Category Archives: Far right racists

Republicans welcome Wilders to Tennessee

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Anti-Wilders protest TennesseeDutch politician Geert Wilders sees a kindred spirit in Tennessee – a state where new mosques draw protests and the legislature is considering a bill that once targeted adherents of Islamic law.

On trial for hate speech in his home country, Wilders brought his headline-grabbing views on Islam to Middle Tennessee on Thursday. He came to town as the invited guest of the Tennessee Freedom Coalition, a 2-week-old political coalition founded by Republican former congressional candidate Lou Ann Zelenik.

“I come with a warning for America,” said Wilders, a filmmaker and member of the Dutch parliament, and something of a cult celebrity in some conservative circles. Close Islamic schools, he warned America. Halt construction of mosques – or “hate palaces”, as he calls them. Cut off immigration from “non-Western and especially Islamic countries”, and expel any immigrants who do not “assimilate”.

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The ‘Islamification’ of Tower Hamlets (part 427)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

On the principle that you can never have too many inaccurate scaremongering articles about Muslim extremists taking over the London borough of Tower Hamlets, the Daily Mail presents its readers with a re-run of the paranoid report it published less than a month ago. This one appears under the headline “Tower Hamlets Taliban: Death threats to women who don’t wear veils. Gays attacked in the streets. And all in a borough at the heart of Britain’s capital…”

But, to be fair, the Mail doesn’t suggest that the takeover by Muslim extremists is restricted to East London. It has another article, mainly about the Balsall Heath area of Birmingham, entitled “Censored! Bikini advert blacked out with spray paint by ‘Muslim extremists who object to women in swimsuits'”.

Needless to say, these irresponsible reports are seized on by the EDL:

EDL-Daily-Mail

Republicans welcome Wilders to Tennessee

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Anti-Wilders protest TennesseeDutch politician Geert Wilders sees a kindred spirit in Tennessee – a state where new mosques draw protests and the legislature is considering a bill that once targeted adherents of Islamic law.

On trial for hate speech in his home country, Wilders brought his headline-grabbing views on Islam to Middle Tennessee on Thursday. He came to town as the invited guest of the Tennessee Freedom Coalition, a 2-week-old political coalition founded by Republican former congressional candidate Lou Ann Zelenik.

“I come with a warning for America,” said Wilders, a filmmaker and member of the Dutch parliament, and something of a cult celebrity in some conservative circles. Close Islamic schools, he warned America. Halt construction of mosques – or “hate palaces”, as he calls them. Cut off immigration from “non-Western and especially Islamic countries”, and expel any immigrants who do not “assimilate”.

“I was happy to visit the state of Tennessee, where I know a lot of people – certainly a lot of Christians – feel the same threat as we do, and know when you talk about values, when you talk about who you are and who you are not, and that Christianity is for certain not the same as Islam,” said Wilders, who is not himself a Christian. “I compare Islam not with Christianity and Judaism. I compare Islam with fascism and communism.”

His first stop of the day was talk show host Steve Gill’s radio show, then a meet-and-greet and news conference at Williamson County Republican Party headquarters in Franklin. The evening ended with a closed-to-the-press speech at Cornerstone Church in Madison about what Wilders sees as the evils of the world’s second-largest religion.

In Franklin, about a dozen protesters stood in the punishing May sunshine across from Republican headquarters, waving signs that said “SHAME” and “Be nice or go away”.

“It’s very inappropriate for an official political party here in Tennessee to bring in someone so notorious,” said Williamson County Democratic Party Chairman Peter Burr. “This guy is sort of the epitome of the outside agitator. That’s not the way we do business here in Tennessee.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations issued a statement condemning Wilders’ visit to Tennessee and asking state and local Republican officials to repudiate the decision to “honor one of the world’s leading Islam-haters”.

The Tennessean, 13 May 2011

See also Peter Burr, “Outside agitators should not define America’s values”, The Tennessean, 12 May 2011

Update:  Wilders’ speech has been reproduced on a number of right-wing blogs, including Jihad Watch and Atlas Shrugs.

