The casuals have stated on their website that their next protests “will be bigger [and] will arrive unannounced and neither the police or the scum [anti-fascists] will know any details.”
The two groups have strong links to a variety of far-right and militant fascist organisations, and were established following demonstrations against returning British troops in Luton earlier this year. Both have attempted (despite links among their members) to distance themselves from the British National Party. Speculation among anti-fascists interprets the groups as a re-emergence of more militant fascism as the BNP becomes more institutionalised.
Their stated purpose is to “stop the enemy within,” namely “these people, whose [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.”
How will Manchester respond?
Comments
Hide the following 8 comments
how will manchester respond?
10.08.2009 15:30
manc af
Man United/City Versus Luton - No Contest!
10.08.2009 15:53
Fucking Luton Town aren't even in a decent league.
They are shit!
NO CONTEST!
Thinka
Be that as it may
10.08.2009 17:40
1. Remove Islamic Fundamentalists/Extremists from our streets (which im sure most Muslims want)
2. Stop imposing Shari'ah law
The first point means what exactly? That on a Saturday when the Christians, Muslims, socialists, communists, single issue campaigners are putting forward their views and literature to the shopping public, that 'Islamic Fundamentalists/Extremists' are banned? That devout Muslims cannot walk around without being attacked by freelance defenders of England or imprisoned by the government? Do you not think they are criminalised enough already?
The second is just a nonsensical scare. Stop who imposing Shari'ah law? Whatever any zealous Muslim may want, no-one is imposing Shari'ah in this country. This is just tabloid crap.
anti-racist
Don't let the UAF fuck things up
11.08.2009 08:08
brum antifascist
The English Defence League is NOT racist or fascist!
11.08.2009 09:59
English Defence League spokesman
Thoughts on the EDL
11.08.2009 11:27
Even on the Lionheart blog, there is a caricature of a Muslim woman with a bomb under her burqa. This kind of lampooning easily fits the definition of racist, as it implies that all Muslim women are either terrorists or at least support it. There is no get-out clause that it is only targetting Muslim extremists: were the strongly anti-semitic cartoons in European newspapers in the 1930s only targetting Jews with big noses? Elsewhere the blog regularly conflates the Palestinian cause with terrorism - a hardline perspective made attractive to the author by his anti-Islamic views.
The question of what the EDL believe is made more complex by previous instigators objecting to a hijacking by racist elements within the group - and abandoning the enterprise. YouTube has videos of anti-Muslim slogans chanted by a group of football thugs - with links to one or both of these groups.
Islamic fundamentalism does exist, and it is right to challenge it politically. But the sum total of the Casuals/EDL output thus far seems to be unreconstructed football violence linked to reactionary, sweeping generalisations that are racist in practise, whatever the denials of spokepeople. And even if the "central committee" were to magically become exemplars of race relations and advocates for multiculturalism, their followers would be most unlikely to.
Jon
Was obviously planned to kick off
11.08.2009 21:56
Am I right to say this group have had 3 marches and every one has turned violent? Could the police not ban them?
Rod
Dear English Defence League spokesman
12.08.2009 10:42
Thought not. Maybe Chris Renton wants to put out a press release on the EDL Website. He can cut and paste it from the BNP website. Or perhaps the EDL will be publicising the interview with Stirrer editor Adrian Goldberg, on Talksport, where spokesman Paul Ray admitted their links with the BNP. Or even where Ray says this:
"I did see Nick Griffins Easter message and thought it was very very good and inspirational.
It seems that they are the only ones willing to defend and uphold Christianity in this country, as for me i will trust in God to bring about the changes within them to make them the people He wants them to be. As you know there is nothing impossible with Him, and you should not judge these people who God is doing a work with and through."
He actually only means the Christian bits when he was Lionheart.
Perhaps the EDL will be ousting the Fascists and Racists from their ranks in order to oppose extremism and the roots of extremism. Or perhaps Ray and the EDL are simply the tools of the Troughing Down One Eyed Holocaust Denier who once said:
"The proper enemy to any political movement isn’t necessarily the most evil and the worst. The proper enemy is the one we can most easily defeat."
The EDL is the most easy to control and direct to the "proper enemy" it seems.
Nick Griffins Accountant