Bartholomew's Notes

Various reports and bits of YouTube footage are now available showing yesterday’s protests in Birmingham, which pitted the English Defence League against Unite Against Fascism. The English Defence League had branded banners declaring their opposition to racism and rejection of the BNP (the name “Casuals United” was nowhere to be seen, and I see its website has now been renamed the “British Defence Leagues”); a BBC report shows the crowd singing the national anthem (as ever, first verse only), and chanting “Muslim bombers off our street”. Other footage shows some more aggressive behaviour, in particular the “who are you?” football chant; however, there is nothing (so far at least) apparently comparable to the May protest in Luton, where Asian-owned shops were attacked and some protestors wore balaclavas, or the 4 July protest in Birmingham, which included the chant “Muslims out”. Photos from the protest (the Daily Mail has some from Reuters) show some apparent EDL protestors being attacked by what appear to be local Asians.

A commentator at Harry’s Place complains:

The majority of the people who were attacked were random passers by. The [EDL] had long gone by then. If you were a White male passing by the crowd you were going to get a kicking. There was even a foreign White guy who made the mistake of taking pictures of what was going on and he was attacked in front of his young baby who was left unprotected in its pram. Granted the majority of the attacks were not as brutal as the pictures on the Daily Mail Website but i still don’t think it should have happened. Ironically the UAF scarpered when they saw what was beginning to happen with the ethnic minority youths attacking innocent White passers by (not saying that a few of the people who were set upon weren’t inciting the minorities because they were, but the vast majority just made the mistake of being in the wrong place at the wrong time) so it seems that the UAF only protest against racism when it is White racism directed towards ethnic minorities, not when it is the other way around.

There is some interesting amateur footage on this YouTube channel. The poster has some background to the man in green who is shown being attacked in the Reuters pictures:

as far as i’m aware the story behind this guy is that two people said to each other “lets rob him” and because they started hitting him the rest of the crowd, already wound up from the drunk guy gobbing off from earlier all pounced on him with at least 10 or 15 people kicking this guy on the ground. don’t think he was EDL but can’t confirm. However 20 yards behind this incident was a line of riot police guarding one street who not only failed to react to the violence but who stood idle and bloody useless as people were shouting for their help.

Another post on this channel has the commentary:

Protesting crowd [i.e. UAF counter-protestors] is incited by one skin head egging them on and rush police line, missiles start being thrown and people in the street have to scarper into shops and allyways.

The poster also alleges some police mishandling of the situation.

Sunday Mercury and BBC footage show the EDL banners. The red cross on a white shield logo has been taken from Paul Ray, who likes to use this symbol at the end of his anti-Muslim YouTube videos. However, Ray has fallen out with his comrades and he complains that the EDL name has been “hijacked” by a certain Chris Renton. Ray has posted a short video entitled “Pirate”, showing a man whom he strongly implies is Renton (it was embedded on his blog here, then removed; see also here); this same man appears in the screenshot below from yesterday. Renton is, or was, a BNP member.

This a story I have been following for a while; background can be found here and here.

UPDATE: A student publication from the University of Birmingham entitled The Radish has an account of the UAF counter-protest:

By half-past, the crowd was angry and ready for confrontation. People from the TUC moving to join the protests were mistaken for the EDL and pelted with sticks…Rather than the well-directed rage of Cable Street, confused anger seemed to be the order of the day. The UAF had no idea what to do with all the people they’d assembled, the crowd seemed to know little about how or where to confront the EDL, the EDL members who managed to reach the bullring must have been feeling almost suicidal, and even the police only seemed to have a vague idea of what to do. Whether you consider this a peaceful protest that got out of hand, or militant anti-fascism that was disorganised and misdirected, it appears that the only beneficiaries were the EDL themselves scoring a potential propaganda victory.

UPDATE 2: There is a rumour of a YouTube video showing EDL protestors chanting “We Want Muslims Dead”; I haven’t been able to find this, and the only person who says they that saw it links to some footage of the earlier 4 July protest (and the chant is not there either – instead it’s “We Want Muslims Out”, at 6.50). So far as I can see, the claim does not appear in any media or eyewitness report.

