Nick Lowles reports: “I’ve picked up a rumour this morning that EDL leader ‘Tommy Robinson’ has been refused entry into the United States where he was due to attend an anti-Islam rally at Ground Zero in New York. Robinson was travelling with a number of other EDL leaders when he was turned away at the Immigration desk for apparent entry form irregularities. He was taken into custody and almost immediately put on a plane back to London. His fellow EDL members were allowed to go through.”
Category Archives: English Defence League
EDL to hold demonstration in Leicester
Controversial group the English Defence League (EDL) has revealed it will hold a protest in Leicester next month. The EDL – whose stated aim is to oppose Islamic extremism – said about 3,000 members would be involved in the demonstration, on Saturday, October 9. Critics say EDL is a far-right group whose demonstrations have led to violence in other UK cities.
Anti-fascist movement Searchlight said the EDL was in Leicester for “one reason only”. Spokesman Simon Cressy said: “They’re a walking time bomb who bring disharmony and disruption wherever they go.”
Leicester Unite Against Fascism (UAF) is planning a counter-demonstration. A spokesman said: “Leicester UAF is building opposition to this proposed demonstration. Previous EDL marches have seen shops and houses vandalised, people attacked and racist chanting. They do not represent the majority of people in this country.”
Councillor Manjula Sood, leader of the Leicester Council of Faiths, said: “We saw what happened in Bradford and we don’t want the same thing here in Leicester. We have built a reputation of community cohesion. We are not perfect but other cities look to us as an example of cohesion and we don’t want to damage that.”
Bradford: more charges against EDL thugs possible as police examine CCTV footage
Police have vowed to bring the full force of the law against anyone involved in violence during a far-right demonstration in Bradford last Saturday. West Yorkshire Police are to scrutinise CCTV footage of the English Defence League’s demonstration in the city centre following a string of arrests for disorder.
So far two men have been charged as police made a total of 14 arrests after outbreaks of violence at the static protest. A spokesman for West Yorkshire Police, said: “We will be reviewing the CCTV footage for the day and looking to bring justice to anyone who was causing trouble on the day.”
Trouble briefly flared during the protest in Bradford’s Urban Garden as police attempted to keep hundreds of EDL supporters in check. Smoke bombs, stones and bottles were thrown towards the group’s opponents, forcing mounted police and officers wearing riot gear to move in.
A group of the protesters managed to break free from the police cordon, clambered over hoardings at the Westfield site and ran towards Bolton Road. A police officer suffered minor injuries during the demonstration.
Arshad Ali, a spokesman for We Are Bradford, said those found guilty of taking part in the violence should receive “significant” sentences, in line with those handed out after the Bradford riots nine years ago. He said: “Asian youths involved in the 2001 disturbances were meted out heavy long-term sentences for similar offences. We hope there will be equality and parity in the way justice will be done.”
EDL launches ‘European Defence League’, organises Amsterdam demo in support of Wilders
The English Defence League (EDL), the anti-Muslim ‘street army’ composed largely of football hooligans that burst onto the front pages of British newspapers in the last year as a result of its often violent protests, is to hold a rally in Amsterdam in October, EUobserver has learned.
The EDL is to demonstrate in support of Geert Wilders, the Dutch anti-immigrant firebrand, with a recently launched French Defence League and Dutch Defence League, modelled on the English group, to join them along with other anti-Islamic militants from across Europe.
The demonstration in Amsterdam is due to take place on 30 October, according to the EDL website. Mr Wilders heads to court at the end of next month on charges of inciting racism. The case begins 5 October, with a verdict expected 2 November.
Joining them there will be members of the recently formed Dutch Defence League and French Defence League, both modelled on the EDL. The latter draws its members from the ranks of far-right supporters of the Paris Saint Germain football club, known in France for long harbouring a far-right element among the club’s supporters, although elsewhere on the continent, according to EDL spokesman Steve Simmons, not all the defence-league-linked groups have their origins in football hooliganism.
The French Defence League, which employs both an anglophone version of its name and “Ligue Francaise de Defense,” founded in May and more latterly takes the name Ligue 732, after a group of Paris Saint Germain supporters, that, according the outfit, “tries to unify all French Casuals, Ultras and French Fans to fight against Radical Islam.”
