Should Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party (BNP), have been invited to appear on Question Time, the BBC’s flagship political discussion program?
This question has generated acres of print over the last few weeks and a few hundred thousand more since his appearance on the program Thursday night. The question is pertinent not just for the case of the BNP but in the wider context. When a small but sizable minority supports socially dangerous and unpalatable views, should that minority be given a public platform for debate or should it be excluded?
So who are the BNP?
You don’t need to know much about them to know that they are offensive. They are offensive and worrying Muslims since the BNP is a party of the far right who would like to see British Muslims go home, wherever they imagine this “home” to be. Griffin is quoted as thinking that Islam is a “wicked and vicious faith”. Apparently on Question Time he toned it down to saying that he thought that Islam did not fit in with the values of British society. Either way, he clearly sees Muslims as a threat to Britain and so presumably must many of those who voted for his party.
More important, his popularity is offensive and worrying to Britain as a country since it signals an unwelcome ugly strand of politics moving from the margins of society to the glare of the limelight, and the worry is, to legitimacy and credibility.
Just how popular is the BNP? Is the BBC right to believe that the BNP is popular enough to make them duty bound by political fairness to be included in such political discussion programs as Question Time?
At the last British general election in 2005, the BNP did not secure enough votes to have a single member elected to the British Parliament. In all 192,746 people voted for them, representing 0.7 percent of the total vote. Since election turnout was 61 percent, this means that less than 0.5 percent of the British electorate voted for them.
Last June, in the European elections, they scored a victory and secured two seats in the European Parliament, one being for Nick Griffin himself. They obtained 943,000 votes, a whopping 6 percent of total votes cast. Moreover, there is a definite trend of increased support for the BNP.
How should we deal with such offensive views? Ignore them thinking that acknowledging them somehow dignifies them? Try to stop such views being publicly expressed and discussed in the hope they will quietly go away? Or do you bring them on and challenge them?
The key question is whether allowing offensive views to be freely expressed helps propagate them. Those who support censorship believe that to be the case. Often there is the idea that they are much like a virus that must be contained, exposure alone is enough to contaminate society.
The opposing view contends that on the contrary preventing unwelcome views from being expressed fuels support for them and that the only way to deal with such views is through robust argument.
I have long held the belief that if you give small-minded people enough rope, they hang themselves. It seems Nick Griffin did just that on Question Time. By all accounts his performance was appalling and he lacked all credibility. Furthermore, the other panelists relished the opportunity to attack him all guns blazing. Intellectually, he did not stand a chance and his views were not just challenged, but vilified.
So a great result then. I’m not so sure. For once, I worry that allowing the likes of Griffin a spot on primetime television, even if he put in a lousy performance, gives him and his party the credibility they lack.
And the publicity generated by his appearance is worrying. How many of us had even heard of Nick Griffin before he was invited on the BBC program?
I am reminded of a certain writer who published a book 20 years ago. The critics panned the book. It was quietly going down the road of books sitting on a library bookshelf waiting to be forgotten when someone noticed the story was offensive to Muslims. The resulting furor and publicity turned the book into an international best-seller.
The case of the BNP is not quite the same. It is not literature but a political party whose support is slowly but surely gaining ground. There are two questions here. One concerns the legitimizing power of television and the other the emotive power of anger and indignation.
There is a difference between challenging a set of views and legitimizing them by giving them the cachet of an appearance on a serious and respected program like Question Time. The BNP has been given a great platform from which to make itself known to millions.
The fact that Griffin was pilloried, booed and treated as public enemy No. 1 on the program may have served to polarize opinion. Those who loathed him were happy to see him get what he deserves, whilst those with a propensity to support his party may have seen him as a victim deserving of their support.
The thing about debates is that they rarely swing it for the decided. Hence all the fuss about swing voters, they are the ones who can be convinced by an eloquent argument. Debates may be good entertainment, they may even be educational, but rarely do they do more than confirm views we already have. If you hold a certain view on a subject, you must be remarkably intelligent and open-minded in order to listen to a debate and let it move you a couple of inches away from your starting position.
In the case of support for the BNP, it is not an intelligent view. It is a knee-jerk emotive reaction to serious social problems; it is a verbalization of anger rather than an intellectual conviction. The question asked by those who are open to the BNP’s view of things is not whether Nick Griffin has views that stand up to scrutiny but whether his party can become legitimate and credible enough to be worthy of their vote. Appearing on Question Time and all the fuss that has accompanied this appearance may have done just that. And yet could we really let such views go unchallenged?
