Nazi De Jour

[poliphilo]

We stayed up to watch Nick Griffin on Question Time- as did 8 million others (or should that be nine hundred thousand, nine hundred and ninety eight).

He's a funny looking cove. Squat, fat-faced, with a glass eye (just like Gordon Brown) and a thatch of coarse black hair. When he makes a joke he crinkles up and goes all geeky. 

He's clever enough to want to present himself as a mild-mannered, mainstream politician and emphatically Not a Nazi- a strategy that falls foul of YouTube- but he can't be that clever or he wouldn't believe that the present government is committing "genocide" against the "indigenous" people of Britain. Maybe the word should be "cunning" rather than "clever".  Cunning but stupid is an entirely viable combination.
 
Only in politics could someone so unappetizing become any sort of a star. 

A lamentable side effect of having him on a show like this is that it permits a trio of mainstream party hacks- including the slippery and sinister Jack Straw- to come on like they're the tribunes of the people. 

The viewing figures (nearly three times what this show normally gets) are depressing and I'm sorry I added to them. 

Comments

[oakmouse]

I suspect many other viewers watched for the same reasons you did --- not to support Griffin but to observe him.

His face gives me the creeps in an ill-defined way. But I know one thing: a man with a face like that could be the next Buzz Windrip (Brazelius P. Windrip, the charismatic dictator in Sinclair Lewis' 1930s novel It Can't Happen Here).

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Griffin is a preposterous, little man- but then one remembers that Hitler, Mussolini and Franco were also preposterous, little men.

I haven't read Lewis, but I imagine that's pretty much what he was saying too.

[ingenious76.livejournal.com]

Hitler was a preposterous little man - but rose to power when Germany was mired in a deep depression, had a government that was fractious and loosely hung together, and the "ordinary" people felt they had been abandoned.

I'm not saying that Griffin will rise to power - he doesn't have a Spin Doctor like Joseph Goebbels - but as an alleged History Graduate Gordon Brown should look at the parallels and shudder.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, we shouldn't be complacent. There's never been a time that I remember when our democratic system was held in such contempt. Griffin has clearly benefited from this.

[ingenious76.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. Why did people vote for him? Simple. Because he sold himself as an honest "man of the working class" to an electorate sick to the back teeth of what they perceive as rampant greed, hypocrisy, and corruption amongst elected officials. Last night exposed the gap between the BNP's electoral platform and Griffin's weird worldview. Whether those who actually support him notice the difference and care is another matter.

[oakmouse]

Preposterous, little men who rode into power by surfing the wave of their countryfolks' own littlenesses, fears, and anxieties. Griffin knows how to ride that wave, which is truly frightening.