What Sources Provide Credible Information?

For the past couple of days I’ve been exchanging emails with a British journalist who made the original contact to request an interview with Fjordman. I explained to him that Fjordman is not giving interviews to the media at present, and in the process expressed my less-than-positive opinion of the legacy media.

We continued to correspond through several more emails. This morning he sent me a reasonable and thoughtful series of questions about what we (“we” meaning Fjordman, myself, and presumably other Counterjihad writers in the alternative media) think of various journalism-related issues.

As sometimes happens with email exchanges, his questions gave me the opportunity to express my opinions about topics that I often don’t have time to write about. His questions (shown in italicized block quotes) and my responses are reproduced below. Some of the discussion refers to what was said in earlier emails, but readers will be able to get the gist from the context.

You ask some interesting questions, so I’ll answer them in detail, seriatim.

By “shared preoccupation” I meant an interest in the role of the mainstream, or legacy, media in radicalising, or providing nurture, or provoking people to extreme acts.

No, this is not a preoccupation of ours. It’s hard to explain to someone who works solely or mostly in the “mainstream” media how things are in the “alternative” media, which is where Fjordman and I do all our writing.

Our view of the legacy media might be summed up this way:

1. It creates a bubble of shared assumptions, whose inhabitants remain largely unaware of those assumptions.
 
2. It enforces this shared uniformity through a combination of monetary/professional incentives (“You’ll never work in this town again!”) and the fear of shaming (“What you said in your article borders on racism!”). Those who step outside the boundaries may be consigned to a small ghetto of people who share similar opinions, or experience legal problems (e.g. Andrew Bolt, Ezra Levant). Some exceptions are those who are too famous and too shrewd to be suppressed, with Mark Steyn being the most obvious example.
 
3. It stigmatizes information obtained through sources other than those within the bubble. This is true even when the material in question is first-hand, original reporting — which is generally of higher quality than that of the legacy media.
 
4. Because of its immense financial resources, its protection by governments, and its virtual lock on popular awareness, practitioners in the legacy media do not have to hold themselves to high standards — in fact, the opposite is true: those outlets that hew consistently to the august high principles of journalism may not do well.

The blogosphere, on the other hand, is ruthless in culling out mendacity, obfuscation, short-cuts, etc. I learned this the hard way early on in my blogging career — when you make a mistake, you get eaten alive by your readers (assuming you allow comments) and your fellow bloggers. After a while, I learned not to publish things that weren’t well-sourced, and to issue prompt and prominent corrections and retractions when I made mistakes.

These characteristics are required in order for a blogger to be successful, but a legacy journalist has no such disciplinary pressures applied to him. I know this for a fact though personal experience, since a New York Times reporter published something factually incorrect about me (not opinion, simply fact). I wrote to the paper and demanded a retraction and correction, but received no reply, and the article was never amended. The same thing happened with The Guardian.

The mainstream outlets get away with that sort of behavior because they can — there is no meaningful check on their inaccuracy if it is not widely publicized in other legacy outlets. They may ignore facts selectively without any consequence. I have seen it happen over and over again to my friends in Britain — absolute nonsense about them, what you would call “rubbish”, terrible factual errors or distortions, published and allowed to stand and never corrected. As I said in my earlier email, such behavior is the norm.
 

5. Above all, the legacy media will do almost anything to avoid re-examining their most cherished core assumptions. For example, they take it as fact that mass immigration from the Third World into Western countries is a net plus, and explain away the manifold, evident, obvious, suicidal destructiveness of such policies using untested assertions and opinion disguised as fact, all the while ignoring the mountain of evidence to the contrary. Sociological evidence, economic data, crime statistics — all these must be glossed over to maintain the fiction and preserve the cherished assumption. Those who dare to take a look at the evidence to the contrary are subjected to the “shunning and shaming” treatment as described in numbers 2, 3, and 4 above.

I recognise much of what you describe in my profession. Largely it is bad journalism. It does, however, seem like you are describing a profile of a person, or an interview focusing on a single person, which is rare, compared with a news story or a feature with multiple sources.

