Rant #1 – Nick Griffin, Oxford Student Union, and John Stuart Mill.
So it’s all over the student press; Oxide Radio wanted to interview that paradigm of human excellence, Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP, live on air, and then OUSU stepped in, claiming a no-platform policy for fascist organisations. Leaving aside for now two issues; one, why did those two DJ’s want to interview Griffin? From their poses in the Cherwell (the newspaper, not the river unfortunately), they looked like pretentious, attention seeking losers, but oh well. And two, are the BNP actually fascists? I mean, do they have that much ideology? I kind of thought they were just the presentable face of extreme right racist thugs, a sunday-dinner version of the National Front so to speak.
Anyway, it seems to me like everything was handled wrongly in this matter. Given that two attention seekers wanted to interview Griffin, it seems like OUSU has messed up on two counts by not allowing him on. Firstly, old J.S. sorted all this stuff out quite convincingly about 150 years ago. To summarise: it’s no good just banning these people, as that wont make them go away – in fact it makes it seems like they have a legitimate cause to be heard. The way to beat them is to let them speak so that we can show why they are wrong, not just refuse to engage with them like petulent children. Indeed, this is made extra important because if we believe in something like ‘A Right to Freedom of Speech’, the catch to that rather impressive and peculiar historical luxury is that we have to afford it to everyone, or else it becomes arbitrary, meaningless and ultimately a sophisticated reporduction of what it was meant to replace.
This is brought home by the fact that Griffin has now used the no-platform policy to say the following: (words to this effect) “its a great shame that the silent student majority hasnt the courage to stand up to the handful of far-left Fascists who run the student union”. That’s right, the leader of the BNP has now been put in a position where he can accuse his liberal sensors of being extremists, even fascists. Quite ironic really, and while anyone who keeps a note on the activities of the far right will notice that they are quite adept at using such situations to glorify themselves, it’s still ridiculous to hand them such an opportunity.
Amnyway, something to make you smile. You may have noticed that Nick Griffin has a lazy eye. Well in fact it’s not just lazy, it’s basically dead. 10 points if you can guess how he got it. That’s right, he was on a shooting trip (though sadly using only air rifles), and his gun wasn’t firing properly. So he decided to have a look why. Seriously. If that never convinced you to vote BNP, then you now see the error of your ways.
EDIT: My boy Grezza X has the mobile phone number of Mark Collete, leader of the Young BNP, and star of the BBC’s Young, Facist and Proud documentary, where he made something of a complete tit of himself. Every now and then we like to ring him and pass on some incredibly mature comments, such as “your ma’s an assylum seeker” and “I heard you are Jewish, would you like to join Young Zionists for Mosad?”. If you would like to get involved, then contact me and perhaps this will be possible.
