The EDL Will Survive

Joe is an EDL supporter and a longtime commenter at Gates of Vienna whose cogent comments are always welcome in this space. The comment below echoes and complements what Dymphna said in the previous post. It was posted earlier this evening, but it is so far down the thread that it might otherwise go unnoticed.

I’m reposting it here in its entirety. It has been edited for punctuation and paragraphing:

I think I have a closer ring-side seat in all of this than anyone else commenting on it, on any of the major blogs.

Tommy has been under unbelievable pressure, not just from the state, the media and the police, but has also been involved in making two or three videos in the last nine months. One of these videos has taken at least seven of the last nine months to complete. Only a few weeks ago he did the last day of shooting that documentary, and I remember him talking about that same documentary back in June, and today when I looked I realised he’d been talking about that same documentary in February. I’ve seen three minutes from one of these documentaries, and I watched it twenty times, and each time the hair stood up on my neck (the whole thing can’t live up to those three minutes, so adjust your expectations).

I also know that there have been Nazis lurking round EDL divisions and demos. I heard from some gay people that they got death threats from Nazis when they turned up on demos, and I was in the room when Tommy was told this. He was angry, frustrated and depressed that the Nazis were still cropping up and threatening people whom Tommy was encouraging to show themselves (mind you, given half a chance, those homophobic Nazis turn up in the comments section of GoV and other sites).

But the gays in EDL are not shrinking violets, and they deal with violent Nazis by themselves, knowing they can turn to their compatriots for support. Still, it must be awful to be Tommy and have his family get hundreds of death threats from Muslims with no police action, to have all the organs of the state on his back, to have the media systematically lie about him and EDL, and then to have Nazis turning up and trying to destroy everything he’s doing.

I can’t say that I would have left EDL the way he did, but then I’m not 1% of the man he is, and would never have been in the situation where I would have to make the decisions he has had to make. Those of us who know him acknowledge he has an unbelievable tolerance for stress. Even those who don’t know him must recognise that he’s taken on a national struggle that none of the institutions of the entire country would take on.

When this crisis broke a few days ago, I didn’t think EDL would survive (I only observe things from the periphery). But seeing how EDL have responded, I think they will survive. And I think the actions they are taking might be entirely productive. I’m pleased to see how professional they’ve been in their response (and that must really rile the traitorous media and “an-ti-fa”). And EDL’s tactical decisions give me confidence.

I know that the Nazis can’t be more than 5% of EDL, and I know they are there because the state agencies place agents provocateurs even in organisations like the Green movement, so they are bound to be inside EDL And if EDL was any left-wing or Muslim organisation, the media would not have concealed the organisation’s attempts to communicate its message: Nazis and racists are not welcome. Instead, the media send the opposite message to Nazis.

I think we should all give Tommy the benefit of the doubt. I have no problem supporting EDL in what they are doing and supporting Tommy in what he is doing. Maybe with Tommy’s magnetism out of the way, EDL can sort out the problem with Nazis that just proved too much for him (on top of everything else he has taken on). As likable as Tommy is, maybe EDL should never have had “a face”, but should have maintained a clandestine nature. As things stand at the moment, EDL has split off into “a face” that will work with the establishment, and an anonymous-collective street movement that will continue to hold protests wherever it wants.

The people who make up the backbone of EDL are almost entirely good people, and I’m proud to know them. They have jobs and families, and they are having to step into the breach, because a country that is £1 trillion in debt will fund any rag-tag bunch of jihadi economically-draining traitors, but will not protect its future, even when 40% of the population are saying that civil war is inevitable.

It gives me great pleasure to see the loons from the BNP or their International Socialist brethren claim that EDL is funded by Zionists, Mossad, Martians, whatever. I know the EDL gets by on determination, donations and perspiration. In May I saw a retired man with a pacemaker lugging massive sound equipment across the centre of London, because the police decided to go back on their word and prohibit EDL driving the equipment to its destination. That man, and a few of his friends, made one of EDL’s most important demos ever happen. And no more than thirty people know who he is.

And at the end of that demo, I got talking to a young bearded hippie (who I thought might be UAF). As we walked away from the demo, it turned out he was a student and a neo-Nazi. I told him: “Go on, say that louder, I want some of these thugs around you to hear, because they will kick the s*** out of you”. He was shocked, and wanted to know why. So I gave this loon a rundown of why EDL hates Nazis and supports Israel. The idea that it is the skinhead, working-class thugs of EDL who are the Nazis, yet there I was talking to a media-misled, bearded, hippie, middle-class, Hitler-loving, Israel-hating Nazi.

