Something about the EDL doesn’t add up

[Holden Caulfield]

I’m sure most readers of this site will be familiar with the English Defence League (EDL), the small group of far right/right-wing football hooligans with plans to annoy shoppers in a different city centre every week for the next few months.

Flag waving football casuals yelling at large crowds of Asians over police lines may seem like the most straightforward form of politics imaginable but I think there’s more than meets the eye with the EDL, there’s a couple of curious features about this formation which suggests to me that it is deeply suspect.

Several places have reported that the links between the BNP and the EDL are self-evident or even that the EDL operates as some kind of ’street army’ for the BNP. In fact, the origins of the group and their relationship towards the BNP is more complicated but I’ll go into that in a future post.
The politics of the EDL are ambiguous, they don’t like Muslims but they’re not fond of the BNP either and, however implausibly, claim not to be racist. (For a visual illustration of their contradictory politics see this picture (http://images50.fotki.com/v1569/photos/5/1222605/7673626/414064DD132000005DC417_636x525-vi.jpg) and then this one (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_XLxL5xIl-m8/Sqfx7wuSl_I/AAAAAAAACYM/zRzMRYCTGfI/s1600-h/littlenaziheilhitlering.jpg)).

Press coverage

Mind you, say what you like about the dubious politics of the EDL, they must have had a great PR department.

They’ve had big splashes in all the main papers, good coverage from the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8250017.stm) and a government minister warning of the serious threat they pose (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/sep/11/minister-warns-facists-streets). It’ll be just like the 1930’s appprently.

The Real IRA could do with taking a leaf out of their book. Despite setting up armed checkpoints in a South Amargh village a few weeks ago (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6qTCTXAzoY) they’re unable to elicit the same (or any) response from the government or significant press coverage.

This level of coverage may be a little less suspect if the EDL delivered what they promised. In fact, with the exception of a few high-profile occasions (the first protest in Luton and two outings in Birmingham) the appearance of the English Defence League on the streets is sad and pathetic. They seem to lack the capacity to bring out decent numbers regularly.

Can you imagine anyone looking at the Sky News pictures of 20 blokes huddled behind police lines being shouted at by a crowd of about a thousand people and thinking ’sod going to the football, that’s what I want to spend my weekends doing’?

This is one of the curious features of the EDL that doesn’t make sense, their uncanny ability to attract huge amounts of press coverage.
While the EDL is a new formation the same sort of crowd has been doing similar things for the last few years yet attracting precisely zero publicity.
A case in point is the annual Al Quds day march in London. This happened a few days ago in London and a small group of EDL supporters turned up and along with reporters and photographers for most of the mainstream media.

One of the groups supporting the EDL this year was March for England, another group for right-wing football fans who have a bit of a thing for flags. They protested against the Al Quds demonstration in London last year (as I did the year before that – although the one I was on was organised by Maryan Namazie (http://www.maryamnamazie.com/) and the Worker Communist Party of Iran) with similar numbers and similar results. They shouted at the demo from behind lines of police whilst waving flags, the demo shouted back and then everyone went home. Result: zero press coverage. What’s changed between last year and this year?

Tactics – learning the hard way

The other odd feature is the tactics they use.

The tactics of the EDL and their associated hangers on consist of holding a series of well-advertised (see above) city centre demos around the country with one every few weeks, a decision that looks distinctly dodgy given what’s happened on recent outings.

They’ve now had two demonstrations in Birmingham. Birmingham city centre around the Bullring and New Street station must one of the most heavily CCTV’ed areas in the country outside London and not exactly a difficult place for West Midlands Police to deploy hundreds of officers.
Didn’t take a clairvoyant to work out what would happen next. The intial news reports were of 90 arrests (http://www.thestirrer.co.uk/edl-demo-clampdown-after-90-arrests-0909091.html) and a hundred participants on each side. Later reports (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/sep/11/minister-warns-facists-streets) upped this to 125 meaning that, astonishingly, near half of the total number of people who turned out on the day ended up in police cells. This also suggests that approximately 35 people so far have been identified from CCTV footage and received a knock on the door and a greeting that involved a pair of handcuffs.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that it’ll be the same routine for their next demos in Manchester and Leeds, a bit of scuffling and lots of arrests. Are they just terminally stupid?

