Satirical placard ridicules “Queen of Fascism”
Call for gays to oppose the BNP
London – 1 July 2011
British National Party leader Nick Griffin will be satirised and mocked at London’s Gay Pride parade this Saturday, 2 July.
Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell will march at the front of the parade with a placard featuring a doctored image of Nick Griffin with blue eye shadow, red lipstick and pink swastika earrings, captioned with the words: “Nick Griffin, Queen of Fascism. Homophobe. No to BNP.”
“Griffin and the BNP are tin-pot fascists who deserve to be mocked and ridiculed. I’m satirising Griffin to debunk his grand political pretensions and to skewer his claim to respectability and legitimacy. He’s a joke and my placard reflects that,” said Mr Tatchell.
Mr Tatchell is a Patron of Pride London and helped organise Britain’s first ever Gay Pride march in 1972. Last July, he confronted the BNP leader face-to-face over his bigotry. See this BBC news report and video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOx9vTqUL10
“Griffin has a long history of homophobia (see examples below). His party is notorious for its racism, anti-Semitism, holocaust denial and Islamophobia. A disturbing number of past and present BNP members have criminal convictions for violence,” added Mr Tatchell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_Party
“Some BNP activists have been involved in gay-bashing attacks.
“LGBT people should stand together united with other minorities to defend our communities against the BNP and its right-wing spawn, the English Defence League.
“Former far right National Front leader Martin Webster claims that he had a homosexual relationship with Griffin many years ago, as reported in the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight. Griffin denies the relationship. If it was true, Griffin’s homophobia would be evidence of hypocrisy. See this report in The Times:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6887304.ece
“Although the BNP has publicly ditched some of its most bigoted policies, many critics believe this make-over is just an astute public relations exercise designed to con people who were put off by its neo-Nazi image. They say the BNP hasn’t changed at all; it has just got more professional and media savvy.
“As part of this spin and PR drive, many of the BNP’s most homophobic outbursts have been deleted from its website.
“The BNP has fought previous general elections on a pledge to outlaw homosexuality, jail gay people and to bring back Section 28. It has described Aids as ‘nature taking revenge’ on gay men.
“Soon after the neo-Nazi bombing of a gay bar in London in 1999, which killed three people and maimed dozens more, Nick Griffin seemed to excuse and endorse the homophobic hatred that inspired the terrorist atrocity. He attacked lesbian and gay people for ‘flaunting their perversion’ and claimed that ‘so many ordinary people find these creatures so repulsive’.
Source: Stranger things have happened, Nick Griffin, Spearhead (BNP magazine), June 1999.
“According to Griffin, homosexuality is ‘form of behavioural deviancy’ and ‘not a valid lifestyle choice’. He erroneously claimed the BNP speaks for ‘the majority of the population’ who, he says, believe ‘homosexuality is wrong’ and that same-sex behaviour ‘needs to be pushed humanely but firmly back into the closet’. Griffin warns that if gays continue to ‘press their aims further’ there will be an ‘almighty backlash’ which will result in the imprisonment of all homosexuals.
Source: Putting the record straight, Nick Griffin, Identity (BNP Magazine), December 2003.
The BNP’s website alleged that: “Sexually-transmitted diseases are no joke. Thanks to them, the average life-expectancy of a gay man is now 40, compared to 71 for all men”: http://www.bnp.org.uk/articles/traditional_values.html
Claiming that the “gay rights lobby target school children,” the BNP opposed gay equality reforms like the repeal of Section 28 and the abolition of the unequal age of consent. It has also condemned and ridiculed LGBT History Month: http://www.bnp.org.uk/articles/lgbt_month.htm
Griffin is not alone. Mark Collett, former chairman of the Young BNP and senior party official, described homosexuals as “AIDS Monkeys”, “bum bandits” and “faggots” and said the idea of homosexuality was a “sickening thought”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_Party