The inclusion of a question about Jan Moir on the edition of Question Time featuring Nick Griffin was fitting, serving as a perfect reminder of where a large proportion of the BNP's support comes from.

The Daily Mail - whose Latin motto translates roughly to "tits and fear" - have roundly condemned the far-right party, and ahead of the broadcast yesterday published a handy guide to Nick Griffin's most bigoted quotes.

Well that's great, except for the fact that many of these vile views can be found expressed by the Daily Mail's own journalists at Mail Online. Here I've presented a handy breakdown, pairing the Daily Mail's Nick Griffin quotes with related quotes from the Daily Mail itself.

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EROSION OF WHITE CULTURE:

Nick Griffin, Quoted by the Daily Mail:
"'Mass alien immigration and suicidally low birthrate mean that the White Race is poised on the brink of a precipice of rapid and irreversible decline. If we do not step back now, we face political and then physical extinction. Unite or die!'"

The Daily Mail Itself:
Ruth Dudley Edwards (in an article titled "Will Britain one day be Muslim?"): "The danger of ending up like those poor, despotic and medieval Islamic states in which millions live miserably is a prospect that Christians, Hindus, moderate Muslims and non-believers should be uniting to prevent. But the truth is that we are doing little to stop it."

MULTICULTURALISM:

Nick Griffin, Quoted by the Daily Mail:
"Has called Britain 'a multi-racial hellhole' and described British Muslims as 'the most appalling, insufferable people to have to live with'. Sunday Times, June 2009"

"'We haven't given up on our principle that mono-racial countries . . . monoethnic countries are more stable and. . . multi-racial societies always end up going down the road of tyranny.'"

The Daily Mail Itself:
Uncredited: "The bitter price of multicultural folly"

Uncredited: "Tony Blair has admitted at last that multiculturalism has failed, but future historians will puzzle why anyone thought it would ever succeed."

ISLAM:

Nick Griffin, Quoted by the Daily Mail:
"[Islam is a] vicious faith that has expanded from a handful of cranky lunatics about 1,300 years ago... now sweeping country after country before it, all over the world.'"

The Daily Mail Itself:
Melanie Phillips: "It is hard not to reach the dismal conclusion that a society faced with violence in pursuit of the goal of overturning Christian values and conquering Britain for Islam turns tail and runs away."

Richard Littlejohn on an ICM poll even he described as "loaded" (see previous posts on this): "ICM regards the sample group of 500 [Muslims] as 'moderate'. If this is what passes for moderate, heaven help us. Even a leading Muslim Labour MP says the results of the poll are 'alarming'. [...] Are we to see Saudi-style 'Chop Chop Square' executions every Friday in the centre of Bradford?"

COUNTING IMMIGRANTS:

Nick Griffin, Quoted by the Daily Mail:
"'A favourite childhood game. . . was counting black people on the streets from the car window when my parents drove through London.'"

The Daily Mail Itself:
Uncredited: "Poles are already setting up Polish branches of trade unions in Southampton - where they number up to 30,000."

Andy Dolan: "For the last 13 years Jack has been the most popular boys' name in the land. But in multicultural Britain children named after the Muslim prophet Mohammed come a close second."

HOMOSEXUALITY:

Nick Griffin, Quoted by the Daily Mail:
"'TV footage of dozens of gay demonstrators flaunting their perversions in front of the world's journalists showed just why so many ordinary people find these creatures so repulsive.'"

The Daily Mail Itself:
Jan Moir (who else): "Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael. Of course, in many cases this may be true. Yet the recent death of Kevin McGee, the former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, and now the dubious events of Gately's last night raise troubling questions about what happened."

Melanie Phillips: "The leaflets also urged homosexuals to 'turn from your sins and you will be saved'. But to the secular priests of the human rights culture, the only sin is to say that homosexuality is a sin."

Melanie Phillips (again, this time in The Spectator): "The true liberal position, that it is right and just to tolerate behaviour that deviates from the norm as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else, is deemed to be rank prejudice on the grounds that homosexuality is not ‘deviancy’ but normal. The agenda is therefore not liberal tolerance but illiberal coercion against mainstream moral values..."

LIBERALS:

Nick Griffin, Quoted by the Daily Mail:
"'If the liberals would just let us have one island, one place, where we could go and do what we want to do by ourselves, most white nationalists would be quite happy to have it.'"

The Daily Mail Itself:
Amanda Platell: "...their predicament is testament to the moral collapse that is the true legacy of a liberal establishment..."

Lindsay Johns (on, brilliantly, the sacking of Carol Thatcher for racism):"How dare these BBC liberals patronise us."

SENDING 'THEM' BACK:

Nick Griffin, Quoted by the Daily Mail:
"Asked what he would do with people living in Britain who couldn't be 'sent home' because their nationalities were not clear, he said: 'Drop them out of a plane somewhere over Africa. I don't really care.'"

"[Any Muslim caught] indulging in specific crimes [would be told] it's either go back to Pakistan or be hanged."

The Daily Mail Itself:

Richard Littlejohn (Webchat):
Pieter: Should asylum seekers/political refugees who committ an offence automatically be expelled?
Richard_Littlejohn Yes."

OSWALD MOSLEY:

Nick Griffin, Quoted by the Daily Mail:
"'There is a strong, direct link from Oswald Mosley to me.'"

The Daily Mail Itself:
It's tempting to bring up the fact that the Daily Mail itself supported Mosley prior to World War II, but since the owners and editors of that period have long since moved on, that would be a little unfair.

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Now, some caveats are needed here.

Firstly, these are a subset of Nick Griffin's quotes, and the Mail have not (to my knowledge) pushed anti-semitism or encouraged violent uprising in their pages. Well, not since the 1930s at least. You can't use a selection of quotes like this to demonstrate that the Mail are as bad as Griffin - they're not.

Another point to be made is that some of these statements are perfectly acceptable, if a little ignorant. There's nothing inherently evil about the quotes on "liberals", nor is counting immigrants necessarily racist. I include these examples to highlight the hypocrisy of the Mail's inclusion of them.

But my point is this. By printing a constant stream of bigotry and fear-mongering over race, religion and sexuality (of which the quotes here are a tiny sample), the Daily Mail (and Jan Moir) have done more than anyone to promote the rise of the BNP. By printing stories about immigration that are simply lies, and infusing them with racially-charged hyperbole, they have helped to create an atmosphere in which issues like immigration cannot be sensibly discussed; in which extremist views can thrive.

It is a testament to their wilful ignorance of their own role in promoting this vile party that they are able to print an article condemning sentiments expressed by their own damned columnists.