If Pamela Geller’s “they had it coming” response to the young victims of the Utøya massacre wasn’t enough to turn your stomach, LoonWatch draws our attention to this unspeakable article by Debbie Schlussel.
Category Archives: Far right racists
EDL march will go ahead in Telford, with restrictions
Strict conditions are set to be imposed by police on a proposed march by the English Defence League which is to take place in Wellington Town Centre on Saturday, 13 August.
The march will take place between 1pm and 3pm and follow a police designated route from Church Street, turning right into Market Street, right into Bridge Road, right again into Queen Street and returning to Church Street.
In a move aimed at minimising the impact of the demonstration on traders and the wider community the police are using powers under the 1986 Public Order Act which will stipulate when and where EDL supporters may gather and the route their march must take.
Shropshire Live, 4 August 2011
Telford & Wrekin Council statement on the march
Telford & Wrekin Council say they disappointed that the EDL march will be going ahead.
Cllr Shaun Davies, cabinet member for Community Cohesion, said: “The overwhelming voice from the community in Telford, and in particular in Wellington, is that people do not want this march in our town.
“The Council would not want the march to go ahead but we understand and appreciate the very difficult position that the Police are in.
“The law and free speech allows for demonstrations and only under very clear criteria can these be stopped. The police have told us that these criteria have not been met and therefore the march goes ahead.
“The Police have the experience, resources and expertise in handling such matters and we continue to work very closely with them to minimise any disruption this march may cause and most importantly protect the safety of the community.
“While Telford is united against this unwelcome march, it is very important the Council, the community and all our partners continue to get behind the police and to make sure it has as little impact as possible on people and daily life in the borough.”
The EDL are complaining that the police will be restricting their march under Sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act. However, given that EDL protests regularly result in serious public disorder, there is no obvious reason why the police could not have applied for a total ban on the march under Section 13.
Labour Party surges in Norway polls as terrorist attacks delegitimise anti-Islam rhetoric and boost support for multiculturalism
Anders Behring Breivik’s efforts to galvanize anti-Islam sentiment in Norway after last month’s hate killings have given the ruling party he sought to destroy its biggest tailwind in more than a decade.
Support for Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg’s Labor Party, targeted by Breivik in the July 22 bombing and shootings that left 77 dead, soared to more than 40 percent, two polls showed this week. If a vote were held today, that would be the best result since the 1985 election. Approval of Stoltenberg’s handling of the crisis is at more than 90 percent, polls show.
Breivik’s 1,500-page manifesto, published a few hours before his killing spree, railed against the “Islamization” of Norway and Europe, a trend he said he would try to halt through his terror acts. Yet the anti-immigration Progress Party that Breivik had sought to champion now faces a backlash as a key campaigning point is stigmatized ahead of local elections on Sept. 12. That’s left the group, Parliament’s second-biggest, with an identity crisis.
“They will try to keep a low profile on immigration, immigrants, threats from the Muslims,” Anders Todal Jenssen, a political science professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, said by phone. Without the attacks “they would have focused on immigration as a very important issue,” he said.
Backing for Labor, which was re-elected in 2009 on pledges to improve welfare without raising taxes, surged 11 percentage points in the month through July 30 to 41.7 percent, the highest result since September 1998, according to a Synovate poll. A TNS Gallup poll for TV2 showed a 9.2 point rise in support for Labor to 40.5 percent, a 12-year high. The opposition Conservatives slipped almost five points to 23.7 percent in the Synovate poll, while the Progress Party, of which Breivik was a member from 1999 to 2004, dropped three points to 16.5 percent.
Since the killings, more Norwegians say they now embrace multiculturalism, according to an Aug. 1 InFact AS poll published by Verdens Gang. Twenty-six percent of those questioned said they were more positive toward a multi-ethnic Norway than before the attacks. Nine percent were more negative and 49 percent said they hadn’t changed their opinion.
“The anti-Islam argument has lost its legitimacy,” said Johannes Bergh, a political scientist at the Institute for Social Research in Oslo, in a phone interview. “You can’t make the type of arguments that the Progress Party has been making in terms of Islam being a danger to society or a threat to Norwegian culture. You just can’t say that anymore.”
The prime minister’s party is now poised to win next month’s local elections. Polls before July 22 had shown it was set to lose.
Fears of far-right rise in crisis-hit Greece
They descended by the hundreds – black-shirted, bat-wielding youths chasing down dark-skinned immigrants through the streets of Athens and beating them senseless in an unprecedented show of force by Greece’s far-right extremists.
In Greece, alarm is rising that the twin crises of financial meltdown and soaring illegal immigration are creating the conditions for a right-wing rise – and the recent massacre in Norway drove authorities to beef up security on Monday.
The move comes amid spiraling social unrest that has unleashed waves of rioting and vigilante thuggery on the streets of Athens. The U.N.’s refugee agency warns that some Athens neighborhoods have become zones where “fascist groups have established an odd lawless regime.”
