EDL

crackerjack

Well-known member
I've moved this from the other thread. with the BNP having a disastrouss election and undergoing some kind of oprganisational meltdown, the EDL is likely to be home to most of the action for the far right, so it should get its own thread. They also get a surprisingly easy ride from people who wouldn't touch the BNP.

Things are brewing round here
http://trialbyjeory.wordpress.com/20...of-persuasion/
http://uaf.org.uk/2010/06/stop-the-r...n-east-london/

June 20, EDL vs UAF outside the Troxy, which is hosting Islamic (alleged) nasties.
 

hucks

Your Message Here
I think you've copied the shortened links, rather than the full ones

Anyhow, is one of the reasons the EDL gets an easy ride/ is not fully exposed simply because it's so provincial? It's not a London thing, it seems to come mainly from the Midlands,and the Metropolitan media just have not been interested.

I'm from Norwich, and my friends at home, as it were, are much more aware of the EDL than I am. I say "aware", I mean "sympathetic to" in some cases. I also say "friends"...
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
I think you've copied the shortened links, rather than the full ones

Anyhow, is one of the reasons the EDL gets an easy ride/ is not fully exposed simply because it's so provincial? It's not a London thing, it seems to come mainly from the Midlands,and the Metropolitan media just have not been interested.

I'm from Norwich, and my friends at home, as it were, are much more aware of the EDL than I am. I say "aware", I mean "sympathetic to" in some cases. I also say "friends"...

They've been quite careful (after a bad start) to distance themselves from the BNP, deny any links to racism and wave their token Sikh around (I believe he's now a fairly senior official, notionally at least). Saying your against Islamic extremism is something of a no-brainer too, though how that tallies with a gang of football hooligans walking around Asian areas singing "We want out country back"...

btw, I don't think the media have ignored them, but reporting is necessarily confined to the marches and demos (which usually just tunr into rucks with teh UAF). Big piece in the Guardian a few weeks back. dunno what the middle-brow tabs make of them - where's Scottdisco when you need him?
 

crackerjack

Well-known member

Yup, the council issued a statement saying they\'d review their relationship with the Troxy if it went ahead. They took the hint.

Downside is the EDL claim a small victory (though it's a weird kind of victory that amounts to the council organising to keep you out), but I can live with that if it means a) making life harder for IFE types to organise and propagandise b) keeping these BNP-type scum from holding punch-ups in our streets.
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
Big piece in the Guardian a few weeks back. dunno what the middle-brow tabs make of them - where's Scottdisco when you need him?

i wuv you too Cracker :)

i am afraid haven't the foggiest re Mail. Express, AFAICT, avoids them, or condemns street violence in passing but doesn't go in to things.

the latter are clearly in a bind. as you may know, they loudly condemned the BNP pre-election, though everyone else could see they have been an effective recruiting pamphlet for the BNP for years - New Labour who obv bear responsibility, Margaret Hodge etc, Mike O'Brien when in the Home Office, all Home Secs, esp Blunkett and probably Clarke (you know the history) and the tabs in symbiosis egging ea other on still further have done that anyway, of course.

so, they made overt statements condemning the BNP (because it is easy to be the Express and laud, as they genuinely do, Britons of any ethnic heritage who are settled here and who are honest, hard-working taxpayers, not this recent bunch who just want to swamp us), but the letters page tone was fairly easy to read; Express readers would write in now and again praising the BNP (who were) promising an even tougher stance on migrants than we already had under Nu Lab etc or the then main oppo Tories were promising.

and the steady drip-feed of Express stories (nonsense, conflation, exaggeration, outright lies, etc) did a great job for the BNP.

so i imagine they can't go too near the EDL, because even the slowest Express readers would see the similarities in terms of analysis about Muzzies that a gang of street thugs definitely share w Mr Desmond's organ.

as i say, haven't a clue about the Mail mind.

at least both papers lauded Refugee Week this week, which is something. there's still all their regular garbage about immigrants, but this is a bit of progress.
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
tbc, the UK being one of the few govts to keep open borders during that big enlargement round a few years ago of course wasn't the country being hard on migrants per se, but, i mean, because until fairly recently the middle-brow tabs still appeared to have trouble understanding the difference between asylum seekers, EU immigrants, etc, they fostered that culture of cynicism about asylum seekers (and still do about immigrants), and it all just feeds into one giant populist laundry list, that Kurdish chap, for one, kicked to death by youths in the northeast some years back and witnesses said they heard them shouting anti-Muslim slogans as they murdered him, people believing TalkSport when they did that patently false story about Kosovans and the Queen's swans, just the general toxification of the air...
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
citing a murder in the same breath as a bit of uninformed rabble-rousing over the airwaves might sound like i'm breaking some sort of Godwin's law for media studies, but i'll leave that post up, FWIW.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
In the week following their Newsnight debut, EDL get their first paper supporter.

Many more pathetic fumbles like Paxman last week and they might get more, Express being the next obvious choice. (Mail might be wary of Hurrah for the Burberry Caps-type headlines, especially given the footy-hoolie background of the EDL).
 

john eden

male pale and stale
The transition from street fighting and boasting on facebook to being an actual political party that people will vote for is not an easy one.

