Racism doesn’t belong in the 21st Century

The slave trade was abolished in 1807. Viv Anderson became the first black footballer to play for England in 1978. In this Olympic year, our three big gold medals hopes – Mo Farah, Philips Idowu and Jessica Ennis – are all from ethnic minorities. These are just three, among a whole host of others, reasons why it staggers, and saddens, me that the question of race still pops up in the media on a regular basis.

Leaving sporting examples for a moment – Luis Suarez and John Terry, you can have a breather – recently there has been a flux of media reports that has racism under the microscope. The Stephen Lawrence verdict, and Diane Abbott’s Twitter gaffe has given us more unwanted reasons to have to address the issue of race.

It’s fair to say that these two first and foremost should not be categorised together – but it is a sign and a shame that they are, just because they mention race. One is about a murder of an innocent and promising man, which exposed police failings and institutionalised racism in the force. The other is an out-of-context 140 character statement from an MP to one of her followers. They are hardly in the same basket.

The real shame is that we still have to talk about it. Do I think this country is racist? Absolutely not. Do I think there are morons who judge people purely on the colour of their skin? Certainly.

To analyse the Lawrence verdict is far too complex in terms of how race was involved, but it is definitely worth remembering that this happened in 1993 – and the problem with racism has moved on a great deal. It would be appalling if it hadn’t in 20 years, so it is good to see that progress has been made in this country.

“The whites have become black” was the statement from one-time decent presenter David Starkey in the aftermath of the riots last summer. I’ve seen this compared to what Diane Abbott put on her Twitter this week. How these two are in any way similar I have no idea, but there’s clear distinctions. For those unfamiliar with it, Diane Abbott MP tweeted “White people love playing divide & rule”. I highly recommend before you have an opinion on the issue, read the full conversation. It has clearly been taken out of context, and in context it is obvious that Abbott was not addressing white people in general, but those who address black communities as an entire group, with no individuals.

Not only is it a severe reminder that MPs need to be aware of firstly the twitter character limit, but careful of how they use language. The difference between Abbott and Starkey is that the latter used being black as a derogatory term, and implies that it was only ethnic minorities responsible for the rioting last summer.

It angers me, upsets me, makes me despair that there are those who still judge on the colour of the skin. I found a sickening Facebook page run by the EDL about Stephen Lawrence. The nasty head of racism still rears its head, but as a country we are better than that.

If those that want to be racist still harbour 19th century attitudes, fine. But you should have to live a 19th century lifestyle. Women, you can’t have a job, or the vote, and a sub-standard education. Men, most of you can’t vote, 80% of you will be working class, and if you have TB you’ll be buried alive.

Your choice.

Andrew Butler at Platform

Thanks to Zaahid for the heads-up

Remove the England captaincy from John Terry

Racism in football is back in the news this week with the eight match ban handed down to Liverpool’s Luis Suarez for racially abusing Manchester United’s Patrick Evra and, today, the news that John Terry is facing criminal prosecution for allegedly racially abusing QPR's Anton Ferdinand.

The Football Association is just as much in the dock as its reputation and credibility is scrutinised at home and abroad. The stakes were raised last month when the FA spoke out at the apparent indifference towards racism in football by FIFA boss Sepp Blatter, after he claimed that racial abuse on the field could be dealt with by a handshake after the game.

The FA appear to have handled the Suarez case in accordance with the rules and appear only to have come to their judgement after much deliberation. It is sad that Suarez’s Liverpool team-mates and manager rallied round him without even slightest concern of his guilt. Wearing T-shirts in support of him undermines efforts to stamp out racism within the game. Let us just hope that at some stage in the future these same Liverpool players, who appear so quick to jump to Suarez’s defence, are not left annoyed with players of a rival team who rally round someone who has abused one of their own.

The John Terry incident raises even more serious questions. Obviously he is innocent until proven guilty, but it seems totally inappropriate for him to remain England captain whilst criminal charges hang over him. He was stripped of the captaincy after a Sunday newspaper exposed an extra-marital affair so it would only seem correct that he is once again forced to stand down as captain while charges of using racist language exist.

English football has done much to rid itself of racism over the last fifteen years and we can rightly boast to have the most pro-active national football association on this issue anywhere in Europe. The FA should act decisively over John Terry’s captaincy rather than be forced to act later under pressure. How can we seem to lecture other countries and FIFA if they fail to deal with this issue swiftly? If John Terry is found not guilty then he can regain the captaincy at some future date. If he has the interests of the game, and indeed the national team, at heart then he will also want to step aside as soon as possible.

Hope not hate

Sepp Blatter faces clamour to quit over racism row

Fifa president urged to step down after saying footballers suffering abuse on the pitch should 'shake hands' afterwards

Fifa president Sepp Blatter is facing a chorus of criticism as players, managers, politicians and anti-racism campaigners called on him to step down over his suggestion that racist abuse on the pitch could be settled with a handshake.

The sports minister, Hugh Robertson, and the chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, Gordon Taylor, urged Blatter to resign after he suggested there was no racism in football and that players subjected to abuse should say "this is a game" and shake hands afterwards. David Cameron backed Robertson's call for Blatter to resign, describing Blatter's claims that racism on the pitch is not a problem as "appalling", adding that there was "no time for complacency" when it came to stamping it out.

Rio Ferdinand launched a scathing attack on the Fifa boss via Twitter. The Manchester United defender said Blatter's comments were "so condescending it's almost laughable", and he criticised the world football governing body for trying to "clear up the Blatter comments with a pic of him posing with a black man".

Blatter's remarks in interviews with CNN and al-Jazeera this week were particularly incendiary given two high-profile ongoing Football Association inquiries into allegations of racism.

Liverpool's Luis Suárez was charged on Wednesday with racially abusing Manchester United's Patrice Evra. He denies it. England captain John Terry is the subject of an FA investigation and police inquiries into whether he racially abused Queens Park Rangers' Anton Ferdinand, Rio's brother. Terry denies the allegations.

Robertson called on Blatter to resign immediately. "This is the latest episode that calls into question whether this man should be the head of world football. For the sake of the game, he should go. We have been consistent in calls for improved governance at Fifa and this underlines the need for that once more. We must never be complacent in our efforts to tackle racism."

Ed Miliband, said: "I think Sepp Blatter's comments are a disgrace, frankly, and I think football needs new leadership. I don't think he has shown in the remarks he has made recently, or indeed his record, that he can provide that leadership for world football."

Blatter, Fifa president since 1998, has made various gaffes and has faced a serious crisis with corruption claims levelled at the organisation amid calls for wholesale reform.

Lord Herman Ouseley, chairman of the anti-racist campaign group Kick It Out, said: "To say Sepp Blatter's comments are unhelpful is an understatement. He has no understanding of what racism is, the ideology behind it, the damage it causes and how it subjugates one group of people as inferior."

But with only limited reporting of Blatter's comments in other countries, Fifa insiders said the furore was only likely to feed the president's belief that the British media was out to get him. This belief intensified in the runup to last year's World Cup vote, when Fifa was rocked by corruption claims, and again prior to his re-election in June.

Guardian

Action must be taken whenever racism rears its ugly head – including in sport

Golf caddie Steve Williams’s alleged racist comments regarding Tiger Woods are the latest episode in what appears to be a phenomenon of racism in sport.

This follows recent incidents in October football matches with Queens Park Rangers’ Anthon Ferdinand claiming Chelsea and England Captain John Terry made a racist comment and a similar incident involving Manchester United‘s Patrice Evra arguing Liverpool striker Luis Suarez was frequently racist towards him.

Racism in sport is not new. Back in 2008 Lewis Hamilton was subjected to crude racism by opposing fans in Spain, who painted their faces black. In 2004 Ron Atkinson was forced to resign as an ITV football commentator, following alleged racist comments directed at Marcel Desailly.

Perhaps the worst incident involving sportsmen, was the violent attack on Asian student Sarfraz Najieb in 2000 involving Jonathan Woodgate and Lee Bowyer, both at the time played for Leeds United. Najieb was bitten on the face, and suffered a broken leg, nose and cheekbone.

