Within a decade of his heyday in 2009 the former BNP leader Nick Griffin has disappeared into political obscurity after UKIP and then the Tories cannibalised the BNP propaganda tactics and their supporter base, but he's still hanging around on Twitter, spreading his bile.
One of his recent Tweets involved sharing a Daily Mail smear-job on Jeremy Corbyn that misrepresents Corbyn's criticism of 'a specific group of fanatical Zionists who turned up to a conference to berate and abuse the Palestinian speaker' with criticism of 'all Jews'.
Anyone with a few brain cells to rub together can see that the latest attempted smear actually reveals anti-Semitism on the part of the accusers, because to equate 'fanatical Zionist activists' with 'all Jews' involves the misrepresentation of all Jewish people as being the kind of blindly biased people who turn up to pro-Palestine events to abuse the speakers.
In his comment on the Daily Mail hatchet-job he shared, Nick Griffin attempted to turn this Daily Mail smear into a means of promoting extreme-right politics, by speculating that the mainstream media attacks on Corbyn are "red-pilling" Labour supporters.
For those who are not in the know, the concept of "red-pilling normies" is an extreme-right meme about the supremacy of extreme-right ideas that derives from the Matrix film where Morpheus offers Neo the choice between a blue pill and a red pill, with the blue pill returning him to normality and the red pill offering him the chance to be shown "how deep the rabbit hole goes".
The fact that the extreme-right have nicked this red-pill meme out of a film directed by two transgender Bernie Sanders-supporting social liberals tells you all you need to know about their cynical opportunism!
Two of the people who actively helped Griffin to spread his extreme-right interpretation of this Daily Mail smear-job were the Labour MPs Wes Streeting and Peter Kyle (a man so right-wing he's actually giving a speech at the 'Tory Glastonbury' festival!).
Both of these right-wing Labour MPs helped to increase Griffin's profile by retweeting him (prompting a significant boost in Griffin's Twitter following), and for what? To attack their own party!
Just consider the fact that during the Labour Party purge in 2016 thousands of ordinary left-leaning Labour members were instantly expelled for 'crimes' like once retweeting a Green party politician, admitting that they voted for another political party long before they joined Labour, and even liking the Foo Fighters too much!
But now we have two right-wing Labour MPs actually retweeting an extreme-right fanatic with no other purpose than damaging their own party, and they're getting away with it!
This contrast in the treatment of ordinary Labour members and right-wing Labour MPs who consider themselves so untouchable they can retweet fascists and speak at rival political party events with impunity is absolutely damning.
There's clearly one set of extremely harsh rules for ordinary Labour members that result in instant expulsion for the most trivial of matters, and another completely different set of rules for the party elitists that allow them to scream abuse at fellow Labour members, promote rival parties, and even retweet fascists without fear of sanction!
Returning to Griffin's Tweet, a quick scroll through his Twitter timeline reveals the fact that he absolutely detests Labour and their democratic socialist agenda (see Tweets). So it's obvious that Griffin's motivation for praising Jeremy Corbyn is to create divisions within the Labour movement as a way of supporting the Tory party that is currently experiencing an overt take-over by the extreme-right.
Griffin might be a horrible extreme-right, anti-Semitic, white supremacist bastard, but he's clearly no idiot. He can see as easily as everyone else that when he attacks Labour he gets ignored completely, but when he pretends to support Jeremy Corbyn he gets thousands of column inches of publicity in the mainstream press, and even retweeted by Labour MPs!
Why wouldn't he praise Corbyn if he knows that he's going to get scores of newspaper articles mentioning him, and thousands more Twitter followers thanks to the free publicity that people like Wes Streeting and Peter Kyle are willing to throw at him.
But instead of ignoring the horrible fascist and his cynical little games, these two Labour MPs have actively helped to give Griffin the enormous boost of publicity that he craves, simply in order to undermine the leadership of their own damned party!
How anyone believe's that resurrecting fascists is an acceptable thing for Labour MPs to be doing is absolutely beyond me.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
The Tory government minister Sajid Javid has just stood up in parliament and accused the Labour activist group Momentum of being "neo-fascists".
