It's not as if Griffin's mob are being frozen out of media land. The BBC carries the BNP's party political broadcasts, and gives them plenty of coverage and interview time on other programmes. The good people at Radio 1 even did 'em the favour of interviewing the party spin doctor without bothering to identify him as such.
Oh, and as underwhelming as that QT panel is we discover, via Nick Cohen, that it could have been so much worse.
Quote:
By this weekend, nervy producers were hitting the phones as they began to realise the 1,001 ways the show could go wrong. One minute, they booked Douglas Murray. He runs the Centre for Social Cohesion, which examines neo-Nazi, Islamist and other extremism in Britain. But he is also from the right, and so, the BBC reasoned, could tell the audience that it was possible to worry about immigration without being compelled to vote BNP. Murray was more than ready to take Griffin on, but the next minute the BBC called back with second thoughts. If he were to say anything in favour of immigration controls, Griffin would look like he was the voice of consensus. As confused call followed confused call, Murray formed the impression the BBC did not know what to do.
Now Cohen rather likes Murray, but it's worth remembering that a few years back Murray gave
the following speech to the Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference.
Some choice bits:
Quote:
In their efforts to avoid war, Europeans are once again choosing dishonour. They refuse to cut back their welfare budgets or significantly increase their defence spending, and they still refuse to enforce the measures required to cease or reverse the disastrous effects of mass immigration. Indeed, there is no indication that Europeans are going to alter their path today any faster than they did in the 1930s. As in the 1930s, Europe is tired of war. So when war has been launched upon it, Europe pretends it is not war, and fails to fight back. Indeed it is worse than that. A Transatlantic Trends survey carried out in 2003 revealed that fewer than half of Europeans believe that any war at all – even one in the national interest - can be considered just. Yet in their effort to avoid confrontation now, Europeans are making a worse confrontation down the line more likely: in their effort to pretend-away the risk, the risk is swelling. The word for dishonour this time is Dhimmitude.
Quote:
On the battlefield this enemy is defeated every time. There has not yet been one military confrontation with this enemy which has been anything less than a rout of that enemy. But just because Al-Qaeda and their sympathisers perform badly in battle, does not mean they cannot win the war. It does not mean that they cannot win the battle of ideas, winning total victory by the side door without having to waste all that money on bullets, missiles and whatever type of IED is "hot" in Afghanistan this season. If you doubt this, then just think back on the so-called "defeats" which we are meant to have suffered since 9/11. Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, 100,000 civilians alleged to be dead by a fanciful survey courtesy of The Lancet magazine. What did our enemy do to win these victories? Absolutely nothing. It all came from within.
Quote:
As I say – it's guaranteed that modern Europeans will finish the job much better than any two-bit thug or terrorist could have done. Which if you're Osama bin Laden means you can just hang around in your cave watching old Michael Moore films and taking notes for your next home-movie. Because this is the root of the problem that we must grapple with: in the war against Islamic fundamentalism, against Islamist militarism, our troops are winning comprehensively on the field of foreign battle; but we are losing this war at home.
Quote:
Dhimmitude begins in such small ways, but it is growing into a big problem. The enemy's victories on our turf during the war on terror – the only place where they have won any victories - have been almost fantastically lightly won. Could anyone have believed before March 11th 2004 that only a dozen bombs would be needed to cause a change of government in a European democracy? Who could have guessed that killing two hundred Spanish civilians at a crucial moment before an election would bring in not a righteously angry leader - an uncompromising opponent of terror - but a sympathetic socialist who has spent his time in office so far offering up concessions to Islam, and degrading his country's native Catholic Church?
This bit is particularly despicable. For those with short memories Aznar took Spain to war against the will of the majority and was tossed out on his ear when his government lied about the Madrid bombings, insisting they were the work of ETA. Murray responds to all this by accusing the Spanish electorate of bending over for terrorists and insinuating that Zapatero is appeasing terrorism.
Quote:
It is late in the day, but Europe still has time to turn around the demographic time-bomb which will soon see a number of our largest cities fall to Muslim majorities. It has to. All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop.
Quote:
The point here is that the whole deal under which Muslims live in our societies must change. At present we ask "why do they hate us", "what did we fail to give them", and suchlike. It is time the West woke up to the fact that the militants in our midst – however large a percentage of the Muslim population – will never like us. And we should not want to be liked by them - so we should stop flattering and playing up to them. Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board: Europe must look like a less attractive proposition. We in Europe owe – after all – no special dues to Islam. We owe them no religious holidays, special rights or privileges. From long before we were first attacked it should have been made plain that people who come into Europe are here under our rules and not theirs. There is not an inch of ground to give on this one. Where a mosque has become a centre of hate it should be closed and pulled down. If that means that some Muslims don't have a mosque to go to, then they'll just have to realise that they aren't owed one. Grievances become ever-more pronounced the more they are flattered and the more they are paid attention to. So don't flatter them.
Now perhaps it's just me, but I don't think Murray is the ideal bloke to set against Griffin, particularly when you consider the BNP's current focus on Islam and Muslims as a substitute (publicly at least) for their more traditional anti-Semitism. Palling around with nutters like Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch (Google, if you can bear it) puts him far closer to Griffin than to sanity on the issue.
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