I have no doubt that Tommy would not have walked away from people like the man with the pacemaker unless he thought he had no other option than to do it this way. Now EDL have the opportunity to show to Tommy and to the nation that he was not essential. Succeeding with that is going to be the best result. Tommy has proved to be too significant. The reality might be that he was just filling that role because he could (if he was not there, EDL may have just never had a public face). Maybe without him there to fill that role, refusing to have someone in that role will be the best way to thwart the deceptions of those who made the EDL necessary.

Sorry that this is buried all the way down here. It’s taken me some time to get my mind round what has gone on.

Previous posts about Tommy Robinson, Kevin Carroll, and the Quilliam Foundation:

2013   Oct   8   Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll Leave the EDL
        8   A Paradigm Shift in the British Counterjihad?
        9   Introducing W.H. “Abdullah” Quilliam
        10   Between a Rock and a Hard Place
        10   The Problem with Gates of Vienna Is…
 

51 thoughts on “The EDL Will Survive

  1. Most Nazis look on the EDL as a completely compromised Zionist organization.

    In certain forums that shall go unnamed you will see what a hardcore Nazi thinks about the EDL, why would a Nazi infiltrate an organization that they consider to be
    One step away from Mossad?

    • I don’t quite understand the fear of National Socialism, either:

      One of the great (and justified) sources of British national pride is precisely the defeat of National Socialism. Clever Jews are an inalienable part of British history and culture (unfortunately, so is Karl Marx :). Britain provided the seed for establishing tne modern state of Israel (Balfour Declaration, 1917), and the EDL is in on all of that.

      Who are these ‘National Socialists’ supposedly infiltrating the EDL? Plants from the government or from international socialists groups?

      It just doesn’t add up properly to me.

    • “why would a Nazi infiltrate an organization that they consider to be
      One step away from Mossad”

      The state agents who infiltrate movements like the Greens, EDL, etc. do not believe in the causes. They construct a back-story that they use to ingratiate themselves. Their back-story may begin with not presenting themselves as a Nazi, but as they gain respect and “friends”, the infiltrator becomes “more radical”, and plays a part to encourage/provoke other people into doing actions that can get people arrested or can discredit the organisation. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/8262746/Mark-Kennedy-15-other-undercover-police-infiltrated-green-movement.html The guy in that story was seen hanging around on the periphery of an EDL demo, a few months before his cover was blown (an EDL demo in support of Israel). If the state has 16 agents like him in the Greens, of course they have that many (maybe far more) in EDL. Another such “ex spy” was recently exposed as leading a muslim research centre in the UK. http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/oct/16/academic-bob-lambert-former-police-spy

      One person I got to know in EDL had been brought up as a nazi. Alarm bells started to ring, and he immediately went into my “danger-to-the-movement” category. I asked more about his background and his motives for joining EDL and his current beliefs. He’d started to go along to infiltrate and turn the movement. At that point in his life, he hated anyone non-white. But as he went to EDL demos and met people who weren’t white, he realised how much he’d been lied to and deceived by his family. He turned on his family, told them they’d lied to him, and rejected Nazism. Some of them turned on him and hospitalised him. IMO what he went through as a child should be classed as child abuse (but then I think bringing a child up to be a muslim is child abuse too).

      He lives with death threats from muslims and from Nazis who knew him and who regard him as “a race traitor”. He also told me that he occasionally saw Nazis he knew on demos. I got this information to Tommy, and the result was that in the Birmingham demo (July?), he made an another announcement that Nazis are not welcome in EDL.

      When I heard this story, I suggested to some in EDL that it was very significant and that EDL could actually function not just to stop islamisation but also to undermine nazi/racist organisations in Britain. I suggested that the government be approached for funding on this. Mostly the response I got was “they’d never believe us”.

      • Nazis see the EDL as a way for Zionists to hijack nationalism and wouldn’t touch the EDL with a ten foot barge pole.

        Agents from MI5 are another matter.

        • ” wouldn’t touch the EDL with a ten foot barge pole.”

          And yet, having never been on an EDL demo, knowing no-one in EDL, you expect us to believe you have some authority. Are you speaking as a nazi? Because I see no other grounds on which your opinion can have any validity in this context.

          The Baron knows through his contacts, my involvement in EDL goes back to 2010. He can verify when his contacts first met me (Dudley demo 1).

          And I tell you that I personally know an ex-nazi, who has told me of the Nazis he recognises on EDL demos. In the other thread I provided proof that Tommy has denounced these nazis from the stage just 4 months ago. I have provided proof that a newspaper even reported on EDL having a street fight with Nazis who tried to join.

