Blogging and the BNP

Quite often when I turn on my computer in the morning and my home page of British National Party 'news' searches springs up, there's a diary story from The Guardian at the top of the pile. The diarists on this newspaper seem to have a growing fascination with the BNP which is quite surprising since they purport to abhor everything we stand for - maybe it's our policy to nationalise all essential services and the railways that might be winning a few of them over?

This morning it's Hugh Muir who bemoans the fact that the BNP is using blogs to recruit supporters. He writes:
"At all ends of the political spectrum, the problem is the same. How to convey the message; how to engage. The problem is more acute for the far-right shock troops of the BNP, who know that most will refuse to read their unsavoury internet ramblings unless they are disguised to make them palatable."

Hugh goes on to quote Nick Griffin apparently lecturing potential bloggers on how to make the most of the service . . . ' the real power of this medium lies - not (in) the naked politics that turns off most of the population, but subtle 'independent' popular validation of our views and our party'.

Well if that's the case, I'm obviously off beam with the BNP Chairman's thinking on this. My blog is 'naked politics' under my handle of 'the editor of the British National Party's newspaper, Freedom.' I suppose I could have been not quite so 'in the face' with who I am, but I'm not keen on hiding my political light under a bushel.

I'm new to blogging, putting one's thoughts down on your own personal page, but I have been publishing my viewpoint, as such, for the last two years. First job in the morning was to trawl all the media outlets online looking for the sort of stories that I could comment on. National newspapers, local newspapers, magazines, news sites, nearly all of them provide some sort of comment facility to express your views on. I had great success with this, making sure that the BNP was mentioned and our policy on the relevant issues.

Then at the beginning of this year someone started 'tailing' me. They must have been using a similar search engine code. Whenever I posted a comment, they would be right behind with their posting which stated "Martin Wingfield edits the BNP newspaper and is being disingenuous in not stating this". Even when I dropped the 'Wingfield' and just used 'Martin from Carlisle', they were there stating who I was. The outcome of this was that suddenly my posts to the national newspapers didn't get published any more and then the larger regional newspapers followed suit.

So that's why I've started blogging. I like to start the day getting some views 'down on paper'.

When I was running my Books on Vietnam website I met hundreds of people online and debated the various issues concerning that country's history. The name Martin Wingfield didn't mean anything to most of them so I could have made that 'subtle 'independent' popular validation of our views and our party' and probably did. There was a lecturer at the London School of Economics who sussed me out straight away but despite differing viewpoints we had a long and interesting correspondence for nearly a year. And then there was a UNICEF official in Australia. We debated long into the night the merits and shortcomings of the Ngo Dinh Diem Government and at the end of our exchange of emails he wrote . . "You are either a geography teacher from Sussex University or a leading light in the British National Party. I hope it is the former, but I suspect it is the latter."

No independent popular validation achieved there then!