The 732 figure references the year that the French king Charles the Hammer, the grandfather of Charlemagne, won a victory at the Battle of Tours halting Islamic expansion in western Europe.
Mr Simmons told EUobserver that militants from the “anti-Jihad movement” in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and “other European states” will join them in Amsterdam for the launch of what is termed the “European Defence League” or, alternately, the much cuddlier “European Friendship Initiative.”
“I would also like to take this opportunity to announce a new demonstration that is to take the English Defence League global,” Tommy Robinson, the pseudonym of the group’s leader, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, a former member of the BNP, wrote on the EDL website in a missive in July.
“You may be aware that the great man Geert Wilders is in court for race hate charges,” he continued. “The EDL has been in contact with our European brothers and sisters and we have decided that on Saturday, 30 October the European Defence League will be demonstrating in Amsterdam in support of Geert. We hope that all of you will be able to join us for this, what promises to be a landmark demonstration for the future of the defence leagues.”
“We feel that freedom of speech is being eroded and a lot of appeasing of radical muslims and Islam in general. Geert has the courage to take this on and we want to support him,” the group’s spokesman, Steve Simmons, told EUobserver.
Geller defends EDL’s actions in Bradford
Newsweek‘s Declassified blog reports an email exchange with Pamela Geller, who sees no reason to withdraw her backing for the far-right EDL despite its supporters’ widely reported racism and hooliganism at the demonstration in Bradford on Saturday,
Geller told Declassified: “The media has been defamatory and libelous towards any and all counter jihad activists, including the EDL, which far from being neo-Nazi and racist, is pro-Israel and has Sikh and other non-white members and spokesmen. The EDL’s own explanation of what happened in Bradford is here. As you can see from that statement, a group of Islamic supremacists and Communists actually began the violence by throwing rocks at EDL members.”
In response Declassified points out that reports by the police and even the right-wing press contradict the EDL’s fantasy account of a peaceful, patriotic event that came under attack from the Left and was otherwise only slightly marred by the unrepresentative actions of a handful of “Combat 18 boneheads”:
“The Telegraph said that as EDL protesters got off buses that had taken them to the site, they shouted slogans at locals, including ‘Allah-Pedophile’, ‘We want our country back’, and ‘We love the floods’ – a reference, the paper said, to flooding that’s now devastating much of Pakistan.
“The Daily Mail, a newspaper perhaps even more conservative than The Telegraph, also reported on the violence. The paper’s website carries photos of what it says are EDL protesters, with one caption reading, ‘Crossing the line: EDL supporters in hats, hoods and balaclavas hurl missiles at police in Bradford today’.”
But Geller will have none of it. In reply she acknowledges that some of the slogans the Telegraph attributed to EDL protesters were “in bad taste, although in saying that I am not accepting the accuracy of The Telegraph account, and also understand that words said in anger are not always words the speakers would endorse in moments of reflection”.
Indeed, according to Geller, if racist chants and violence occur at EDL rallies this is very probably part of a conspiracy to undermine the “counter jihad” movement:
“The Left and real neo-Nazis frequently attempt to infiltrate EDL rallies in order to discredit the EDL. This is amply documented. Both have an interest in seeing the EDL fail: the Left so that there will be no serious resistance to its agenda, and the neo-Nazis so that there exists no respectable alternative to them in opposing the British elite, and also because the neo-Nazis have generally aligned with the Islamic jihad that the EDL resists.”
But then, Geller also believes that the attack on New York taxi driver Ahmed Sharif was a leftist plot to discredit her campaign against the “Ground Zero mosque”.
The truly bizarre thing is that this woman is regularly featured in the US media as if she has some rational ideas to contribute to a discussion of Islam. As for the UK, faced with the example of Pamela Geller you do feel that in all fairness Melanie Phillips should perhaps now be renamed “relatively sane Mel”.
Postscript: For more on the common ground Geller finds with the far Right, see the recent article by Heidi Beirich at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch blog.
EDL supporters attack police at Bradford protest
Far-right activists threw smoke bombs and missiles and fought with the police as trouble flared during a protest organised by the English Defence League.
Bricks, bottles and smoke bombs were thrown at anti-racism supporters and police as around 700 EDL activists – including known football hooligans and BNP members – held a “static protest” in Bradford city centre. Mounted officers and others in riot gear were attacked as they pushed the EDL into a penned area. Skirmishes continued as EDL speakers addressed the crowd and there was more violence as its supporters were put back on coaches.