  2. I found it EXTREMELY UNUSUAL that as soon as I responded to your tweet MY account was SUSPENDED….HMMMM

  3. Given that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, here is mine:

    The EDL was doomed to failure from the very start. An organization who welcomes unbridled immigration, homosexualists, the trans-gendered, social outcasts of every imaginable sort, cultural enrichers of the most unassimilable kind, in other words an organization based on Leftist doctrine with one purpose – to oppose Islamic ideology will never succeed.

    Leftism will never defeat or reverse the Islamification of Britain. Leftism is what has allowed it to flourish.

    • The recent marchers were very ordinary people though. That last march across Tower Bridge looked quite ordinary. Quite unlike the stereotype of teh hooligan casual. Perhaps that’s what panicked the state.

    • Agree – How can you defend ‘England’ by including the invaders?

      Ironically for the EDL, their indigenous base is essentially the working class – i.e. the same ethnic group who were defeated and kept down since the Norman conquest – i.e. they’ve lost a similar if more suddenly bloody battle already, in 1066.

      So it would/will no doubt end up the way England was forced to include the Norman invaders – complete subjugation for centuries, essentially until now if you count the upper classes claims to ancestry stemming from the Norman Conquest.

      • The threat to England and English culture is from those who want to change it, not from those who want to enjoy it. Many immigrants throughout history have arrived at these shores with a desire to establish a safe environment for themselves and their families. This ‘diversity’ has added to the culture in a positive way.

        There is, however one immigrant group who have no intention of assimilation, and indeed, wish to assert their own supremacy culture over and above the indiginous culture.

        Worse, there is a powerful political/religious supremacist group that wishes to use this immigrant group as a battering ram to fragment the culture of England, and build upon it a theoretical Utopian socialist tyranny.

        We will win this civil war by focussing on the main issues and not by expending energy on side issues.

        The government will introduce these side issues in order to divide and conquer. Hindus, Sikhs and Jews are not part of the threat, the threat is comprised of the cultural Marxist ‘rump’ in the Con/Lib/Lab parliamentary establishment with their cohorts in the media, and their Islamist attack dogs.

        Thesis, antithesis (the current conflagration and destruction) followed by synthesis, and the real enemy are those who want their political religion to be the dominant part of the synthesis.

        This process is going on all over the ‘civilized world’ but is at a particularly advanced stage in both the UK and USA.

        It is a red herring to make this a ‘race’ issue, it is a purely political issue of incipient world domination, just like that of the third Reich, but this time the enemy is within, there are no ‘jackboots’ or goosesteps, there are just ‘smiles’ and ‘tolerance’ with attractive silk lined handcuffs and a fashionably decorated ‘balls and chains’, as advertised on television, and we are so deceived that we go out and buy ourselves the tools of our own enslavement.

        • Diversity is our strength. What a dumb mantra.

          “The threat to England and English culture is from those who want to change it, not from those who want to enjoy it. Many immigrants throughout history have arrived at these shores with a desire to establish a safe environment for themselves and their families. This ‘diversity’ has added to the culture in a positive way.”

          My take on English culture is this. The English were never inside the Roman system of Universal Ideals. The Anglo is a primitive capable of great originality but also also creative plagiarism. The Anglo requires the ability to “Other” an outside group and generate an “Inside” group. England was never about equality and universally applicable principles. Pakistanis bring nothing to this Englishness. Somalis bring Nothing to this Englishness. West Africans. bring nothing to parley. The Chinese who have been present among us for more than 200 years bring nothing to this Englishness. The Japanese do not mess around with their national identity as we have in the recent post war era and they are in better shape than us.

    • Your way of thinking, and others with similar ways of thinking are the main reason why the anti islamification movement is so ineffective and crippled. It is time to put away personal preferences for whom we would like to fight alongside to defend ourselves, our history, our culture against the invading Islam. We face an enormous struggle to defend ourselves. I have my own personal likes and dislikes but am grateful to whoever is at my side in this battle. Personal likes and dislikes are things to be considered later, once the immediate threat to us all has been dealt with.

    • To support open borders/unlimited immigration is demographic suicide of the country’s native people and culture. The fact the EDL couldn’t bring itself to condemn the very immigration policies that brought forth the cancer that is Islam upon England shows that the EDL is no better than than the establishment political parties and just as useless to the man and woman on the street.

  4. All of which makes the Bradford demo (tomorrow?) VERY important. The media, and their far-left and Islamist alies, will be looking for any sign that the EDL is disintegrating. And any sign they get, will be encouragement for them to continue in the same spirit, to make the EDL disintegrate further, and faster, and make the Religion of Peace and all related subjects (such as grooming) become “taboo” once more (unless it’s the likes of Quiliam that’s addressing them)…

    My advice to anyone sympathetic in England, who can make it to Bradford – BE THERE, bring family and friends, and don’t let the “thugs” become the image of the march.

