Recently, on my Facebook account, I received some rather bizarre threats. This in itself is nothing new, as I receive rambling threats from neo-Nazi goons on a semi-regular basis, usually threatening to put me on Redwatch or some similar action. That putting my face on an internet site won't be too daunting a prospect for somebody who uses Facebook in the first place is a concept that seems utterly lost on some people.

However, the threats I'm referring to here were of a somewhat different flavour. After a brief exchange on a Facebook discussion board for the activist group No Borders, wherein I suggested that somebody claiming that the UK was 20% too overcrowded had "pulled the figures out your arse," I received the following message;

you've insulted a member of Hur al'Ayn
Between You and Sakinah Malik
Sakinah Malik
17 July at 00:19
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please take it back, on the board. you have to speak to us as you would if were speaking in person.
yours sincerely
Sakinah

Although bemused, I thought nothing of it until I received a similar response on the No Borders group, to which I responded that "I'll speak to anyone however I please, that's one of the beauties of free speech, so please don't fucking PM me about this trifling shit again cause I'll ignore it." To which I received the following reply from a like-minded Facebook troll;

OK here's another PM
Between You and Lady Terror
Lady Terror
17 July at 16:44
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I'm not a troll, I'm a member of the Hur al-Ayn and you should show people a bit more respect. you're only being rude coz ur 200 miles away behind a keyboard. Apaologise to Charlotte or face the consequences.

Aside from the obvious irony of somebody calling themselves "Lady Terror" and claiming to be of the "Hur al-Ayn" (Maidens of Paradise, the Islamic "72 virgins") whilst simultaneously insisting that they are not a troll, there is also somehing sinister in the phrase "or face the consequences." Sure enough, a member of Lancaster Unity who was also a member of the No Borders group alerted me to a group titled "Uk[sic] Casuals United," on which my own details have been published by the "Charlotte" (Charlie Wadia) whom "Sakinah Malik" and "Lady Terror" were defending via Personal Message.

This group was set up after a similar group, "Hooligan Central," was hijacked. I wrote about this earlier incarnation in an article titled "Riots in Luton and media apologism for fascist violence," about the fascist ties and thuggish antics of the groups who marched through Luton in opposition to earlier Muslim demonstrations at an armed forces homecoming parade. [ http://truth-reason-liberty.blogspot.com/2009/05/riots-in-luton-and-media-apologism-for.html] The Casuals United homepage confirms that "Casuals from around the UK started coming together in protest at these hatemongers, and the way the police arrested two people who were rightly outraged by their disgusting protest" but insist that they are "non political, non racist, non violent protest groups."

However, the fact that their stated purpose is to "stop the enemy within," namely "these people, whos [sic] agenda is to dominate Britain, and make it an Islamic State," and the "politically correct traitors ... who have brought us to this terrible state of affairs," says otherwise. Such rhetoric is transparently fascist in origin, as are the doctrinal precepts which underlie it. This is not to mention, of course, that posting up the details of opponents - I am not the only one to receive such treatment on that particular group - has obvious echoes of sites such as Redwatch.

Groups such as Casuals United, and the affiliated English Defence League, represent a new strain of fascism. They are as virulent as traditional groups such as the BNP, the National Front, or the Orange Lodge, and antifascists need to organise physical resistance to them as they try to bring fascist violence back to our streets.