This is my truth

As regular readers will know, I have started to add comments to a blog from a member of the BNP in order to understand the way he thinks, and he has reciprocated. There are many aspects of his thinking and the thinking of BNP members in general that I would like to question. I could take up most sentences of my correspondence with him as well as most sentences of his blog but I'll just take two of them. He wrote "I think that anybody who refuses to believe a person when they set out precisely what their party's ideology and stance is regarding a particular issue - is a fool. For a person cannot deny fact".

How do you define a fact? I am old enough to remember the Guardian adverts on TV that told stories from different perspectives. The first 'truth' was false. So was the second. Take the denoument of many films and the hero turns out to be the villain (or vice-versa). Ewan McGregor is a wonderful person in Angels and Demons until the CCTV is considered. It is so obvious that taking things at face value is not always the best course of action. If you can be precise in the social sciences then you are almost inevitably wrong.

As I pointed out to him, you may claim that a foolish opinion is a foolish opinion, but not that a person is a fool because they choose to believe something that you disagree with. This point was not accepted. What is a fact? You may think that science will give you facts, but even in science there is talk about tolerance, acceptable variation. Are you travelling at 30mph or 29.72mph or any other number of decimal points after this. 30mph is not a fact so what chance have you got with the much more contentious social sciences?


I would like to know more details about the BNP's definition of ethnicity and what this looked like in Britain prior to 1948. I used the metaphor of classical guitar and how I like South American music. It seems this is alright because it is a minority interest but I remain just as confused as to how they view South American influences. Even though I am trying to get more answers I feel the answers will be related to the quote from GBS "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it".