  5. “…In May I saw a retired man with a pacemaker lugging massive sound equipment across the centre of London, because the police decided to go back on their word and prohibit EDL driving the equipment to its destination. That man, and a few of his friends, made one of EDL’s most important demos ever happen. And no more than thirty people know who he is…”

    An image that will stay with me. Thank you.

  6. Political Tomfoolery – the intended or unintended subversion and take down of an organisation or political system by an incomprehensible act of flattery.

    That working class rogue from Luton has created the biggest political enigma in modern British political history.

  7. The EDL needs to clean up its act. Regardless of who the leader is. They need to commit to completely non violent demonstrations. Think Reverend Martin Luther King during the civil rights movement or Ghandi during India’s independence quest.

    Think about the photos and news reels from those periods. Peaceful demonstrators beaten, fire hoses used against marchers, dogs unleashed on the protestors. However, in the end, they won.

    Every time an EDL member throws something, makes a rude hand gesture, yells something obscene, it gets filmed and that becomes the story. It doesn’t matter if they are provoked, even 1000-1, the one example of bad behavior will lead and eclipse the message.

    • “Every time an EDL member throws something, makes a rude hand gesture, yells something obscene, it gets filmed and that becomes the story.”

      The police, the UAF, the media all collude in this. Let me give you an example.

      Through health problems, I had not been to any EDL demos for a long time, but after the killing of Lee Rigby I went to the demo in London. There were about 2000 people there, and I recognised almost no-one. The “anti-fascists” had been placed on the opposite side of the road (about 300 feet away), with large banners and flags saying “EDL = racists” etc.

      Literally all the TV cameras and photographers were taking photos of a group of about 20 or 30 of the men on the EDL demo who were positioned opposite the UAF, and who were shouting angry words about the UAF being traitors, about what had happened to Lee Rigby, about the useless government. Meanwhile, there were about 2000 very calm, very ordinary people in the rest of the demo, all being ignored by the media.

      When I talked to the man who’d lugged the sound equipment, he told me how the police had agreed that the UAF would not be put in a line of sight, yet there they were. Moreover, during the pre-demo setup as people were gravitating to the EDL site, the police had stood by whilst the UAF threw bottles at those who were gathering.

      So, the UAF, the police and the media, played their part in constructing the image that EDL were a mob of violent, threatening white men that day.

      How is that to be stopped? Have an EDL official for every 5 people on the demo? Where does the money come from to organise things like that? EDL has no money. The UK government spends £3.5 bn per year policing muslim terrorism, it doles out money to muslim organisations too.

      And even if the media could be stopped from getting such images, if they cannot show/report EDL in a bad light, then they will simply not report that a demo took place. It is no surprise to me that Breivik’s original target was to be a conference of journalists.

          • This comment re Breivik barely passes the civility test. Unless you have read both sets of psychological status assessments the Norwegian government paid for (they had to do two to get the results they wanted), your opinion remains merely that: one man’s not terribly helpful smack-down.

            Please give us some sources for your numerous assertions, sir.

      • Joe, you have only repeated my statement. It doesn’t matter if the bad behavior is 99.9999 percent on the other side. It doesn’t matter if the Police lie to you.

        If there is one photo of an EDL member behaving badly, that will be the media narrative.

        How does the EDL police itself? How did MLK do it? How did the followers of Ghandi do it? By commitment, by keeping the goal in mind and by having the leaders constantly remind everyone in every speech that their actions matter.

        • The EDL is massively infiltrated by agents of MI5 and the police, whose task (among others) is to do things that make the EDL look bad at demos — Sieg Heil, swastika tattoos, throwing bottles and fireworks, starting fights with UAF, shouting obscenities, etc.

          If MLK’s movement had been as thoroughly infiltrated by people whose job it was to discredit it, he would most likely have never succeeded. The FBI kept a close eye on him, but as far as I know they never conducted a “dirty war”. Or, if they did, it didn’t work.

          What I have noticed and lamented about the EDL over the last few years is its apparent lack of any significant counterintelligence apparatus. Presumably this is at least partially due to a lack of funding.

          If there were a counterintel division, tasked full-time with monitoring newcomers and detecting infiltrators, things might go differently. Informants and provocateurs could be turfed out, or turned to become double agents, in time-honored KGB fashion.

          Absent this sort of operation, the same things will keep happening to the EDL, over and over again. They will always be riddled with “Nazis”, and they will always look bad in the media.

