BNP exploits Gmail sponsored links

It’s a feature of the far right over the last quarter-century that they have been quick to exploit the possibilities of all forms of computer-mediated communication. Checking my Gmail earlier I came across this in the ‘sponsored links’ header:

“BNP banned in Britain”? Well, of course they’re not, although this allegedly respectable political party has so many links to illegal racist, neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups there are serious questions about their right to legal protection.

Without rehashing readily available information on the BNP they have been quite adept in recent years at portraying themselves as a non-racist ‘party of the people’, ditching the bully-boy tactics of the past, and doorstepping the British working class. Their reward has been a worryingly large number of local councillors and a renewed sense of importance and acceptance.

Anyway, clicking on the BNP link takes you to this:

That’s the BNP leader Nick Griffin, a convicted racist. Even a cursory reading of the current poll results tells us that politic-poll.com is not all as it seems. Lo and behold, this is http://politic-poll.com:

This is not a website designed to host political polls at all, it’s a BNP website made to look like one. It’s hosted in California but other registration details are restricted at Whois. By contrast, the BNP’s official site is hosted in the UK. Other pages on the site include a Flickr feed for anything tagged ‘bnp’ (an eclectic mix!) and a similar YouTube feed with videos like ‘Time to End Anti-White Racism in Britain’ but also some exposés of just how murky the BNP sphere of influence really is. No editorial discretion there then.

There are plenty of other details to be gleaned using freely available web tools and I’m sure someone with better forensic skills than me could find out who specifically is behind this. The poll page is linked to a rewards site called GiveAwayCafe.co.uk, a US-incorporated company, so there’s a double commercial tie-in at work here.

How did they get into Gmail as a sponsored link? Presumably they paid Google AdWords to do so, although I have no idea of the advertising rates.

There are various ways to turn off the advertising in Gmail, although Google would of course rather you didn’t. I keep it on to see what sort of things Google’s algorithms think (from scanning my inbox) I’d like to see, although I’ve certainly never bought anything as a result. The most common advertisement I get is from MI6 recruitment. Go figure.

This is another example of how the far right are identifying and exploiting niches in cyberspace. It’s actually a good example of a sophisticated media strategy. Very granular. And it’s perfectly legal.

Update: It’s been suggested to me that this might be a scam site exploiting the BNP, rather than a BNP initiative as such.  More details if they emerge.