I am describing my personal experience of journalists, and the personal experience of people with whom I work closely. The published material includes interviews, articles with snips of quotes, articles with no quotes, and opinion pieces — all types of journalism.

Those experiences are overwhelmingly as I described, with few if any counterexamples of probity, fairness, and impartiality on the part of the journalists involved. Not just one instance, but dozens of them.

I do also think that your word “betrayal” rather betrays your own agenda here. Surely betrayal is only valid for a person who once shared your own viewpoint, or “should” share your viewpoint. Not agreeing with your politics surely is not unfair per se.

I use “betrayal” here to describe particular types of behavior, the breaking of a professional code, if you will. These descriptions are based on actual incidents:

1.   A journalist makes a promise (to present a case in full, to give a fair hearing, etc.) and then breaks that promise, publishing biased, incomplete, tendentious material about the subject.
2.   A journalist publishes factually inaccurate statements and refuses to correct them, knowing that (in Britain) a would-be complainant needs £100k just to begin the process of a libel lawsuit.
3.   A journalist uses threats and intimidation to gain access to a person, promising to expose certain private information if the subject does not cooperate, and then carrying through on the threat if refused.

If “betrayal” is inadequate to describe such behavior, perhaps you can think of a better term…? “Devious”, “unscrupulous”, and “vile” are adjectives that come to mind.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but certainly I conduct my professional life in a spirit of fairness. I suspect, however, that fairness is something of a subjective concept.

For the sake of our correspondence, I assume you are an exception, and not like the people I describe here. That’s why I’m taking the trouble to provide lengthy, thorough, carefully considered answers to your questions.

Consider this: If Islamic preacher X spoke combatively, persuasively and often, about the decadence of Western values and was later quoted scores of times by a suicide bomber as an intellectual inspiration, would it be fair for a journalist to ignore this, and focus primarily on the preacher’s interpretation of his own conduct?

I don’t know if it would be “fair” or not. I don’t look at those things in those terms.

But I will pose a counter-question: Christopher Dorner is an ex-LAPD cop who recently went on a killing rampage before committing suicide. Like Breivik, he published a manifesto on the Internet. In it he praised Barack Obama and Ellen DeGeneres (among many others).

Should journalists be talking to Mr. Obama and Ms. DeGeneres about the way in which their opinions and beliefs influenced a mass murderer? Should they be referred to as “Dorner’s mentors”?

That is an exact analogy with what was done to anyone cited favorably in Breivik’s manifesto. Fjordman headed the list, obviously, but all of us were treated the same way, even those who were just mentioned in passing.

If this does not reveal to you the double standard of legacy “journalism”, I don’t know what will. Ellen DeGeneres will never have to endure a public grilling for her “influence” on Christopher Dorner, and that’s that.

The double standard is obvious to anyone who is not trapped inside the bubble. There are none so blind as those who will not see.

I wonder, too, whether you believe it is healthy for a person to get all of his information from a site like yours with specialist interests and writers? Or do you believe that he should seek other sources for credible information and interpretation.

With this question you reveal your relative inexperience with alternative media and what it is that we do. Information on our blog and similar sites comes from a multitude of sources, more than 75% from the legacy media itself. We also track down and republish material from small agencies that would otherwise remain obscure.

For example, consider the destruction of St. George’s Church in Fayoum (Egypt) by a Muslim mob last Friday night. Are you familiar with that incident? No?

I learned of it through the Assyrian International News Agency (AINA), a small outlet catering to threatened Christian minorities in the Middle East and North Africa. It was also covered by AGI and ANSAmed, two small Italian services that do invaluable work in the Mediterranean area. But for some reason it didn’t make it into any major dailies or TV networks, as far as I know.

So, once again, I will transform your question into a slightly different one: “I wonder, too, whether you believe it is healthy for a person to get all of his information from the legacy media, where certain important topics and trends go entirely unmentioned?”

I thank you for providing me with the opportunity to order my thoughts and present them coherently in writing. These are matters I often think about, but rarely get a chance to put into words.

