Dear Britain, please stop helping the fascists

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By subjecting nationalist toad Nick Griffin to the Two-Minute Hate, the U.K.'s media establishment turns a fool into a victim. His dismal performance on the BBC's Question Time would have been satisfying were it not for the hand-wringing hostility that turned it into a circus. Coming next to Britain's inane tabloids: Nazis portraying themselves as victims of oppression.

It's no wonder he smirks so much, when his presence induces demands that his political party be banned, his speech suppressed and his opinions abolished. These instincts represent everything his followers want Britain to become: perhaps the irony is not lost on him.

To paraphrase one noted humanitarian, a civilized society would either kill him or give him his bookings.

The BBC disclaims the appearance as part of its duty to impartiality, then spins around to congratulate itself for orchestrating Griffin's public "humiliation." Paradoxically British! But the whole mess only goes to prove a simple fact: no-one has ever been so inadvertantly adept as the well-breakfasted BNP leader at poking holes in our pretentions to democratic toleration.

Public convulsions over the BNP's inconsequential electoral successes make the country appear more divided and insecure than it is. But the BNP's advances are trivial: proportional representation, a changing media landscape and voter disgust merely reveal the exact form of a longstanding political presence on the fringe.

Freaking out over it just creates a narrative that can be exploited and expanded into yet another bestselling British moral panic. The BNP is like salmonella, satanic abuse and paedogeddon all in one: yummy! And Griffin is thimerosal in your vaccination against media bullshit.

The repsonse to these far-right nutjobs reveals not a principled objection to racism and fascism, but rather the weakness of a political culture built on tradition and the expectaton of common sense. Shouldn't a democractic society accept a plurality of idiots?