BNP members interviewed on the Newsbeat website
The F-Word have blogged about an interview of two BNP members on the Newsbeat website and they comment:
While the BNP members don’t come across as the most intelligent human beings and the interviewer does get a couple of gentle digs in towards the end, the BBC’s decision to run this interview without at least giving a bit of context about the party’s violent, racist and sexist history and policies on a website designed for young people who are assumed to have little political awareness is hugely irresponsible.
I know people are divided on the ‘no platform’ policy - personally, I think Griffin’s appearance on Question Time won’t necessarily be a bad thing providing he faces suitable scrutiny and condemnation from the other participants and audience members - but providing an uncritical platform for BNP members to spout their racist views (couched in pseudo-logic and reason, as ever) to generally apolitical young people is dangerous and completely unnecessary.
The F-Word also gives some background on one of the interviewees :
UPDATE: One of the interviewees is Mark Collett, who was exposed in this Channel 4 documentary, in which he proclaimed that 1930s Germany was a better place to live than Britain today. “Hitler will live on forever and maybe I will too”, said Collett. He said that he considered AIDS a “friendly disease because blacks, drug users and gays have it.” He also made this sexist little speech which I blogged last year.
The Newsbeat website makes no mention of this and it is, as stated , a pretty uncritical platform for the BNP.
If you want to complain, here is the link.
While the BNP members don’t come across as the most intelligent human beings and the interviewer does get a couple of gentle digs in towards the end, the BBC’s decision to run this interview without at least giving a bit of context about the party’s violent, racist and sexist history and policies on a website designed for young people who are assumed to have little political awareness is hugely irresponsible.
I know people are divided on the ‘no platform’ policy - personally, I think Griffin’s appearance on Question Time won’t necessarily be a bad thing providing he faces suitable scrutiny and condemnation from the other participants and audience members - but providing an uncritical platform for BNP members to spout their racist views (couched in pseudo-logic and reason, as ever) to generally apolitical young people is dangerous and completely unnecessary.
The F-Word also gives some background on one of the interviewees :
UPDATE: One of the interviewees is Mark Collett, who was exposed in this Channel 4 documentary, in which he proclaimed that 1930s Germany was a better place to live than Britain today. “Hitler will live on forever and maybe I will too”, said Collett. He said that he considered AIDS a “friendly disease because blacks, drug users and gays have it.” He also made this sexist little speech which I blogged last year.
The Newsbeat website makes no mention of this and it is, as stated , a pretty uncritical platform for the BNP.
If you want to complain, here is the link.
Labels: anti-fascism, media
posted by stroppybird at 6:47 pm
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