U-Kippety-Krap

Hating on UKIP is the latest badge of righteousness, it seems.

(this image is doing the rounds on Facebook so don't know who to credit)

It used to be the BNP that everyone competed to hate the most. It used to be the BNP that everyone feared the most. Back in 2009, when Nick Griffin, the BNP's then leader, was booked to appear on Question Time, some people were acting like it was going to be the end of the world if they didn't rush down to the studios and have a big tantrum outside. In fact, putting Griffin on national television was about the best thing that could possibly have been done. Because, in the run-up to his appearance, and for some time before, there had been a lot of hand-wringing and knicker-wetting about how incredibly dangerous Nick Griffin was, because he was such an acceptable face of nasty, dimwit fascism. How easy it would be for him and his gang of obnoxious little tossers to fool people with their presentable, 'caring' niceness. There was quite a bit in the media about the dangers of Nick Griffin's 'charm'.

And then there he was, on national telly. A sweaty, squirming, smirking, not-very-articulate weirdo talking a lot of old cock. The BNP pretty much bottomed out after that. Oh, they were still a kind of handy indicator of Nice Person-ness - you could express wild and passionate hatred and contempt for them if you were having a spot of social anxiety (after maybe making a tiny-bit-racist joke or something) and still impress people with the depth of your not-one-of-them-ness, but they had stopped being a major threat to the political infrastructure.

For a while, Nigel Farage seemed much more potentially dangerous. He could do charming, self-deprecating and funny. He managed to disown the first couple of his minions to come out with blatantly racist, sexist or homophobic crap. But the thing is with raging arseholes who actually have a nasty hidden agenda is that they can't keep the niceness up. Give them enough time and enough space and they will show their real faces. Just like the lovely, caring, romantic, spontaneous new lover who suddenly smashes up your phone or punches one of your friends for 'flirting' with you.

This is yet another reason why censorship is never the answer to anything. If people who are known or alleged to hold unacceptable opinions are banned from expressing those opinions, they become more dangerous because it's easy for them and their supporters to allege that their arguments are so convincing that they will cause a revolution. Letting them speak in public means they invariably trip over their own ringpieces and reveal themselves as the idiots they are - because their arguments are fundamentally invalid and they themselves are fundamentally inadequate.

But they do serve as a handy distraction from the dangerous, bigoted, looneytunes monsters we actually have elected at the moment...

'Culture,' violence and prejudice

Predictably, the bucketheads are out in force all over the internet, following the murder of a squaddie in Woolwich yesterday. Along with the usual sentimentalism of candles and poppies cluttering up Facebook, aside of the blatant racism of EDL wankstains, the two main themes are 'Stop being nasty about religion' and 'I'm not a racist, but...'.

Religion is quite simply the biggest mistake humanity ever made: a way of allowing bullies to seize and retain power over whole groups of other people in an unending game of 'My imaginary friend says you have to do what I say because my imaginary friend has chosen me as a Special Person'; they just change the rules every time it looks like they might be about to lose. This doesn't stop plenty of people who subscribe to one or other religion from being perfectly lovely, decent, kind, non-violent, ordinary human beings. They've imagined a friend for themselves who might be a bit funny about diet and dress sense but generally expects them to be nice to their neighbours, fair in their dealings and happy in their lives. The existence of subdivisions in all the myth systems demonstrates that plenty of people are happy to remake their imaginary friend in a kinder, gentler style and interpret the myths in a broadly pro-social fashion, though unfortunately plenty of others are just as fond of reinterpreting the tropes to justify a revolting, bigoted, dangerous worldview. Think Westboro Baptist Church for an easy, obvious example. 

As to the racism, the more details of this ghastly incident emerge, the more it looks like a couple of psychotic crackheads rather than an organised, politically motivated attack. It seems like it's only 'terrorism' (and an excuse for attacks on whole groups and classes of other people) when the murderers are, well, Not White. White loners weren't investigated or abused-as-a-group after the revolting David Copeland planted his nail bombs in the late 90s. Even though Copeland was in fact a neo-Nazi, there was no muttering and sideways looks at any young man with a shaved head, or suggestions that all white people needed to denounce him or be labelled BNP supporters.

But if we're going to start going after pressure groups and people with unpleasant opinions that could be said to incide others to murder, then what about Fathers 4 Justice? Where are they when, as has already happened two or three times this year, a man murders his own children to punish his wife for leaving him? Strictly speaking F4J could be and perhaps should be described as a terrorist organisation. Several of their members have convictions for violence, and the stuff that their members like to spout on discussion forums can be seriously frightening due to their blind, frenzied hatred of women. Yet misogyny is still seen as not terribly important. Well, unless you want to air a bit more Islamophobia and remember to tack it on at the end of your rant about foreigners...