From American Thinker, last month:
On Thursday night, the Chairman of the newly formed British Freedom Party, Paul Weston, spoke to a group of New Yorkers at an meeting sponsored by Brigitte Gabriel’s Act For America organization. Weston also said he came to warn America that what is happening in Britain today could happen in America in the not too distant future.
It should be recalled that the British Freedom Party has formed an alliance with the English Defence League; Weston’s trip across the Atlantic also included a visit to the EDL-supporting Tennessee Freedom Coalition in Nashville.
The BFP website has posted a video (and transcript) of Weston’s speech, in which two co-hosts are billed at the end:
Video shot at a private apartment
Manhattan, Feb 23 2012.The event was co-hosted by Lawrence Auster and members of Brigitte Gabriel’s “ACT! for America
The American Thinker article gives a different date (16 February), but it’s clearly the same event. From a post by Auster here, in which he urges those who “are interested in attending, and don’t have my address” to write to him, the apartment appears to have been Auster’s own.
The association raises questions about Weston’s judgement, given Auster’s views on race relations. Auster is a particularly controversial figure, who fell out with David Horowitz in 2007 after writing an article on “The Truth of Interracial Rape in the United States“. Auster complained about the media’s lack of attention to race in reporting stories of rape:
Each story of black on white rape is reported in isolation, not presented as part of a larger pattern. There is never the slightest mention of the fact that white women in this country are being targeted by black rapists.
The article was published on Horowitz’s Front Page website (and remains there today), but Horowitz, stung by criticism from the Huffington Post, decided it would be Auster’s last piece for the site. There is also bad blood between Auster and Robert Spencer.
Auster’s website contains his thoughts on a number of subjects, such as 2005 piece on the 1960s struggle for civil rights:
Contrary to neoconservatives’ dreamy thoughts on the subject, the true aim of the civil rights movement, of which the 1964 Act was the crowning achievement, was not to attain a universal, race-blind equality of rights for all persons. It was to advance the condition of black people, by any means that would work.
…To criticize the profound harm done to our society by the civil rights movement and its aftermath is not to defend all of the South’s pre-civil rights racial policies. For example, the Jim Crow laws–which not only allowed discrimination against blacks, but mandated it, most notoriously in public accommodations–were an offense to the nation’s conscience and would have had to be eliminated one way or another. But the regime brought into being by the 1964 Civil Rights Act did not stop at correcting specific racial injustices such as those that came under Jim Crow. By attacking, in principle, all racial discrimination, including private racial discrimination, it in effect delegitimized all natural and historical human groupings and cultures, if they were white. It delegitimized white people’s most basic rights of free association and of property, since such rights were now seen as having only one end in view: the oppression of blacks.
In this spirit, Auster went on (in 2007) to defend the membership rules of the BNP:
which is more inhumane and immoral, the established policy of total non-discrimination which is rapidly destroying Britain, or the BNP’s policy of rational discrimination in favor of British descended people and those who are culturally similar, which would save Britain?
Auster has also helpfully provided a list of his “articles about the evolution of the BNP into a non-anti-Semitic party under the leadership of Nick Griffin”.
Auster used to have links with American Renaissance, although according to the Southern Poverty Law Center he has since “spoken out against [Jared] Taylor’s refusal to clearly condemn anti-Semitism.”
UPDATE: On 16 March, the transcript of Weston’s speech was reposted to the Nationalist Unity Forum, which is run by the BNP MEP Andrew Brons. The piece is described as a “guest column”, and a note adds that “the Nationalist Unity Forum invites guest columns from all the parties and factions in Britain, in a spirit of co-operation and unity.” This suggests that it has been reposted with Weston’s permission and approval. Hope Not Hate, which noticed the column’s appearance, also claims that Weston and Brons recently met.
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The association raises questions about Weston’s judgement, given Auster’s views on race relations.
Well yes, if he is aware of Auster’s background. I was not, until I read things here. I think Paul Weston is certainly not someone to encourage anything of that nature, and he is an essentially decent and rational person. One could portray him as either an “innocent abroad” or someone who is working on the principle of all publicity is good publicity.
I think that the attempt to bring the EDL’s membership off the streets and to be more disciplined under the umbrella of a party – particularly under the leadership of Paul Weston – was a good idea. However, I think that the rank and file (and leadership) of the EDL would not want to be involved in the comparatively boring mechanisms of being in a political party.
I think it is always ironic that people like Pym Fortuyn, Geert Wilders, even Ayaan Hirsi Ali, were/are always demonised by liberal media as racists when they were not. Intolerant of the basic principles of Islam, yes, in ways that would be hard to implement without denying others’ basic rights to believe in whatever they want to believe in – but not fitting into the traditional stereotypes and memes reserved for “intolerance.”
I think the EDL main players are not interested in political structures, and the inevitable dialogues and compromises that ensue from trying to become “electable.” So I do not know if it is fair to say Paul Weston has an alliance with them.
And re: Brigitte Gabriel – it seems she is being maligned and having to cut loose from many of her former supporters. Because she still advocates the reforming-of-Islam campaigner M. Zuhdi Jasser, I see she is being maligned by many supporters of Geller. Poor Zuhdi Jasser sees himself as a Muslim, who wants to remove the pro-jihad aspects from his faith (and in a free society he should be free to campaign for that, despite the anti-innovation pronouncement from Salafists and others). But for his desire to see a reform of Islam he is not hailed as a Martin Luther – he is vilified by traditional Muslims and armchair anti-jihadists.
And because Brigitte Gabriel is on his side, she is now receiving a lot of flak.
It is depressing to see that things are getting so polarised in the USA. Many of the supporters of Ms. Geller (and her homophobic friend Ali Sina) seem unable to deal with anything other than absolutes. No room for nuances, no room for “moderate” Muslims, no room for Muslims full stop.
Whereas, I believe if they would find far more credibility if they concentrated on attacking Islamism/Islamists and antisemitic preachers, and retained some basic respect for the rights of Muslims to engage in their democratic (and US constitutional) rights to believe whatever they want, and if they supported the needs and desires of others to read whatever they want to, including the Koran.
I think Paul Weston’s outlook is far closer to someone like Elisabeth Sabbaditsch-Wolff than many in the US anti-jihad “mob”. But it is early days for him as a politician. He is bound to make some bad judgement calls as he starts off, but I think he is intelligent and thoughtful enough to learn from situations as they arise.