It could well blow up in their faces bigtime. The following quote is from an article entitled "Is the BNP Nazi?
No, it’s Worse: It isn’t" by Andrew McKibben and originally published in the left wing British journal
What NextWITH THE increased vote for the British National Party in the last local elections, a chorus of “these Nazis must be stopped” has gone up, along with suggestions concerning what organising tactics might be effective against it. Unfortunately, most such tactics are presently handicapped by a misapprehension about the BNP that leads well-intentioned activists into ineffective tactics. This suspicion is bolstered by the failure of the brave and sincere efforts of Stop the BNP (publisher of Searchlight magazine), Unite Against Fascism, the Anti-Nazi League and others to stop the party’s growth.
The problem? While it is morally satisfying to call the BNP Nazis, and while their ideology is indeed racist, xenophobic and abhorrent, it’s starting to become clear that this rather slippery political beast has in fact shed its old skin, and is no longer plausibly describable as a Nazi, or fascist, party at all. Why is this “worse”? Because, although one must rejoice in the abandonment of this diabolical ideology by anyone, it also increases their chances of success
The likelihood of real, live, goose-stepping Nazis actually winning much support in Britain is far less than that of some better-packaged and locally-palatable variety of racist extremism. Unfortunately, after 40 years (if you count its National Front predecessor) the BNP seems to have finally figured this out. So the Nazi business has been junked. This is logical: racial hatred is their only political bedrock, and the swastika is just one expendable way of expressing it.
Before I discuss the evidence they really have done this, it’s important to remind ourselves that “Nazi” isn’t just a word to toss around, even at people who richly deserve any insult they get. Nazism is a real, historical, political ideology, like Marxism, with a specific content and specific criteria for who is one. It is National Socialism, the philosophy of the National Socialist German Workers Party. There’s some leeway to include people who don’t literally fit, but not every racist demagogue is a Nazi, not even remotely. Some especially in foreign countries that fought Hitler in World War II, are even anti-Nazi.
Why care about being so precise? Because attacking the BNP for being Nazis will backfire, if they’re not. It only invites them to prove to the public that they aren’t, and, because this is now probably technically true, they can then just sit back, smile, and say to the public: “See. Our opponents told you we were bad because we were Nazis, and we’ve now proved we’re not Nazis. So we must not be bad. Furthermore, our opponents are liars and you can’t believe anything else they say about us.”
This is not good. When the public hears “don’t vote for them, they’re Nazis”, and then, partly out of sheer titillation at the naughtiness of somebody daring to be such an evil thing, goes and looks at the BNP website and starts reading their propaganda, they will discover fairly quickly a group that has gotten rid of the old swastika trappings, and adopted the image of nice British patriots. If they are taken in, they may then conclude they’re a legitimate party, merely being attacked by silly and hysterical left-wing cranks who exaggerate things.
The full text of the article has been posted in the Nationalism in the News forum under the heading 'Proof from a hostile source that the BNP is a reformed character'.
