Disclosure: I am a strong believer in minimalist government. I think it is fair to say that I consider many so-called libertarians to be hopelessly big government stooges who just haven't thought about it enough.
I am not saying anything unique when I note that the main benefit of the Internet and blogging is that it has allowed those who believe in small government and limited governmental interference to get their message out in a way that earlier 20th century technologies did not. This coincides, not coincidentally IMO, with an ever growing mistrust in the ability of big government to solve the problems that modern societies face. At present I do not believe that a majority of people think this way but the fraction that does is, it seems to me, growing even in countries where statism has a long and relatively successful record (e.g. France or Belgium). Furthermore, even people who seem keen on their own big government are willing to believe all sorts of conspiracy theories about other governments whether it is the USA, the EU, Russia, Iran or the Rotarians. In Western Europe this disaffection with big government is leading to an increasing disaffection with current mainstream political parties because today's politicial mainstream parties are mostly in favour of big government and having their turn at putting their snouts in the trough. This leads to a large "apathy" vote at many elections and, worse, leads to votes for "fascist" extreme parties such as the BNP, Front National etc.
Not at all coincidentally I note that many of these parties seem to be desperately appending libertarian, small government policies to their nastier racial purity ones. The party that seems to have gone the furthest in this regard is the Vlaams Belang in Belgium, which seems to be genuinely limited government, free market and, officially, only keen on dealing with unemployed immigrants; that is to say dealing with the social security system that permits people to sponge off the rest of society for life. I wrote about the VB last year before the Belgian local elections where I said that I thought that the pre-election carve up by the non VB parties in Flanders was a bad thing. I got a certain amount of stick in the comments because, while the VB may officially not be nastily racist, it certainly appears to contain a bunch of nasty racists within it.
In the rest of the continent, the German right wingers seem to be lagging behind, at least as far as I can tell but the Austrian right has also made a similar move albeit one that its leader Joerg Haider seemed upset with. In France Charles Bremner reported that Le Pen's FN is at the least drawing attention to the failures of the big state, which is quite a step forward in a country where dirigism has been the poicy for centuries.
It is in Britain though where things are most interesting. The far right seems not to be trying this policy on very hard as, unlike most other countries, there are already a number of small(er) government parties - e.g. UKIP and some parts of the Tory party - who can allow small government folk a less unpleasant choice. The BNP is going after the guardianistas, political correctness and the like, but they have yet to really try and hop onto the limited government plank - its last mainfesto was full of Gaullist ideas of protectionism and national champions of the sort that the French and Germans are still proving to be a really really bad idea. However it may well try to do that if the Nouveaux Conservatives continue to suck up to Polly Toynbee. After all it has tried to do precisely that on the English Parliament idea, although, as Gareth points out, it has some odd ideas about who might be allowed to vote for members of such a body.
We in the BNP will create an English Parliament for the indigenous English people themselves. The British State and its political structures will be the sole political representative bodies for all those of non-indigenous Anglo-Saxon English descent in England. Those from non-indigenous English and immigrant backgrounds should only be able to vote for parties and to stand for election in political institutions that are British, and never indigenous English. The English must first awaken and then rule over themselves. The BNP will form a Council of the Isles for the various Folk Parliaments of Britain to send elected representatives to participate in the proceedings of the British State, but only those that define themselves as indigenous English must and will have the right to form an English Parliament that recognises their ancestral rights over the lands of England and their right to self define and identify themselves as the indigenous English Folk of this land.
How, one wonders, is one to prove that one is an "Anglo-saxon" or "indigenous". If one has ancestors who were Huguenots is one excluded? how about Normans? or Vikings? (or Jews? ) and would this mean that Danes, Dutch and Northern German immigrants would be allowed to vote because they would seem to be just about as "Anglo Saxon" as their distant cousins who crossed over the North Sea 1500 years ago? And what about the numerous descendants of Poles, Czechs and others who fought for Britain in WW2?
[Aside: I went to primary school with a kid called Dimitry Wozinski (or something like that) and hence butt of endless "Dim" jokes. As far as I know his mother was as English as they come but his father was the son of a Polish refugee who fled the Nazis in 1939. I think said grandfather became a pilot because I recall that in between acting out episodes of "the Bionic Man" we had Dim as squadron leader of the Spirfires as we attacked the evil Germans - but for all I know he was merely a maintenance worker in the RAF. From what I remember after 3 decades and a bit this kid was, apart from the name, pretty much your perfect BNP "indigenous White Working Class English" and utterly indistingushable from the Pauls, Daves, Mikes, Darrens and Kevins that were in the same class. ]
The only way for that I can think of for "indigenous people" to prove that they are such would be to subject everyone to a genetic test and issue ID cards based on the result of this. Since the BNP seems unhappy with ZANU Labour's ID Card plans, and since despite the BNP claims, the genetic evidence is rather mixed, it is uncertain how a genetic test would work anyway. In other words the plan is total bunk.
But to go back to the original idea. The defenders of the transnational status quo with all theit bureaucratic institutions and total lack of accountability are trying to tar those of us who like small government with the "fascist" tag even though, as Tim W points out, in many ways fascists like the BNP are left-wing and espouse similar policies to those of the Guardianistas and other tranzies.
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