30 thoughts on “What Sources Provide Credible Information?

  1. Has this journalist spent any time looking at the vanishingly small areas of permissible topics he may cover? That is, he may safely cover Fjordman but not Tommy Robinson. How come?

    Even though this man is British and Tommy is important to a lot of Brits, mention of his solitary confinement and soviet-like treatment is not permitted in the bubble you describe. Admittedly Tommy is not of the class of Brits in which this man moves and lives and has his being, but he and Tommy are fellow-Brits nonetheless; just that fact ‘ought’ to make Tommy’s life and ideas inherently more interesting than some previously obscure Norwegian writer. Right?

    But journalists follow the unwritten rules about who shall be walled behind un cordon sanitaire, eh? Thus like many others, he picks the low-hanging fruit, i.e., Fjordman. A little fast food journalism he could probably sell to any editors interested in buying yet another bite. Gotta write what sells.

    It is for this, and the many omissions of the legacy media that I refer to these practitioners as “jornolists” – and am grateful to the fellow within the bubble who self-described his work and his cohorts’ efforts with this term.

    The road to irrelevance is long and winds gently downhill. Because the journey is easy, few of the travelers bother to notice the drop in altitude. By never looking into the forbidden areas, they avoid straying into dangerous, off-the-road areas, too.

    Does this man ever stop to reflect that within his bubble, Fjordman is considered interesting because The Inflators have ruled so? Does he even perceive the firm constraints which rule where his attention may wander – and also where it may NEVER go?

    He no doubt means well. But what price authentic integrity?

    • Having met someone with a degree in journalism, who worked as a journalist, and whose father was a doctor, “journalist” for me is a byword for “ignoramus”. This woman did not know what cholera was. She had not heard of the disease. Half of my brothers are illiterate, yet by the age of 16 I knew what cholera was. Academia has been so corrupted, that for most academics it is the height of glory to be considered “journalists”. 100 years ago, academics would have been mortified to be associated with journalists (and that at at time when journalists would have been better informed than our current crop leaving university with degrees in “journalism”).

      It’s not just that the journalists live in a bubble. It’s not just that they are unaware of the information that enables them to contrast the behavior of their “profession” vis a vis Breivik and Christopher Dorner. The leftist mentality has come to dominate almost all thinking in the west (as Hayek predicted).

      30 years ago I was an associate of Ken Livingstone’s. Among our left-wing group the term “politically correct” was a joke. We used it to describe those odd political drones who were incapable of any independent thought. We were a far-left group, but even then we valued freedom of speech and freedom of thought. By the early to mid 90s the concept of “political correctness” was being echoed back to us from the US, where it had lost all irony. But any thinker who strives for even a modicum of independent thought would chafe at the concept of being politically correct. Yet we see virtually no sign of that at all among journalists. Newspaper editors and journalists should have stood by Suzanne Moore, Julie Burchill, etc. when a group of trannies started to object to anything other than slavish worship of their condition. Goebbels and Stalin would have found political correctness to be exquisite: self-imposed censorship, the most economical and effective thought-control money can buy.

      The journalistic profession take things further than this though. They will lie by omission. Take the case of EDL. Journalism 101 supposedly says “dog bites man” is not news, “man bites dog” is news. Yet when it comes to EDL, even though they had black and asian people at demos and meetings (about half the men who burned the swastika on Newsnight in 2009 were not white), even though they flew the Israeli flags at demos and had a jewish division, even though they had a gay division, in almost every case of reportage, these “man bites dog” phenomena were ignored. There were cases where “documentaries” would pan along a crowd, only to be edited at the point where someone in the crowd was black or was flying a gay flag, and then jump to the “skinheads”, and continue to pan along.