Greek police on Monday said they have increased security checks at Muslim prayer houses and other immigrant sites in response to the Norway shooting rampage that claimed 77 lives. “There has been an increase in monitoring at these sites since the events occurred in Norway,” said police spokesman Thanassis Kokkalakis.
The xenophobic rage exploded in May, when youths rampaged through a heavily immigrant neighborhood in broad daylight, knifing and beating foreigners. The attacks left at least 25 people hospitalized with stab wounds or severe beatings. Athens has since suffered a spate of hate attacks by far-rightists.
Last November, the leader of a neo-Nazi group won a seat on Athens’ city council, with an unprecedented 5.3 percent of the vote.
The UNHCR warns of daily attacks by fascist groups in central Athens. “There has been a dangerous escalation in phenomena of racist violence targeting indiscriminately aliens, based solely on their skin color or country of origin,” the UNHCR wrote in a June report. “In certain areas of Athens, cruel and criminal attacks are nearly a daily phenomenon staged by fascist groups that have established an odd lawless regime.”
“I receive threats all the time,” Naim Elgandour, the Egyptian-born head of the Muslim Association of Greece, said in an interview. “Things have gotten much worse lately. It’s an alarm bell from the rest for Europe,” he said. “There may be 5,000 hardcore extremists in Athens, by they are gaining sympathy and tolerance by the day.”
Elgandour said at least 10 makeshift mosques – basements and coffee shops converted by immigrants to use as prayer sites – have been damaged in firebomb and vandalism attacks in the past year.
Since winning a seat on Athens City Council, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, head of the violent far-right group Golden Dawn, has tailored his recent rhetoric to the financial crisis.
“We are living in an enslaved country, financially and nationally,” Michaloliakos, a 54-year-old mathematician, told supporters last month, giving a speech under a statue of Alexander the Great.
“We have a bankrupt economy and the thieving politicians responsible go unpunished,” he said. “How long do they think they can keep lying and fooling the Greek people? Whether they like it or not, the hour of Golden Dawn and nationalist revolution is coming.”
Why’s everybody always pickin’ on me? Wilders accuses Left of witch-hunt over Breivik links
Anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders has accused Dutch left-wing parties of playing “a dirty political game”. He says they are taking advantage of the recent terrorist attacks in Norway to conduct a “witch hunt” against him.
Several politicians and commentators have pointed out that Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian man who has admitted carrying out the attacks, mentions Mr Wilders in his some of his writings. They also note that both men use a similar rhetoric when calling for a war against Islam, which they present as a threat to Europe.
Update: Wilders’ website has a (barely literate) translation of an interview from De Telegraaf, headlined “Wilders furious at ‘witch hunt’ after the Norwegian drama”.
In the interview he attacks Labour Party leader Job Cohen, who was one of the politicians to point out that Breivik employed the same anti-Muslim rhetoric as Wilders. And Wilders procedes defiantly to repeat that same inflammatory rhetoric:
“Islam is the biggest danger threatening our country and the free West. We have too much mass-immigration from Islamic countries and too many hate palaces – Cohen call them mosques, I believe – and immigrants are still overrepresented in the crime figures. Enough is enough.”
See also “Prime minister should comment on Wilders Norway links: D66 leader”, Dutch News, 2 August 2011
Mayor Lutfur Rahman’s speech to United East End public meeting July 29th 2011
Mayor Rahman signs book of condolences at Norwegian Embassy
This is the speech given by Lutfur Rahman, Mayor of Tower Hamlets, at the United East End rally on 29 July.
Good evening and Assalamu Alaikum.
Thank you all for attending this wonderful display of community unity in Tower Hamlets. I know the dangers of extremism has been in your minds this week in the aftermath of the horrors committed in Norway.
I know that your hearts will have been moved, like mine has, by the grief of the Norwegian people.
So earlier today, I was both proud and saddened to go as your Mayor to Norwegian Embassy. I went with a delegation of faith and community leaders from our borough, to offer condolences and solidarity to all the people of Norway from all the people of Tower Hamlets.
And I came away from that visit more committed and determined to a very simple message from my administration – there is no place for hate in Tower Hamlets.
There is no place for hate against people on the basis of sexual identity.
There is no place for hate against people on the basis of racial identity.
There is no place for hate against people on the basis of religious identity.
We are One Tower Hamlets.
We are not going to let the preachers of hate and extremism, whatever community they come from, divide us.
And we certainly have no intention of the letting the EDL divide us!
Because when the man responsible for the mass slaughter of dozens of Norwegian teenagers boasts about his strong links with EDL leaders;
when he brags about his 600 EDL friends on Facebook;
when he tells the EDL to ‘keep up the good work’;
we all know only too well what the EDL’s idea of ‘good work’ is.
Their idea of ‘good work’ is when they sow the seeds of hate and intolerance.
