I got this message last week from the anti-racism, anti-religious extremism organisation, entitled, appropriately enough, ‘Paul Golding Is A Loser’. Just to really rub it in to the head honcho of Britain First.
‘Hi David,
With your help, the far-right had a terrible time at the local elections! Thanks to the backing of supporters like you David, we made sure we defeated the far-right this time out.
During the campaign, we had two aims, prevent far right success at the ballot box and make sure young people were aware of the changes to the way we vote. And, David, we smashed it!
Our team worked tirelessly throughout the campaign to beat the far-right, here’s what they got up to:
We targeted the far-right parties Britain First and British Democrats in Salford, Dartford and Epping Forest. We ran several days of action in each ward, with Britain First losing in Salford and Dartford, and former BNP man Julian Leppert losing his seat in Epping Forest. Result!
Elsewhere, as part of our commitment to raising awareness to the changes to the way we vote, we built this fantastic interactive map through which supporters could draw their MP’s attention to the level of local disenfranchisement. This tool was a trial ahead of the General Election and was a big success!
We also wrote and produced two Voter ID awareness videos, which we carefully targeted at young people between the ages of 18-34 living in the North West to let them know about the changes to the way we vote. They were seen over a whopping 1.5 million times during the campaign!
Our researchers trawled the candidate nomination papers to pull together a blog on all the notable candidates from across the far-right and radical right. This formed the backbone of our campaigning work, and was a useful reference point for our supporters. You can check that out here.
HNH researchers painstakingly pieced together a dossier on what we believe to be electoral fraud committed by the leader of Britain First, Paul Golding, which was then sent to the authorities. You can read a summary of the evidence we collected here.
Finally, we worked with The Guardian on a story about five Conservative councillors who stood for election this time out, but who had previously been suspended for alleged racism and Islamophobia. We will be doing much more on the mainstreaming of hate in the coming weeks and months.
Thanks for all that you do.
Georgie
Georgie Laming, Campaigns & Communications Director at HOPE not hate
P.S. We have a plan to go much further at the 2024 General Election, but we’ll need you to help us get there. Will you help?‘
One of the points here I found particularly interesting was that Paul Golding is being accused of committing electoral fraud. So, the voter ID laws are unnecessary, because the mass electoral fraud the Tories claim it combats simply doesn’t exist. There have only been a handful of cases. But one of those actually committing it is Golding and his far right outfit. This says much about them, and their contempt for democracy and thirst for power at any price.
One of the great commenters on this channel asked me this yesterday. I must say that I really don’t know much about Andrew Tate at all. He seems to be some kind of cult figure on the right, and there were a number of videos put up on YouTube by right-wingers shocked at his conversion to Islam, wondering if it was genuine. I gather also that he’s anti-feminist, but the only other thing I really know about him is that the Romanian police arrested him on charges of enslavement and people trafficking after he got into some kind of spat on Twitter with Greta Thunberg. The right-wing American activist and YouTuber Matt Walsh coincidentally put up a video about this question, ‘Why do young men support Andrew Tate’ on YouTube yesterday. I haven’t watched it, so really don’t know why some men do. My guess is that, to them, he represents traditional masculinity and conservative values against the woke left.
In the case of Tommy Robinson, I think the short answer is that the people that support him are thugs. Robinson used to be a BNP stormtrooper before founding the English Defence League and Pegida UK. He’s got convictions for assault, and his house is actually in his wife’s name because of another conviction for mortgage fraud. There’s a video up on YouTube showing what he’s really like. It’s of him punching and beating someone at a sports match. His method of dealing with critics is to dox them, telling his supporters not to bother that person, and then later taking the video down, so that it doesn’t look like he’s encouraging people to go round and harass them He’s also done this personally to his critics and their families. He turned up at the house of the parents of one of his critics in Cumbria with his horrible mate Avi Yemeni, demanding a word in the early hours of the morning. He also went round banging on the windows and doors of Australian anti-racist and teacher Mike Stuchbery, as well as slandering him as a paedophile. It ended with Stuchbery leaving his job to go to Germany. He also got hit with a heavy legal case after he libelled a Syrian immigrant kid who’d suffered racist bullying at school. Robinson claimed the lad was the bully while interviewing one of the boys responsible for the attack. Robinson got sued for libel, lost, and was ordered to pay substantial damages.
A fair number of his supporters seem to be football hooligans. A few years ago when he was running the English Defence League, their supporters included football casuals, so called because they wore casual clothing looted from the stores they trashed. When he turned up in Bristol, he was supported by the Democratic Football Lads’ Alliance, who might be genuine football fans, but I suspect otherwise. As for respectable Conservative support, I’m not so sure. The Lotus Eaters support him, but talk about him in coded language as ‘the bad man’ in case they get a YouTube ban for doing so. I don’t know if other right-wing web sites support him. I haven’t seen him interviewed by the New Culture Forum, even though they have interviewed History Debunked’s Simon Webb. Possibly this lack of obvious support is because of his violence and criminality, just as many Tories in the 1970s stopped supporting the NF because of it.
Unfortunately, the long official coverup of the grooming gangs has given him ammunition. He’s made a number of videos about them and spoken to their victims, in contrast to some of the police and local authorities that have tried to silence them. He’s thus able to present himself as a lone voice standing against official complicity in these terrible crimes.
I’ve covered Robinson and his wretched followers in a number of blog posts, and the anti-racist, anti-religious extremism organisation, Hope Not Hate, have published a book exposing him and his crimes. My guess is that some men support him for the same reason they support Tate, and that Robinson also represents to them traditional Britain against the Muslim threat. But how much support he has beyond his own milieu I really don’t know.
