TRIGGERnometry - ＂Why I Joined and Left the Far-Right＂： Jack Buckby

00:00:00.000 hello and welcome to trigonometry i'm francis foster i'm constantin kissin and this is a show

00:00:10.240 for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people our brilliant guest this week

00:00:15.780 is a former far-right extremist who is now a counter-extremism researcher jack bugby welcome

00:00:22.120 to trigonometry cheers for having me on welcome to the show it's good to have you man uh before

00:00:26.600 we get into like uh you know we talked about before if if we're the mainstream media we would

00:00:30.880 spend 40 minutes grilling you about all the things that you've done in the past and it's quite a list

00:00:35.800 let's be honest rightfully so rightfully so but my our sense of you having spoken with you is that

00:00:41.020 you've moved on you're working in as a counter extremist now i think you've really genuinely

00:00:45.400 abandoned all the stuff that you had but just for anyone who doesn't know you just give us a quick

00:00:51.420 rundown of a little bit of your life story how did you become a far-right extremist some of the

00:00:56.260 antics you got up to and you know why you decided to move away from it yeah absolutely i will and

00:01:00.680 one thing i would say just to sort of um precursor that is that i've not become like a left-wing

00:01:05.960 liberal multiculturalist sort of you know hippy dippy person i've not like completely switched

00:01:11.600 sides like what's interesting i think i hope is i'm very much a conservative you know i'm i would

00:01:17.580 be to the right of center um but what's changed is that i came from this ultra nationalist white

00:01:25.220 nationalist white separatist white supremacist sort of movement that

00:01:29.900 really started taking off in the mid-2000s and yeah I mean let's start

00:01:35.340 there I was a teenager I come from a working-class town up north called

00:01:38.840 Skelmersdale not a very mixed-race sort of multicultural town I have to say it's

00:01:43.980 like one of the whitest places you can visit it's still very white but the

00:01:48.560 immigration we saw was Polish and so there was a sort of an anger about the

00:01:53.720 economic side of things there, especially during 2008 with the crash and people started losing jobs

00:01:58.320 and then, you know, you've got this Polish community that were seemingly taking the jobs

00:02:03.080 and it creates anger, right? So I was like 15 years old and I remember seeing Nick Griffin on

00:02:08.780 the TV and I think it must have been the run-up to the 2009 elections where they got about a

00:02:15.420 million votes and two seats. And I remember seeing him on the TV and thinking, well, he's not wrong

00:02:20.980 about that, you know, immigration was too high and things like this. And this was a time when the BNP

00:02:25.660 was sort of claiming to have modernized, right? You know, we're not neo-Nazis anymore, guys, you

00:02:30.760 know, we're just, you know, against immigration and we're standing up for working class people.

00:02:34.300 And when you look at the Labour Party, who was responsible for opening the borders in, you know,

00:02:39.180 in 97 onwards, you look at the Tory party, well, people from Scamette, never going to vote Tory,

00:02:44.680 you know that it felt like there was no one else and so I was a 15 16 year old going through high

00:02:51.180 school I remember leaving high school the very very last day of high school I was leaving through

00:02:56.000 the front door saying goodbye to the teachers and my PE teacher asked me what you're going to do

00:02:59.320 with your life and I literally turned to her and said I'm joining the far right and she went oh

00:03:04.600 and I went but not the bad far right the good far right and she was like okay best of luck and it

00:03:10.220 the last time I ever saw her. So then I went to college and it just sort of

00:03:15.080 deepened and became more entrenched and yeah I became an active member of the

00:03:19.340 British National Party. I think part of the reason what what pushed me from just

00:03:24.620 seeing the logic of what Nick Griffin was saying on the TV which was

00:03:27.560 immigration's too high maybe we should leave the European Union things like

00:03:30.380 that was also I went to Preston when I was a teenager I'd never been to Preston

00:03:34.940 before and it was the total opposite of what scam my hometown was. It was very

00:03:39.260 Muslim, very non-white. I saw street signs that weren't in English. I saw mosques and

00:03:43.360 people in burqas. I've never seen that before. And there's something really emotive about

00:03:47.360 that, I think. You know, some people might call it racist or whatever, but it's not a

00:03:51.540 feeling of hatred towards people. It's just a genuine shock when you see that for the

00:03:54.840 first time. And I think, and a lot of people would agree with me, polls show time and time

00:03:59.440 again that the British people, you know, have concerns about multiculturalism. And I just

00:04:05.520 think there's something really emotive about it. And when the media, the politicians, far-left

00:04:10.500 activists, when they all tell you that that's something you can't talk about, it makes you

00:04:14.480 really want to talk about it. And again, I felt like nobody else was, you know, talking about

00:04:19.440 these problems. And then I learned about the grooming gang things, and that really set me off.

00:04:25.840 So I started becoming an activist in Blackpool for a case relating to a girl called Charlene

00:04:30.940 downs there's a lot of questions about that one she was a victim of Muslim

00:04:35.440 grooming gangs but it's later come out that actually the guy that or a person

00:04:39.220 who murdered her we still don't know the latest assumption is that it was a white

00:04:43.180 fella but the BNP really capitalized on that that story I eventually left the

00:04:49.420 BNP because anti-semitic abuse incredibly I'm not Jewish my step great

00:04:57.380 grandfather was Jewish he was came from Germany he was a German Jew he was in

00:05:01.320 Dachau came to England and married my grandmother so I'm not I'm not connected

00:05:07.620 to him by blood or anything but I was wearing his wedding ring at a BMP

00:05:11.000 meeting in in st. Helens the first meeting I ever went to and somebody

00:05:16.060 pulled me up about it are you married and I was wearing on my right hand and

00:05:18.980 like no I'm not married with my grandfather and I told them the story

00:05:21.140 and immediately the tone changed and I was like ah this is interesting now this

00:05:26.900 point i wasn't really great i didn't really know about the whole anti-semitism thing i didn't

00:05:30.260 really know that much about the bmp's past but things really changed and to this day i've still

00:05:34.220 got these people claiming i'm a secret jew um you know i they make francis knows what you're

00:05:39.700 talking about there's a lot of people online who think i'm a secret jew it's like a really amazing

00:05:45.500 thing i like that they they it was awful the abuse they put me through you know i used to have to

00:05:50.700 meet with police when i lived in liverpool because i was getting attacks from communists as well as

00:05:55.380 the far right the neo-nazis had me on the stab on site list it was really crazy

00:06:01.860 and so eventually I left the BMP and then I joined part of the counter jihad

00:06:06.480 movement and to this day I've got massive concerns about Islamism you know

00:06:11.580 I've not completely changed my opinion on that I think there's a real issue

00:06:14.640 there that we need to talk about now I kind of feel like maybe there's better

00:06:17.940 people to talk about it than me I'm not a scholar but you know and so I joined

00:06:22.140 that movement and so from being a teenager in a white nationalist movement

00:06:26.700 I became in my early 20s a gobshite who was not a white nationalist and had some

00:06:35.140 what I believe genuine concerns about a lack of representation of working-class

00:06:40.260 communities and things like that but I would I would not express myself in the

00:06:44.760 best way and I would do awful things Channel 4 in my early 20s you know four

00:06:49.200 years ago or something I handed this woman a form to take in a Syrian refugee

00:06:53.580 and told her you know I hope you're taking a refugee and I hope you don't

00:06:56.760 get raped looking back yeah it's a terrible thing to say I stand by the

00:07:03.660 principle don't get me wrong there was a massive issue at the time that with the

00:07:07.860 migrant rape crisis and I we weren't talking about it my idea was that if

00:07:12.780 you as shocking as possible people hate me anyway so you know maybe I become the

00:07:16.380 guy everyone hates but at least we're talking about the issue the same thing

00:07:20.160 when I stood I stood for Joe Cox's constituency in 2016 early 2016 I think

00:07:25.820 that was and again I stood because local people who contacted me told me about

00:07:29.880 the grooming gang issue that was actually happening in Batley which is

00:07:33.540 still something I don't think people are really talking about in Batley but I

00:07:37.980 ran a really aggressive campaign in Joe Cox's seat and arguably I'm the reason

00:07:43.080 why the election even happened,

00:07:45.400 because if nobody had stood against the Labour candidate,

00:07:48.720 then there wouldn't have been an actual election,

00:07:51.000 they would have just appointed someone.

00:07:52.560 So I guess that's the sort of summed up version

00:07:55.600 of my history.

00:07:56.960 And also you were friends with Jack Renshaw.

00:08:00.420 Oh yeah, how did I miss that one?

00:08:02.280 I was wondering how you missed that one.

