March 12, 2010
Why I Support the Boycott of Total Politics
Orginally published at Though Cowards Flinch. Comment from Sunder Katwala is worth reading. Tim Ireland makes the excellent point that Iain Dale refuses to link to opposing blogs on the grounds that he doesn’t want to legitimse them – so what’s different about Griffin?
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The question of whether to boycott Total Politics magazine’s top blogs poll if it runs an interview with Nick Griffin is proving divisive. Giles is sceptical. More surprisingly, so is Sunder.
I wanted to set out why I think bloggers of the left should support the boycott.
Firstly, let me say that I am not a uniform supporter of No Platform. The world is too messy and complicated to apply one position to every circumstance. Thus, I was not opposed to Griffin appearing on TV per se but (for reasons that turned out to be off-target) to his appearing on Question Time because of that particular show’s format. With hindsight, however, the QT appearance did Griffin more harm than good. His odious personality and his cringing attempts to be loveable showed him up. Badly.
Yet a printed interview aimed at nerdy political anoraks is different. Griffin’s weakest asset is his face and his personality. He’s not TV-genic, and he doesn’t know how to behave under public scrutiny. In a magazine interview, those things don’t matter. No matter how “tough” Iain Dale’s questions, Griffin can lie and squirm around them. The crucial thing that made the QT appearance a glorious disaster was that people could see him squirming, hear his lies automatically challenged. Not so with a published interview.
But what really matters is not whether Griffin flounders on Dale’s questions or not. It’s about the long-run effect of having Griffin feature in a mainstream publication. Long after the specific questions that Dale asks are forgotten, people will remember that Griffin was interviewed by an (allegedly) respectable, mainstream publication. It will help to normalise Griffin and his party. It will encourage him to be seen as a legitimate politician with legitimate views to be considered a reasonable political option by reasonable people.
At present, the BNP is held back in huge measure because it lacks popular legitimacy. Its leader is largely seen as unpleasant and devious, the party as fascist and suspect. The BNP are still stigmatised in the eyes of the vast majority of voters. What the BNP desperately want is to break out of that, and to be seen as a reasonable political choice. That’s the only way they can move beyond the (already considerable) million people who voted for them last June, and into the political mainstream.
Sure, the BNP thrive in deprived areas on their status as underdog outsiders. That’s something we should worry about. But the solution is not to normalise them by ending their status as outsiders, making them a legitimate political choice in the eyes of the electorate! Yet by interviewing Griffin, in the long run Total Politics can only serve to normalise the BNP as a part of Britain’s political mainstream.
Now let me be clear: one thing I am not advocating is state curtailment of Total Politics’ activities. As an independent organisation, they can invite Griffin if they want to. It’s Iain Dale’s professional decision. In a democracy with freedom of press, he can interview Griffin if he wants. By the same token, those of us who oppose the legitimation of the BNP as a political force can withdraw our support for Total Politics, and do so by boycotting their poll with the hope of making it redundant, and thus hurting Total Politics.
Yet there is one final question to ask: why does Total Politics want to interview Griffin? An obvious answer is that controversy attracts attention and shifts units. That may be all there is to it. But it’s worth noticing that the BNP are not presently a threat to the Tories – they are a threat to Labour. Traditional Labour areas – where the white working class feels abandoned, disempowered and angry – are what the BNP target. One does have to wonder if Dale would be quite so prepared to interview Griffin if the BNP leader was targeting Chelsea rather than Dagenham this spring.
freethinkingeconomist said,
March 12, 2010 at 3:01 pm
I was going to write my own piece of liberal sanctimony on this issue, but so many of the commenters on LibCon – Alex Smith, Will Straw Earnest Ernest, etc – have put it so well that I am only adding my own verbiage.
You know what I think. I don’t feel comfortable with the (possibly patronising) aspects: e.g. “While we can tell that the BNP are a bunch of racist simpletons, the merest scrutiny of whom reveals them to be idiots, ifa niche political paper interviews them then the gullible public might think they are legitimate”. I trust the British public on this one. Otherwise, we have a bigger problem which will not go away from quasi-quasi-censorship.
