Hannan’s repeating the lie that the BNP is a ‘left wing’ party again in his blog. Only this time, he is involved in a spat with fellow Telegraph blogger, Damian Thompson. who says,
I really am bored of Right-wing Tories like my old mate Dan Hannan insisting that the British National Party is “far Left”. It isn’t. It’s on the far Right. Sure, the BNP’s economic policies reflect a version of socialism; it would create a monstrously intrusive, high-spending state not unlike those on the totalitarian Left. But, for crying out loud, let’s use some common sense here. Political parties are defined not just by their economic manifestos but also by their culture. And the culture of the BNP expresses a nationalist racism that is almost identical to that of European parties that everyone identifies as far Right, even if they are less statist and protectionist. This culture is a long way removed from Dan’s free market Whiggery; but then Dan is not on the far Right, just as (say) Will Hutton is not on the far Left and has almost nothing in common with the Socialist Workers’ Party. Calling the BNP Left-wing is like calling the Soviet apparatus Right-wing, as so many libertarian Lefties did in the 1970s. It’s a debating society trick, nothing more.
Quite right, Damian, quite right….it’s not only a debating society trick, it’s a cheap trick; a cheap and nasty trick.
Mad Dan’s headline reads “There’s nothing Right-wing about the BNP – except in the BBC sense of baddie”. I think that title reveals more about the man than he cares to admit.
Here, he falls back on a rather shaky piece of logic
The BNP, like all fascist movements, emerged from the revolutionary Left. It dislikes free enterprise, hates the rich and resents the monarchy. It markets itself as “the Labour Party your parents voted for” and its last manifesto promised “to give workers a stake in the success and prosperity of the enterprises whose profits their labour creates by encouraging worker shareholder and co-operative schemes”. Its support comes overwhelmingly from ex-Labour voters.
Wrong. The BNP was formed as a splinter group from the National Front whose precursor was Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. So what does this prove? Nothing whatsoever. Did Mussolini’s fascists emerge from the revolutionary left? No, they did not. Mussolini may have, at one time, been a socialist but he was soon expelled for supporting WWI. he soon followed the lead of irredentist, Gabriele d’Annunzio (who was a darling of the Futurists). Being expelled from a socialist party doesn’t necessarily mean that you will have taken socialism with you to forge into a new dynamic party of fascists. Yet, this is what Mad Dan assumes. Quite frankly, I don’t know what history this man has been reading but it is all wrong. Appealing to the working classes is pretty common for fashos, but actively incorporating them into the party’s leadership structure is something quite different. No far-right party has ever done this. In this way, the far-right shares something in common with the Tories. Remember the Primrose League? It was an attempt by the Tories to attract working class support in the 1880’s. But the working class never found themselves actually leading the League’s local branches; they remained at the bottom of the hierarchy.
Then there are the Nazis: Hitler was not and never was, a socialist. While some of the Nazis may have, at one time, been socialists, they were either expelled or left the party of their own accord. Hitler was totally opposed to socialism from the outset. How on earth could he and his party be ‘left-wing’ when they were opposed to trade unions?
Hannan then quotes FA Hayek. This is a very bad move because Hayek isn’t exactly neutral in his ‘analysis’ of socialism; he wants to tie it to fascism and in so doing ignores the corporatist nature of fascism/Nazism in order to score a political point. The defence of Hayek appears to rest on a single premise: Hayek lived in Austria during the Dolfuss regime. For Hannan, it is as if Hayek exists in some kind of ideological vacuum.
Read Hayek’s chapter on “The Socialist Roots of Nazism” in The Road to Serfdom,
No thanks, I tried Hayek and he made me sick….and he made the rest of the country sick when Thatcher adopted his philosophy.
This is pure gold,
In what sense, then, is the BNP Right-wing? Some argue that it is Right-wing to discriminate on the basis of race and nationality rather than class and income, but this would surely make Stalin, Gerry Adams, Pol Pot and Robert Mugabe very Right-wing indeed. A true Rightist believes that, other things being equal, the individual should be as free as possible from state coercion: a position equally abhorrent to socialists of the National or Leninist varieties.
When did Gerry Adams discriminate on the basis of race or even religion? You’re going to have to find some pretty solid examples, Dan; because your case is looking shakier by the minute. You do realise that there have been Protestant members of the IRA or did you think that the ‘Troubles’ was all about religion? Your take on the Right as ‘defenders of freedom’ is so risible that I can only say one thing by way of reply: Pinochet. Of course I could have said Franco or Salazar, but Pinochet was alleged to have presided over an ‘economic miracle’ that was, in part, informed by the theories of Hayek (as well as those of Friedman who was also influenced by the Austrian School).
As the blog nears its end, it becomes ever more batty. He shrieks,
No, there is only one sense in which the BNP is Right-wing, and that is the BBC sense. Our state broadcaster uses the epithet “Right-wing” to mean “disagreeable”
Do they? Is that like when “lefties” allegedly use the word “hate” when they mean “disagree”? To be honest, I think you’re spending far too much time around Teabaggers, Dan.
One thing is clear from this blog and your blog of a couple of days ago: you don’t know your right from your left.
Guy Debord's Cat 