00:08:04.400 Yeah, so, well, you know, it's kind of hard,

00:08:06.180 it's a long story.

00:08:07.020 For anyone who doesn't know, by the way,

00:08:07.860 we have viewers all over the world, who was Jack Renshaw?

00:08:09.520 So Jack Renshaw is a terrorist, convicted terrorist,

00:08:12.560 Also, I think technically a paedophile.

00:08:16.320 Technically a paedophile.

00:08:17.280 I could have all the bases covered there.

00:08:19.760 It sounds like a top lad.

00:08:21.280 I can't remember whether it was something he did

00:08:23.600 when he was underage too, I don't know.

00:08:26.360 Underage paedophile, that is an achievement.

00:08:29.120 I'm afraid I can't offer any insight on that bit.

00:08:31.600 I have no idea.

00:08:32.760 All I know is Jet Renshaw was a young lad

00:08:34.680 from my hometown scam.

00:08:36.660 He was a couple of years younger than me.

00:08:38.900 We were friends.

00:08:39.540 and it's kind of weird talking about him like this

00:08:43.080 because people forget that neo-Nazis weren't always neo-Nazis.

00:08:46.740 They were normal at some point

00:08:47.980 and Jack was very much normal at one point

00:08:50.920 and for those who don't know him,

00:08:52.940 he tried to murder or plotted to murder our local MP, Rosie Cooper,

00:08:57.620 purely for the fact that I think she was accessible

00:08:59.760 because she's not particularly notorious.

00:09:02.160 Nobody really knows who Rosie Cooper even is.

00:09:04.000 There's probably people Googling her now.

00:09:06.500 But he plotted to kill her with a machete

00:09:08.300 and I remember hearing the news about it and it really shocked me because when I knew him he was

00:09:15.500 just a normal lad he had concerns about immigration as most people do in you know the northwest and

00:09:20.680 and lots of working-class towns everywhere really but I just saw this gradual progression when we

00:09:26.740 were both in the BMP I left the BMP in like 2012 or something like that he stayed and it was really

00:09:33.360 interesting because when I was in the BMP I would kind of parrot what Nick Griffin would say

00:09:37.160 the leader of the BMP I would go and have meetings with him he'd tell me this

00:09:41.960 that and the other and I go home I think about it and then I parrot basically

00:09:45.560 exactly the words that he used and I was very much sort of like a rising star

00:09:50.180 within the far right so I was sort of being groomed in a way I think because I

00:09:54.260 was young and articulate and I could you know put a speech together if I had to

00:09:59.280 whereas a lot of the young support of the BMP were vulnerable young lads you

00:10:04.700 know not always that smart or if they were smart they were more interested in

00:10:07.940 like the sports side of things whereas I was very much a nerd so I was sort of

00:10:11.780 it fit and I left because of as I say the abuse I was getting and stuff like

00:10:17.780 that and and lots of other reasons we can talk about later I suppose but Jack

00:10:21.560 stayed and he got worse and worse and then when the BNP sort of collapsed

00:10:26.240 after well 2010 onwards I suppose it started collapsing he joined National

00:10:31.800 Action, which was a terrorist organization, and he just became a full-on neo-Nazi. And

00:10:37.340 I saw that progression happen, and I stopped talking to him as I saw it getting really

00:10:41.560 bad. But yeah, I mean, that was just a really bizarre experience, and it's something we're

00:10:46.900 seeing all over the world, is young lads seemingly normal, who just become monsters out of nowhere.

00:10:55.140 And you said that you parroted Nick Griffin's opinions.

00:10:58.520 how did it work this process of radicalization because I'm sure that it works with lots of

00:11:04.240 things not just the far right but also you know Islamic fundamentalism how do you go from a normal

00:11:10.800 young lad who's 15 16 to entering this organization to then parroting Nick Griffin to then saying

00:11:17.040 awful things how does that process work so in I've just written a book plug sorry monster of

00:11:23.100 are making and it's kind of like an autobiography sort of it but it's

00:11:26.640 interlaced with you know analysis and ideas and the argument I make in the

00:11:31.680 book is that I think there's two kinds of people that join these organizations

00:11:35.460 there's principled fanatics and joiners and a joiner is someone who's devoid of

00:11:40.720 any sort of ideology it's someone who's kind of an outcast they're vulnerable

00:11:44.700 they don't have much going in their life and they're looking for a community and

00:11:48.000 I think that works for lots of other groups I'd say a lot of SJWs joiners but

00:11:52.800 But then a principled fanatic is somebody, I would say I'm probably a principled fanatic

00:11:57.140 because there was an element of being a joiner, you know, I was an outcast, I'm a bit weird

00:12:00.980 and a bit of a nerd.

00:12:03.240 But I joined because I saw real world problems, you know.

00:12:07.040 I always say extremism isn't created in a void, you don't just become something out

00:12:10.340 of nothing.

00:12:12.300 And when you're a principled fanatic it's because you have principles, you see a real

00:12:16.840 problem, you see grooming gangs or you see that immigration is too high and nobody wants

00:12:22.080 to talk about that because it's racist and so you you join pretty much any

00:12:26.160 anyone who's willing to talk about it and I did and yeah within a few years

00:12:31.740 you end up just sort of it snowballs I suppose but there's another argument I

00:12:35.600 make which is the three-pronged attack and that is I think it's a process so it

00:12:41.040 starts with negligent politicians you know the politicians it's inconvenient

00:12:45.600 for them to talk about certain issues they might get dogpiled if they do talk

00:12:49.620 about it so immigration multiculturalism leaving the eu even they don't talk about these issues

00:12:56.900 because it's difficult but those issues are very real for some groups of people white working class

00:13:02.020 people in particular and so then you look to the media and you think well the media should be

00:13:06.580 that check on the politicians right the media should be the ones standing up to the politicians

00:13:11.540 but actually the media are the ones calling the working class people racist and so then you go

00:13:15.540 out on the street and when you go on the street and you're shouting from the rooftops it's like

00:13:19.060 Like please do something about these problems we care about and then the far left activists

00:13:23.680 break your window or something or smash you over the head with a bike lock.

00:13:26.680 And so it's backing people into a corner.

00:13:29.480 And no matter whether you agree with the concerns or the ideas that some sections of the white

00:13:35.300 working class community might have, no matter whether you agree with them or not, politicians

00:13:40.140 should represent those people or at least talk about those issues.

00:13:44.020 And because they're not, this three-pronged attack, this process is backing people into

00:13:48.020 a corner and leaving them with nowhere to go and most people just shut up and put their

00:13:53.780 head down and accept oh this is life now you know political correctness gone mad and they

00:13:57.920 you know they have conversations in the kitchen at parties you know in under hushed tones

00:14:02.700 about you know it's crazy isn't it but then a lot of people don't want to live like that

00:14:07.160 they don't want to live in secrecy and so they get really angry about it and most of

00:14:10.540 those lads end up joining the far right because there's no one else talking about it and we

00:14:13.780 keep using the term far right now apparently some people think it's a very hard thing to

00:14:17.620 define on the internet so what do you when you talk about being a former far-right extremist

00:14:23.580 what are you talking who's the far right right okay so one thing I always get is what bugs me

00:14:29.900 I'm I'm more on the conservative side of things but one thing that I see with conservatives that

00:14:34.180 really annoys me and I hope they won't get turned off by this when they read the book is that

00:14:38.340 whenever there's a far-right attack I'll get to the definition whenever there's a far-right attack

00:14:43.060 like the Paris Synagogue shootings and things like that in America,

00:14:46.460 conservatives always look to see if that person holding the gun

00:14:51.060 has ever espoused ideas like socialized health care or something like that.

00:14:55.660 Because then they point the finger and say,

00:14:57.840 ah, he was a progressive liberal.

00:14:59.720 He believed in socialism and he was actually left-wing.

00:15:02.000 It's like, come on, guys.

00:15:02.940 He wasn't shooting up a synagogue because he was a socialist.

00:15:05.460 He wasn't shooting Jews because of an economic belief.

00:15:07.840 He was shooting them out of really extreme right-wing social views.

00:15:12.640 If a conservative or a nationalist believes in restricting immigration, then someone on the extreme end believes in killing or deporting the people they don't want to be there.

00:15:23.200 So I think it's pointless talking about economics when we're talking about this kind of realm.

00:15:26.700 It's like, let's talk about the social values.

00:15:28.880 So if someone who wants to deport all non-white people, wants to kill the Jews or thinks the Jews run this global conspiracy to control the West, which is crazy, if they're not far right, then who is?