Woodgate was found guilty of affray and both Woodgate and Bowyer were cleared of grevious bodily harm. While the trial judge said there was no racist motive to the attack on the student, Najieb claims he was called a “Paki” before the attack.

Racism in sport is nowhere near as bad as it was four decades ago, and we seemed to enjoy a period of peace in the late eighties and nineties. So why the reemergence of it during the last decade?

Racism in sport is a reflection of racism in wider society.

The 1970s saw Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of blood” speech and the growth of the National Front. So it is no surprise that, in this climate, black footballers were subjected to bananas being thrown at them and black supporters were some times subjected to violent attacks, even by fellow supporters of the same football clubs.

At the start of the noughties we experienced the worst political attacks on immigrants since powellism in the 1970s, with politicians and newspaper headlines frequently attacking asylum seekers in particular. This followed a rise of Islamophobia post 9/11 and 7/7.

This climate provided fertile ground for the British National Party’s unprecedented electoral gains for a fascist organisation in Britain. This electoral growth – the breakthrough to the European Parliament in 2009 specifically – emboldened the English Defence League (EDL) to organise racist demonstrations on Britain’s streets reminiscent of the 1970s National Front demonstrations.

The EDL recruits support from football hooligans through “casuals united”. Two years on the EDL is still growing and continues to organise demonstrations.

Now, amidst the worst international economic crisis since the 1930s great depression, false racist arguments are advancing with immigration being wrongly blamed.

Take David Cameron’s speech on immigration a few weeks before this year’s election. Or the absence of a sensible debate on the economy prior to the 2010 general election and instead a debate on how immigration was to blame and what policies to reduce it. This is not the first time in history where failure to deliver solutions to economic crises paved the way for immigrant communities to be scapegoated.

This is the context within which racism in sport is rearing its ugly head. It is a symptom of racism in society as a whole and is not unique to sport.

All racism, where ever it manifests itself, must be confronted by robust action. Black people are free from slavery, to walk on our streets without fear of relentless racist abuse and attack, to vote, and to compete in top level professional sport, because people actively campaigned against racism. It didn’t happen by itself.

Therefore I welcome the Football Association’s investigations into John Terry and Luis Suarez.

It is interesting though, that the furore surrounding Terry’s affair with Wayne Bridge’s girlfriend Vanessa Perroncel, prompted England Manager Fabio Capello to strip off the England captaincy from Terry but the allegation of racism has not prompted the same response to the now reinstated England captain.

The police are also investigating Terry after a supporter reported the incident to the police. Racist abuse after all, whether verbal or physical, is against the law.

The Formula 1 Association launched the “race against racism” campaign following racism against Lewis Hamilton. Ron Atkinson was forced to resign his role as ITV football commentator as a result of his comments.

But what action is being taken against Steve Williams? Thus far none. It is how institutions respond to racism that is crucial and will prevent further incidents of racism. The International Golf Federation should launch an investigation into Steve Williams. An apology is not enough.

by Sabby Dhalu, One Society Many Cultures secretary, Unite Against Fascism joint secretary

Left Foot Forward

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

A proudly diverse nation

This article was submitted by one of our readers, Daniel Pitt. We welcome any contributions from our supporters (as long as those contributions conform to the law and are in reasonably good taste). Please send your articles to us via email.

Britain is a land built by migrants. After all, there was no one inhabiting these islands 50,000 years ago, and for most of human history there were no international borders. The emergence of the modern British nation state and the advent of a global economy brought with it the movement of capital in search of profit and the movement of people in search of work. Britain, home of the industrial revolution, saw successive waves of immigration from the 19th century onwards. It was driven by the needs of capitalists to find an adequate supply of workers. However, from the beginning, the capitalist class also grasped that the migration of cheap labour into the country provided them with a ready mechanism for dividing working people.. This was not automatic; it depended on an invented common identity of Britishness, which offered a false sense of solidarity between workers and bosses, while dividing native born from “foreign workers”. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the treatment of Irish workers who came to Britain in the 19th century to work on the canals and railways. They were forced to leave their homes—much like Roma people in Slovakia today—because of impoverishment or oppression, and usually both.

Our rulers have always tried to sow divisions among workers but there is a powerful history of class solidarity.The next time you walk down a canal towpath or ride a train think of the thousands of Irish labourers—the navvies—who died building the infrastructure of the industrial revolution, housed in the most squalid living conditions imaginable. Textile mill bosses also imported Irish workers. Initially this was often to use them as strikebreakers. In situations of sharpened competition in the labour market among low-skilled workers, it is not difficult to see how tensions arose. Karl Marx observed the process and got straight to the heart of the matter: “Every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps… The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standards of life. In relation to the Irish worker he feels himself a member of the ruling nation and so turns himself into a tool of the aristocrats and capitalists of his own country against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself.” Marx went on to explain how this antagonism was kept alive by “the press, the pulpit and the comic papers” in much the same way that the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express do today, with their relentless attacks on migrants and Muslims. But there was another process cutting aganist the divisions between workers. The bringing together of workers in the factory system created a need for unity against the common enemy exploiting their labour. Despite the best efforts of the capitalists to stoke racism, the impulse to class solidarity was often stronger. Many leading members of the Chartists, Britain’s first mass workers’ movement in the mid 19th century, came from the ranks of Irish labourers. Class fighters such as Feargus O’Connor and James Bronterre O’Brien led British workers into struggle, as did other “foreign” workers like the black Chartist organiser William Cuffay. Unfortunately the Chartists were defeated, and racist ideas were able to fester.

The New Unionism of the 1880s brought a new wave of Irish activists into politics. Ireland was officially part of Britain at this time so there was no issue of immigration controls—it was the availability of work not controls that adjusted the flow. At the end of the 19th century millions of Jews from the economically undeveloped parts of eastern Europe fled poverty and persecution. State-sponsored anti-semitic pogroms killed thousands of Jews in Russia and Poland. Three million largely poor Jews migrated to the US and perhaps a quarter of a million to Britain. Ruling class figures responded with racism. Tory MP William Evans Gordon said in parliament in 1902, “Not a day passes but English families are ruthlessly turned out to make room for foreign invaders.” This racism paved the way for the Aliens Act of 1905, the first to limit immigration and which defined some groups of migrants as “undesirable”. It made it easier for racists to argue that Jewish people were a problem in British society - however, Jewish workers came together with other sections of the working class. In the 1930s fascist attempts to turn “native” Britons against Jews were defeated on the streets. The long economic boom after the Second World War saw capitalists respond to increasing demand for labour by again looking to workers from overseas.

This time they looked further afield in the British Empire—to the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent—for workers to plug the shortages in areas such as public transport and the hospitals. Black people soon found that the land of opportunity was also a land of racism. Some landlords and pubs in places like London and Birmingham put up signs saying, “No blacks, no Irish, no dogs”. But socialists and trade unionists organised reception committees to welcome the new workers and to help them settle in. However there was no automatic unity among the oppressed. Some established migrants, who had become assimilated into British society, came to view more recent immigrants as outsiders, and at times as a threat.

Some British people of Irish backgrounds could be among the most antagonistic towards Black people, seeing their own “whiteness” as making them superior to African-Caribbeans. Post-war Britain’s open door policy wasn’t to last as the boom ebbed and turn into crisis towards the end 1960s. The Tory politician Enoch Powell who had once implored Jamaicans and others to come to find work in the “mother country”, now scapegoated black and Asian immigrants for the mounting problems faced by a British economy in decline. This was even though many so-called immigrants were in fact born in the country. The 1971 Immigration Act brought a shuddering halt to “primary” immigration to Britain. Future migrants would be the dependants of those already here and not new workers. But the rising racism, especially in the mid 1970s, led to a powerful anti-racist response that reached a crescendo with the formation of the Anti Nazi League (ANL). The ANL drove the predecessors of the Nazi British National Party (BNP), the National Front, off our streets. Today asylum seekers, living in forced destitution, are blamed for “ruining areas” and bringing crime. Or in the case of “economic migrants”, like those from new European Union countries in eastern Europe like the Irish before them, lowering wages.

