02/02/2006
Scumbags united
entry posted by Inquisitor at 22:13
(permalink).
categories: Idiots
, Politics
, Scumbags
, TV
"I hate Illinois Nazis!" [Jake Blues, "The Blues Brothers" (1980).]
Following that line, the Blues Brothers drive their car directly through a crowd of heiling Nazis, scattering them into the river, completely destroying their master-race image and making them look as ridiculous as they really, underneath the swastikas, are.
Sadly, a similar fate did not befall Nick Griffin today, and it's a shame. This, not jail, is what he and his crowd of tinpot hatemongers really deserve - full, humiliating, public embarassment.
It's interesting to contrast this with the current furore over the Prophet Muhammed cartoons - made by a Danish newspaper specifically to piss people off in about September last year, riled up by a few Internet tossers as a 'freedom of speech against those Ay-rabs' issue, now so successful in doing so it's destabilising the European role in the Israel/Palestine peace process. Both the cartoons and Griffin's BNP are at the harsh edges of freedom of speech - they may cause great, great harm by being there.
As a small-l liberal, I have to consider freedom of speech to be one of the values I hold most dear. People like the BNP do not make this easy. I note, with some irony, that they don't want us to have our freedom of speech - they're involved in the current will-not-die iteration of the Jerry Springer: The Opera saga. At the same time, I have to concede that while Muslims do have genuine grievances over the cartoons - the one with the turban bomb is truly appalling racism - their leaders really shouldn't be trying to make it a nuclear issue; although the normal boycotts, complaints, protests etc are absolutely fine if done in a legal and proper way. It's not like Jerry, where the complaints were unjustified and the protesters scummy - this is a much more even affair.
Anyway, on the Mohammed cartoon stuff, Bloggerheads and Chicken Yoghurt are both very good. Oh, and considering that Mark Collett - Griffin's co-defendant - has admitted being involved with Redwatch, the British Nazi version of a animal-rights/anti-abortion style 'post the addresses and knock them off' hitlist (in both Secret Agent and, istr, in the 2002-ish 'Young, Nazi and Proud' Channel Four film) shouldn't he be in jail instead of praising himself as a "victor" for "freedom of speech"? Only in a just world, I think.