Simon Webb today went full Mosley and put up a video asking, ‘What’s wrong with Fascism?’ He wanted to make a distinction between Nazism and Fascism. Fascism, he said, had been tarnished through its association with Nazism. But if you wanted to see a benevolent regime that was Fascist in all but name, he directed you to that of the Portuguese dictator Salazar.
But it isn’t just the association with the Third Reich and its attendant horrors that has turned decent people across the world against Fascism. It’s the fact that Mussolini’s fascists were also militant imperialists responsible for brutal atrocities in the nations they conquered, as well as those committed by the various Fascist juntas in Greece, Latin America and Indonesia.
Yesterday or the day before right-wingers like Paul Joseph Watson were also celebrating the electoral victory of the right-wing coalition in Sweden’s elections over their socialist party. This coalition included with the centre right party the Sweden Democrats, a far-right outfit. They’re obviously anti-immigration, but have a very unpleasant neo-Nazi past. According to Hope Not Hate, they used to wear Nazi uniforms as late as the ’90.
I didn’t watch Webb’s video about the Swedish election, whose title said that the Swedes had turned against immigration, the Italians were waking up and when would Britain follow? Mark Pattie did, and wasn’t impressed. He writes ‘Dear God! I did watch his recent video on the Swedish election result where he said “Why can’t we have a similar party here?”- and the anti-immigration party he mentioned? Ukip, 2015? No, he mentioned the bloody National Front getting 5% of the vote in 1974. Makes me think he would vote for Britain First in the next GE.’
I remember the National Front when they goose-stepping about in the 1970s, as well as the various other Fascist and Nazi outfits like the British Movement. And they were overtly Nazi and extremely violent. Michael Collins in his book Hate describes one of the attacks he took part in on an anti-racist meeting in the local library. This had young Asian women leaping out of upstairs windows to get away from them. Monica Ali gives a fictionalised description of the gang fights between White Fascists and Asian self-defence groups in her book, Brick Lane. Just to remind people what British Fascism looked like in the 1960s and 70s, here are a few pictures from British Fascism, 1919-1985. and the W.H. Smith History of the World.
Colin Jordan, Fuhrer of the World Union of National Socialists, with his wife, the daughter of fashion designer Christian Dior.
Skinhead supporter of the NF in the 1970s
And this is what the Nazis did to the Jews, aided by their collaborators in occupied Europe.
The Survivors of Buchenwald Concentration Camp
I don’t know about Portugal, but Franco only kept out of the Second World War because of poverty. Even so, I think he wanted to send a few token Spanish troops with the Nazis in the invasion of the Soviet Union. Not everyone who wants to cut down on immigration is a racist or Nazi. And despite the rhetoric, the BNP and NF as Fascists have a trouble hanging on to members. Lobster published a piece in the 90s which I think quoted anti-racist researchers of the movement as saying that although they boasted of having 2,000 members or more, they actually had a very high membership turnover. In reality they only had 200 or so core members. The simple reason for this is probably that people aren’t interested or sympathetic to fascist ideology. People joined not because they wanted some kind of new British reich or dictatorship, but probably simply because they wanted an end to non-White immigration. When they were subjected to the Nazi or Fascist ideology, they left. And political scientists have noted that this common in other countries with Fascist parties as well. They do better when they get rid of the jackboots, the right arm salute and the calls for a dictatorship. The Alleanzo Nazionale was formed from the Italian neo-Fascist party, the Movimiento Sociale Italiano or Italian Social Movement. But they jettisoned the Fascist paraphernalia and became instead, so they claimed, a centre-right party. As such they joined Berlusconi’s right-wing coalition with the separatists of the Liga Nord and Berlusconi’s own Forza Italia party.
Whatever people’s feelings about immigration, the majority of normal people despise Fascism and its British parties. There should be absolutely no nostalgia for these brutal thugs.
I was watching one of the Lotus Eaters’ videos early today and I came across a possibly hopeful sign when they were discussing the latest protest by Stand Up To Racism against Tommy Robinson and his documentary about grooming gangs in Telford. I noticed that the Stand Up To Racism protesters were waving placards with the slogan ‘Justice for the Victims – No To Tommy Robinson’. The Lotus Eaters seemed a bit confused over who the victims for whom SUTR were demanding justice were. I don’t know, but I hope it means the victims of the grooming gangs.
I was furious at the response to a protest by SUTR and Unite back in February against Tommy Robinson and his gang when they appeared in Birmingham or Telford to premier their documentary about the ‘rape’ of the town by the Pakistani grooming gangs. Now I have no sympathy for Robinson. He is a violent, islamophobic thug. But his presentation of the film’s public showing was, I felt, far better as propaganda and outdid the protest against it by SUTR. Robinson’s video about the event showed a young Black man wearing a ‘Black and White, Unite and Fight’ T-shirt, which presented his organisation as anti-racist. This is justified, up to a point. The majority of the gangs’ victims were White, and they were racially abused while being raped and brutalised. Not that Robinson’s organisation is genuinely anti-racist: it’s against Islam, and I got the distinct impression that Robinson and his team regard the rape and utterly horrific abuse of the White girls as a convenient stick to beat to beat the British Muslim community.
Stand Up To Racism, by contrast, seemed to mismanage their protest completely. They turned up to shout the usual anti-racist slogans of ‘Fascist scum, off our streets’ and ‘Refugees welcome here’. These are fine against the usual Nazis and racists. But they’re not good enough against Robinson and his film because they ignore the Pakistanis’ abuse of the White girls. This gives the impression that SUTR wasn’t interested in the girls’ suffering and that they are only concerned about racist against Blacks and Asians. Callum, from the Lotus Eaters, had been present at the event and walked over and asked the SUTR protesters if they approved of the grooming gangs. ‘No, of course not’, was their reply. He then asked on the Lotus Eaters’ video why they hadn’t joined Robinson in protesting the gangs. They could have done this without approving of the man himself.
