No Matter What Your Reservations About The EDL

You must watch this video all the way through:

EDL's Tommy Robinson Attacked

As Anonymous pointed out in a comment to a different thread here at IBA:

Tommy Robinson violently beaten up to shouts of "allah ackbar" and "Merry Christmas Tommy".

Gates of Vienna has the story, including more photos.

Unpleasantness

From Kleinverzet:

I am reluctant to post this. It will not make me many friends and possibly antagonize a couple of people I hold in esteem. But I do want to state my views. That's why I became a blogger in the first place: To bother all of you with my (questionable) wisdom. That, for better or for worse, is the kind of person I am.

Veterans of the counter-jihadist part of the blogosphere are undoubtedly familiar with the storm cause by Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs (LGF). Back then LGF was a leading blog in the counter-jihad, until Johnson, for reasons best known to himself, started throwing all and sundry under the bus, accusing them of Nazi sympathies and other forms of human depravity. The end result, fortunately, resulted in a complete marginalization of LGF and left the counter-jihad (mostly) in tact.

Three years on, and yet again the counter-jihad blogosphere is wracked by a storm of in-fighting. Pamela Geller, of Atlas Shrugs, initially withdrew her support for the English Defence League (EDL) after some vague and unsubstantiated claims the top of the EDL had been infiltrated by 'neo-fascists', turning the EDL into an anti-semitic Nazi party.

The EDL has a Jewish Division, led by a Roberta Moore, who sought active co-operation with the Jewish Task Force. The latter is described as a far-right American group, whose leader Victor Vancier has been imprisoned for terrorism offences. Not wanting to be associated with terrorism, the leadership of the EDL openly distanced itself from the Jewish Division, stating "If they [the Jewish EDL] continue with their plans to forge links with the terrorist JTF, the EDL will have no option but to sever its links with the Jewish division as we cannot support terrorist sympathisers". Mrs. Moore refused to sever links with the JFT, which eventually let to her leaving the EDL (or was she thrown out, after all?). This seems to be the proximate cause of the current rift.

Ms. Geller (and in her wake: Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch) initially denounced the EDL for distancing themselves from Roberta Moore, seeing in it a sign of increasing anti-semitism and fascism within the inner circles of the EDL. In turn, this forced Tony Robinson, leader of the EDL, to publish a statement affirming the EDL's support of Israel as the only free and democratic nation in the Middle East. Moreover, the statement emphasized that extremist ideas, whatever their origin, will not be tolerated.

Gates of Vienna and others published an open letter, challenging Ms. Geller to put up concrete evidence of anti-semitism in the EDL's leadership, or, failing to come up with such evidence, apologize and (re)state her support for the EDL. Ms. Geller, evidently realizing she jumped the gun dramatically, has done the latter, but refuses to do the former, insisting that she didn't really withdraw her support for the EDL, called them anti-semitic fascists or called upon 'genuine anti-jihadists' (1) to leave the EDL. And to put insult to injury, she referred to those taking her to task over her hysterical overreaction as "bottomfeeders [who] just bang keyboards and jockey for position on the bottom of the food chain". By which she evidently referred to the camp led by GoV.

In the mean time the 'recent unpleasantness' (the slightly coy term used by Baron and Dymphna of GoV) has descended into some pretty petty squabbling. As happens so often, the original cause is all but forgotten. What is left is a rather tedious 'he said - she said' back and forth, completely divorced from the issue that started all this. Neither side seems to be willing to give the other the benefit of the doubt, increasing the acromony on both sides. Which is why I initially didn't want to get involved. My dad taught me early on not to step into a dogfight, unless you want to get mauled. Additionally, there are aspects to the whole situation that make picking a side and sticking with it a bit of an iffy proposition.

The fact is: Ms. Geller did initially, and completely prematurely, withdraw her support for the EDL. In subsequent posts she conveniently forgot about that little outburst, making us believe her withdrawal of support was meant as a conditional. This is not what her initial post said. In her initial post, Ms Geller stated: "Now that the person whom I most trusted in the EDL, Roberta Moore, has resigned, as she was increasingly uncomfortable with the neo-fascists that had infiltrated the administration of the group, I too am withdrawing my support from the EDL". And with that she caused the EDL substantial and, as it turns out, unwarranted harm.

To err is human, and this would seem to be a case where personal preferences got in the way of an objective appraisal of the situation. Ms. Geller could have said so, telling the EDL she had it wrong. But that is apparently asking a tad too much of Ms. Geller.