Spiked indignant over ASBO for EDL thug

Posted on by Bob Pitt

SIOE/EDL Protest - 13.12.09
Joel Titus punching a photographer outside Harrow Central Mosque in December 2009

Over at Spiked, website of the ultra-leftists-turned-right-wing-libertarians formerly known as the Revolutionary Communist Party, Patrick Hayes expresses indignation over the imposition of an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO) on the EDL’s former youth leader at Uxbridge Magistrates Court last week.

“Over the next three years,” Hayes complains, “19-year-old Joel Titus is forbidden from attending any demonstration that is connected with the English Defence League or being ‘part of a group of 10 or more people whose actions could cause alarm or distress’. His ASBO from Uxbridge Magistrates Court also claims he must not ‘display a sign or placard or use defamatory or insulting language which could cause alarm or distress’…. He is also forbidden from entering mosques, Islamic prayer rooms or a defined area of Whitechapel in London.”

According to Hayes this is a “shocking restriction on someone’s democratic rights”. He demands: “What did Titus do to deserve such a punishment? Absolutely nothing EDL-related.”

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Bruno Gollnisch stripped of parliamentary immunity

Posted on by Bob Pitt

France's far-right National Front political executive director Bruno Gollnisch candidate to succeed Jean Marie Le Pen,attends a news conference in LensThe European Parliament stripped parliamentary immunity from French far-right MEP Bruno Gollnisch on Tuesday, to enable a complaint of “incitement to racial hatred” to be investigated.

French authorities will now interview Mr Gollnisch after asking for the move, following a complaint over an October 2008 press release issued by Rhone-Alpes regional authorities near Lyon, which Mr Gollnisch led, that cited “the invasion of our land and the destruction of our culture and values” by Islam.

The International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism launched the complaint, and the European Parliament decided that, as the case related to Mr Gollnisch’s activities as a regional councillor, “applying parliamentary immunity to such a situation ‘would constitute an undue extension of those rules'”, a statement said. Lawmakers voted 511 in favour, 56 against and 65 abstentions.

First elected to the European Parliament in 1989, Mr Gollnisch had his immunity lifted in 2005 and was given a three-month suspended jail term and a 5,000-euro (S$8,848) fine in 2005, although an appeal court threw that out in 2009.

AFP, 10 May 2011

Police try to maintain order as EDL thugs descend on Hammersmith

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL demonstrate in support of Yaxley Lennon
The massed ranks of the EDL demonstrate in support of ‘Tommy Robinson’

Police are trying to maintain order in and around Hammersmith after thugs from the English Defence League flooded to the area in support of a member who appeared at West London Magistrates Court in Talgarth Road earlier on Wednesday.

A police helicopter is circling, while several police vehicles are lined up in Talgarth Road, as well as near Barons Court. There have been reports of disorder in Margavine Cemetery near Barons Court Tube station and near the court. Police confirmed EDL supporters in their “tens” were in the area.

Hammersmith & Fulham Chronicle, 11 May 2011

The member appearing in court was EDL leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (“Tommy Robinson”). According to reports on the EDL’s Facebook page, Lennon was found guilty of a Section 5 public order offence and fined £350 £315.

Update:  See also “Arrests at EDL founder Stephen Lennon’s court case”, BBC News, 11 May 2011

Further update:  Predictably, EDL supporters whipped themselves up into a state of racist hysteria over the report that “Tommy” had been fined more than £300 over his confrontation with Muslims Against Crusades during an EDL counter-protest on Armistice Day last year, whereas MAC supporter Emdadur Choudary received a mere £50 fine for burning a poppy.

Some examples here. You know the sort of thing to expect – “Englishman fined £315 for defending his culture – muslim fined £50 for degrading it”; “if your white and non Muslim you get treat differently that’s discrimination”; “wetha is 350 or 315 its still a fuckin diabolical joke when that mussy goat fucker only got 50 quid fine”; “1 rule for british 1 rule for the fuzzy faced pedophile loving scum”; “British courts r racist to Whites”; “tommy should of painted his face brown this morning wouldnt have spent half as long in a court room never mind a fine like he got”. And so on. Not to mention warm words of congratulation to Lennon for confronting MAC: “well done tommy 4 doing what any true patriot would of done … god i would of cut that cunts head off and his fuckin friends … islam is a big piece of shit fuck mecca and medina … nuke em”.

