The English Defence League — from all I’ve heard, they sound rather like our Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop Islamization of America, hate groups organized solely to propagate stereotypes and stir up anti-Muslim fervor, all in the name of patriotism. They’re apparently planning on stirring up mischief this weekend.
Over this weekend, the violent English Defence League will hold demonstrations in towns and cities across our country, trying to spread their message of hate. By blaming all Muslims for the terrible murder of Drummer Lee Rigby, the EDL will attempt to whip up a climate of fear and violence towards the Muslim community in Britain.
They don’t sound like very nice people at all.
At least large numbers of UK citizens are signing this petition to rebuke the EDL’s message of hate. It sounds like a good plan to me, I hope many more of you will do so. We can reject Islamism and the follies of religion without doing harm to people, or demonizing entire ethnic groups.
There’s a strong undercurrent of racism and nationalism in British politics. Interestingly, it tends to flare when the existing Conservative Party doesn’t appear to provide a comfortable home for the bigots. The National Front, which looked very dangerous in the ’70s, was kneecapped by Margaret Thatcher, who spoke the language of the working class racists and little Englanders. She drew them away from the NF with the use of dog whistle rhetoric. Now in Dave Cameron’s Britain the bastards are leaving the tories and becoming visible elsewhere, as we’ve seen with UKIP drawing all the petty bigots into its fold.
They are a nasty group, almost as bad as the defence of England, and the popular league of English defenders. The splitter.
Seriously though, great shout. Time to see if there are any counter protests near me to join.
There are calls for the counter protests to be based around a nice cup of tea.
Mitch Benn did a song about it on latest episode of The Now Show
http://youtu.be/LNvJ0D9tSjQ
As usual from Mitch, it’s a good one
I always thought the extreme right wing was something that other countries worried about, not Britain, but that turned out to be incredibly naive. The upswell in support for the BNP, EDL, and UKIP is really worrying.
Signed and shared.
They’ve always been there, Loud. It’s just that in the ’80s they were absorbed into mainstream Toryism, which just meant their voices were muted.
Actually, at least before the Woolwich murder, both the BNP and EDL appeared to be in terminal decline. Both are trying to relaunch on the back of it – thus doing exactly what the murderers wanted – but I predict they will fail. UKIP, on the other hand, have successfully positioned themselves as the respectable face of xenophobia, and in line with this strategy, their leadership has been quite restrained in its reaction to the murder, although a large proportion of their voters have strongly Islamophobic and to a slightly lesser extent racist views. As has happened elsewhere in Europe, the danger is that they -along with the government – are pulling public discourse ever further to the right, and making the scapegoating of minorities increasingly respectable.
Signed, BTW.
Recently The York Mosque, in northern England, reacted to an EDL demonstration by… giving tea and cookies to the protesters.
Predictably, the bigots have been shouting “Taqiyya! Taqiyya! Taqiyya!” while claiming that free cookies are the first step toward the overthrow of western civilization.
Looks like the skinheads have found something new to do. Well, not new so much.
Man, I was on vacation in Turkey when that British soldier was killed. Sky News treated it like a terror attack with several days of non-stop coverage. It was weird.
One hard-to-explain fact about the EDL is their fetish for vandalising my local – slightly twee but perfectly harmless – railway station. When they have events in the North they make detours just to do it. What that has to do with anything remains a puzzle.
@laurentweppe – 1 June 2013 at 5:55 am (UTC -5)
Taqiyya Cookies, how excellent! Great idea by that Mosque.
@5
They are a subspecies of human. Paleontologists have traced the origins as far as the Neander valley in Germany. They spread to Britain from there.
@Loud – warm smiles do not make you welcome here
You get them everywhere – in South Africa they tend to target Shangaans and Somalians.
They find no pride in their achievements, as they have none, so they turn to their race, their masculinity and/or the *insert nationality here* way.
@14: As someone who potentially has some Neanderthal DNA, I’m deeply offended.
