The nastiness, inhumanity and racism of the BNP

From Paul Crofts:

If anyone is in any doubt about the nastiness, inhumanity and racism of the BNP then their response to the disaster and devastation in Haiti and an issue closer to home, their attitude to asylum-seeker children in the UK, illustrates this in ways that can only shock.

British National Party Party leader Nick Griffin criticised the Haiti aid effort in the following way.

Sending aid to rioting ingrates while our own people die is stinking elite hypocrisy

The BNP’s legal officer went even further and attacked the humanitarian teams who set off to help in Haiti:

I am frankly sick and tired of seeing media stories about simpering white people in some foreign hell hole run by the most violent and corrupt despots on the planet, swanning about before the cameras acting smug and superior over dealing with ‘johnny foreigners’ whilst ignoring the devastation, mass deaths and tens of thousands of dying people in their own countries.

Fortunately the British people have responded to the humanitarian crisis in Haiti in precisely the opposite way, thus demonstrating the sort of compassion and humanity that I am proud of – one that recognises when we need to help people in dire need and whose need is clearly greater than our own, irrespective of the nationality or race or ethnicity of the person concerned. The reference to “johnny foreigner” makes me sick to my very being and strengthens my resolve to oppose a political party that can voice such distasteful and vile views.

The story closer to home illustrates the BNP’s attitude to asylum-seeker children who are being cared for by Northamptonshire Social Services. On Northants BNP’s blog (“Northants Patriot”) they had this to say:

In excess of £2.5million has come out of Northamptonshire tax-payers income tax rather than their council tax to pay for the upkeep of just 112 children in the last financial year who should have been immediately sent back to their country of origin, or back to the last country they travelled through before arriving in the UK.

Whatever the issues are around asylum-seekers, the one thing that any decent, humane and caring person will agree with is that we should provide support to children who find themselves (for whatever reasons) in the UK without their parents or any other family member to care for and protect them. Most, if not all, of these children will be deeply traumatised, having been trafficked to the UK and dumped here, probably on or near the M1. Many will have been abused and injured during their journey here. The stories of how and why such children are here will be complex and complicated – but as children they are not to “blame” for the predicament that they find themselves in.

The BNP’s attitude to how we should treat such children in desperate need illustrates that racism and xenophobia are so central to their ideology that they are blind to simple humanity. They are not seen, by the BNP, as children, but rather as “the other”, “the enemy within”, the ones we hate, the ones we must dispose and get rid of as quickly as possible – we must eliminate them from our considerations and our care. Just one small step from, well, just eliminating them! So simple, so quick, so easy...

Such attitudes would lead directly to genocide and gross and disgusting human rights abuses if ever the BNP got even a whiff of power. For this reason, and this reason alone, we must stand up and aim for the defeat and humiliation of the BNP as a "political" party and the relegation of the ideas they stand for to the history books.

By Paul Crofts