It’s obvious why they wouldn’t want to lend support to Robinson: he’s one of the racists they’re protesting against, even if he claims that he isn’t because Islam is a religion not a race. But I was so annoyed by SUTR’s massive mishandling of the protest that I wrote an email to Hope Not Hate and, if I remember correctly, Stand Up To Racism themselves.
The Hope Not Hate email went:
‘Dear Sir,
I have always been impressed by the great work Hope Not Hate has done and is doing in uniting people of all races and creeds in this country against the threat of racism and Fascism on the one hand, and Islamist religious extremism on the other. I have read with great interest and pleasure about your organisation’s attempts to combat Tommy Robinson and his very real islamophobia. But I am writing to you in this instance to express my grave concerns that the liberal left’s response to his rally and film, ‘The Rape of Telford’, has been so poor and catastrophically mismanaged that by contrast Robinson and his supporters seemed good.
As you are aware Robinson has been exploiting the very understandable and entirely reasonable public fears about the grooming gangs as part of his wider campaign to sow hate against British Muslims as a whole. A couple of weeks ago he turned up in Birmingham to show his film about the grooming gangs, The Rape of Telford, which included testimony from the abused girls. He was met with a counterdemonstration from Unite the union and Stand Up To Racism. And this is where the problems lie.
The counterdemonstrators seemed not to understand that victims of racism in this instance were White and to tackle this issue while at the same time expressing their disgust at Robinson. Instead they shouted the usual slogans like ‘Fascist scum off our streets’ and ‘Refugees welcome’. These are fine and suitable against the usual anti-immigration and racist demonstrations. But here they miss the point. They give the impression that the established anti-racist organisations are so fixated on anti-Black and Asian racism, that they find the very concept of anti-White racism literally unthinkable and have no response to it. This is not the impression they should give, and I’m sure it’s unintentional. One of the members of the right-wing Lotus Eaters YouTube channel actually asked them if they supported the grooming gangs. They replied that they certainly didn’t, but did not reply to his next question about why they weren’t over there with Robinson protesting against the grooming gangs.
They shouldn’t, of course, but this doesn’t mean that they should stay silent when it comes to anti-White racism and abuse. The real issue behind the grooming gangs is that they were allowed to get away with it for so long by the police, social services and local authorities because the victims were White and the authorities were afraid of being accused of racism. There are concerns about how the inquiry has been managed,, with some of the witnesses complaining that they have been instructed to limit their testimony and some of the evidence being redacted. There is speculation that some very prominent people, going as high as Blair’s government, are being protected.
It wasn’t always the case that anti-White racism was ignored. In the 1990s the CRE published a report, written by Independent and i journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown about Black and Asian anti-White racism as it was found that 60 per cent of the victims of a racist incidents were White. In the first decade of this century Sunny Hidak in the Guardian wrote a piece stating that anti-racism must now include poor Whites and attack religious extremist organisations like Hizb ut-Tahrir. But this inclusive message seems to have been forgotten or discarded in the age of Black Lives Matter.
I strongly believe that the way to fight Robinson is to take this issue out of his hands. People should be marching against the Muslim grooming gangs, just as they should and do march against White fascists and racists. Indeed, a few years ago when the Islamic preachers of hate were emerging with the Satanic Verses controversy in Bradford, liberal Muslims organised marches and demonstrations against them. But they complained they were given no support from mainstream society. Blacks, Asians, Muslims, Christians, atheists, Hindus and other faiths need to unite and march together against anti-White racism. I believe this is possible and non-Whites would be willing to join such marches and protests if it were organised by genuine anti-racist organisations. You can protest against anti-White racism without supporting fascists and islamophobes like Robinson or the BNP.
But this is what the established anti-racist organisations are failing to do. And I’m afraid their refusal to engage with this is handing Robinson a terrible weapon. If you watch the video he produced with Voice of Wales and Free Man Media on the ‘Rape of Telford’, one of his supporters is a young Black or mixed race man with the sweatshirt bearing the slogan ‘Black and White unite’. This is what the real anti-racists should be doing, but aren’t.
I would like to see it changed, but I’m afraid it seems that you may be the only organisation that will take this on board. I wrote a similar email to Stand Up to Racism a few weeks ago and have not received a reply. I would be very interested to receive your views about this subject, which I intend to place on my blog. You can contact me wit the email below:
Yours with very best wishes,
David Sivier’
I also wrote a series of email to various papers and organisation, including Stand Up To Racism, urging the organisation of a multicultural march against the grooming gangs.
‘Dear Sir,
I’m sure you share my disgust at the recent reports on the Asian grooming gangs and how they preyed on White girls for decades, as well as the way they were allowed to get away with it by police forces and local authorities who were afraid of being accused of racism if they intervened. But I am also greatly concerned about the lack of response to this monstrous scandal by mainstream anti-racist organisations like yours. While White people have been marching in support of Blacks and Asians in their struggle against racism for decades, I very much regret that there have been no such marches in support of these victimised White girls. This, in my opinion, is a grave and odious mistake, as it gives more ammunition and plausibility to islamophobes such as Tommy Robinson.
A few months ago Robinson and his supporters turned up in Birmingham for a public launch of his film about the city’s ‘rape’, which included testimony from the gangs’ victims. There was also a counterdemonstration by your organisation and Unite. However, while the protesters shouted anti-racist slogans against Robinson, they made no public gesture in support of the raped and abused girls. Robinson’s video of the demonstration, however, appears to show his organisation as by far the more anti-racist and diverse. One of his protesters was a young Black man wearing a T-shirt with the anti-racist slogan ‘Black and White, unite and fight’. Unfortunately, I don’t see the mainstream anti-racist organisations doing this against the grooming gangs.