Aside from the fact that it's the political left who have always stood in solidarity with the Jewish people to fight against actual fascists from the political right (as at Cable Street where they beat the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s, when they beat back the rise of the National Front in Lewisham in the '70s, and the regular criticism of modern neo-Fascist hate groups like Britain First from the political left), there's also the well-known fact that the leader of Momentum is a Jewish guy called Jon Lansman.
Now if we know anything at all about anti-Semitism then surely we know that it's deeply anti-Semitic to baselessly resort to calling Jewish people Nazis just because you disagree with their political views.
So where is the tide of outrage about this hard-right government minister deliberately and offensively tarring hundreds of peaceful anti-fascist left-leaning Jewish people with the vile ideology that resulted in the mass genocide against their ancestors?
Aside from the blatantly anti-Semitic nature of his revolting smear-tactics, there's another thing to realise about Sajid Javid:
When Zac Goldsmith and the Tories used vile extreme-right propaganda tactics copied straight out of the BNP playbook to attack Sadiq Khan during the London Mayoral election in 2016, guess who remained absolutely silent on these disgusting tactics?
Then there was the blind eye that Javid turned when the actual fascist Britain First leader Paul Golding recently threatened to violently intimidate anyone who dares to oppose or criticise right-wing politicians like Rees-Mogg.
Then there's the fact that Javid refused to criticise his fellow Tory MP Bob Blackman after he shared extreme-right Islamophobic propaganda on his Facebook page just a few days before he hid behind parliamentary privilege to shout his offensive slurs at Jewish Momentum members.
When his own political party used neo-fascist tactics copied straight from the BNP, Sajid Javid remained silent; when the Britain First neo-Nazi thugs threatened to act as a violent enforcement militia for the Tories, Sajid Javid remained silent; when his fellow Tory MP shared disgusting fascist propaganda on Facebook, Sajid Javid remained silent.
And then after all of that silence he resorts to full bore anti-Semitism by slurring every single Jewish member of Momentum as neo-Nazis.
Will Theresa May do anything to discipline her own government minister for debasing parliament by resorting to anti-Semitic smear-mongering? Doubtful
Will the Tories like Brandon Lewis who was promoting his "respect pledges" on social media just a few weeks ago call his fellow Tory out on his hyperbolic and offensive slurs? Doubtful
Will the mainstream media call Sajid Javid out for baselessly smearing hundreds of Jewish Labour Party members as Nazis just days after the whole anti-Semitism furore? Doubtful
Just like Javid's own personal attitude to Zac Goldsmith's disgusting use of neo-Nazi propaganda tactics, his fellow Tories will doubtless turn a blind eye and refuse to hold their own to account.
And given the blind eye the mainstream media have turned to half a dozen other bigotry and bullying scandals within the Tory ranks this week, few would expect mainstream journalists to call him out either.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
One the day that the extreme-right fanatic Daren Osborne was convicted over the Finsbury Park terrorist attack, the BBC Newsnight team took the outrageous decision to invite one of the extreme-right hate preachers who radicalised and inspired him for an interview about the attack.
The prosecution presented Osborne's web browsing history as evidence in the Finsbury Park trial, and that evidence showed his fixation with the extreme-right hate group Britain First, and with the former EDL leader Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Christopher Yaxley Lennon). It also turned out that Osborne had copied out 'Tommy Robinson' tweets and left them on the dashboard of the van he used in the terrorist attack.
The BBC Newsnight team then decided to invite Tommy Robinson onto the show to make excuses, distance himself from the extreme-right fanatic he helped to radicalise, and spread even more of his extreme-right propaganda.
The interviewer Kirsty Wark was so weak that she even allowed Robinson to go completely unchallenged when he grossly misrepresented the peaceful Al Quds Palastinian Solidarity march as "a terrorist march", claim some kind of BBC conspiracy to cover up this so-called "terrorist march", and use this conspiracy as justification for Osborne's terrorist atrocity.
Wark and the Newsnight team were so shockingly unprepared for the interview that they allowed Robinson to deny being a hate preacher without countering his claim with anything from the mountain of evidence that he is (with this horrific hate-inciting video for example).