It can sometimes appear easier to kick the “foreign” worker next to you, especially during times of low class struggle, such as after the defeat of the Chartists in the 19th century. Equally however, during times of rising struggle, divisions are overcome time and time again. A key task of socialists today is to harness that class solidarity to fight both against the bosses and in defence of the rights of all working people, regardless of spurious notions of nation and race. Socialists must act as “tribunes of the oppressed”, as the Russian revolutionary Lenin put it. We must oppose all racism and bigotry. Today that means standing up against Islamophobia and racism, and breaking the back of the organisations these twin poisons are breeding, the Nazi BNP and the English Defence League.

BTP launches hunt for racist group

British Transport Police has launched a hunt for a group of men who chanted racist slurs onboard a morning train on Saturday, 5 March.

The incident happened on the 11.08am Leeds to Manchester Victoria service, when a group of around 50 men boarded the service at Halifax.

Detective Constable Jason Ridgway, of BTP’s Criminal Investigation Department, said: “The group’s behaviour included chanting racist and inappropriate remarks and aggressively punching and banging on the train’s interior, causing unnecessary fear for passengers and staff onboard the train. The behaviour of these men was outrageous and has no place on the railway – or in the wider community – especially at a time when families are travelling between cities.

DC Ridgway added: "Racism and Islamophobia in our community and on the rail network is totally unacceptable. Everyone has the right to travel without fear of abuse or threatening behaviour, and when that behaviour is further exacerbated by racist undertones, our stance becomes firmer still. BTP and the wider rail industry will not tolerate any form of racism on the rail network and we will do everything in our power to take action against those responsible.”

The group are believed to have been travelling to an EDL demonstration in Rochdale taking place later that day.

If you have information please contact British Transport Police on 0800 40 50 40 quoting background reference B12/NWA or call the independent charity Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

BTP

Funding blow for Stoke-on-Trent community project

A community project aimed at uniting people from different backgrounds across Stoke-on-Trent could be axed because of a lack of funding.

The One World Project educates young people against the prejudices associated with asylum seekers and refugees. It was set up by Stoke-on-Trent’s Citizens’ Advice Bureau (CAB) following racist incidents in schools. But the Migration Impact Fund which covers its costs has now been scrapped, leaving the future of the initiative in doubt.

Charlotte Laws, Children’s Cohesion Worker at Stoke-on-Trent Citizens’ Advice Bureau (CAB), said: “With the BNP on our local councils and even boards of school governors and the EDL gaining momentum throughout the area, the loss of this project can only lead to a return to a culture of fear of and antagonism towards these groups of people.”

Chou-Chou, a refugee from Africa, visited Silverdale Community Primary School in Newcastle-under-Lyme this month and shared his story with the children.

Deputy headteacher of Silverdale Community Primary School, Mrs Blaney told Staffslive: “It was really useful because it enabled our children to meet someone who had suffered from war and fled their country to escape persecution. After hearing his story the children can form their own opinions instead of listening to the news or reading newspapers.”

The One World Project was given an Award for Bridging Cultures (ABC) from the Institute of Community Cohesion.

Ms Laws said: “We create a way in which young people can encounter asylum seekers and refugees and hear their experiences in the hope that the stereotype associated with them can be changed. Telling others their stories is more valued than what people read or hear in the media.”

Now it’s in jeopardy after the Conservatives scrapped the Migration Impact Fund which provided the scheme’s funding. They are set to visit five more local schools by the end of the month thanks to temporary funding from Newcastle Partnership.

Ms Laws is hoping to restart the project at the beginning of next year as a standalone not for profit venture.

Staffs Live

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

Undeserved honor for Klan founder

Nathan Bedford Forrest was a cotton planter and a trader in horses, cattle and black people. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Forrest, whose business dealings had made him wealthy, [he] raised a cavalry unit to fight for the Confederacy. He is remembered as an instinctive military genius whose daring and unpredictability gave Union forces fits.

He is also remembered for leading a rebel band that overwhelmed a Union stronghold, Fort Pillow, Tenn., massacring 300 mostly black soldiers and civilians, including children, after the soldiers had dropped their weapons. According to official reports, black soldiers were nailed to logs, buried alive, gunned down where they stood.

Finally, Forrest is remembered as a founder and the first "Grand Wizard’’ of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan, of course, is America’s preeminent terrorist group; in its various permutations, it has been responsible for countless acts of violence against African Americans and others it deemed inferior, including the notorious 1963 church bombing in which four little black girls were killed.

This is the legacy of Nathan Bedford Forrest. At this writing, the state of Mississippi is considering whether to honor that legacy through the issuance of vanity license plates. And perhaps an observer might be forgiven for wondering what in the world there is to consider.

The request to honor Forrest was made by the Mississippi branch of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group often found neck deep in attempts to rewrite and sanitize the odious history of the Confederacy.

For what it’s worth, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour has said he doesn’t think the state legislature will approve the vanity plate. But he rejected a call by the Mississippi NAACP to denounce the idea. "I don’t go around denouncing people," he said, piously.

Presumably, he would be equally nonjudgmental if his state were to consider similar honors to Osama bin Laden, convicted spy Robert Hanssen or Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Their legacies, after all, are combined in Forrest: terrorist, traitor, mass murderer.

On April 12, it will be 150 years since the Civil War began. That is the distance from telegraph lines to smart phones, from steam engines to space shuttles, from Lincoln to Obama. And yet even after all that time, some of us are still unable to conquer the moral cowardice exemplified by Gov. Barbour and the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

The South fought in defense of racism and slavery. It was soundly defeated, racism and slavery soundly repudiated. You’d think from that loss the South would have learned signal lessons of human rights and human dignity.

The past exists for one overriding purpose: to prepare us for the future. It is the great and wise teacher, though its lessons are often purchased at monstrous cost. Such was surely the case with the Civil War: 620,000 lives — 2 percent of the population — lost, the South left devastated.

Yet sometimes, you wonder if the South even knows it lost.

Because, instead of learning those costly lessons and moving forward, too much of the South has spent too much of the last century and a half denying them and looking backward. It did so first through the expedient of lynch mob violence and Jim Crow laws. Now it clings to discredited 19th Century symbols like driftwood, obsessively reworks history trying to make the facts other than what they are.

But the facts are immutable.

You wish the South would finally accept that and move on. Instead, too many in that storied region are still absorbed in fighting a war that ended in 1865, seeking to vindicate a cause long ago lost. A man who betrayed this country, founded a terrorist group and committed mass murder is a man unworthy of honor.

It is pathetic that that even needs to be said.

Miami Herald

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

'Nazi Leaks' And The NPD - Leak Of 60,000 Far-Right E-Mails Reveals Extremist Chaos

A massive leak of internal communications, dubbed "NaziLeaks," has embarrassed Germany's far-right NPD. The roughly 60,000 e-mails which have been obtained by SPIEGEL reveal blatant racism, internal strife and shady financial dealings within the party.

Udo Voigt, the chairman of the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), had hoped that 2011 would see the radical right make an important step forward in Germany. On Jan. 1, a merger with its rival far-right party, the German People's Union (DVU), went into effect, thereby combining their numbers just in time for a year that will see parliamentary elections in seven of Germany's 16 federal states. In a New Year's speech, Voigt confidently told his supporters that 2011 would be a "small super-election year."

"State elections, municipal elections -- Germans will finally get a chance to punish those at the top," Voigt said, looking straight into the camera. "We have a chance. We have a program for the future."

Now, less than six weeks later, Voigt's cockiness has given way to disillusionment. For the second time since 2008, tens of thousands of internal party e-mails have been leaked. SPIEGEL, along with other publications, has been given access to more than 60,000 e-mail messages from the accounts of NPD politicians. The party has labeled the people behind the leaks "criminal suppliers." It remains unclear whether the digital information came from a disgruntled individual within the party's headquarters or was obtained by a hacker.

The e-mails lay bare the chaotic internal life of the far-right party. They testify to the problems encountered during the merger with the DVU, shady finances related to state election campaigns and internal wrangling that often degenerated into hateful words and insults toward other party members.

The e-mails also document blatant racism. One senior Bavarian NPD official writes about "Kanacken," a racist term of abuse directed against people of immigrant descent, while a well-known neo-Nazi from the southwestern city of Aschaffenburg reflects on the "National Socialist movement." One NPD official from Hamburg complains about another party member having a "Negress" as a Facebook friend.

