BNP bloggers whip up anti-Muslim sentiment

There are increasing signs the BNP are resorting to more and more desperate measures to inflate what little influence they have. Lisa Nandy, Labour MP for Wigan, writes in Tribune about the work of a small group of anonymous online bloggers who have gone to extraordinary lengths to whip up anti-Muslim feeling.

This includes mounting a campaign to spread the untrue allegation that the MP is Muslim and attacking Wigan council for supplying halal meat in primary schools.

Prior to this, the anonymous group had been banned from the online forum of the local paper in Wigan after flooding it with anti-Muslim attacks. Labour MPs, Nandy explains, have similar stories from their own constituencies and that all MPs are being targeted in a letter-writing campaign which focuses on whether halal meat should be banned in this country.

Nandy, who has recently been appoined vice chair of anti-Fascist group Searchlight, also writes about the BNP’s lack of real support on the ground:

“In truth, the BNP has always created the impression that it had more support than it did in reality. Fielding unprecedented numbers of candidates at the 2010 general election helped to fuel the fiction that the far right had a real presence in communities where in fact it had little support and no activists.

“And there are few people who haven’t realised that the BNP’s online presence is a result of the efforts of a handful of individuals posting under various pseudonyms.”

She concludes:

“At this year’s election, no one party commanded a clear majority because no party spoke convincingly to those fears. We must not allow a new, poisonous force to replace the BNP as the default place for people worried about the future – Labour must provide the positive alternative.”