UPDATE 3: Paul Ray claims a strong Luton presence, in a message to Muslims:

The EDL Luton division was the only division out of all of the divisions that was allowed into Birmingham on the day, thats why you outnumbered those present and started attacking old men, beating them, stealing their Union Jack flag and then burning it.

Look at the Templar blood red, Cross of Christ that the Luton division carried fearlessly, into your domain.

The police even brought in army barriers to protect you from them, and that is only one EDL division.

Ray revels in this kind of religio-military language, and tends to fetishize medieval suits of armour and such. He also has a habit of calling critics “traitors” and recalling how in wartime traitors would be shot. Speaking on “Talksport” a few weeks ago, he claimed that he was against all “devout” Muslims, and that even peaceful attempts to gain converts should not be allowed as they go against the British “way of life”. He also complains that his local council has been “taken over” by Muslims. The psychology, and the political traditions it has engendered in the past, are of course familar.

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One reason for scepticism about the “English Defence League”  has been the involvement of Chris Renton, who set up its website. Renton is a BNP activist, but EDL “spokesperson” Paul Ray shrugged this off as being his own business; Ray himself believes that God is working to turn the BNP into a non-racist nationalist group. Now, however, on the day of an “anti-Islamic extremist” protest in Birmingham, Ray announces he has fallen out with Renton:

The English Defence League that was originally built over many months and eventually set up by myself and others, was hijacked over the last couple of weeks leading up to tomorrow by a bunch of ‘Pirates’ led by Chris Renton, his brother and supported by their ‘Casual’ friends who all gathered around each other and stabbed me in the back.

I have spent the last few weeks trying to save the ‘English Defence League’ name from these people but to no avail, which amongst other things, is the reason why I will not be attending the protest tomorrow and do not want any link made with myself nor the EDL name in Birmingham on 8/8. Any ‘English Defence League’ banners that are visible on the day have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with me, and are the sole responsibility of Chris Renton & Co.

…The Renton brothers caused the initial division and eventual split with myself and ‘Casuals United’ after releasing a statement to a Birmingham newspaper stating the 8/8 protest was a ‘Casuals United’ event and not EDL & [Welsh Defence League] even though its was myself who put it in place. I then removed myself from the equation because I no longer believed in the new leadership or direction the protest was moving in. The Renton brothers (Pirates) subsequently hijacked the EDL name and have been pushing forward and promoting the protest for the past few weeks, using both of the names.

Ray also complains about the “significance of the date” for the protest; he does not elaborate, but Searchlight notes that some (not Renton) are interpreting “8/8” as “HH” – “Heil Hitler”. On the other hand, though, we’re told that

the ‘Casuals United’ movement has now been taken over by [United People of Luton’s] ‘Tommy Robinson’, who will be in charge on the ground in Birmingham tomorrow. He and those under his leadership, know about the threat of the far-right neo-Nazi movement trying to gatecrash the event and have had banners and placards made to counteract this and state ‘Casuals United’s’ position within modern British society.

“Tommy Robinson” is probably Wayne King; Jeff Marsh of the Welsh Defence League had been an organiser of today’s protest but he recently announced that he was handing over to King following police harrassment (Marsh was arrested a few days ago following a “scuffle” in a bar which he tells us was “was nothing to do with me”).

Ray adds that he will have nothing to do with neo-Nazis (although he does not accuse Renton of being one) because “I have Jewish friends, and friends with a different skin colour to my own.” The link to his “Jewish friends” takes us to an audio interview he had in 2007 with none other than Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs; Geller has continued to support Ray while other American conservatives (such as Phyllis Chesler) have repudicated him. Geller’s enthusiasm for one of Ray’s protests recently led to a spat with Charles Johnson.

As I blogged just yesterday, Ray has a habit of falling out with people.

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A new comment arrives from Dave Smeeton of March for England:

As stated in earlier posts neither [Glen] Jenvey or [Paul] Ray where friends of mine, They where contacts on facebook. My friends i trust ,these two i would trust a rattle snake more. Have never trusted either of these two that is why neither have any personal details of myself,

The latest email i have from Ray proves despite what he said to the Daily Mail he was not a friend of mine and never will be.

I have never grassed anyone can the other two say that?

To make it clear March for England had nothing to do with Ray although he did try and drag us into a few things. Despite his latest sniveling email we do not want him in our ranks we dont hold with his views or his betrayal of people.

http://www.marchforengland.co.uk

This is his second message on the subject; previously, he wrote that:

while every person is entitled to worship what ever religion the choose.

