Protesting the Proms: Israel's Philharmonic Orchestra and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign

London's Royal Albert Hall, home of the BBC Proms, scene of the protest

Last night, for the first time in its 117-year history, BBC Radio 3 stopped its Royal Albert Hall broadcast of a Proms concert because of a politically-motivated protest. Just like that. Mid-performance (Bruch's Violin Concerto, since you ask), taken off the air.

The broadcast started at 7:30pm, which is nothing unusual. Outside the Royal Albert Hall, pro-Palestinian protesters had been vying with pro-Israeli protesters in a shouting match for some hours. Meanwhile, inside, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Zubin Mehta, was about to begin their performance. But every time their Indian-born conductor stood ready for a new movement of Bruch's work, the IPO found they couldn't start – protesters inside the hall were making too much noise. The BBC broadcast was taken off-air twice, and radio listeners didn't get to the end of the concert.

The BBC Proms are hardly the place you'd expect to get heckling and disruption so serious it causes an early end to radio broadcasting. This is supposed to be a civilised event, attended by civilised, cultured people. That makes the reasons behind this protest all the more worthy of examination.

A few years ago I was in Birmingham when the REP Theatre staged Behzti (Dishonour), a play featuring rape in a Sikh temple. Local Sikhs found this distressing, understandably, and a couple of hundred of them protested outside the theatre, eventually resulting in the play's run being cut short. But that – and several other disrupted performances that come to mind – had some pretty controversial subject matter, which is what protesters were complaining about. Bruch's Violin Concerto contains nothing especially objectionable; the issue this time was the orchestra itself.

The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is proud of its status as one of the leading cultural ambassadors of the state of Israel, as well as happily recruiting non-Jews to its ranks. Before the 1967 Six-Day War (the one where Israel grabbed a whole load of land while fighting a range of Arab nations), that was fine; Israel was the under-dog surrounded by powerful adversaries, still a young nation defending its right to existence.

But since 1967 and the increasing Israeli expansion into its newly-occupied territories (the West Bank, Gaza), with Israel's reluctance to give up control of the contested Golan Heights, it's rather harder to sympathise with Israel. These days, they're the ones risking international condemnation through their treatment of different ethnic groups, as Palestinian Arabs did in the decades before Israel's declaration of independence in 1948. Since occupying regions such as the West Bank, Israel has been expanding its settlements (of, at best, dubious legal standing) and getting involved in conflicts that do nothing for stability in a troubled region (conflicts that aren't really about Israeli self-defence any more).

In a statement on their website, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign – responsible for the protests outside last night's Proms – argue that the IPO has 'lent itself to the official Israeli propaganda campaign titled Brand Israel, which aims to divert attention from Israel's violations of international law and Palestinian rights to its artistic and scientific achievements'. I'm all for promoting the scientific and artistic achievements of Israel (or any other group of people, for that matter), but the IPO's alignment with the Israeli Defence Force is a worrying example of artists getting (perhaps too?) closely involved in politics. I grant you, art and politics can't and shouldn't be entirely separated, but artists lose their ability (maybe even their right) to comment on politics when they get too closely involved. The IPO is quite right to promote Israel's artistic achievements internationally, but performing morale-boosting concerts for the troops (as the IPO has been doing since 1942) implies a condoning of the actions of those troops. Much as I'd like to keep this performance of Bruch's Violin Concerto separate from Israel's encroachment of the West Bank, the IPO itself has made that difficult with their IDF concerts. The Palestinian protest last night has at least been successful in bringing the connection between the two to light.

When I say the Proms is an event for cultured, civilised people, it's worth pointing out that those protesting against the performance aren't themselves uncultured. Far from it; their in-hall protest included what one audience member described as 'singing to the tune of Beethoven's Ode to Joy' – Beethoven's Ninth Symphony features the words of Schiller's poem, To Joy, in its fourth movement. While I can't help thinking that disrupting a classical music concert inside the hall itself runs the risk of making your protest look churlish (dare I say philistine?), using Beethoven's Ninth – with its overarching theme of brotherly love and the constant struggle to improve the human condition – redeems that cause immeasurably.