This gives the impression that your organisation and others aren’t concerned about anti-White racism and hate crimes, and that the only racism that matters to you is that against Blacks and other people of colour. Thus Robinson is able to present himself as the only person standing up for these girls against a bigoted and complacent establishment.
I feel very strongly that the only way to combat this is to organise genuinely multicultural rallies against these grooming gangs, just as there have been rallies against the BNP and NF and in support of refugees. I would be very grateful indeed if you could organise one as one of the leading anti-racist organisations here in the UK. I would be particularly grateful if your branch in Bristol could stage one. This is not one of the towns plagued by these gangs, but it has a diverse, multicultural population, who have demonstrated against Robinson and his attempts to stir up hatred against Muslims. Now we need to go further and demonstrate in support of these gangs’ victims as part of the wider campaign against racism. I have also sent an email to the head of Bristol’s equalities and children’s departments in the council about the possibility of organising such a rally.
I would very much like to hear your reply about this suggestion, which I intend to publish on my blog. I look forward eagerly to receiving it.
Yours faithfully,
David Sivier’
If the victims mentioned on Stand Up To Racism’s placards are those of the grooming gangs, and not simply Robinson’s own victims – who are more than entitled to justice themselves after his treatment of them – then it would seem that SUTR has come round to my point of view. Perhaps they received a number of letters like mine from other people who felt the same way.
I’m still annoyed about the conduct of the counter-protesters nearly three weeks ago, who turned up to demonstrate against Tommy Robinson’s film ‘The Rape of Telford’. Robinson has been exploiting the issue of the Muslim grooming gangs to push his own violent, deceptive and malign islamophobia against Muslims as a whole. But there is a real issue there, as the gangs were enabled to prey on some many extremely vulnerable girls and young women for twenty years and more because the authorities – the police, local councils and social workers – were afraid of being called racist and starting riots if they did anything to stop them. And the grooming gangs were racists – they mainly targeted White girls, and those girls were physically and verbally abused because they were White. But this aspect of the gangs is ignored by mainstream, liberal anti-racism. There are no crowds of people demonstrating against the gangs chanting ‘Black and White, unite and fight’. The crowd, drawn from the trade unions and Stand Up to Racism, who turned up to protest against Robinson did nothing but chant the usual anti-fascist slogans – ‘Fascist scum off our streets!’ and ‘Refugees welcome’, but did nothing to tackle him on the issue he was exploiting. Although they told Callum of the Lotus Eaters that ‘Of course they didn’t support the grooming gangs’, they didn’t denounce them. They could easily have done so without supporting Robinson. Instead they look worse. Because Robinson’s supporters included a Black man wearing a sweatshirt with the slogan ‘Black and White, unite!’ The counter-protesters, by contrast, marched off before the testimony from the abused girls began. They looked at best complacent, at worst anti-White, because anti-White racism is outside the mindset of liberal anti-racism. They don’t know how to handle it, and my guess is that they don’t really believe it exists or is as important as tackling racism against Blacks and ethnic minorities.
I was so angry I wrote to Hope Not Hate about the issue, suggesting that we needed to incorporate marches and demonstrates against anti-White racism into mainstream, liberal anti-racism. I chose Hope Not Hate because in addition to attacking White supremacism and fascism, it also dared to tackle Islamism and religious extremism. It seemed far more open to attacking anti-White racism than some of the other, similar organisations. For example, I also wrote to about this issue to Stand Up To Racism, and didn’t receive a reply. And I don’t expect to get one either. Yes, I know Hope Not Hate has connections to the wretched Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, the smear factory accusing decent anti-racists of anti-Semitism because they support Corbyn and the Palestinians. And yes, I’m very aware that Hope Not Hate pushed the anti-Semitism smears against the Labour leader. But sometimes you have to use the materials present, as there’s little alternative. So I sent them this email.
”Dear Sir,
I have always been impressed by the great work Hope Not Hate has done and is doing in uniting people of all races and creeds in this country against the threat of racism and Fascism on the one hand, and Islamist religious extremism on the other. I have read with great interest and pleasure about your organisation’s attempts to combat Tommy Robinson and his very real islamophobia. But I am writing to you in this instance to express my grave concerns that the liberal left’s response to his rally and film, ‘The Rape of Telford’, has been so poor and catastrophically mismanaged that by contrast Robinson and his supporters seemed good.
As you are aware Robinson has been exploiting the very understandable and entirely reasonable public fears about the grooming gangs as part of his wider campaign to sow hate against British Muslims as a whole. A couple of weeks ago he turned up in Birmingham to show his film about the grooming gangs, The Rape of Telford, which included testimony from the abused girls. He was met with a counterdemonstration from Unite the union and Stand Up To Racism. And this is where the problems lie.
The counterdemonstrators seemed not to understand that victims of racism in this instance were White and to tackle this issue while at the same time expressing their disgust at Robinson. Instead they shouted the usual slogans like ‘Fascist scum off our streets’ and ‘Refugees welcome’. These are fine and suitable against the usual anti-immigration and racist demonstrations. But here they miss the point. They give the impression that the established anti-racist organisations are so fixated on anti-Black and Asian racism, that they find the very concept of anti-White racism literally unthinkable and have no response to it. This is not the impression they should give, and I’m sure it’s unintentional. One of the members of the right-wing Lotus Eaters YouTube channel actually asked them if they supported the grooming gangs. They replied that they certainly didn’t, but did not reply to his next question about why they weren’t over there with Robinson protesting against the grooming gangs.
