After BNP leader Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time, Joe Holder explains why the BBC got it wrong
That this government has little interest in the provision of history in schools is well documented. But who knew that ignorance of history reached to ministerial levels? The parallels with the 1930s are there for all to see: a crisis in capitalism, mass unemployment (still on the rise), widespread contempt for the ruling order, xenophobic sentiments and a lurch to the far right.
Against this backdrop, the agreement to share a platform with Nick Griffin suggests that lunacy is not confined to the BNP.
The accepted liberal-left wisdom was that since the British public and then the BBC have given Nick Griffin a platform and the other major parties were in attendance, therefore, the Labour Party must be represented as well. The press has been full of commentators salivating over this “golden opportunity” to expose the poverty of the BNP’s arguments and reveal their prejudices for what they are.
Is it naivety, ignorance or arrogance that fuels this outlook?
History quite clearly demonstrates the dangers of legitimising the far right. So what if the BNP were democratically elected – so were the Nazis and the Nazis were the paradigm of how the anti-democratic right cynically uses the apparatus of the democratic state and its liberalism to undermine and destroy the state.
Goebbels boasted: “The stupidity of democracy. It will always remain one of democracy’s best jokes that it provided its deadly enemies with the means by which it was destroyed. One can make superb capital from democratic stupidity.”
We have been warned. We are not – or we should not be – the proverbial voting turkeys. We do not need to hand to anti-democrats the privileges of a democratic society as weapons to be used against us all.
Any official engagement with Griffin and the BNP plays directly into their hands and bestows upon them a legitimacy which can never be undone, irrespective of what ensues on Question Time or any other programme.
The path of the Nazis to legitimacy was a continuum starting out on the fringes and using their electoral gains, the underestimation of their appeal and force of their arguments by their opponents, and the willingness of the mainstream parties to engage with them.
For the BNP this episode takes them a step further along the path to mainstream acceptability. If you had looked this week at the BNP’s website it was fronted by a glorious photomontage of Griffin and Jack Straw with a counter marking the days, hours, minutes and seconds to Question Time and the message: “Don’t Miss It”.
The ability for Griffin not only to speak directly to his core potential vote and to sit with representatives of the three main parties but also to be honoured and dignified by the presence of the Justice Minister is something of which Griffin and the BNP could once only have dreamed.
Richard J Evans, in his seminal book The Coming of the Third Reich: How the Nazis Destroyed Democracy and Seized Power in Germany, says: “Democracies that are under threat of destruction face the impossible dilemma of either yielding to that threat by insisting on preserving the democratic niceties or violating their own principles.”
Yes, it would have taken great moral courage to have left the chair vacant and issued a statement explaining why the Labour Party would not and could not share a platform with an avowed fascist but, at a time when politicians are held in such low esteem, this at least would have sent out a strong and clear message.
Whatever the commentators say, does any serious political analyst really believe that confronting Griffin on Question Time has magically removed his cloak of respectability and shone a light on his divisive and racist policies?
Again, history shows the dangers of underestimating the extremists and belittling the appeal of their message. Griffin could have chosen last night to highlight the hypocrisy of Tory links with far right groups in Europe, to revel in the discomfiture over MPs’ expenses and to delight in the failure of the main parties to address unpalatable but deeply held concerns of a significant segment of the population.
He could also have pointed out the inconsistency of a government that at the same time that it is, rightly, attempting to ban BNP members from the teaching profession, is prepared to share a platform with it!
He also, of course, seized the opportunity to trot out his simple prejudices and facile solutions to problems that require long and complex responses.
But the damage has been done.
Even if one was naïve enough to believe that Griffin would crack under the spotlight, Question Time is not the forum for deep debate and intense cross-examination. Its multi-question format gives an opportunity for attendees to improve their public profile, to espouse their party line and to declaim their well rehearsed soundbites along with a good bit of party political point scoring.
Griffin will have wallowed in this – and the opportunity to address directly his core constituency, watching at home, who will now see him sitting as part of the accepted political landscape.
The place for confronting fascists is in the workplace, on the streets, in our local communities, in our schools, in our unions and at the ballot box. But to share a platform with them is to legitimise them, to show we have learned nothing from history and that is hubris indeed.