Anyone who thinks that this move was editorially justifiable should have a think about how Tommy Robinson and his ilk would have reacted had Newsnight invited an Islamist hate preacher onto the show on the the very same day one of the people they had radicalised was convicted for carrying out a deadly terrorist attack.
Just imagine the wave of outrage if the BBC had used the conviction of an Islamist terrorist as an opportunity to give a fanatical Islamist hate preacher a platform to spread even more Islamist propaganda, and even actually make excuses for the attack.
Amazingly the BBC's decision to hand Tommy Robinson a massive platform to make excuses and spread even more of his vile extreme-right views and conspiracies has elicited hardly any outrage at all.
It's just somehow taken for granted that the BBC would use the conviction of an extreme-right terrorist to actually help to promote one of the extreme-right hate preachers who radicalised him!
Newspaper columnists are not writing outraged pieces about it because to them it's perfectly normal that the BBC would actively promote a man who inspired an extreme-right terrorist attack.
If we think back a few years to that time the BBC invited the BNP leader Nick Griffin onto Question Time and the massive controversy that caused, it's clear that something has changed dramatically over the last decade.
Only a few years ago it was a highly controversial move to invite the leader of a far-right political party onto the BBC, even though Griffin was the leader of a political party that had bagged almost a million votes at the 2009 European Parliament elections, and he had no proven connections with deadly terrorist attacks at all.
But now things have changed so much that it's considered completely fine and uncontroversial to invite an extreme-right hate preacher onto the BBC on the very day one of his followers was convicted for carrying out a deadly terrorist attack!
If we look at the appalling decision to invite Tommy Robinson onto the BBC to spread extreme-right propaganda in the context of what was considered highly controversial less than a decade ago, it's beyond doubt that extreme-right politics has been embraced by the mainstream media to such an extent that people have become thoroughly normalised to it.
The only conclusion to draw from this horrific editorial decision is that the BBC is now actively working to promote and normalise extreme-right fanaticism.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
The furore over what the Tory MP Anne Marie Morris said is quite extraordinary. Not because she used such an archaic and obviously offensive phrase in a committee full of Tory MPs, but mainly because of the vast swarms of right-wing Tory sympathisers on the Internet defending the phrase and crying that white people can't lob the word nigger around with impunity any more!
It's no surprise at all that a Tory MP has been caught using a phrase that should so obviously have been left in the past. The only surprise is that her Tory colleagues aren't caught out revealing their inherent bigotry more often.
Theresa May has spent the last three months stumbling from one chaotic pratfall to another, but even she couldn't make a hash of the "nigger in the woodpile" furore, doing the minimum necessary and temporarily suspending Morris from the Tory party.
A decent bit of media management could even have turned the incident into a qualified success for the hapless Tory leader as she symbolically ousts bigotry from the Tory party, and then begins trying to tiptoe out of the toxic extreme-right Blue-kip corner she spent the last year painting herself into.
The problem of course is that there are huge numbers of Tories out there who share the same out-of-touch bigoted mentality that Anne Marie Morris temporarily failed to hide.
Most MPs are trained to keep these bigoted attitudes carefully concealed (except Boris Johnson who inexplicably gets a free pass to say pretty much whatever bigoted nonsense he likes), but your run-of-the mill right-wing loudmouth has no idea how toxic this kind of bigotry has become in 21st Century Britain.
Many of these Tory supporting right-wing blowhards grew up in the era when it was fine to monkey chant and lob bananas at black footballers, call mixed race people "mongrels" and openly express racist, sexist, and homophobic views with complete impunity.
Obviously not all Tories are like this these days, but anyone who wants to deny the existence of this bigoted extreme-right Tory demographic should ask themselves where the million BNP voters at the 2009 European elections went next, and where the the most extreme-right elements of the 4 million disappearing UKIP voters went after Theresa May opportunistically stole UKIP's Brexit flag and began slow-marching the UK towards a fanatically right-wing "no deal" economic cliff edge.
