Response to BNP on Question Time UK
I believe in freedom of speech, and I would adamantly defend that right both when it works in my favour and even when it does not.
The BBC is a publicly funded broadcasting organisation that is there to allow everyone a voice.
They were politicised in the 80s and 90s when Gerry Adams from the Irish political party Sinn Fein was not allowed to be heard on British television. Those dark days of censorship are hopefully over.
The protest outside the BBC was against the BNP being given a voice on the BBC. This is wrong.
The protests outside the BBC should have been against the BNPs policies, against their ideals, not against their freedom of speech.
I fundamentally disagree with everything that the BNP stand for, and as a result they should be exposed for who they really are.
A programme like Question Time is the ideal forum for the BNP to be exposed for the racists that they are.
This is not a programme hosted, panelled, or watched by the unintelligent, it is a programme where there the panel and the audience are more than capable of dispatching the ignorant rants of a ‘one horse’ party with only one policy and no strategy for the country and its place in the wider world.
I have seen clips of this show on the BBC this morning and I believe that the panel and the public acquitted themselves admirably in dismissing the BNP as the racist joke that they are.
This is not the first time that the BNP has been on the BBC. I heard an interview, no more like an annihilation, on the Today programme, where John Humphreys completely destroyed the BNP leader by blowing holes in his argument and leaving him floundering like a dying fish out of water.
To those that say that we should not watch at all, I would say “know your enemy”. It is important to listen to the opinions of others in order to have an informed argument against their ideas. This does not give then credibility, instead it publicities the flaws in their ill conceived policies.
We must fight evil where we see it, but we must make sure that we are using the right weapons and striking the right target.
Orlando Speaks / Topcat's Blog 