Image Source: Wiki - Dogs Playing Poker

In case you missed it; the first story is about Mary Bale or “Evil Cat Woman” as she is known all over the Internet. She gained this name due to CCTV footage that records her placing a cat in a wheelie bin. It is an act of senseless cruelty that deserves condemnation. Mary Bale received more than condemnation and ended up being placed in protective custody.

The second story involves musician Morrissey, who in response to China’s mistreatment of animals stated,

Absolutely horrific. You can’t help but feel that the Chinese are a subspecies (source: The Guardian)

There is some furore in the papers regarding this racist statement but Morrissey is not in protective custody.

The message that seems to be coming out of these stories is that any violent, malicious, or offensive action is justified if the intended victim has violated the rights of an animal.

This really does not sit well with me but I think at the root of all of this is the fact that we live in a society that seems comfortable with the idea of assigning personhood to animals even it results in our dehumanisation; and I witnessed this first hand last weekend.

Background

It is no secret that I am not a fan of dogs. I don’t hate dogs. I do however have a healthy fear of dogs, especially big dogs. I am not scared of all dogs; in fact once I spend time in the company of a particular dog I find that I can get on quite well with that dog. This makes sense to me because all animals are different; some are friendly, some are not. I have had a hard time explaining this distinction to certain dog lovers and dog owners who seem aghast that I will not join them in their public display of affection for a dog whose owner’s name they do not know.

“Oh but he looks so cute”; they say, as they proceed to ruffle the fur of this stranger’ pet. This is often followed by many questions about why I do not like dogs. I must have had some traumatic experience to explain my irrational fear of an animal that has the capability to maul a person to death.

Disclosure:
Yes as a young child in Kenya, while walking home from school, I was chased by a pack of dogs and the owner stood there and watched. But…even before the dogs chased me, I remember seeing them, feeling very scared and then running for my life. So it wasn’t the dog chasing incident that made me scared of dogs, all it did was prove me right that some dogs are vicious and it is far easier to avoid them all then to risk life or limb trying to work out which ones are not.

Last Weekend
I was at a pub that is a favourite for dog owners and I endured my regular grilling on why I am not a dog lover. I then asked a few questions of my own such as why would anyone take a dog to a bar? The discussion went on for a while until we reached the point that I always dread. The part where someone will argue that owning a dog is no different to being a parent and that children and pets are not only the same thing but interchangeable.

A parent is NOT the same as a pet owner.
I cannot understand how anyone can argue that dog and baby equals the same thing. In my mind babies and by extension human beings are not the same as animals and I often use a simple test.

If I had one plate of food before me and I had a hungry dog and a hungry child I would feed the child. If I had to save a drowning man or a drowning dog, I would save the drowning man.

Why? Because human beings are not comparable to animals.

I am not condoning the abuse of animals. I am also not arguing that every person who cares for an animal will take to attacking the likes of Mary Bale. What I do recognise however is a connection between how easy it is for Morrissey to dehumanise an entire nation and how easy it is for an individual to dehumanise a baby all in the name of animal personhood.

The North West win has not come as a surprise. In the run up to the election nearly every other party tried to convince the electorate that a vote for them would count as an anti-BNP vote. The threat of a BNP win was real. What is unreal is this seeming unwillingness to accept that there are racist people in the UK (at least 132,094 live in the North West) and that on June 4th these racist people exercised their democratic right and duly sent not one but two -Nazis to represent the rest of us in Brussels.

Apparently all this is the fault of the mainstream political parties. It was they who alienated and excluded “regular voters” from the political and democratic process. That the BNP win is a direct result of the frustration that “regular voters” feel and have felt for a long time – they have expressed this frustration by way of a protest vote.

Rubbish. Utter rubbish.

Firstly, if Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are deemed mainstream political parties, the remaining eight options on the North West ballot paper should have provided sufficient choice for those seeking an alternative view. Failing that, the right to invalidate one’s ballot paper is the ultimate protest vote but it comes as no surprise that BNP voters did not take this course of action. Those who voted in favour of Griffin’s party were not protesting; they were endorsing a hate group that has unfortunately been allowed to masquerade as a political party.

Secondly, to assume that a sense of disillusionment and disenfranchisement is reason enough for a “regular voter” to lend his or her support to a hate group is a leap in a logic that I am unwilling to take. Unless of course regular voters” is code name for “racist, homophobic and xenophobic white voters.”

If the BNP’s relative success in the European Parliamentary Election shall be discussed along the lines of finding fault and apportioning blame then I have no problem in placing all the blame on the BNP voters around the UK but in particular those in the North West and York and Humber region.

Whatever forms the discussion will take; there is no room for those who argue that the BNP supporters are unaware of the party’s racist, homophobic and xenophobic beliefs, or that BNP voter is well meaning but ill educated person who has been duped. If condemnation for the BNP party is (almost) universal then the same should be true of its supporters.

We certainly should not attempt to portray them as victims; they seem to be doing a good job of it themselves. Listening to Nick Griffin citing the Race Relations Act as the basis of potential law suits against employers who sack BNP supporters is reason enough for us to raise the level of the debate surrounding the BNP and its existence as a political party.

One reason why I detest the BNP so much is because I, like so many others, can see through the name change that transformed the National Front into its present form. Comparisons have been made between the BNP and the Ku Klux Klan and I could not agree more with these comparisons. Yet unlike the KKK, the BNP has been granted political party status, which has resulted in what Mshairi describes as a schizophrenic relationship between the rest of the nation and the party and its supporters.

That is why on the one hand the BNP can appear on a ballot paper yet its members are denied the right to openly associate with their party of choice. It is the same flawed logic that saw the other North West MEPs refuse to share a stage with Nick Griffin as he gave his victory speech despite the fact that they will be sharing a forum in Brussels.

I think our leaders and law makers need to decide where they stand on the issue of the BNP and should that day ever come, I hope they are bold enough to place BNP in the same category as all other hate groups and revoke their political party status. Until that time our discussion of the BNP and its increasing support be limited by this rather bizarre cycle of misplaced blame and unwarranted empathy.