Disinforming the masses
Published on Sunday, 22 January 2012 17:15 Written by Ketlan Ossowski
One of the more irritating beliefs of the far-right is that if you tell a lie, you should keep on telling it, no matter how preposterous it is, in the hope that it becomes an acceptable untruth - meaning a rumour that has been so often-repeated that it appears to have some element of truth in it. Over time, it is hoped, the fact becomes submerged beneath the fiction.
The best lies, of course, are those that begin with the truth and are elaborated upon to suit the teller's purpose. The BNP has always had a talent for this kind of thing and inevitably distorts the truth to fit its current purposes or simply makes up a lie that sounds like it might possibly be the truth. Thus the BNP's ludicrous 'Africans for Essex' claim, which stated very clearly that the Government had paid Africans up to £50,000 to move into the Barking and Dagenham constituency to 'ensure safe majority seats in the future'. Naturally, the assumption was that a flood of African applicants took advantage of the scheme and poured into the area.
Well, not exactly. In fact, the incentive scheme was open to everyone, not just immigrants (which the BNP conveniently forgot to mention), and just 39 people, of whom six were white, 15 Asian, 13 black and five others who presumably wore masks and refused to be categorised. Thirty-nine in a population of 167,000, which represents an uptake of approximately 0.02 per cent.
If all thirty-nine people in this 'flood' a) bothered to vote at all, and b) voted for Margaret Hodge in the most recent general election, it wouldn't really have made a lot of difference: Hodge increased her majority from 8,883 to around 16,000. The BNP's share of the vote went down by 2% while Hodge's went up by 7%, showing pretty clearly that it doesn't do to tell the electorate porkies. They don't like it.
Naturally, the BNP's lies aren't reserved to the odd election campaign, and some of its members and supporters like to keep their hand in during quieter times. They're not too bothered who they attack, as long as they're perceivably enemies of the BNP.
There's a persistent rumour that I attacked a father and son who were fishing, during my animal rights days - apparently heaving a brick at the boy. Why? Presumably because I didn't like the idea that they were fishing.
Let me state this very clearly. If I was ever to attack anyone for any reason at all, it would have to be an adult. I couldn't bring myself to harm a child, no matter what they had done or were in the process of doing. In any case, a guilty conscience would have stopped me going after anyone for fishing. Why? Because for many years, I loved to pack up a Thermos of chicken soup and a pile of cheese and pickle sarnies and bugger off with a friend to fish off Felixstowe or Aldeburgh beach all night. You can't really have happy memories of hauling in an enormous cod in the middle of a freezing cold night, then clout a kid around the ear with a brick for enjoying the same thing, albeit on a smaller scale.
This story was started, I believe, by a major liar and idiot (who I suspect to be fairly high up in the BNP) who calls himself (or herself, of course), HFTF over at the British Democracy Forum. This idiot has started a thread entitled 'Ketlan Ossowski comes out of the closet', which is obviously intended to appeal to the average gay-hating BNP member.
This is, of course, nothing to do with being gay (though I wouldn't give a shit if it was); it's to spread a little rumour that I am now on the payroll of 'the state-funded' Searchlight. I should be so lucky - not that I have any particular wish to be on anyone's payroll.
Is Searchlight state-funded? Do you care? I don't actually know where Searchlight gets the money it needs to run, though I suspect it's from subscribers, donations and possibly trade unions. Beyond that, I really don't know and I really don't give a toss. If all the major political parties, Simon Cowell, the Queen, and MI5 all provide funds to ANY organisation devoting itself to ridding the country of fascists, that suits me fine.