However, her weariness of GoV and affiliates is, if slightly hysterical, not completely unfounded. There exists an unfortunate tendency over at GoV (and elsewhere) to cast the counter-jihad, or the merits of Western civilizations, in racial terms. As just one example I give you a Fjordman essay published on GoV. In an otherwise excellent recent essay, 'When Treason Becomes The Norm: Why The Proposition Nation, Not Islam, Is Our Primary Enemy', Fjordman concludes: "The only way to restore sanity to our countries is to restore the concept that a country is the homeland of a nation of closely related people with a shared heritage" (2).

As far as I'm concerned that is the wrong conclusion (correlation is not equal to causation, I believe. But I'll leave that for another post). It defines a country in terms of blood-ties, of ethnicity, of race. It is a rather exclusive definition that denies or ignores the groups of immigrants that have settled in European countries throughout history and have become an integral part of many societies. In the case of Holland I will only have to point to the relatively large numbers of Portuguese Jews or French Huguenots that settled in the Netherlands during the 16th and 17th century. Over the last century Holland has seen influxes of Chinese, Malukkan, Syrian Orthodox Turks and Vietnamese refugees (in roughly chronological order) who have all nestled in Dutch society and have become valued parts of it.

If determining whether anyone belongs anywhere is based exclusively on pedigree, as Fjordman seems to suggest, these groups are not Dutch and, more importantly, will not be allowed ever to be viewed as Dutch, no matter how much they integrate and/or assimilate. I know I am going to sound like a left-wing liberal here, but: That is unjustified, unjust, narrow-minded and downright xenophobic. And completely counter-productive: it will breed a lot of (understandable) resentment in groups that do try to fit in, while doing exactly nothing to remedy the problems with groups that reject Dutch/Western society to begin with.

I tend to agree with Pamela and Robert Spencer on this subject. I certainly do not agree with the folks at Gates of Vienna.

However, I must say, my overall despair (and resulting ennui), at the direction of the counter-Jihad, precludes me from writing on the subject at all.

It's simply too depressing.

I'm glad Kleinverzet decided to post on this, as I think it is a good general summation of the controversy. Go read the whole thing.

But, let me be clear that I simply do not agree with the following sentence:

... this suggests that Atlas Shrugged is no longer devoted to the anti-jihad per se, but is now entirely devoted to the inflated sense of self of Ms. Geller.

That is completely unfair to Pamela, who does great, sincere, and impassioned work, whatever my disagreements with her have been.

Let us be clear about one thing. The EDL's problems do not merely lie in the region of anti-Semitism. It has been clear, for years now, that the EDL is rife with people who are outright racist. The EDL is filled with members who are also members of the BNP. Many of the EDL's leaders, over the years, have been members of the BNP. The BNP, for those who do not know, is a separatist party which would admit no non-white members, until in recent years, they were forced to do by law.

It is true that the EDL has attempted to establish itself as a more inclusive organization. To the extent that they have succeeded in doing so, they are to be commended. However, as Pamela has pointed out, much of their racist behavior is endemic, as it is supported by people in leadership positions within the EDL.

EDL on BBC London News

Tommy Robinson, Leader of the EDL seems to be doing well in the media recently. He successfully managed to "stuff" Jeremy Paxman on BBC 2's Newsnight on Tuesday and that's no mean feat because it's usually the other way round even with media savvy politico's.

This latest media effort was shown on Thursday, just ahead of the big Luton demo today. I had to grab it from YouTube and then spent many hours trying to get it to display in it's proper 16:9 format. I then edited out most of the idiots at the end because I was sick and tired of hearing the same drivel from the usual idiots. I put up some captions to illustrate the point. The Labour MEP and the Iman had nothing to say but the usual taqiyya.

Watch This

Leader of the EDL at Leicester tells of police harassment of himself and his family



Reports of the EDL being racists and violent thugs are being put out by the antifa, marxist opposition. They would do that wouldn't they? Let's remember that the same applies in the US with the libtard dems applying the same worn out accusations against the Tea Party supporters by manipulating the MSM and "creating" photo ops.

Got it? OK. Now let's see how the establishment are dealing with the EDL but letting the violent opposition off scot free. The EDL are not perfect by any means but right now they are all we have in the UK to oppose islamification.

