We are told that ‘nazism’ is once again on the march in Europe. The recent success of so-called far-right political parties has inevitably evoked many such sensationalist reactions from journalists, and perhaps none more so than in the case of BBC correspondent Angus Roxburgh's Preachers of Hate, which evokes the image of SS Jackboots pounding throughout the continent. Roxburgh's book uses the term ‘neo-nazi’ sweepingly, to encompass just about everybody from the SS-praising Jorg Haider to homosexual libertarian Pim Fortuyn. They, and the groups they apparently embody, are all lazily accused of being modern ‘nazis’ - key players in the politics of ‘hate.’

Of course, one of Roxburgh's problems is that he is unable, or unwilling, to define what ‘far-right’ or ‘nazi’ actually mean, allowing him to use these emotive terms entirely unquestioned. So perhaps we should think for a moment about this point. What defines ‘nazism’ for most people? I would suggest it is the projection of hatred and fear onto certain groups, scapegoating these groups; the smearing and dehumanising of opponents; and suppression of free speech and the desire for a One-Party State. Now, if this is so, then ‘nazism’ would indeed seem to be ‘on the march’, but this is not embodied in Haider or Fortuyn. It is embodied in the ‘anti-fascist’ movement, which has been marching through Europe (including Britain) evoking fear and stirring up hate wherever it goes.

Dehumanising opponents

The Nazis are famously reputed to have dehumanised their opponents. Jews were compared to a plague of rats in a film by Dr. Goebbels. Schoolchildren were taught in an equally notorious story book that the Jew was The Poisoned Mushroom. But in Britain the ‘Anti-Nazi’ League, the magazine Searchlight and many in the Labour Party portray their opponents in an equally dehumanised fashion. Referring to the latter as ‘nazis’ clearly has this purpose in the context in which the term is understood. Even though the BNP, for example, is clearly not ‘nazi’ - because nazism was a German ideology of the 1930s - associating the BNP with Nazism, and by extension the various atrocities of which the Nazis are accused, massively assists in dehumanising the BNP's members. They are portrayed not as individuals but simply as an indisputably evil collective force.

Quite apart from the ‘nazi’ label, various figures on the left use highly emotive language in referring to the BNP. Roy Hattersley termed the BNP ‘evil’ on a recent edition of Question Time. And how often has the ‘Anti-Nazi’ League been recorded chanting ‘scum’ at members of the BNP? BNP members are portrayed as not human but as ‘filth’. And there is only one logical thing to be done to filth!

The second way in which the ‘anti-nazi’ movement dehumanises its opponents is subtler. It involves deliberately alienating the BNP from those whom they wish to prevent voting for the party: the sprawling middle class. This includes just about everybody from office managers to barristers. As such, they make numerous false allegations against those they oppose. They suggest that only uneducated and often unemployed people living in deprived areas vote for the BNP. Roy Hattersley made exactly this claim on the edition of Question Time from Burnley to which I have referred, despite the fact that there were high BNP votes in many middle-class areas of Oldham, Burnley and elsewhere at the 2001 general election and in subsequent local government elections. Such an allegation cleverly manipulates the well-known phenomenon of ‘Rank Concession Syndrome’ - that people will emulate their perceived socio-economic superiors and reject the lifestyle of those they believe to be ‘failing’. Hattersley's viewers would obviously, and perhaps over-simplistically, associate unemployment with failure!

The ‘criminal’ cry

Hattersley's next argument was that many people in the BNP are ‘criminals’. This would again invoke ‘Rank Concession Syndrome’ for many of his viewers. But what he fails to point out is that most of the ‘crimes’ committed by BNP members have amounted only to breaches of the law in pursuit of political motives, sometimes involving the use of freedom of speech in a society in which freedom of speech has been a sacred national tradition (though now a ‘crime’ in certain respects). Hattersley also suggested that top BNP members have convictions for violent behaviour, again forgetting the violence against which they frequently have to defend themselves from the far left.