00:15:40.980 you know so if we were going to sort of let's be quite overt about this if we were going to put

00:15:47.120 together a checklist for someone who is far right what would you say is on that checklist

00:15:52.940 um anti-semitism i would say um and then an idea of not just accepting that european people exist

00:16:01.860 i don't think that's inherently extreme i think that's just scientific fact but wanting to deport

00:16:07.100 anyone who isn't white would definitely go in there, people who want to kill people who

00:16:11.680 aren't white, people who, you know, completely authoritarian about values relating to European

00:16:18.380 identity.

00:16:19.380 Don't get me wrong, I consider myself a culturist, that means I believe in the primacy

00:16:22.980 of national culture, I believe in a unifying culture for one nation, I'm not a multiculturalist,

00:16:28.900 but there's people who take that to an extreme, you know, but yeah, I mean, that's why that

00:16:33.500 would be the checklist.

00:16:34.500 Yeah, well, that's actually something that I think, you know, that's a very reasonable viewpoint that most people are.

00:16:41.340 That's my view as well, you know.

00:16:42.980 I think actually, yeah, probably just over half, maybe.

00:16:47.620 Actually, polls do show a majority of British people think like this.

00:16:51.080 Don't ask me to name the poll, but I know there's a few of them.

00:16:54.180 Yeah, I think it's perfectly normal to believe in the primacy of national culture, but you just can't talk about it.

00:16:58.640 Yeah, but this is one of the biggest problems that we've had with multiculturalism,

00:17:02.220 being the idea that there's no such thing as British culture.

00:17:04.640 They've destroyed over time our ability to have a kind of civic nationalism

00:17:10.600 around what it means to be British.

00:17:12.760 So I'm delighted to be British, and I've tried in my time in this country too.

00:17:16.740 Oh, no.

00:17:18.580 That's because you're actually British.

00:17:20.360 That's why you're so fucking miserable all the time.

00:17:22.840 Cheer up.

00:17:23.660 But my point is, in the time that I've lived here,

00:17:27.340 I've tried to adapt to British values, to kind of complain about the weather, you know, all that kind of stuff.

00:17:33.100 Like, I've tried to incorporate myself into this country because I do see this country as having a national identity.

00:17:39.880 Of course.

00:17:40.160 And what has happened over the last 20 years is there's been quite a deliberate drive to eradicate that, to make that problematic somehow.

00:17:49.200 And if you have a multi-ethnic society, you cannot have a cohesive society without an overarching identity.

00:17:56.840 Exactly.

00:17:57.200 That's something that I think most reasonable people actually would accept.

00:18:01.880 And, yeah, so I totally hear that.

00:18:04.600 Do you know, I think that's one of the reasons, sorry to interrupt, but I think that's one of the reasons why the far...

00:18:08.500 Well, you're here to be interviewed, so feel free.

00:18:10.260 You're going to have to interrupt to get your words in.

00:18:12.380 So I think one of the reasons why, this is, again, another argument I make in the book, is that we keep proving the far right right.

00:18:21.200 So when you have this constant blatant attack on Britishness and British identity

00:18:25.880 and even the idea that a British culture exists, I'm looking at you, Afua Hirsch,

00:18:30.840 when you attack that basic idea that a country has a unique identity

00:18:35.760 and then everyone's scared about talking about it,

00:18:38.640 to the point where even like conservatives from the Conservative Party

00:18:41.820 are banging on about the diversity and multiculturalism is our strength and all this stuff,

00:18:47.240 the only people talking about it is the far right.

00:18:49.320 you know and if they're right about one thing they're right about another thing and they're

00:18:52.260 right about another thing then young lads driven by testosterone and anger and the fact that well

00:19:00.000 logically they're correct about some things you you're gonna end up going to those guys and how

00:19:06.620 much of a part do you think like this culture on twitter and on the internet about white males

00:19:12.300 being the problem people saying you know toxic masculinity you know whiteness all these different

00:19:18.140 things does that isn't that just fuel to the fire for these guys massively so that's the third part

00:19:23.260 of the three-pronged attack politicians ignore you media smear you and then the far left do this and

00:19:28.780 actually the media does it as well you know you're i think i feel like we're backing young white men

00:19:33.040 into a corner and that's kind of what i did for a while you know after leaving the bmp i remember

00:19:39.480 i left the bmp because um i there were there were some guys in liverpool from the old combat 18

00:19:47.900 days national front and I was living in Liverpool I was still technically a

00:19:51.980 member of the BNP at the time and I was very much on the sort of modernizing

00:19:56.480 wing of the party you know I was in favor of allowing white people at non

00:19:59.780 white people to join and and actually I was even in favor of civil partnerships

00:20:03.560 because the BNP was even against gay marriage and civil partnerships you know

00:20:07.520 I was on in favor of changing that policy and things like that so I was on

00:20:10.700 the modernizing wing of it but the old school national front lot really hated

00:20:16.100 me and you know the people that were threatening to kill me or stab me had

00:20:20.240 been in prison for stabbing people so it was a very real threat so I was in that

00:20:26.540 world and I once I saw these things I couldn't defend anymore and I myself was

00:20:30.500 becoming a target and I thought maybe I made an error here I tried to leave and

00:20:35.660 I remember contacting UKIP at the time and UKIP seems like the natural option

00:20:42.860 because there was no chance in hell a lad from SCEM was going to join the Tories.

00:20:48.460 And so the UKIP ended up just telling me,

00:20:51.520 sorry, no ex-BMP allowed, disavowed, leave.

00:20:55.520 And I was like, oh, okay.

00:20:57.440 So not only that, it was like I was cast out of civilized society.

00:21:04.520 I was a complete sort of, you can't talk to him.

00:21:06.840 The media would only talk to me if it was a chance to have a go at me.

00:21:10.620 And okay, rightly so, I was in the BMP.

00:21:12.640 I get it, but this idea that you can't have redemption for young lads, backing them into

00:21:18.860 this corner, and not letting them sort of move on from that, I think is a really dangerous,

00:21:23.160 dangerous thing.

00:21:23.780 And I tried to move on, and yeah, I couldn't.

00:21:27.980 And so that's why I found myself in the sort of counter-jihad world, because much of my

00:21:34.500 concerns were based around Islamic terrorism, and grooming gangs, and female genital mutilation,

00:21:38.720 and all the things that come with authoritarian conservative Islam.

00:21:43.720 And I still don't think a lot of what I said was wrong.

00:21:47.220 I think there are issues we need to talk about.

00:21:49.620 But what I would say is because I was already cast out,

00:21:52.740 I was very happy to be seen as the bogeyman.

00:21:56.520 You know, people hate me anyway, so I'll just go and say and do awful things

00:22:00.720 as long as it created a conversation.

00:22:02.580 And like when I stood for the, sorry, I feel like I'm going on a massive tangent here,

00:22:05.100 But when I stood for Joe Cox's seat, I ran a nasty campaign.

00:22:11.100 I remember publishing images of Joe Cox behind bars and things like that.

00:22:15.880 And don't get me wrong, I was obviously not in favor of murdering Joe Cox.

00:22:18.640 Tragic, leaving little kids behind and her husband.

00:22:21.440 It was awful.

00:22:23.660 But my view was, you know, I met people in Batley who told me her story.

00:22:28.080 One family told me the story of their daughter who'd been taken from,

00:22:32.760 I won't name the venue, but they told me a venue in Batley where a grooming gang was operating, and people have told me still operates.

00:22:41.700 She was taken, kidnapped, taken all the way up north, somewhere near Newcastle, and was raped by multiple men, escaped through a window, and went to the police.

00:22:51.700 And the police just took her home, and eventually there was not enough evidence, and the case was dropped, and that's that.

00:22:57.160 And that's a story we've heard a million times over by now.

00:22:59.420 And there were other people in Batley who told me the same thing.

00:23:02.760 And when you go round, when you run for election, you have to get 10 people to sign a piece of paper saying they want you to run.

00:23:08.640 So you have to go and knock on people's doors and say, listen, I'm standing for election.

00:23:11.960 You don't have to vote for me, but will you endorse me as a candidate?

00:23:16.840 And you end up having to knock at about 50 houses or something because not everyone wants to do it.

00:23:21.780 But I'm not joking when I say a majority of the people I spoke to at the doorstep, either their family were victims of it or they knew people who were victims of it.

00:23:30.080 And that made me really bloody angry.

