Many people in the anti-racist movement and in the media regularly term the BNP ‘Nazis’, comparing them to the ideology and policies of the Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler.
It’s undeniable that at one time the BNP were an openly Nazi party. Their leader and founder John Tyndall (pictured left in uniform) praised Hitler, promised to send those who disagreed with them to the gas chambers while other prominent members declared they would seize power through physical force alone.
Even in more recent times senior members, such as Simon Darby, have said that some party members were neo-Nazis, though oddly they never seem to mention this in their election material.
Are the BNP still Nazis?
The ideas of National Socialism aren’t very popular, especially in a country bombed heavily by Nazi Germany during WWII, and slowly but surely some members of the BNP realised that they had an image problem.
To put it simply, from the mid-1990’s onwards the party changed its image and the message it gave out to the general public. Out went the swastikas, the confrontational marches stopped, the obsession over the Holocaust was dropped and the party moved its efforts mainly into electoral politics.
If you look at the current literature the BNP puts out to voters it’s not overt Nazi stuff, instead it generally focuses on hostility to the mainstream political parties, immigration or Islam.
There are still BNP members who are Nazis, the party still has links to Nazi groups abroad and the politics of the party still have something in common with the ideas of National Socialism but the BNP is no longer a Nazi party.
Why is it important?
‘Nazi’ isn’t an insult, or a slur even though a lot of people use it as both. It’s a description of a real set of political ideas which were put into practise with horrifying results.
If we criticise or condemn the BNP for being something they’re not it’s counter-productive and undermines the arguments of anti-racists. This is because it’s easy for the BNP to demonstrate that they’re not Nazis and so portray its opponents as liars who simply exaggerate things by using ‘Nazi’ as an insult.
Calling the BNP ‘Nazis’ is an ineffective tactic and it will backfire on anti-racists.
Posted in what we think | Tags: anti-racism, BNP, John Tyndall, Nazis
