Re: Nick Griffin - BNP : Mon Jun 10, 2013 12:37 pm  

Dally wrote:

If you need to censor any "politician" in our first past the post electoral system then you are being undemocratic. No need to censor people unless you have PR.

By which I think you mean that the BNP will get nowhere under FPTP but might get a seat or two under PR, therefore we'd need to silence his group to avoid a democratic result.

I don't think you've quite got the hang of this democracy lark.

Re: Nick Griffin - BNP : Mon Jun 10, 2013 12:48 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

By which I think you mean that the BNP will get nowhere under FPTP but might get a seat or two under PR, therefore we'd need to silence his group to avoid a democratic result.

I don't think you've quite got the hang of this democracy lark.

Extremist parties can much more easily build support under PR. No "wasted" votes.

Re: Nick Griffin - BNP : Mon Jun 10, 2013 12:52 pm  

Dally wrote:

Extremist parties can much more easily build support under PR. No "wasted" votes.

If you read my previous post, you'd see that I was aware of that.
Your suggestion is to curb democracy because the wrong people might get votes.

I repeat, you haven't quite got the hang of democracy.

Re: Nick Griffin - BNP : Mon Jun 10, 2013 12:53 pm  

Dead Man Walking wrote:

He's called Nelson Mandela a terrorist and said that South Africa is now a hellhole after being an economic powerhouse. Is he really that thick ?

Well NM wsas classed as a terrorist in the olden days. So, that's just attention seeking.

SA was previously the economic powerhouse of Africa and other Africans used to aspire to live there. Not sure whether or not it is a hellhole at present but I guess it's not so great for many people. I certainly know while-folk who packed up over here to go back home to SA but then came straight back. Not sure the lot of the poorer black folk is any better than it ever was.

As to the future, with NM seemingly about to die, I would have to be very concerned.

Re: Nick Griffin - BNP : Mon Jun 10, 2013 12:54 pm  

Mintball wrote:

'One man's terrorist' ... etc.

If Mandela was a terrorist, what about the apartheid regime that was entirely happy to shoot unarmed children?

Would resistance fighters in WWII have been terrorists too?

I suppose if it was one of my loved ones who had died, he would be a murdering b'std, but the world has rubber stamped these deaths as OK, because of the evils of apartheid he fought.

Re: Nick Griffin - BNP : Mon Jun 10, 2013 1:11 pm  

rover49 wrote:

I suppose if it was one of my loved ones who had died, he would be a murdering b'std, but the world has rubber stamped these deaths as OK, because of the evils of apartheid he fought.

I don't know that anyone has said that the deaths were "OK", but I think that there is an understanding that, in certain situations, there is little choice but for resistance to be violent in nature.

There's a reason that I mentioned WWII resistance fighters.

As in South Africa under apartheid, there was hardly a peaceful option available to those who were opposed to the state: those had been tried and put down with violence in SA; in WWII Europe, the Nazis acted quickly to get rid of any political opponents. So were resistance fighters then terrorists?

Re: Nick Griffin - BNP : Mon Jun 10, 2013 1:19 pm  

Mintball wrote:

I don't know that anyone has said that the deaths were "OK", but I think that there is an understanding that, in certain situations, there is little choice but for resistance to be violent in nature.

There's a reason that I mentioned WWII resistance fighters.

As in South Africa under apartheid, there was hardly a peaceful option available to those who were opposed to the state: those had been tried and put down with violence in SA; in WWII Europe, the Nazis acted quickly to get rid of any political opponents. So were resistance fighters then terrorists?

There probably is a difference. In WW2 Germans had invaded other countries. It is only right that people should attack the aggressor. In South Africa some would argue that the whites were invaders and so the situation is the same. However, the whites (more than arguably) had a legitimate right to be there by NMs time and they had "developed" the country.

Re: Nick Griffin - BNP : Mon Jun 10, 2013 1:28 pm  

Dally wrote:

There probably is a difference. In WW2 Germans had invaded other countries. It is only right that people should attack the aggressor. In South Africa some would argue that the whites were invaders and so the situation is the same. However, the whites (more than arguably) had a legitimate right to be there by NMs time and they had "developed" the country.

1) Before Nazi Germany invaded any other country, the regime very deliberately and carefully removed political opponents and many of the cultural and intellectual elite that were opposed to it.

2) The ANC campaign did not start from a viewpoint that white South African had no right to be in the country.

As for the 'development', that's a different issue, although there are serious theses out there that Africa as a continent was 'underdeveloped' by the assorted colonialist powers. You'd have to ask tb about that: he knows a very great deal more than me about the subject, having both lived in SA for a decade and studied the history and politics not just of SA but the continent.

Re: Nick Griffin - BNP : Mon Jun 10, 2013 1:29 pm  

Dally wrote:

There probably is a difference. In WW2 Germans had invaded other countries. It is only right that people should attack the aggressor. In South Africa some would argue that the whites were invaders and so the situation is the same. However, the whites (more than arguably) had a legitimate right to be there by NMs time and they had "developed" the country.

Whether they had a right to 'be there' or not, they had no right to treat black people like animals.

Re: Nick Griffin - BNP : Mon Jun 10, 2013 2:03 pm  

Rock God X wrote:

Whether they had a right to 'be there' or not, they had no right to treat black people like animals.

When we docked in Simonstown in 1973 it was designated a 'uniform visit' the local authorities said that our black sailors should not wear uniform ashore, the skipper politely told them that we either ALL wore it or no-one did. The racism extended other nationalities as well.