      And it goes further than ignorance and lying by omission. They will collude with those in power to distort the truth. Three weeks before the last general election, the so-called “Independent” newspaper was able to run a story, freely admitting that the media had been working in cahoots with the 3 main parties to ensure that the BNP never got anything other than negative reporting. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/main-parties-accused-of-failing-to-confront-the-bnp-1936714.html

      The BNP might allege that kind of thing happens, but normally one would never know. But here was a paper that supposedly was proud of its “Independence” openly talking about media corruption and collusion with political parties. And 3 weeks before a general election! And all the other newspapers and journalists ignored this story. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect in a Banana Republic.

      For a year or two now, I’ve advocated that no-one in the counter jihad movement should speak to the media. Up until 20 years ago, those who wanted to get the word out on a different political perspective used to have to choose between leaflets/public meetings, and cosying up to journalists to get coverage. We live in a different age now, and we don’t need the journalists. We have ample evidence they are ignorant, they are liars, they are committed to existing political parties and the narrow agenda of policies those parties offer. People who disregarded what I said and spoke to the media have ended up losing their jobs, and ended up fearing for their lives. And if they were to face assassination attempts, as with Lars Hedegaard, the media would ignore it, or even worse, sympathise with the assassin.

      Once one has accepted that the problems the media have conspired to conceal are going to end in civil war, what’s the point in trying to persuade them? They were happily telling us that “islam is the religion of peace” after 9/11 and 7/7. They were lying to us then, and they’ve been lying to us since the 1970s. They are an enemy of the people. I read somewhere that Breivik had originally planned to massacre 100 journalists, but couldn’t get close enough to do it, so he chose a more vulnerable target instead.

      As recently as the 1970s, children’s comic books in europe were telling us more truth about the life of Mohammed than we have ever seen from a european newspaper in the last 40 years. Bat Yeor shows how the OIC has worked hand-in-glove with the EU, universities and the media to air-brush Mohammed’s genocide and slave-trading out of history.

      • Some interesting stuff there Joe, congrats on admitting to having been a leftie in a previous life. I guess that proves that not all leftards are incurable. There are only really two possible outcomes if the present situation vis-a-vis Islam is ignored leading to everything connected getting considerably worse. We can just slide into a slow and hideously painful death as a race and nation or we can end up in a civil war. If the second outcome is going to occur, we won’t be fighting the Moslems or foreigners in general, we will be fighting the Traitor Class of just about all of our politicians plus all the organs of the state, starting with their running dogs, the Police. It’s going to be White on White, with the thinking patriots against the ‘patriots’ in the pay of the Government.

        • “we won’t be fighting the Moslems or foreigners in general, we will be fighting the Traitor Class of just about all of our politicians plus all the organs of the state, starting with their running dogs, the Police. It’s going to be White on White, with the thinking patriots against the ‘patriots’ in the pay of the Government.”

          A friend of mine works for a very prominent department of the British government. These are high-level, metropolitan, “politically-correct” civil servants. A couple of years back they had an anonymous internal survey to ask the staff for suggestions on how to save the country money. The number one suggestion: “kick out all the muslims”. The leaders were not best pleased.

          Up and down the country, the line being spouted by the political class and their media lackeys is light years away from the opinion of most of the populous. Including top level civil servants.

          3 years ago the Labour Prime Minister openly accused a woman of being a bigot, because she asked a question about immigration. 2 years the Labour Party was wrapping itself in the British flag, something that only the BNP has been doing for the past 20 years.

  2. Nick of the Frozen North had trouble getting the comments to work. He asked me to post this one for him:

    ——

    What journalists working for the traditional media need to remember about the individuals working in the new media is that the “new” journalists working for blogs etc. are likely to be just as well qualified as anyone else.

    Remember the snap survey not long ago about the academic qualifications etc of the readers of this blog in particular? Very interesting.

    And as the Baron pointed out – the internet is an extremely unforgiving environment for a writer. If you make an error then you will hear all about it, right quick. Articles must be factual, logical & properly referenced. So “credible”? Why wouldn’t a blog like GoV be credible?

    The traditional media on the other hand? Not so much.

    A quick example: Geert Wilders.

    Much ado in the media when the British government banned him from travelling to the UK. Same when the Dutch authorities took him to court.