Thanks to Boeke, for the image of the Royal Albert Hall on Flickr.

Some advice for journalists in the post-News of the World world

Some advice to journalists in the post-News of the World world; To Hack or not to Hack

Dear Journalists,

so, phone-hacking, eh? News of the World, huh? Well, that all blew up in their faces a bit. Or someone's faces anyway, I gather the actual culprits had already left (of course they had, of course). But, look, there are lessons to be learned here – just listen to Ed Miliband bang on about the lessons for everyone to learn when he was on Newsnight on Friday. And if Miliband Jnr's spotted them...

Where journalists went wrong here was in their choice of target (aside from the phone-hacking thing being illegal at the best of times). I mean, we hardly cared about an actor or Deputy Prime Minister getting hacked, but you go for a missing schoolgirl's phone and the nation's up in arms. It may be a cliché, but we do seem to love an underdog in this country. Target the powerful and we'll let you off. Target the vulnerable and we'll bite your hand off...or at least write strongly worded letters to rival newspapers.

Thing is, there are three types of people whose stories sell newspapers (and yep, because newspapers – especially tabloids – are driven by what we'll pay to read, it's kind of the public's fault too, a bit). I turn to our old friend William Shakespeare to explain them.

“Some are born to publicity. Some achieve publicity, and some have publicity thrust upon them.”

To take that one at a time...

“Some are born to publicity”
For example, the Royal Family. It's not their fault (honest) and they can't help it (really); if your mum is the head of state, your every move will be of interest to someone. These people have no choice about the public spotlight, and we can only hope that through a lifetime's exposure to it, they'll learn to handle it (there's still time for Prince Philip, fingers crossed).
These people probably have stories worth telling, so go ahead and get them (legally), but tread carefully; they are influential and know powerful people...not for nothing has that family been 'in charge' for centuries.

“Some achieve publicity”
For example, actors or politicians. It is very much their fault that they're in the limelight; they've sought it. They're either performers (of some kind or another) who've actively pursued public interest for the sake of their careers, or they're politicians who've gone out of their way to get noticed and elected to public office. Once in public office or on stage/screen/radio/print, they are of course interesting to the public.
Reporting stories about those in public may well serve the public good, and those should be encouraged. If you've a story about a celebrity, great, go for it, they'll probably help you out because they think any publicity is good publicity (unless they try to gag you, in which case you know you're into something).

“Some have publicity thrust upon them”
For example, people caught up in national tragedies, disasters or victims of crime. These are people like the families bereaved after the July 7th terror attacks. They've got a story, certainly, but if they don't want to tell it you, tough. They haven't gone looking for publicity, it's come to find them (along with something horrible in their lives), and the last thing they need is some journalist poking around their inboxes.
Stories about these people are fair enough, but don't be insensitive about them.

Thing is, the British public – as journalists can't have failed to notice over the last few years – always need a hate figure, some group of people to target all our latent anger and aggression at. Maybe it's because we're so reserved and/or apathetic most of the time and we need to vent a bit. Not so long ago, it was bankers for screwing up the economy. Before that it was MPs for...well, various things – cash for honours, fiddling their expenses, generally getting things wrong etc etc.

This week, it's your turn. Take it on the chin. Have a look at Shakespeare's contribution above, then go and dig some dirt on people worth doing it over. Or find another hate figure...we'll lap up a good hate figure.

Why Burlesque isn't just stripping for posh people

Thought dead for the last half century or so, burlesque as an artform has been undergoing a revival in recent years. That's probably most noticeable in 2010's Cher and Christina Aguilera film, Burlesque, though that's only the most recent outbreak of burlesque into mainstream culture.

I realise I'm a bit late on this, but it's been a thought bubbling away for a while. I blame these Guardian articles: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2010/dec/13/burlesque-stripping-posh-empowering and http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/dec/13/burlesque-dita-von-teese-christina-aguilera

Burlesque has caused controversy – most recently in Cambridge – mainly on the grounds that women taking their clothes off for money from dirty old men is distasteful and a regressive step for the feminist movement. That's no doubt true; attaching commercial value to displays of a woman's body is a clear case of objectifying women. There's a feeling that burlesque bars are simply upmarket strip joints, exploiting young women in much the same way as a brothel would.

