Harry's Place finds an excuse for BBC's fascist showcase

Sorry to run another post on Harry's Place so soon after the previous one but this time I am actually shocked that they are so happy to undermine anti-fascist activism rather than work with socialists or Muslim groups against fascism. Their latest post has them supporting the BBC's latest decision to support violent racists albeit in the opposite way from the previous time. This time the beeb has decided to grant a platform to fascist British National Party leader, Nick Griffin. The last time they showed their support for violent racism was by not allowing a platform for a fundraising effort for the children of Gaza.

Traditionally leftists and liberals have opposed providing a platform for fascists and I'm sure Harry's Place have pretended to be acting in this tradition when they have opposed visits to this country by various islamists. It's curious then that HP have made an excuse for what the BBC has done tonight that even the BBC hasn't come up with and that is that in the internet age the no platform policy is redundant as people can simply surf the net. Here's HP's Brett:

You really have to stop and wonder sometimes whether SWP and UAF activists are just hysterical children throwing tantrums for attention or temper. Is there not a serious strategist among them?

Having not succeeded in the, frankly, redundant-in-the-internet-age tactic of ‘no platform’, what did they do next? They created such a media stir - now, apparently having broken in to the TV studio - that Nick Griffin’s performance on Question Time will probably be guaranteed the biggest audience since a mysterious assailant shot J.R. Ewing!

Now this appearance of Nick Griffin on the BBC has been publicised in the media for weeks now and it was the subject of the front pages of both the Guardian and the Times newspapers this morning. But for the anti-anti-fascists of Harry's Place it is the SWP and Unite against fascism who publicised Nick Griffin's appearance on UK television tonight.

Two points about HP emerge from this. The first is the usual one that in suggesting that it is anti-fascists that have publicised this event by their actions tonight when the event was already publicised on the front pages of two national newspapers this morning, HP shows that truth is a complete irrelevance to its campaign against leftists and Muslims. The other is a bit more troubling and that is that if HP has to choose between fascists on the one hand and socialists and Muslims on the other, it will side with the former.

The Question Time programme that Nick Griffin is appearing on tonight is actually on as I am writing this and the reason HPrs see leftists and Muslims as more problematic than fascism in the UK wasn't long in coming. Griffin managed to mention that his party wholeheartedly supported Israel's assault on Gaza. And this of course calls to mind the time that a so-called Community Security Trust spokesperson admitted that "[t]he BNP website is now one of the most Zionist on the web".