Sensitive Details about the NPD-DVU Merger

Still, the most awkward details from the data leak regard Voigt's prestige project, the NPD's merger with its former rival, the DVU. They disclose that there was massive resistance to the move within the DVU. One DVU member wrote in an e-mail sent ahead of Dec. 12, the day of the party convention where the merger was voted on, that DVU chairman Matthias Faust would get to experience his own "Waterloo" -- in other words, a total defeat. In order to help the merger go through, one NPD official from the southwestern state of Baden-Wurttemberg offered the support of a "Kampfgruppe" (a term associated with the Nazi era, referring to a combat unit) from the city of Schwabisch Hall. The unit, the official wrote, could be transported in a rental van to the DVU convention, which was being held in Kirchheim, a small town in the eastern state of Thuringia. "Nine men cost €524 ($710)," he wrote. The fee included €45 for meals, he explained, "as an incentive."

However, it would appear that not all of the van's passengers would be eligible to vote. The NPD official asked Faust to supply him with a "back-dated DVU membership card and a back-dated invitation" for his girlfriend, who would be coming along. When approached by SPIEGEL, Faust denied having supplied a back-dated membership card or invitation. Talk of the "Kampfgruppe" could only have been "a joke," he added, saying that "absolutely no combat units were present" at the convention. What's more, he said, guests wouldn't have been allowed to vote.

A majority of people attending the Dec. 12 convention voted for the merger. Since then, the right-wing extremists have been calling their common party "NPD -- The People's Union." Still, the merger is far from being a done deal. After the vote was held, senior officials representing DVU associations in four states complained of voting improprieties, such as not having been given enough time to properly review and respond to certain documents in the run-up to the vote. In January, a state court in Munich sided with the complaining officials, declaring that the vote did not meet democratic requirements and that a new vote would have to be held before a merger agreement could be signed.

Money Problems and Inflated Ambitions

In addition to such legal troubles, the NPD continues to struggle with financial shortfalls. The NPD is hoping that it will clear the 5 percent hurdle in the March 20 election in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt and secure seats in the state parliament. But, to support its campaign, the party has apparently been forced to meet its financial needs with the help of private loans.

According to one of the internal emails, the family of Udo Pastors, the deputy head of the NPD in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, extended a €25,000 loan to the Saxony-Anhalt campaign organization under his wife's name. Ironically, Pastors, an avowed critic of capitalism, is charging the Saxony-Anhalt brethren 3.5 percent interest on the loan and only appears to trust his notoriously cash-strapped party to a certain degree: As collateral for the loan, Pastors demanded a guarantee from the NPD's national organization, which had to be personally signed by the NPD's national leader Udo Voigt.

This, in turn, does not seem to have entirely conformed to Voigt's understanding of loyal camaraderie. In an e-mail to Matthias Heyder, the NPD's lead candidate in the Saxony-Anhalt state elections, Voigt grumbled that it was "a joke that, of all people, a man as well-off as Udo (Pastors) still wants a guarantee in this case." Pastors has confirmed the existence of the loan but refuses to provide any additional details. Voigt opted to not respond to questions regarding the loan.

The financial shortages also have something to do with the costly campaign in Saxony-Anhalt as well as with Heyder himself and his at times ambitious campaign plans. For example, although he is just a regional politician, Heyder wanted to have a "documentary" filmed about him in which he flies "from appointment to appointment" in an airplane and is welcomed upon arrival at airports. What's more, as Heyder wrote to the NPD's media relations officer, he wanted to have members of the press accompany him on his flights, who would get to see "real rallies" whenever he landed. The point of all these staged events would be to portray the NPD as a serious party -- despite the fact that recent polls put its support at a meager 3 percent -- and to help it secure the votes it needs to win seats in the state parliament. Heyder has also declined to respond to inquiries.

NPD Struggling to Mobilize Supporters

While the NPD in Saxony-Anhalt have their heads in the clouds, their colleagues in Baden-Wurttemberg are having a hard time mustering enough people on the ground. The NPD in the state is suffering from mobilization problems: The far-right party has to collect 150 valid signatures in each election district in order to be allowed to field their own candidates in the state parliamentary election on March 27.

In December, Janus Nowak, a local party official from the town of Boblingen, wrote an e-mail with "ALARM" in its subject line. In the e-mail, he reported that, despite months of trying, party members were "apparently incapable" of even "getting merely a single signature per day." In order to increase the yield, the NPD official provided the would-be signature-gatherers with detailed suggestions on how they "could address people on the street and be successful." For example, he suggested that every pitch should begin with the words: "Hello, I'm not trying to sell anything. No vacuum cleaners or washing machines or anything."

Once they had gotten that far, campaign workers were instructed to make sure "to look people in the eye," rather than looking at their clipboards, and to avoid saying anything too "complicated." The most important piece of advice regarded what came last: "Say 'Thank you' and don't talk too much." The idea of deploying professional signature collectors, such as an "NPD organizational wizard" from the town of Volklingen, was even considered. But the man in question appeared to lack selfless dedication to the party. Instead, as Nowak complained in an e-mail, he asked for "€1,000 a week" in addition to "meals + additional helpers + information kiosks + accommodation." Nowak also declined to comment on the e-mail exchanges.

'Capitalist' Scheme

Rudolf Schützinger, a member of the NPD's executive committee in Baden-Wurttemberg, also gave some thought to how to increase the number of signatures being collected. He suggested paying €1 to "each collector who turns in an acceptable, unauthenticated signature" and €2 for every authenticated signature.

Schutzinger also had another idea up his sleeve: attracting campaign donors with a sort of "profit-sharing" scheme. He suggested that, if the party succeeded in winning more than 1 percent of the vote, donors would get their "entire donation back within a set time frame + 30 percent." But, if the NPD could "not master" the 1 percent hurdle, donors would get back half of their contribution, while still being able to write the donation off against their taxes. In doing so, they would "have a loss of only 25%." According to Schutzinger, this scenario offered the advantage that the party would not have to assume any "financial risk," while at the same time motivating "the gamblers among our sympathizers" to make donations.

In an e-mail, the NPD official admitted that the scheme had "a capitalist aftertaste" and noted that it would need "legal validation" as far as party finance laws were concerned. In the end, the idea was apparently rejected. Schutzinger also chose not to respond to SPIEGEL's inquiries.

Threat of Legal Action

NPD spokesman Klaus Beier has threatened legal action in response to the publication of the emails. According to Beier, the "e-mail traffic between both party officials and party members, which used encryption technology (was) copied in breach of (Germany's) communication secrecy law" and that "the texts, whose content was probably manipulated" were "provided to the compliant journalists." On Saturday, the news agency DPA reported that the NPD had filed a criminal complaint over the publication of the e-mails.

In any case, Beier refused to say anything about who was behind the data leak or how it came about. He did say, however, that one had to assume that "the system has far-reaching means at its disposal for reading all of the NPD's e-mail communication."

Beier's remarks are reminiscent of the stance that the party took back in 2008, when SPIEGEL published an earlier collection of internal NPD e-mails.

Free Internet Press

Law needed to tackle hate speech on Internet

Turkish civil society organizations are demanding a new law regulating hate crimes and hate speech, saying racism and xenophobia are spreading fast on the Internet.

At the beginning of this week, Ankara hosted a meeting of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), a body within the Council of Europe (CoE). The meeting brought together national and international experts to discuss the implementation of the ECRI's recommendations to combat discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion or other characteristics, and one of the main topics was discrimination and racism on the Internet.

Turkey, like most countries of the world, is not free of crimes against minorities and disadvantaged groups. Among these, crimes motivated by a victim's background or identity are defined as hate crimes. The Turkish Penal Code (TCK), however, includes no such category, and civil society organizations are fighting to have it added.

Despite the lack of such a category in the TCK, Parliament ratified a bill this week that introduces new regulations for broadcasting. According to amendments to the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) law, broadcasts will not be allowed to instigate hate and broadcasts that discriminate on the basis of race, language, gender, class, sect or religion will not be allowed. However, regulations regarding the Internet are not included for the time being.

