Observations on PC conspiracies
All is not well at the British National Party. As they seek to secure their first London Assembly member on 1 May, they are being tormented from every side. "Communist-Tory-Labour-Libdem Alliance Reveals its Ugly Face" ran a headline on the BNP website recently. That's quite an alliance - one that could in fact only really be brought together by one thing: protesting against the BNP, as was the case on this occasion. And as if fighting off this unlikely coalition was not causing them trouble enough, even the party supporters' own internet message board seems to have become sentient and joined the conspiracy.
On the Green Arrow web forum, where immigration, Islam and multiculturalism are decried as a single united threat to the (white) British way of life, banner adverts have started appearing for www.muslima.com, "a Muslim Marriage and Muslim Matrimonials site that assists people to find a Muslim partner for friendship or marriage". This seems like an extraordinarily unproductive place for a Muslim singles website to advertise, but it's less likely to be a liberal pinko PC conspiracy, and more likely the product of advertising software that responds to frequently used terms on the message board.
BNP supporters have obviously been talking a lot about Muslims, and this is their computer-generated reward - one they aren't best pleased with. "It would be nice to get rid of [the advert] as I do find it rather offensive given tha t the picture clearly shows an Asian man and a Caucasian woman," wrote one message-board user, who obviously hasn't noticed that another part of the website now carries banner adverts for www.interracialromance.com.
So how can the beleaguered BNP get rid of these unwanted intrusions? One user suggests avoiding the words Islam or Muslim and replacing them with "invaders from the East" or, even more convolutedly, "the religion of 'peace'". This consistent use of euphemisms might prove a challenge for a party whose London mayoral candidate, Richard Barnbrook, is standing on a platform of "no new mosques".
Even intellectually, the BNP seems to be being infiltrated by those who seek to undermine its cause - its online shop carries a collection of essays, Neo-Conned, which features contributions from such noted white nationalists as Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky and Milton Viorst. And in the wake of St George's Day, it may not be a good idea to tell the party's flag-waving English supporters that their patron saint was a Roman soldier brought up in Palestine who probably never visited England, and that he is also patron saint of China, Ethiopia, Serbia, the Freemasons, and people with syphilis. I just don't think they could bear it.
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