anti-BNP hysteria

From reading some of the responses of politicians in Britain's mainstream parties to the British National Party's success in winning two seats in the European parliament, anyone would think that a descendent of Adolf Hitler had just been voted into Number 10.

A particularly overblown label which they keep throwing around is "fascist," which now seems to be totally divorced from its original meaning as a particular form of technocratic totalitarianism.

In mainstream liberal society, the term "fascist" lost its original intellectual definition some time in the hedonistic late-60s, when it came to be used to describe virtually anything that was perceived as vaguely authoritarian or conservative.

When coined in the 1920s, fascist, referred to a particular system of non-democratic government, which was moderately elitist and had an corporate economic system in which the public and private sectors worked closely together in the national interest.

In the contemporary world, the developed country with the most fascist-like state is probably Japan, with its staunchly meritocratic education system and complex system of state-directed financial institutions and large scale industrial networks. However, since the country doesn't conform to what most semi-educated left-liberals think of as a "fascist" state, with a militarised government and a charismatic strongman leader, it never gets labeled as one in the mainstream media.

Among European countries, the most fascist-like states would probably be the corporate Scandinavian likes of Finland and Sweden, where the government, for better or worse, continues to take an active role in economic development and industrial relations.

The British National Party, by contrast, fails most of the criteria for being a fascist party. It does advocate protectionism for native industries, but has no detailed corporate programme for integrating the public and private sectors. It also has little to say for example on important corporatist issues like research and development or industrial relations. Nor does it call for greater government control of free speech, the media or the legal system.

A true fascist party for example, would probably be critical of the jury system, which is would perceive as wasteful and unprofessional, and would probably be strongly opposed to populist public referenda.

Nick Griffith himself has argued that a true fascist-style party would probably fail in Britain since the country has no fascist intellectual tradition to draw upon.

Rather than fascism, populism seems to be dominant political philosophy of the BNP. It's political campaigning, emphasises populist imigary, of the Battle of Britain-era and its policies, such as immigration restrictionism, capital punishment and pulling out of the EC, are those which most working-class Britons either support, or would have supported just a few decades ago.

Probably only its anti-interventionist foreign policy could be construed as being more ideologically nationalist than populist.

However, majoritarian populism is arguably just as unpopular these days as Fascism. At no stage in the last 40 years have the populist policies which the BNP now advocates, been put up for public vote through referenda or by being advocated by the major parties.

Controversial matters like increased immigration, EU entry and the repeal of the death penalty were all decided through closed negotiations among the nation's elites without any real democratic imput from the populace.

The reason why mainstream politicians are so concerned by the rise of the BNP is that it represents a populist challenge to the elites monopoly over deciding policy on controversial issues.

In the minds of Britons, political, business and media elites, the populace should only be able to debate, minor issues like small variations in tax rates and prison sentences (which can later be reversed if they prove unsatisfactory) and not over serious matters of long-term consequence like immigration.

It's also rather ironic that pro-EC parties like nu-Labour and the Liberal Democrats should be so concerned about Britain having some nationalist political representation, when this is now a well-established trend in most other European countries which they supposedly want closer relations with.

By labeling the BNP as "Fascists" or "Nazis", rather than calling them what they actually are, Briton's mainstream politicians and journalists are showing contempt for both the British populace, and the populace of much of western Europe.