Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

The Mail don’t like the BNP, oh no

Let the Mail make it clear for you: They don't like the BNP. They want to make it absolutely crystal clear that they don't like the BNP and that being racist, like the BNP are, is wrong, and a bad thing.

Got that? Good. The BNP are especially bad when they're given a platform to present their views on the BBC, the evil Stalinist broadcasting monolith who affect the profits of private media companies do loads of bad things with our tax pounds, particularly when it comes to celebrity dancing programmes.

Today's story has the headline

BBC storm as two of BNP's most notorious activists are invited on Radio 1 to insult Ashley Cole

in which a BNP spokesman says:

Statistics fail to record the true impact of immigration because foreign born people record their children as British rather than second or third generation immigrants.

Terrible, isn't it... oh. Hang on a minute. That wasn't a BNP spokesman saying that, it was the Daily Mail's James Slack in a news report. Whoops! Sorry about that, don't know how that got in there.

Anyway, let's get this right. The BNP spokesman says

"Immigration threatens to ruin Europe"

and

"Europe's (and Britain's) problems with Muslim migration are not mostly demographic. Europe opened the door to mass immigration in the Fifties and discovered - as the United States did before it - that it is impossible to open that door just a fraction. Immigration, though intended as a solution to a short-term labour crisis, has become, without anyone particularly wanting it to be, a permanent feature of the landscape."

Oh! I've got it wrong again! Shit! I don't know how I keep doing that. That's in today's Mail, in an article which does have this beautiful "I'm not racist but..." at the start:

are Europe's ethnic problems the figment of a febrile political imagination - something created by racism, dishonesty and manipulation by extremist parties such as the BNP?

See? The BNP are bad but... here are some of their arguments!

Anyway, I'll get it right this time. The BNP spokesman says:

"The problem, however, is that it doesn't understand what Muslim extremism is. Believing that Islamic terrorism is motivated by an ideology which has 'hijacked' and distorted Islam, it will not acknowledge the extremism within mainstream Islam itself."

There. That's the BNP spokesma... oh no! It's happened again. Sorry, that was Melanie Phillips, writing in the Daily Mail*! Oops. I don't know how this keeps happening, I'm sorry.

Anyway. I'm definitely going to get it right this time. The BNP spokesman, who was disgracefully given a platform by the BBC, said:

I am an alien in this land, I do not understand the language and do not know which new language to learn as there seems to be so many spoken. I do not understand the religion either, there seem to be so many, all of them incomprehensible to me. I do not understand the culture either, it seems to consist of being very loud in the streets while being very drunk, it also seems to consist showing a complete lack of respect for the law.
I am male, white, born in Norwich and currently living in Essex, I will vote for any party that promises to deport me back to the land of my birth.

Shit! I seem to have done it again! This was just one of over a hundred pro-BNP comments which turned up on another Melanie Phillips article and which were published by the Mail!

Well there you have it. It's wrong for the BNP to have a platform, unless it's provided by the Daily Mail. And it's wrong for them to say that people like Ashley Cole aren't ethnically British - but it's fine for Mail reporter James Slack to question the Britishness of immigrants. It's wrong to attack immigration, unless you're writing for the Daily Mail. And it's wrong to label all Muslims as being extremists, unless you're writing for the Daily Mail. I hope we're all clear on that now.

Just as a footnote, I enjoyed this:

The interview was also an apparent breach of National Union of Journalists guidelines which say that when interviewing representatives of racist organisations...

The Daily Mail, champion of trade unions! I'm sure the NUJ guidelines are prominently displayed all over their offices.

I also liked:

Mr McKenzie appeared to be unaware that it is common BNP practice to mobilise members to post supportive messages on websites whenever their party is in the news.

I wonder which newspaper they choose most often, which has stories they can support and columnists who represent their views? Hmm, guess we'll just have to keep wondering about that. In the meantime, we'll see what happens with the comments on this story during the day... I'm sure the vast majority will be bashing the BNP!

Incidentally, Radio 1's treatment of the BNP was piss-weak, and an affront to journalism, and everyone responsible for it should be smacked over the arse with a rusty spade until they realise how fucking stupid they are. That's true, but let's not have crocodile tears from the Mail, just because their arch-nemesis has fucked up.

* July 8, 2008. Article has mysteriously disappeared from the online archive.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Related posts:

1. The Mail: No principles
2. A tricky one for the Mail
3. Mel Phillips: Not right-wing enough for Mail readers
4. The Mail v Chris Moyles
5. Call the cops? Don’t bother, the Mail knows…