Jumping into bed with Hamza Choudry and Co is somewhat beyond belief. If this is true it shows that Jenvey and his friend can not be trusted.

Both these people where om my facebook friends list only reason being there is not a contacts list ob facebook.

The other fella used March for England to keep him self in the spotlight. This was bought to an end by myself and other commitee members. We did not hold with his attacks on a religion as a whole or of some of the people in his videos.

I blogged on March for England back in March. The group is nationalistic, but it rejects association with the far-right. It also supports the cause of the Gurkhas, and it has protested against Islamic extremism alongside the Iranian dissident Potkin Azarmehr. There is also a strong link with football supporters; Smeeton has a past in a supporters’ “firm”, but he assures us that that was a very long time ago and that he is now an “old man”. MFE protests have generally been peaceful; a recent report in Searchlight explains that:

…encounters were overwhelmingly non-violent, except when the National Front (NF) turned up and were driven away by the [United British Alliance] and MFE.

The UBA and MFE appeared to draw large numbers of young men including some black people and even a couple of Jewish football supporters from Surrey. Many were former soldiers and former football hooligans. They were frighteningly disciplined.

MFE was involved in an early protest in Luton following the Islamist provocation there in March, working with Paul Ray. However, it seems that the relationship with Ray quickly soured, and Ray sought alliances with other groups. A later protest in Luton, which MFE did not organise, was marked by some violence. That brought the attention of the Daily Mail, which ran a piece (since pulled) on MFE and Ray and which noted the Facebook link from both Smeeton and Ray to Glen Jenvey; Jenvey was described as “accused by several newspapers of fabricating stories about Islamic extremism”. Jenvey did not respond well to this, and he has now converted to Islam and allied himself with an extremist group. Jenvey also stated that the Mail  did not know that he had been “under cover collecting information for a British MP and Newspaper for them to pass on to the police”.

Ray went on to associate himself with “Casuals United” – this group was behind the protest in Birmingham last month and is preparing for a replay tomorrow. However, on his blog he recently announced that:

I have decided that the way the protests are being led is not in line with how I personally, feel they should be, Because of this, I will not be supporting any upcoming ‘Casuals United’ protests, which includes the Birmingham one on 8th August.

I am no longer involved in any way, with ‘Casuals United’ and their activities, but stand shoulder to shoulder with, and back the aims and intentions of each division and branch that is involved with the group.

Ray possibly annoyed some of his “casuals” associates over a protest in east London; the protestors met up in central London but many of them drifted away when the organiser – a shadowy “Dave Shaw” – failed to materialise and there were fears of a police sting operation. Ray was scathing about those who headed for a pint in Covent Garden rather than a protest at the East London Mosque, comparing them to First World War deserters who would have been shot.

Instead, Ray now describes himself as spokesperson for the “English and Welsh Defence League” – although it should be noted that the leader of the Welsh Defence League, Jeff Marsh, is also involved with Casuals United; Marsh has been organising the Birmingham protest planned for tomorrow, although he recently handed over the reins to someone else, complaining of police harassment. Various “Casuals United” groups on Facebook have his “bouncingbomb” email address as the point of contact. I blogged on Marsh and his charming memoir here – he left a comment thanking me for extra sales which he says have resulted.

Searchlight tells us that

the MFE and UBA are the English and Welsh Defence League (EWDL)…all used to work together until recently when Ray turned against Dave Smeeton.

This pattern makes Smeeton sceptical:

Do you not find it strange he tries to use MfE then gets droped moves to the Casual lads then draws peoples names out to be published on line then he drops that group??? Is he an informer for press or other agencies??

Meanwhile, Ray boasts that the EDL has been meeting with an “influential group of people”, to create “a professional, credible and organised ‘street movement’ for our country”.

UPDATE: As an aside, West Midlands Police has issued a video statement about policing the protests tomorrow.

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Fifty per cent of the time I log on to WordPress I’m obliged to see this face:

It’s there because of some kind of ranking for most popular WordPress post at any particular moment. I’ve always generally ignored it, but since reading this post at Pharyngula I’ve found this person’s visage – apparently it belongs to a certain Anthony Watts – increasingly unwelcome.

