Quote:
|
Originally Posted by demonrail666
While I have no time for the views of any of these groups, I think it's important that they have an opportunity to speak. The day people are able to decide what others can and can't say only leads to problems in the future.
|
I too think they have a right to speak; there's a difference between intelligent, or even provocative debate and erroneous, misleading, hate-fuelled bullshit. I throw holocaust denial into the latter category; I consider a debate on stronger immigration laws/ 'what is nationalism', even one that runs counter to my (predictable) personal views as necessary.
The BNP have, on several occasions, shown themselves capable of constructing intelligent and considered debate - even though I largely vehemently disagree with their premises/ conclusions. Conflated with this, lamentably, is the capacity of a great many of their ranks, all the way up to the top of the organisation, to utterly undermine their points by revealing themselves to be spiteful, sub-rational cunts. For every well constructed economical theory (and, to be fair, I consider their economic policy to be one of the better constructed ones of the incidental national parties) there's a stereotypical skinhead cunt spouting fear-induced bullshit about a ill-perceived 'other' based on half-baked notions of their 'separation' from the other due to some plain wrong holy cow notioin of ethnicity.
I had a conversation with a paid-up member of the BNP last year. I wasn't persuaded by his arguments, but they weren't ill-considered until I asked him whether I, as a first-generation descendent of Irish people, should be 'sent home' as he saw it. At which point he started trying to say something about the Caucasus and North-Europeans, by which token I ostensibly 'belong' to Italy, Spain, Germany, Norway (etc) but not to the Balkans, Greece, Russia (etc). Utter, utter bullshit, and that's always the problem - the argument is only rational up to the point where the protagonist (me) demands a line to be drawn - none of those lines are satisfactory to a sense of ration, and the argument reveals itself as fearful nonsense.
Basically, my point is that people should be allowed to have whatever opinions they like, no matter how absurd or idiotic; at the point where it cannot be defended within a reasonable debate, or backed up with actual facts (as in the case of holocaust denial) it becomes hateful nonsense, and should quite rightly be prohibited with the utmost severity.