The EDL seems to largely consist of fantasists and self-identified football "crews". Unlikely to succeed, even with the Star's support.

Likely scenarios include:

Being absorbed by BNP/UKIP or similar.

Another big scandal about the leadership either being corrupt or being stupid or both. (See: the seemingly completely invented assassination attempt against The Leader prior to the Luton event).

A series of static demos which get more boring and lose support.

Some other way of successfully releasing all that pent up testosterone and adrenaline, which results in prison sentences aplenty.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
The Guardian piece completely fails to get to grips with the EDL's wacky post-modernism.

The conclusion about them being anti-semitic is hardly proven and their gay/jewish "sections" (is it one person who happens to be both?) is not addressed. Nor them flying the Israeli flag.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
The Guardian piece completely fails to get to grips with the EDL's wacky post-modernism.

The conclusion about them being anti-semitic is hardly proven and their gay/jewish "sections" (is it one person who happens to be both?) is not addressed. Nor them flying the Israeli flag.

No, it's just based on outdated assumptions about EDL=racist=BNP=anti-semite. Whatever we think of EDL's claim not to be racist, it seems pretty clear they're a new(er) generation with little of the Hitlerite baggage of Tyndall.

And anti-Islamism/Islamophobia (as you will) has much more widespread support than the BNP. Their main obstacle to growth (at least as a movement, even more so as political party) is their hoolie roots. Your leader adopting the name of a local football hooligan as a pseudonym (completely overlooked by Paxman) doesn't help.

A merger with UKIP would be funny, if only for the Farage/Robinson press conference.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
The Guardian piece completely fails to get to grips with the EDL's wacky post-modernism.

The conclusion about them being anti-semitic is hardly proven and their gay/jewish "sections" (is it one person who happens to be both?) is not addressed. Nor them flying the Israeli flag.

Yeah, what the hell's with that? I wouldn't be at all surprised if plenty of their boys on the streets were a bit anti-Semetic, I mean it goes with xenophobia generally, but I'd have thought the leaders would have tried to get some visibly Jewish characters on board to further legitimise the "We're not racist, see?" line. And it surely wouldn't be that hard to find some conservative Jews who might share their scaremongering views on Islam - would be quite funny to see them recruit Melanie Philips...

Edit: also, what crackerjack said.
 
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john eden

male pale and stale
Yeah people forget that the overriding aspect is anti-Islam, bolstered up by the terrorist attacks and some stupidness by extreme Islamists in the UK. I wonder if you've actually had any experience of jewish people if you're a working class bloke in Luton or wherever? I imagine it's all fairly humdrum stuff if you have?

So yeah the old NF/BNP models don't apply because the EDL can position themselves as being for "women's rights" or pro-gay or pro-Israel because "militant Islam" is "against" these things. And they can even posture about not being racist because "Islam isn't a race".

I think they have one token Sikh member, for example (the Muslim and Sikh kids at my school hated each other, but were all victims of racism, go figure...). Newsnight included a section where their leader received a package of research material about the Koran from... Israel.

But yes as you say there are problems with this on the ground, they've had PR grief and fist fights when overt nazis turned up and started sieg heiling for example.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
So yeah the old NF/BNP models don't apply because the EDL can position themselves as being for "women's rights" or pro-gay or pro-Israel because "militant Islam" is "against" these things.

Well, let's face it, it is. But clearly it's not going to go away just because some people have a march and do a bit of shouting, or even if they do more unpleasant things; quite the opposite, of course.

But then, how feminist, pro-gay-rights etc. is the average EDLer, blah blah.

And they can even posture about not being racist because "Islam isn't a race".

Again, this is strictly true - for a given value of "race". You don't have to be racist to feel uncomfortable with certains aspects of a religion or the actions of some of its followers, and if you're ill-informed and fed propaganda it's easy to extend those feelings towards everyone who follows that religion or even comes from an associated ethnic background (which is where the racism-per-se comes in). I don't see Islam in this country as an unalloyed good, not because I'm terrified of Different People but because it's an authoritarian organised religion (standard disclaimer: just like Christianity - in fact I think a lot of people fail to realise just how similar the two religions are).

Newsnight included a section where their leader received a package of research material about the Koran from... Israel.

Oh dear...
 
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john eden

male pale and stale
Yes absolutely... the difficulty I have is that these sorts of attacks which focus on muslims as muslims (rather than any other identity) are more likely to make them more religious/militant, as people band together when under the cosh.

It's hard to see a more liberal or even secular muslim identity emerging under these conditions, which you would think would be a sensible aim. (Unless you're just up for a ruck).

There was some footage on Youtube of about half a dozen EDL blokes, with their hoods up (bit like Burkas, eh?) shouting insults at a lone muslim woman on a train. Bravery issues aside, I doubt they bothered to ask her about how "militant" she was or got into a discussion about the finer points of her interpretation of the Koran. What about a "woman's right" to travel peacefully without intimidation?

And yet the defence the EDL mounts is that they are only interested in the barking mad excesses of islam in the UK...
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Well yeah, I mean it's a truism that in situations like this the extremists on either side are really each other's best mates, aren't they?
 
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