Yaman Akdeniz, an associate professor at Bilgi University's school of law, told Sunday's Zaman that Turkey has signed the Convention on Cybercrime but not the additional protocol “concerning the criminalization of acts of a racist and xenophobic nature committed through computer systems.”

The additional protocol defines racist and xenophobic material as “any written material, any image or any other representation of ideas or theories, which advocates, promotes or incites hatred, discrimination or violence, against any individual or group of individuals, based on race, color, descent or national or ethnic origin, as well as religion if used as a pretext for any of these factors.”

Even a quick look at the social networking website Facebook is enough to show that there are many groups which spread hatred and even call for the mass killing of certain groups.

The additional protocol asks for its members “to adopt such legislative and other measures as may be necessary to establish [hate crimes] as criminal offences under its domestic law,” but, as Akdeniz, pointed out, this is no easy task. Akdeniz said it is easy to spot criminal material such as child pornography that is posted on the Internet, but not so with hate speech because it includes written material also.

He added that websites such as YouTube and Facebook are trying to implement controls and monitoring mechanisms and that it is possible for users to report discriminatory or racist content, but it is very easy to repost banned material on the digital platform after simply changing the name and/or content just a little.

Akdeniz also underlined that there is a very fine line between hate speech and political discourse, another fact that makes the fight against hate speech and hate crimes very difficult.

In interview with Sunday's Zaman earlier this week, ECRI Chairman Nils Muiznieks said discrimination and hate speech on the Internet is a very important issue they are trying to tackle; however, the general recommendations for fighting hate speech, racism and discrimination are outdated and technologically inadequate.

He said the countries most successful in fighting racism and intolerance on the Internet are those with the best cooperation between NGOs, Internet service providers and authorities; however, the level of cooperation is not at desirable levels everywhere and the fine line between freedom of expression and discrimination is very important.

“You need groups that monitor discrimination on the Internet. You need service providers who are willing to listen and engage in dialogue. And you need authorities to step in and punish the bad guys. It is clear that our own tools used to cope with this are outdated. This is a very rapidly developing field. Until very recently MySpace and Google were not willing to talk to organizations such as the ECRI. But they are now beginning to change a little,” he said.

Öztürk Türkdoğan, chairman of the Human Rights Association (İHD) underlined that there is a serious gap between regulations on hate crimes and hate speech in general but also on the Internet and that the fine line between freedom of expression and hate speech should be drawn very carefully.

“The measure should be the decisions and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights [ECtHR], but the Internet should not be used as a platform for any form of violence,” he told Sunday's Zaman.

Akdeniz also pointed out that the difficulty of tackling the issue should not prevent civil society from fighting against it, saying that some measures can be taken.

“In order to combat hate speech and discrimination, banning entire websites or networks is not the right solution. This is only pretending that some measures have been taken. Closing platforms should not be considered a solution. Racism and discrimination on the Internet is very much related to the level of racism and discrimination within society. To tackle it, we must raise awareness, though this is no easy task. Fighting racism is similar to fighting terrorism, and both need careful handling and a delicate approach,” he said.

Today's Zaman

Thanks to Anon for the heads-up

Hindus, Jews Ask Pope to Abandon Double Standards on Roma Apartheid

Hindus and Jews claim that Pope Benedict holds double standards on the issues of Roma (Gypsy) apartheid in Europe.

Hindu statesman Rajan Zed; and Rabbi Jonathan B. Freirich, prominent Jewish leader in Nevada and California in USA; in a statement in Nevada today, said that despite their repeated requests, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI had not come out openly to support the 15-million European Roma who faced apartheid conditions. But in a message for "19th World Day of the Sick, 2011", posted on Holy See's website on January 15, Pope says (as per Zenit.org translation): "...know how to recognize and serve him also in those brothers who are poor, sick, suffering and in difficulty, who have need of your help".

The Pope also points out in this message: "A society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering and to bear it inwardly through 'com-passion' is a cruel and inhuman society". And he quotes in this message: "As I have loved you, so must you love one another" (John 13:34).

Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, and Rabbi Freirich argued that it was a travesty to silently watch Roma suffer day after day for the last about 1200 years, and do nothing about it. Roma apartheid occurred right under the Pope's nose in Europe. Hindus and Jews had been regularly appealing to the Pope to openly support the Roma cause and come up with a White Paper on their plight, and yet the Pope continued to ignore these reasonable requests for justice in Europe for the Roma.

Rajan Zed and Rabbi Jonathan Freirich further said that the alarming condition of the Roma people was a social blight for Europe and the rest of the world as they reportedly regularly faced social exclusion, racism, substandard education, hostility, joblessness, rampant illness, inadequate housing, lower life expectancy, unrest, living on desperate margins, language barriers, stereotypes, mistrust, rights violations, discrimination, marginalization, appalling living conditions, prejudice, human rights abuse, and racist slogans on Internet.

The Pope needed to make a public statement against persecution of the Roma, Zed and Freirich added.

Rajan Zed and Rabbi Freirich pointed out that religions shared a conviction to help the helpless, defenseless and downtrodden. The Pope should recognize, acknowledge and affirm the Roma as children of God who deserved to be treated like all other people-as equals. Roma apartheid was shocking, reprehensible, hazardous and immoral. As the most powerful religious leader in the world, the Pope's must lead in upholding the moral obligation to make efforts to stop the frequent human rights violations suffered by Roma.

Hindu Rajan Zed and Jewish Jonathan Freirich offered help to the Pope, if asked, to support the Roma cause.

Sify News

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

Billy Bragg hits out at BNP following hate campaign against him

Singer blames BNP for dozens of letters sent to his neighbours

Billy Bragg has become the target of a hate mail campaign aiming to drive him out of the village he lives in. The singer, famously a campaigner for left-wing causes and anti-fascist organisations, has seen dozens of letters sent to his neighbours in the village of Burton Bradstock, Dorset, with some describing him as a "hypocrite" and "anti-British".

Bragg has claimed the anonymous letters, which have a Southampton postmark, are from a British National Party member and has urged his neighbours to bin them.

One letter ended with the sentence: "People of Burton Bradstock stand up for the British and kick this traitor out of your village and out of Dorset forever." In it Bragg was described as "useless as a singer and a man".

Speaking to the Daily Mirror, Bragg described the letter as the "powerless ranting of a bitter individual angry that, even in a sleepy village, people reject the politics of racism". He also reaffirmed his commitment to fighting racism, adding: "I will campaign against racism wherever I find it."

Bragg has not, as yet, reported the letters to the police.

NME

Bishop urges firm stand against racism

The Bishop of St Albans spoke of the need to "stand firm" against racism in society.

The Rt Rev Dr Alan Smith used his Christmas sermon in St Albans Cathedral to warn against "destructive powers which try to divide communities, races and religions". He acknowledged "hatred and unrest" could be found within Britain, using the example of the controversial marches undertaken by far-right group the English Defence League (EDL), which provoked clashes in town and cities during the year.

He said: "But hatred and unrest is not just found in far away places. In the past year we have seen racist marches on our streets in London and Bolton, in Dudley and Peterborough, in Aylesbury and Bradford, led by individuals who want to stir up unrest. Even as I speak, demonstrations are being planned in Luton in six weeks' time which could seriously undermine community relations. Some people are even trying to commandeer Christianity to support their cause."

He also spoke of the violence faced by Christians in Iraq resulting in killings on the grounds of their beliefs. He said: "Still today we live in a world where there are destructive powers which try to divide communities, races and religions. The Christian church in Iraq is one of the oldest in the world, yet 50% of Christians in that country have had to flee since 2003 in the face of extreme violence.

"Tragically, we receive almost daily reports of Christians being attacked or murdered there. This Christmas many church services have been cancelled because of threats. They have appealed for us to pray for their protection."

The Rt Revd Dr Alan Smith called for greater compassion among people regardless of their religion.

Bearsden Herald

Us (the British) and them (the Muslims)

The front page and main story of Thursday's Daily Express is a clear and unsubtle attempt at maintaining the "us and them" mentality which is so often levelled by that paper against Muslims:

The headline refers to the shouts from "a group of men" (according to the Mail) who were sitting in the public gallery during the trial of Roshonara Choudhry, the woman convicted of stabbing Stephen Timms MP earlier this year.

