The Mail/BNP Syndrome

I've spoken before about how the Daily Mail is often superficially critical of the BNP, calling the party names but actually producing material not that different from what you'd expect to see in a BNP campaign leaflet. Sometimes, this can happen in the same story.

Not always though. 'An economy in chaos and now those expenses. BNP leaders hope it's the 'perfect storm' that will sweep them to power', from Saturday's edition isn't an awful attempt to expose the BNP, although it is a little thin on substance and it probably talks up the goons' 'successes' a bit too much, but it is at least critical all the way through and traces the party's lineage back to Oswald Mosely. Of course, the paper's own lineage stretches back to supporting fascism in the thirties, but that's not too important in this story.

One of the good things about this article is that at least some attention is paid to the kind of dog-whistling language the BNP use. There should be more of this sort of thing in the Mail, but this is at least a start:

On the phone the previous night, Pete had even used the phrase 'indigenous people', which is straight from the BNP lexicon of racial terminology.

Of course, most people know that the term 'indigenous people' actually means 'white people'. It's the sort of language that is sufficiently ambiguous to fool people into thinking it means everyone born here, or current citizens. How about some examples of it's use in sentences, to see it in action? I'm alternating between italicised and non-italicised text to help differentiate between quotes. As regular readers know, I have a policy of not linking to the BNP site, so I normally urge you to Google for my references:

"For it's not only language but culture and tradition - the very essence of nationhood - that divides the growing numbers of new arrivals from the indigenous population."

One in five of Luton's 200,000 population is Muslim. But in the Bury Park district, where Luton Central Mosque is situated, the figure is much higher. Indeed, the original indigenous white population has all but disappeared from these back-to-back terraces near the Kenilworth Road football stadium."

"Under that law, judges have been handed the power to balance rights against each other. And time and again, they have come down in favour of the rights of terror suspects, illegal immigrants and common criminals against the rights of indigenous, law-abiding people."

"What's more, Porritt's two-child limit is particularly neuralgic when it comes to Britain, where many people are indeed having no more than one or two children - with the result that the indigenous population is not replicating itself.

The rise in Britain's population is made up almost entirely of immigrants, at the cost of its identity."

"Not only was our welfare system encouraging the growth of an underclass of indigenous Britons.

As foreigners took jobs that locals were not prepared to fill, this immigration also prevented the country from tackling the problem of millions of its own citizens on incapacity and other unemployment benefits."

"These are shocking figures. They paint a picture of a country whose indigenous population has signally failed to benefit from years of economic growth."

"I've long argued that left to their own devices, people rub along quite well together. The indigenous British have been far more accepting of incomers than any other nation in Europe - and far more scandalously traduced by their own political leaders. "

This time though, I can link to all these references. None of them are from the BNP. Here they are, in the order they appear in the quotes above.

'A tower of Babel', Daily Mail Comment, 18 March 2009.
'Britons who HATE Britain: The Muslim extremists hell-bent on segregation rather than integration', Daily Mail 14 March.
'Yes, Big Brother Britain is a menace. The irony is, it's the civil liberties lobby who are to blame', Melanie Phillips, Daily Mail 2 March 2009.
'Why do Green zealots think they can dictate how many children we are allowed to have?', Melanie Phillips, Daily Mail 3 February 2009.
'Paying the price for dropping our guard on immigration', Daily Mail, 2 February 2009.
'Brown must deliver for British workers' Daily Mail Comment, 31 January 2009.
'Getting up the noses of the 'guilt-tripping white folks'', Richard Littlejohn, Daily Mail, 20 January 2009.

You knew that was coming, right?

It would be great if the recent pointing out of 'indigenous people' being 'straight from the BNP lexicon' was a signal that the paper is going to cut down on the dog-whistling, but that isn't really likely.

Here is something I'm going to suggest you Google. Look for 'The Littlejohn Syndrome', and you'll find a rambling article about this sort of thing on the BNP website. It says

So every now and again the ‘acceptable extremists’ make a token effort to distance themselves from the conclusion that their writing points to. In the case of Richard Littlejohn a good half a dozen times a year he launches into an absurd tirade against the ‘knuckle-dragging BNP’, presumably in the hope that somehow it will erase the fact that much of what he says is compatible with much of what the BNP says.

[...]

Similarly with Peter Hitchens. This periodic ‘cleansing’ is pure charade. Littlejohn et al know perfectly well that their assaults on their audience have no effect and that the same people will continue to read what they write because it’s what they want to read. It’s odd. They’re denying the connection between what they write and who reads it; if they don’t like who their writing attracts maybe they should write something else.

So every now and again they put on a show of putting distance between themselves and that section of their readership they consider (publicly that is) undesirable, safe in the knowledge that just so long as they continue writing what they’re writing the same people will continue reading it and their all important readership numbers will be maintained.

Of course, most of the article is mad stuff referring to a homogenous 'establishment' and all that good stuff, but the Mail does appear to write quite a lot that's quite similar to what the BNP might say and it does occasionally bang out an article critical of the party.