Stalwart anti-everyone left of Enoch Powell Sun columnist Jon Gaunt, famously sacked from TalkSport radio for calling a councillor a ‘nazi’ for suggesting that smokers wanting to foster kids should choose between their vile habit or nurturing a child, claimed in his latest article that:

Unfortunately, if you expressed any of the above in recent years the fascists on the Left and in the BBC shut down the debate or tried to portray you as Little Englanders at best, and racists at worst.

These deluded fools are to blame for Griffin and Darby – the Dumb and Dumber of British politics – grabbing a foothold.

I’ll just clarify what “the above” means to give you some context. He was making the point that you can be anti-Europe, concerned about immigration, dislike political correctness, pro-capital punishment blah blah – without being a moron. However, it’s where he places the blame for the recent election of two BNP MEPs that I take issue with.

There’s an irony in your words, Gaunty. Why do you think that we can’t have a sensible debate about immigration? Why do you think we can’t engage in serious discussion over the benefits and disadvantages of the EU? A large chunk of the blame sits with the Sun for whipping up a feast of jingoism, nationalism and animosity within the British public. Perhaps the reason these people get stereotyped as “little Englanders” is because the opinions handed to them by the Sun means that they form irrational conclusions, based on uneven evidence and hyperbole.

A story with the headline “Immigrants push cops to the limit” ran, with the first line of the article reading:

A crime wave triggered by a huge influx of immigrants has stretched police to breaking point, a top cop warned yesterday.

The ‘top cop’ they were talking about is named in the article as Julie Spence, Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire. They unashamedly place her open letter next to it – not once does it mention a ‘crime wave’ or a rise in criminal activity due to immigrants. She talks frankly and sensibly about the pressures on public services that mass immigration can cause because of budgetary limits:

The contribution that all communities make to our success as a nation is considerable. But we cannot hide the fact that our growing population is having an impact on our public services…funding for my service has not kept pace with the scale of change we have seen in recent years. That must change.

I commissioned a booklet welcoming all nationalities to our county and reminding them of the laws and customs they should be aware of to make their life here both safe and lawful…If I became a victim of crime in a foreign land I would like, where possible, to speak to someone in my own language. The same applies here

So the ‘crime wave’ being detailed in the Sun isn’t true. The very source they claim to have received this information from mentioned nothing of the kind. Detailed reporting by better newspapers revealed that the alleged rise in crime was due to the influx of immigrants was entirely false. Both the Telegraph and the Guardian showed this.

We can’t have a sensible debate about the EU because there isn’t enough sensible reporting on it by the media. The Sun build up an anti-European consensus among its readers by using imperialist rhetoric, referring to Germans as “Jerry” or “Krauts” as an example. Constant use of the words “our”, “them” and “us” build up an atmosphere of defense: as though we’re being attacked.

With the majority of Sun readers taking their education on the EU straight from the pages, what chance have they got of really learning how the system works? The Sun frequently publishes stories on the EU that are myth. Take this as an example. From “EU plan to grab our oil“:

GREEDY EU chiefs will snatch Britain’s North Sea oil if Tony Blair signs up to the planned EU constitution, it was revealed last night.

The draft proposal for the treaty has a secret clause demanding power over Europe’s energy supply.

Critics warned the move would mean Britain surrendering control of multi-billion pound oil stocks to Brussels.

But this is highlighted as false by europa:

The “secret” clause referred to here by The Sun was Article III-152 of the draft treaty (Article III-157 of the final version).

This article is merely a restatement of existing EU laws that aim to preserve and improve the environment, whilst maintaining the operation of the single market. UK ministers have agreed to this existing legislation. It does not allow “Brussels” to seize control of UK oil stocks.

However, the Sun’s readers don’t know about this and so form an opinion on the EU based on a mistruth.

In another example of the Sun’s irresponsible hate-mongering, they were forced to pay £30,000 damages to a Muslim bus driver they vilified in their pages. In court, the bus driver’s lawyer highlighted the libel:

The article suggested that Raulynaitis was so arrogant, unprofessional and contemptuous of the passengers within his care whom he is paid to serve, that he ordered them off his bus so that he could pray.

The article went on to allege that the passengers later refused to reboard the bus because they spotted a rucksack and feared he may be a fanatic and therefore, it is to be inferred, a terrorist.

It’s exactly this hype that the readers will absorb and so come to a conclusion based on myth. I wonder how many of the readers know that those stories are false? I’d hazard a guess at not many. So the damage is done and relatively irreparable. Who do many readers turn to on the back of falsities about immigration and the like? The worst proponents of anti-immigrant, racist propaganda of all.

The BNP.