They shouldn’t, of course, but this doesn’t mean that they should stay silent when it comes to anti-White racism and abuse. The real issue behind the grooming gangs is that they were allowed to get away with it for so long by the police, social services and local authorities because the victims were White and the authorities were afraid of being accused of racism. There are concerns about how the inquiry has been managed,, with some of the witnesses complaining that they have been instructed to limit their testimony and some of the evidence being redacted. There is speculation that some very prominent people, going as high as Blair’s government, are being protected.
It wasn’t always the case that anti-White racism was ignored. In the 1990s the CRE published a report, written by Independent and i journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown about Black and Asian anti-White racism as it was found that 60 per cent of the victims of a racist incidents were White. In the first decade of this century Sunny Hidak in the Guardian wrote a piece stating that anti-racism must now include poor Whites and attack religious extremist organisations like Hizb ut-Tahrir. But this inclusive message seems to have been forgotten or discarded in the age of Black Lives Matter.
I strongly believe that the way to fight Robinson is to take this issue out of his hands. People should be marching against the Muslim grooming gangs, just as they should and do march against White fascists and racists. Indeed, a few years ago when the Islamic preachers of hate were emerging with the Satanic Verses controversy in Bradford, liberal Muslims organised marches and demonstrations against them. But they complained they were given no support from mainstream society. Blacks, Asians, Muslims, Christians, atheists, Hindus and other faiths need to unite and march together against anti-White racism. I believe this is possible and non-Whites would be willing to join such marches and protests if it were organised by genuine anti-racist organisations. You can protest against anti-White racism without supporting fascists and islamophobes like Robinson or the BNP.
But this is what the established anti-racist organisations are failing to do. And I’m afraid their refusal to engage with this is handing Robinson a terrible weapon. If you watch the video he produced with Voice of Wales and Free Man Media on the ‘Rape of Telford’, one of his supporters is a young Black or mixed race man with the sweatshirt bearing the slogan ‘Black and White unite’. This is what the real anti-racists should be doing, but aren’t.
I would like to see it changed, but I’m afraid it seems that you may be the only organisation that will take this on board. I wrote a similar email to Stand Up to Racism a few weeks ago and have not received a reply. I would be very interested to receive your views about this subject, which I intend to place on my blog. You can contact me wit the email below: ————-
Yours with very best wishes,
David -‘
To be fair, I did get a reply from Hope Not Hate’s head honcho, Nick Lowles, telling me I’d get a reply before the end of the week. But all I got was an invitation to join the Zoom webinar about the current State of Hate, which seems to be entirely about White fascists. It’s good work, but not an answer to my inquiry.
Clearly anti-White racism isn’t an issue mainstream anti-racist organisations want to touch. And so they leave it to be exploited by the real islamophobes and Nazis like Robinson.
I got this email from the anti-racist, anti-religious extremism organisation Hope Not Hate today. It’s by a Uyghur Muslim activists calling for people to tweet messages of protest against their genocide by the Chinese state. Which is being carried out at the same time the world enjoys the Winter Olympics there.
‘This is the first time I’m writing to HOPE not hate supporters, so let me introduce myself: my name is Rahima Mahmut. I’m a Uyghur singer and activist in exile, and I lead “Stop Uyghur Genocide”, the UK-based campaign to defend Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims from the genocide being perpetrated against them by the Chinese government.
I was born in Ghulja, near the Kazakhstan border, and I come from a large Muslim family. I came to the UK in 2000, a few years after Chinese police massacred peaceful protestors in my hometown, and have lived here ever since.
It has now been more than five years since I have had any contact with my family back home. As reports of concentration camps and unprecedented surveillance emerged from the Uyghur region (so called “Xinjiang”) in 2017, thousands of Uyghurs in exile like me received final messages from their family, all communicating the same thing: please do not contact us – when things change, we will reach out to you.
Uyghurs like myself that have spoken out, including brave concentration camp survivors, do so at huge personal cost. But we won’t be silenced.
Sunday marks the closing ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics, coined the “Genocide Games” by campaigners and activists across the world due to the Chinese government’s persecution of the Uyghurs and other Turkic groups native to the Uyghur region.
While China puts on a show to entertain the world, the genocide continues with alarmingly little attention for the plight of the Uyghurs. Let’s use this moment while the world’s attention is on China to stand in solidarity with the Uyghurs and shine a spotlight on the genocide taking place in my homeland.
Will you take part in a “Twitter storm” to tell the world that while China celebrates the end of the Beijing Olympics, the genocide against the Uyghurs continues?
ot on Twitter? Read and share this blog which explains more about what’s happening in the Uyghur region and what we can do about it.
It is estimated that anywhere between 1 and 3 million Uyghurs are forcibly detained in so-called “re-education camps”, where systemic sexual violence, cultural erasure, birth prevention measures, organ harvesting and torture are commonplace.
And outside the camps, Uyghurs are transported across China to work in factories, under prison-like conditions and subject to a mass-surveillance state that monitors their daily practises.
This has been going on for years with almost no consequences for the Chinese government. China hosting the Olympics adds to their legitimacy, despite the atrocities being committed there. If you agree this is unacceptable, please join me in speaking out on social media on the day of the Olympics closing ceremony.
I’m not on Twitter, so I can’t join the Twitter storm she and Hope Not Hate are calling for, but I’ve absolutely no objection whatsoever to raising awareness of the Chinese state’s campaign to wipe them. So if you’re on it, and you feel strongly about this issue, please tweet your support for the Uyghurs.