If you don't think the electoral stats are convincing enough proof of this extreme-right Tory demographic, just go and read any article about the "nigger in the woodpile" furore or type the phrase into a Twitter or Youtube search, and marvel at the frothing hordes of right-wingers tying themselves in knots to defend the use of the phrase.
Apparently, according to this thronging mass of right-wingers, the fuss over the phrase is political correctness gone mad because blacks say nigger all the time, so why can't whites?
If people are unaware of the concept of oppressed groups reclaiming and repurposing offensive words they must have been living under a bloody rock for decades.
Just because gay fellows call each other "queer" doesn't mean that you can chase them down the street yelling "queer" at them; just because women protested against rape culture and systematic misogyny with "slut walks" doesn't mean the word is back in fashion and blokes can call women sluts again; and just because black rappers have reclaimed the word nigger doesn't mean it isn't inappropriate when coming out of the mouths of white elitists.
Another right-wing argument is that it's a common phrase!
If the saying "Nigger in the woodpile" is common parlance in your social circles, that says absolutely nothing about the general acceptability of the phrase in modern Britain, and everything about the kind of people you associate with.
I've literally never heard anyone I know use the phrase, and I'm reasonably sure the majority of Another Angry Voice readers have either never heard it in real life, or have only ever heard it in the distant past.
Another right-wing argument is that there's apparently no such thing as racism, and that it's all some kind of leftist conspiracy to erode the natural supremacy of whites, which is such absolutely mind-rotting lunacy I don't think I even need to posit a counter argument do I?
It's actually quite amusing that all the frothing-at-the-mouth Tory bigots out there have made this another absolutely unwinnable situation for Theresa May.
For once she did more or less the right thing by quickly suspending Morris, but her election strategy of deliberately appealing to the bigoted instincts of the extreme-right ultra-nationalist blue-kip demographic has come back to maul her big style.
There's absolutely no way that Theresa May can spin this into a "zero tolerance to bigotry" stance when every extreme-right blowhard on the Internet has spent an entire day vigorously defending the "nigger in the woodpile" phrase, Anne Marie Morris' right to utter it in public, and the use of nigger and various other terms of bigoted abuse in general.
With fans like that, who needs enemies?
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
Once upon a time Zac Goldsmith used to pretend to be "the nice guy" of the Tory party. He created this impression by talking up environmental causes, promoting cycling and pushing for the right to recall corrupt MPs. It was a good act, in fact it was good enough to fool me into thinking that he was one of the least objectionable Tories. Admittedly "the least stinky turd in the sewer" is damning with faint praise indeed, but it's testament to Goldsmith's "nice guy" act that he had me convinced that he was far from the worst of the Tories.
Zac Goldsmith's "nice guy" pretence took an absolute hammering even before the London Mayoral election when he was sacked as the patron of a London disability charity for voting to slash subsistence benefits for sick and disabled people by £1,500 per year.
Once the London Mayoral campaign got under way the "nice guy Zac" persona he had been carefully cultivating for so many years got well and truly thrown under the bus. His campaign has veered from Islamophobic smears against his Labour rival Sadiq Khan, through racially targeted fearmongering leaflets and then back again to more Islamophobic smearing.
It's been pointed out many times that the accusations against Sadiq Khan are desperate smears. It's also been pointed out that it's pretty damned hypocritical for members of a party that sucks up so pathetically to a brutal murderous Islamist theocracy like Saudi Arabia to go around criticising other people for having debated against Islamist extremists in the past. But it just doesn't seem to matter to Zac Goldsmith and the Tories. They know that fear and hate are powerful political weapons, and realistically the use of such tactics are the only way they're ever going to install another out-of-touch Eton posh boy as the ruler of London.
Just a few days before the election Zac Goldsmith's campaign plummeted to a dispiriting new low when he wrote an article in the Daily Mail making the same tired old slurs against Sadiq Khan, which was illustrated by a picture of the deadly 2005 Tavistock Square bus bombing.
The tactic of using images of this Islamist terrorist atrocity was first used by the BNP back in 2005 when they used a picture of the bombed bus in a by-election leaflet just a few weeks after the event.
