Category Archives: Far right racists

EDL launches ‘European Defence League’, organises Amsterdam demo in support of Wilders

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Bradford4The 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.

EUobserver, 31 August 2010

Netherlands: opposition to coalition deal with Wilders grows

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A number of prominent former politicians from various parties have urged the Christian Democrats (CDA) and the conservative VVD not go ahead with the planned formation of a minority coalition government with parliamentary backing from Geert Wilders’ anti-Islamic Freedom party.

“A cabinet supported by a party whose main goal is to marginalize and exclude a section of the populace will not succeed in bringing about the sorely-needed unity in Dutch society.”

The warning was published in the left-of-centre daily de Volkskranton Monday. The signatories include former deputy prime minister Jan Terlouw, former health minister Hedy d’Ancona, former education minister Jos van Kemenade and eight others.

A recent poll shows the CDA suffering from its own internal divisions about the prospective coalition. One-third of those who voted for the Christian Democrats would no longer do so. The number of CDA voters who support the current coalition talks has dropped from 79 percent to 60 percent.

Radio Netherlands, 30 August 2010

See also “Wilders calls Islamic culture ‘backward'”, Radio Netherlands, 29 August 2010

Update:  See “VVD elder statesman urges members to protest about PVV”, Dutch News, 30 August 2010

Geller defends EDL’s actions in Bradford

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Bradford3

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

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL Bradford4Far-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.

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Swedish TV channel refuses to broadcast far-right anti-Muslim campaign ad

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Swedish TV channel TV4 announced on Friday that it has refused to broadcast a campaign advert by the far-right Sweden Democrats because it claims it contains racial hatred.

The party wanted to pay the channel 1.5 million kronor ($201,240) to run the ad. The half-minute advert shows a race in which an elderly woman with a walker is chased by a group of burqa-clad women pushing prams with a slogan promising to safeguard pension funding at the expense of immigration.

According to party press secretary Erik Almqvist, the ad does not violate Swedish law. The party has screened the clip for lawyers, who said that it does not break the law against inciting racial hatred. “The conflict we see as a result of mass immigration is not related to the person’s origin, but rather a conflict of values, as far as we can see,” said Almqvist in reference to the burqa-clad women in the video.

TV4 CEO Jan Scherman disagreed. “The film is contrary to the democracy clause in the Radio and Television Act and also against democracy clauses which the Sweden Democrats, among others, have adopted for the equality of all people, regardless of whether it is the European Convention or the UN Charter,” he said. “The film is also against the constitution act on freedom of speech that prohibits hate speech,” Scherman added.

The Local, 27 August 2010

Neo-Nazi NPD celebrates Thilo Sarrazin’s new book

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Germany’s crazy central banker and hero of the extreme right, Thilo Sarrazin, has outdone himself now with a new book – Deutschland schafft sich ab (“Germany Eliminates Itself”) – which attacks Germany’s Muslim minority.  The book is not even in the bookstores yet, but the excerpts that have been published have already unleashed a firestorm of controversy.

Thilo Sarrazin is a member of the Social Democrat party (SPD) but yesterday the general secretary of the German Jewish Council (Zentralrat der Juden) Stephen Kramer, encouraged Sarrazin to switch to the neo-Nazi NPD, whose platform is more aligned to Sarrazin’s extremist views.

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Netherlands: Christian Democrat leader rejects Lubbers’ criticisms, insists on pursuing deal with Wilders

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Division within the Netherlands’s Christian Democratic Appell (CDA) party over dealing with the far-right PVV party of anti-Islamist politician Geert Wilders deepened Friday with a top leader insisting talks with the PVV should continue.

CDA parliamentary faction leader Maxime Verhagen ruled out suspending talks with the PVV – rejecting a call made the day before by former premier Ruud Lubbers – on getting the PVV’s backing for a minority government.

Verhagen said any suspension of the talks was out of the question. The work towards forming a Wilders-approved minority cabinet was in full swing, he said. “I expect that we will achieve a good result with which we can convince Mr. Lubbers,” Verhagen said.

DPA, 27 August 2010

Update:  See “Increasing pressure from senior CDA members”, Radio Netherlands, 28 August 2010

Ruud Lubbers opposes coalition deal with Wilders

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Three-time Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers, who brokered talks on forming a government between his Christian Democrats, the Liberal Party, and the anti-Islam Freedom Party, said he now opposed the plan, citing concerns about freedom of religion.

“My stance has developed from a ‘yes, but’ to a ‘no, unless’,” Lubbers wrote in an Aug. 20 letter to the Christian Democrat leader in parliament, Maxime Verhagen, and party chairman Henk Bleker published by Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant today.

Lubbers’s change of view may jeopardize the formal negotiations that started last month on establishing a Liberal-Christian Democrat government that would rely on the support of the Freedom Party, led by Geert Wilders, to get legislation through parliament. It would be the Netherlands’ first minority administration since World War II.

Other senior Christian Democrats have also expressed opposition against the talks with Wilders. His party seeks to ban new mosques, curb immigration, cut development aid and reduce European Union influence in the Netherlands.

“Freedom of religion – also of Islam – and no discrimination based on religion or world view have to remain essential features of our constitutional state,” Lubbers wrote. “On that, there can’t be a shadow of a doubt.”

Bloomberg, 16 August 2010

Campaign against ‘Ground Zero mosque’ inspires far-right vandals to attack Islamic centre in California

Posted on by Bob Pitt

No temple for the god of terrorismVandalism to a Madera Islamic center and signs found on the property are being investigated as a hate crime, the Madera County Sheriff’s Department said today.

A brick was thrown at the building Friday and three signs were found at Masjid Madera, 16634 Road 26, during two other incidences since Aug. 18, said Erica Stuart, Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman. Two of the signs were found on the center’s property Tuesday afternoon.

The signs read “No Temple for the God of terrorism at Ground Zero. ANB,” “Wake up America, the Enemy is here. ANB” and “American Nationalist Brotherhood.”

The Fresno Bee, 25 August 2010

Via LoonWatch

Campaign against ‘Ground Zero mosque’ inspires far-right vandals to attack Islamic centre in California

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Madera masjid attackVandalism to a Madera Islamic center and signs found on the property are being investigated as a hate crime, the Madera County Sheriff’s Department said today.

A brick was thrown at the building Friday and three signs were found at Masjid Madera, 16634 Road 26, during two other incidences since Aug. 18, said Erica Stuart, Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman. Two of the signs were found on the center’s property Tuesday afternoon.

The signs read “No Temple for the God of terrorism at Ground Zero. ANB,” “Wake up America, the Enemy is here. ANB” and “American Nationalist Brotherhood.”

The Fresno Bee, 25 August 2010

Via LoonWatch