If anyone was concerned about a BNP/EDL take over of the UK can stand down – apparently just 5 have turned up in Bristol, none in Exeter, and the loons are outnumbered by counter protesters everywhere else I’ve heard of. In fact the main event in Whitehall was even outnumbered by people protesting the culling of badgers!
@AsqJames #17
Haha, that made me laugh. Good news indeed!
Maybe this is a delayed reaction to the last time they didn’t pay enough attention to a foreign invasion by the Normans.
@14
The EDL are a posse of knuckle-dragging, lack-witted simian oafs. The Neanderthals were a large brained, behaviourally complex species of human. The archaeological record even provides us with substantial evidence for Neanderthal compassion. Definitely not the EDL, then.
“protesting the culling of badgers!”
Badgers!? We don’t need no stinkin’ badgers. :)
I guess bowling didn’t work out for them after all.
What bugs me about this is that Islam — the idea/religion, NOT MUSLIMS THE PEOPLE — is a major problem worldwide and a growing one. But these people are attacking Muslims, not Islam.
And they are inevitably going to firebomb some “cultural Muslim” or someone who “looks Muslim” but is, say, a Sikh or a Christian or an atheist, and all hell will break loose. These people can’t seem to separate ideas from the persons who hold them.
How do you draw a distinction, though? Islam is more than just a religion, it’s a polity, a law system, and a way of life. It’s really tightly integrated into Muslim peoples’ worldviews.
*sigh* Sometimes I think Islam exists so that Christians have some perspective on how everyone else sees them.
I was in the office today doing some weekend work and apparently missed the Cambridge EDL march just outside the window. I’m told they had just 30 people and it passed off peacefully.
I was at the counterprotest for their last march a couple months back when they were protesting the building of a mosque. I doubt they had above 30 or so marchers there as well, and they were outnumbered by the coppers who surrounded them. The counterprotesters had them beat by a significant multiple.
Signed. The EDL are a blight on Britain, and any little thing I can do to help put a crimp in their hate-mongering is more than worth it.
Pretty much exactly right – it is one of the nastiest ultra-nationalist, neo-fascist hate groups in the UK, and demonisng all muslims is a particular favourite pass time of theirs.
They aren’t; being a titanically bigoted arsehat is a pre-requisite for membership. They represent all that is sick and broken in the social and political discourse in the UK, and it is no surprise at all that they would exploit the horror of a hideous crime to promote their agenda of white supremacist race hatred.
They are, quite simply, the most disgusting poor excuses for human beings to slither around these British isles.
More on the badgers…this is too good not to share.
I heart my country. Got to love a headline that starts: Far-Right Extremists Chased Through London by Women Dressed as Badgers
@Azuma #23:
I think you’re wrong. Extremism is the problem, not any one particular religion or philosophy or any such else. There will likely always be people who take some basic idea, whether political or religious or whatever, and take it too far, far beyond the point which most people sharing the same background could support it. When someone advocates or initiates violence because of it, their actions are wrong but the broader, complicated, nuanced (schismatic!) belief shared by so many is not necessarily wrong.
You say “NOT MUSLIMS THE PEOPLE” yet you are still tarring a billion people with the same brush. If some nutter decided to hack down a vicar in the street, and declared he did so because of his atheism, would you say that — assuming this event was repeated — the idea of atheism had become a major problem worldwide?
@Lee #27:
The unacceptable pursued by the incredible?
@Me 28:
I said ‘ is not necessarily wrong’ when I meant to say ‘is not necessarily at fault’. Apologies for the lack of clarity.
The EDL are not the brightest of the bunch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL1jDcAHkc8
I’ve been told by friends who marched today that the fascists were outnumbered 10-1
Wasn’t that on Ummagumma?
:-D :-D :-D
Day saved!
What immediately comes to mind is Klingons vs. Nazis on the holodeck. X-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
+ 1
…Is that staged?
Does the English Defence League care about Ireland, Scotland and Wales?
