Laughing at Griffin

by Graham Davies

The three most powerful presentational weapons for fighting extremism are accuracy, moderation and a sense of humour. They were used with varying degrees of success against Nick Griffin on Question Time.

Griffin clearly wanted to seem as reasonable and mainstream as possible, insisting at a very early stage that his views had been widely exaggerated and misquoted. David Dimbleby nicely punctured that false balloon by reading out a sequence of quotes that Griffin simply could not refute.

It was the mainstream politicians that let the Anti-Fascist side down, especially Jack Straw and Chris Huhne. They were determined to shout their way through pre-prepared rants, no matter what questions were asked. They turned the programme into a "How Outraged Can I Get?" competition. Their staged emotion made me feel nauseous.

Bobby Greer, the playwrite, had exactly the right presentational attitude to Griffin: she treated him as an object of simultaneous tragedy and comedy. She laughed at him and felt sorry for him....but without coming across as hating him.

Of course, this is far too clever an approach for any politician to understand.