          • Just want to back you up, Baron. It’s a pleasure to read Joe’s comments, because it’s so obvious that he knows what he’s talking about. And a “chapeau” to GoV. Where else would I have got this information?

          • It will do no good as the national press will ignore rallies outside central London.They will only be reported in local papers,in terms of hate-speech against the EDL;claims they are outsiders trying to provoke violence in “our”diverse community;that they are frightening shoppers away and damaging trade;that they are costing the police[and tax-payer] £Xmillon.The header photo will show large numbers of yellow jacketed police-if there is no other negative images.Witness the Bradford Telegraph and Argos re. yesterdays rally[12 Oct.] The police web site reports there were 700 EDL supporters,120 counter demonstrator and 11 public order arrests.The police attribute the peaceful nature of the event to the community spirit of local people in not being provoked.

          • I said it will do no good;but some local people will notice what they read isn’t what they see on the ground and will share this on facebook or local papers [like The Sheffield Star]that allow reader comment and sympathy may grow over time (as with UKIP which has crossed the `hate barrier`and now has a national newspaper on side;The Daily Express).

  8. Tommy Robinson ‏@TRobinsonNewEra 2h
    @TisOnlyMe_Julie @MaajidNawaz I’ll be fighting all extremism ! The met police do not categorise Edl as extremists, although that may change?

    The proscribing of the EDL would give sense to the events of the last few days. There is a spectre haunting the EDL and counter-jihad movement that has not been mentioned.

    • That’s an idea. Perhaps the Fuzz intimated to Tommy and
      Carrol that EDL was about to be banned.

      • I’m fed up with these dysphoric assertions. You have not the slightest whiff of a clue that this is the case. Stop saying these things on this blog. Go be unhappy and unkind somewhere else.

  9. After looking into what the leaders of the EDL actually believe I was surprised to find that they have no problem with additional Muslim immigration into Britain. They only oppose what they deem to be the “radical” aspects of Islam. As Tommy Robinson himself recently said, “extreme Sharia” is what they are against.

    The EDL is based on a platform of tolerance, diversity, and peaceful protests. This sounds good and I agree with it to a limited degree. I believe the EDL has went too far though in their left-leaning approach.

    Take for example Muslim immigration. As we have all seen with horrific results Muslims living in Western nations can and have become radicalised after living peacefully amongst us for years. Due to liberalised immigration policy we now have millions of Muslims any one of whom could become radicalised at a moments notice. Yet the ADL will not call for an end to Muslim immigration into the West regardless of how many lives might be saved from future acts of terrorism. This would violate their policy of diversity and tolerance.

    The EDL leaders fail to realise that there must be limits on diversity and tolerance in order to preserve a nation, its indigenous people, and way of life.

    I must also say that I have always been very pro-Israel and I support their strict immigration policies. Israel should be a Jewish homeland. Sadly, I have yet to hear a single Jewish person reciprocate these sentiments toward Britain or any Western country. The very notion that Britain should remain a homeland for indigenous Brits is deemed racist and Nazi-like.

    These are among the reasons I also believe the EDL, without massive support of indigenous Brits, will accomplish very little.

    • Britain has, as far as the DNA evidence shows, never faced a replacement level of immigration. The Romans left no genetic stamp, the Anglo Saxons were probably just a warrior elite that grafted onto the lower orders and influenced a linguistic transformation with a German lexicon/Celt syntax. The Viking left a stamp, but that is practically indistinguishable from populations that slowly migrated back n forth from The Rhine Delta and the Thames Estuary anyway. The Normans essentially were no different from the Vikings and Anglos and simply spoke another language.

      What we have now is a possibility of a Northern European population that has been evolving for 12,000 years simply getting swallowed up by a South Asian transplant refugee population that arrived here via air transit.
      Fighting against them is completely justified especially since they have a foreign hostile creed and hate us.

      • I might add that they have tribal marriage customs which simply cannot coexist with a democratic political system. The Pakistani migration (plantation more likely) is going to retribalize our population and collapse civic virtue.

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  11. The smart money is that this is all going to come down to violent civil war. Where diversity will be eliminated.

    • A recent Guardian poll said over 40% of the British population believed civil war with Muslims was “inevitable”. I bet that translates into more or less 50% of the indigenous Britons believing it. But of course they are wrong – the Liberal, Conservative, and Labour parties and politicians say so.

  12. http://youtu.be/XXfemp4nrDQ
    This link is to a video did re Britishpeoplesleague.com English Defence League / National Front UK earlier this morning. Our thoughts verbally put as to the traitors. Leaving the troops under fire was penalty of death in many past wars, regardless of ” pressure ” . Bottom line .the invasion has to be stopped in the streets, and only the streets.

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