There have been a number of murders of muslims in the UK. These don’t get much press and you can’t attribute them to the EDL but clearly some people are doing a bit more than just kicking off in the streets.
These people are a similar breed to football hooligans. Calling them a far right group is inaccurate. There’s plenty of racism on the right but they don’t hold a monopoly.
I dunno. Is there a place where “normal” people can express their displeasure with Islam and all its undesirable baggage including dressing women in sacks and promoting amongst SOME of their own, a hideous violence that no one in the Muslim community seems to be able to control, or at least attempt to control or speak out against while admitting that there is something about their stone-age faith that is a huge problem? Violence no and tarring all muslims with the same brush, no. But the faith has a problem that has become a problem for the rest of us that aren’t tainted with islam. The faith IS the problem.
#28 Rich Woods
I, have come to disagree with that. Extremism can be a good thing – I think we all agree that it is a good thing we are all anti-slavery extremists for example, and the tendency to blame extremism tends to be a bit of a cop-out.
The accusation of extremism is used to insulate ourselves, of making the perceived extremists something other than us, which means we tend not to learn from them.
This is why I am actually opposed to culture – because you get the exact same thing with tribalism where people derive their sense of mattering from cultural norms they stick to, and any threat to that such as people with different cultural norms.
Leave aside all of that and ultimately we are all one species – each human being matters because that is all any of us are. To people like the EDL Islamist extremists matter because they are a threat to the “English way of life” – a threat to their cultural identities. Islamists are exactly the same, and the rest of us aren’t all that far off.
Extremism doesn’t really come into it – it is that insular fear of others, that need to promote ideas because you feel they make you matter, not because they are right.
We all have that urge to proclaim offense when others disagree with us, to proclaim other ideas as being unAmerican, or unAfrican, or unBritish so as to avoid having to actually deal with them, and we all have that urge to treat the simple fact of difference as an assault.
We bind so much of why we matter into identities rather than our simple common humanity, that things which simply show how it does not need to be this way can be deeply uncomfortable. To dismiss the issue as simple extremism, only serves to blind us to the real dangers within ourselves.
Do you support punishing a slave owners by torturing him to death after having forced him to eat the remains of his family members who have been raped then flayed alive before his very eyes?
Do you also support the idea of summarily executing people who openly disagree with your Rape-Flay-Feed-Torture mega-combo policy?
Do you support applying the Rape-Flay-Feed-Torture mega-combo policy to people who would dare to organize in protest of your Rape-Flay-Feed-Torture mega-combo policy?
No?
Then stop spewing bullshit about “Oh, no, extremism can totally be a good thing”.
I don’t want Behavior X to ever happen or I don’t want belief Y to be held true by anyone is not extremism.
I don’t want Behavior X to ever happen or I don’t want belief Y to be held true by anyone therefore I will enforce good behavior and correct thinking by either exacting or encouraging others to exact in my place gruesome and nightemarish punishment toward the people who do X or believe Y as well as toward the people who object my punishing so that no rube ever dare to do X or profess belief in Y: THIS is extremism.
laurentweppe
Do you support punishing a slave owners by torturing him to death after having forced him to eat the remains of his family members who have been raped then flayed alive before his very eyes?
I was unaware that the Taliban, in their extremism in Afghanistan was feeding parents their own children, or that Saudi Arabia was doing that to heretics.
I do not support punishing slave-owners with death, I support sentencing them to prison for a very long time. I would also argue that people who support slavery should be publicly shunned and shamed for that stance.
Further I would argue that the civil war was ultimately a good thing because it spelled the end to American slavery – or do you think no atrocities were committed by the Northern forces during that period?
All of this is somewhat more extreme than what most American religious extremists (often referred to as ‘fundies’) generally want for atheists.
As to extremists of the sort you describe, you are capable of the same, or haven’t you noticed the horrors of Guantanamo Bay? Lynndie England wasn’t particularly an extremist, she just stopped seeing people and started seeing ‘terrorists’.