The Nazis who infest the EDL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZjFU47Ia7rs
Via Lancaster Unity
One of the EDL’s staunchest defenders is of course Pamela Geller, who has written:
“The EDL is routinely smeared in the British media, as the Tea Party activists are smeared in the U.S. media. The corrupt, biased media defames any group, person, or organization standing against Islamic supremacism. They tar, feather, and destroy the good name of good people who stand for life, liberty, and individual rights. Libel and slander like ‘racist’, ‘fascist’, ‘bigot’, etc. color every news report of every counter-jihad action. The quisling media is the propaganda arm of jihad. It’s despicable. There is nothing racist, fascist, or bigoted about the EDL.”
See also “Racist thugs urged to hurl pork at Muslims”, Daily Star, 22 August 2010
Demos defends EDL’s right to march in Bradford, says it would help them ‘feel a sense of belonging to the society in which they live’
The Home Secretary should lift the ban on marches in Bradford this weekend or risk making protesters more radical, according to a think-tank. Banning protests by extremist groups is an ineffective way of combating their ideology, Demos said.
The warning comes as police in the West Yorkshire city prepares for clashes between the English Defence League (EDL) and Unite Against Fascism this weekend, despite Home Secretary Theresa May authorising a blanket ban on marches in the city.
Jamie Bartlett, a researcher at Demos, said banning the march “could push members of the English Defence League into more radical groups like Combat 18 or the Racial Volunteer Force”.
Home secretary bans EDL march in Bradford
Home Secretary Theresa May has authorised a blanket ban on marches in Bradford on August 28 – the day the English Defence League (EDL) was planning a protest.
The far-right group had intended to march down Manchester Road, one of the biggest Asian areas in the city, and Unite Against Fascism (UAF) had planned a protest in the city on the same day.
A Home Office spokesman said: “Having carefully balanced rights to protest against the need to ensure local communities and property are protected, the Home Secretary gave her consent to a Bradford Council order banning any marches in the city over the bank holiday weekend.”
The city council sought a marching ban following an 11,000-strong public petition and a formal request by West Yorkshire Chief Constable Norman Bettison. Mr Bettison said he was taking the action after considering the “understandable concerns of the community.”
BNP want Jewish ‘comrades’ to fight Muslims
Members of far-right organisations are urging colleagues to support an unlikely ally – Israel. Small groups of BNP and English Defence League supporters are championing the Jewish state as part of a perceived struggle with the Muslim world. They call for Israel and the BNP to be “comrades in arms”.
One person commenting on a pro-BNP blog suggested that the party should open an office in Israel to “show solidarity with the Israeli people”. But Jon Benjamin, Board of Deputies chief executive, warned: “No one in their right mind should have any truck with the BNP or their ilk.”
A blogger on The Green Arrow, an independent website which supports the BNP, encouraged others to look to Israel to avoid the West’s “meek surrender to Islam”.
Under the name Reconquista, the blogger wrote: “Against the backdrop of an enormous anti-Israel propaganda campaign waged by Muslims and by the Marxist left, Israel continues to fight for its very survival.
“I believe it is absolutely imperative for British Nationalists to be fully aware of the lies, deceptions, hypocrisy and moral cowardice surrounding Israel and the Jewish people.”
One person commented on the blog: “I have written several times calling for committees for the mutual defence of white and Jewish communities to be set up here. Both people are under attack… Jewish people need to stop opposing us as their enemy.”
Another adds: “We need Israel. We must join with them to fight this terrible wave of Islam trying to take over the world. The Jews know all about ethnic cleansing, and they will never allow themselves to be in that position again.”
In May, the extreme right-wing anti-Islamic fundamentalism group the English Defence League launched a “Jewish division”, encouraging Jews to “lead the counter-Jihad fight in England”.
Mr Benjamin said: “Short-term political expediency and pronouncements of this kind are merely a cynical ploy by the BNP to try to re-invent themselves to capture the support of those who should know better.”
A CST spokesman said: “There may be the odd BNP activist who thinks that antisemitism is stupid, and there may well be others who think that supporting Israel is a good idea, but none of it changes what the BNP is all about.”