Everyone loves a scapegoat. I love scapegoats. We all love scapegoats...or at least, love to hate them. Originally, a scapegoat was a goat chosen from among the Israelite herd (way back in the days of Exodus), that was then symbolically laden with the sins of the people and cast out into the wilderness...naturally taking all the sin and blame away with it, the poor creature.It's good to have someone take the blame; it's good to channel anger and have some tangible focus for blame. That avoids vague, directionless hatred, and lets us all know who to aim our quietly muttered declarations of vengeance at. Basically, when things go badly, we like to know exactly whose neck (metaphorically) we should grab and throttle.
Right now, we ('we' being the ignorant masses of the British public) like bankers to be scapegoats. The recession (etc.) is all their fault, and so we'd like them to suffer for it, please. Being as they're the only ones qualified, it would be great if they could also sort out the whole sorry mess while they're at it ('it' being swinging from the metaphorical nooses we've strung up for them), please...pretty please?
When teenagers are rowdy, we like their parents or teachers to be scapegoats, though they (the parents and teachers) have a nasty habit of blaming society. Which is clearly wrong, because that's us, and we haven't done anything wrong.
Sometimes, we like foreign immigrants to be the scapegoats. They've come over and taken our jobs, they work for longer, for less pay! The call centres have all shipped out to India! The car factories are heading for the cheap labour force of Eastern Europe – meanwhile, the Eastern Europeans (mainly Poles) take over our building sites and plumbing business. This is their fault for having a strong work ethic and large families to feed, not our fault for being lazy and taking for granted that we in the West have relatively easy lives – having never lost major wars or suffered massive natural disaster or a dictatorial tyranny. In fact, Britain has been able to take it relatively easy since the early 1800s, really, what with an Empire, a worldwide language and an ally in the new World Policeman, America.
When teenagers are rowdy, we like their parents or teachers to be scapegoats, though they (the parents and teachers) have a nasty habit of blaming society. Which is clearly wrong, because that's us, and we haven't done anything wrong.
Sometimes, we like foreign immigrants to be the scapegoats. They've come over and taken our jobs, they work for longer, for less pay! The call centres have all shipped out to India! The car factories are heading for the cheap labour force of Eastern Europe – meanwhile, the Eastern Europeans (mainly Poles) take over our building sites and plumbing business. This is their fault for having a strong work ethic and large families to feed, not our fault for being lazy and taking for granted that we in the West have relatively easy lives – having never lost major wars or suffered massive natural disaster or a dictatorial tyranny. In fact, Britain has been able to take it relatively easy since the early 1800s, really, what with an Empire, a worldwide language and an ally in the new World Policeman, America.
Some people who believe that the foreign immigrants changing Britain should leave are the British National Party. They want Britain to stay the way it is...or was, in the bygone, glory days of 1948. Remember those? The post-War debt, loss of international prestige and loss of a generation of brave men and women willing to sacrifice their lives in the defence of democracy? No, me neither, but leader Nick Griffin (born 1959) seems to think he does. Funny, as he's looking very good for a man old enough to remember that year. Apparently, there was a conscious decision by the 'liberal elites' (I think he means the Labour party) to change British society and include people who were civically, but not ethnically, British. 
There was me thinking the Caribbean and African influx was due to our astounding lack of workforce after a devastating World War, and the desire of men from such places to earn some money for their large, hungry families living in countries soon to take the first steps of their own toward democracy. No, it was because the liberal elite didn't like Britain as it was (the Britain that had elected them into power, rather than re-elect Churchill's Tories, why wouldn't Labour like that?).
There was me thinking the Caribbean and African influx was due to our astounding lack of workforce after a devastating World War, and the desire of men from such places to earn some money for their large, hungry families living in countries soon to take the first steps of their own toward democracy. No, it was because the liberal elite didn't like Britain as it was (the Britain that had elected them into power, rather than re-elect Churchill's Tories, why wouldn't Labour like that?).Thing is, the BNP have built themselves a bit of a reputation as fascists, as racist bigots who approve of violence and murder to rid Britain of its ethnic minorities. That simply isn't a true reflection of them. They aren't the political bogeymen we (remember who 'we' are in this case) want them to be.
Recently, they've gained seats in the European Parliament, which is a worry for the people I'm tempted to call liberals. I don't really mean liberals, of course; I mean moderates. By which I mean the people in power (well, the Tories, Lib Dems and Labour, anyway). The political elite, if you like. The people that are adamant we, the voting public, have to unite and defeat the BNP, bar them from office etc. Even if we don't vote Labour, Labour want us to make sure we vote against the BNP. It's as though the BNP were some kind of anarchist threat to ordered society. But are they? It's funny – in a worried, laughing-in-the-face-of-probable-danger way – that when Peter Hain wrote to encourage people to vote against the BNP, even if not for Labour, someone replied saying:
'Labour are in the process of passing a law that will allow discrimination on
the basis of race and sex, have invaded two countries, encouraged a politicised
and violent police force, systematically eroded the right and ability to
protest, and given thousands of civil servants the power to spy on citizens.'
When you look at history like that, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell who the moderates are, and who are the radicals that we should absolutely oppose.
I used to think the danger was in taking the BNP seriously, that giving them air time – even attention – was exactly what they wanted and so, like a troublesome child, exactly the thing to not give them. Then they got elected to the European Parliament. Suddenly, they're a bit more serious.