As the Express reports:

JEERING Muslim fanatics turned an Old Bailey court into a battleground yesterday after an Al Qaeda follower was jailed for stabbing an MP.

In unprecedented scenes the angry mob chanted “British go to hell” as would-be assassin Roshonara Choudhry was handed a sentence of life with a minimum of 15 years.

Rather than leading with the story at hand, the sentencing of Choudhry to "life" imprisonment, the Express has chosen to focus on the deranged rantings of a few nutcases in a courtroom instead. (Both the Daily Mail and The Sun have also gone with this angle, but neither has chosen to put it across in as brazen a way as the Express.)

That there are Muslim extremists who say such things is beyond a doubt. However, the Express' decision to make this the key focus of the story, along with the deliberately ambiguous language used in the headline, is an attempt to imply that these shouts are in some way an expression of what every Muslim thinks about the British.

The Express sees Muslims as a homogeneous mass that is in complete agreement with the ramshackle fanatics at its fringes. The headline is a dog-whistle signal for the idea that "Muslims" disapprove of "us British".

Can you imagine, for example, what the Express would have done if the men who broke into shouts of "Go to hell, Britain" were Christians? Would the Express have replaced "Muslims" with "Christians" in the headline? Would they even have mentioned it so prominently in the first place?

I doubt it.

Continuing the theme of rampant hysteria, the Express' article states that:

The gang, sitting in the public gallery, chanted “Allahu akbar” or “God is great” and another demonstration raged outside the court.

"Raged"? Gosh, that sounds dramatic, doesn't it?

Between the Express, the Daily Mail and The Sun, the "raging" demonstration seems to have comprised of at least three poor souls holding particularly unimaginative print-outs:

In their articles about Thursday's events, the BBC and the Telegraph make no mention of the men holding signs outside or of the shouting from the gallery, and the Guardian makes a passing reference only to

a small demonstration... taking place outside the court.

An examination of The Sun's article reveals the following:

Security men bundled the ranting bigots from Court Seven after the disgraceful scenes.

But the three were allowed to continue their poison rants [sic] in the street - yelling "British soldiers must die."

According to this, the demonstration outside appears to have consisted of the same men who were shouting in the gallery. Therefore the Express' claim that "another demonstration raged outside the court" seems pretty baseless.

Nonetheless, expect the wearisome English Defence League to seize this stormy teacup with both of their grubby hands.

Thanks to Minority Thought, "A blog about bad journalism"

BNP members to be barred from teaching

Headteachers are to be given the power to dismiss teachers who are members of the BNP or other groups which have an "extremist tenor".

The pledge by the education secretary, Michael Gove, follows the case of a BNP activist who used a school laptop to post comments describing some immigrants as "filth". Gove said he would allow school heads and governing bodies to sack teachers for membership of the far-right party. Members of the BNP are barred from working as police or prison officers.

The minister told the Guardian: "I don't believe that membership of the BNP is compatible with being a teacher. One of the things I plan to do is to allow headteachers and governing bodies the powers and confidence to be able to dismiss teachers engaging in extremist activity.

"I would extend that to membership of other groups which have an extremist tenor. I cannot see how membership of the British National party can co-exist with shaping young minds."

The crackdown was welcomed by the NASUWT teaching union, which has called for a ban. Its general secretary, Chris Keates, said: "I hope this is something Michael Gove takes forward as quickly as possible. It is an important part of safeguarding the interests of young people."

Adam Walker, a BNP member and teacher at a school near Sunderland, was cleared of racial and religious intolerance by a disciplinary panel in June this year. He wrote in an online forum that Britain was a "dumping ground for the filth of the third world". But while the panel said the comments were troubling, it was not satisfied that they showed intolerance.

Delivering the General Teaching Council's verdict, the chair, Angela Stones, said: "A negative comment about immigration to the UK of itself need not be indicative of racist views or racial intolerance, since the race of immigrants is extremely varied."

The GTC, the profession's watchdog, was abolished a week later. In a Commons statement, Gove cited the decision made on the Walker case as "quite wrong".

The previous government ruled out banning BNP members from teaching after an independent inquiry into racism in schools decided it would be disproportionate. Maurice Smith, a former chief inspector of schools, said a ban would be "taking a very large sledgehammer to crack a minuscule nut". He also described it as a "profound political act".

The review found that in the past seven years four teachers and two governors had been publicly identified as members of racist organisations, and that only nine incidents of teachers making racist remarks or possessing racist material had been subject to GTC disciplinary sanction.

Critics say this review over-emphasised the number of incidents, rather than their potential impact on a classroom. Keates said: "It's not an issue of scale. That was our biggest criticism of Maurice Smith's report. T the issue is one of making sure that a clear message goes out that membership of the BNP and other extremist groups is incompatible with being a teacher."

Gove outlined plans to ban the BNP from classrooms in an interview in which he also said he would not oppose parents and teachers if they rejected his traditionalist views on the curriculum.

At this year's Conservative party conference, Gove said historian Simon Schama would advise on an overhaul of the history curriculum to ensure that no pupil leaves school without learning "narrative British history". English teaching will also be reformed to ensure that canonical writers such as Pope, Shelley, Dryden, Dickens and Hardy are at the heart of the curriculum.

He said he believed there was an "unfulfilled appetite" for a more classical education. But he insisted teachers could steer their own course. "The idea of the reforms I'm about to bring about is that if the professional wisdom of teachers takes them in a different direction, and the common sense of parents takes that direction, I won't stand in their way."

The Guardian

Poland: Secret Jewish heritage converts neo-Nazi

Pawel sits in the synagogue learning the Torah, praying and getting advice from his rabbi. He appears to be enjoying a happy life married to his childhood sweetheart and the mother of his two children.

But he and Ola have traveled further than most -- from hate-filled neo-Nazism through the shock and anger of learning their heritage was Jewish to taking their place in the synagogue as Orthodox Jews.

They met at school in Poland's capital, Warsaw, when they were 12, but as their teen years passed Pawel first and then Ola grew into the neo-Nazi scene. At 18 they married and a few years later Ola was nagged by a conversation with her mother that she barely remembered -- something about Jewish roots.

She found her answer at the Jewish Historical Institute, which says it has collections documenting 10 centuries of Jewish experience in Poland. While there she said she felt compelled to also check Pawel's family history -- and he too came from a Jewish background.

"Something told me to... It was unbelievable -- it turned out that we had Jewish roots. It was a shock. I didn't expect to find out that I had a Jewish husband," she said. "I didn't know how to tell him. I loved him even if he was a punk or skinhead, if he beat people up or not. It was a time in Poland when this movement was very intense."

Reeling from the news, she had to return home to her neo-Nazi husband and tell him of their Jewish heritage.

There were 350,000 Jews in Poland after World War II -- about 10 percent of the Jewish population before the war. In the 25 years after WWII ended the overwhelming majority left to escape persecution by the Soviet-controlled government.

For those who stayed, their Jewish heritage was hidden often even from their own children. It provided a culture where anti-Semitism could thrive and in 1980s Poland, Pawel was embracing the hate festering in the concrete tower blocks of Warsaw.

When Ola brought home the documents to show Pawel his own history, he rushed to confront his parents, and they told him the family secret.

"I was a nationalist 100 percent. Back then when we were skinheads it was all about white power and I believed Poland was only for Poles. That Jews were the biggest plague and the worst evil of this world. At least in Poland it was thought this way as at the time anything that was bad was the fault of the Jews..." he said.

"Emotions, it is difficult to describe how I felt when I found out I was Jewish... my first thought was what am I going to tell people? What am I going to tell the boys? Should I admit it or not? I was angry, sad, scared, unsure."

Over time, Pawel's anger and confusion subsided and he approached Chief Rabbi of Poland Michael Schudrich.

Speaking in the synagogue where he now worships, Pawel said: "The mirror was a big problem. I couldn't look at myself. I saw a Jew. I hated the person in the mirror then I grew accustomed to it, came to terms with it somehow. I came here to the rabbi and said, "listen, they are telling me I'm a Jew, I have this document in my hand, my mom and dad have said something. Who is this Jew and what is it? Help me because I am going to lose my mind otherwise.'"

