Reply #52: The BNP stoked what? It wasn't just BNP supporters who participated. [View All]

When Hague runs on a little England platform and gives speeches which talk about the pound and euro in thinly-velied nationalist terms, and he criticizes immigrants, he creates a mood which the BNP exploits.

It doesn't matter that the riots happened before and after the election. It matters that they happened at a time when the right was pushing nationalist and racist ideas.

This is pretty much what happened in Zimbabwe. Calling it voter intimidation is the spin the press puts on it. I don't know how it's different from Oldham. It's people who care about politics getting caught up in a mood and lashing out.

One could argue that if Mugabe's guilty, so is Hague and the BNP. If politicians aren't responsible for creating this mood, then I don't see you can treat total fucking riots in England as being superior, culturally and politically to what the western press criticizes in Zimbabwe.

The truth, however, is that both are due to very particular social, cultural and political factors and that, in neither case is the media interested in investigating the truth. They're interested in having the stories fit into a narrative that helps them with their more general editorial aims. In the UK, it's pretending that the whole Tory party ISN'T part of a dangerous, narrow, illogical racist and nationalistic project. In Africa the project is undermining any government that threatens the one-way flow of profits from Africa to Europe.