The BNP were roundly condemned for exploiting the victims of a terrorist atrocity in their political propaganda, but times have obviously changed, since the tactic is now apparently considered perfectly acceptable by the Tory party.
A look at the comments beneath the Daily Mail article is revealing:
"I predict certain parts of london will be voting for the eye sis sympathiser, but hopefully the British parts of London will do the right thing..."
No capitalisation of the Word London, a bizarre misspelling of the acronym ISIS and a clearly bigoted assumption that the likes of Muslims and non-whites are not British.
1,300+ upvotes
"I wouldn't vote for him simply because he is called Khan. We all know where his loyalties lay and it's not with the British anglo saxon minority is it."
An admission that the commentator wouldn't vote for anyone with a non-British name, a bizarre claim that white-British people (87.2% of the population at the 2011 Census) are a minority and a claim that people of non Anglo-Saxon origin are incapable of loyalty to the United Kingdom.
850+ upvotes
"London is no longer a British city"
An utterly bizarre claim. The capital of the United Kingdom is not British! The tactics of speaking about culturally diverse places as if they are "lost" or sticking "istan" on the end of place names are right out of the BNP handbook on bigoted political posturing.
750+ upvotes
It's absolutely clear that Zac Goldsmith is desperately trying to whip up hatred and play the BNP style tactic of creating racial and cultural divisions, and that such tactics are highly successful with a lot of bigoted Daily Mail reader types. The problem for Goldsmith is that London is a culturally diverse and largely tolerant city, where diverse cultural groups have a long history of standing together in solidarity against the fascistic division tactics of the extreme right (like the Battle of Cable Street in 1936).
In the end it will be up to the people of London whether they see through these deliberate BNP style hatemongering tactics and reject the latest nasty Eton posh-boy the Tories have lined up to rule over them at the ballot box.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
In this article I am going to explain twelve things you should know about the extreme-right hate group called Britain First.
Britain First is a BNP splinter group
Britain First was founded by a guy called Jim Dowson who ran a British National Party call centre in Belfast until he abandoned the party after being accused of indecently assaulting a woman in a hotel room. Dowson tried to claim that the accusations were part of a "dirty tricks" campaign to discredit him because he opposed BNP leader Nick Griffin's plan to comply with court rulings to remove discriminatory clauses from the BNP constitution. It's not much of a defence to say that the accusations against him were fabricated because he was even more right-wing than Nick Griffin, but that's the story he came out with.
Jim Dowson has got a track record of involvement with loyalist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland, and with anti-women's rights groups. He is also very open about his homophobic views.
The treasurer of Britain First is also an ex-BNP man. Paul Golding was a BNP councilor in Sevenoaks between 2009 and 2011 and he also served as the BNP's communication officer.
This ex-BNP pair stood as the Britain First candidates in Wales and Scotland in the 2014 European elections. As Britain First didn't stand any candidates in England, they advised their followers to vote for UKIP, which would hardly seem to be the kind of endorsement that Nigel Farage would want for his "we're definitely not fascists" party.
UPDATE: Britain First founder Jim Dowson quit in July 2014 saying that "No matter how many times I told [Paul Golding] I did not want decent Muslims intimidated, he just continued doing it ... I have come to the conclusion that no matter how hard I tried, you cannot escape from the fact that the group is being overrun with racists and extremists".
The largest and fastest growing UK political page on Facebook
Over one million people have decided to "like" Britain First's Facebook page, meaning this extreme-right hate group has more followers than any other political party in the UK.
It should be a source of acute national embarrassment that at a time when the British public should be looking to genuine political alternatives to the bankrupt neoliberal status quo in Westminster, that hundreds of thousands of people are turning to an extreme-right hate group hell bent on scapegoating minorities, and that these followers are spreading the Britain First messages of hate and fear all over Facebook.
Deceitful tactics
Britain First use populist
infographics to dupe unsuspecting people into following their hate
group. In between Islamophobic rants and immigration lies the Britain First admins intersperse images that the majority of people agree with
(infographics decrying animal cruelty, anti-paedophilia memes, support
our troops/football team memes, don't leave dogs in hot cars memes ...) so that ordinary people get hooked in to following their page.