That is the mechanism behind atrocities – not specific ideas or beliefs carried to the extreme, but the dehumanisation of other people. That an idea is extreme or radical is neither here nor there, it is that instinct to make people into monsters.
And that is part of all of us, it is something we all have to guard against. Simply declaring “Extremists” at the problem ignores the fact that we aren’t all that different ourselves – we have to learn to not become like that ourselves.
That isn’t avoid ‘extremes’, that is ‘see the humanity in others’.
What is exactly wrong with EDL? They are against Islam, not against other religions. One of their spokes person is non-white, so they don’t seem to be racists. They burned Nazi flag to those they don’t support that kind of ideology.
peter2vill,
Of course EDL are racists. Many of the leadership are not just racists, but Nazis. See here, for example, and here. Since it took me less than a minute to find these pages, I have to question your good faith.
Can you really be that stupid? Showcasing a handful of non-white members would only fool a complete lackwit.
peter2vill,
Of course EDL are racists. Many of the leadership are not just racists, but Nazis. See here, for example, and here. Since it took me less than a minute to find these pages, I have to question your good faith.
Showcasing a handful of non-white members would only fool a complete lackwit.
@Nick Gotts
I agree that sounds racist to me too. But just to be sure do we have the facts; Who is that person speaking in the video and what is his position in EDL? What was the context of the comment (who/what is he referring to) and has he or EDL leadership recanted/apologised that and/or stated that they don’t support racism?
Accusing that the organistation is racist based on a comment from a one middle management person who makes a comment against the organisations guideline does not make the organisation racist.
Your second link goes to article telling about “THE EDL IS RACIST, particularly targeting Muslims” and “anti-Muslim racism”. I thought Muslims are not a race. Please explain.
Some people attend EDL demonstrations chanting ‘Burn a mosque down’ and making nazi salute against the ideology of EDL does no make EDL racist or fascist. Can you provide some evidence that EDL policy or leaders support “Burn a mosque down” and “making nazi salute”?
None of those links supported your claims that their leadership are Nazis. The fact is that EDL leadership organised a burning of Nazi flag to demonstrate they do not support that
ideology. It sounds unlike to me that Nazi supporters would make anti-Nazi video to make a
point. Do you have any evidence for your assertion?
Your claim “Showcasing a handful of non-white members would only fool a complete lackwit”.
Note that EDL *spokes person* is non-European ethnicity. You might want to rephrase your
comment.
Do you have any real evidence to your claims?
peter2vill
The EDL is essentially fascist because they use fascist tactics to achieve their aims.
While there is some window dressing in the form of talk about integration and protests against known fascist groups, this tends to work out to really just trying to gain a monopoly on the market for hate – scratch the surface and you find that they are really no different.
If the EDL was to match its words with action it would include interventions based around actually helping people. Instead their methods amount to sending drunken hoodlums to punch people in the face, loot ‘foreigner’ stores and then loudly complain about how their victims want nothing to do with this “English Culture” of theirs.
peter2vill,
I’m not your errand-boy: you can find all the evidence you want for yourself, if you are not a racist liar come here to spread confusion. As my second link shows, top leaders of the EDL such as Tommy Robinson, aka Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, Chris Renton and Alan Spence, have long records in racist and fascist organizations such as the BNP. That link also lists EDL-related attacks on mosques, and on black and Asian individuals. Islamophobia is in itself a form of racism, as it functions to reinforce existing inequalities and hostility between ethnic groups.
Anyone who can JAQ off with a straight face about whether the EDL is really honestly really for sure really positively really and truuuuuly a racist and fascist organisation or not is just screaming bad faith.
Is my memory playing tricks on me, or does peter2vill have form for this?
Signed. I fucking hate the EDL, they’re a national embarrassment.
@peter2ville
Anyone even slightly familiar with the EDL and their antics who still claims they are not an Islamophobic organisation is either a liar or a fucking idiot. So which are you? Or are you simply unfamiliar with them?
Actually, you know what? peter2ville has answered his own question.
