at the Argus, they have adopted a new tactic. This involves blocking threads started by people they detest, or where the balance of posting has gone against them (as it always does), or where they have been shown to be liars, or - uniquely, where they have started a thread so that they can block it themselves and blame "the lefties".

Thread blocking apparently works by posting huge amounts of data into a reply box. The effect is to cause something akin to server time-outs. The posts can only be viewed after several minutes of rendering (if at all), cannot be added to, and also have the effect of making the site run slowly.

For some time these idiots have run riot, blocking entire pages of threads. They schizophrenically admit to thread blocking one day (in the name of "free speech", as one of them claimed), and the next blame "the lefties". And they sit in their empty haven of the Oxfordshire forum to crow to one another about how well they have done.

Of course, it has never yet occurred to them that they are doing the party they support the biggest disservice possible - but I don't call them braindead for nothing!

Things have lately become so serious on the Argus forum that one of their own, posting on the Nazi Stormfront site, took them to task:

'Well you and your buddies have screwed up big time. Now nobody can post to either forum and there are likely to be legal consequences and bad publicity that are going to reflect badly on all Nationalists. Thank you. Thank you very much.... You swamped the forum with race-based posts that had nothing to say but just contained links to news stories. It was all you did, and not surprisingly other posters got fed up with it. You wouldn't leave threads that had nothing to do with race alone and other posters got fed up with that too. When they complained to you, you and your cronies immediately stooped to personal abuse. You even abused people who had a BNP mindset... You also did the same thing on the Oxford forums. You made that forum a joke and even when one of our own people came on to fire a warning shot across your bows you ignored him. You caused disruption every day on the Argus forum and used the Oxford forum to boast about it. Very clever... You went there and behaved like trolls so you got treated like trolls.'

Those are excerpts from the first of a series of Stormfront posts. The response of the Braindeads was predictable - they ignored what any rational person would have seen to be sound advice. Unable to believe that one of their own could seriously question their disruption of the two forums they concluded that the Stormfront poster must be an imposter!

BNP antics on two obscure internet forums might not seem to carry much importance (and on these two forums at least, the BNPs are their own worst enemies), but multiply that by several hundred active forums and you have thousands and thousands of people daily exposed to their message - no matter how badly or unintelligently it is posed.

Several things have become very clear to me, after browsing several dozen BNP-infested forums. That is their ability to brazenly lie, to avoid difficult questions (usually by coming back with a question), to query their opponents' bona fides, to attribute to their opponents things they have never said or done, to take statistics and quotes and to mangle them until they fit in with the BNP purpose, and to deflect almost any topic, no matter how innocent, into anti-immigrant propaganda.

There is also a strange propensity for dredging up posts by opponents that were made years before - as if these creepy creatures were keeping databases of who said what and when. Now why would they want to do that?

The BNP encourage and pursue cyber-activism with a vengeance. They realise, even if their opponents do not, that the Internet is an increasingly vital tool in the war of ideas and propaganda, and that the internet forum is one of the strategic fronts in that war. They have taken the initiative, meeting little real opposition away from the larger forums - and though, thanks to their own incompetence and stupidity, they frequently do themselves more harm than good, we should remember that often a post containing nothing more than a link to a crime story with ethnic minority involvement is all that is needed for them to get their racist message across.

Though it isn't my wish to either deny or denigrate the anti-racist stalwarts who do oppose the BNP on many forums, I think we can do so much more. They have many small local newspaper forums to themselves - forums which do have quite a wide local readership. We should be on these forums, not only challenging their views, but exposing their organisation for what it really is.

And the BNP make it so easy!

A thread on crime? Respond by posting of criminality among the BNP membership themselves - there are more than enough links to such stories. Or remind them of the missing money promised to Sharon Ebanks, collected from among their own ranks. Why do none of them ever question what happened to it?

Fastest growing party? Remind them that in 2005 (a great year for racism) the BNP had a net gain of less than 150 members, according to their own accounts as submitted to the Electoral Commission.

Corrupt local government? BNP supporter "EN Ronn" composed an article named 'Unsettling Accounts', reposted on Stormfront several times. Make good use of it! In fact, take a good look at Stormfront, including the back threads - there is so much to use concerning the corrupt internal workings of the BNP that you can counter them on almost anything and throw them completely off balance. And, of course, keep checking the regular anti-racist websites that contain tasty little tit-bits you can store away for future use.

Nick Griffin the best thing since sliced bread? Apart from anti-Griffin posting on Stormfront and similar sites, the best demolition of his reputation to date was penned by the man he deposed, the late John Tyndall. His magazine Spearhead may thankfully be defunct, but its website still exists, and contains many articles full of useful information and quotes. If it's there, you may as well use it.

We're Nationalists? Are they? Ask the majority of them to explain their "nationalist philosophy" and watch them squirm. On two forums they were asked this, and on both avoided giving any answer - in fact their response was to demand that we explain it (they always come back with a question when they have no answers, remember?). Eventually there was some desultory quoting from Wikipedia, and even the OED definition, but nothing in their own words. Which allowed us to show them up as the bone-headed bigots they really are, obsessed with one issue alone, and utterly clueless about the ideology they profess to follow.

We're patriots? So much to choose from to shoot that one down in flames - Mark Collett's "Churchill was a ****ing ***t" tirade is always good.

Undermining the BNP with facts about their own party's doings seems to me the best course of action in the current climate. They cannot dispute provable facts, and their general response when presented with them is a sort of embarrassed prevarication, and sometimes an abusive retort. It doesn't matter which - you have succeeded in undermining their credibility, and can be seen to have done so.

You may not win many converts to the cause of anti-racism but you will cause people to think more deeply about the organisation they may have been tempted to support or vote for. And mostly you can do it simply by posting the facts, the unavoidable, incontrovertible facts!

Article supplied by DG