I overlooked this story when it first appeared two weeks ago, but was alerted to it today by an email from the estimable anti-fascist campaign Hope not hate. The story concerns remarks made by British neo-Nazi leader and aspiring MP Nick Griffin following the earthquake in Haiti that has so far caused an estimated 200,000 deaths.

Three days following the devastating 12 January quake, when around 45,000–50,000 Haitians were already known to have lost their lives, and 100,000+ deaths were forecast, Griffin is reported to have said:

“While the Haiti earthquake is terrible, the winter death toll in Britain will be similar. No aid here though… Fifty thousands pensioners will die… of cold this winter… Sending aid to rioting ingrates while our own people die is stinking elite hypocrisy.”

“Rioting ingrates”? I can see a roaring trade in downtown Port-au-Prince in wax dolls of the Griffin creature. Every little will help in rebuilding the shattered economy of Haiti.

Forgive my punctiliousness – one of those unfortunate character traits possessed of scientists – but I have to challenge the macabre image conjured up by Griffin of 50,000 old folk frozen to death in front of their equally aged single-bar electric heaters.

Every time we have an unusually bad winter, newspapers and broadcast media feature stories of excess deaths due to the cold, and the numbers involved are typically in the region of 10,000. But uncertainties in the figures are large, and the details complex given the difficulty in nationwide surveys of attributing deaths to specific causes.

The result is sensationalist news reporting, and it’s hardly surprising that Griffin and his lumpen mates have sought to make political capital out of a conflation of two damaging acts of nature, poor urban planning and inadequate welfare provision. The upsides are that the fascists have made themselves look very silly, and it allows unscrupulous hacks such as me to get away with completely over the top headlines.

HOPE Not hate
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exposing the extremism behind the BNP

Support the people of Haiti!

Help British grannies!