BNP: genetics and Jewish vampire conspiracies

The British National Party has long suffered from image problems. Now, they have another image problem. It is on their website (see here), subtitled "arrested on the orders of international Zionists" and looks like this:

The shadowy background figure is taken from the well known 1922 German horror film, Nosferatu: a Dracula take off. The Star of David and "TRANSNATIONAL JUDENSTADT" (Judenstadt - Jewish state) are not in the film. Neither is Nikos Michaloliakos, leader of the notorious Greek neo-Nazi group, Golden Dawn - he is the chump clutching the manbag, arrested by two masked law enforcement officers.

The anti-racism group Hope not Hate suggest that the BNP took this image from a dreadful antisemitic website called endzog that thinks Jews run the world. In its skinhead (pre-Internet) marching days, the BNP was not too shy about this kind of thing. More recently, with elections to be fought, the BNP has aped "anti-Zionism", tending to avoid hook-nosed Jewish blood-suckers imagery.

It is hard to think of the BNP as having been affected by political correctness over the years, but that is exactly what has happened. This once overtly neo-Nazi party now tries to appear respectably nationalist, not even racist: but the BNP's instinctive groping for the bosoms of Greek and Hungarian neo-Nazis and fascists (ie Golden Dawn and Jobbik) says far more about its true nature than any amount of PR spin ever can.

Groups such as Golden Dawn and Jobbik have strong, charismatic leaders. These men and their groups tell it like it is, and if that makes them sound a bit Nazi, or like dangerous revolutionaries, with ugly antisemitism and racism chucked in for good measure, daring them to arrest you, shaking up the system, scaring minorities and those in power - then so what. Isn't that what its all about?

Of course, there is also opportunism. It has been a while since BNP leader Nick Griffin had the opportunity to go on BBC Question Time. If a Golden Dawn or Jobbik leader had been given such an opportunity, you can be sure that afterwards nobody would have mocked them for sounding like David Brent.

Squeezed between the EDL and UKIP, the BNP's opportunities had been shrinking faster than a vampire in daylight. Whatever the BNP was trying to be, hoping to be, or pretending to be, it has simply been losing its relevance. The more powerful and dangerous these European neo-Nazi and fascist groups become, the more the BNP will be drawn towards them: it is a matter of genetics.