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Tim Marshall reports at Sky about the reaction to a recent piece he wrote concerning a mass wedding in Gaza:

…Then the grooms, aged about 18 to about 28. They are holding hands with their young nieces and cousins, little girls aged from about 3 to 8, made up to the nines, wearing white wedding dresses.

…Our report on this put it into context saying that it took place just a mile from the Israeli border and was a message from Hamas about its strength confidence and future fighters. Oh and that the brides were elsewhere. Pretty straightforward.

It never struck me for a moment that the little girls might later be described in the bloggersphere as the brides! How naive I am.

Dozens, and I mean dozens, of websites took the video of the event and wrote lurid stories about Hamas mass paedophilia with headlines about ‘450 child brides’, and endless copy about how disgusting this was, how it showed how depraved Islam is, et al, ad infinitum. Site after site jumped on the story, linking from one totally wrong load of rubbish to the next . I’ll give credit to Tundra Tabloids who at least took down the video, but most sites just ploughed on regardless.

The many websites that picked this up have responded in various ways: some issuing corrections, some quickly deleting their postings, and some insisting that it’s all true and that Marshall is trying to cover up the fact: “Why”, demands one site “would Tim Marshall defend the Gaza pedophiles?” One of the sites that decided to scrub was Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch, which is worth noting as Spencer claims some sort of academic expertise on Islam. Of course, we know that child weddings do occcur in the Islamic world, but the idea of a mass child wedding becoming the focus for popular public celebration in such an urbanized environment as Gaza should have evoked some scepticism. Even WorldNetDaily has – grudgingly -debunked the tale.

George Readings recently posted a good article to the Spittoon which puts this kind of thing into some context:

The “argument” goes that Muslims believe Muhammad to be a perfect model for behaviour and therefore the fact of Muhammad’s marriage to A’isha somehow proves Islam to be a depraved religion…This attempt to aggressively apply a modern British definition of paedophilia to seventh century Arabia strikes me as a sign of severe anthropological illiteracy…

…Marriage to a pre-pubescant child with whom consummation occurs upon reaching puberty is not a model most people would be happy with in the modern world (although Bolivia sets the age of consent at puberty).

Which is probably why nearly all Muslim countries have reformed these rules beyond recognition. The age of consent in Algeria and Malaysia is 16, in Indonesia it is 19 for males and 16 for females. In Egypt it’s 18 for both and Tunisia 20. Reform has not, however, come to Saudi Arabia. Back in April the world followed the case of a mother trying to obtain a divorce for her eight-year-old daughter who had been married off by her father to a friend he owed a debt. In the end she succeeded and now there is even talk of Saudi Arabia preventing marriage before the age of 18.

In Christianity, the traditional story of the Virgin Birth is focused on a female who was probably supposed to be a young teenager at the time she is made pregnant; in the USA, some fundamentalist Mormon sects continue the practice of  marrying older men to young girls. Most famously, the singer Jerry Lee Lewis – a member of the Assemblies of God and a relative of Jimmy Swaggart – married a 13-year-old cousin in Tennessee in 1957; reportedly, the girl at the time still believed in Santa Claus.

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Anjem Choudary’s “School of Shariah”  – a successor outfit to the banned extremist Al-Muhajiroun group – has posted a YouTube video in which Glen Jenvey is guided through a formal conversion process to Islam. This is a long and somewhat meandering story which I’ve blogged numerous times, most recently here.

The video’s blurb contains a taunt aimed at Jenvey’s former “anti-Jihadist” associates:

Former spy embraces islam dr rusty, paul ray pipeline choke at it

Jenvey features on the controversial Obsession DVD – his profile for the film can be seen here.

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Also: Casuals United leader charged with affray

From Unite Against Fascism:

Unite Against Fascism supporters in the West Midlands will be joining the local Muslim community in Birmingham city centre on Saturday 8 August to protest against an “anti-Muslim demonstration” planned that day by right-wing thugs linked to the fascist BNP and promoted on openly Nazi internet sites such as Stormfront.

The racist demo is planned by a group of football hooligans operating under the names “Casuals United” and the “English Defence League”. There was a spate of Nazi and BNP graffiti in the local area after their last outing in Birmingham on 4 July.