In the years that followed they became friends with the chief rabbi and he has been a mentor to them.

Pawel, now 33, said: "I'm not saying that I don't have regrets but it's not something that I walk around and lash myself over... I feel sorry for those that I beat up... but I don't hold a grudge against myself. The people who I hurt can hold a grudge against me."

Today, they're active members of the Jewish community in Warsaw. Pawel is studying to work in a slaughterhouse killing animals according to the Jewish Kosher requirement and Ola is working in the synagogue's kitchen as a kosher supervisor."

Schudrich said: "The fact that they were skinheads actually increased the amount of respect I have for them. That they could've been where they were, understood that that was not the right way, then embraced rather than run away the fact that they were part of the people who they used to hate."

"I think also it says on a personal level, never write somebody off. Where they may be 10 years ago doesn't have to be where they are today. And the human being has this unlimited capability of changing and sometimes even for the better."

CNN (with video)

Weekend reports - BNP chased out of Glasgow, "gutless" Griffin flees Liverpool

BNP & SDL chased out of Glasgow


Saturday 18 September saw a hugely successful day of anti-fascist direct action against the racist thugs of the BNP and the Scottish Defence League – both of whom attempted to carry out public activity in Glasgow on the day.

September 18 was originally the day the SDL were planning to hold a march from Blytheswood Square to the Cenotaph in George Square. With this route being denied by the council – who offered them a static protest instead – the SDL announced that the march was cancelled and re-applied for one in the east end of the city in November.

In light of the events of last weekend, however, when the EDL descended on Oldham in a secret ‘flash mob’ protest, local anti-fascists began to suspect that something similar could be afoot in Glasgow. This was compounded when both the main SDL forum was taken offline, and their facebook page announced that they would be holding a ’social gathering’ in a city centre pub on the day. Acting on these fears, activists from the Scottish Anti-Fascist Alliance decided to keep an eye on the city centre over the course of the day, posting scouts at different locations where it was believed the SDL might show up.

However, it soon turned out that the SDL were not the only group of far-right thugs in town that day. At 1pm, a number of BNP activists were spotted in George Square, setting up a stall and posing for photos with their ‘Support our Troops’ banner. They left soon after, but quickly set up again on Buchanan Street. Anti-fascists from across the city quickly mobilised, and by 1.30 there was a small gathering around the stall, preventing the BNP from engaging with the public. Ten minutes later, a larger group of anti-fascist arrived. Within seconds, the stall was smashed up and the BNP material was scattered and destroyed. The 5-6 BNP members were forced to stand beside the ruins of their stall waiting for the police to show up, which they did – about 15 minutes later.


After a humiliating half hour of being chanted at by a now large group of passers-by and anti-fascists, the BNP were driven away in a police van for their own safety. A total victory for anti-fascists and, judging from the response from the public, a reaffirmation that Glasgow will not stand for the bigotry and racism of the BNP. This was the first BNP activity in the city centre for almost a year, and apparently the ‘launch of their new campaign’. We don’t think they’ll be back any time soon.

But believe it or not, this was just the beginning of a day of successful direct action against fascism. At 3pm, members of the Scottish Defence League began gathering in The Goose pub on Union Street, next to Central Station. Upon being approached by anti-fascists, they informed them that they’d be going to George Square at 5.30pm, apparently with the intention of assembling at the Cenotaph. Clearly, they were after a confrontation – regardless, though, this doesn’t change the issue at hand: fascist gatherings need to be opposed.

By 5.30pm, small groups of anti-fascists and local youth were assembled around the square. When the 15 or so SDL supporters showed up, a brief confrontation ensued. The crowd of around 100 anti-racists ensured that the SDL did not reach the Cenotaph, while a few fists were thrown in both directions, although it’s understood that no anti-fascists suffered injuries. A large number of police then stepped in and pushed the SDL to one corner of the square, where they were held for a period then removed. The BBC are reporting that a 14 year old was arrested – as far as we know this was for punching an SDL member in the face. One SDL supporter was also lifted for a ‘racist breach of the peace’.

Overall, a massive victory for anti-fascists: two groups of racists thrown off the streets. We didn’t rely on the police, and we didn’t rely on the council or Home Secretary to ban them either. The numbers of anti-fascists weren’t massive, but were swelled by passers by and young people who didn’t want the SDL or the BNP on our streets either. A reassuring confirmation that Glasgow is not a safe space for fascists to engage in public activity.

Scottish Socialist Youth


Spontaneous antifascist protest sends BNP packing in Liverpool


Today (Saturday), members of the British National Party – including Nick Griffin – held a stall in Liverpool City Centre. They were, perhaps, hoping to show that they stood tall after their trouncing at the General and local elections. Instead, what it showed was the strength of antifascist sentiment in Liverpool.

Within minutes of the BNP setting up shop in town, word got out. The BNP were on Church Street and texts and phone calls went out across the city warning people and asking for them to turn out in opposition. I was walking the dog at the time, and so and hour elapsed between the time I was first told and the time I reached the crowds. And yes, I do mean crowds.

Nick Griffin had been there, but he fled with his minders the second opposition showed up. As Peter Tatchell opined when he confronted him, the BNP chairman is a gutless coward.

But the local branch of the BNP stayed behind in Griffin’s stead, offering the members of the public a “petition” (PDF) to “Bring Our Boys Home” from Afghanistan. But as Griffin admits on the BNP website, this is not a petition that will be presented to anybody, or even a serious effort to raise the issue of the war in Afghanistan.

Although they will be “under the banner of “Support Our Troops — Bring Our Boys Home”” their true purpose is “the biggest co-ordinated nationalist recruitment campaign ever run outside of an election period.” Hence who signatories “authorise the British National Party to contact” them or send “future promotional, electoral and fund-raising material.”

As I have argued before, the BNP are not an anti-war party. In fact, their 2010 election manifesto explicitly stated that they opposed the Iraq war only on the grounds that “there were no strategic or commercial interests to defend” and “the same applies to the current war in Afghanistan.”

Hence, if a BNP felt there were British strategic or commercial interests at stake (as Blair did in those two wars), then they would have no moral qualms about sending “Our Boys” to die. For the BNP, imperialism’s only bad when you’re not in the seat of command.Which is why the banner of the Stop the War Coalition could be found in the group opposing the BNP.

Unfortunately, their ruse was fooling a lot of people, the anti-war message drawing people away from the fact that this was a fascist recruitment drive, as they planned. Hence why opposition was vital.

Very quickly, a sizeable crowd had gathered, and the BNP found themselves closed off from public view by a semi-circle of very loud antifascists, some bearing banners and signs from various groups. This, in turn, drew members of the public – most notably young teenagers – into the impromptu demo.

While the police held the main demo back from the BNP, some antifascists took the opportunity to talk to people. The general public were receptive to the idea that the BNP were an anti-working class party, offering division at a time when we are facing huge attacks from those in power, and that any pretensions to the contrary (including on the war) were political opportunism.

That their (pre-recorded) chants echoed the Tory party line with calls to “Smash the TUC” certainly didn’t help the fascists’ case.

Arguing the point with the BNP themselves, for those listening in rather than with hope of converting die-hard BNPers, also went in our favour. People can tell the difference between a valid argument and rhetoric, and what Peter Tierney and his friends offered was certainly the latter.

With the rain pouring down, and some people who had arrived earlier on having to leave for other commitments, still the antifascist crowd continued to grow. The BNP struggled to pass out their leaflets or to get many people to sign their petition-cum-covert-recruitment-form. But still they tried to fight a war of attrition, making a show of themselves for a full six-and-a-half hours.

Ultimately, however, over 100 antifascists and local people watched and jeered as the fascists packed their gear into two cars and drove off, protected by a flank of police. No doubt they will try and sell it differently, but for British nationalism this was undoubtedly a failure.

Elsewhere, the BNP’s dissident faction claims that “four teams of two” were “out in Liverpool, Sefton and Knowsley, handing out BNP literature to commuters and the General public.” However, even on the basis of their own piss-poor website all they can prove is that Steve Greenhalgh appeared outside Orrell Park Station and Bootle Strand to give letters to … err, nobody!