    But – when he did show Fitna in the UK & nothing happened (there was NO “anti-Muslim backlash”) and when the Dutch case against him failed (an EPIC FAIL btw) there was not the same attention in the media at all. And there was NO real discussion of the underlying issues either – so we have agenda driven coverage, with no examination of the facts, and no changing their ways later on either.

    Are the traditional media outlets reporting on the persecution of say, Elisabeth Sabaditch-Wolff, the German lady recently nailed for carrying a sign at a rally, Tommy Robinson, etc? Are they discussing the “chilling effect” this has on freedom of speech? No? Why not?

    Probably too busy worring about getting nailed for tapping phones eh? And journalists wonder why people don’t trust them?

    Really? I mean … really?

  3. Christopher Dorner’s manifesto bore striking similarities to Breivik’s. I’m sure a professional psychiatrist would put them in the same category.

  4. When it appeared that Muslim gangs had been deliberately targeting young white girls for rape and sex trafficking in the UK a few journalists wrote reports tying the incidents together. The rest of the media made sure that a flood of reports proved that this wasn’t true and anyone who thought so was nothing more than a racist.

    Well it appears that they were lying (click on the blue markers in the left hand column):

    Abuse Map

  5. To put the best face on it, at least this journalist is reading GOV. Maybe he/she will also read the comments and come to realize that the reporting of Islam by the MSM is hugely distorted as is the reporting of antijihad orgs.
    I thought your comparison between Dorner and Breivik was quite apt Baron. No one named in Dorner’s manifesto got any blow back what so ever while Fjordman was literally driven out of his own country!

  6. The Nouveau-Marxists knew what they were doing: of all disciplines taugth in our universities, the most intensive brainwashing programs are in education, journalism and law.

    Someone just sent me an article from hillbuz.org about BHO the gay man. I couldn’t care less about that BHO aspect; even if true, there are far worse and more important things about him. But the article started with a cogent statement of where Journalism “is at”:

    “Since at least the 1964 election, the agenda-driven media in this country has aggressively promoted the Left’s favored candidates in every election while strategically targeting conservatives for destruction. A copy of the Alinsky Rules for Radicals sits in every newsroom in the country, where “journalists” employ Alinsky Methods to polarize, ostracize, ridicule, and impugn Republicans at every available opportunity. In the zeal to destroy conservative politicians, the agenda-drive media quite often reports rumors and innuendo as concrete fact. Leftist websites like Politico.com rush to be first! in reporting Republican scandals, never much worrying about being “right”. A real double-standard’s in play when it comes to accusations made about politicians: if a Democrat’s being accused of anything, the agenda-driven media attacks the accuser, digging up any dirt it has on the person and mobilizing the Alinsky Goon Squads to annihilate this perceived opponent of the Left; if it’s a Republican who’s been accused of anything, the agenda-driven media heralds the accuser as the bravest and most courageous person on the planet for coming forward with dirt on the conservative in the race.”

    • “A copy of the Alinsky Rules for Radicals sits in every newsroom in the country, where “journalists” employ Alinsky Methods to polarize, ostracize, ridicule, and impugn Republicans at every available opportunity.”

      Oh, come on! This is the ramblings of a loon. Of course there is not a copy of Alinsky’s “Rules” in every newspaper office. The Conservatives/Republicans are so clueless as to why they have been losing the battle for 50 years, that they have to invent these ridiculous scenarious. I doubt if most of the people who inveigh against Alinsky have ever even read his little book. I was still considering myself “far left” until a few years ago, and I never knew anyone who ever mentioned the name of Alinsky, let alone had a copy of his book to be used as a catechism.

      Hayek was a greater thinker than anyone who writes on this blog, and a greater thinker than probably any living soul in the Republican Party, and an immeasurably greater thinker than Alinsky. Hayek explained why conservatism was destined to fail. Those who oppose “progressivism” just ignored him, and ignored him for another 50 years.

      I’m so sick of seeing people clutching at this Alinsky straw. It’s pathetic.