The site links to a blog post by me, in which I investigated crossovers between the EDL and the BNP – although I should add that I have never drawn wider inferences from the instances I noted.

Meanwhile, Jeff Marsh (whom I blogged here, and who does not have any far-right links) complains of police harrassment on the Casuals United website:

As you probably know, the powers that be decided to lift me from  outside a pub where a scuffle was occuring which was nothing to do with me, arrest me for nothing, then when they got me to police station they advised me that I was being arrested for incitement to religious hatred in reference to some videos I had on youtube.

They held me for 24hrs wouldnt let me speak to my wife at all, pulled my house to bits, damaging a lot of books in the process and have now bailed me after charging me with this ridiculous affray charge.

Marsh’s YouTube channel is now closed, and he has “dropped out of organising [the protest] due to police betrayal”. Instead, he has handed over the event to a young man named Wayne King, who has been involved with protests in Luton. He adds that

if everyone who says they are coming turns up we should have close to a thousand people, including many football lads, and normal people of all races will be present. After this the loony left will find it nigh on impossible to keep calling us nazis, or even racist. Job done. The sooner these apologists for terrorism shut up the better.

Further down, we are assured that

 Casuals United and the Defence Leagues are non political, non racist, non violent protest groups, and anyone is welcome to get involved.

Anti-extremist Muslims, though, might be put off by the “Infidel” baseball caps (available for 15 quid); the old “Casuals United” Facebook page carried the slogan “We are the Infidels”. Further, the group takes the view that most immigrants are terrorists:

the traitor Alan Johnson wants to keep letting immigrants, most of them terrorists or sympathisers into this country…British people must make a stand and the scum that have allowed our country to get in this state need to be told.

We have no chance of removing islam with rodents like this in power. This man is in charge of immigration control and openly states that he doesnt care how many people come here. No, well he wont be on the train when the next bomb goes off, so why should he care?

The main “Casuals United” Facebook page has now gone, and instead around 30 new pages have been established, named for various football clubs and identified by their banners. The blurbs contain statements that include “Nazis go to HELL, BNP GO TO HELL and NF go to HELL”. However, as I blogged here, some far-right elements have apparently promised to show up, welcome or not.

By the way: if the Portsmouth banner is unfurled on the protest, I fear that some unhappy confusion may ensue…

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WorldNetDaily returns to the theme of a Muslim anti-Christ:

Meet “The Islamic Antichrist,” a book almost certain to be greeted in the Muslim world with the same enthusiasm as Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses.” The author, Joel Richardson, is prepared. He has written the book under a pseudonym to protect himself and his family.

In fact, the book is a follow-up to Richardson’s Antichrist: Islam’s Awaited Messiah, which was published last year, and which – as I noted at the time – is just the latest in a long line of fundamentalist tomes in which the Bible supposedly reveals an underlying spiritual dimension to conflicts that involve the USA. Both books carry endorsements from Robert Spencer, who is not known to be particularly religious but who doubtless sees such works as having populist uses [UPDATE: Actually, it turns out that Spencer is a Catholic deacon in a Greek Melkite diocese].

In fact “the Muslim world” has ignored Richardson’s “Islamic Antichrist” views; just recently Richardson was in Turkey to have a chat with none other than Harun Yahya, and he returned home in one piece. WND editor Joseph Farah previously promised riots following the publication of Richardson’s Why We Left Islam – again, there was no reaction from “the Muslim world”, although Ibrahim Hooper made a snarky comment which Farah tried to spin into some kind of incitement to violence.

WND continues:

Richardson believes the key error of many previous prophecy scholars involves the misinterpretation of a prediction by Daniel to Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel describes the rise and fall of empires of the future, leading to the endtimes. Western Christians have viewed one of those empires as Rome, when, claims Richardson, Rome never actually conquered Babylon and was thus disqualified as a possibility.

It had to be another empire that rose and fell and rose again that would lead to rule of this “man of sin,” described in the Bible. That empire, he says, is the Islamic Empire, which did conquer Babylon and, in fact, rules over it even today.