What's worse is people's response to them. When delivering a press conference speech after winning a seat as an MEP, Griffin was hustled by protesters, who pelted him with eggs and forced him to move on. The man was speaking calmly but triumphantly to a crowd of journalists, who were asking him questions that he was answering – as a politician answerable to the people and the press should do – but was attacked violently, and made to leave by his minders. He got into a car, avoiding the angry mob, and quietly drove away while they kicked his retreating car and yelled what sounded like 'Fascist scum off our streets'. So, an elected politician not allowed to express his views, nor answer press questions, by a loud mob...who are the violent bigots here, again?
Even more worrying than that is an interview Griffin recently had on BBC One's The Andrew Marr Show (transcript here), in which Marr somehow manages to make the man sound reasonable. Griffin doesn't sound like a racist, and actually makes a good point about the way that we define who we class as British (when he says that while Dame Kelly Holmes may not be ethnically English she is still British).
What's worse is people's response to them. When delivering a press conference speech after winning a seat as an MEP, Griffin was hustled by protesters, who pelted him with eggs and forced him to move on. The man was speaking calmly but triumphantly to a crowd of journalists, who were asking him questions that he was answering – as a politician answerable to the people and the press should do – but was attacked violently, and made to leave by his minders. He got into a car, avoiding the angry mob, and quietly drove away while they kicked his retreating car and yelled what sounded like 'Fascist scum off our streets'. So, an elected politician not allowed to express his views, nor answer press questions, by a loud mob...who are the violent bigots here, again?
Even more worrying than that is an interview Griffin recently had on BBC One's The Andrew Marr Show (transcript here), in which Marr somehow manages to make the man sound reasonable. Griffin doesn't sound like a racist, and actually makes a good point about the way that we define who we class as British (when he says that while Dame Kelly Holmes may not be ethnically English she is still British).What worries me most about this interview though, comes a little later. Now, normally, when people draw comparisons between the Nazis and someone more recent, I groan a little inside. That's because such comparisons usually involve a misunderstanding of either a) the Nazis, b) the people being compared to them, or c) both. So I hesitate to compare the BNP to the Nazi Party, and modern, recession-hit Britain to Germany of the 1930s. Cash-strapped 1930s Germany which was rapidly losing confidence in its ruling political elites, and was looking for a scapegoat...
Hitler's party provided them with several – most famously the Jews, but also the liberal politicians, the Communists, the anti-social (tramps and the work-shy (chavs?)), the homosexuals, the gypsies, the British, the Treaty of Versailles and so on. The Nazis promised to a frustrated people that they would solve all of these scapegoat issues and make the people and nation great again. But before that, they'd been laughed at as a minor rabble of extremists on the fringe of politics, people who should be ignored in the hope that they would go away, deprived of attention like troublesome children. Then they were elected to the Reichstag.
Hitler's party provided them with several – most famously the Jews, but also the liberal politicians, the Communists, the anti-social (tramps and the work-shy (chavs?)), the homosexuals, the gypsies, the British, the Treaty of Versailles and so on. The Nazis promised to a frustrated people that they would solve all of these scapegoat issues and make the people and nation great again. But before that, they'd been laughed at as a minor rabble of extremists on the fringe of politics, people who should be ignored in the hope that they would go away, deprived of attention like troublesome children. Then they were elected to the Reichstag.
In the twenties, the Nazis had tried to seize power by force, and had failed, Afterwards, they changed their focus and aimed for power legally (which they eventually achieved). In order to appeal to more voters, they tapped into what people wanted to hear, and toned down their extremism. They started sounding reasonable. Their earlier ideas were phased out or put on the backburner for a decade or more. By 1933, they were a very credible alternative to the governing elite, and were even deserving of power according to their electoral success. They'd become moderate, credible, legally elected politicians.
Much of the Griffin-Marr interview indicates that the BNP too have toned their ideas down. Griffin claims that an all-white Britain isn't 'do-able', and the BNP's failure to support England's football side when black players take to the pitch is an attitude of eight years ago. It sounds like they've decided to appeal to voters by becoming reasonable. The media and the political Left have made him the victim of a smear campaign, claiming his dogs are called Ann and Frank, for example. When physically attacked, Griffin didn't use his bodyguards to retaliate. He went quickly and quietly to his car, and retreated, leaving the mob to look like the violent, bigoted ones. Suddenly, with the election of two members as MEPs, the BNP have moderate, credible, legally elected politicians.
The Biblical Israelites used their scapegoats as a means of removing their own sin; the goat took 
their problems away with it. Germans of the 1930s hoped the Nazis could do something similar – ie. remove their problems for them. In both cases, it was the failings and weaknesses of the people themselves that needed to be removed, be that Israelite sin or a German incredulity that they could have lost the Great War fairly without being stabbed in the back by the liberal politicians, Jews, Marxists etc. Scapegoats are only used when a society is itself flawed, when the people aren't willing to admit that the problem lies with them. This leaves us with the question: what problems are we in modern Britain avoiding, and using for a scapegoat the BNP?
their problems away with it. Germans of the 1930s hoped the Nazis could do something similar – ie. remove their problems for them. In both cases, it was the failings and weaknesses of the people themselves that needed to be removed, be that Israelite sin or a German incredulity that they could have lost the Great War fairly without being stabbed in the back by the liberal politicians, Jews, Marxists etc. Scapegoats are only used when a society is itself flawed, when the people aren't willing to admit that the problem lies with them. This leaves us with the question: what problems are we in modern Britain avoiding, and using for a scapegoat the BNP?I'm not praising the BNP, nor Labour, nor any other political group or movement. We all like a scapegoat, but the BNP simply aren't the political bogeymen we want them to be.
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