Sensible Erection | Brits Elect Fascists to Euro Parliment

Monday, 8 June 2009

quote [ He then re-entered active politics for the first time since standing five times for the National Front in the 1970s after a brief spell as its leader, which ended in internal quarrels. He joined the British National Socialist party as a teenager. ]

Next time some Brit says something about stupid American voters I'll know how to respond.

Actually there was a lot of this going on all over Europe.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/5471893/European-elections-2009-far-Right-and-fringe-parties-make-gains-across-Europe-amid-low-turnout.html

[politics] [by Periander@2:38amGMT] [+8 WTF]

Comments

Tirade said @ 2:41am GMT on 8th Jun
Shit, we're contagious.

willrogers said @ 8:13am GMT on 8th Jun
To be fair, we caught it from the Brits first when they gave the Indians all those blankets laced with smallpox.

We're just reinfecting them.

sacrelicious said @ 2:44am GMT on 8th Jun
what are you talking about? nine years ago we elected a fascist to the highest office in the land!

sacrelicious said @ 2:45am GMT on 8th Jun
I mean, c'mon man, don't take this from us. it's all we got.

Jin said @ 3:19am GMT on 8th Jun
Really? Your comparing GWB to the likes of Mussolini and Franco??

sacrelicious said @ 3:24am GMT on 8th Jun [Score:2]
good point.

second highest office in the land!

willrogers said @ 8:07am GMT on 8th Jun
Bush may have been a huge asshole but he never really seemed all that racist or prejudiced to me.

Frankly, I think all those rumors about him having the hots for Condi were all true.

But then again, Strom Thurmond had a black daughter, so go figure.

EPT said @ 2:18pm GMT on 8th Jun
Yep, if you've got a black friend, you can't possibly be racist.

utah said @ 8:45am GMT on 8th Jun
I'd compare him to Laurel and Hardy.

"Well, here's another nice mess you Democrats have gotten me in"

CapnSilver said @ 2:44am GMT on 8th Jun
Oh come on now, the British would never vote in someone anti immigration, anti gay, anti union and anti darky now would they.

LALALALALALA THE 80'S NEVER HAPPENED! LALALALA

bathoz said @ 1:36pm GMT on 8th Jun
While I otherwise am not a fan of Thatcher's legacy, breaking the unions is something I wish more countries did.

I can see why unions are necessary, but they seem to be predestined to go down a destructive route of self-serving little picture thinking.

Hell, knowing what she did, if Thatcher ran in South Africa, I'd vote for her.

Krutz said @ 3:00pm GMT on 8th Jun
As opposed to the CEOs and CFOs that are looking out for what their compensation package will be worth in the 3-5 years they're with the company instead of long-term?

People are greedy bastiches, but one guy has the potential to destroy a company at the top with much greater efficacy than the entire work force does, even if they decide to burn down the factory floor.

bathoz said @ 3:11pm GMT on 8th Jun [Score:1 Interesting]
I'm coming from the point of view of a country which has had a 50% unemployment rate in the last 15 years. What unions have done here is make it untenable for labour intensive startups to get into the market.

They've made it impossible for a mine to have 100 workers because they can only afford 50 union guys.

More horrendously, they've created "super unions" where any one unions complaint brings the economy to a stand still. They've have general strikes for such diverse problems such as: the cost of oil(!), the high cost of living, unemployment(!), and the like.

My favourite were the people striking for a pay rise, which they eventually got, three months later. Some quick pocket maths showed it would take them 14 years to make up (with the difference in offered salary and negotiated salary) the three months lost pay.

And yes, people are greedy bastards, but unions are run by people. Usually people employed by the union, who only shift or their fat, greasy behinds when they notice that union membership fees are down.

That said, some of my bile may be because my particular industry doesn't have one - and never will.

nbob said @ 4:52pm GMT on 8th Jun
uhm? do you live in Bolivia or something?

tgzuke said @ 2:56am GMT on 8th Jun
Though, if the US ever had a proportional election like that, you can bet that more than one white supremacist would be voted in.

sythe said @ 2:59am GMT on 8th Jun
But who would be their corporate sponsor?

GordonGuano said @ 3:00am GMT on 8th Jun [Score:2 Funny]
Mr. Clean?

sn said @ 3:15am GMT on 8th Jun
Gay white supremacists?

brat#3 said @ 3:21am GMT on 8th Jun
..R-US?

nonsense said @ 3:45am GMT on 8th Jun [Score:2 Funny]
I don't think they exist.