A lot of people end up following the page because they saw one of these populist "honey trap" images, without even realising that the page that produced them is an extreme-right hate group.
Dodgy party funding
One of the most distasteful things about Britain First is the way that they elicit donations to their right-wing political party through animal cruelty shock tactics.
The image to the right is one of their most popular fundraising campaigns ever (shared a mind-boggling 791,234 times).
The image description says "help us stop this cruelty!" and includes a link to their Paypal donations page. The problem is that Britain First have made absolutely no effort to segregate funds raised through this "help us stop this cruelty!" appeal from their general donations. Neither have they explained anywhere how they plan to use all of this money to actually prevent animal cruelty.
Britain First believe that they can get away with appealing to people's good nature (abhorrence at animal cruelty) in order to soak up huge numbers of donations from unsuspecting people who imagine that their donations will be used to prevent animal cruelty, rather than fund an extreme-right political party.
In my view Britain First are guilty of obtaining party political donations under false pretenses, and of illegally funding their political party with overseas donations. I have written to the Electoral Commission to ask what they plan to do about it.
Abusing Lee Rigby's image
One of the most commonly occurring images on the Britain First Facebook page and on the Britain First website
is a picture of the murdered soldier Lee Rigby. It is absolutely
sickening that they choose to continue desecrating his memory by making
him the "poster boy" of their extreme-right hate group despite the objections of his family.
In the 2014 European Elections they even used the phrase "Remember Lee Rigby" as their party description on the ballot papers in Wales. The Electoral Commission were hit by a tidal wave of condemnation for allowing them to use Lee Rigby's name like that, and eventually issued a groveling apology to the Rigby family.
Here's what Lee Rigby's mother had to say about their use of his name on the ballot paper.
"Well
yet again can anymore heartbreak be thrown at me and my family, so
heartbroken tonight. Electoral commission phoned saying that a party in
Wales has stood for election in the European parliament named
Britain First using Lee's name to promote their party and some fucker
from the commission allowed it to go through but [they] cannot take any
action
till after the election which is held on my sons anniversary of his
murder. Their views are not what Lee believed in and has no support from
the family. Their will be a family apology from the electoral
commission but cannot be made public till after 22nd of May. Lee's
legacy
will live on through Team Lee United Forces and all the good I hope to
achieve xxxx" [source]
Desecrating the poppy symbol
Another one of Britain First's most disgusting tactics is to desecrate the poppy symbol by using it to raise funds for their extreme-right hate group.
The worst thing about it is that some vulnerable people may see the poppies and think that they're donating to a cause which helps former soldiers, rather than an extreme-right hate group.
The Royal British Legion have been informed that Britain First are using the poppy symbol to sell their tatty jackets and t-shirts, but even if the RBL come out and condemn this tactic in the strongest terms, one would expect Britain First to completely ignore them, just as they completely ignore the suffering they are inflicting on Lyn Rigby.
Outright Lies
Britain First are also guilty of spreading outright lies on their Facebook page. In one widely shared Britain First meme they claim that asylum seekers and illegal immigrants receive £29,900 per year in benefits.
This is blatantly untrue for several obvious reasons:
- Asylum Seekers and illegal immigrants are not the same thing, so they wouldn't have the same entitlements.
- Illegal immigrants are not even entitled to benefits. Given that they are in the country illegally they are extremely unlikely to turn up at the Jobcentre asking for benefits.
- The Tory benefits cap was introduced at £26,000 per year, so it seems more than a little unlikely that they are giving £29,900 per year to illegal immigrants.
The extreme right love to use the argument that "we can't even talk about immigration without being labeled racists and bigots". The problem is of course that they're not just "talking about" immigration, they are spreading outright lies about immigration.
In my view it is unacceptable to label someone a racist or a bigot if they raise legitimate concerns about immigration. However, if they resort to spreading outright lies about the subject in order to stir up resentment and hatred of immigrants, then fire away, because those are clearly the tactics of racists and bigots.
Hypocrisy
The admins on the Britain First Facebook page are an appalling bunch of hypocrites. They whine endlessly that their views are under threat from censorship, however they have a policy of purging their page of any critical comments and banning dissenting voices from ever coming back again.