But to accuse burlesque performances of committing this act is to miss the point of burlesque, in both its earlier and its modern form. As various opponents and insiders have pointed out, early burlesque was satirical, a light relief that used things like cross-dressing as a way of bursting the pomposity of the ruling classes. In its more modern form, burlesque can be easily confused with striptease, but there are significant differences. It's also a misinformed approach to associate all burlesque with nudity; burlesque embraces a variety of artforms, and provocative dance is only one of those.

The satire element may not be so prominent in modern burlesque, but the idea of treating the performance as an art form certainly is. For a start, the amateur nature of many burlesque performers contrasts them with the strippers that Laura Barnett reckons are getting money furtively stuffed into their garters. But, deep down, burlesque is a different activity to stripping – even the acts that involve some clothes coming off. The two activities have different objectives and different approaches, even different audiences.

A striptrease in a strip joint is a commercial venture, where the stripper is earning money (not necessarily for herself), in exchange for stripping. The point is to make her male audience want to sleep with her, and pay more money to gain visual material for their own imaginings. The striptease offers the male audience member the hope that he could sleep with the stripper – or at least get a good idea of what it would look like (and in some cases, paying enough means that his dream comes true). The stripper has to offer everything up before the audience gets bored, give them what they want and get to the point. It falls apart if the audience doesn't believe she'd go all the way.

The art of a burlesque erotic dance lies in the restraint and the control, the titillation and

knowing when enough is enough.

Amateur performers aim to entertain, rather than arouse.

Their mixed-gender audience doesn't need to be attracted to the performer, and that's where the empowerment can come in; performers needn't be svelte paragons of beauty (however you define beauty). More importantly, the burlesque erotic dance is about giving the audience a little bit of what they want – in a light-hearted way, without the earnestness of the striptease – gradually. The performer plays with the audience, working them up, and then judges the right moment to withdraw leaving them wanting more without feeling that they've missed out. Unlike stripping, a burlesque performance doesn't need the audience's gratification.

The two performances have superficial similarities, but the underlying intentions and outcomes are different; it's a bit like the difference between having sex and making love.

Images courtesy of No Saints and Anna Fox, The Ringside

The Catholic Church is missing a trick

Before and during his state visit to Britain Pope Benedict XVI – as you probably noticed – was under a lot of criticism. While the media focused on the historic ties being reconnected between the Vatican and Lambeth Palace, non-media voices tended to focus on the negative side of the current Pope, his Church and religion as a whole. But most of the recent criticism concern the sex abuse scandal which implicates his Holiness in official cover-ups. While that is undeniably A Bad Thing, it's only the most recent issue to cause problems for the Papacy.

What really irked me during Pope Benedict's speech at Westminster was his assertion that democracy and reason were under threat because secular societies no longer underpinned those values with the moral code of religion (ie. Catholicism). This coming from the man considered infallible by himself and his followers (no room for reasoning that one out, nor even any need to think about it), who not long ago banned any discussion in his worldwide Church on the subject of female ordination. So, no chance to think or argue about that either. The reason women can't be Catholic priests is tied into that moral code of religion that Pope Benedict insists should underpin reason and democracy. I for one can't see the logical reasoning behind (not even a discussion on) prohibiting female ordination.

Thing is, I've seen enough women leaders (both in churches and the secular world) to know that they can do just as good a job as men. In the pastoral role required of priests, they're often better than men – it's the maternal instinct. In fact, lads of the Catholic clergy, women are – whisper it – actually good at stuff sometimes. I know, I know, hard to believe. A quick look back through English history (not worldwide, nor Catholic, admittedly) shows that the periods commonly regarded as golden ages were presided over by women: Queens Elizabeth I and Victoria come to mind...it's probably too early to pass comment on the current Queen Elizabeth and the jury's still out on Thatcher, I know.