Dalillama said @ 6:01am GMT on 8th Jun
Aryan Thrust, anyone? "The future is White, and Male, and Gay!"

theolypse said @ 4:46am GMT on 8th Jun
No, probably R-MN.

dead_by_dawn said @ 4:06am GMT on 8th Jun
westside gay pride...we give gang baging a new meaning

Shirobake said @ 6:22am GMT on 8th Jun
must be some pretty big bags to fit a whole gang...

utah said @ 8:47am GMT on 8th Jun
Just their heads; they're ugly.

ar656 said @ 3:27am GMT on 8th Jun
Proportional representation is used in Britain for elections to the European Parliament only. For the rest, they use the riding system.

Also, it should not be a big surprise. Great economic debacles usually make the Middle Class more willing to accept restrictions to their liberties.

Adam said @ 3:35am GMT on 8th Jun
2 out of 72 is simultaneously no big deal and two too many. But this is what happens when the disinterested majority doesn't show up - the loonies at both ends of the spectrum, the zealous maniacs, set too much of the agenda.

In the EU parliament these cats are unlikely to form a herd, which means they won't really be able to accomplish anything.

sacrelicious said @ 3:45am GMT on 8th Jun
so I don't get it. I can kinda understand how an american might join a neo-nazi movement, what with so many quarters of the US being so insular. but brits? I mean racism aside, don't they teach about the the battle of britain in schools? are these guys unaware of the fact that the nazis bombed the shit out of their homeland? how do they reconcile that in their minds?

seriously, I want to know.

Stratafyre said @ 3:48am GMT on 8th Jun
I'm guessing they would have been perfectly happy to swim across the channel and join the Nazis.

CapnSilver said @ 3:48am GMT on 8th Jun
If white europeans can attack the isles, anyone can.

sacrelicious said @ 3:52am GMT on 8th Jun
tell that to Napoleon or the IRA.

CapnSilver said @ 3:56am GMT on 8th Jun
I thought Napoleon focused on the continent, not trying to take britain, just hassle it's navy enough to be left alone.

sacrelicious said @ 4:01am GMT on 8th Jun
silly me, I was under the impression that waterloo was in england on the basis of the fact that they have a tube stop named that.

CapnSilver said @ 4:22am GMT on 8th Jun
Are you being sarcastic?
I can't tell as it's the sort of tone I'd take if I were right and being a dick about it.

Anyway, it was Waterloo, Belgium

sacrelicious said @ 4:49am GMT on 8th Jun [Score:1 Funny]
not sarcastic.

azazel said @ 5:10am GMT on 8th Jun
So does Hannover. Probably more places as well.

Eru said @ 4:06am GMT on 8th Jun
Actually Napoleon did plan an invasion of Britain. But his attempt got owned by the British fleet.

Napoleon said @ 4:21am GMT on 8th Jun
All I know, iz zat Russia was FREESING

Hitler said @ 4:26am GMT on 8th Jun
Tell me about it...

Stalin69 said @ 6:29am GMT on 8th Jun [Score:3 Funny]
LOL PWNED!

Batu Khan said @ 12:07pm GMT on 8th Jun
You fucking pussies.

Krutz said @ 6:15am GMT on 8th Jun
"I can kinda understand how an american might join a neo-nazi movement, what with so many quarters of the US being so insular. but brits?"

A while back, I was listening to a piece on the BBC about racism in Britain vs. America, and a lot of the whites were making the case that unlike in the US. they were the ones that had been in the UK since King Arthur and the foreigners were the invaders and usurpers (economically speaking).

I did note that none of these guys brought up the whole empire/colonization thing, but it was a concept I hadn't thought of before. Not that it excuses the rhetoric and behavior...

willrogers said @ 8:12am GMT on 8th Jun
It's kind of hard to attract recruits to your hateful bullshit unless people feel like they are being oppressed, that's why all these racists have martyr complexes and act like the whole world is against them.

That's why all those white conservatives acted like Sotomayor told them to sit at the back of the bus.

"Yeah, Rush, black football players receive media attention as some form of affirmative action because there's such a paucity of black guys in the NFL."

sacrelicious said @ 8:15am GMT on 8th Jun
wow, that would make them over a thousand years old. no wonder they're racist, the elderly are often racist.

utah said @ 9:04am GMT on 8th Jun
There was some popular support for Fascism in England leading up to the war - see Oswald Mosely, for example. Plus, the English weren't fighting the Nazis because of a disagreement over racial idology, they were fighting because they were worried about being invaded. I mean, your government was very late to the war, too; they didn't exactly weigh in the moment the Nazis started putting yellow stars on Jews. Oh, and there's the whole rascist skinhead culture - I don't think that's indigenous to the US, I'm pretty sure that's imported from the UK.

Finally, if you're the sort of person who sees poor black and asian kids stabbing each other as "their problem", then the BNP approach of "send them all back where they came from" has a nice, simplistic appeal. If on the other hand, you take a "they were born over here, they're our fucking problem", then the BNP has less appeal, which is what ~96% of UK voters used their vote to indicate.

utah said @ 9:08am GMT on 8th Jun
Fuck. There's supposed to be a line about "rascism being around for ages in the UK" in the first paragraph, and one about "BNP supporters being rascists without thinking of themselves as Nazis" in the second.

