I was having a coffee yesterday morning when the friendly chef, seeing that I was reading a newspaper, asked me ‘Do you think that Griffin should be on Question Time?’ ‘No,’ I replied, ‘he appears to have, like all fascists I’ve ever seen or heard, sociopathic tendencies. These should be treated not promoted. ‘Yes,’ the chef came back with, ‘but will you watch it?’ I thought for a moment, ‘Yes, I will.’ I said, chuckling idiotically at the apparent paradox.
I did watch it. Questionable Time. The BNP leader did not disappoint. His performance was as cringe worthy as his answers were devious. He was at times paranoid, irrational, disingenuous and delusional. He seemed to see the world as an essentially hostile place and wanted to protect ‘Britain’ from imagined threats from ‘others’. I was saddened by this sorry man.
Why do some people think like this? What is fascism? Is it an unconscious societal response to a perceived existential threat, a reaction as old as human society itself? When threatened the hedgehog curls itself up into a spiky ball. Is fascism a society pulling itself into a protective iron fist?
Once a fist has been shown a fight usually ensues. And once the human survival instinct kicks in a society can become irrationally aggressive, starting of an unstoppable sequence of events that usually provoke first civil war and then, as in WW2, a much wider conflict. Then the original insecurity becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.
If ideas are like viruses then fascism is an infectious disease. It is an idea that spreads rapidly in times of great social pressure, affecting all but infecting those with a predisposition, the chronically insecure. The fearful. All humans have insecurities. They are an essential part of us being who we are. But most people understand and cope with their anxieties to a functional extent. Occasionally the fascist infects someone with pre-existing sociopathic tendencies. These then act as carriers and social amplifiers of the infectious agent. Full blown fascism appears to be fatal, sooner or later.
Fascists are suffering from a sociopathic disease. Yes, it is just another aspect of the human condition, but then so is paedophilia. These people are ill and should be helped with care, kindness and love. But they are also infectious and dangerous to the vulnerable. Isolation, understanding and treatment are required, not promotion, aggravation and contempt.
Ah, Mr Huggan, like any reasonable, civilised human being, I agree fully with your thoughts on fascists however, is not the real issue here why this odius little man has managed to garner up to 2% of the nations' votes?
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that there has been a massive failure on the part of both main parties and, when handed an opportunity to defend themselves and attack Mr Griffin on Question Time, they instead started quibbling between themselves as to whose immigration policy was worse.
In my opinion, the Tory and Labour representatives should have taken this opportuntiy to admit that, yes, the rise of the BNP has a lot to do with the utter mess they have made regarding mass immigration and set out their stalls as to how they intend to fix this problem. This approach would have given them an opportunity to win back some of the voters who have defected to the dark side...
The poblem would appear to be that they still don't take the BNP threat seriously and to me, that is a very dangerous attitude.
I think the BBC was right to put Griffin on QT however, it is a crying shame that the other politicians present proved yet again how out of touch and ineffectual they are by not making more of this opportunity to challenge him properly.
I am certainly not one of them, but there are many people in this country who feel, rightly or wrongly, that they have valid reasons for supporting the BNP. These are the people that the politicians should have been trying to appeal to. Instead they just played to the braying crowd in the studio who, understandably, were after Griffin's blood.
Shame.
On a similiar-ish note. Why is it that the general population seem to think that there are only two viable political parties in the UK. They just seem to sway gently from Labour over to Tory and back again without ever noticing tht they are both almost identical nowadays. I think that the people voting BNP are among those who have noticed this and are looking for something different.
While I don't advocate anyone voting for what is effectively a rebranded National Front, I would like to start the "VOTE FOR SOMEONE ELSE" party. Want to join me?