00:23:31.860 and you know when I see that the the former MP no matter what the tragedy was that happened to her

00:23:37.300 had basically ignored it because she'd said nothing about it and she was very much one of

00:23:41.560 these Labour politicians who was concerned about what what was happening overseas but

00:23:44.540 this happening on her doorstep didn't care about that pissed me off and yeah okay I ran a nasty

00:23:50.700 campaign and it was awful and I wouldn't do it now I wouldn't dream of doing it now but I because

00:23:55.320 of that lack of redemption I felt like I had nowhere to go I had no way of getting these sort

00:24:01.380 of feelings out and talking about them so I was like you know what I'll just be known as an

00:24:05.680 extremist for the rest of my life and I'll carry on doing this and we keep talking to people and

00:24:10.860 they raise the grooming games which is awful I actually taught a girl in East London who

00:24:16.600 was a victim of one of these gangs and the case actually went to the high court

00:24:21.500 how big a motivator and a recruitment tool is that for far right activists huge it's massive

00:24:30.420 and it's it's one it's like when I say when you prove the far right right if they're the only

00:24:35.200 ones who wanted to talk about it and don't get me wrong more people talk about it now I think

00:24:38.140 we're getting to a better place with this I'd like to see more convictions but um I think we're

00:24:42.620 getting to a better place with it now but you know back in like 2009 oh yeah holy crap like nobody

00:24:48.020 was talking about this and that's that was one of the big motivating factors for me was the case of

00:24:51.900 Charlene Downs so if you don't know about this case um the media reports that she I mean it's

00:24:58.940 horrific. She was chopped up and put into a kebab, basically, is what the story was

00:25:02.520 at the time. She was a victim of a majority Muslim grooming gang in Blackpool, went missing,

00:25:10.880 presumed dead. And the police obtained recordings that sound like they said they chopped her

00:25:19.520 up in the back of the kebab shop and put her in a kebab. But the recordings are really

00:25:26.480 bad quality the mic the hidden mic was put near a television you know you can't really hear what's

00:25:32.000 being said and I encourage anyone to go and listen to the recordings that's probably not what happened

00:25:36.760 but at the time it was what the BNP said happened because the police had said it and the politicians

00:25:42.900 didn't want to talk about it and that was a massive campaign the first time I went out with

00:25:47.100 the BNP was in Blackpool campaigning for justice for Charlene and it felt like we were on this sort

00:25:52.720 righteous tirade you know I felt like I was really doing the right thing it was

00:25:56.800 the first time I would ever gone out to any political protest there was this

00:26:00.940 woman who she was like my BMP mom so to speak you know it becomes like a family

00:26:05.320 she really took me under her wing the first time I met her in Blackpool and we

00:26:08.800 went out campaigning together and it became this sort of community but it was

00:26:12.840 a righteous campaign for justice for young girl well the BMP didn't

00:26:17.520 acknowledge is the fact that those recordings were really really awful and

00:26:20.740 And the latest evidence seems to suggest that maybe she was actually killed by a white guy.

00:26:25.760 That's not negating the fact that she was a victim of Muslim grooming,

00:26:29.020 but still, you know, they sort of twisted the facts because they had that opportunity.

00:26:32.220 They were monopolizing on that issue because it's not something the politicians wanted to touch.

00:26:37.580 So grooming gangs is that massive motivating factor, and it's because it proves the far right right.

00:26:41.900 You know, if they're right about that, if they're right about, you know,

00:26:44.700 multiculturalism being, you know, ineffective or, you know, counterintuitive or whatever,

00:26:48.300 So if they write about a couple of different things, then, you know, why not join them?

00:26:53.460 Yeah, I have a feeling this episode might be demonetised.

00:26:58.220 Sorry.

00:26:59.060 I'm still upset that you refer to yourself as British.

00:27:01.240 But anyway, I bet you are with your voice.

00:27:07.640 We've got an exciting new sponsor, haven't we, Constantine?

00:27:10.800 Yes, we do. It is, in fact, The Economist.

00:27:13.000 And The Economist is a fantastic publication because it doesn't just deal with economics.

00:27:17.540 It also deals with politics, science, technology.

00:27:21.040 If you want to read what some of the finest journalistic minds are writing about today,

00:27:26.300 then The Economist is a publication for you.

00:27:28.940 Yeah, I was reading an article that very recently, incredibly insightful into the US Democratic

00:27:33.480 primary.

00:27:34.000 So if you want that kind of insight into all kinds of things, politics, economics, etc.,

00:27:39.680 I really recommend it.

00:27:41.140 It's been a trusted source of intelligence for people for over 170 years.

00:27:44.720 So they're doing something right.

00:27:47.540 I think one of the things that a lot of particularly middle class people in London or in the media don't really understand, you know, with a story like yours is how as a 15-year-old boy you might join a party like the British National Party, which quote unquote, for the listeners I'm doing air quotes, everyone knows is a racist party.

00:28:06.340 because i guess in their little middle class head what they imagine is someone you know sending you

00:28:12.460 the full history of the british national party with an addendum detailing the nazi party of

00:28:18.620 you know 1930s germany and and world war two history when actually what happens is you don't

00:28:25.140 really have that because someone comes up to you in a pub and goes do you do you want a job and

00:28:28.800 you haven't got one it's because someone's taken it yeah well you know it's not just it's you don't

00:28:33.760 know that background and stuff, but actually also, even if you do, it kind of doesn't matter.

00:28:38.360 So, you know, I remember going into college in my politics class. I had a Pakistani Muslim

00:28:44.140 politics teacher who I actually got on really great with. Saqib, if you're watching, doubt you

00:28:48.320 are. He was really cool. I'm sure he's a big fan. He's followed your career very closely, at least.

00:28:53.680 I remember he did actually say to me when I was leaving college, like, I know you're going to do

00:28:57.280 something. I'll be watching for you. And he's also the one who told me, you're not BNP Jack,

00:29:01.500 you're a conservative kind of right but I remember after a few classes everyone had sort of outed

00:29:12.720 their political beliefs you know you had the Tory wing of the class you had the Labour wing you had

00:29:16.600 the Lib Dems you know you had a few weird greens and stuff like that and I was the only one who

00:29:21.000 hadn't admitted what I was at this point because at this point my closest friends knew that I was

00:29:27.060 into BMP, but I wasn't as much of a gobshite then as I was.

00:29:30.600 I was really shy, you've got to understand this, I was super shy, which is why it's

00:29:34.300 so incredible I became so awful.

00:29:38.200 But I remember the politics teacher, Saqib, he was like, go on, Jack, who are you, go

00:29:42.380 on, you've got to tell us.

00:29:43.380 And I'm like, I remember saying to him, I went, I can't, you'll think I'm racist.

00:29:46.820 And he was like, you've got to tell me, I'm like, BMP, and he was like, yeah, you're racist.

00:29:54.480 I remember he went, you know about the history, right?

00:29:57.040 And I literally just responded, yeah, I don't think it matters.

00:30:00.380 So did you know the history?

00:30:02.580 Yeah, I knew.

00:30:03.640 I knew.

00:30:04.040 So what did you know?

00:30:04.860 So you I knew that it started off as the National Front.

00:30:07.480 I knew that there were a load of neo-Nazis in there.

00:30:09.140 But what I also knew is I'd met people from the party and they weren't neo-Nazis.

00:30:14.320 Some were little old ladies, you know, like you might be your neighbor.

00:30:17.740 They were normal people.

00:30:18.780 And this is one thing I say, and you're definitely demonetized, is the BNP was racist, right?

00:30:25.980 Actually, a lot of the members weren't.

00:30:28.060 Sorry, it's true.

00:30:29.520 A lot of the members did not have a burning hatred of black people.

00:30:33.960 Some of them would tell really inappropriate jokes or have a gollywog as a profile picture

00:30:37.900 or something, but that was mostly a finger up to political correctness.

00:30:41.800 But actually, I don't know if I can say a majority, but a large amount of people were

00:30:46.720 just normal working class people who had nowhere else to go genuinely and do you think part of that

00:30:51.980 is because labor have turned their back on them massively so yeah i mean i'm surprised honestly

00:30:56.840 that it's kind of labor's got no better so it is kind of shocking that the bmp i know yeah so it's

00:31:03.120 kind of shocking that the bmp's kind of what disappeared really and nothing's really properly

00:31:08.360 replaced it yet you know there isn't really a big racial nationalist or white supremacist i should

00:31:14.440 say movement in the UK I mean thank God but you know it could be around the

00:31:18.680 corner but but isn't that because with brexit a lot of the concerns that people

00:31:24.560 had yeah about mass immigration some of it's been addressed were channeled

00:31:28.900 into that and you had a politician who most people would consider a mainstream

00:31:35.120 politician Nigel Farage taking that issue and delivering he killed the BMP

00:31:40.840 Right. So it was a way of, I mean, and this is what I really want to get into in the second part of the interview is countering some of this extremism. I mean, part of it clearly is addressing the concern, stop making the far right right. So it's addressing the concern. So if people had a concern about mass immigration, Brexit tackled that.

