ANGRY MOB

The Daily Mail is a racist paper. It lies about immigration and prints consistently misleading stories about ethnic minorities to try and create the impression that 'indigenous' white British people (these people do not even exist) are being shoved to the bottom of an imaginary pile. This is exactly what the BNP does, yet the Daily Mail would have you believe that they condemn, not support the BNP.

However, luckily the truth about the Daily Mail's racism is recorded by bloggers patient enough to sift through the hatred and demonstrate exactly how in tune the Daily Mail and the BNP (or related extremists) are.

This week The enemies of reason has published several posts demonstrating this: 'Who fancies a quiz?' demonstrates that telling the difference between what Dutch racist Geert Wilders says and Melanie Phillips writes is pretty difficult. 'Midwives and immigrants' demonstrates how the Daily Mail is a respectable source of information for the BNP. 'Here comes the hatred' demonstrates how the Daily Mail has the same mindset as the BNP. The kind of mindset that says: 'racism is not our problem, it is caused by foreigners. If they weren't here flaunting their different colour skin and funny accents we wouldn't need to be right-wing extremists'.

This is something I covered briefly recently when considering reasons to not buy the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail treats racists with such sympathy, and tries very hard to point out that 'extremism' is caused by the density of foreigners in certain areas, not the fact that the extremists are hateful bigots. They don't seem to make the same arguments when paedophiles are concerned; you don't see the Mail pointing out that Mr X only molested children because of the density of young children around. They don't argue that poor Mr X's behaviour was caused solely by the fact the poor soul just happened to live near a school.

The logic is exactly the same - it removes the responsibility from the active persecutor onto the passive victim. It is also a logic that the Daily Mail likes to apply in instances of rape; they remove the responsibility from the male attacker and blame the victim for 'sending out signals' like wearing a short skirt or daring to get drunk. The Daily Mail can blame the victim or attacker depending on whom they are broadly in agreement with. Thus you will never hear this logic wheeled out to defend paedophiles but you will regularly encounter its use in defending racists.

Another prolific blogger is the excellent Tabloid Watch. This week he has been extremely busy trying to record the torrent of Daily Mail racism with posts like: 'Littlejohn and the BNP' which brilliantly documents how Richard 'I'm not racists guv'ner, honest' Littlejohn rant against Gypsies supposedly queue jumping in doctor's surgeries could have been lifted straight from the BNP.

I've tackled Richard Littlejohn's racism before and pointed out that whilst he claims to dislike the BNP - referring to them as 'scum' - this is a pretty silly position to take when he actively writes, promotes and endorses the disinformation that feeds them. I've made the same point about Iain Dale, who writes posts against the BNP whilst at the same time defending Carol Thatcher's use of the word 'golliwog' and claiming that the UK has 'uncontrolled immigration' and 'no border controls'. Iain Dale - like Littlejohn, like the Daily Mail - slaps the BNP with one hand, whilst feeding them the misinformation that keeps them going with the other.

Tabloid Watch demonstrates how the Daily Mail likes to feed topical racism: 'Mail helps fuel more anti-Roma attacks'. Pointing out that in the week that Romanians (the Guardian reported that the majority of the families are from Roma) are attacked in Belfast the Daily Mail helpfully fans the flames with the article: 'Want to see a GP? Gypsies come first as NHS tells doctors that travellers must be seen at once'.

Not content with feeding the anger of the general public (and Richard Littlejohn for a column containing a disgraceful cartoon that wouldn't look out of place in 1930s Germany) towards gypsies the Daily Mail has now gone a step further: 'As hate-filled mobs drive Romanian Gypsies out of Ulster, we ask who's REALLY to blame?'.

As Tabloid Watch points out:

The Daily Mail is a racist newspaper. Just like any racist they can claim that they're not, they can write that they are not, they can even criticise the BNP and other extremists. However, they cannot deny being racist because ultimately they share many of the same views that the BNP do and they actively spread the hatred, ignorance, paranoia and lies that feed extremism and help it flourish.