BNP civil war - part III

As if death threats and exclusions were not enough, the BNP has now been forced to expel a potential councillor, alleging that he was a mole who had infiltrated the party to discredit it:

The British National Party has expelled a UKIP mole standing for the BNP in Thurrock after discovering that his aunt was the UKIP candidate and that he had been sent into the party to discredit it, Thurrock organiser Emma Colgate has announced.

“Mark Onions appeared out of the blue a short while ago and became very active,” Ms Colgate said.

“We never dreamed for a minute that his aunt was the UKIP candidate standing against us, and he gained our confidence enough to volunteer to be our candidate in the local ward against his aunt.

“When we discovered the link, our suspicions were alerted that something was amiss.

“Further research showed that he had posed for prank pictures in pubs and had written things on the Internet which could be used against the BNP, and Mr Onions was formally expelled from the party on Tuesday 13 April,” she continued. (1)

First of all, one wonders why anyone felt the need to discredit the BNP. They do a perfectly good job of that themselves, and I suspect the BNP's chances have not been significantly damaged by this. Read into that what you like.

The obvious uselessness of the BNP's candidate vetting - or perhaps their desperation to find any candiates at all - deserves passing acknowledgement. But the news that the BNP aren't very competent shouldn't com as any surprise.

Of greater interest is the reference to Onions' alleged behaviour. There's a photo of him giving a Nazi salute, reproduced on the anti-BNP website, nothingbritish.com, which also describes some of the comments he is alleged to havee made, which lead to his expulsion:

Mark Onion is the BNP candidate fighting the Orsett Ward in Thurrock’s council elections on May 6th. This picture is taken from his Facebook page and features the candidate offering a Nazi salute while wearing aHelp for Heroes wristband. Onion has said on his Facebook page that he finds films about the Holocaust and Slave Trade “amusing and funny”. He lists “Mein Kampf” and the “Final Solution” as his favourite books. He has publicly joked about violence and rape against women amongst friends on his Facebook wall. (2)

Now, what's interesting is that nothing british published this on the 9th of April. According to Colgate, the BNP expelled Onions on the 13th of that month - presumably, a damage limitation exercise in response to the nothingbritish story.

Which begs the question - what would they have done if nothing British hadn't broken this? And why weren't the BNP's leadership more active in dealing with this? Either, they didn't know, or they didn't care enough to do anything until they thought it would make them look bad.

If they didn't know, then it just changes the question - why didn't the BNP membership alert them to Onion's behaviour?

After all, if he was a genuine plant, his wwhole purpose would be to make as big a stir as possible. So, if he was making as big a display of being a nasty little racist Hitler loving gimp as possible, it would, presumably have been noticed by the party membership, if not by the leadership, and condoned.

The logical deduction being that the membership of the BNP see nothing outrageous or repulsive in displays of nasty little racist Hitler loving gimpery. Which would mean that they are also ...

1 - "BNP expells UKIP mole for trying to discredit party," by BNP News. Published on the BNP blog, 14th of April, 2010. (http://bnp.org.uk/2010/04/bnp-expels-ukip-mole-for-trying-to-discredit-party/)
2 - "Time to hold Nick Griffin and BNP candidates to account," by Maurice Cousins. Published on There Is Nothing British About the BNP, 9th of April, 2010. (http://www.nothingbritish.com/04/time-to-hold-nick-griffin-and-bnp-candidates-to-account/)