00:32:02.560 uh partially i mean i actually i think in terms of what the government's doing now we're probably

00:32:08.840 going to have more immigration than we had before because of the way they've they've composed the

00:32:13.560 point system but in terms of perception i think immigration went massively down on people's list

00:32:20.320 of concerns because it got molded into brexit it got folded into brexit so now that we've had it

00:32:26.320 we've kind of we've pricked that bubble which i think is why that racialized way of thinking has

00:32:31.600 declined because people's genuine concerns are at least they feel for the moment are being addressed

00:32:36.720 but that's the problem is they feel like they've been addressed yeah if if this new immigration

00:32:41.460 system that boris has put forward doesn't solve the problem or at least look like it solves the

00:32:46.900 problem we're going to see more problems because brexit was like a temporary sort of stop valve you

00:32:51.380 know yeah um it's going to start bubbling up again you know also another thing that i've seen is um

00:32:56.820 I see the logic behind it, but it just sounds bad when Priti Patel, who I love Priti Patel, I think she's awesome.

00:33:02.700 I bet you do.

00:33:05.540 Guilty crush.

00:33:07.280 Not even guilty, man.

00:33:08.420 I love me some Priti Patel as well.

00:33:10.320 A strong, confident woman, deport you in a heartbeat, that's what you want.

00:33:13.700 Well, you know, she said something along the lines of, I think the policy proposal is that they would encourage people, immigrants, to move up north rather than to live in the London area because London's so cramped.

00:33:24.240 I'm sure people up north would love that.

00:33:25.620 I mean, that's the last thing Northern voters want, and it's the last thing they were expecting from Brexit.

00:33:30.460 So I think what we're going to see is if Boris doesn't handle this well, then there's going to be a resurgence of something.

00:33:36.300 And if it's not like a stop-valve sort of skirt around the issue party like UKIP was or Brexit was as an issue,

00:33:43.980 then, yeah, something like the BNP, something genuinely extreme, could rear its ugly head again if nobody really wants to talk about it.

00:33:51.280 And I just want to tackle this subject because we work, and I say it ad nauseum, in the wokest, most liberal.

00:33:57.720 It's not liberal. If you say something, if you say it's the wrong thing, then you get destroyed.

00:34:01.680 But a lot of my contemporaries would say Nigel Farage is a far-right politician. He's a Nazi.

00:34:08.920 Could you make the case as to what Nigel Farage actually is?

00:34:12.500 He's a true blue Tory, I suppose.

00:34:15.020 You know, it's one of the reasons why I didn't want to vote for him or support him in the first place

00:34:18.000 and why I went to the BMP is because Nigel Farage

00:34:20.080 was just seen as a posh Tory, you know,

00:34:22.640 like UKIP were just like Tory, not even Tory light,

00:34:25.460 maybe even Tory extra or Tory max or something, you know.

00:34:29.880 Farage, far right, I mean, he doesn't meet the requirements

00:34:33.240 we talk about in our little made-up checklist.

00:34:36.300 I don't think he fits the bill at all.

00:34:38.920 He's a Tory.

00:34:39.860 I think this is one of the biggest problems that we've had,

00:34:43.140 and we've had some issues with that recently,

00:34:46.000 where if you keep calling everyone a Nazi,

00:34:49.620 if you keep calling everyone far right,

00:34:51.800 if you dilute the meaning of the term,

00:34:54.200 then people who are far right,

00:34:55.900 who just don't want to be called far right,

00:34:57.600 go, well, there's no such thing as the far right.

00:34:59.580 You're just doing what the leftists do.

00:35:00.980 You're calling everyone a Nazi.

00:35:02.060 Well, if you want to kill Jews and deport black people

00:35:05.760 and whatever else might come on our checklist,

00:35:09.700 well, maybe you are a Nazi.

00:35:10.880 You know what I mean?

00:35:12.400 And people get triggered when we say that.

00:35:15.300 So I think that the misuse of that term has been a huge problem.

00:35:20.820 Yeah, absolutely.

00:35:22.220 And it sort of allows people who are genuinely extreme

00:35:24.660 to operate under the cover of night, you know, if everyone's a neo-Nazi.

00:35:27.940 See, this is another thing that I think conservatives get wrong,

00:35:31.620 is whenever I talk about this issue, people assume that I've,

00:35:34.660 conservatives often assume that I've become a multiculturalist

00:35:37.700 leftist liberal overnight and, you know, I'm a traitor and all this stuff.

00:35:40.700 And it's not true, I'm mostly conservative.

00:35:43.860 but it's still problematic but conservatives seem to think that I've

00:35:49.680 become this leftist liberal overnight and it's like well hang on so everyone

00:35:54.480 is calling everyone a neo-nazi that doesn't mean neo-nazis don't exist and

00:35:59.820 these conservatives who think that I've become a liberal tell me Jack why are

00:36:04.380 you using that term far right you know the far right doesn't really exist it's

00:36:07.540 like hang on a minute okay they might not be in the greatest of numbers

00:36:11.860 compared to is like 1930s well yeah but it doesn't mean they don't exist and this is one of the

00:36:19.720 problems that I have with conservatives and it's something I think conservatives can address it's

00:36:24.240 not something that I think is going to go on forever I think eventually people will realize

00:36:27.760 is denying their existence is playing into the hands of the left because that helps them because

00:36:32.920 it makes the right look completely delusional when you're saying no the neo-nazis don't exist

00:36:37.220 so yeah and that it's it's kind of like it's a tactic i think for far left ideologues they know

00:36:43.200 very well or at least some of them do some are just dumb but you know they know very well that

00:36:48.800 if they call everyone a neo-nazi then conservatives are going to be like oh well everyone's a neo-nazi

00:36:52.780 these days and they just assume it doesn't exist and it makes us look completely delusional which

00:36:57.140 is what allows the left to dominate this narrative on extremism right they control the extremism

00:37:03.000 narrative. And that's really worrying. You know, there's organizations, I'm not going to name

00:37:07.120 names, but there's organizations in the UK that claim to oppose far-right extremism and things

00:37:12.220 like that. And they completely dominate that narrative. And, you know, they're the ones that

00:37:16.420 the politicians go to for information about the far-right. But it's run by former members of the,

00:37:21.360 and current, apparently, current members of the Communist Party of Great Britain that came from

00:37:26.040 a communist organization originally. Some of the members doing the research for this organization

00:37:30.520 are extremely far left and i just find it really troubling and worrying that the only people

00:37:36.860 talking about far extremism most of the time are far left extremists that's crazy well now that we

00:37:43.060 are talking about far right extremism give us a sense of how much of a problem it is numerically

00:37:49.300 because obviously judging how many people are sitting you know in their basements on the internet

00:37:54.900 talking about this stuff is hard but we have seen what seems like a rise in the number of

00:38:03.240 attacks that are being committed by these people and one of the things we talked about before is

00:38:08.400 actually you were talking about how in America the majority of terrorist attacks that result in

00:38:15.380 homicides are committed by. Yeah so the I'll get this mostly right it's hard for me to remember

00:38:21.180 numbers I'm not the numbers guy but people can check it out the ADL

00:38:24.360 anti-defamation we published this study saying that most terrorism was far right

00:38:28.140 and blah blah blah and the ADL being the ADL sort of they kind of played with the

00:38:33.440 numbers a bit you know and other organizations did a similar thing when

00:38:36.360 they released this information and what they did was they included homicides

00:38:39.720 and violent attacks and things from people who were far-right extremists but

00:38:43.620 the attack itself wasn't ideological so they might have just beat someone up in

00:38:47.140 the pub it's not far they might have beaten up another Nazi right yeah

00:38:50.640 exactly so what some other people did I think it was numbers from the National

00:38:54.720 Consortium for the Study of Terrorism something I think that was the name of

00:38:57.720 the group they looked at specifically violent ideologically motivated attacks

00:39:03.320 that resulted in homicide and they found that 92 93 percent of them were far

00:39:08.100 right that's in America another study from another group found it was about

00:39:12.060 73 percent so the numbers vary but it's a majority that's interesting but again

00:39:17.820 the other side of it is whenever there's an Islamist attack more people die because they

00:39:23.340 use bombs and things like that and conveniently they always start the figures after 9-11 you know

00:39:31.420 so there's that in the UK it's different story actually the number of terror attacks and

00:39:37.820 ideologically motivated violent attacks that result in homicide being far right it's kind of

00:39:43.620 but I don't think that means we should ignore it because it's increasing and

00:39:48.360 it's more common and you don't always hear about it a few weeks ago a 16 year

