Massive bomb making find.

[Malacasta]

Originally posted by Aristotle
You cannot seriously be drawing an equivalency between this story and the story of Islamic jihadism.

I can't because I'm not. You can't seriously suggest that it's not a problem that the media don't cover terrorist plots when they're carried out by the BNP.

[Aristotle]

Originally posted by Malacasta
I can't because I'm not. You can't seriously suggest that it's not a problem that the media don't cover terrorist plots when they're carried out by the BNP.

But you've cited media coverage, so obviously media has covered it.

Honestly, you are comparing a mugger with Lex Luthor.

It isn't as newsworthy because it is so comparatively small in scope.

There are all sorts of horrible things that happen in the world without generating enormous media coverage. It is because of how huge and totally out of control Islamic jihadism is that results in it getting the coverage it does.

[Maelgrim]

The British National Party (BNP) and the party it spawned from (National Front) are racist political parties that have long been involved in acts of violence against minorities in the United Kingdom. They have ties to explicitly fascist and racist parties across Europe and here in Australia.

Reference please? For something that has ties to political parties in australia, I'm a little disturbed that I've never heard of them before.

[Dalaena]

Originally posted by Maelgrim
Reference please? For something that has ties to political parties in australia, I'm a little disturbed that I've never heard of them before.

I've never heard of them either. I went to their site to look around, though, and couldn't find anything exceptionally exciting except for a few articles on hemp, how Bush's war sucks, and an interesting article on the British being a "Mongrel Race".

http://www.bnp.org.uk/

Anyway, I'll look around some more.

Found a reference to their racial purity idea:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1507680.stm

[Dalaena]

As for why this issue isn't getting a lot of press coverage when compared to the Muslim/Arab stuff, I think that's kind of a complicated question. These are my thoughts:

1) The BNP has never accomplished (committed an atrocity?) anything close to the 9/11 destruction of innocent lives and public property. They simply haven't done anything "worthy" of serious media attention, or if they have, it's a thing of the past.

2) The BNP is mostly talk, politics, and smaller crimes. Actions still speak far louder than words. A bunch of kooks in a basement making home bombs apparently doesn't compare to beheading people on TV, blowing up buildings with planes, naked pictures being taken of prisoners, school children being slaughtered, etc. The BNP simply hasn't moved on the grand scale of world terrorism and the resulting backlash of that terrorism.

3) The BNP simply haven't done anything sensationalistic enough or created enough tragedy to get serious press. Tons of stuff gets more press than the BNP. Look at Columbine. It got tons of press for years. Why? It was tragic. A bunch of school boys killed a bunch of other school kids. It's every parents' worse nightmare when they send their kids to school. It struck at the heart of tons of people's fears. Thus, it got tons of press. Tragedies, unfortunately, create the most press.

4) The media is no longer out there simply to keep us informed. Every source of news has an agenda, and the main agenda is to make money (for all the major sources) or to tell a side (for all the political sources). Thus, if something is not that exciting, it gets a byline or only shows up on certain sites/papers. The only thing that gets TONS of coverage is what makes people watch the news most. Again, that goes back to tragedy or drama.

Is this a good thing? One could argue that it promotes greater tragedies and atrocities in order to actually get mentioned in the news. However, that's a whole other topic.

[Malacasta]

Originally posted by Maelgrim
Reference please? For something that has ties to political parties in australia, I'm a little disturbed that I've never heard of them before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Action

We had many a run in with Michael Brander and his jack-boot cronies in my younger days when they tried to open up bookshops, or molotov the local lefties homes, or beat up on migrants. They never lasted too long in Melbourne though, the anti-nazi league acts pretty quickly. I'm pretty sure NA or its like still have a presence in Perth and Adelaide.

There is also this reference in an article on the Cronulla Riots
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Cronulla_riots

Representatives from three far-right organisations were also identified handing out pamphlets: "Australia First Party", the Newcastle-based Blood and Honour, and the "Patriotic Youth League" (PYL). The PYL describes itself as a "radical nationalist" group with links to the US-based racist skinhead group Volksfront, British National Party and the New Zealand National Front. The PYL had previously been linked by the Sydney Morning Herald to racially motivated attacks at the University of Newcastle. None of the groups have claimed a role in organising the event.

[Kraxe]

The BNP essentially changed their name from the National Front a few years back (decades even). They wanted to present a slightly less extreme image than their far-right extremist predecessors. It is obviously working.

Type in ‘national front’ and see what comes up in your search. That’s still the BNP despite what they say. Their public face may have changed but their private face is still the same.

Having lived in the UK for quite a while it’s all but impossible not to have come across the NF or BNP in the news and various documentaries. They are a political party now, but they are still a hate group. The documentaries at the time showed that they have close ties with many of the similar groups in Denmark, Germany, and Holland and Australia. Strangely France didn’t come up. There’s no reason to believe that they have stopped their relationships with any of these groups today.

I know you will all scream ‘sources’, but you can find them yourself. The NF and BNP’s own websites used to be the best source of information for what they were really like, with their lists of left-wing sympathisers, Jews, Asians and other foreigners to target and all their other hate propaganda. I haven’t looked in a while but their public face has been cleaned up. I’m sure they have their old sites out there under different names. Look harder and you’ll find them.

The BNP/NF have been responsible for a lot of crime and violence in the UK and across Europe. They keep it small and/or organised in such a way that it will not lead back to them and never attract too much attention or bad (to them) publicity. It’s a shame you can’t get hold of MI5 files online, as I’m sure they would paint a much better picture.