A new report has been published about the EDL, which is described as one that "challenges stereotypes about the English Defence League and the wider counter-Jihad network". To accept, as a given, and before any research findings have even been presented, that the EDL are in any significant way part of any "counter-Jihad network" proves from the outset that this report is biased. That interpretation uncritically accepts the EDL's own self-justifying propaganda, which (against an overwhelming weight of evidence) has tried to spin the EDL's prime motive as opposition to Jihadi politics, as distinct from the more obvious reality that the EDL are mostly (though not exclusively) old-school far-right thugs – veteran supporters of groups like the NF and BNP – who, where the far-right once supported Islamic extremists, later exploited Jihadi politics as a strategy to try to sneak current and former BNP and Nazi activists into more prominent positions within mainstream popular culture and UK street-politics.

The description states that the report's findings run "contrary to widely held assumptions which trace support for counter-Jihad groups to the financial crisis, economic austerity and political isolation", despite the fact that the far-right in the UK experienced dramatic growth in support years before the present government's current program of austerity. The financial crisis and economic austerity are realities the far-right (unsuccessfully) sought to exploit – they are not conditions which produced the EDL or its many splinter-groups, begging an obvious question about who the report thinks made such assumptions in the first place?

A few gripes like that notwithstanding, report findings seem mostly accurate – confirming for instance that EDL supporters a/ are "more likely than their fellow citizens to have voted", b/ are "not more likely to be unemployed (or) dependent on social housing", c/ are "not necessarily young and uneducated", d/ are "xenophobic and profoundly hostile towards immigration", and e/ are "more likely... to expect inter-communal conflict and (to) believe violence is justifiable and inevitable".

These findings are all compatible with the interpretation that EDL supporters are (despite a smattering of younger hooligans and older religious nutters and middle-class eccentrics) in significant part drawn from the tiny minority of those middle-aged, semi-skilled, often self-employed and non-unionised tradesmen, who are also deeply xenophobic and immersed in a culture of racially-motivated street violence – who have in other words been involved in far-right thuggery (and been voting for far-right parties) for decades. Bearing in mind that MOST self-employed tradesmen wouldn't touch the EDL with a barge-pole, this report suggests the EDL are pretty much the kind of people who observant Anti-Fascists always thought they were.

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The English Defence League
Cordelia Nelson
7 March 2013

"A new Chatham House report, which draws on YouGov research, challenges stereotypes about the English Defence League and the wider counter-Jihad network. The report by Dr Matthew Goodwin, entitled "The Roots of Extremism: The English Defence League and the Counter-Jihad Challenge", finds that widely held assumptions about counter-Jihad sympathisers may need to be reassessed. Contrary to widely held assumptions which trace support for counter-Jihad groups to the financial crisis, economic austerity and political isolation, our research for the report reveals that most respondents sympathetic of the EDL’s values are:

• Actively engaging in mainstream politics, and more likely than their fellow citizens to have voted at the last election
• Not more likely to be unemployed, dependent on social housing or motivated simply by economic insecurity
• Not necessarily young and uneducated. Less than a fifth (16%) of sympathisers in our sample are aged 18-29 years, and fewer than one in ten supporters has no qualifications whatsoever
• Not simply anti-Muslim and overtly racist, but xenophobic and profoundly hostile towards immigration
• More likely than the British public to expect inter-communal conflict and believe violence is justifiable and inevitable

YouGov’s Political and Social Research Manager Laurence Janta-Lipinski comments "This new research helps to shed light on an under-researched and poorly-understood group in British society. The report helps to answer some of the fundamental questions surrounding  these groups and challenges some of the widely-held views on their demographic make-up, core concerns and potential support"."

yougov.co.uk/news/2013/03/07/english-defence-league/