00:39:51.480 old was sent that sent to prison for plotting to murder somebody and finding

00:39:55.380 manifestos in his room and all these things and it was blatantly neo-nazi

00:39:58.620 there's been multiple national action arrests what happened with Jack Renshaw

00:40:02.400 was really scary there was a guy I knew when I was in the sort of in Liverpool

00:40:07.140 days I'll talk about this again in the book is this guy called Darren who I

00:40:10.720 I remember going for a coffee with once and he seemed kind of normal a few weeks later

00:40:15.360 I saw pictures of him wearing a full KKK outfit and Zeke heiling and I think he ended up calling his baby

00:40:20.720 Adolf or something like absolutely crazy these people exist they're there and

00:40:25.600 to their credit the the British authorities are doing a damn good job of stopping these things

00:40:30.160 um and so I think we need to stop playing this game of comparison let's stop comparing it and

00:40:35.680 saying, oh, well, remember Lee Rigby, or remember this Islamic attack, and oh, more people die

00:40:42.060 from Islamic attack. It's a stupid game to play, because all you're doing is admitting

00:40:45.740 that two kinds of, or more than one kind of, extremism exists. Let's stop comparing them,

00:40:50.600 and let's just address the fact that it exists in the first place. And by the way, not just

00:40:54.300 that, the circumstances are ripe even for this problem to just get bigger.

00:41:01.040 So how do we combat it?

00:41:03.080 Okay, so I think conservatives have a job to do here,

00:41:07.500 but actually I think it's more with liberals.

00:41:10.620 And kind of what you're doing here is part of that solution.

00:41:13.320 So we're not far right.

00:41:15.300 Well, you guys are kind of good liberals, are you?

00:41:16.900 I'm quite enjoying my niche as a Jewish Nazi.

00:41:19.400 It works well for my comedy, at least.

00:41:21.300 No, man, I mean, I don't know.

00:41:23.700 The word liberal, just like the word Nazi, has been so misapplied.

00:41:27.380 I mean, the people who call themselves liberal now,

00:41:30.260 they're not fucking liberal at all.

00:41:31.540 They're the most illiberal, intolerant people you're ever going to come across, except maybe the far right.

00:41:38.580 But but yeah, I'm politically, I think kind of on the economic questions, I'm in the center.

00:41:43.800 Culturally, I think maybe I culturally on some issues, both of us probably lean to the right on the culture.

00:41:50.100 Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So but economically, France would be an old school lefty.

00:41:54.900 So it's kind of like that. But yeah, I mean, having conversations about these issues, I think is important.

00:41:59.920 is that what you're saying? Well, that's part of it. So I think what liberals need to do is take

00:42:03.740 the mic away from the far left. Because I don't think for a moment that these blue-haired crazy

00:42:09.420 people screaming in the street are a majority of even left-wing thinking. They're certainly not a

00:42:14.060 majority in society, but they're not even a majority on the left. The only reason they have

00:42:17.900 so much control is people are terrified of them. I compare them in the book to an unruly dog. The

00:42:25.920 left are the owners and they're the unruly dog and like they can't even live in their own home

00:42:29.760 because they're so terrified it's going to bite their hands or something so they just let it be

00:42:33.680 this unruly thing that just gets worse and so it's down to liberals to take the mic away from

00:42:39.100 them and say hang on a minute that's not us yeah but that kind of takes the power away but how's

00:42:43.460 that going to happen i mean ash sarkar is on question time every fucking week yeah well yeah

00:42:47.400 i mean it's partly it's it's the media is certainly a big part of this yeah but i think

00:42:51.980 more people need to start standing up so like seeing what andrew doyle does is is great the

00:42:56.700 thing with andrew doyle and titania is that he does it and also it's like doing it with a smile

00:43:01.660 on his face you know doing it with laughs and i think that's really powerful um seeing lawrence

00:43:07.180 fox and more left-wing liberals standing up to this it's going to be tough because they're seeing

00:43:12.540 why people don't do it you know it becomes very difficult and emotionally draining and it affects

00:43:17.980 your life very much so. One thing if you're a leftist, if you're a former BMP, it's even worse.

00:43:26.500 But, you know, it's going to be difficult. But as long as more liberals start taking the mic away

00:43:31.120 from those people, that removes a lot of the power. And then as a result of that, I think the

00:43:35.240 media will have to change once the media starts seeing that these people aren't the majority

00:43:39.740 at all. But then when it comes to conservatives, I think the biggest job that conservatives have

00:43:45.180 is they have to admit it exists.

00:43:48.040 The far right, I mean.

00:43:49.380 They have to admit that this problem exists

00:43:51.360 and they don't have to be so defensive about it.

00:43:54.540 You know, they can just say,

00:43:55.480 well, listen, that's not representative of us,

00:43:57.960 but, you know, we're opposed to it too.

00:44:00.080 You know, stop pretending that it doesn't exist

00:44:01.860 or trying to pretend that someone who goes

00:44:03.680 and shoots up a synagogue is actually a liberal socialist

00:44:06.620 just because they believe in socialized healthcare.

00:44:09.220 Like, give me a break.

00:44:09.840 Like, do you think you're going to find

00:44:11.340 one of these synagogue shooters at a Bernie Sanders rally?

00:44:13.940 Do you think that Boris now has a real opportunity with embracing one nation tourism, with winning a lot of these former, well, not former, but working class, former Labour constituencies to actually really tackle this and hopefully maybe even start to change people's hearts and minds?

00:44:35.780 Yeah, I think he does, but I suspect he won't, and that all boils down to the fact that it's extremely unpopular and difficult to say, whether people know this term or not, I've been saying it for years, that you are a culturist.

00:44:49.400 You believe in the primacy of national culture.

00:44:52.160 I don't think Boris is going to say that, because it's just too, like, it's so annoying, because I feel like if a mainstream politician like Boris actually stood up and said,

00:45:01.400 yeah we believe in

00:45:02.880 a unique British identity

00:45:04.700 we believe in British customs

00:45:06.040 and values

00:45:06.600 and if you're an immigrant

00:45:07.920 moving here

00:45:08.540 you should adapt to that

00:45:09.440 if someone says that

00:45:10.760 in mainstream politics

00:45:11.840 I think that would change

00:45:12.800 everything

00:45:13.480 and it would become normal

00:45:14.860 but Boris ain't going to do that

00:45:16.320 if he does

00:45:16.940 it would be great

00:45:17.440 but I don't think he will

00:45:18.160 why not?

00:45:18.620 because he's going to get

00:45:19.220 called a Nazi

00:45:19.860 yeah he's going to get

00:45:21.460 called a Nazi

00:45:22.000 but he's

00:45:23.360 it's got to be

00:45:25.180 we've got to reach

00:45:26.160 a tipping point

00:45:26.880 surely

00:45:27.280 because it's something

00:45:28.760 most people believe

00:45:29.780 you talk to the average

00:45:30.940 person on the street regardless of color regardless of background and they will agree with it so and

00:45:37.760 he's got a mature he's got a huge majority now yeah is this not the moment to do it would be

00:45:42.900 the moment but this is what i'm saying i don't think he's got the guts i hope he does but i

00:45:46.740 don't think he does and i think what that means is if the labor party can elect someone who's not

00:45:52.300 mental uh yeah you can end that answer that is not going to happen for like 10 years then you

00:45:58.780 know at some point they're going to be back and you know the you know things

00:46:02.500 will change so drastically that the white working-class vote won't even matter

00:46:05.260 anymore because you know demographics do change with large-scale immigration fact

00:46:08.740 and that changes the way people vote so I think eventually we'll probably just

00:46:12.220 get to the point where working-class votes won't matter at all yeah but I

00:46:15.580 don't think that's true at all man because one of the things that you saw

00:46:18.820 with brexit for example is a third of ethnic minorities voted for brexit that's

00:46:22.480 true so the the idea that people are united by their skin color or the or

00:46:27.220 even their their background of immigration is it's a bit wishy-washy like in america with trump for

00:46:33.560 example given what he's done for those communities in terms of employment and stuff like that

00:46:38.860 they're going to be uh actually to some extent a backbone of his re-election campaign uh polls

00:46:44.940 don't suggest that but we'll see i mean i hope i i don't suggest he was going to win either let's

00:46:49.460 be honest no but my point is that just because you know i think you're probably right there i

00:46:53.720 was born in Russia doesn't mean that I'm automatically a massive fan of labor but

00:46:58.280 I still think I still think it's gonna be a minority because it's very hard in

00:47:03.960 a multiculturalist society to sort of separate I know a Hindu guy who is very

00:47:10.220 much on my way of politics but he's totally like cast out from his family