It could be but stupid just doesn’t quite cover it when it comes to the decision to hold a demo in Glasgow city centre (http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=136437554910). Suicidal is more the word, I’ve heard Union Jacks and St George’s crosses go down really well among a large numbers of people in the city.

I don’t want to make firm conclusions here. It could just be that the EDL and its supporters are so thick that they don’t realise that a repeat of their last performance in Birmingham will end up with the lot of them facing a lengthy list of criminal charges and that the media are wetting their pants at the thought of some old-fashioned street confrontation.
Still, I reckon there’s enough circumstantial evidence to indicate that all is not what it seems with the EDL.

Link (http://nationofduncan.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/something-about-the-edl-doesnt-add-up/)

[MilitantAnarchist]

I agree mate, their popularity is down to stupidy and sloppy journalism... but it hasnt really harmed their cause, and that is the problem... that is probibly why we (antifa) don't get any publicity, we are too intelligent :thumbup:

[Tiocfaidh Ar La]

Yes the EDL are coming to the biggest city in Scotland. You do the math, the huns at rangers may give them a little help but's that all they will get

[Holden Caulfield]

Yes the EDL are coming to the biggest city in Scotland. You do the math, the huns at rangers may give them a little help but's that all they will get

I think what happens or doesn't happen in Glasgow will be very interesting.
The mix of the whole Black/White, Left/Right, Catholic/Protestant, Celtic/Rangers etc etc things makes for possibilities of strange events. Although with that said, it is in a city centre again so whatever happens it will probably be contained, small scale and will probably result in alot of arrests if any thing kicks off

[The Ungovernable Farce]

Yeah, I'm expecting there to be a big turnout of Celtic's casuals for the counter-demo. The question is, will the EDL be able to appeal to the Rangers' fans' Unionist/Protestant sympathies? If they are, I can imagine it getting really messy. Interesting article, anyway.

[Tiocfaidh Ar La]

The CSC will kick their lights out. Only a few weeks ago they stopped an Orange Order walk in Glasgow. Good show by them:) But really I can't see that many Unionist coming out in support of the EDL. Their more into attacking Catholic than Muslims.

[Melbourne Lefty]

The CSC will kick their lights out. Only a few weeks ago they stopped an Orange Order walk in Glasgow. Good show by them:) But really I can't see that many Unionist coming out in support of the EDL. Their more into attacking Catholic than Muslims.

If they get the rangers fans onside it could be a real ruck.

If they dont.... well who cares. It will just be the same as Harrow.

[Holden Caulfield]

The relationship between tabloid reporting and the increase in the BNP's popularity is an interesting one to look at. We know tabloid nonsense gets churnalised over on the BNP's website, we know that the party advertises and sells Melanie Phillips' book via its website, and we know the policy of attacking Muslims rather than any other group is based on the prominence of negative stories in the news media, so it seems the tabloids are at least contributing to an environment where far right ideas may seem more attractive to some.

There is still a little bit of ambiguity between cause and effect here though. Does tabloid coverage cause people to vote for the BNP, or are the tabloids merely reflecting a rightward shift in public opinion? I know what I think, but you know what? I'm not going to bother arguing it right now. And that's because it's much much easier to show how the tabloids contribute to support for the campaign of new ball-'eds on the block, the English Defence League, to kick off violent confrontations with brown people Muslims. (More on the EDL at Bartholomew's Notes on Religion (http://barthsnotes.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/meet-the-english-defence-league-leadership/), and the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8250017.stm)).

The EDL have produced a video to drum up support for their campaign to stir up violent trouble and drag the country back to the seventies and 40 odd years further back with their black shirts and stiff armed 'seig heils' march for freedom by supporting the restriction of religious, er, freedom. Or something. It's geared toward an upcoming event in Manchester.

