ANGRY MOB

I normally avoid blogs that have a particular political allegiance because I find it hard to accept that people can really identify with any political party. I mean, I understand that you might lean towards voting for a particular political party because they may vaguely suit your ideals, but to declare that 'I'm a Conservative' or any other allegiance seems to me to be the resort of someone who can't think too independently. I think to speak on behalf of a political party - accepting its views as your own - requires you to switch off parts of your brain in order to become a useful servant to it; to accept and promote without too much judgement its views, its desires and needs.

Perhaps it is far easier than this, what if you only surrounded yourself with people from the same political party, would this not mean that you are shielded from dissenting views and in some ways unaffected by alternative realities? If this was the case to have any views contradicting the views of the party becomes impossible. For this reason stepping into a party political blog - regardless of which party it is - is like stepping into a different world.

Suddenly priorities change, the physical world seems to drift away and becomes replaced by London-centric gossip and intrigue. Everyone seems to be obsessed with their own importance and grappling for whatever power they can lay their hands on. It is far less about the open exchange of ideas and instead becomes focused on school-yard sniggering about other parties (the 'outsiders') who must be just terrible to believe in different things to us.

I mention this because I've heard of Iain Dale - as he is supposedly the lord of the 'blogosphere' - but I had always avoided visiting his site and reading anything for the above reasons. However, I paid a visit via a Twitter update from Chickyog and ended up reading this article: The BNP Blasts VC War Hero (Because He's Black). In the article Iain points out that the BNP are unpleasant and that he 'cannot understand why anyone who reads this blog could even think of voting for the BNP.'

Then you get to the comments and realise that the BNP actually seems to get a fair amount of support, and I wonder if this because in the great scheme of things the BNP are not that far away from the Conservative Party.

However, could the same warning not be levelled at the Conservatives, who some would argue hide the fact that they are the 'nasty party' behind friendly smiles and promises that they really just want to help us? I had heard before that Iain Dale defended Carol Thatcher when she called a tennis player a 'golliwog' but having actually read his post on it I'm actually quite shocked by his arguments - or rather the fact that he has only selectively updated his post since the whole truth of the matter came out.

For example, he downplays the insult and accuses the BBC of not treating people equally and perhaps this is because he thinks the word 'golliwog' was used to refer to a white player - Andy Murray. I can to an extent understand this, if the term was being used as a similie to describe Murray's hair then because he is white there are no racial undertones or connotations to concern people. I think Iain Dale is arguing that the word 'golliwog' in itself is not racist - and perhaps it isn't if applied to a white person's hair - but it is clearly a word that has long been associated with racism and has been used as a racial slur in Britain.

Therefore, with such clear connotations it seems strange that after Iain Dale updated the original post to strike-through the reference to Andy Murray he did not see fit to change the following:

As I have discussed above, the remark was clearly made about a black tennis player, the word has clear racist connotations, so why has Iain Dale not changed this statement to reflect the new information? Is it because he thinks that 'golliwog' is an acceptable word to use when referring to a black person, or that the word 'golliwog' is simply a victim of 'PC gone mad' culture? Clearly, as soon as the facts were known the logic of the BBC was surely correct, so why still say it is 'utterly preposterous'? Why not strike-through this sentence as well and concede that no black person should be subjected to the word 'golliwog' under any circumstance?

Surely Iain should be ashamed to have this argument hanging around on his blog after the context of Carol Thatcher's comment had been revealed. Obviously not, as he has not seen fit to amend his post to concede that perhaps Carol Thatcher was rightly condemned for being racist. Certainly his commentators do him no favours, it takes just the second commentator on that post to state the following:

Is it a pattern that racism never seems to be too far away on a Conservative blog? It is certainly a comment that brings me to nicely to my final point: Iain Dale may criticise the BNP but his post on Carol Thatcher and his comments below the article on the VC War Hero are part of the ignorance that feeds the BNP. The idea that 'the most oppressed people in this Country are the White Majority' and that considering the term 'golliwog' as being racist is 'utterly preposterous' both lend tacit support to the ignorant misinformation that the BNP relies on to attract voters.

Johann Hari once attended Richard Littlejohn's TV show in order to destroy a BNP candidate - with Littlejohn joining in - but Hari not only destroyed the BNP candidate, he also challenged Richard Littlejohn for peddling the 'urban myths, exaggerations and prejudice about asylum-seekers' that swell the ranks of the BNP. Likewise you can't destroy the BNP here without also looking at how Iain Dale is peddling the urban myths that feeds them. In the comments below the VC War Hero post Iain Dale writes:

Firstly, who has suddenly decided that 'multiculturalism hasn't worked'? Did I miss this consensus agreement? Stating this as a fact only serves to lend credibility to the BNP and their agenda of repatriating all ethnic minorities back to their country of origin. Secondly, 'uncontrolled immigration' implies that we don't have a UK Border Agency for example, and is a complete myth. Again, it is an important myth that feeds the racist BNP.

I challenged Iain in the comments about these assertions (amongst other things) and got the following response:

What is interesting is that the BNP sometimes bemoan the lack of real debate about immigration and that Iain does the same here. However, how can we have a real debate when you (and the BNP) have already drawn the conclusion that 'we do have uncontrolled immigration'. The statement that we 'have no border controls' is utterly ludicrous and cannot possibly be backed up by Iain. When tackled a second time with this:

Iain, not surprisingly, didn't respond to me. Perhaps he is struggling to think about things in a considered way, perhaps he is just another person subservient to political ideas that they really haven't thought through. Maybe he doesn't actually have any evidence that multiculturalism has failed and he certainly must feel pretty stupid saying that we have uncontrolled immigration when we are clearly a small island which you need a passport - and more often than not - a reason for entering.

The BNP has been a big issue on many blogs recently. The enemies of reason speaks much sense on the matter and points out that we need to stop blaming things for 'encouraging' people to vote BNP and realise that people support the BNP because they are inherently racist (or stupid, or likely both) - they need no other justification. The enemies of reason also recognises the knee-jerk blame that is levelled at 'uncontrolled immigration':

Iain Dale - like the Daily Mail, The Sun, The Daily Express and other tabloid shit rags - repeats these lies and blames the victims of racial oppression for causing racial oppression. By doing so he is showing his ignorance, feeding the BNP with new members and confirming that the Conservatives are still the nasty party, they've just changed their language a bit.