“Let’s cross our fingers and hope he forgets not to turn up in Nazi uniform”

Whatever happens on Thursday (and, perhaps more importantly, on Friday, on Saturday etc etc), Nick ‘well-directed fists and boots’ Griffin will come out of this whole sorry affair smelling of roses rather than shit and with a much higher national and international profile than before. To put it simply, he is absolutely not going to describe himself as a racist or nazi on national television. And according to the Guardian’s diary this week (can’t find the link unfortunately), the Labour Party is absolutely determined to avoid referring to him in this way in any case in case it makes them look, erm, anti-racist. Instead Jack Straw (that name pretty much says it all) is planning to attack individual BNP policies as unworkable and contradictory. Of course to do so is to absolutely miss the point. The BNP’s policies are, as Griffin himself has repeatedly and openly admitted, both a red herring and a smokescreen. The entire aim and meaning of the BNP is racist violence; there is nothing more to be said about them. I will certainly be there protesting on Thursday, but since we are dealing here with how these events are portrayed in the media, I fear that the protests will allow the BNP to present itself as an unfairly maligned and beseiged minority, given that, as I said earlier, when they are accused of being nazis their strategy is simply to laugh it off, thereby sidestepping and defusing the issue.