Mothering fuck, when are we going to get an "edit comment" function on SE?

willrogers said @ 9:23am GMT on 8th Jun
But at least the current system preserves stuff so that people can't edit out stuff hey later regret.

Otherwise we wouldn't know so much about the epidemic of train rape.

Krutz said @ 9:35pm GMT on 8th Jun
Other sites just implement a countdown system. 4 minutes to make sure you want to voice support for nazi furry liberation or what have you.

Silent said @ 9:56am GMT on 8th Jun
Unfortunately the English do feel victimised, the government turned so over politically correct that far too many people feel put out and angry over it, over the past ten years immigration has effectively been in chaos and it's only made worse by the Mayor of London proposing a blanket "turn a blind eye" to all illegals in the country, we'd effectively be throwing open the door and saying "Just come on in, once there's too many of you to get rid of you can be a citizen!"

I'm taking the point of view that this is a good thing, hopefully the main parties will see how the people feel and actually do something about it, there is a problem and ignoring will only add fuel to the fire but "sending them back home" isn't the solution.

v21 said @ 5:40pm GMT on 8th Jun
Not sure there's actually been much* chaos, think that's just a false impression put about by the media (weirdly enough in collusion with the Govt.). And what there has been has, I'm sure been half caused by underfunding, micromanaging and changing the ground underneath the departments involved. Which, of course, comes back off the media's reaction.

But immigrants always have been a popular target. They're a ready made outgroup to blame, because they are by definition, not like us. Immigrant groups more like us, you never hear a murmur about. When was the last time you heard someone ranting they couldn't get a bar job because of all the bloody Australians?

*in comparison with most government departments**

**not that the government is necessarily hideous/worse than commercial firms. But it maybe has nasty tendencies towards hide-boundedness and meddling management. The media like the government to meddle with things, it makes them look busy, and gives the media something to talk about.

Spyike said @ 10:12am GMT on 8th Jun
Yes the Nazis did bomb the shit out of Britain, and you know what Nazis were?

Foreigners!

dead_by_dawn said @ 4:05am GMT on 8th Jun
I see Screwdriver playing at the next cabinet meeting ,,,hahahahah fucking Nazi assholes!

Dioxin said @ 4:35am GMT on 8th Jun

He looks like a very nice man.

ENZ said @ 5:18am GMT on 8th Jun
Look on the bright side, this might prompt Allan Moore to write another comic book.

CapnSilver said @ 5:51am GMT on 8th Jun
Isn't he writing LXG 3 now?

sacrelicious said @ 6:02am GMT on 8th Jun
isn't he masturbating to erotic photographs that he took of himself using his camera's timer function now?

Krutz said @ 6:16am GMT on 8th Jun [Score:2 Funny]
Neither activity is helpful to comic books, in my opinion.

Dioxin said @ 9:15am GMT on 8th Jun [Score:2]
rule 34

bathoz said @ 3:13pm GMT on 8th Jun
Based on recent output, this isn't a bright side.

specialrelativity said @ 6:05am GMT on 8th Jun
you don't know the meaning of the word..yeah it's going on in small measure across Europe..hmmm wonder why...Parliament always precedes the two party sys in US. It will happen there too. But just as it is in Briton, it is a harbinger at best..it will take 6-10 yrs. to make a difference.

willrogers said @ 8:16am GMT on 8th Jun
I don't know.

The Republicans have taken a big hit and aren't doing much to enhance their electoral chances while a small minority of Americans are getting more radicalized by the anti-Obama and tea party stuff.

The more traditional Republicans that get too radically conservative to vote for Republicans, the less voters Republicans will have and the worse chances they will have getting elected.

Gay marriage seems to be the wild card.

PoTayToe said @ 12:04pm GMT on 8th Jun
While I'm not happy that the BNP even exist I think the question that needs to be asked is: Why do people feel it's necessary to vote for these candidates? The knee jerk "because they're racist" answer is correct for some of these voters but not all but because that's a nice convenient one-size-fits-all response no one looks any further into the question.

I heard an interesting POV this morning: there's a Muslim Council of Great Britain, a Black Police Officers Association, the Ethnic Minority Advisory Council, the Ethnic Community Service, I can go on and on naming advocacy groups for the rights of ethnic and immigrant groups in the UK. Given the fact that all these exist, why is it so absolutely untenable that white UK born citizens should have an advocacy group for their rights? Isn't that a double standard and isn't denying them this right, in a democracy, a form of oppression?