Also:
“Yet a printed interview aimed at nerdy political anoraks is different. Griffin’s weakest asset is his face and his personality. He’s not TV-genic, and he doesn’t know how to behave under public scrutiny. In a magazine interview, those things don’t matter. No matter how “tough” Iain Dale’s questions, Griffin can lie and squirm around them.”
Forgive me, but this seems to be taking an empirical/case-by-case approach to the issue, depending on how effective *we* think the BNP will be in the particular media. So if they hire someone more telegenic as their leader, we should take TV appearances more seriously, presumably? Not sure I like where that leads.
But it’s Friday afternoon and I am not sure I can fill the echo-chamber with even more of my racket at prsent.
Paul Sagar said,
March 12, 2010 at 3:53 pm
Giles,
I think your misunderstanding the level I want to aim at:
“I don’t feel comfortable with the (possibly patronising) aspects: e.g. “While we can tell that the BNP are a bunch of racist simpletons, the merest scrutiny of whom reveals them to be idiots, ifa niche political paper interviews them then the gullible public might think they are legitimate”. I trust the British public on this one.”
It’s not that people will suddenly go “oh, that Mr Griffin seems like a nice chap”. It’s about long-run processes of normalisation. Legitimacy is an incredibly important thing in democratic politics; as Hume said, “all government is founded on opinion”, and as I bang on all the time at this site, in politics it matters far more what people will LET you do than what you can FORCE them to endure.
So the question about ordinary people suddenly being “duped” into supporting Griffin, or “failing to see through his lies” – the patronising attitude you’re worried about – isn’t relevant to what I’m getting at. It’s not about “ordinaries” being too stupid to see Griffin for what he is in the here and now. QT showed that the ordinaries were pretty good at calling Griffin on his shit. It’s about the risk of a long-run legitimisation of the BNP as a mainstream political force.
“Otherwise, we have a bigger problem which will not go away from quasi-quasi-censorship.”
Again, the level at which I’m running my argument avoids this point…but makes a similar enough one when I say that we’ll be in serious trouble if the BNP are able to legitimise themselves as a political force. That certainly will not go away by quasi-quasi-censorship…but we’re not there yet. One Total Politics interview won’t take us there, either. Yet there’s the risk of finding ourselves – 100 TV, newspaper and radio interviews down the line – thinking “shit, why didn’t we stand up to the normalisation process right at the beginning?” Ergo, we ought to take the stand at every available opportunity. So that means now.
“Forgive me, but this seems to be taking an empirical/case-by-case approach to the issue, depending on how effective *we* think the BNP will be in the particular media. So if they hire someone more telegenic as their leader, we should take TV appearances more seriously, presumably? Not sure I like where that leads.”
Surely that idea leads to thinking like an economist? I.e. if the empirical data changes, our response changes. Given that Griffin is a TV disaster, I’m quite up for him having occasional appearances to remind people that he’s a berk. Not too many mind – that would help to normalise him, and seeing him endlessly kicked by other panelists and audiences would run the risk of fostering a weird sort of sympathy for him (cf what seems to be happening with Brown in some quarters of the electorate; when you see a dog you hate get kicked so many times, even though you hate the dog you start to feel a bit sorry for it).
If Griffin had the acumen of a Blair or a Clinton, I wouldn’t want him anywhere near a TV studio. Now, that wouldn’t mean I’d dive in and demand the state banning him – which I think is what’s motivating your worry – but I would change my response to the situation.
As I said in the OP, I’m not a uniform No Platformer. These questions are difficult – and we should respond to them with appropriate nuance on a situational basis.
Iain Dale said,
March 13, 2010 at 12:25 pm
I look forward to your boycott of The Guardian. Today they have also interviewed Nick Griffin
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/mar/13/nick-griffin-margaret-hodge-barking-dagenham
But I wouldn’t expect you to be consistent….
Fortuna’s a Bitch « Bad Conscience said,
March 13, 2010 at 1:22 pm
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Iain Dale, silly triumphalism and what freedom is about « Though Cowards Flinch said,
March 13, 2010 at 9:12 pm
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March 15, 2010 at 9:02 am
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