I came across a phrase the other day that stopped me dead in my tracks – and I can’t even remember where I saw it, or what exactly it related to. It went something like this…
“Just because nobody is saying the unspeakable, doesn’t mean they aren’t thinking it”
Whatever it was about it made me think about the complacency it is easy to fall into when standards of common decency are raised (through means which the Daily Mail tendancy would no doubt call political correctness gone mad) so that we no longer hear the types of hostile, unthinking bigotry we used to, or very rarely.
In those cases, the symptoms have been masked but the disease remains. Political correctness can help create an environment where education in decent, humane attitudes can bear fruit, but on its own it just hides what some people are thinking from the more delicate ears.
Its obvious I am really thinking about what is driving so many voters to vote for the BNP. Some will be the disenchanted working class who feel that the Labour Party has left them behind and are just happy to think someone is listening to them, but how many actually know what the BNP really stand for and positively support them for it?
Its a worrying thought that they are no longer free to say what they are thinking but can only express their hateful thoughts anonymously through the ballot box – and having their opinions bolstered by all those who really would not vote BNP if they only understood what it meant.
The hardcore are probably beyond reach, but the rest (hopefully a sizable majority of their voters) can be swayed by information. Do they know, for example, that the BNP harbours Holocaust deniers in its ranks? Do they know what BNP councillors actually do when they are elected? (Very little in most cases) Do they even know that the election of BNP councillors is often followed by a slump in house values locally?
Or am I reading far too much into it?
If we can get this UAF set up locally, it is that sort of information which it must get out to the public. Despite my personal detestation of the BNP and what they stand for, I appreciate they have every right to their opinions and to promote any of them which are legal – but I believe strongly that they are better countered merely by providing the facts than by trying to stifle them.
Wasn’t that phrase the basis of the Tory General election campaign of 2005. It certainly was quite scary the way that it was tapped into people’s prejudices.
It has echoes of “are you thinking what we’re thinking?”
Re BNP
Things look like they will get very nasty as the May elections loom – in Horsham as well as Crawley.
West Sussex County Times (WSCT) are now less complacent about the BNP, since BNP managed 171 votes in Denne’s By-election.
Take a look at a cluster of letters in the WSCT this week (Feb 16) : “MP should now rise to the challenge” – Page 11
One from V.C. Atkinson – remember him as the Crawley BNP guy for Furnace Green ?!
Another from Adam Champneys – another prominent BNP member from the South East, and
Andrew Morris – don’t know about him
They are desperate to get a ‘debate’ with Francis Maud – orchestrating their ‘troops’ – and desperate for a grain of ‘legitimacy’.
It’s going to be a nasty, nasty fight against these ‘right-wing nuts with a screw loose’.