I have had a couple of emails from the anti-racism/ anti-religious extremism organisation Hope Not Hate over the past few days asking if I would like to donate to their legal fund to fight Tommy Robinson, former head of the EDL, Pegida UK, jail bird, mortgage fraudster, and former member of the BNP. He’s a violent islamophobe with convictions for assault. His modus operandi in dealing with his online critics has been to dox them to his followers, leave the information up for a few hours, and then tell everyone he doesn’t want them touched or abused after this has no doubt happened. He also turns up to his critics’ homes, or those of their elderly parents in the middle night with a few of his thugs demanding to have a few words. One of his minions is the war criminal Avi Yemeni, an Australian-Israeli. Yemeni claims to have shot an unarmed Palestinian protester during his time in the IDF, and talks like he’s proud of it. Robinson also turned up at the home of Mike Stuchbery, a teacher, in the middle of the night, loudly insinuating that he was paedophile. This is pure invention, but nevertheless it led to Stuckbery leaving his job and moving to Germany.
A year or so ago Robinson was sued for libel for lawyers acting on a behalf of a Syrian refugee schoolboy, who had suffered a violent racial assault and bullying at school. Robinson, despite the evidence, immediately took the opposite view and decided that the lad’s White English assailant was really the victim. He interviewed him and put up the interview on YouTube. The Syrian lad and his lawyers won the case, and the beak ordered Robinson to pay £100,000 in costs and damages. Robinson has refused, pleading bankruptcy. Which is why Hope Not Hate are writing to me and others.
They’re not convinced Robinson is bankrupt, and are appealing to their supporters for funds so they can sue him and prove otherwise. Now as you might have gathered from the above description of Tommy Robinson’s sordid political career, I have no sympathy for him. In fact, I think he’s a counterproductive menace. He was jailed several times for contempt of court for his citizen coverage of the trials of Muslim grooming gangs. Except he broke all the rules real journalists have to follow to ensure that everyone gets a fair trial. He talked as if they were already proven guilty. This is dangerous, because if they were, but could claim that they didn’t get a fair trial thanks to Robinson’s reportage, they could get off.
But I have a problem with this, and with Hope Not Hate’s friends and allies. They’re connected to the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, the Israel lobby organisation that was deeply involved in the witch hunt against supposed anti-Semites in the Labour party. Except those they accused of anti-Semitism were simply followers and supporters of Corbyn and campaigners and supporters of the Palestinians, who were overwhelmingly genuine, principled anti-racists and opponents of anti-Semitism. A very high proportion of the victims of this witch hunt are Jews. They are five times more likely to be accused of anti-Semitism as gentiles. As I keep banging on about again and again, many of them have suffered real anti-Semitic abuse and violence, and have been threatened with further violence after these smears.
I am concerned about the safety of these victims of the smears, and especially Mike, from legal persecution. The Israel lobby uses lawfare – legal action – to shut down its critics. This was powerfully shown in the YouTube video Mike did with other victims of the witch-hunt to mark the release of a film refuting the Panorama claim that Labour was rife with anti-Semitism. I am also very concerned about how such legal actions, like the one Hope Not Hate wishes to bring against Tommy Robinson, will affect Mike.
As you know, Mike is currently in a legal battle with Rachel Riley, Countdown numbers person, who is suing him for libel. It’s a thoroughly unfair battle, as Riley is a rich woman – forget all that bilge from her oppo Tracey-Ann Oberman about jobbing actors. Mike, like the rest of us, is just an ordinary bloke with a limited income, and carer for missus Mike. He has been forced to rely on crowdfunding to help fund his battle. Riley and her expensive lawyers have attempted to stop this. They have also enquired how much money he has and whether this will make it worth their while to sue him. Her followers have also shown themselves to be deeply unpleasant, vicious people. They have gloated over the prospect of Mike being left bankrupt and homeless, looking forward to him losing the case and having to sell his house to pay her damages.
Riley and Oberman and their supporters have shown themselves in their conduct to be nothing but litigious thugs in my view. I am deeply concerned that if Hope Not Hate uses this tactic against Tommy Robinson, the same tactics will also be used against Mike, and every other genuine anti-racist Riley or someone like her chooses to sue.
In normal circumstances I would have no hesitation in helping Hope Not Hate sue Robinson. I have considerable respect for the work they have done exposing and fighting genuine Nazis, White supremacists and Islamists.
But because of their connections to the militant Zionist witch hunters and smear merchants I cannot do so because of the danger this poses to decent people, simply because they support Corbyn, the Palestinians or the people who have been falsely accused.
I must therefore decline and strongly encourage others to think twice before contributing to their legal campaign.
This is interesting. According to an article in today’s Evening Standard, Danyal Hussein, the murderer of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, was on an internet group run by a Nazi Satanist connected to the Order of the Nine Angles. The article, entitled ‘Danyal Hussein: Calls to ban Nazi-occultist group after Satanist murders of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman’ runs
‘Campaigners have renewed a call to ban a UK-based Nazi-occultist group following the Satanist murders of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman.
Killer Danyal Hussein, 19, was jailed for life on Thursday for the murder of the sisters as part of a twisted demonic pact to win the lottery.
Hussein is believed to have been influenced by a black magic practitioner called EA Koetting, who promotes his work to more than 80,000 followers on YouTube.
Since his Old Bailey trial, it has emerged that Hussein was an active member of online forum Becoming A Living God, set up by Koetting.
The American author has associated himself with a group called Order of Nine Angles (O9A) and its US branch, Tempel ov Blood, which has been linked to a string of recent terrorism cases in Britain.
As Hussein was jailed for life for the sisters’ murders, Nick Lowles, chief executive of anti-fascism campaign group Hope Not Hate, said: “Danyal Hussein was influenced by a man associated with the Order of Nine Angles before he launched his attack.
“This is yet another reason why the Government must move to ban this Nazi-occultist group.
“Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman had their lives stolen by this murderer, and the ideology which propelled him. Their families’ lives have been devastated.