And the sole purpose of their visit to Tower Hamlets on September 3 is to promote the politics of hatred and division on our streets.
That’s why one of the messages that must go from this meeting is to the Home Secretary, Theresa May, and that message is this:
We don’t want the EDL in our borough;
The people of Tower Hamlets don’t want the EDL in our borough;
And you, Home Secretary, have to the power to stop the EDL from coming into our borough on September 3.
But if the EDL do march, we know full well what their intentions are.
The Norwegian killer Anders Breivik praised them for it; they want to try ‘lure’ the local community, and especially Muslim communities, into street violence.
They want images on our TV screens of Muslim and white youth fighting on our streets.
They want to use these images as evidence of our communities at war with each other so they can claim multicultural Britain does not work
We know the EDL want to set us a trap.
Well, my message to them is this; we are not going to fall into your trap!
Between now and September 3 Tower Hamlets is not going to be a divided borough – it is going to be a united borough.
And on September 3 we are going to have a massive, united and peaceful celebration of multiculturalism and anti-racism.
We are going to have inter-faith groups, LBGT groups, youth groups, pensioners groups, Muslims, Jews, Christians and Atheists; members of all political parties and members of no political parties; all standing together to send one message:
We are One Tower Hamlets.
We are a United Tower Hamlets.
And we are not going to let the EDL or any other bunch of extremists divide us.
Geller says Breivik’s motives were legitimate
Pamela Geller is emphatic that she doesn’t endorse violence. However, following on from her defence of a Norwegian Islamophobe who announced that he was “stockpiling and caching weapons, ammunition and equipment” to deal with the Muslim threat, Geller explains that Anders Breivik’s motives in attacking the Labour Party youth camp on Utøya island were entirely legitimate:
“Breivik was targeting the future leaders of the party responsible for flooding Norway with Muslims who refuse to assimilate, who commit major violence against Norwegian natives, including violent gang rapes, with impunity, and who live on the dole… all done without the consent of the Norwegians.”
Update: Think Progress notes that Geller has now removed the caption to a photo of participants at the Labour Party youth camp, taken shortly before Breivik slaughtered 69 of them, which read: “Note the faces which are more Middle Eastern or mixed than pure Norwegian.”
Setback for struggle against Islamisation of Australia
The massed ranks of the Australian Defence League rallied in Sydney on 30 July to protest against sharia law. Judging by photographic evidence, there were fewer than 40 of them.
A contributory factor in the poor turnout might possibly have been that the ADL’s leader Martin Brennan has been arrested and is currently held in a detention centre facing charges of being an illegal immigrant.
Nobel chairman warns Europe’s leaders over ‘inflaming far-right sentiment’
Europe’s leaders, including David Cameron, have been warned to adopt a more “cautious” approach when discussing multiculturalism. The Norwegian chairman of the Nobel peace prize committee has told them they risk inflaming far-right and anti-Muslim sentiment.
Thorbjørn Jagland, a former prime minister of his country, said leaders such as the British premier would be “playing with fire” if they continued to use rhetoric that could be exploited by extremists.
Four months ago in Munich, Cameron declared that state multiculturalism had failed in Britain, a view immediately praised by Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP, as “a further huge leap for our ideas into the political mainstream”. Marine Le Pen, vice-president of the far-right National Front party in France, also endorsed Cameron’s view of multiculturalism, claiming that it corroborated her own party’s line.
Jagland, who is also secretary general of the Council of Europe, told the Observer:
“We have to be very careful how we are discussing these issues, what words are used. Political leaders have got to defend the fact that society has become more diverse. We have to defend the reality, otherwise we are going to get into a mess. I think political leaders have to send a clear message to embrace it and benefit from it. We should be very cautious now, we should not play with fire. Therefore I think the words we are using are very important because it can lead to much more.”
Jagland’s warning is to be welcomed. However, it has to be said that he hasn’t always taken this line. Back in February he gave an interview to the Financial Times who reported:
“Mr Jagland came to the defence of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, David Cameron, UK prime minister, and Nicolas Sarkozy, French president, who have all warned recently that the tradition of encouraging diverse cultures to live side-by-side has damaged national identity and helped to promote the radicalisation of immigrant youth.”
The FT quoted Jagland as saying: “As we understand it now, multiculturalism allows parallel societies to develop within states. This must be stopped. It is also clear that some parallel societies have developed radical ideas that are dangerous. Terrorism cannot be accepted.”
Muslim police officers targeted by EDL
Britain’s National Association of Muslim Police (Namp) will deliver a letter to Theresa May, the Home Secretary, stating that its officers have been targeted by radicalised members of the EDL. It details an unresolved investigation of an unidentified man arrested last year with “quantities of fireworks/devices” alongside names of Muslim police officers circled on whiteboards for attacks.
The letter also outlines concerns that EDL leader Stephen Lennon suggested similar events to those witnessed in Norway could be “years away” if his organisation’s concerns were not addressed.