THE BNP, NINA SIMONE AND THE DYNAMIC OF PROTEST (9 June 2009)

The British National Party won two seats in the European Parliament! Oh, lord help us the entire respectable country (i.e. anyone outside the BNP) is in an uproar! How could it happen, why we look just as dumb as the Austrians! (and them in their feathered hats and liederhosen )

If I might have a word…

The Greens won more than 350,000 more votes than the BNP, and the same number of EU MPs. The ever dangerous Scottish National Party won the same number of seats. I have to tell you right up front that I'm neither concerned about a takeover by animal rights extremists nor men in plaid skirts (and with precious little hope of being saved by visionary eco-avatars or the emboldened legacy of Robert the Bruce). Why, then, should I be concerned about a takeover by unrepentent Hitler worshippers?

The problem doesn't seem to be so much what the BNP has achieved as who they are, who some of them are anyway. The Greens, for example, are popularly perceived as a reasonably domesticated quantity whose support has varied little enough over the past 15 years and rarely appears organised enough to even look much further. The SNP is similarly seen as what Sean Connery figured out to do with a bunch of money he took off an evil film corporation in a glorious lawsuit so that can't be too bad, and everyone likes the Scots anyway even though they do talk funny.

The BNP, however, are rather less cuddly. They are the current incarnation of the Nazis, the National Front, all sorts or maybe just one sort of violent assholes full of abhorrent ideas and hate. That's who we see them as anyway, it's who they've always been. The reality, though, is that what with all of their new voters, they can't quite be that same thing any more, exactly, can they?

In the UK we are traditionally most inclined to vote for what an expert pollster yesterday artfully termed "less mainstream parties" during local and EU elections. It's a good opportunity to give the big boys a black eye without worrying much about the consequences. The EU issues directives on everything all of the time, and governments comply in general ways when they feel like it. The British public is also-it must be understood-very much against the EU in general terms, presumably because the French are involved. So EU votes run far more strongly to the right than votes in general, and particularly votes in a general election.

But what of these two exciting and awful new BNP EU MPs? What will they be able to do in Brussels, or Strasburg, or Vienna or Chugwater, Wyoming or wherever they might be under the impression that the European Parliament meets? Yes, that's interesting. The most likely scenarios are (1) drink too much with fellow racists like the Austrian Freedom Party and get arrested for holocaust denial or the desecration of graves, and (2) get their asses kicked upon arrival by a welcoming commission of Greek Marxist EU MPs. In either case the answer is unavoidably: distinguish themselves in a manner unbecoming and unlikely to garner any further support, ever.

Yes perhaps but, well who voted for them anyway? Pollsters say the usual suspect devout and deviant doctrinaire racists and new people who are pissed off at the government for a million reasons ranging from….all the scandals, corruption and corporations; but especially mathematical concerns relating to the inherent limitations of employment opportunities and the healthcare system as applied to immigration. In other words, myriad dumb things that the government has done, and matters that it's either pushed aside or been unclear on.

My answer? I know one person who voted BNP. A very nice middle-aged lady who runs the corner mom & pop convenience store (contemporarily sans pop). The shop itself is about 10 x 10 feet, stuffed to the gills with essentials and cheap but beguiling plastic toys for the kids to pick up on their way to school. The room of the store opens back into her living room, and she sits there watching soaps most of the day waiting for someone to come in. She's happy to give anyone credit if they need a loaf of bread or quart of milk.

She voted for the BNP, she told me in an exclusive interview the other morning while I was picking up a few cans of Special Brew, because she identifies it (correctly, I'm certain) as "the ultimate protest vote." She is mad about, in order: government corruption, corporate hegemony of the economy, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown's broken promise to bring our troops home from Iraq just as soon as he took control of the government. She informed me, with neither apology nor irony, that she wishes it was like back in the days where there were tune in, turn on, drop out protest votes like the Crazy Loonies or Flower Children Against Brutality. Those lacking, she figured that if she voted for the BNP at least everyone would understand that she's terribly displeased with the status quo.

Indeed, I think they may have got it. But just. She's not going to back anyone burning crosses in anyone else's yard, and if the BNP tries to broaden its appeal by turning its back on everything that it's ever stood for by appealing to people like my friend…it's difficult to see the harm (or any electoral threat, for that matter) ever growing out of that.

I remember reading an interview with Nina Simone, several years ago. Nina was of course the incredibly gifted jazz chanteuse, an old school radical if there ever was such a thing (her cover of the Beatles' "Revolution" interpreted "but when you talk about destruction, don't you know that you can count me…in!"). Arguably the greatest of all jazz singers and one entirely directed towards God and social justice though not necessarily in that order.

She was asked what she thought about rap. One would think, as a jazz artist she should be aesthetically aghast. As a social activist she would rue the direction. As a feminist icon she would decry the pervasive misogyny in terms too lovely for bumperstickers. "I love it," she said, "Black men should be angry."

And so should the people who voted for the BNP. The challenge is not, I think, to denounce them nor even to educate them. The challenge is to give them a more meaningful avenue of inclusive change.

fuck the BNP and every horse that looks like 'em, I want to go home

No, this is fun, back to the political page