“The Order of Nines Angles’ appearance in the story of these horrendous murders is shocking but shouldn’t be surprising.
“We have been warning of their promotion of terrorism and sexual violence, and called on ministers to act by banning the group.
“The Order of Nine Angles is determined to promote and inspire terrorism. They must be banned.”
Last week, Facebook announced that it had removed Koetting’s page and Instagram account for violating its Dangerous Individuals and Organisations policies, and YouTube said a review is under way. The PA news agency has previously contacted Koetting for a response.’
A few months ago when Danyal Hussein was arrested and charged with the murder, History Debunked put up a video suggesting that it was caused by Hussein’s own belief, as a Muslim, in the djinn. He stated that in his experience, it was very common amongst British Muslims and he had overheard Muslim students in his class discussing how one of their female relatives was being tormented by one of these spirits. That is why a murder, like something from the Middle Ages when people believed witches like Faust sold their souls to the Devil, and practiced human sacrifice, had returned to Britain.
Hussein did believe in the djinn, but it’s a bizarre twist that he was in fact motivated in this horrific act by a neo-Nazi. This might explain why the murder victims were two Black women, however. The Order of the Nine Angles is mentioned in Nicolas Goodrick-Clarkes book on contemporary Nazi occultism, The Black Sun. They sound absolutely bonkers, as if someone combined Norse mythology with a bit of crude Jungian theorising after reading the 2000 AD strip, Nemesis the Warlock, and thought that Torquemada was a good role model. The nine angles supposedly refer to the nine levels of Yggdrasil, the world-tree connecting the nine world in Viking myth. These are inhabited by acausal beings. The Order rejects the Theory of Relativity for the same reason the original Nazis did: Einstein was Jewish. After conquering the world and subjugating the non-White races, they aim to develop interstellar space travel and are eagerly awaiting the emergence of the future galactic emperor, Vindictus. Or something like that. The Nemesis the Warlock strip was set in a far future galaxy in which humans lived underground in a totalitarian hell. Earth was renamed Termight, and ruled over by Torquemada, grandmaster of the Terminators, a military order dedicated to exterminating all intelligent alien life. Creators Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill based it on the cruelty and corruption they had experienced in their communities growing up as Roman Catholics, though bigotry, hypocrisy and intolerance certainly aren’t confined to any one religion. They’re found right across all human ideologies and religions as part of the human condition. Mills and O’Neill were making metaphorical statements about racism in wider British society and particularly at the National Front, which was then on the rise. The strip was launched after a series of racist murders and the rise of anti-racist youth groups to oppose it like Rock Against Racism. But the Order of the Nine Angles with its cult of Vindictus does sound like its creators read ‘Nemesis’ and thought Termight was cool, as against the real fans of the strip, who knew it lampooned such Nazi prats. I have to say, though, that I don’t think anyone in the Order of the Nine Angles has read the strip or been influenced by it. It just seems to me that Mills’ and O’Neill’s creation, which still retains a cult following amongst comics fans, was all too accurate in its depiction of the mentality of these psychopathic nutters.
As for Hussein, it’s ironic that a man of colour was influenced by a Nazi, who would no doubt have looked down on him personally because of his race. And it shows that the motives behind his murder is much more complex than simple explanations that it was all down to Islamic superstition and immigration.
Hat tip once again to Tim Fenton for his excellent article on yet another grotty point on GB News’ downward trajectory. As he points out, the channel must be really desperate if one of its presenters, Patrick Christys, has far-right activist Jack Buckby as a guest, and even boasts about it on Twitter. The wretched station even called Buckby a ‘counter-extremism researcher’ and proudly boasted of his praise for Christys, tweeting “‘People on the right are so scared of being smeared as being far-right extremists to the point where they say the far-right doesn’t exist’ … [Jack Buckby], counter-extremism researcher, praises Patrick Christys for talking about extremism”. Well, the real counter-extremism researchers over at Hope Not Hate have been following Buckby for years along with the Islamists Buckby is claimed to be an expert on. Because Buckby may himself be justly described as a far-right extremist. Citing pieces from the Liverpool Tab and Examiner Live, Zelo Street then proceeds to give a brief precis of Buckby’s career.
Buckby is a former member of the BNP, getting mixed up with them when he was at school and then going on to study briefly at Liverpool University before he was thrown out for his views. Buckby said, “I initially got involved with the BNP in high school. I wasn’t very political, but I had my opinions, as everyone does. I saw Nick Griffin and the real bias that he was facing on the television and I thought, ‘That can’t be right.’ I did my own research and thought, ‘Shit, I agree with him. He actually seems like a good bloke.’ I started supporting it and went through college being the notorious BNP guy. It was later that I met Nick and started talking about these culturist ideas”. He was expelled eight years ago in 2013, and went on from the BNP to Liberty GB, which describes itself as an anti-Islamisation party and a radical patriotic conservative organisation. Following the murder of MP Jo Cox, Buckby stood for Liberty GB against Labour in the Batley and Spen by-election, stating that Labour could not go unchallenged. He also claimed that Labour had duped working class people and were walking into the election with smug little grins on their faces. He also issued tweet stating that if Jo Cox’s murder was true, it was either a case of the ‘moronic’ Britain First damaging the cause of the far right, or a false flag attack by the Remain campaign. He was also strongly criticised for a rant on Channel 4 News in which he said to Barbara Ntumy, ‘Take in a Syrian refugee, I hope you don’t get raped’”. The good peeps of Batley and Spen weren’t impressed, and Buckby got 1.1 per cent of the vote and lost his deposit. Tim’s article also quotes tweets from Dr. Louise Raw and anti-racism campaigner Mike Stuchbery. Dr. Raw was horrified at the platforming of Buckby, because he had called for terror attacks in the Netherlands and was in the BNP, as was David Copeland, the man who radicalised Jo Cox’s assassin. Stuchbery has also been a victim of fanatics claiming to fight Islamisation. He was targeted for harassment by the noxious Tommy Robinson. Stuchbery also wondered why GB News was platforming him, ending his tweet with“Disgraceful from [GB News] … A known fascist with despicable views on the murder of Jo Cox & much more that should shame [GB News], who clearly did no background checks here”.