      Alinsky’s “Rules” are equally useful to “conservatives” as they are to “radicals” (maybe more so). Alinksy is very fond of quoting the ideas and citing the tactics of many of those who “conservatives” think of as theirs: Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, Samuel Adams. He quotes the Bible a lot. He doesn’t want revolution to be the sole preserve of the communists. He sees “the establishment” as the enemy (so do we).

      Stop crying like babies. Start looking at what it is that needs to be done to counter “progressivism”. You can start by reading Hayek. You can start by reading Alinsky and using his tactics against those in power.

      Alinsky is all about power and how to organize people to use their collective power to bring about change. In Britain a few journalists with impeccable credentials publicised the muslim grooming gangs: nothing happened. A female socialist MP spoke out about it: nothing happened. The notorious far-left BNP campaigned about it for years: nothing happened. When EDL was formed, the government experts said “EDL will collapse within 6 months”. Well, within 12 months of the EDL campaigning on the grooming gangs, the police & courts started to prosecute the backlog of cases from the previous 10 years. I think there are three mass trials going on at the moment.

      The EDL embraced many of the tactics of Alinsky. One of EDL’s strategies was that if necessary it would bankrupt the local councils where these heinous crimes had been brushed under the carpet. EDL knew that the child-rape enablers (communists) would hold counter-protests and they would cause a lot of vandalism and damage. EDL welcomed that, because it would bring about the financial impact sooner, and it was that financial impact not the conscience of those “childcare professionals” that would bring about change. Every time there is a demonstration that descends into a riot, it is the police force in charge who must meet the costs of the riot. If every demo cost a local government or a police force £1 million, and EDL demos were self-financing, EDL could go on indefinitely (which is why they set about destroying EDL from the inside).

      The muslim grooming/pimping gangs is just one of the issues where EDL’s tactics brought about change. Muslim groups have been banned. Hate preachers have reduced the frequency of their conferences, and now hide the location or have a backup location. Muslim supremacist actions have disappeared. What appeared as a relentless march to power by muslims has been slowed down. Political parties have at least had to mouth statements about what they got wrong.

      EDL is not alone. Even now, MosqueBusters is deploying Alinsky tactics. They are showing local people that they personally have the power to stop islamisation within their area. Exactly the kind of thing Alinsky would have done. MosqueBusters are serving as educators in community action.

      Organisations like MosqueBusters and EDL have done these things with no budgets. I’m sure Alinsky and his ilk were being funded externally. I doubt that EDL leaders had read Alinksy; they just hit upon many of his techniques by themselves. If they had knowingly used his techniques, I suspect they would have been even more effective. But some of the techniques advocated by Alinsky are contradictory in certain circumstances. He advocates against actions which are boring; well most protests are boring. EDL managed to make them less boring by ensuring there was the prospect of crushing the heads of child-rape enablers, should they physically attack an EDL protest. If EDL had chosen more precise targets (e.g. some childcare organisation, or a newspaper, or a government office), the communists would not have created a counter-protest. It would have been more boring and would not have led to bankruptcy as quickly.

      EDL never descended to the targetting and destruction of individual opponents the way that Alinsky did. Alinsky would have had no problem pushing people onto trainst to concentration camps. But then EDL is run by ordinary men and women. Alinsky was more like the well-read Nazi who would play Bach as he gassed people. Alinksy chose to be a professional revolutionary; the EDL leaders would far rather be going to football and getting drunk.

      If more “conservative” leaders had read Alinsky and put his techniques into practice in the last 20 years, we wouldn’t be staring at civil war. The same goes for Hayek 50 years ago.

      The actions of EDL and MosqueBusters have just thrown some bumps in the road in the process of islamisation. What is needed is a far bigger project. And “the right” are not going to realise that until they stop blaming a book that’s been out of print for 20 years.

        • Also, your hectoring is not helpful. Your are setting up straw dogs and then whipping them. Spend some time getting to know yourself, please, then approach others with more humility.

          • “your hectoring is not helpful. Your are setting up straw dogs and then whipping them. Spend some time getting to know yourself, please, then approach others with more humility.”