Hattersley's final tactic was simply to claim that if you vote BNP you have been ‘brain-washed’ by the far right and you are an ‘insecure person.’ Of course, no-one would wish to feel that either of these things applied to themselves, so that the intended effect was to alienate them from the BNP. In the process of all this, of course, Hattersley was essentially alienating many ordinary people, implying that they are incapable of having an intelligent opinion. Moreover, the refusal of politicians like Hattersley to debate with the BNP is intended only to assist this dehumanisation process further - his opponents become a dark, shadowy group with whom it is dangerous even to talk!

Projecting hatreds

The Nazis, of course, were regarded by many as projecting their own insecurities - in a time of national crisis - onto the Jews. The Jews were scapegoated for everything from unemployment to the degradation of the national character. But do not ‘anti-nazis’ project their own hatreds onto their political opponents? Recently, the ANL in Guildford used threats of violence against members of the public to cancel a BNP hustings.

We have already explored the accusations of ‘nazi’, ‘evil’, and ‘scum’ and the way in which ‘anti-nazis’ refuse to debate with their opponents but simply seek to lock them up for speaking their minds. One councillor in Wiltshire said he wouldn't want to be in the same room as a BNP member. The BNP are essentially blamed for anything for which their opponents can find to blame them. One commentator argued that racist attacks had increased in Burnley since a BNP councillor was elected. But these attacks would almost certainly have occurred regardless. Such an accusation is thus, again, scapegoating and totally irrational. The Jews were legally persecuted for their race and religion in Germany; the opponents of the ‘anti-nazis’ are persecuted for their patriotic views today. In both cases, of course, the legal system prevented, and prevents, them from fighting back.

Indeed, much of this loathing derives from the insecurities of the ‘anti-nazis’ themselves. Who are the ‘Anti-Nazi’ League? Overwhelmingly, they are white and middle-class. They are also, in a socio-economic sense at least, failures. They do not belong to the affluent middle-class, but are mainly what they might themselves call wage-slaves: teachers, nurses and so on; and they are politically on the left. They dislike being white and British, I would suggest, because of the tremendous sense of post-colonial guilt with which today's young people have been inculcated through their education. And, needless to say, they dislike their lack of affluence, their lack of self-determination and their relative lack of achievement. The BNP, therefore, embodies all of the aspects of themselves that they despise. It is unashamedly in favour of preserving the British Nation - its culture, its own special way of life and once again ensuring that we are proud, not guilty, to be ourselves.

A great deal of the BNP's support is from honest, working-class, white people whose position reflects an aspect of the lifestyle of the ‘anti-nazi’ that he loathes. Moreover, the BNP challenges the identity of the ‘anti-nazi’ by highlighting the utter failure of his left-wing ideology to help anybody in the working-class anywhere. Even some of those in Britain's de facto underclass are likewise beginning to vote nationalist, challenging the certainties of the ‘anti- nazi’. No wonder, then, that the ‘anti-Nazi’, insecure in terms of his ideology, economic position and national identity, projects his self-loathing onto the BNP!

Violence and suppression

And like the real Nazis, the ‘anti-nazis’ are attempting to achieve a One-Party State. They use violence in place of democracy. They suppress freedom of speech. They smear and imprison their opponents. They even interfere with the democratic process by, almost unbelievably, marching against the democratically expressed will of the people and rioting in the streets, as we saw in the wake of Jean-Marie Le Pen's first-round success in the French Presidential Election. Some - such as Dutchman Volkert van der Graff - will even go as far as murdering their opponents; despite the fact that the victim in this case, Pim Fortuyn, clearly had the backing of a vast number of the Dutch electorate, van der Graff assassinated him. Many ‘anti-nazis’ will argue that they believe in freedom of speech but they still shout for the BNP to be banned!

I have even heard some ‘anti-nazis’ question whether the kind of people who vote BNP should be allowed to vote at all. One of them mooted the idea that one shouldn't be allowed to vote without a university degree. If the BNP were suppressed, Britain would effectively become a One-Party State. The three main parties are, at least in theory, agreed on the desirability of a multi-cultural society. So without the BNP where would the voice of dissent and opposition be? On many issues our so-called ‘anti-nazis’ are essentially of one voice and one party. And like the Nazis of legend, they have an absolute intolerance of anyone who dares to disagree with them.