Dozens and dozens of people have told me how they were banned from Britain First for daring to leave non-conformist comments, but you don't have to take my word for it, the Britain First admins are quite open about the way they routinely delete all critical comments.
If you still don't believe it, maybe you should try leaving a couple of politely worded criticisms (you shouldn't use the poppy symbol to raise funds for your own political party) or questions (what exactly have you done with the money raised through your animal welfare appeal?) and see how long it is before you experience the Britain First "delete and ban" treatment yourself.
To harp on and on about "free speech" whilst simultaneously engaging in one of the biggest mass censorship campaigns Facebook has ever seen is such an appalling display of hypocrisy that anyone, no matter what their political orientation, should be shocked by it.
These people hate free speech, and they only ever invoke it to claim that they have the right to do and say whatever they like (conning people out of money with animal cruelty shock tactics, debasing the poppy symbol, making a dead soldier their "poster boy" despite the protestations of his family, telling outright lies). When it comes to other people's free speech the Britain First admins can't hit the "block and ban" button quickly enough. In their view freedom of speech
is the freedom to agree with them, if you happen to disagree with them, then
freedom of speech doesn't exist for you.
The fact that they have censored such a huge number of people has inspired me to come up with this "I've been censored by Britain First" certificate which people can use as their Facebook banner image, because it should be a mark of pride that you've been censored by a bunch of extreme-right hatemongers.
A closed ideology echo chamber
[Main article]
The Britain First Facebook page is a classic example of a closed ideology echo chamber, in which information, ideas, and beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission and repetition inside an enclosed system.
Their policy of routinely purging the page of critical comments and banning dissenting voices demonstrates their commitment to keeping their followers brainwashed in an atmosphere of conformity.
Any group or society in which people who ask awkward questions or present counter-evidence are routinely censored is clearly a closed ideology echo chamber. With over 400,000 followers the Britain First Facebook page is one of the biggest examples of a ruthlessly enforced closed ideology environment in the history of Facebook.
Fascism
The American author Laurence Britt defined 14 characteristics of fascist regimes (you can see a copy of his article here). I'll list the 14 characteristics and compare with Britain First policies and strategies.
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Britain First make constant use of patriotic mottoes, slogans, symbols
and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols
on clothing and in public displays.
2. Disdain for the
importance of human rights - One of Britain First's most common complaints is against the European Human Rights Act.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying
Cause - Britain First rally people into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the
need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or
religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
4. The supremacy of the
military/avid militarism - Britain First constantly intersperse their posts with posts designed to glorify the military (often in order to sell their own merchandise or convince people to sign up to their organisation).
5. Rampant sexism - Britain First's founder Jim Dowson is strongly opposed to women's reproductive rights. This subject is never mentioned on the Britain First page because it would interfere with their populist appeal.
6. Controlled Mass Media - Thankfully Britain First haven't got to the stage where they can exert any control over the media, however their policy of ruthlessly censoring dissenting opinion on their Facebook page indicates their contempt for freedom of speech and their desire to control the spread of information.
7. Obsession with
national security - Britain First are always harping on about threats to national security in order to whip up fear amongst their followers.
8. Religion and ruling elite
tied together - Fortunately Britain First are not part of the ruling elite, but it is absolutely clear that they see religion as an integral part of their political mission. Here's a quote from their statement of principles: "Britain First is committed to maintaining and strengthening Christianity as the foundation of our society and culture".
9. Corporate Power is Protected - Britain First like to present themselves as an alternative to globalisation, however their dalliance with the neoliberal Tea Party fringe in the US show that they have more in common with hardline neoliberals than they like to let on. Another indicator that they are no opponents of globalisation is the way they use their Facebook page and website to propagandise for Cadbury's, which was once a British company, but is now owned by the American multinational giant Kraft.
10. Power of labor
suppressed or eliminated - Britain First make a big deal out of opposing socialism and trade unions as enemy ideologies and they also use their Facebook page to attack the minimum wage.