            You are a perfect lesson in humility. I will try to emulate you.

      • yes, the description of the book mentions the tactics to bring about “change”… it doen’t mention what type of change (although most of those wanting to use these methods – Alinsky included – did indeed mean it to bring about leftist change).

        Not sure I would be quite so quick in describing the EDL as a success story adhering to Alinsky though. Most of what they did involved street protests – and only that. I believe Alinsky advocated letter-writing and even “mass farting” at a classical concert – as well as ridiculing and lampooning of opponents. Not sure the EDL did much of that.

        But the EDL’s opponents – being mostly seasoned far-leftists – certainly ridiculed and demonised the EDL, and even propagated the ridiculous view that the EDL were “racist”, in a way that would make Alinsky proud. It led even the prime minister, David Cameron, to be a signatory of the EDL’s main opponents – United Against Fascism. And now the main thrust of opposing the EDL doesn’t even have to be the UAF – but mainstream journalists (even those on the right) and the likes of the “English Disco Lovers”. Meanwhile, out on the streets, Choudhary is as influential as ever before, and there are even “Muslim Patrols” now forming in London… where are the EDL to oppose them? The answer is nowhere to be seen – as they are at the point of break-up – after 3.5 years of concerted Leftist effort to demonise and strangle them, from the moment they were formed.

        • ‘Not sure I would be quite so quick in describing the EDL as a success story adhering to Alinsky though. Most of what they did involved street protests – and only that. I believe Alinsky advocated letter-writing and even “mass farting” at a classical concert – as well as ridiculing and lampooning of opponents. Not sure the EDL did much of that. ‘

          I didn’t say they’d read Alinsky and used it as a catechism. The street protests involved aspects that other political groups didn’t. They made protesting into “a day out”. Those who were not stalwarts were even known as “day trippers”. The establishment, the Left, and academics were all taken aback by EDL because it was something new. There are 2 groups of sociologists at British universities who have been studying EDL precisely because it was a new kind of protest movement.

          EDL was involved in plenty of letter-writing, and phone call campaigns. They went into the meetings of the SWP and the UAF and took them over or disrupted them. The communists were completely unused to their enemy doing things like that.

          EDL would go into Tower Hamlets any time they wanted. The police begged them to stop doing it. The demonstrations were only the most visible aspect of what EDL did. And they did it with a conscious idea that they would bankrupt local councils by the cost of policing. I heard it from some of the leaders themselves, and I was surprised that they were operating at such a strategic level.

          ‘But the EDL’s opponents – being mostly seasoned far-leftists – certainly ridiculed and demonised the EDL, and even propagated the ridiculous view that the EDL were “racist”, in a way that would make Alinsky proud. It led even the prime minister, David Cameron, to be a signatory of the EDL’s main opponents – United Against Fascism. And now the main thrust of opposing the EDL doesn’t even have to be the UAF – but mainstream journalists (even those on the right) and the likes of the “English Disco Lovers”. ‘

          Almost no damage to EDL was inflicted by the far-left. The damage was done by the establishment: the media, the police, the courts, and no doubt government agents fomenting internal dissent (the police had 15 infiltrators/provocateurs in the Green Movement, some working undercover for as much as 10 years – of course, they must have had at least that number in EDL fomenting dissent). And EDL must take some of the blame too. Despite them not being a racist organisation, they failed to publicise that (e.g. by putting images from demos of white and brown and black people on their website). However, even to do that brings charges of “racism” from those who are determined that EDL must be seen as evil.

          EDL offered an opportunity for many different groups who had suffered from decades of islamic invasion to come together. But instead Jews, gays, muslim women etc. lined up with the media and politicians to castigate EDL. EDL was the opportunity for Britain not to descend into civil war. People have made their choice, and civil war is what they will get. When the jewish organisations, the gay organisations, and the right-wing press such as Daily Mail and Daily Express and Telegraph are insisting that EDL is “far right” and “racist”, don’t try and blame the far-left. Is it the far-left who have Tommy in prison for fraud, when muslims who commit multi-million-pound fraud are given community service? Is it the far-left who suspended a black Tory councillor because he expressed support for EDL? Was it a far-left government who banned demonstrations throughout London? Was it the far-left judges who imposed 10 year banning orders on various EDL leaders?

