We must engage with the enemy if we are to win the war.

You have to love Facebook once a year we have a crusade to defriend or watch out for someone. Last year it was Carla Jones [whom I meet in person and she is most definitely not a Mirror ‘plant’ journalist].

Now we have a crusade to oust a BNP member, who has over 1000 Facebook friends of which I share about 300 of them. When I received the first request [posted on my wall] I blogged about HERE

A couple of days ago I received a second [this one was a direct message] warming me about the person’s indenting and requesting that I block or defriend that person – I can understand why some might feel so strongly about such an issue, but……

I think and belief that true and effective change can only be achieved with debate and the exchange of views and ideas. So many times in history people fought wars to change what they ‘believed’ was bad for the better to only make matters worst. The approach of blocking and shutting-off those we despise or even disagree with ideologically is not that much different than the wars some vainly fought throughout history. Shutting- off people and blocking them is neither good for debate nor is it democratic!

The BNP like most live on the oxygen of publicity and feeds on the attention it gets whether negative or positive. Remember last October when Nick Griffins went on Question Times and some Labour front benchers [Peter Hain & Alan Johnson] said they will not share the same platform with him – plus all the rioting outside the BBC all did was just give Griffins and his party the publicity they so badly needed and craved.

This Facebook business is the same – boycotting, blocking and defriending will give air to this person which I suspect it not the desired or anticipated outcome. What will be far more productive is to engage with them and expose the flaws of their beliefs. Furthermore, if the BNP’s main argument is that the mainstream political parties don’t listen to the masses of indigenous Britain – how can we refute that claim if all we do is stop listening and talking to them? Debate we must continue regardless of how hard and uncomfortable it might be.