And here is EDL's Leader "Tommy Robinson" speaking to a Canadian radio station.
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=927vG9Xq ... G9Xq2Yg%26

That's like a Chris Morris satire. It'd be funny if he wasn't serious.
Also, there's some interesting background noises at the start...

"I'll tell you some great Englishmen ... Shakespeare, Keats, Yeats, Kenny Dalglish"

Surely that's the start of an Englishman, Irishman and a Scotsman joke?

Am I right in assuming that's a hoax btw? Presumably even the EDL isn't that self-basting?

You'd desperately hope he was taking the mickey out of the interviewer but somehow I doubt he was.

Want to see him getting punched?

http://youtu.be/BtlIF5Q6iXQ

That's quite the video

It shows how intolerant he is.


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York Mosque praised for offering EDL protesters tea

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-yo ... e-22689552

Good on them. Although the fact only 6 protesters even bothered to turn up says it all.

The rest have defected to UKIP? The fact that such groups even get any support is down to failure at national level of government. The resurgence of the EDL and BNP started under New Labour.

That's absurd. Far right nationalist groups are a permanent and self organising feature of the political landscape. Their electoral fortunes may ebb and flow a little according to fashion, but the number of racists whose votes they can court is predetermined. No government can shrink that constituency below its basic minimum, nor can they cause it expand measurably.

I'd agree with the first part but possibly not with the latter. It's certainly true you can't make any political extreme go away entirely - as the saying goes, you can't kill an idea. But it's a generally accepted point that at times of economic hardship, extremist groups gain in membership. And governments have a degree of influence as to the economic wellbeing of their citizens. Not total control, but policy has an effect. Plus if the government is using divisive tactics as a political tool, that can provide extremist groups with some level of 'official endorsement', albeit even subconsciously. If the government is banging on about immigration...

The difference is not how many extremists there are, it's how acceptable it feels to be extreme, because we're all subject to the same basic processes of social cohesion and exclusion at the end of the day. In times of poverty and when official sanction seems to be implied, extremism can sometimes prosper, or at least show it's face more eagerly. It is within the power of governments not to provide either of those stimuli, or stoke them for their own ends.

(Note: I'm not referring to our current administration in this, there are several much more obvious examples from history. The current lot are nothing compared to some of what has come before.)

In terms of the rise of BNP under labour it was because the traditional white working class voter was taken for granted by Labour and yet still did nothing to reform housing shortages to allow them to get on the housing ladder, all while immigrants jumped housing queues. There will always be extremists but if the majority are satisfied then they get little headway. If as now people are disillusioned with mainstream parties then more extremist parties start to gain ground. Though many will only vote for them as a protest vote.


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Was there a rise of the BNP under Labour? Surely all that happened was the old National Front sticking on a new frock and making itself a little more presentable. What did they manage electorally for this effort? About 10 council seats, half of whom were jailed for benefit fraud iirc.

This rubbish about white voters being taken for granted is the stuff of third rate tabloid columnists. Change of any sort causes anxiety for those who don't cope easily with new things. Certain types of people are predisposed to dislike other groups of people. Those people will automatically project their anxieties onto the people they already don't like.

It's fallacious to wring our hands and worry about what we could have done to placate total idiots. The BNP electorate is composed entirely of people who will find a reason to blame 'darkies' for stuff they don't like, and will always have things they don't like for which to place blame.