Leave it to the Socialist Worker to get all worked up about this. Where was the rest of the fucking media? Off screwing the pooch again, of course. I mean, what else is there to do on a slow news day when no Muslims get up to mischief and it’s only a bunch of white rightards getting their lumpish butts arrested?
Police claimed last week that they had seized what was potentially the largest ever haul of chemical explosives plus a rocket launcher and a nuclear and biological protection suit.
A lawyer acting for the prosecution said the people that the haul was seized from had "some kind of masterplan".
But for once the national media did not react with stories about a plot to blow up a football ground or bring down airliners, or some other gross threat.
There were no lofty editorials about "home grown terrorists".
Home secretary John Reid did not hold a special press conference peppered with Churchillian rhetoric. The entire national press coverage in the first week after the arrests amounted to 52 words.
And the reason was that those arrested were not "Muslim terrorists" but people linked to the Nazi British National Party (BNP).
Robert Cottage, 49, of Talbot Street, Colne, appeared before Burnley magistrates last week charged with possession of an explosive substance.
He was charged under the Explosives Substances Act 1883 (not terrorism charges). Some 22 chemical components are believed to have been recovered from his house.
Cottage stood for the BNP in the May elections in the Vivary Bridge ward of Pendle Council.
And 62 year old retired dentist David Bolus Jackson, of Trent Road, Nelson, was charged with similar offences.
It has been reported that police discovered a rocket launcher, a nuclear biological suit, chemicals and BNP literature at his home.
Unlike the Forest Gate raid in east London in June, which involved 250 police, some of them armed, Lancashire police entered Cottage’s home with a handful of unarmed officers.
There was no "air exclusion zone" or assaults on neighbours, no closing down of surrounding streets, and no smear stories about those arrested.
Superintendent Neil Smith instantly moved to reassure residents and stressed, "It is not a bomb making factory." He was able to add that it was not related to terrorism. The pair have now been remanded in custody and will appear at Burnley Crown Court on 23 October.
Emphasis added.
Note that since these are ultra-white, ultra-right, ultra-English terrorists, they’re not even labelled as such–not even when the police are raiding their dens of iniquity. And their so-called “party” is allowed to stand in local elections as if it were perfectly respectable, even though it’s as fascist as Hitler’s ugly little mustache. Do you suppose the same would happen if they were brown and overtly Islamist?
Shit, just look at what happened to this bunch of black guys in Miami. A weird cult, yes. Islamist? No. Dangerous? Not very–and likely to disintegrate of its own accord over time, seeing as poverty and mental instability were factors in the group’s coalescence. Set up by the FBI? Sure looks that way. Why? Anyone’s guess, although my educated one is that BushCo badly needs fall guys right now to make them look like they’re doing something about terror. After all, the War on Terra’s not going so great, in case you hadn’t noticed. (The media is doing its level best to make sure you don’t notice, trust me. They’re barely touching this story about a poorly constructed US ammo dump in Iraq being blown up by those supposedly technologically inept brown camel-jockeys.)
Plus, there’s a certain racist factor at work in the Miami Seven case. It’s no news that the Repugs have long gone well out of their way to deny non-white voters their civil rights at every possible moment they stand to exercise them. Hell, the late SCOTUS hack Rehnquist was one of those who “challenged” black voters, long before his star rose in the federal judiciary. This is what lynching gave way to, once it became apparent that voting-rights laws had been made and were going to be upheld. Jim Crow wasn’t really dead, though–he was just in the witness protection program. Anyone who wasn’t white and whose English was dodgy, was subject to severe scrutiny by right-wing pollside harassers, and many still are. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to disenfranchisement–election irregularities in the last decade have been stealthy, but they’ve hit non-whites hard. In electoral terms, it’s a virtual genocide.
Gee, what do you suppose those “respectable” British Nazis recently busted for terrorism have in common with the Republicans on this side of the pond?
And what do you bet the media won’t be reporting on that anytime soon?