The video's a bit rubbish, and amounts to a series of still images juxtaposed against each other to stirring music. Rumbold at Pickled Politics (http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/5917) has pointed out the pisspoor crusader imagery, but there is a series of 22 images in the video that are of particular interest to this blog.

These 22 images are of headlines from the news media and around the internet - headlines to negative stories about Muslims. Only three of these stories are not from the mainstream media. Here's a league table of where the 19 that are left come from:


The Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday (8)
The Daily/Sunday Express (4)
The Daily/Sunday Telegraph (3)
The BBC (1)
The (DGMT owned) Evening Standard (1)
Here's the surprising thing. Only six of those stories are about specific terrorist plots, and none are about 9/11 or 7/7. Rather than stories including emotive images of the twin towers exploding or the Russell Square bus with the roof blown off, the remaining 12 articles pictured are examples of scaremongering about sharia law, the number of schoolchildren speaking English as a second language and so on. It would probably be useful to go through them and give quick and dirty rundown of the 'ooga-booga look at the scary brown people mainstream articles' used for recruitment to the EDL cause.

Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday
Will Britain one day be Muslim? (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-452815/Will-Britain-day-Muslim.html) - an opinion piece (in the 'News' section and not flagged as opinion), which mentions 'the enemy within', scaremongers with guff about birth rates and bigs up Mark Steyn.

Britain has 85 sharia courts: The astonishing spread of the Islamic justice behind closed doors (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196165/Britain-85-sharia-courts-The-astonishing-spread-Islamic-justice-closed-doors.html) - from our old friend, Steve Doughty. While the article does manage to bury the fact that the law allowing the courts to operate also covers Jewish Beth Din courts, it includes a lovely big box headlined 'The elders who dole out justice in secret'. Ooh, spooky.

Schoolboys punished with detention for refusing to kneel down and pray to Allah (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1031784/Schoolboys-punished-detention-refusing-kneel-pray-Allah.html) - a story that fails to explain or link to later information about the case that revealed that the boys were not given detention for failing to kneel and pray to Allah. You might have thought that would be relevant. It wouldn't have mattered much if the EDL had included screenshots from the story that revealed that the teacher had never made pupils kneel and pray to Allah or put anyone in detention for refusing to do so anyway, as it was still headlined Teacher sacked after 'making pupils kneel and pray to Allah' during RE lesson (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1189497/Teacher-sacked-making-pupils-kneel-pray-Allah-RE-lesson.html). Hurrah for truth and honesty.

English-speaking pupils are a minority in inner-city London primary schools (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1205937/English-speaking-pupils-minority-inner-city-London-primary-schools.html) - the headline there is a lie. Pupils who speak English as their first language are a minority in inner London primaries. Hurrah. Truth and honesty.

The Pope must die, says Muslim (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-405622/The-Pope-die-says-Muslim.html) - now, Anjem Choudhary is a prick (http://mymarilyn.blogspot.com/2009/09/choudary-best-gift-to-fascists.html), and there are better ways do describe him than merely by his religion. Like, er, 'prick'.

Government renames Islamic terrorism as 'anti-Islamic activity' to woo Muslims (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-508901/Government-renames-Islamic-terrorism-anti-Islamic-activity-woo-Muslims.html) - a James Slack classic. The headline makes the value judgment that terrorism carried out by Muslims is 'Islamic' at the same time as offering a false reason for the change in the way such terrorism is referenced. The article later reveals that the change is because "Security officials believe that directly linking terrorism to Islam is inflammatory, and risks alienating mainstream Muslim opinion" - and that Jaqui Smith used the term once rather than it becoming the official government label for such activity. Truth and honesty?

Daily/Sunday Express
HATE PREACHER: I WANT SHARIA LAW IN BRITAIN (http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/91891/Hate-preacher:-I-want-Sharia-law-in-Britain/) - there's a better description of Anjem Choudhary than 'Muslim'. Or 'prick', for newspaper purposes at least.

