Sticks and stones won’t break the BNP….

So, the British National Party have got themselves in trouble with some generals for the use of World War II imagery. While the retired generals may well have a point I would argue that they should be perhaps be giving equal consideration to the case of UKIP who also prolifically use the same kind of imagery. While it seems like the generals scored a hit against the BNP I am not so convinced that they have.  Firstly, it is hard to escape the accusation that they were specifically targeted which, given the case of UKIP, I feel is wrong. General Sir Michael Jackson confirmed this was the case;

The comment was interpreted as being directed at the British National Party which has used the Spitfire and Churchill in its literature and campaigns. Jackson told the Times: “How dare they use the image of the army, in particular, to promote their policies. These people are beyond the pale.”

Predictably, lefties were overjoyed at this development; particularly when Nick Griffin seemed to suggest that due to the Afghanistan war; such figures might find themselves indicted for war crimes. A typical kind-of response can be found from Sunny Hundal on Pickled Politics:

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot, if that were possible even more. The BNP website has an angry editorial today hitting back at the British generals who distanced themselves from the BNP.

The same author pens ’20 questions’ to the BNP on Liberal Conspiracy most of which try to implicitly link the BNP with Nazism. Maybe we should just all sign-up to the ‘There is nothing British about the BNP’ campaign and be done with it but to me; there seems little on offer here that offers the disenfranchised voters who are drawn into the BNP’s milieu any kind of positive alternative. This is the primary failing of leftist (and indeed most kinds of mainstream ) responses to the BNP and it’s emergence as a party of protest. Stigmatising the party seems to have limited effectiveness and only will work to a limited extent when there is nothing positive offered alongside that; reheated patriotism doesn’t really offer that much, nor does tagging yourself to the coattails of generals who are currently spearheading an ill-advised and wasteful war in Afghanistan. One wonders how much the British National Party will have to make for this to be realised….