That right there is the problem.
@brucegorton
What are these “fascist tactics” EDL is using that extreme left/right/religious/single issue groups are not using? I just want to know why you label them fascist.
Does EDL advocate/ask/support “sending drunken hoodlums to punch people in the face and loot ‘foreigner’ stores” or is their leadership against it? If they are against such behaviour should they be blamed for that?
@Nick Gotts
So basically you can’t provide evidence for your claims and then you shift the burden of proof. Nice try. Why is asking for evidence now “spread confusion”?
I have links to Christian organisations but I’m not a Christian and I have links to socialist organisations but I’m not a socialist. I was once even a member of a God-only-anti-gay boy scouts but their view does not reflect my views on those particular issues.
The question is if EDL is “racist and fascist”. You just haven’t provided this evidence. Islamophobia is *NOT* in itself a form of racism. It (phobia) is irrational fear of Islam. If you have studied Islam, understood it and then are against some form of Islam, you are not Islamophobic. Islam is not a ethic group. It is a religion having members from all ethic groups. You might want to study this issue a bit.
@opposablethumbs
Can you provide any evidence that EDL or its leader endorses “racist and fascist” behaviour?
you said:
“Is my memory playing tricks on me, or does peter2vill have form for this?”
Can you provide any evidence to this attempt of poisoning the well? If you can’t find evidence for this please retract this.
@Thumper; Atheist mate
I’m not familiar with EDL as I don’t live in Europe. To my understanding EDL is against extreme form of Islam. It seems that their leadership has reasonable understanding what extremist Muslims want to do in the UK, and EDL leaders’ lives have been threatened, so I don’t see why you claim they have irrational fear of Islam. Can you provide some evidence why EDL is Islamophobic?
I have to correct my earlier statement. Tommy Robinson stated that they are against *extreme* Islam; not against Islam as I stated before (He stated an example of 100 sharia courts in the UK and attacks against people critisising Islam)
What is wrong being against a religious ideas or being against only one type of religious idea?
peter2vill,
Liar. I provided sufficient evidence, in the form of the past membership of EDL leaders in racist and fascist organizations, and of Nazi salutes and racist attacks at EDL demonstrations.
It is led by fascists – neither you nor they have denied the past membership of fascist organizations my second link mentioned – and is most certainly racist. I have provided adequate evidence for both these claims, which were the ones I made. Further evidence of the EDL leadership’s links to fascist organizations is available here.
Liar: the evidence I provided was quite adequate and as I say, you can find plenty more yourself if you are genuinely interested in the facts, which clearly you are not. It’s clear you would not accept any evidence short of an official EDL declaration that it is a racist and fascist organization – but one of its main purposes is to broaden the appeal of the far right and draw in people who would not join an overtly fascist or even overtly racist organization.
Yes, it is, in the definition of racism used by social scientists: ideology or behaviour that systematically reinforces existing racial inequalities.
It’s quite evident you know nothing whatever about it, or else are simply dishonest. The vast majority of Muslims in north America and western Europe are non-white, which means that in these regions of the world – which is where the term “Islamophobia” is used – it systematically serves to reinforce the disadvantages suffered by particular ethnic groups. That makes it a form of racism. Moreover, the EDL thugs whose attacks on Asians are mentioned in the second link I gave (if you were at all interested in the facts, you could find many more simply by googling “EDL racist attacks”) didn’t care whether they were Muslims – as noted there, in one instance they attacked a Hindu temple, and Sikhs have also been assaulted – let alone what form of Islam they followed.
Finally, it’s worth noting that the EDL leader, Tommy Robinson aka Stephen Yaxley-Lennon aka Paul Harris, has a number of criminal convictions, including at least two for violence and one for using a false passport. So anything he says, including anything he says about the aims and ideology of the EDL, should be accorded all the credibility due to the words of a violent criminal liar.
