Nick Griffin (BNP leader) on BBC’s Question Time was controversial and caused violent protests. People say to me that the Holocaust is not a relevant subject today, so why did a Holocaust denier stir up so much anger?
Before QT, BBC news broadcast the following:
Although he now says Hitler was wrong, he once said about the Holocaust:
Orthodox opinion is that six million Jews were gassed and cremated. Orthodox opinion also once held that the world is flat.
But without a formal ban on the BNP and with the party polling 6% in the European elections the BBC felt he could be allowed an occasional slot on Question Time.
Nick Robinson, BBC Political Editor, commented:
He’s also been given the chance to deny that he is a Holocaust denier, to simply confirm that he thinks that the Nazis did kill millions of Jews. He failed to do that tonight…
The QT show mainly focused on Griffin. Amongst questions from the audience, regarding his comments on race, immigration and the BNP hijacking the image of Winston Churchill, was the following:
David Dimbleby:
Which is the untrue quote that’s been said about you? The Holocaust denial possibly?… Did you deny the Holocaust?
NG:
I do not have a conviction for Holocaust denial.
DD:
But you did deny it… Why are you smiling, it’s not a particularly amusing issue.
NG:
I was very critical for the way in which the Holocaust was and is in fact abused to prevent serious discussion over immigration.
DD:
Just you say you’re misquoted…
[Quoting NG]:
I want to see Britain become 99% genetically white just as she was 11 years before I was born.
…I can’t find the misquotations and apparently neither can you.
The discussion continued, then came a question from the floor:
Winston Churchill put everything on the line so that my ancestors wouldn’t get slaughtered in the concentration camps but here sits a man who says that that’s a myth just like a flat world was a myth. How could you say that?
NG:
I cannot explain why I used to say those things… anymore than I can tell you why I’ve changed my mind. I cannot tell you the extent to which I’ve changed my mind because European law prevents me…
DD:
Have you actually changed your mind or do you only say you’ve changed your mind because the law makes it illegal to be a Holocaust denier?
NG:
I have changed my mind, a lot of it is about figures. One of the key things which makes me change my mind is British radio intercepts of German transmissions about the brutal mass-murder of innocent Jews on the Eastern Front…which changes the figures very greatly.
Jack Straw:
What about Auschwitz? Couldn’t people see with their own eyes what happened in Auschwitz? You didn’t need a subsequent radio intercept to find out that people were gassed at Auschwitz.
Maybe my work is about a contemporary issue afterall.
