After all the talk and controversy for weeks building up to Nick Griffin’s appearance on the BBC’s Question Time, the event itself has finally come and gone, and really not very much happened that wasn’t to have been entirely expected. Predictably, anti-fascist protestors demonstrated outside the studio. Predictably, the BNP leader was booed, mocked, attacked and ridiculed by both his fellow pannelists and the studio audience. And predictably Mr Griffin came off looking like a clueless, lying, uneducated upstart – which is all that a man of his convictions could really come off as anyway, even at the best of times.

Peter Griffin, from Family Guy, would’ve only been a touch more credible than his namesake, in all likelihood.

Really, nothing much was accomplished; Griffin wasn’t able to further expound the BNP’s convinctions and policies in any meaningful way, and any meaty debate of a substantial nature was sorely missing from the whole affair. Instead, Griffin pathetically tried to worm his way out of accounting for many of his past statements and actions by responding with his distinctly unendearing smile and continuously saying, “I never said that” and “that never happened” and other undisguised cop-outs to that effect.

Meanwhile, I don’t think the other pannelists – Bonnie Greer aside – did a very good job either. Instead of allowing Griffin to fully address questions and issues, they were jumping on him at every opportunity, desperate to condemn him. At times it bordered on bullying. In essence, I’d have little against the lambasting of a fascist; but the negative side-effect of that behaviour is the perception (to some viewers) of Griffin somehow being the victim, even a martyr, trying to stand up for the persecuted white English majority and being bold enough to speak up for his convictions and the ‘indigenous’ population in the face of all the hatred and condemnation being thrown at him.

The smarter way to have dealt with him would’ve been to restrain all the indignation and objecton and shouting and to have let him express his and his party’s untenable position freely. Griffin makes a big enough tit of himself when left to his own devices – particularly with all the spurious British racial history. To attack him like that surely just plays to his advantage, imparting to him almost a sympathetic hue – that of a lone, passionate idealist outnumbered by mainstream establishment politicians and trying to stand his ground.

Even worse, at one or two moments Griffin, to his credit, at least came across as more committed to a position than the rest of the pannelists, Jack Straw included, who were the usual brand of dithering, indecisive politicians when it came to policy; to immigration in particular.

One would’ve hoped that his appearance on Question Time would’ve been a useful vehicle for ensuring that fewer people will take the BNP seriously. Unfortunately, that may not be the effect. Essentially, it may have had no impact either way: BNP supporters watching will still be BNP supporters, and non-racist viewers will, of course, have been appalled by his attitudes and will remain opposed.

Were the BBC right to invite him onto the programme? The easy answer is yes; any legitimate, popular party must be entitled to the same platforms as their opposition parties. The real negative consequence, in the long term, might be a gradual validation of the BNP following more and more television platforms and the like; to the point where some years from now, no one will be batting an eyelid at Griffin and the mobilisation of the knee-jerk underclass.

There is a danger, no matter how ludicrous they presently seem, that the BNP could gain more and more support, gradually, over the coming years; particularly when they continue to incite and exploit Islamaphobia to their advantage, and when the mainstream parties continue to lose more and more supporters to disillusion.

Griffin’s stance against Islam is simply convenient. The Muslim community, in the wake of 7/7 particularly, is the obvious and easy target, the easy scapegoat, and the genuine disease of Islamaphobia in Britain is a convenient vehicle for the BNP to gain more support – in the same away as Jews were a great vehicle for Hitler and the Nazis to gain support. For such parties there must always be a minority to blame for all society’s present problems; a minority that can be painted as a danger and a threat to the majority.

Not that Islamic fundamentalism isn’t a problem in itself; both it and white supremacy are versions of the same disease; a disease that has infected human societies for hundreds of years, and seems to come back around periodically, like a virus. The extremist Muslims make the tarring of the entire Muslim community that much easier for propaganda-merchants like the BNP; they make it easy to villainise the whole community and to impress those negative impressions onto the minds of those not especially good at forming balanced, educated perspectives.

At this moment time, organisations like the BNP and the EDL are simply riding the momentum of Muslim extremism to gain popularity; tommorow, the ‘creepy’ gay community, the Sikhs and Hindus, Eastern Europeans, and soon enough it’ll the Jews again.

Mr Griffin’s denial of being a Nazi was one of the TV comedy moments of the year. It was generally quite funny to see him try to pretend he isn’t a Holocaust denier, trying to pretend he wasn’t really giving tips to the head of the Klu Klux Klan, and then smugly citing his grandfather’s service in the RAF as proof that he himself is “not a Nazi” – which smacks of desperation and falls flat from its irrelevance.

Griffin’s extraordinarily uneven notion of British history was a highlight; his desperate attempts to reason what the indigenous British race IS resulted in him looking confused himself, with incoherent babbling about the ‘aborginal’ white race. Scholarly exposition of English descent from Middle Earth was due to follow, no doubt, with retellings of the Battle of Gondor. Just as well that Bonnie Greer was close by to offer him some helpful corrections before he could manage to explain to us all how the BNP’s pure indigenous race goes all the way back to the Late Cretaceous epoch, where pure indigenous velociraptors opposed mass immigration from French pterodactyls, who were becoming a strain on the economy…

The ludicrousness went on and on, including at least three instances of Griffin citing “scientists” to back up some of his convictions about race. The scientists in question, of course, have no names. And no specific scientific fields.

All quite entertaining. That is, until you remind yourself that this is a legitmate political leader, with a great many supporters in this modern 21st century nation.

Also, is there a single Christian in the country who appreciates having the BNP leader repeatedly citing “Christian” values and asserting Britain’s Christianity as the bedrock of BNP beliefs and attitudes? You can’t have it both ways – if you’re going to go back seven thousand years to cite the roots of the true English race, you can’t also cite Britain as being a Christian country – Christianity didn’t even COME to the British Isles until two thousand years ago and certainly wasn’t a state religion until much later than that. A religion, for that matter, imported INTO Britain from the Middle East (from JEWS, no less) via Rome.

It should therefore stand to reason that the BNP’s religious values should be based on a mixture of Druidism and paganism. Which, in pre-Roman Britain, included human sacrifice, cannibalism and a great many other delightful quirks (at least according to Julius Caesar, who is documented as having been absolutely horrified by the native Brits and their practises).

Equating Christianity with the BNP’s other doctrines makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Citing Henry VIII and his Christianity might make more sense; and if the BNP want the insane Tudor King, they can have him. But they’ve got no pertinent claim to a religion based around a heretical Palestinian Jew and his Jewish followers. But that won’t stop them, of course; any more than it stops the Klu Klax Klan.

But, then, the key, no doubt, to the BNP’s support is that the party can spout all KINDS of confused, incoherent and unfounded history, science and sociology to support its ideas – simply because the overwhelmong majority of BNP supporters wouldn’t know any better and probably wouldn’t be interested in knowing any better either. Racism, xenophobia and homophobia are much easier when you don’t do your own research, or are otherwise sadly deficient in the knowledge department.

There was also something perverse and slightly unsettling about watching the police dragging young students away by the feet for protesting against a fascist party – as a concept, on paper, it’s a bit unnerving.

Unfortunately, a true democracy can’t bypass its own precepts when it becomes convenient; and the BNP, whether we like it or not, now has validation and, therefore, rights as a legitimised political organisation. It’s isn’t the BBC’s fault. If anyone’s to blame, it’s Britain’s racists and xenophobes; of which there are apparently quite a few.

That’s the problem with democracy – it’s dependent on the intelligence level of its voting constituents. And when a large enough proportion of those people are of a less-than-impressive intelligence level, democracy itself might become a liability to a civilised society…