RhesusMonkey said @ 12:54pm GMT on 8th Jun
The assumption is that, as the majority, their voices are already heard day-in and day-out. The further assumption is that minorities require special interests and protections from the majority because their voices would otherwise not be heard in general assembly. The problem with both of these assumptions is that it depends on White Britons still being the majority in the population (or in NA, White Americans). Over time this is changing rapidly, to the point where one has to ask at what point does a minority group have sufficient protection through their numbers exclusively that the additional special interest groups are not required.

Prop 8 in Cali is an excellent example of how the minority fails when not protected.

PoTayToe said @ 2:21pm GMT on 8th Jun
In a democracy that uses the majority vote to elect leadership then the minorities are not necessarily guaranteed to be heard in any assembly. That's not necessarily fair (ask a Ron Paul supporter) but it's how it works.

What we've got in the UK is representation that's too terrified to say anything negative about a minority or, in many cases, to even adopt any position at all in relation to minorities for fear of being labelled "racist" - because once that label has been applied (whether correctly or not) then no further meaningful discourse can be held because to discuss anything with a "racist" is to demean your own position by proxy.

That's why in some ways I am glad that the BNP have a seat because now some of the more contentious issues like our (quite frankly very, very poor) immigration controls can no longer be swept under the carpet by applying the ever convenient racism label and then ignoring them completely. Now the mainstream parties either tackle the issue (which is one a LOT of people want dealt with) or continue to lose ground to the more radical parties who are willing to do so, which is exactly what is happening with the Dutch.

See; even having written that I'm inwardly cringing that I'm about to be labelled some sort of closet racist (I'm not but I do subscribe to the "monkeysphere" theory). It's a terribly powerful weapon to wield against people and I for one welcome any changes that lessen the power of that and maybe force people back into meaningful dialogue and thinking about things rather than just reacting to a convenient title.

EPT said @ 2:41pm GMT on 8th Jun
It's something I struggle a little with myself. Sometimes when I try to have intelligent conversations with other left-wing friends about issues that skirt political correctness, my words are distorted and pigeon-holed.

For example, I think conversational English should be a requisite for citizenship in my country. During the discussion where I was to explain why, I had to actually shout at my detractors telling them to be quiet so I could tell them my reasoning that they had asked me for and subsequently spoke over. My reasoning is assimilation - not to make little anglo-australians, but to reduce the effect of strong social enclaves forming. If people have a common language, they are more likely to communicate with each other and learn about each other. I like migrants arriving, they bring interesting new viewpoints, customs, and food. But if someone wants to be able to vote, then I think they should be able to communicate with others in their country.

The richness of the culture in my city has moved ahead in leaps and bounds as the italians, greeks and south east asians assimilated, by which I mean breaking out of their social enclaves without necessarily abandoning their own customs. There is currently a wave of muslim immigrants inbound with slightly different issues, mostly pertaining to religion.

To me it'd be insane to move permanently to a new country and not learn the language anyway. I have no problem with migrant resources or political or medical information being printed in tons of languages, but I see a common language as being important to understanding the people around you. And conversely helping them understand you.

But to my leftie friends, when I say things like 'migrants should learn conversational English to become citizens', even though they know I'm fervently humanists, they just see it as prepackaged words and I'm pigeon-holed as something I'm not.

v21 said @ 5:49pm GMT on 8th Jun
I can see your point, but that's always a relatively temporary issue. Second generation immigrants almost always know the language, and it's a rare third-generation one that knows anything but English.

But then again, full citizenship: that's a reasonable point. But even if they can't if you let them live and work, well, that's pretty fucking liberal and generous.

(On a side note, I have noticed weirdnessess with second-generation Muslim immigrants being far more radical than their parents. My friend Maryam chose to wear a veil over her hair, though her mother did not. And my friend Maryam's brother threatened to kill me for speaking to her (which I found funny because a) he was younger and smaller than me and b) my friendship with Maryam was based around obviously non-serious flirting. Um, but I digress.)

Nihil said @ 7:24pm GMT on 8th Jun
You probably want to start using the word 'integration' over 'assimilation'. The way I've heard them used, the difference between the two is that the latter implies abandoning the customs and culture of your origin.

Rapscallion said @ 2:58pm GMT on 8th Jun
As an aside on this topic I was watching a story about the BNP on the BBC. They showed footage of a rally and I swear if they hadn't been speaking with an English accent I would have guessed the rally was in the reddest redneck part of Alabama. I thought "Huh, they have rednecks too."

Then I realized that of course the UK has rednecks...where else could the US rednecks have originated from?

nFiend said @ 4:58pm GMT on 8th Jun
And next week, England invades Poland...

...just shooting back of course.

sherlock said @ 9:28pm GMT on 8th Jun

"Instead of racial purity, we'll talk about identity"

Yikes.