EDL Runs Amok In Leicester

Yesterday, I posted a piece questioning what it means to say the EDL "runs amok" "smashing" news equipment and police cars.

BabbaZee sent over this video. They certainly are running amok here, and one wonders what would have happened in this fast food-type restaurant, had their not been police protection:

English Defense League Uncovered

Posted without comment. What do you all think?

from The Guardian

Dudley, Do Right

The English population is growing rapidly, thanks to Labour Party government scheme to import people to create a multi-cultural society, like it or not. Today in Dudley, Birmingham, the local mosque is too small for the exploding population of Muslims, who want build a large mosque to accommodate their population. The locals, other than the city council, objected, and the mosque, in spite of the people's wishes, is slated to go up. The English Defence League has arrived to demonstrate in favour of the people's will.

More: http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2010/05/dudley-do-right.html

EDL Scenes from the Front: Leading the March

From Atlas Shrugs:

EDL Rally: [4/5/2010 10:01:06 PM] Trevor Kelway: This is the Russian girl who did the short speech in Russian to support the families of those who have died in recent suicide attacks. She wanted to lead the march.

I thought my readers should see more of what actually happened at the EDL rally.

Sareeta, a British Indian Sikh girl and her friend, who was of Caribbean appearance immediately made it clear that the English Defence League was not formed as an organisation which discriminated against individuals from an ethnic background other than English. Surprisingly there are still some narrow minded individuals and groups around in this day and age who will attempt to smear an organisation with these accusations for political gain, even though they know the accusations to be false. Also, Guramit gave a speech, and there was also a speech by a young girl with family in Russia. She gave her speech in Russian as a message of support for the recent Muslim Metro suicide bombings. Sareeta's speech, and the young girls speech can be found here.

EDL Supporters are pelted with Bricks and Bottles

Unfortunately, whilst Sareeta was giving her speech, a mob had approached a corner of the cage surrounding us and started to throw bricks and bottles at us. This caused a surge towards the area, and the missiles were thrown back. Police officers outside the cage did nothing. They stood idly by as we were pelted with a barrage of missiles. This was the moment when some members of our group proceeded to shake the fences down in an attempt to chase the offenders away. We were completely defenceless from inside this makeshift cage, and though we do not condone violence, self defence is the right of every human being. As i mentioned , the police stood and did nothing from outside the cage, and left our stewards to attempt to diffuse the situation. Eventually the fences came down, and at this point the police officers who were standing at the safety of the exterior of the cage appeared to run away! Our stewards did a fantastic job at calming the crowd and containing them in the designated area alone, and as you can see by the video, no major disruption was caused.

Robert Spencer has more on the latest subterfuge to infiltrate the EDL.

EDL rejects white supremacists, neo-Nazis trying to infiltrate

Here is a message from English Defense League leader Tommy Robinson, further belying charges that the group is racist, neo-fascist, neo-Nazi, etc. "Extreme Far Right Nationalists Trying To Recruit EDL": EDL rejects white supremacists, neo-Nazis trying to infiltrate

I'll tell you who you are

In response to the post "Who the fuck am I"

If you are taking the piss out of us Brits who are for the EDL you are way off the mark - stupid as well by writing about white supremacy etc. You will find more about white supremacy in your own country - and a long history of it. All we want is to stop Muslim supremacy for fucks sake.

The purpose of the EDL as I see it is to

(1)wake up the middle classes to islamification of England

(2)force the media to report the issue and so accomplish (1)

(3)make the politicians aware that they had better take notice that they are pissing us off.

You may notice that NONE of the crap that you wrote is included in the above.

What do you think we should do, keep blogging? Roll over like the rest of the dhimmies and let the Muslims take our culture, rich history, freedom, and lives away from us?

SOMEONE HAS TO DO SOMETHING FOR FUCKS SAKE. IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT BUTT OUT AND WORRY ABOUT WHAT OBAMA IS DOING TO YOUR COUNTRY.

So who are you? Someone who can't see the wood for the trees, that's who you are. Normally gun toting, gungho, typical Yank but suddenly the typical sarcastic type who is worried about our right wing for fucks sake when he should be worried about his very own left wing and it's Islamification of America.

Oh, I just realised that when the Muslims look like they are taking over you can all get out your guns (80 million gun owners) and take your country back. Sorry, but we don't have that advantage over here. We have to try to stop it getting to that point.

cross posted with Commonsense Against Islam