NOW MUSLIM CLERICS TO TEACH OUR CHILDREN (http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/46340) - a repeat of scaremongering stories from March 2008, in which the paper expressed outrage that schools should be considering allowing 'Muslim clerics' to talk about Islam in school religious education. I covered these earlier stories in Fury over children being taught together and learning about one another (http://5cc.blogspot.com/2008/03/fury-over-children-being-taught.html) and Fury over paper printing nonsense front page headlines (http://5cc.blogspot.com/2008/03/fury-over-paper-printing-nonsense-front.html).

MUSLIM SCHOOLS BAN OUR CULTURE (http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/85553/Muslim-schools-ban-our-culture) - need I say any more?

BROWN: DON'T SAY TERRORISTS ARE MUSLIMS (http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/12172/Brown:-Don) - the headline isn't actually true. It refers to the same sort of thing as the Mail story above. Although that one came six months later.

The Daily/Sunday Telegraph
We want to offer Sharia Law in Britain (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1576066/We-want-to-offer-sharia-law-to-Britain.html) - a more sober look at sharia courts from the Telegraph, which still manages to open with a negative vignette about the 'mundane' tasks they carry out.

CIA warns Barack Obama that British terrorists are the biggest threat to the US (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/4550144/CIA-warns-Barack-Obama-that-British-terrorists-are-the-biggest-threat-to-the-US.html) - a story actually about how a former CIA officer who had advised Obama told the Telegraph that the biggest threat was from Britain. Not, as the headline would suggest, a story about how Obama is currently being advised by the CIA that Britain is definitely the greatest terrorist threat to the US.

The Evening Standard
I want to see flag of Allah flying over Downing St (http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23661857-details/I+want+to+see+flag+of+Allah+flying+over+Downing+St/article.do) - Anjem Choudhary again.

Now, although the EDL do further monkey around with these stories with the way they're juxtaposed (putting the more sober Telegraph story next to the fearmongering ones from the Express and Mail, or the one about children not being able to speak English next to ones about Muslim Schools 'banning our culture' for instance) most of their work has been done for them. Even the papers themselves create false impressions by monkeying around with the juxtaposition of images and words and even entire stories, just like the EDL. Look at the Mail story scaremongering and making false claims about the number of school pupils who can't speak English. It only tangentially involves Muslims, and yet it's included in an anti-Muslim video because the picture the paper used to illustrate it includes a girl in a headscarf.

But it's not just the careful placement of images and stories that the tabloids help out with.

Of the six Mail headlines that aren't about specific terrorist plots, three are false (I'm including the 'detention for not kneeling and praying to Allah' story because the updated version is false), one is opinion dressed as news, one is reporting the results of a right wing think-tank as absolute truth and the last labels a ridiculous extremist merely with his religion, which is about as useful as labelling him 'bearded man'.

Of the four Express headlines, three have been exaggerated beyond the recognition of the facts in the story itself, and two perform the famous Express trick of casting Muslims as not 'us' or 'ours'.

The rest (including the ones from the Telegraph and Standard) are either spun in a quietly negative manner or reporting something Anjem Choudhary has said. There's little wrong with those things by themselves, but when they're included alongside misleadingly exaggerated scaremongering - as they are in the papers themselves as well as the EDL video, they don't really help community relations very much.

I've left aside the ones about terrorist plots, because you can't really blame papers for reporting these. They have also been exaggerated, but not only by the papers. Obsolete has more about these (http://www.septicisle.info/labels/terror%20suspects.html), and they're not exactly straightforward themselves.

So there you have it. Tabloid distortion used directly to recruit for extreme right-wing activity. I'm not merely surmising that these stories might help in this aim - I'm showing recruiting material that deliberately uses direct screenshots of the stuff I write about here to stir up support for the goons we've seen trying to provoke violence - sometimes successfully - in recent months.

Here's the difficult question. Would the EDL exist to produce this video at all if it wasn't for the sort if dishonest coverage the video contains?

Five Chinese Crackers (http://5cc.blogspot.com/2009/09/tabloids-and-right-wing-extremism.html)