Anti-Islamic groups across Europe to attend far-Right rally

More than 10 anti-Islamic groups, led by the English Defence League, are expected to send representatives.

"There will be speeches from every defence league in Europe," said Isak Nygren, the spokesman for the Swedish Defence League. "I hope we can show that there's resistance against Islamisation of Europe, that we can inspire each other."

The EDL has held one European rally before, sending members to Amsterdam in 2010 in support of Dutch anti-Islamic politician Geert Wilders, who was in court accused of insulting religious and ethnic groups.

Mr Wilders, who has moved to distance himself from the EDL, is not expected to attend the event.

Stephen Lennon, the former football hooligan who formed the EDL three years ago, however said he was inspired by the Amsterdam gathering to link up with other far-Right groups in Europe, setting up the European Freedom Initiative.

He described the planned gathering, in Aarhus on March 31, as the "first proper European event".
"We're hoping this will be the launch of a wider European Defence League," he said. "We don't expect it to be big, but our first event wasn't that big, and they're just going to get bigger and bigger."
Mr Lennon, who was convicted of assault in November 2011 after headbutting another EDL member at a rally, said his members were prepared for violence.
"The likelihood is that the local Islamic community will come and attack us, aided and abetted by the far-Left," he said. "We come to protest peacefully, it's not our fault that when we come out, that they come to try and bash our heads in."
Imran Shah, the spokesman for the Islamic Society of Denmark, urged Muslims to stay away from the rally and called on the Danish government to act against the growing movement, especially in the wake of last year's massacre of 77 people by Norwegian far-Right extremist Anders Behring Breivik.
"We've seen what the rhetoric of hate can do in Norway. Do we want some deaths here before we react?", he said.
Breivik was an early European supporter of the EDL, attending a rally in Bradford in 2010, and claiming hundreds of EDL members as his Facebook friends.
Matthew Goodwin, an expert on the far-Right at Nottingham University, said that the EDL's move into Europe is worrying.
"It shows us something that I don't think British commentators have grasped, which is that elsewhere in Europe, the EDL is seen as being
quite a significant movement," he said. "When you look at guys like Anders Breivik and the Danish Defence League, we can see how groups in
Europe are looking at Britain and the EDL as a model."
Weyman Bennet, a spokesman for Unite Against Fascism, said: "Everywhere they've called a demonstration there's been violence. Across
Europe, the Sweden Democrats and the Danish People's Party, all of them are growing by using this rhetoric. We see them as a group of
people who will try and encourage fascist politics they've simply swapped anti-semitism for anti-Islam."
Denmark is a natural choice for the EDL to launch its first European march.
The Danish People's Party is one of the most electorally successful anti-immigrant parties in Europe, winning 12.3 per cent in elections last September. The Danish Defence League has grown rapidly since its founding a year ago, with chapters already set up in more than 10 Danish cities.
: Anders Behring Breivik was a "male chauvinist" who did not know how to treat women, his last known girlfriend has said.
Breivik met the woman, who the paper refers to as Natascha, on a dating site in 2005, and then travelled to see her in her home town of Minsk, Belarus, before bringing her to stay with him in Oslo.
The woman said discovering that her former boyfriend had killed so many people had been "simply terrible".

They achieve notoriety through a mix of combustible characters and often ugly protests, yet are kept on the political margins due to infighting and ill thought-out policies. But, next month, at a meeting in Denmark, some of Europe's most notorious right-wing groups will meet for the European Counter-Jihad Meeting.
Those attending could witness the birth of a right-wing movement, the European Defence League – and the beginning of a dangerous new phase in extremist politics.
Representatives from defence leagues in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the USA, Italy, Poland and Finland are due to attend, along with the anti-Muslim groups Stop Islamisation of Europe, Stop Islamisation of the World and the far-right European Freedom Initiative. It is feared the new umbrella organisation could co-ordinate right-wing activities across Europe while politicising and unifying disparate groups. The idea, which is being championed by the English Defence League (EDL), could be modelled on the European Union – with delegates from participating countries meeting regularly.
Weyman Bennett, spokesman for pressure group Unite Against Fascism, said the meeting in Denmark's second city, Aarhus, was the first meaningful meeting of such groups – which were looking at the EDL model and to mimic successful right-wing political parties in Eastern Europe, some of which have made it to government. He said: "The Euro-leagues are a new danger. We should not forget that it was the Norwegian Defence League that gave us [Anders] Brevik. The growth of a Euro-league in a time of economic crisis threatens to resurrect fascist street armies such as those that destroyed European democracies in the 1930s. The development of this network allows fascists and right-wing populists to share ideas, finance and experience in a way that should worry us all."
Mr Bennett added the groups would be using the euro crisis as a way to pull in new members, particularly from the middle classes.
He added: "We used to have a number of disparate groups. Now we are moving to a stage where we have fewer groups but they are more organised and sophisticated."
Some 50 EDL leaders – whose members have been involved in violent clashes with anti-fascist groups in the past – will travel to the meeting. "This is the first proper European Defence League meet. We have been building bridges for the last two years and this is going to be the launch pad," said Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, the leader of the EDL, who is also known as Tommy Robinson.
He added the leader of each national defence league would sit on a panel and would meet "every three to four months". He said: "We will discuss tactics. Each country's delegates will get time to describe the problems they have. We will try to pool resources. For example, if another defence league wants to run a demonstration in their own country, they are unlikely to get as much media interest as if we were involved, so we would go over there and lend some support."
Dr Matthew Goodwin, an expert on the far-right at Nottingham University, said a Continent-wide far-right alliance would help extremist groups organise demonstrations, which carry the possibility of violence and provide access to better-resourced and organised groups in eastern and central Europe.
He said: "The strategy is to organise large marches for the media attention and to provoke anti-fascist and Muslim groups, as well as the local population. Wherever these movements go, there is a possibility of violent clashes. With the EDL, there are question marks over where the movement is heading, if not towards elections. This would be an indication of where it sees itself going."
Dr Goodwin added that, historically, the far-right has often tried to build alliances on the Continent. "If there is anything the Breivik experience taught us, it is that the European-level movements, which share ideas and resources, are very dangerous."
Farooq Murad, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) said the move was "worrying". He added the MCB was trying to bring together Muslim groups to counter an increase in Islamophobia.
Last year, Mr Yaxley-Lennon announced that negotiations to set up a political wing of the EDL were at an advanced stage. An alliance with the far-right British Freedom Party was discussed and Mr Yaxley-Lennon said he hoped to stand candidates in the next round of local elections. That deal has not yet been concluded and it is thought that it has met with some resistance among the EDL's grassroots.
Yesterday, about 600 people travelled to Hyde, Greater Manchester, to take part in an EDL protest against an alleged attack by Asian youths on two white teenagers in the town. Eleven were arrested for minor public order offences.

this kind of UAF fearmongering is helping no'one, sure the EDL and SIOE need to be smashed but exposing them for the clueless wankers that they are is far more helpful in that than pulling another searchlight - combat18 hype...