I just watched most of that. It was very interesting to see how strongly "Tommy" felt about multiculturalism, how in favour of it he was. He's obviously a hard working chap, and I suspect that apart from his fairly brutal views about Islam he's actually not a bad chap. Fairly uneducated clearly, and very working class, but he seems an OK sort of guy. While the organisation seems fairly horrible, he does seem far more reasonable than I expected. Intentionally trying to get rid of the racists from an organisation which would have very fertile recruiting ground in the racist far right community is admirable.
Is the EDL a 'far-right' organisation? The media always says it is but is it really? I understand that it campaigns against militant islam which seems to me to be a reasonable point of view since militant islamists are without doubt the most bigoted, backward bunch of racists and fascists in the country - bad for everyone. The EDL isn't helped by the fact that they look like a bunch of football hooligans but a desire to counter militant islam doesn't necessarily make them 'far-right' or racist per se.
It's a reasonable question to ask. The EDL has three problems (which Dwarfer already has put his finger on). First, its stance against fundamentalist Islam may be interpreted as a stance against all Muslims, and indeed other ethnic minorities. Of course it is making great efforts to emphasise that it opposes fundamentalism rather than a specific minority group, but ordinary folk and the media may not get that distinction. This is probably because of the second problem: neither do many of its members. For instance Guramit Singh, a Sikh Brit who is one of the EDL leading lights was quoted during a protest: You see the problem. And with the BNP in decline the EDL is getting a lot of racist and fascist hangers-on who wouldn't mind pushing the agenda a bit further. This leads to problem number three: the EDL looks, by all appearances, as a factional bunch of militant football hooligans out for a fight. Muslims, other minority groups and the left-wing crowd get nervous about that and respond in equally militant ways, and before you know it confrontation leads to polarisation. The media, of course, loves it and does its bit to wind people up further. The EDL is having to learn te political lessons that the BNP never quite managed, but for instance Marine Le Pen, daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen and his successor as leader of the right-wing Front Nationale in France has learned very well: appearances matter; target ideology, not ethnicity; extremism scares people, no matter what direction it comes from.
This is awesome, three pages of bigotry and such a simple initial question. The simple answer, and it is very simple, is we as a nation love pantomime. We enjoy a simple narrative, with easily identified bad guys. Suspense, fear, and tropes. Honestly, we can't get enough. There are a bunch of more complex propositions as to why this is the case. But essentially the ongoing narratives reinforce simple ideas and prejudices. It's like a good book series with characters you really enjoy. The difference is that you can be convinced that it is entirely real. To some extent it is. To the same extent that we have retarded tits spouting hate about the Arab world. We have all the same armchair infantry that they have. The difference is we know our loud-mouthed douchebags are only good for a bit of GBH. Meanwhile, the narrative tries to suggest all thier loud-mouthed mongs have the capability to destroy our culture. Nowhere is this more laughable than the trope of Sharia Law. The papers sell the idea that in some way there is a building critical mass of radical, fundamental, Islamists who are capable of taking British jurisprudence and sending it back to the dark ages. It honestly beggars belief that people are so stupid to believe that anyone with enough education and power to do so would a) actually want to and b) be capable of altering public opinion dramatically enough for such an arrangement to be ratified. TL;DR stupid people are stupid and enjoy simple easily identified characters and story lines.
I never said that, I don't believe that they are only opposed to the faith and not the foreign element this brings. I have just had a read of the mission statement which is quite interesting! Funny how they don't mention any other form of religious oppression such as Catholicism, this paragraph could very well apply to the Catholic extremists: : including, but not limited to, the denigration and oppression of women, the molestation of young children, the committing of so-called honour killings, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and continued support for those responsible for terrorist atrocities.
Are you not 'longweight;2981762' and did you not say The day we have Catholics opposing our freedom of speech, shouting death to the infidels, spitting on mothers of their lost sons/daughters who fight for ours and their freedoms, the day I will be pissed and fight them too!
I am and I did say that, I didn't say that they were being racist towards an ideology I meant it as I said it. Dwarfer this is about more than a few extremists in the papers, many of them have had family members killed by our armed forces because we invaded their country. Whether that was the right decision and has improved things is still up for debate but in many peoples eyes we had no right to do what we have done and been doing in the middle east for many years. Change is a painful process, this country is emerging from its religious past and will hopefully soon have no state religion. The middle east isn't as culturally developed as the Uk and many parts of Europe, they will have to go through the same pains that we did and this will cause hurt on both sides. You need to see the bigger picture, stop believing everything you read in the press and try to appreciate the other side of the story. But child rape and the oppression of women are ok for now?
Never been to Ireland then? Ok, here's the thing. Dwarfer is looking at the ideals of the organisation, and perhaps at the leader of the organisation. Others, like Longweight, are looking at the body of the organisation, which makes up the bulk of its social impact. The former is an explicitly anti-racist anti-islam pro-multiculturalism setup. The latter is a bunch of skinheads who don't much like muslims for whatever reason, no doubt racism in a good deal of cases.
So after all that babbling you can;t explain to me how you can call someone a racists when you're criticising an ideology.
He did explain how longweight can call the EDL a group of racists when they claim to only be criticising an ideology. It's quite simple really. Just because the leadership of the EDL may proclaim that they aren't racist and are only opposed to militant, fundamental islam doesn't mean that the members aren't racist or conduct themselves in a non-racist manner during protests etc.
I dunno, is it? Is the mass dislike of people who're subscribed to a specific set of values and standards fascism, or rational discrimination?
Ask Eysenck. He had very rational, scientific reasons for thinking that Black people were cognitively inferior to White people. Come to think of it, Phrenology was based on a rationale too. As soon as the word "mass" is coupled with an emotion, we leave the rational domain.
Has his science been shown to be faulty? If it has, then fine. If it hasn't, then his research stands. People react emotively to science they don't like. If it turns out I'm statistically likely to be less intelligent than an east-asian simply because of my genes, then fine. If that's what the science says, OK. Of course, we have to recognise that people have agenda's often, but that's the beauty of science, it corrects for agenda. My whole point though, is that disliking muslims is not the same as disliking black people. If I tell you I dislike people who endorse capital punishment, not a lot, but a little bit, that's fine. If I tell you I dislike people who think women are to be treated as property, and men as incapable of not raping, then that's fine. If a whole bunch of things I don't like are codified into a religion, and then I don't like people who believe strongly in these things, that's not fine? The conflation of race and religion is terrible, not least because I think it's perfectly legitimate to be opposed fundamentally to a religion to and to think less of followers of that religion on the grounds that they follow it, yet with race, that is clearly not a logical or rational thing (unless your man was right, in which case, oh crap).