But it turns out that Lennon was in fact fined just £50, with £250 costs. In other words he received exactly the same fine as Choudary.

EDL trio accused of racist graffiti

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Three members of the English Defence League, including two from County Durham, have appeared in court charged with conspiring to commit racially aggravated criminal damage.

Anthony Smith, 24, of Easington, Peterlee, and Steven Vasey, 31, of High Pittington, along with Charlotte Davies, 19, of Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, are alleged to have plotted to daub graffiti on a mosque and buildings linked to a family business.

Each spoke only to answer their name during a short hearing before Peterlee Magistrates on Wednesday. Davies, wearing a pale crocheted top, giggled as the charge was read out. None entered a plea to the indictable only offence.

Chairman of the bench Gary Walker committed the case to Durham Crown Court, where the defendants are due to appear before a judge next Wednesday. They were released on unconditional bail.

A Durham Police spokesman said: “The charges relate to spray- painting incidents at the Nasir mosque in Hartlepool, the Albert Guest House in Shotton Colliery and the Milko store in Shotton Colliery, all on November 16 last year. At the time of the alleged offences, all three people claimed membership of the English Defence League.”

Press Association, 11 May 2011

Nazi-linked flag displayed in Wilders party’s parliamentary offices

Posted on by Bob Pitt

PVV flagsAn early version of the Dutch flag which became associated with the Dutch Nazi party in the run up to World War II has been removed from PVV’s parliamentary offices.

Two flags – horizontal orange, white and blue stripes – were spotted hanging in the window of the anti-Islam party’s meeting room and photographed by free newspaper Spits. However, they were removed early on Wednesday, following the newspaper publication. MP Karen Gerbrands denied on national radio that there were any flags at all, Spits said.

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Islam a threat to Western freedom, Wilders tells Toronto audience

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Wilders TorontoThe presence of Muslims in Canada threatens the country’s freedoms and democracy, and only if immigration from Islamic countries is suspended can the cultural deterioration of the country be stopped, controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders told a packed house Monday night in Toronto.

“Our Western culture is far superior to Islamic culture,” Mr. Wilders said. “And only once we are convinced of this will we be able to defend our civilization.”

The event, held at the Canadian Christian College in north Toronto, marked Mr. Wilders’ second stop on a three-city tour. The visit, his first to Canada, is sponsored by the International Free Press Society. He spoke in London on Sunday, and he will be in Ottawa on Tuesday.

Charles McVety, president of the Christian College, introduced Mr. Wilders to an ebullient crowd as a man with “a prophetic message.”

In his speech on Monday night, he said Muslim immigrants to Europe have changed the social and political landscape there. An increasingly vociferous Islamic lobby has led to the harassment of Christians, female genital mutilation and polygamy, he said, adding that with its own growing Muslim community, Canada faces the same fate.

His career has been driven by a belief that the Koran encourages violence, that moderate Islam is an impossibility and that in allowing Muslims to immigrate to Western nations, these countries open themselves up to inevitable Islamization. “We need the spirit of resistance to this evil,” he said. “That is our moral duty.”

Farooq Khan, executive director of the North American Muslim Foundation, expressed shock at Mr. Wilders’ being allowed into the country, and is dismayed by what he sees as a lack of nuance in the views of many Westerners about Islam.

“It is the political agenda of the far right, which is hell-bent on on creating an environment in which Muslims must get out of the West,” Mr. Khan said in an interview before Monday’s speech. “The Wilders event is nothing more than creating hatred.”

National Post, 10 May 2011

See also “Keep Islamic ideology out of Canada: Wilders”, 24 Hours Vancouver, 10 May 2011

Anti-Wilders protestors in Toronto
Anti-Wilders protestors in Toronto

Arson attack on Athens mosque

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Kallithea mosque graffitiUnknown arsonists set fire to a makeshift mosque in Athens early on Sunday, causing damage but no injuries, police said.

The arsonists broke a window of the ground-floor flat used for religious practices in the district of Kallithea around 2:00 am SA time and threw incendiaries inside, a police source told AFP. Greek news reports said a Nazi swastika was painted on the flat’s windows.

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