00:47:15.100 because it's all they'll be coming for us next you know though you know they

00:47:18.480 say it's just about culture but they'll be booting us out next and stuff so

00:47:21.140 there's that fear you know there's a real of course there's a massive I know and all the people

00:47:24.700 we've had on the show from ethnic minority backgrounds they all get called coconuts and

00:47:28.520 all blah blah blah but I also think that will change too because there's a pushback against now

00:47:33.180 because as you say the far left has gone so far that a lot of people are being driven out of that

00:47:38.600 and I think it will be it will be okay for people not to be on the far left if they're an ethnic

00:47:43.460 minority well again that boils down to I think it's the job of normal left-wing liberals to

00:47:48.180 to start speaking out against it and maybe that would aid that but i think boris johnson with

00:47:53.560 you know he's he's got a really diverse cabinet and i get the feeling that maybe there's a bit

00:47:57.100 of pandering to make make it extremely diverse so that he's not attacked for it i think that has

00:48:01.340 happened but the people that he's appointed seem extremely capable to me right and so that's you

00:48:06.280 know that's a benefit um and i think with that sort of cabinet there with that diversity of

00:48:11.800 people within the conservative party he's in the perfect position to now come out as a culturist

00:48:16.800 and talk about this primacy

00:48:18.820 of national culture. If he did that

00:48:20.540 he would reap the rewards

00:48:22.840 of it for decades. You should talk about

00:48:24.860 decency, postboxes,

00:48:26.740 all the good British things.

00:48:30.840 Letterboxes.

00:48:31.520 I'm going to ask you a human

00:48:32.940 question now. Let's say... A human

00:48:34.740 question. After now he's been a

00:48:36.780 robotic but he's going to ask you a human

00:48:38.720 one. But it's, let's say

00:48:40.840 because we've all had

00:48:42.380 friends who maybe

00:48:44.680 have started to flirt with these kind of

00:48:46.640 ideas you know get very angry what should you do if you have a friend or a family member who you've

00:48:54.100 started to notice deviate to that side of the argument oh good question um you know

00:49:01.000 i think prevent is really interesting um and from what i understand they they are quite good when

00:49:10.840 it comes to the far right and they do understand just tell everybody what oh sorry prevent is the

00:49:15.620 government's counter extremism program is you know intervenes with young people

00:49:19.800 but they'll only intervene if they're sort of tipped off and also you don't

00:49:23.300 have to comply with them which is like that kind of sucks you know I'm not an

00:49:27.200 authoritarian so I'm not gonna force people to comply with them but at the

00:49:29.840 same time most people are just gonna say no thank you but when they do get

00:49:33.400 involved you know there's some great success stories but prevent so that's

00:49:35.780 good you know what would have helped me is and I can't believe I've not talked

00:49:41.420 about this yet when i was in the bmp the media onslaught against me from like the age of 16 or

00:49:47.640 17 or something jeez i mean that's crazy to experience at such a young age and that again

00:49:53.360 sort of backed me into a corner which is why i was in it for such well a fair few years and

00:49:58.160 there was an article written in the telegraph about me which has since been deleted off the

00:50:04.260 website i don't know why um written by a guy called timothy stanley i can't remember exactly

00:50:11.180 what it was, but it was like a scathing piece about how awful I was. But I remember reading

00:50:15.080 about it and thinking, I don't think this guy is actually that wildly different from

00:50:19.360 me. I'm in the BNP and he's not, but the things that I was talking about I felt like

00:50:24.000 weren't too dissimilar from the kind of things that people like him from the Telegraph, the

00:50:28.540 conservative side of things, were talking about too. And looking back, I think if some

00:50:33.960 of those people on the sort of political right, because let's be honest, most people who

00:50:38.400 join the far right are never going to be left wing.

00:50:42.080 Some of them do have this magical transformation

00:50:44.620 and get very, very nice careers out

00:50:46.800 of being a left wing counter extremist afterwards.

00:50:50.080 Convenient.

00:50:51.240 But most of these people, most of these young lads

00:50:53.280 are always going to be at least on the right.

00:50:55.600 And I think I will probably at least be always center right.

00:50:58.560 If some of these people in the conservative right wing

00:51:00.680 circles had reached out to me as a young lad

00:51:03.960 and talked to me about it, like, this isn't the way

00:51:05.640 to go about things, that would have been really helpful.

00:51:08.380 because the only sort of older male influence that i had at that point in my life because no

00:51:14.300 none of the men in my family were political they didn't even really know or care about what i was

00:51:18.620 doing because it was just completely alien um if a male conservative figure had reached out to me

00:51:26.460 and talked to me rather than using me as a chance to virtue signal or write a hit piece about me

00:51:32.300 that would have helped um so i think i think we need to get to a point where we're willing to

00:51:38.300 forgive monsters um okay so i'm not saying if someone goes out and um tries to murder rosie

00:51:46.540 cooper then you should you know become his best mate or something but you know the people that

00:51:50.220 get wrapped up in far right circles we've got to have some kind of redemption here not just

00:51:54.700 redemption but there needs to be some kind of innovation intervention where people are willing

00:51:58.860 to talk to them about the issues they really care about rather than just mocking them because

00:52:03.660 mocking them just pushes them further down that rabbit hole and when they've got no way to get

00:52:07.900 out when there's no redemption at all they've got nowhere else to go but further right and when

00:52:12.780 you've got nowhere else to go but further right you're probably going to end up in really dark

00:52:17.020 corners of the internet you're going to become depressed you're going to have no future because

00:52:21.340 you can't get normal work i certainly can't get normal work and for most people that that can be

00:52:27.340 life-ending. So you're more likely to go out and commit one of these atrocities.

00:52:32.320 You've got nothing to lose. You've got nothing to lose. Now look, the one question before

00:52:36.540 we ask our final question I wanted to talk to you about is something, again, we discussed

00:52:40.140 before, which is how do you deal with these ideologies in the public space? Because I

00:52:47.640 asked you on the phone, I said, do you remember Nick Griffin going on question time? And the

00:52:53.860 argument that i've been persuaded up by up to this point was well he goes in question time

00:52:59.740 i i guess i think you'd probably say he wasn't treated fairly no he definitely wasn't and i think

00:53:06.060 i probably agree with that uh he was they made it the nick griffin show as you put it they picked

00:53:11.480 on him a lot um instead of just letting him contribute on an issue just like any other

00:53:16.180 panelists yeah um but my my thinking up until the point that you and i had that conversation was

00:53:23.340 well look he goes on question time he sounds like an idiot next year there's an election

00:53:27.740 party share plummets he goes bankrupt brilliant victory for free speech yeah right but what you

00:53:34.480 said to me was actually the next day the amount of membership shut up the amount of traffic to

00:53:40.720 the bmp website shut up yeah massively so is there then an argument i guess the the left

00:53:48.480 the far left makes which is by platforming certain people you're giving their ideology

00:53:53.180 uh oxygen that shouldn't be given it's not just platforming them it's demonizing them the fact

00:53:58.960 that they made it the nick griffin show and they attacked him so much was why people joined

00:54:02.340 and why people went to the website and why people were interested because it was such a blatantly

00:54:06.440 biased show. All they did was, you did this, you said that. And yeah, okay, some of the

00:54:12.920 accusations obviously were, I mean, he's done awful things. He was appearing with David

00:54:18.180 Duke and the KKK and all this stuff, and so rightly so. But there were some other things

00:54:22.320 that were like, some people might look at it and go, well, isn't he right about that?

00:54:25.740 We should control immigration. And so when they see that smearing going on, the second

00:54:30.640 part of the three-pronged attack, when they see that happening, they relate to it and

00:54:34.900 they think, well, sod everyone else. Sod the mainstream. I'm going to join them. Membership

00:54:38.400 shot up. There was a point around that time where, at least this was what the BNP was

00:54:44.160 saying or the BNP webmaster was saying, that actually the BNP was the most visited political

00:54:47.760 website in the world or political party website in the world. It was huge.

00:54:51.700 It was going to rain for a thousand years.

00:54:54.560 It was like this website, I remember it had a peak oil section. It had all these membership

00:54:58.700 forums, and the forums were hugely active. Right at the top was a picture of Nick Griffin

00:55:03.800 like this um it was huge and there was this huge online platform and question time didn't kill the

00:55:10.660 bmp um what killed the bmp was a combination of things really it was mismanagement from within

00:55:15.940 the party and accusations of corruption this is the boring stuff that i saw from the inside

00:55:20.360 what really killed it was nick griffin's vanity he kept you know he was very much seen as he's

00:55:26.500 got to go um because he's got this much baggage and they were at that that tipping point where

00:55:30.840 they just won two MEPs, a million votes, they were mainstreaming, we've got to get rid of

00:55:35.920 this dude who's been with the KKK and we've got to get someone younger in. And that's

00:55:39.640 why they would groom young lads like me, because eventually we'd become leaders or something.

