Sean Gabb
There is quite a lot in the BNP Manifesto that is worth liking: its rejection of the climate change nonsense, its promise to raise motorway speeds to 90mph, its policy on guns and smoking and tax and government spending. Then there is its promise to withdraw at once from the European Union and to withdraw all British forces from Afghanistan, and never to join in any invasion of Iran. I don’t like the proposal to put drug dealers to death – or the proposal to make it a criminal offence to publish “false information”: that sort of thing sets alarm bells ringing in my head.
I suppose I should hysterically denounce the BNP line on race and immigration. Not to do so, after all, invites smears from the pro-Regime left of wanting to stuff people into gas chambers. However, the party doesn’t seem to be committed to ethnic cleansing, and its policies on immigration seem to be no firmer than those of the Conservative Party before 1970. And I am more interested in what else the BNP has to say.
I think the most interesting disagreement between libertarians and white nationalists is over visions of the future. A nationalist sees the white race as politically and demographically verging on extinction. The best he can imagine is to make the West into a fortress and, at best, somehow get through the next few generations without being submerged. A libertarian looks forwward to a future of limitless scientific and technical and moral progress. We want more wealth and more freedom, and believe that differences of race and culture and religion will be of decreasing importance in a world based on free contract.
This being said, we do often begin from a shared analysis of how the present ruling class is destroying our civilisation. We may also share a certain pessimism about the chance that this ruling class can be dislodged before it is too late. However, the main difference is that libertarians are fundamentally optimistic about the future, and white nationalists are not.
I might also note that the British and American nationalist movements – now they have dropped all nostalgia for the 1930s – are borrowing wholesale from libertarianism. As yet, these borrowings often look like gold teeth in an otherwise indifferent mouth. But what will be our response if the gold teeth begin to outnumber the others? Those of us who are libertarians need to prepare for the day – one or two elections hence – when the BNP Manifesto may be the least statist on offer. If that does happen, we can look forward to some sharp disagreements.
Oh, I notice I’ve already been smeared on on some left-fascist blog almost certainly funded somewhere along the feeding chain by the taxpayers: http://westmidlandsunity.blogspot.com/2010/04/bnp-will-end-islamic-colonisation-of.html
Here is the BNP Manifesto: http://bnp.org.uk/pdf_files/BNP-Manifesto-2010-online.pdf
