Undergraduate Scribblings

It was the storm that failed to materialise and, aside from the protesters outside the various BBC buildings, all that will be really remembered from the night is the lack of substance of Griffin. It is, and remains, a widely held belief that no right-thinking person should share a platform with someone such as Griffin, and it is a view held particularly strongly by those on the left, and I have some great sympathy with that view. George Galloway recently spoke, however, of his change of belief, and that he would now share a platform with people such as Griffin in order to argue against their beliefs. And, from the evidence of last night, I would advocate and support that new stance because there was a danger that, rather than an appearance on the BBC increasing support for Griffin, a continued veiled menacing silence would allow others to fill in their own prejudices into that silence, creating a slow drift in the minority toward his and his party's ilk.

By having Griffin, an elected representative, on air to share his views and beliefs has evaporated that menace and reveals in broad daylight a bunch of cobbled-together nonsense, probably the result of undergraduate scribblings in lecture halls, barely understood then, and made to fit his view of the facts now. I had hoped, however, that it wouldn't have turned into a baiting arena which it certainly came close to, and I had hoped the tone of derision would have been less scornful because, as I have said, people such as Griffin thrive on being taken seriously, and take that away from them and they're left clutching onto nothing but those undergraduate scribblings.

A Mirthful Spectacle?

I'm afraid, as usual, I'll be tuning tonight into Question Time. I have great sympathy for the view that we should exclude people such as Griffin from such mainstream shows. The arguments for such a belief are cogent and coherent. Yet, I tend to take the opposite view that, such a party has gained representation, it does have a level of support, and so the best way to marginalise such parties are to engage them with argument because, as will become apparent tonight, I'm sure, their beliefs are based on a flimsy, cobbled together philosophy that have always been baseless and empty and useless and this current machination of such ideas are as hollow as those who held them before Griffin.

The one thing that such a party thrives upon is to be taken seriously, though, because they need it, and so they will take tonight as a victory, as a challenge to the mainstream, and as a sign of another small step toward their dystopia (for it is a dystopia to them also, because they believe in conflict and violence). Therefore, I do hope that their big night becomes a mirthful spectacle. I hope Dimbleby takes his designer glasses into his hand, smiling benignly, and looks around at the other guests, who are also smiling benignly, mockingly almost. You don't defeat such people by taking them seriously, you defeat them by laughing at their cobbled-together ideas, their fast-forward cassette-tape rhetoric.

These guys are the school-bullys of the political world; there aren't many of them, most of us will be fortunate never having to meet them, but they linger around on the edges, looking for weakness and playing the occasional game for their own self-satisfaction. Tonight is just such a game, and we should treat them in the manner befitting.