@ Nick Gotts
I don’t get how somebody’s past actions/views makes his current organisation anything. I guess according to your logic many Christian organisations are actually atheist organisations because their leader used to be an atheist.
You seem to think that some random web site claim is “evidence” for something. If some organisation is racist/fascist/nazi it should be easy to quote/video their
policy/manifest/website/video/leader speaking/leader acting to prove the point – not some
third party web site. BTW I can show you a website proving homeopathy works.
I just wonder how you think EDL is a “nazi” organisation while they make a point of burning a
Nazi flag. Do you also think Muslim organisation would make a point by burning a Koran?
I agree that racism is “ideology or behaviour that systematically reinforces existing racial
inequalities.” Islam is *not* a race or ethic group. I does not matter if all Muslims would
come from the single ethnic group – being a Muslim is a choice. You can’t choose your race. For example being against communism is not racism.
According your definition your attack on low-to-middle class ethic-white dominated EDL is racism. Do you think that you and people who signed above petition are a racist?
People like you seem to want to use/misused “Islamophobia” to silence criticism of Islam and Muslim extremists. Any ideology should be open to criticism without name calling.
Keep in mind that some people have read Koran, attended Mosque Koran studies, lived in a
Muslim country, and can differentiate between general Muslims and extremists. People who have made an informed view to be against Muslim extremists don’t have a “phobia”. Get informed – Don’t use the word “Islamophobia” when talking about people who are against Islam or Muslim extremists.
Yes, Tommy Robinson has a number of criminal convictions which does put a big dent to his credibility. This demands that people double check all he says and keep an eye on if his actions match what he officially or privately says. This is the reason I also asked you to get your information from the primary sources, not from a third party web site.
And you don’t want to be Ray Comfort type of investigator who claims if you lied one time you are always a liar.
I asked you earlier and I ask you again:
Can you provide some evidence that EDL policy or leaders support “Burn a mosque down” and “making nazi salute”?
and
Why is asking for evidence now “spread confusion”?
So you are just assuming that people who no longer are explicitly members of racist and fascist organizations are no longer racist and fascist. That’s a rather strange null hypothesis.
(Editing the next quote for illustration purposes)
Your views on “race” and “ethnicity” are oversimplified and naive. Religious identities can be part of a ethnicity, or can be an ethnicity in itself. It happens. Usually in areas where that religious identity is a distinct minority.
lolwut? An “attack” on a group of those who are predominantly “white” is “reinforcing existing racial inequalities”? Are you really going to argue that white people are underprivileged so that you can cover as many right-wing talking points as possible?
@anteprepro
I’m happy with null hypothesis that we don’t know if EDL is racist/fascist/Nazi. That is why I keep asking for primary source evidence, but nobody seems to be able to show that. I made a counter point showing that your past actions do not always predict the current action. When somebody is accused of criminal activity null hypothesis could also be “innocent or not-guilty until proven guilty”, but I’m happy to go with “we don’t know” here.
You might be confused because the word Jew is used for ethnic group and religion;
Religions: Islam and Judaism (= following the laws and God of the Hebrew Bible)
Followers of the religion: Muslims and Jews
Ethic group: —- and Jews
Note how the word Jew is used to describe a member of an ethnic group *and* a follower the laws and God of the Hebrew Bible.
So to correct your example – you should have written:
“I agree that racism is “ideology or behaviour that systematically reinforces existing racial
inequalities.” Judaism is *not* a race or ethnic group. I does not matter if all followers the God of the Hebrew Bible would come from the single ethnic group – following the God of the
Hebrew Bible the is a choice. You can’t choose your race.”
So you are confused about race, ethnicity and religion so you might want to retract your
statement “Your views on “race” and “ethnicity” are oversimplified and naive”
regarding your “lolwut”:
Notice that the sentence starts: “According [Nick Gotts’] definition…”
Also understand that racism can be target at underprivileged *and* privileged groups.
Now please read my comment again.
Funny how people disappear from this discussion when they are asked to provide real evidence that EDL policy is racist/fascist/Nazi.