Maintaining irrational hatred has to be the most draining of activities, and since Griffin must constantly come into contact with human beings that confound his politically stereotypical views of their imagined shortcomings, because of their race, sexual orientation or religion, it must wring him dry with the effort of continuing to loathe them.
Where does he find the superhuman energy that would be required, according to his party’s policies, to despise a nice black chap who’d just sorted out some car insurance, a cheerful Jewish woman running an adult literacy programme, a kind Muslim girl giving eye tests or a gay man giving a lecture on diminishing populations of red squirrels? It would take spectacular concentration levels to keep up such absurd distaste – to make anyone want these particular people to be removed from this country, or have their rights eroded – particularly when faced with the indisputable body of evidence that proves accidents of birth such as race and gender are irrelevant to conduct and character.
Since we know that mental exercise requires energy, then pre-judging other human beings, and constructing plans to make them disappear because you think them inferior, must also burn a lot of calories – which shows how much Griffin must eat, judging by his less-than-athletic figure. We can therefore make a bit of a guess that senseless bigotry is where most of Mr Griffin’s mental energy must be spent, since his thinking prowess on just about anything else is less than impressive. Hence, when the big debate raged last week about whether Griffin should be invited as a panellist on to BBC’s Question Time, the answer should surely have been a resounding “yes”.
The arguments against it are of course perfectly valid and often heard. Why should we give air time to someone with an agenda to spread discord and division? Indeed. Fair point. The counter-argument, however, is that the viewing and listening public are most certainly not stupid, and observing extremists and fanatics in the full glare of sunlight is not only vitally important so we may observe what they’re up to, but can often be extremely entertaining as well as instructive. One occasionally misses, for instance, the ubiquitous televisual presence of that ridiculous bearded chump Anjem Choudary, the head of British al-Muhajiroun, since the BBC seems to have kicked the habit of wheeling him out as the token mad fundamentalist every time they require one.
I always had a hankering to see Choudary on Question Time, being compelled to answer questions from a panel in Orkney concerning herring quotas and what he thinks about the digital switchover and diving in football. How priceless would that have been?
That’s only one of the reasons I want to see Griffin on Question Time too. It’s not just because it’s actually right and proper, in a free democracy, that a representative of a legally recognised political party with European parliament and regional council seats should not be banned from sharing a platform with other politicians. It’s also because he will be exposed as being so monumentally, catastrophically stupid that it will serve the public well to witness it.
It’s the more covert, street-corner leafleting, door-knocking canvassing that the BNP do, far from the main public glare, that has helped them come as far as they have in political life. However, contrary to the fears of those modern lost souls of the liberal elite, who view the common man and woman in the street as pawns and not players, many voters ticked “BNP” to take a swipe at the recently exposed greed of politicians, and not because they wished to be ruled by fascists.
Some BNP voters, of course, might simply be dumb as dirt, quite unable to see past the distortions and deceptions that canvassers have presented to them. Other BNP voters may genuinely be angry about immigration or cultural issues on which they feel Labour has betrayed them, but unconcerned about what else the party stands for as they know too well it is, and will remain, a marginal force. Whatever the reasons for the BNP’s small victories, it is quite wrong, and patronising to us as the public, to imagine that hearing more from them will increase their popularity. It will almost certainly do the reverse.
There’s a popular mythology which states that Griffin is a clever man. Technically, he’s certainly an educated one, having graduated from Cambridge. But if he has displayed any kind of intelligence at all, it has been of the nature of low animal cunning, and not the more highly evolved reason, analysis and empathy. Part of this cunning has been in making sure he rarely says or writes anything of any great substance on which he can be quoted or challenged. He is well aware that his political rise has been closely monitored throughout his entire adult life, by anti-fascist groups and one presumes also by British intelligence, so his reluctance to be drawn out on the more extreme aspects of the BNP’s agenda is testament to wily design.
A great deal of Griffin’s work is done by footsoldiers, a shambolic herd of assorted thugs, numbskulls and borderline psychopaths who serve a double purpose of recruiting from a similar gene pool and helping make their leader look “clever” in comparison.
So let’s bypass this, and put Griffin up there on the panel next to sparkling, mocking, wits; maybe David Mitchell, Iain Hislop, Mark Thomas. Wheel in some big-beast MPs with years of aggressive hustings and front-bench debating experience. No harm, of course, if a couple of them happen to be black, Jewish or Muslim. Then, most importantly of all, turn the lights full on Griffin as he faces that room full of genuinely bright, prepared and articulate people that always do their duty, and battle through rainy nights to make up the show’s audience to ask those annoying, awkward questions.
Actually, I can’t wait.
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