          If all you’ve got is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. Again, it is a pathetic lack of vision on the part of those who consider themselves “right wing”; they think that the whole process of islamisation is being driven by “the far left” (those organisations Bat Yeor has exposed are mostly not driven or managed by communists).

          The UAF was decimated by EDL. At the start of 2010, UAF could get 3000 people to a demo; by the end of 2010 they could get no more than 50. The UAF has ended up relying on muslims to be their foot soldiers. In 2010, the UAF was bussing trade unionists and students across the country. They can’t do that any more, because the support is no there (they create local non-UAF identified front groups e.g. Walthamstow United). The problems for EDL came from the inside, from the media, from the police, from the government, and from other groups who are too scared to speak out alone not realising that within the shield of the EDL they would have been safer. Alinksy was about bringing people together to effect change; people were instead very successfully kept apart.

          It was all the establishment-connected groups who managed to corner EDL. I’m resigned to what the future of Britain will be. I threw all my energy into trying to avert it. As I said “The actions of EDL and MosqueBusters have just thrown some bumps in the road in the process of islamisation. ”

          Those who think that their enemy is “the far left” are tilting at windmills. The enemy is far more pervasive. But simple people like simple explanations.

          Whether EDL survives or not, I have no idea. Even if it collapses, it has achieved more in 3 years than the BNP achieved in 20 years. I doubt there is any group in Britain that has been subject to such attacks: from right-wing media, muslim gangs, gay communists, international hackers, secret police, academia, church leaders, politicians of every stripe (from SWP to liberals to BNP). What EDL has achieved was a minor earthquake in British politics. For them to have persisted for 600% longer than the experts advised is amazing. And even if it was to disappear, there is now a network of several thousand people across the country who thought they were alone 5 years ago.

      • Actually, the fact that the police protects peaceful EDL demonstrations, but attacks violent communist demonstrations, is seen as proof that the System bestows Privilege on the EDL, so they forfeit their right to Free Speech in the eyes of the communists.

      • Joe is absolutely correct. You want to know how to affect change that you want to see. Read and study the Western Left, New Left Radicals, Feminists, Identity Politics groups, Marxists: Social Democrats to Communists, Gramsci, Alinsky. Not only to understand your enemy but to adopt their successful tactics and strategies for your own counter cultural movement.

        One example is to create organizations like the NAACP, NOW, and the Anti-Defamation league. When average people start seeing these organizations waging lawfare, providing legal defense, and efffective action advancing their interests, they will gain sympathy and members, donations and funding. Men and White Europeans, Anglos all need to be mobilized. Additionally, organizing these tribes gives the pollies and powers that be something to pander too.

        Joe is absolutely correct that imposing financial costs upon the Establishment is a prime tactic for getting grease.

        The powers that be, the Establishment, and those who act against the interests of White European Christians must be faced with negative reinforcement, when they do so. They must feel professional/carreer, financial, legal (criminal and civil) and social ostracization pain when they act against the well being and interests of this group or this group will continue to be abused.

  7. I am quite new to your blog, but this is an excellent post. If this posting is any indication of the quality of this blog, count me as a fan.

  8. Fascinating email exchange, and thank you, Baron (and Dymphna in your comment) for wonderful work that gives to so many of us a voice we could not raise on our own behalf.

    Thank you, too, fellow commenters; and special thanks to Joe on February 19, 2013 at 3:48 pm, for the valuable personal testimony and insight in your comment. I can’t put a price on the opportunity to profit from your life experience and the knowledge and wisdom you have gained through it.

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  10. “At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.”

    — George Orwell, “The Freedom of the Press”, unused preface to Animal Farm (1945), published in Times Literary Supplement (15 September 1972)

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  12. Pingback: The EDL, Alinksy, and an Earthquake in British Politics | Gates of Vienna

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