Posted by Cockney Robin 
| How big a big tent is too big if you're a Republican? Are you okay standing shoulder to shoulder with people whose authoritarian ideals and notions of conservatism are fueled by very different values than those of your own version?
It seems that an organisation of students at Michigan State University ("Young Americans for Freedom") invited British Nationalist Party's Nick Griffin to share some cosy anti-Islam sentiments round their autumn bonfires. The author of the distinguished conservative blog "Little Green Footballs" was most distressed, assuming---at first---that the invitation to the "flat-out racist and Holocaust denier" was simply a "boneheaded" move by young freedom-lovers made in honour of the "Islamo-fascist Awareness Week" that featured so prominently is last week's conservative (American) blogs. "It’s not clear from the article whether this was part of Islamofascism Awareness Week or not, but if it was, the Young Americans for Freedom have just handed the enemy a huge gift on a platter, tied up with a lovely white supremacist bow," she fretted. Later she realised that the move had been a conscious one and that the YAFfers, so called, had invited Griffin because of his views.
Kyle Bristow, chairman of YAF, said his organization invited Griffin to promote intellectual debate. Bristow said he doesn't believe in many of the ideas Griffin has preached, particularly his alleged denial of the Holocaust, but does agree that the Islamic faith is a threat to America.
"I'll stop saying their religion is terrible when they stop flying planes into buildings," he said.
"Islam is horrible. The extreme in Christianity is 'love thy neighbor,' with Islam it is violence." (Lansing State Journal)
This is what happens when young people aren't taught any history about their own culture or the history of their own religion. I do like it that he considers "love thy neighbour" to be the "extreme" in Christianity, even while he denounces another religion as "horrible." Perhaps he means he is personally not that extreme a Christian? Who knows? Not I. Not being a man of faith, I can't work out how people become so furiously committed to their own superstitions and so furiously opposed to others. And that goes for all of them.
Even so, as a British person, I find it rather odd that Nick Griffin would be invited to speak by any person who professes to be allied with the religion of "love thy neighbour." But it is only fair to acknowledge that I am biased. To carry on being exceptionally fair, I should mention that the BNP denies that they are a racist party and Nick Griffin denies that he is a neo-Nazi or a fascist. What beliefs, then, do they acknowledge?
A liveblog of his speech is posted here. Some remarks attributed to him are certainly a quite a bit more bloodthirsty than those incorporated in his profile here at the BBC. He doesn't seem to have got very far in terms of speech-making; protesters evidently shouted him down when he tried to speak
Amongst other (and more inflammatory) remarks I don't care to quote which were attributed to him in the 'liveblog' were the following:
"If we had American or Britain threatened by radical Christians I would speak against that too. There is not a clear and present danger," Griffin said..."I have in the past said very rude things about the holocaust...I have never denied it, and I do not doubt so many Jews were killed by the Nazis and the Allies....People are genetically programmed to fight people who do not look like them,” (Lansing State Journal)
As I say, he was shouted down. I wonder why the protesters bothered? But it never seems to occur to people that the most devastating treatment you can give an invited speaker is to fail to turn up. Instead, 75 people turned up, prevented him from making his intended speech, and then engaged in "unstructured banter" with him, in the manner, one imagines, of an episode of Jerry Springer. Some seemed to have believed, pathetically, that they could have a dialogue with him.
When British Nationalist Nick Griffin took the podium at a Friday night Michigan State University event, he tried to explain how Islam is a threat to Western civilization.
Protesters wouldn't have it.
Hurling obscenities and using chants to interrupt his address, rambunctious student organizations forced Griffin to abandon his speech and allow an informal question and answer session.
What followed was an unstructured banter between the speaker and a crowd of roughly 75 protesters. While many attempted to ask Griffin legitimate questions, others shouted obscenities.
"We have all come from different backgrounds," said Authra Khreis, 17, a pre-med student and a protester. "We should accept one another. I don't think he should be allowed to speak. You can use free speech until you hurt another person." (Michigan Messenger)
Altogether rather a ludicrous spectacle and unsatisfying encounter, it seems. Perhaps fittingly.
It must be very difficult to be an American conservative. The ordinary British conservative wouldn't consider Nick Griffin's beliefs to be in any way related to, or relevant to, the sort of conservatism practised in Britain. In Britain, ties to the BNP would get you flung out of the Conservative party. They do not regard the BNP as included within their "tent."
But in America the GOP's "big tent" is apparently big enough and inclusive enough to encompass young people who sincerely believe that Nick Griffin has something to teach them about freedom as well as others with whom the less extreme sort might balk at rubbing elbows with. The 345(!!) comments to the LGF post are instructive, as sane, well-intentioned conservatives struggled with the troubling problem of differentiating their sort of anti-"Islamo-fascist" conservatism from Nick Griffin's.
And not just Nick Griffin's. The LGF posting got itself denounced by the YAFfers as "Traitors to Western Civilisation," where the religion of Jesus somehow has engendered in the author of at least one of the posts a violent urge to SMASH them as LEFT-WING SCUM! Must have been rather an eye-opener for such earnest and unabashed right-wingers to find the fence relocated so far to their right and to find that their mere conservatism stirred up such violent animosity among the extremer sort. The response of the extreme right-wingers has been to post the emails of their not-quite-extreme-enough critics at their site so that they can be spammed with email accusing them of being left-wing. In case they'd like to do the same to me,, here is mine: [email protected]. But perhaps they won't bother, since I certainly do not aspire to be under the same tent with them or on the same side of their portable fence.
Are the conservatives who have been slammed by their extremer counterparts as amazed as I always am to find that people claiming to be conservatives are talking about "freedom" in one breath while being very keen to take away their fellow citizens' freedom to think differently from them in the next? Or how people manage to get the religion of Jesus all mixed up with the rage of Attila?
Poor Ron Paul is getting a bit of stick because the aforementioned scum-smashers support his candidacy which seems a bit unfair. He seems like a nice enough bloke despite all his supporters can do to prevent undecided others from voting for him.
And the blog Hot Air predict (accurately) that those of us to the left of them can't resist the opportunity to philosophise a bit, though I hope I've avoided the appearance of laziness. But perhaps, as a moderate or centrist blog, we aren't included in the "they" to which Hot Air is referring:
The left will enjoy this story, of course, presenting as it does an opportunity to spin some lazy Olbermannesque “Larger Truths” about conservatism out of the fiasco....Do savor the irony, though, that it’s LGF — the blog to which they so often maliciously attribute BNP-ish attitudes — that was the first to post on this.
As I said, it begins to look a tough world for American conservatives. But this post concludes, and correctly, "All movements, political and otherwise, eventually face the temptation
of “enemy of my enemy” logic. It’s seductive; it’s human nature. Resist it at every turn." (emphasis in original)
Memeorandum has blog responses here
[Thanks to D for posting this for me & filling in links etc while I am in current technology difficulties-\...CR]
Update: A Plague of John Galts? More on "The Ron Paul Wars...."
New Poll: Record-Low Approval of Bush & More
Independents and Moderate Republicans: Sign This Letter!
Republican Reaction to Dismal Poll Numbers: Reviving Reaganism? [Updated]
Even Conservatives Feel "Betrayed" by Republican Leaders
LINKED
Protesters shout down anti-Islam speaker at MSU (Lansing State Journal)
Comments