00:55:43.340 But there were some other contenders in the party who were considered more moderate, who

00:55:47.700 were going to sort of take the reins. If that had happened, I think the BNP would still

00:55:51.860 be here, like genuinely, I think it would still be around. And I think it would have

00:55:55.200 been a competitor to UKIP if they'd have continued down that modernizing streak, very

00:55:59.880 much like the national front in France you know the national rally it's called now with Marine

00:56:05.500 Le Pen like it's amazing how you can turn a party from you know being led by a genuine raging

00:56:10.300 anti-semite to now a mainstream political party that comes second in the presidential elections

00:56:15.000 so yeah I think that I think all right so but answer my point which is

00:56:28.520 the bad platforming yeah it's it's an argument that i having spoken to you about it i now i'm

00:56:34.640 like well what's the right way to deal with this platform them give platforms so platform them and

00:56:39.760 treat them fairly is what you're saying yeah because people like if you if you don't treat

00:56:43.760 them fairly then it it it creates it like again it proves the far right right there's a jewish

00:56:48.660 conspiracy to you know like kill whitey and you know to control dissent against multiculturalism

00:56:54.040 and things like that and when you kind of do exactly what they're saying is happening it

00:56:57.760 bar the Jew bit, you know, then it proves them right. Have them on TV, let them say their things.

00:57:03.780 But, you know, at the same time, if you're going to platform them, you also need to have politicians

00:57:07.720 in the mainstream who were talking about the issues that working class people care about.

00:57:11.760 So it's not just a matter of platforming them. There's probably an argument that if you platform

00:57:16.660 them, then it mainstreams them, right? But if you counter that with mainstream politicians who

00:57:21.140 actually address genuine issues that aren't about hating people because of their race,

00:57:26.100 It's things that affect working class people, like the changing nature of working class towns and the changing job market in working class towns.

00:57:33.100 Like where I came from, it was a former mining town and now it's like a warehouse town.

00:57:37.600 Everyone worked in the warehouses and stuff.

00:57:39.660 But, you know, there was a huge, as I said, Polish immigration that sort of shifted that.

00:57:43.820 When you talk about those issues and then you're mainstreaming like the far right, people are going to go with the mainstream one.

00:57:50.620 And also eventually the far right are going to become insignificant anyway because the mainstream people are talking about it.

00:57:55.140 Like, don't starve the far right of oxygen, starve them of the issues.

00:58:00.500 When you take away the things that they're right about, they're left with pure conspiracy

00:58:04.260 theory.

00:58:05.260 The only thing they've got left is that, oh god, aren't the Jews awful and they're controlling

00:58:08.260 everything?

00:58:09.260 People don't associate with that because it's not true.

00:58:10.760 Well, it's interesting that you say that because, as you know, we've been dealing

00:58:13.960 with a few people trolling us from the far right.

00:58:18.980 And this is where they're like demanding that we interview their favorite neo-Nazi

00:58:23.420 and all this kind of stuff.

00:58:24.420 common tactic yeah but i actually i don't think that it's not about platforming it's just we're

00:58:29.880 not a show that debates people yeah you're not you're you you don't owe them anything and also

00:58:36.060 the reason they say that what they usually say is they try and like like you know ben shapiro

00:58:40.420 conservative in america um they always say to him debate i don't know nick fuentes or something like

00:58:45.860 debate this person debate this person it's like hang on a minute ben shapiro's got this gigantic

00:58:50.680 audience uh and then the smaller sort of neo-nazi crowds um i've got sizable ish audiences but we're

00:58:58.560 talking thousands not millions who benefits the most from that debate you know some of these

00:59:03.140 people in the far right uh are so dumb that you can absolutely destroy them in a debate and they

00:59:07.940 still think they've won like it's crazy either they're dumb or they just do it anyway because

00:59:12.480 they are dumb we were just talking about this they have this theory that the jews have conspired to

00:59:16.980 replace white people with Muslims.

00:59:19.540 Because the Jews and Muslims really get on.

00:59:23.180 This is the one thing, like, it's so crazy.

00:59:26.220 You know, I always pull them up about that.

00:59:28.520 You know, it makes absolutely no sense.

00:59:30.740 But, you know, I think the thing with the far right is it offers...

00:59:35.600 Here's another thing, right?

00:59:36.600 So, yeah, okay, to answer your question, you don't owe them anything.

00:59:40.380 You don't need to debate them.

00:59:41.280 And the only reason they propose those debates is because they're the ones who benefit the

00:59:43.960 most from it.

00:59:44.460 And they say they win regardless of what happens.

00:59:46.980 and then suddenly they've got access to Ben Shapiro's

00:59:48.920 millions of viewers, so, no.

00:59:52.020 But also, I think, while we're talking about these

00:59:54.640 sort of like Nick Fuentes people,

00:59:56.100 who's, he's like a white nationalist YouTuber

00:59:59.040 before he got banned off YouTube.

01:00:01.240 I think it's really-

01:00:02.080 Oh, he didn't get banned, did he?

01:00:02.920 I hear, I don't, I'm not a massive follower,

01:00:04.740 but I heard something, maybe he's back, I don't know.

01:00:06.760 I don't watch the show.

01:00:08.520 But one thing I think is really interesting is,

01:00:11.700 he's gaining some young people,

01:00:14.400 not a majority or anything like that, it's nothing crazy,

01:00:16.800 but it's substantial.

01:00:18.880 And I think it's because the far right

01:00:22.880 is perceived to be fun.

01:00:25.120 I know that sounds weird, but when, okay,

01:00:27.800 say you're a young lad and you're figuring the world out,

01:00:30.140 right, and you see real world issues

01:00:32.500 about immigration, multiculturalism, you know,

01:00:35.800 you see the Trump agenda as actually countering

01:00:39.060 this crazy far left sort of puritanism

01:00:43.180 that's not very punk anymore,

01:00:45.120 like the left isn't punk anymore, they're very much church ladies,

01:00:48.320 and they're always complaining about something,

01:00:50.200 and this is sexist, and this is racist,

01:00:52.220 and here's what you have to say, and you can't say that.

01:00:54.820 So you've got that option,

01:00:56.540 or you've got these dudes on the far right

01:00:58.740 who are doing these YouTube shows and laughing about everything.

01:01:02.380 They're having a load of fun compared to those guys.

01:01:05.140 And so when you're faced with these sort of competing factions,

01:01:07.940 these extremist cults, which cult are you going to choose?

01:01:10.960 The one that's telling you what you can and can't say,

01:01:12.620 or the ones that say anything, we don't care.

01:01:14.780 It's hilarious.

01:01:16.380 I don't know how you address that.

01:01:19.600 Well, Puritanism isn't very attractive, is it?

01:01:22.300 Puritanism, it's not that appealing.

01:01:25.040 But look, thank you for coming on the show.

01:01:28.700 We wish you all the best with the counter-extremism work that you're doing.

01:01:31.700 It's a really good book, Monsters of Their Own Making.

01:01:33.700 We recommend that you get it and read it.

01:01:35.300 Thank you.

01:01:35.880 Watch your Twitter, all the rest of it.

01:01:37.660 Twitter is just JackBuckby, B-U-C-K-B-Y.

01:01:40.700 Website, jackbuckby.co.uk.

01:01:42.040 and the book is called

01:01:42.900 Monster of Their Own Making

01:01:43.880 and yeah,

01:01:45.400 I do hope you'll pick it up.

01:01:46.680 Fantastic.

01:01:47.120 And that's available on Amazon

01:01:48.040 and all good bookstores.

01:01:49.080 Yep, it's out on April 28th

01:01:50.280 but you can pre-order it now.

01:01:51.800 Excellent stuff.

01:01:52.500 Well, thanks for coming on the show

01:01:53.440 and we'll see you guys

01:01:54.660 in a week from now

01:01:55.680 with another brilliant episode.

01:01:57.260 Take care.

01:01:57.760 And I'm delighted to find out

01:01:58.900 that after all these rumors

01:02:00.220 we're not far right.

01:02:01.160 We'll see you next week, guys.

01:02:12.040 We'll be right back.

01:02:42.040 28th through June 7th,

01:02:43.720 2026, the Princess of Wales

01:02:45.800 Theatre. Get tickets at

01:02:47.400 Mirvish.com.

TRIGGERnometry - March 08, 2020

＂Why I Joined and Left the Far-Right＂： Jack Buckby

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