One of these days I’m sure you’ll make the decision whether you

Comment on Commenting Policy by David.

One of these days I’m sure you’ll make the decision whether you will or won’t be commenting here anymore, you seem to not be able to stay away :-)

“You know why we don’t really debate?
Because we always get the tired old ‘racist/fascist’ slagging, or written off before we start, like your above comment.”

That’s total BS, my comment above doesn’t even mention racist/fascist or slagging the BNP off, yes writing them off before they start is accurate though.

The option to debate has been here all along, most (not all) BNP supporters who comment here do not want to debate, they want to dictate their views and have no one question them. It’s a real shame as we could all gain something from open debate and maybe find a middle ground (pretty much everyone who has commented on immigration agrees there’s a problem for example).

I’m open to debating Labour policy and failures: but apparently no one wants to debate Labour failures and what to do about them!

Three months is more than enough time for a person like myself to do significant research on the BNP and offer counter arguments to some of the dumb ideas presented by the British National party and it’s supporters. I’m sorry, but some of the BNP policies are dumb.

BNP policy: Do military national service or loose the right to vote, how dumb is that for a political parties policy in the 21st century! Can anyone even give me a democratic country that has a similar working policy today (only the military trained can vote)?

Feel free to get off your high horse and debate with me about the above? No, didn’t think so!

I recall you saying you thought this site was great, but that was before pro BNP comments received serious scrutiny?

Come up with a good, workable BNP idea and I’ll agree with it. There was a comment that the BNP have over the cold weather been calling it’s elderly members to check on them, that’s a good thing and I said so.

I honestly don’t care if it’s a BNP publicity stunt or not, (they are a political party and that’s what ALL political parties do). I help people out not because I’m completely altruistic, but because helping others makes me feel good. It’s a selfish reason for helping, but people are being helped, so who cares as long as something good is achieved and no one is hurt in the process.

“The BNP main site is a party site, it is NOT a discussion site. It gets far and away more comments than your site does, and the moderator has to work overtime. It does allow critical suggestions, I have put some on there myself ages ago when I was still blindly supporting Labour.”

Erm, if it’s not a discussion site why have open comments? the whole concept of comments on a WordPress blog (which the BNP main site uses) is to generate debate, give visitors an ability to comment. They could have a private contact/comment form like the other parties use.

Clearly the main political party websites (Labour, Conservative and Lib Dems) are NOT discussion sites (no ability to openly comment). I’ve given the BNP credit for their website as it’s the only one to allow it’s members any ability to comment (it’s a good thing IMO). I’m not going to gloss over the fact the BNP moderators curtail free debate and only allow pro BNP comments in general (I’m sure they’ll let the odd anti BNP comment through, but they stop open debate).

Which means I’m more inclined to allow free debate than the leaders of the BNP are, but by the same token at least the BNP allow some debate, even if it is a BNP sanctioned version. So the BNP site and open comments that are heavily moderated is a big step in the right direction at least.

“You talk about us as if we were from Mars, and not worthy of space on your wonderful site.”

And yet despite your perception you are allowed to comment with minor rules that ALL commenter’s (including myself) are held to (I’m not pretending to be perfect and I will make mistakes). I might not agree with the BNP or it’s supporters, but I’ll defend your right to express your views even on a site I own and could easily delete every BNP comment on. What I don’t want is every single comment thread being about the BNP, there are other far more important issues (government debt for example) than a political party that will be happy if they get 2 MPs and will be on cloud nine if they got 5 MPs.

“You know nothing about the BNP except for your own ignorant preconceptions, bias and prejudice.”

Hang on a second, let me remind you of how you perceived my site before I had time to research the BNP in detail:

https://general-election-2010.co.uk/islam-and-the-islamification-of-britain-discussion/comment-page-1/#comment-543
David, I would like to thank you again for providing these pages. I have found the comments and opinions to be very varied and interesting.
Democracy is supposed to be about all these various opinions being represented in Parliament, but very few of them will be.

General Election 2010 Poll Results

By the way, I find your web pages fascinating, thank you for providing them.

And oh! nearly forgot – vote BNP.

Reasons to Vote British National Party : BNP 2010 General Election

Personal for David, I admire you for including the BNP in your site since you clearly dislike them so much.

What I write now is not based on any preconceived ideas of the BNP, before I had researched the BNP in enough detail to be able to comment, I held back because all I could go on was preconceptions (the little info I had suggested the BNP is a racist/fascist party, but I wasn’t sure) and I hate to hold a debate without understanding a subject in reasonable detail.

Even now I’m not 100% certain the BNP leader hasn’t changed his racist/fascist roots (there are indications he hasn’t changed). If Nick Griffin has changed his ideology from racist/fascist to something else, (how does he describe his ideology now?) that’s good news, but IMHO it’s way to early to take a risk on the BNP, what if he’s another Hitler in the making, is it really worth the risk considering his past racist and anti-semitic views?

And that’s assuming you believe many of the BNP policies will work, most of them are unworkable (some are plain stupid).

I think the main problem here is the majority of BNP commenter’s don’t want to discuss anything negative about the BNP, like the military national service policy, because of a fear it will loose potential BNP voters. Easier to knock the other political parties, how awful they are than argue the dumb BNP policies aren’t dumb.

The BNP have a perception of being fascist and racist by the British people (the majority). It’s up to the BNP and it’s supporters to persuade the British public otherwise and crying foul every time the BNP’s recent past is brought into a discussion does not dispel those perceptions. As long as you (BNP/BNP supporters) as a whole refuse to accept the mistakes of the past you will never move into mainstream politics since the rest of us will be stuck on the past and need to be convinced the BNP have changed.

David