Tim, on the other hand, ends his piece with the conclusion that GB News knew exactly what they were doing, and should hang their heads in shame. But they won’t, because they don’t have any.
I’m afraid Tim’s precisely right. A quick search on Google reveals this article on For Britain, its leader Anne-Marie Waters, and Jack Buckby. https://hopenothate.org.uk/research-old/investigations/undercover-inside-britains-far-right/for-britain/. I realise that neither Buckby nor Hope Not Hate are exactly household names, but the researchers at GB News would have known of them and who Buckby was when gathering information for the show. Even if they didn’t come across Hope Not Hate, they would have been able to get the facts about Buckby. It looks very much like the broadcaster wanted someone controversial to talk about Islamisation in the aftermath of David Amess’ murder, and weren’t particular about who they were inviting.
As for describing Buckby as an anti-Islamisation expert, this strikes me as nonsense. I think it’s a mistake to underestimate the Islamophobic far right, as from my own reading of their web pages there are people there who do have a deep knowledge of Islam. This is apart from the football hooligans and other thugs who simply want to beat up brown people. There are issues with Islam in Britain. I think some sections of it are very alienated from mainstream British society and there is a danger of the creation of parallel societies. But the vast majority of British Muslims aren’t terrorists and have very publicly condemned it.The problem is that Fascists and Islamophobes like Buckby don’t distinguish between Islam and Islamism.
From what I’ve read and watched, many of the Islamist activists and terrorists have a similar background. Apart from those radicalised abroad, they seem to be individuals, who’ve been radicalised over the Web or from particular hate preachers. A number had connections to Anjem Chaudhury, a grotty individual who’s spent time in the slammer for supporting terrorism. I don’t know if this the case with Amess’ alleged killer, but quite often they’ve spent their lives drinking, taking drugs and having sex before their conversion to radical Islam. Chaudhury, if I’m correct, is a case in point. Some of them, like those responsible for attacks in France, seem to have been violent criminals. Quite often they’ve precious little connection to their local mosque, the congregation of which haven’t seen them in years.
As for the political motivations behind the attacks, some of it simply seems to be rage at the west’s repeated invasions and attacks on Muslim nations, such as the invasion of Iraq. While there’s more to the ideology than simply this – it also seems to be coupled to stupid conspiracy theories about the Jews plotting against Islam and Mohammed from the foundation of the religion in the 7th century onward, cultural shock and dislocation caused by the massive changes in Middle Eastern and broader Islamic society, as well as an idealisation of pre-modern, traditional Islam – that seems to be the primary motive.
This is a tense time. Our Muslim brothers and sisters are naturally afraid of increased prejudice and abuse following Mr. Amess’ horrendous murder. I saw a piece on the internet news page yesterday stating that Muslim organisations were giving them advice on handling this increased suspicion and hate. We need informed, sane experts, who can properly explain the issues, drawing people together to dispel such prejudice and unite against violence and hatred.
This means real experts, not bigots and Nazis like Buckby.
GB News risk increasing tension simply by platforming him. It seems to be a publicity stunt, though I also wonder if the broadcaster couldn’t get anyone who really knew about Islamist terror and radicalisation on.
Either way, it shows how low it really is going on its way to being eventually wound up.
The Tory right has a reputation for supporting and crossing over into real Fascism. This got so bad that in the 1970s the anti-immigration Monday Club opened its books to the Board of Deputies of British Jews to show that they didn’t have any genuine neo-Nazis among their numbers. The far right connections of the Tory party were so extensive that Panorama made a documentary about it, ‘Maggie’s Militant Tendency’. This was immediately spiked and stopped from being broadcast by Thatcher. One of the Tory youth movements was closed down because of the extreme right-wing sympathies of its members. These young activists were caught singing such ditties as ‘Hang Nelson Mandela’ and ‘We Don’t Want No Blacks and Tories’. The party has attempted to combat this by trying to recruit Black and Asian MPs. When David Cameron took over the party leadership he purged it of activists with connections to the far right and expelled the Monday Club.
But it seems old habits die hard, and Mike has on his blog a piece about the exposure by Hope Not Hate of a Tory councillor, Tim Wills, of Worthing in Kent, who is also an activist for the Fascist group Patriotic Alternative. This is a racist group that sees non-White immigration as a threat and demands their deportation. Mike’s put up a number of tweets about it, one commenting on a demonstration of 100 people against Wills on the centenary that left-wingers and trade unionists opposed Mosley and his Black Shirts marching through the town. There’s also a clip of Wills telling his fellow storm troopers that they should concentrate on White genocide. This is the conspiracy that believes that mass non-White immigration to the West is part of a ‘great replacement’, a plot to destroy the White race and replace it with Blacks and Asians. The perpetrators are usually identified as the Jews, unsurprisingly. It’s a stupid, murderous myth that’s been imported over here from American Nazism, but also partly draws on the native British anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of Arnold Leese’s The Britons.
Unfortunately, although Wills has had the Tory whip suspended, he’s still staying on as independent, and there are fears that the Tories will do what they normal do in such instances. They’ll loudly boast about his suspension, claiming that this shows how swiftly the party responds to racism in its ranks, before quietly restoring the whip.