The Guilty Men

There is a classic scene in The Godfather, where Don Vito Corleone sits down for a meeting with the other heads of the Five Families, and agrees to make the peace if only it is guaranteed his son Michael is safe from reprisals for killing a police captain. As Don Corleone warns though,

'I'm a superstitious man -- and if some unlucky accident should befall him -- if he should get shot in the head by a police officer -- or if he -- should hang himself in his jail cell -- or if he's struck by a bolt of lightning -- then I'm going to blame some of the people in this room. And that, I do not forgive.'

In a similarish spirit of unforgiveness, it might be worth compiling a list of the top ten people who are worthy of blame should the worst case scenario happen and the British Nazi Party either take control of a council or even take a seat in this general election. Of course, as a Marxist, I understand that it is not the fault of individuals if a fascist party makes any kind of breakthrough - rather one should blame a crisis prone system of exploitation in which people are forced to compete with each other for jobs, the racism against migrant workers that results combined with the past failure of any British government to ever fully come to terms with the legacy of empire, the recent invasions and occupations of Muslim countries and concurrent rise in Islamophobia, the 13 years of attacks on the working class made by a so-called 'Labour Government' and so on and so forth. Nonetheless, individuals do play a role as well, and while theoretically every single member of Parliament who fiddled their expenses deserves to be on this list, this post aims to highlight the ten key individuals who I personally will not forgive should the fascists make any kind of breakthrough in two weeks time...

1. Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC - for giving the Nazis unprecedented favourable and largely uncritical media coverage in the run up to the election - essentially he (like most others on the list) might properly be regarded as 'an appeaser of fascism'.
2. Jeremy Paxman, BBC Newsnight presenter - for giving 'Nazi Nick' Griffin some of the most friendly and cosy interviews imagineable (eg on Newsnight on 24/4/10).
3. David Dimbleby, BBC Question Time Presenter
4. Tony Blair, former PM and war criminal.
5. Gordon Brown, current PM for his obsession with 'Britishness' and spinning the racist 'British Jobs for British Workers' line in 2007
6. Jack Straw MP - for both trying and failing to beat Griffin in public debate
7. Margaret Hodge MP (not strictly a 'guilty man' but an appallingly useless)
8. Peter Hill (editor Daily Express) - for relentlessly whipping up racism against migrant workers
9. Dominic Mohan (editor The Sun) - ditto
10. Paul Dacre (editor, Daily Mail) - ditto

Feel free to suggest others I have missed out etc... How for example did racist Immigration Minister Phil Woolas slip under the radar? Should Rod Liddle have made it on? What of Martin Amis? Or the likes of Nick Cohen and others on the pro-war 'Left' who gave intellectual legitimacy to racist terms such as 'Islamo-fascism'?