As ever, this is voodoo scholarship. The Book of Daniel belongs to an “Apocalpytic” genre of the second century BCE, and, like the other books of the Bible, it was written with a contemporary audience in mind; it does not contain secrets that make sense only thousands of years later. The various empires that concern the author end with that of his own time and location: the Hellenistic kingdoms of the post-Alexander period. The author is not interested in Rome, and shows no knowledge of any kind of “Islamic Empire” hundreds of years in the future.  Babylon as a city had already lost much of its historical significance by the time the book was composed, and by the Islamic period the town itself was largely a ruin. Babylon was never destroyed in any sort of disaster, despite the promise in Isaiah 13; instead, the site eventually became uninhabited after a millennium of natural decline.

However, Christian fundamentalists have another perspective: for them, the book of Daniel was written hundreds of years earlier, during the Exile, and it contains supernatural divination of the future course of history. Babylon may be a ruin today, but the physical location remains central to the events of the “Last Days”. Thus there was excitement in the 1980s when Saddam Hussein tried to “restore” the archaeological site in his own image, and the apocalpytic Left Behind novels feature the United Nations relocating to the site. Recently, the announcement of US funding to protect the site (a mere $700,000 was quoted) created a hysteria.

Joel Richardson’s blog can be seen here.

UPDATE: In a follow-up article (also reposted on Richardson’s blog), WND finds a way to bring Obama into the picture:

Richardson explains:

Under the guise of “fairness” and “equity,” Americans are getting their share of government-coerced wealth redistribution under the leadership of Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress, but it’s only a foreshadowing of what the whole world will witness under the rule of a coming world leader known as “the Beast,” says the author of a controversial new book, “The Islamic Antichrist.”

Author Joel Richardson is quick to point out he does not believe Obama is that future global leader – one many evangelical Christians hold will be satanically inspired. But his messianic appeal and some of his policies do foreshadow the dreaded “man of sin,” says Richardson.

“Obama’s populist message, his appeal to class envy and his overt move toward wealth redistribution find some very clear and dark echoes in the pages of the Bible,” he explains.

Richardson says the Book of Daniel reveals the Antichrist will invade the wealthy nation of Israel specifically to plunder and gain control of its commodities and wealth.

“But what is so interesting is the Bible tells us his reason for seizing this wealth is to give it away to his followers,” says the author. “While slightly more violent than Obama’s tax plan, it is no less populist in its methodology of radical wealth redistribution.”

Once again, Richardson reads into the Bible want he wants to see there. He’s refering to Daniel Chapter 11:

He will be succeeded by a contemptible person who has not been given the honour of royalty. He will invade the kingdom when its people feel secure, and he will seize it through intrigue…When the richest provinces feel secure, he will invade them and will achieve what neither his fathers nor his forefathers did. He will distribute plunder, loot and wealth among his followers. He will plot the overthrow of fortresses— but only for a time…His armed forces will rise up to desecrate the temple fortress and will abolish the daily sacrifice. Then they will set up the abomination that causes desolation.

The person described here is Antiochus IV Epiphanes, a Seleucid king hated in the Jewish tradition for his enforcement of Hellenistic culture and religious forms on Judea. Christian fundamentalists accept this historical context, but see it as some kind of “foreshadowing” of events still to come – which the text itself does not warrant. Of course, one of the main attractions of war historically has been the plunder victors can enjoy; the above cannot seriously be compared to “Obama’s tax plan” unless one is suffering from a paranoid monomania.

And besides, the Bible does not disapprove of plunder being doled out among supporters; here’s Numbers 31:

So Moses said to the people, Arm some of your men to go to war against the Midianites and to carry out the LORD’s vengeance on them…They fought against Midian, as the LORD commanded Moses, and killed every man…The LORD said to Moses, You and Eleazar the priest and the family heads of the community are to count all the people and animals that were captured…Divide the spoils between the soldiers who took part in the battle and the rest of the community…

Back in August 2008, Richardson claimed that a podium used as staging for Obama’s nomination acceptance speech was designed as a copy of the Pergamon Altar, a significant piece of Classical architecture described as the “throne of Satan” in the Book of Revelation. When I pointed out why this was nonsense, he responded congenially but with the complaint that “either you have no sense of humor or you just like to act as though you don’t”.

WND recently ran an article exploring a claim that Jesus stated that Barack Obama is Satan.

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20 January 2008:

As a Knesset panel deliberated Tuesday on proposals to ban all gay pride parades in Jerusalem, MK Nissim Ze’ev (Shas) accused the homosexual community of “carrying out the self-destruction of Israeli society and the Jewish people.”