The Catholic Church is really missing a trick in not allowing women into the priesthood. I say this partly as a result of watching Peter Tatchell's The Trouble with the Pope on Channel 4, in which the one person Tatchell found to defend the Church and its policies was a woman. Fiona O'Reilly is an eloquent and non-judgemental defender of the Church (despite Tatchell's repeated efforts to trip her into calling him an evil person because he's gay), and her defence would have carried more weight had the Church taken her seriously (she clearly takes the Church and her faith seriously) and given her a dog collar. From what Tatchell says on Channel 4's website, O'Reilly sounds like she was put up by the Church as a low-level minion willing to parrot the Church's teachings without dragging the (male) hierarchy into a documentary they had no desire to be involved with. Most disappointing was that Tatchell didn't ask her about female ordination, because he was too wrapped up in the Church's apparent homophobia (though there were plenty of other disappointments in Tatchell's documentary).

As some of the strongest advocates for faith, healing and understanding, women deserve a place in the Vatican's priesthood – and should certainly not be denied ordination merely on the basis of gender. But now I'm just tripping out old feminist arguments. My point is that the Church is backward-looking and conservative on so many issues as to be radically out of step with the secular world. Its attitude to women is one major part of this; how can the Church hope to maintain its followers, or even expand, when it subjects half of the world's population to an inferior status? I don't ask the Church to change its opinion on homosexuality (not just yet) or contraception (not just yet), but the attitude to women – God's children as much as men, and surely able to hear God's word as much as men (the Virgin Mary comes to mind) – has to be re-examined.

Photo of the Vatican by Diliff.

Is it time for a new Pope?

Not all that long ago, the Pope was a widely-respected and much-loved leader of the world's billion or so Catholics as well as the Vatican City's head of state. His word carried a certain moral and ethical authority even for non-Catholics. What went so badly wrong?

Well, all of that was Pope John Paul II, the Polish Pope known for his warm public receptions and charismatic appearances. His successor, Pope Benedict XVI, is a German with a far colder public image, positively lacking in charm or charisma. Worse, he brings the reputation of 'God's Rottweiler' to the role, from his time as Cardinal Ratzinger and has gradually undermined that moral and ethical authority carried by the title Bishop of Rome.

Without wanting to understate the conservatism of John Paul II's papacy, Pope Benedict's conservative direction is one of the principle damaging factors in the Catholic Church's recent history. Yes, the sex abuse scandal is serious and damaging, but it is one in a series of incidents that show this conservative trend to be distancing the Church from the people. The scandal's personal implications for the man at the top – Ratzinger being the Cardinal blamed for earlier alleged cover-ups – tarnish the Papacy itself and the entire Church by implication. Worse, the conservative thinking of the current Papacy – in danger of taking the Bible literally – is out of touch with the secular society Pope Benedict is concerned to re-establish religion within; the two are incompatible.

That incompatibility is down to the Church's inability to move with the times. Secular society has advanced into the modern age, but the conservatism of Pope Benedict holds the Church back, restraining it in the race of human progress. This is the Church that refuses to even discuss the possibility of ordaining women because there are no female preachers in the Bible. It's funny, there's no electricity in the Bible but I don't hear of many priests refusing to have their churches re-wired.

But the Bible was written (if you take a non-Christian or cynical view) by men in a patriarchal society roughly two thousand years ago. If you take a Christian, theistic view, it was written by God, via men in a patriarchal society roughly two thousand years ago to be read by that same patriarchal society. Of course there are no women preachers!

The worldwide church (not just the Catholic one) does a great deal of good in the world, as do other organisations in the name of their faith. So let's not go lambasting religion and arguing that anyone willing to listen to the Pope is somehow evil or misinformed. Religion has the power to help as well as harm – it's much more about how people interpret it – and I'm not for one minute arguing that religion is necessarily a bad thing. I just question whether Joseph Ratzinger is the best man to be leading the Catholic Church right now. Someone so embroiled in the biggest scandal the Church has faced in living memory, and generating such opposition in other areas is perhaps not the best spokesperson for the world's billion or so Catholics.

The Catholic Church needs to accept that the march of history has advanced, and they have to adapt or get left behind in their medieval theology. The Church is still stuck in the past, and that, your Holiness, is why secular society has marginalised religion.