But they, like the Griffinites, are promising to be out every Saturday for the next few weeks. On which note, the promise from Liverpool Antifascists is that we will be watching when you turn up again.

Liverpool Antifascists

English Soccer Hooligans at Ground Zero

Among the non-New Yorkers who traveled to Lower Manhattan on Saturday to protest the neighborhood’s decision to allow an Islamic community center to be built were seven men who came from England bearing flags with slogans and the cross of St. George — a symbol of their nation and of the Crusades.

Those flags are often seen at soccer stadiums, when ultranationalist fans of England’s soccer team gather to cheer (and to fight fans of other nations), but they have been cropping up regularly at anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim protests in English cities over the past year.

That is because the men are members of a the English Defense League, formed last year to counter what the men see as the threat posed to their national identity by immigrants to England and British-born Muslims who are neither white nor Christian.

As the British anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate explained last month, the E.D.L. is led by a former member of the British National Party, whose leader has made common cause with the Ku Klux Klan, and has “mushroomed from a coalition of former football hooligans into an enormous street army with the propensity for large-scale disorder and city center confrontations with the police.”

After spending months working undercover on an 11-minute documentary about the group, Matthew Taylor reported, “A Guardian investigation has identified a number of known right-wing extremists who are taking an interest in the movement — from convicted football hooligans to members of violent right-wing splinter groups.”

The fact that the E.D.L. channels the rage of hardcore soccer fans into racist demonstrations against foreigners and Muslims in England is no secret. A post on the group’s Web site described the scene before a rally in London last month:

More and more lads started to arrive at the pub, Pompey, Southampton, West Ham, Arsenal, Tottenham, Millwall, Chelsea, Brentford, QPR all drinking together, a bit of banter, but no hassle whatsoever. Top lads all there for their country.

The group’s official statements make much of the fact that their membership includes a number of Jewish, Iranian and gay activists and deny charges that it promotes a fascist or racist ideology. The E.D.L. report on the same rally said:

The ‘fascists’ from the various patriot groups are now stood, football rivalries forgotten, side by side with Jews and Iranians, proving once again that these movements are not racial, they are ideological. Islam is not a race, it is a religion. A religion that promotes violence against nonbelievers this induces certain Muslims into a rabid frenzy, these Muslims must be challenged wherever they raise their evil heads.

At the rally on Sept. 11 in New York, the group’s banners and T-shirts carried the Israeli flag along with the cross of St. George.

In a report on the group, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz asked, “What are Israeli flags and Jewish activists doing at demonstrations sponsored by the English Defence League?” The newspaper answered the question this way: “Call it a struggle against a common foe: Islam. Or a journey into the heart of darkness. Or perhaps further proof that Europe is starting to lose its mind again.”


Despite the protestations that the group’s members are not racist, The Guardian’s undercover investigator encountered a very different reality. Mr. Taylor reported:

[A]t each demonstration I attended while making an undercover film for the Guardian’s investigative film unit, Guardian Films, I was confronted by casual — often brutal — racism, a widespread hatred of Muslims and often the threat of violence.

It was only possible to film some of the most alarming scenes with a hidden camera. Inside a pub in Stoke in January about 3,000 E.D.L. supporters gathered for the first demonstration of the year. They had spent the past four hours drinking. The balcony around the top of the cavernous pub was draped in flags bearing the names of different football clubs — Wolves, Newcastle, Aston Villa — and the chants, “We all hate Muslims,” and “Muslim bombers off our streets,” filled the air. The atmosphere was tense, and not just because of the growing anti-Islamic rhetoric. The pub was packed with rival football gangs from across the Midlands and the north of England. Twice, fighting broke out as old rivalries failed to be subdued by the new enemy — Islam. “They’re just kids,” said one man. “That is not what we are here for today.”

As we moved outside for the E.D.L. protest — during which supporters became involved in violent clashes with the police — a woman asked me for a donation to support the “heroes coming back injured from Afghanistan.” I put a pound in the bucket.

“Thanks love,” she said. “They go over there and fight for this country and then come back to be faced with these Pakis everywhere.”

The woman also used another racial slur, using language we cannot repeat here.

This clip from a BBC documentary on the group includes footage of some members denying that they are racist, and other making racial slurs during a rally in London in support of the anti-immigrant Dutch politician Geert Wilders last year:


Other Guardian video reports on E.D.L. rallies in London and Bradford in recent months illustrate that it is not hard to hear similarly racist, anti-immigrant sentiments from members of the group.

Their approach to Islam is similarly aggressive. Here is how members of the group who did not make the trip to New York marked the Sept. 11 anniversary in London — by burning pages of the Koran and chanting, as they have at other rallies this year in Britain, “Allah is a pedo’!” (Note: This video, like that of other E.D.L. rallies, includes strong language and racial slurs.)


On Sunday, Robert Booth reported in The Guardian that the group’s leader was denied entry to the United States when he landed in New York last week. Other members of the group — which has clashed with British police this summer — claimed that they were subject to harassment by the authorities in New York.

One of the E.D.L. leaders, Ronnie Burgess — described by The Daily Mail as a 31-year-old bodyguard from Liverpool — wrote in a poorly spelled entry on his Facebook page from New York:

its all fun and games here fedral agents have turned are rooms over last ngt while we were out…. hotel are saying they know nothing but the fact is are rooms have been turned over

One of the organizers of the Sept. 11 rally in Lower Manhattan, the blogger Pamela Geller, has defended the group in the past, writing in February, before it was reported that the E.D.L. is led by a former member of the British National Party:

I share the E.D.L.’s goals…. We need to encourage rational, reasonable groups that oppose the Islamisation of the West and not leave it solely to fringe groups like the B.N.P., whose growth has sparked because of their opposition to the encroaching Islamization of the U.K. (their racial position is reprehensible).

Like Ms. Geller, the E.D.L. has strongly supported Geert Wilders. Mr. Wilders also traveled to New York from Europe for the rally on Sept. 11 and began his remarks by leading the crowd in chanting, “No mosque here!”

New York Times

EDL - a shocking truth

A message from Nick Lowles at HOPE not hate:

Day by day the violent and racist English Defence League are becoming more dangerous. This shocking video exposes the truth behind this self professed "peaceful" group. Watch this video and then share it with everyone you know:


The EDL exists for one simple reason: they want to spread fear and hatred throughout the UK - and it's only going to get worse.

In a few weeks the EDL will be invading Bradford for what they're calling "The Big One." Once again they plan on attacking the Muslim population.

We've been down this route before - the riots in Bradford in Oldham were sparked by small groups of violent racists attacking the local community.

We simply can't let that happen again. I'll be in touch about Hope not Hate's plans to combat the EDL in the next few days - but for the moment please watch this video, share it with your friends and get as many of them as possible to sign up to our campaign.

http://action.hopenothate.org.uk/EnglishDefenceLeague

We've really got our backs against the wall on this one - we're all going to need to take ownership of this issue.

Please email a link to this post to everyone you know.

Best wishes,

Nick

HOPE not hate

Anti BNP Video Banned for Being Too 'controversial'

The brand new single from the 18-year-old award winning political rapper/lyricist Sabotage that has been banned from mainstream radio for being “too controversial”. Still just 18 years old, he has firmly established his name on the underground scene as one of the best up and coming reality based and conscious lyricists.

The fact that challenging racism is seen as controversial is a sign of the times and a reflection of the fact that the in the UK today the politics of racism has now become normalised. It begs the question that when a party can legitimately promote racism as part of the democratic discourse anti racist’s become deemed anti democratic. This perversity cannot stand unchallenged, racism has no place in progressive democracy.

British rapper Sabotage has created a You Tube sensation with his “ Letter to the BNP “video. In response to the many supportive comments he issued this statement:

“Thanks a lot for everyone’s support, I really appreciate it! Despite it being banned from radio for being “too controversial” and because it “may potentially upset listeners” it has got almost 10,000 views in 5 days on You Tube.”

It is important that we support the rights of artists to freely express themselves in challenging racism in politics.

OBV