Ze’ev also said homosexuals were a plague as “toxic as bird flu.”

20 Feb 2008:

Homosexuals caused Israel’s last earthquake, Shas MK Shlomo Benizri said Wednesday.

During a special Knesset session on earthquakes, Benizri said he proposed that the Knesset “find a way to prevent mishkav zachar [sexual relations between men], and thus save [us] a lot of earthquakes.”

2 August 2009:

Israeli police are hunting for a gunman who shot dead two people in an attack on a support centre for homosexual teenagers in Tev Aviv.

…Shas, whose members and rabbis have been openly critical of the country’s homoseuxual community, condemned the attack.

“We are shocked and bereaved, and denounce without reservation the murderous incident that targeted Tel Aviv’s gay community,” the statement said.

Surely they mean to say “we are shocked, shocked…”?

UPDATE: Incidentally, the Israeli police still haven’t arrested anyone for a 2008 letter bomb attack which left a teenage Messianic Jew seriously injured.

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Edmund Standing’s recent report on The BNP and the Online Fascist Network has resulted in a debate over whether Standing has underplayed the BNP’s anti-Muslim rhetoric in his investigation of continuing links to neo-Nazism . Edmund’s view, expressed in a follow-up article, is that

The reality is that Griffin and co don’t really care about Islam. Griffin may be an odious figure, but he’s not a complete idiot, and he knows very well that Britain is not on the verge of turning into an Islamic State.

Following his strategy for making the BNP electable, Griffin has tried to steer the party towards populist issues, picking up on fears and resentment among the electorate in an attempt to use such issues as a Trojan horse for his underlying racist agenda. The truth is that the BNP hates Muslims because they are predominantly brown skinned. In ‘white nationalist’ ideology, everything ultimately boils down to an obsession with race.

Islamophobia Watch complains:

Trying to make sense of Standing’s argument, he seems to be saying that the BNP’s Islamophobia is a mere epiphenomenon of traditional colour-based racism and that anti-fascists should concentrate on resisting the latter. He writes: “The truth is that the BNP hates Muslims because they are predominantly brown skinned. In ‘white nationalist’ ideology, everything ultimately boils down to an obsession with race.”

It is of course true that the BNP’s hatred of Islam is inseparable from the fact that the overwhelming majority of Muslims are not white. But racist ideology is not based solely or even primarily on the physical characteristics of members of the victimised minority community. These days it is more often justified in cultural terms. When the BNP denounces Islam as “alien” to “Western values”, and rants on about the threat to European civilisation posed by a “barbaric desert religion”, this isn’t reducible to a hatred of Muslims because they are brown. The far right really does despise and fear Islamic beliefs and religious practices…If we accept Standing’s analysis, the BNP leadership doesn’t believe a word of this. Griffin is stupid and bigoted enough to embrace paranoid fascist fantasies about Jewish control of the media (see his 1997 pamphlet Who are the Mindbenders?) but apparently he’s too intelligent to imagine that the “liberal elite” are complicit in a plan to facilitate the Muslim takeover of Europe.

Sunny Hundal concurs, calling the report “a farce”. There is also some scepticism because the report has been published by the Centre for Social Cohesion; the CSC’s director Douglas Murray is part of the neoconservative anti-Islamic pundit circuit, speaking alongside the likes of Melanie Phillips and Robert Spencer (Murray also recently spoke at the Robertson faction of the Swinton Circle – which puts him in some dubious company).

However, it seems to me that this spat is unconstructive: we can’t know what’s going on inside Nick Griffin’s head beyond what he actually says or does, and whether or not the BNP’s attacks on Muslims are primarily opportunistic, Edmund does not suggest that they are not serious or should be ignored. His report has a different focus, because it has has a different purpose: we know that Griffin’s stated strategy has been to downplay his true views with palatable euphemisms, and the report contains useful new documentation of the extent to which the party is willing to tolerate and draw support from those who are proud to identify with the Nazis. I think Edmund could consider the BNP’s views on “culture” for people in living Britain when judging whether it all just “boils down” to race – Rumbold (in a thread here) notes that the party would hardly welcome white converts to Islam – but the report does not hinge on that point.

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