When We Shouldn't Call a Friend a Friend; or, The Misunderstanding of Facebook Friendship

Personally, I've never been sure what constitutes too many friends on sites like Facebook.

Apart from anything else, I've never understood the idea of adding a celebrity (or mock celebrity) as a friend, nor the idea of adding a band. Things like that require a basic (and wilful) misunderstanding of the term 'friend'. Liking these people makes you a fan, not their friend.

But adding celebs etc. is one way people have of boosting their 'friend' quota. We all like to feel we have an active, healthy social life and what better way to prove that (and measure it) than by pointing to a large pool of people one can count as 'friend'? A big number on a computer screen must be true, after all. Is there also any way to better quantify social popularity, and therefore make a competition out of friendship?

Recently, I watched a French film (My Best Friend, or Mon Meilleur Ami if you prefer) about an art dealer who seems to have a social life but absolutely no friends. Not one. Not a single person he cares enough about to talk to, nor anyone that cares about him – not even his daughter. It (predictably enough) raises questions about what makes a friend, how we treat friends and the nature of friendship. This is a man whose Facebook page would state that he had no friends whatsoever – a depressing, desultory naught.

Unless he used Facebook in the way that you're supposed to – which a minority does these days. The other day I heard a friend (and let's just quickly establish that this was a real-life friend whom I've met only in the flesh and isn't a Facebook friend – there is a difference; the bonds of a Facebook friendship are much looser) complain of a Facebook user: “A thousand friends! He can't possible know that many people!”

Initially, I'm tempted to agree. Surely this chap (not someone either of us knew) can't be holding down cordial relations with so many people. He'd forget who nine out of ten of were. Most of them must be meaningless relationships with people he's met once or twice, if at all. It was even temping to picture him as a social whore with no real friends but a string of acquaintances whose personal details he can access at a mouse click – slave to the ever-rising friends counter, his ego stroked by having more friends than his rivals. What an butterfly-like, lonely and essentially cold person he must be. I don't mean butterfly-like in the good way; this is a man whose attention and affection flitters from place to place, a man who can never settle himself on any interaction before moving to the next.

Then I realised that wasn't the case at all. To have such assumptions and thoughts about a Facebook user is to fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of Facebook. If you use Facebook as a social tool, to keep in touch with old friends and talk to people that you see every day, or just for the rafts of applications, quizzes and games forever being pumped out of the ether, then hundreds of friends you hardly speak to is perhaps like treating human acquaintance as prizes in the trophy cabinet that is Facebook.

However, the site is supposed to be used as a social NETWORKING tool – in this case, social merely referring to people within a network, as opposed to corporations (etc.) within a network. It should be a system of interconnected professional/serious people using the internet for communication and (a more elusive term to define) networking. Under such usage, the more friends the better. Though some blame for confusion must lie with whoever decided to use the word 'friend' and not 'contact'. A thousand contacts on a social network sounds more plausible (and more easily-justified) than a thousand friends on a social site.

Alas, people (myself included) have failed to understand this, and in a way Facebook's success has fatally undermined it. Rather than the slimline professional linkage it should have been, Facebook has become to University students and recent graduates what MySpace is to Sixth Formers and GCSE kids. It's used as a social interaction and gaming tool, not networking, by the majority of its users – it's more toy than tool.

This in part explains the rise of Twitter. It offers to the older professional what Facebook should have offered, and once did. Something simple and stream-lined, an easy way of posting brief bits of important information for others and keeping abreast of what like-minded professionals are doing and thinking. The problem with Facebook was that once people reach that age at which MySpace and Bebo stop being cool (it happens) they use Facebook for the same purpose. Although in my case MySpace stopped letting me log in so I made the full transition to my already-existent Facebook early. I had been trying to keep a distinction running: MySpace for school friends, Facebook for Uni and networking. It wasn't a distinction that survived once all of my school friends moved to Uni and added me on Facebook.

Facebook is a site that no longer does what it set out to do; its purpose has changed, because its users (and therefore their needs) have changed. Networking on Facebook didn't stand a chance once the socialites forced the professionals into a minority.

The BNP - the Bogeymen of politics?

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.

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?).

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 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.

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?

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.