Journalists expose ‘murky world’ of far right
Image © Jonathan Warren/jwarren.co.uk 2010
Leading anti-fascist journalists last week gave a fascinating insight into the “murky and disturbing world of far right politics”. Around 70 journalists and media workers packed the meeting last week which was hosted by Expose the BNP and held at the NUJ headquarters.
Nick Griffin’s biographer Dominic Carman and photojournalist Marc Vallée shed light on the violent and antidemocratic core of the BNP and the English Defence League.
A screening of Jason Parkinson‘s film showed rioting EDL supporters on the rampage – breaking police lines, smashing the windows of a police van, shouting, yelling and throwing bottles at police and photographers – in Stoke earlier this year.
Vallée showed slides featuring thuggish posers clad in hoodies and St George’s crosses illustrated the menacing atmosphere in which photographers covering the far right often work.
Photographers and journalists had been targeted with violence or with death threats from far right supporters while covering their activities, Vallée said.
“Obviously the EDL and others are very savvy to the fact that those news-gatherers can do them damage by showing the nature and character of their protests.”
Vallée added: “I can’t think of any other group left or right who are putting thousands of people on the streets every month.”
Carman talked about the BNP’s deep-running Nazi sympathies, its tradition of violence and about the mainstream media’s role in the party’s rise.
He said he had stepped into a “murky and disturbing world of far-right politics” while working on Griffin’s biography, when he collected over 20 hours of videotaped interview footage, which can now be viewed on Youtube.
Describing the BNP leader as “slippery” and “evasive”, Carman told the meeting how the former cult member boasted about breaking the Race Relations Act and declared Hitler as daft for not murdering the German Jews before the Second World War.
He said: “The BNP is based on the Fuhrer Prinzip idea. This principle is basically understood to mean that the Fuhrer’s word is above all written law. It gives strong, absolute and total power control by the chair. It’s a fascist ideal.”
Griffin’s politics are rooted in Nazism, according to Carman. The BNP leader read Mein Kampf, Hitler’s testament and personal manifesto, when he was still a youngster. Carman said that this book has had a significant impact on Griffin’s personal politics. He pointed to the white supremacist magazine The Rune, edited by Griffin and for which he was convicted under the Race Relations Act and served a nine-month prison sentence.
Carman warned the violence is integral to the ideology of the BNP, despite its attempts to cultivate a respectable image as a legitimate political party.
“Last week I discovered that Nick Griffin and I have something in common,” said Carman. “We’ve both been issued with death threats by BNP supporters.”
Carman then addressed the problem of anti-immigration and Islamophobic newspaper headlines which pander to far right sentiments.
He said: “Griffin hates the press but he knows that he needs you. He told me: ‘The best recruiting sergeants I have are the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express.’
“Every headline about immigration, immigrants, illegal immigrants, asylum seekers, Muslims or some combination of those words helps to sell newspapers, I’m sure. But it also serves to boost the support for the BNP and Griffin knows this.”
Both journalists warned that there is a significant overlap in the membership of the BNP and the EDL. A senior BNP member was regularly seen on the streets at EDL demonstrations and had taken an organising role in the movement, Vallée said, adding that the far-right party saw the protests as ripe recruitment grounds.
Carman added: “The BNP are on record as saying that the EDL ‘are our united front’.”
A lively question and answer session produced suggestions from both the speakers and the floor for responsible reporting on the far right.
Carman’s advice was simple: “Question what they say, keep questioning it and then question it again.”
Reporters: S. and D.
All images © Jonathan Warren/jwarren.co.uk 2010
