Is the BNP a nazi party?

Despite attempts to modernise the British National Party and make it more electable, it continues to be led by hardline nazis.

It may be difficult to believe that nazism is active and has any support in Britain. Yet the BNP is nazi through and through. What is the evidence for this?

A recent report Racism and Xenophobia describes the BNP as an ‘openly Nazi party’.

"Mein Kampf is my bible" says John Tyndall, who founded the BNP. Mein Kampf is a book written by Hitler in which he set out his Nazi philosophy and practice. Tyndall has also written "Many who feel that Hitler was right do not believe it is safe yet to state such views. But times will change."

A Panorama TV programme showed a BNP rally in Wales in 2001 at which members were seen making the raised arm Nazi salute and a CD of SS marching songs was played.

The Young BNP use an SS symbol as a logo. At their annual rally in 2002 a member was filmed for TV wearing a tee shirt with 88, code for Heil Hitler (h is the eighth letter of the alphabet).

The BNP has close links with nazi groups abroad. In the United States, the BNP has links with the National Alliance, the most dangerous nazi group in the world. The Alliance was led by William Pierce (deceased), author of The Turner Diaries, a fictional account of a race war. This book inspired the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and was a favourite of the London nailbomber David Copeland. Pierce's articles regularly appeared in the BNP publication Spearhead, and in 1995 he addressed a BNP rally in London.

Recently, the BNP has tried to position itself as a responsible mainstream political party. To do this its leaders try to appear as family friendly advocates of democracy, law and order. Deceit is their stock in trade. Let no-one be in any doubt that it is an extremist organization which generates and thrives on violence in localities where it is active. Its aims are to gain power, as Hitler did, through elections in order to impose its nazi ideas. They despise democracy and the criminal records of their leadership are astonishing. They have no respect for the law which is a fundamental basis for any democracy.

Perhaps it is hardly surprising that Nick Griffin the BNP leader seeks to deny that the Holocaust ever happened. The horrific spectacle of the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime, the mass exterminations and the gas chambers, conjures up Hitler's irrational and racist quest. The BNP does not want potential supporters to realise that they share the same beliefs and vision with such discredited history.

Griffin is a man for all people. He is also an outrageous opportunist. His plan is to use community-based politics to build respectability for the BNP in the eyes of voters. We should not be fooled.

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