11. Disdain and suppression
of intellectuals and the arts - The Britain First Facebook page is rife with anti-intellectual comments and infographics.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Britain First are obsessed with crime and punishment, making frequent calls for the death penalty to be re-introduced. Nooses and gallows are recurring motifs on the Britain First page, and they also use public outrage at judicial decisions, in order to con people into donating to their political party.
13. Rampant cronyism and
corruption - Thankfully Britain First have no political power, so they are not in the position to use their power to enrich themselves and their cronies, but judging by the fact that there is no open process over how appointments are made within the party, and their deceitful fundraising tactics, it's not hard to imagine what Britain would be like if these guys were in charge.
14. Fraudulent elections - Once again, these guys are not in charge of the country, so they haven't got the power to rig elections in their own favour.
Of the fourteen characteristics of fascism identified by Laurence Britt, Britain First meet most of them, and the only ones they don't meet are the ones that it is impossible for them to meet due to their absolute lack of political power.
A national disgrace
A severe economic depression followed by the rapid rise of right-wing nationalist extremism and the scapegoating of minority groups seems to be a case of history repeating itself.
An
interesting contrast can be made with the rise of the left-wing anti-corruption party Podemos (We Can) in Spain. They experienced a
similar lightning rise in popularity, with their Facebook page passing 500,000 followers within three months of the foundation of the party. But instead of fostering fear and and inciting hatred of minorities, they lay the blame firmly at the door of the corrupt Spanish establishment and propose reforms to put political power back into the hands of the people.
Podemos are committed to fighting corruption and increasing people power through democratic participation. Britain First are committed to parading around on paramilitary style marches, invading mosques, scamming money from unsuspecting people and spreading outright lies.
It's pretty sad that in Spain, a country that was still ruled over by a fascist dictatorship less than 40 years ago, people are looking to a party that presents a real alternative to neoliberalism and corruption, whilst in Britain, a country that has never experience a full-on fascist regime, people are looking to the extreme-right fringe in their hundreds of thousands.
Given the enormous sacrifices made by previous generations in the fight against fascism, it is a national disgrace that right-wing extremism is on the rise in the UK. What makes it even worse is the fact that Britain First use those very sacrifices in order to raise funds for their own brand of right-wing extremism.
The fightback
Given that it is impossible to fight back against Britain First on their own page due to their "delete and ban" censorship policy for all dissenting voices, people who oppose Britain First's brand of right-wing extremism need to find other ways of criticising them. In this section I'll outline a few tactics.
Criticise the shared versions of their images - Britain First can use their admin powers to delete all criticism from the original iterations of their pictures, but they can't delete criticism on the new iterations that are created when their followers share their work. If you see any of your Facebook friends sharing Britain First images, you can leave comments expressing your distaste.
Report them - If you see Britain First using deceitful tactics to raise party donations you can report them to the Electoral Commission. If you see them using poppy images to sell their own merchandise you can report them to the Royal British Legion. If you see any Britain First posts that you consider to be in breech of Facebook terms and conditions, you can report them to Facebook. If you see them using Royal Crests and you suspect they have no permission, you can report them to The Lord Chamberlain's Office. If you see anyone posting unlawful comments on there (such as incitement to murder, racist or religious hate crime, criminal threats ...) you can report the individual to the police. If you see someone using making extremist and offensive statements(using the term "muzrats" to describe Muslims, or calling for a Nazi style holocaust against all Muslims) you can click on their profile and see if their employer is listed and send screen shots of their extremist comments to their employers.
Convince your friends to unlike the page - Clicking this link allows you to find out which of your Facebook friends follow the Britain First page. You could consider sending them a message explaining your objections to this extreme-right hate group and asking them to consider unliking the page (feel free to follow these 3 simple steps if you like).
Spread awareness - You can spread awareness of Britain First's disgustingly hypocritical censorship policy by using this "I've been censored by Britain First" certificate as your Facebook banner.
Laugh at them - There are several Britain First parody pages out there including Britain Furst and Britian First. Sometimes the best thing to do when it comes to the extreme-right fascist fringe is to take the piss out of them and laugh at them.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
