SIEG FAIL: NICK GRIFFIN DEMANDS RESPECT AND OFFERS ONLY HYPOCRISY

The whole poppy burning non-event on November 11, 2010 functioned as a sort of shibboleth to distinguish the bigoted from the non-bigoted. The former complaining that any of obnoxious, unrepresentative fringe group Muslims Against the Crusades who burnt a giant replica poppy should piss off back to Pakistan if they hate our liberal democracy so much – regardless of whether or not they're from Pakistan, and how illiberal and undemocratic a demanding the deportation of people who don't agree with you is.

The story about two Respect Party councillors in Birmingham who refused to deliver a standing ovation for a returning marine who was awarded the George's Cross on February 3 performs a similar function. Respect aren't exactly obtuse in their policies – they're effectively a single-issue party opposed to the Iraq war, but the far right, from the Daily Mail on downwards, chose to frame the event through an Islamic filter and initiate it into their larger narrative about Muslim values chipping away the United Kingdom

Cllr Salma Yaqoob, Respect Party leader and head of Birmingham’s Stop the War Coalition, said, “It was more about the politicians feeling good about themselves for sending our young men to fight for reasons that have proved to be false. I have every sympathy for our soldiers on a human level, they are only doing their jobs. But this ovation was just a big public show, it was false patriotism.”

BNP leader and North West MEP Nick Griffin weighed in on Twitter to brand the Birmingham two “disgraceful creatures,” although he added more recently while attending to his parliamentary duties in Brussles, “Voting session starts with commemoration of all victims of terrorism in Europe. I remember in particular John McMichael, who was a good man, and George Seawright, who was also a good friend. Both victims of Fenian [Republican] terrorism. Sinn Fein MEP should have stayed seated when we all stood.”

John McMichael was the deputy commander of the South Belfast Brigade of the paramilitary Ulster Defence Association who “hand-picked” Republicans for assassination in 1979. He was killed by a car bomb planted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 1981.

George Seawright was a pro-National Front Unionist politician, who although not directly responsible for any deaths, removed the Irish flag from a public building at gunpoint and physically attacked the then secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Tom King. He was shot in his car by the Irish People's Liberation Organisation in 1987.

When Griffin, a homophobic ethno-nationalist, takes a stand to commemorate the deaths of one mass murderer and one violent nationalist – assigning them both the same moral value as an innocent bystander caught in a car bomb – it's all perfectly respectful and appropriate.

Even though Nick Griffin has spoken at events alongside David Duke, a former head of the Ku Klux Klan, and received funding from American nationalist James von Brunn, who later went on a shooting rampage at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, it's all perfectly perfectly respectful and appropriate for him to publicly shed a tear for victims of terrorism.

Although Griffin welcomed expat South African Lambertus Nieuwhof into the party and gave him a mandate to do a spot of web design, despite him trying to bomb a mixed race church school in 1992 on behalf of Eugene Terre'Blanche's Afrikaner Resistance Movement, it's all perfectly respectful and appropriate for him to publicly shed a tear for victims of terrorism.

When nail bomber David Copeland (one of many would-be terrorists who've held BNP membership), killed three and injured 139 with three bombs in London in 1999, one targeting the Asian population in Brick Lane, one targeting the African/ Caribbean population in Brixton, and one outside a gay pub in Soho, Griffin said simply, "The TV footage of dozens of 'gay' demonstrators flaunting their perversion in front of the world's journalists showed just why so many ordinary people find these creatures so repulsive." Having justified those three deaths, it's all perfectly respectful and appropriate for him to publicly shed a tear for victims of terrorism.

But if Sinn Fein MEP Bairbre de Brún – a respected human rights and equality activist who negotiated on the Good Friday Agreement – stands to publicly shed a tear for victims of terrorism, that's not on – she's a hypocrite. And those two councillors in Birmingham – both representing a single-issue anti-war party – refuse to stand to publicly applaud a soldier from that war, that's not on – they're disgraceful and disrespectful.

The real hypocrite, the real “disgraceful creature” is Nick Griffin, unafraid to pick and mix his principles, and happy to condemn violence against the nationalist right as “terrorism” and yet endorse it through association when it's coming from the nationalist. In Nick Griffin's world, as with all nationalist politicians, the “victim” is always convinced of his own victimhood even as he pulls the trigger, signs the order or slams the cattle cart door closed.