Despite the failure of the first large event, the League insists it will continue to hold demonstrations. Comments on the group’s website, and the affiliated football hooliganism site Casuals United said that the next one would be bigger. One message on the Casuals United site read: “We will arrange it via the Inner Circles secret forums, so we will arrive unannounced and neither the police or the scum will know any details.”The English Defence League (also known as the EDL)
is a British political group whose professed aim is to oppose the spread of Islamism, Sharia law and Islamic terrorism in the United Kingdom.The group has organised various protests in the United Kingdom. The BBC states that the group leads "anti-Muslim extremism" demonstrations, grew out of the football casual movement, and is organised around figures in hooligan "firms". The League states that it opposes only "jihadists", rather than Muslims as people, although members were reported to have chanted "We hate Muslims" at pro-Palestinian demonstrators at counter-demonstrations in London on 13 September 2009.
SNIPThe English Defence League emerged from the angry scenes in Luton last March when a group of Muslims protested as the Royal Anglian Regiment paraded through the town on its return from Afghanistan.When a counter-demonstration under the name of United People of Luton led to arrests, local football supporters decided something should be done
The EDL has been at pains to stress that it is non-racist and opposed to Islamic extremism. However, its website states that "we are the infidels", suggesting animus against all Muslims, and far-right elements have shown up at protests held by the group in Luton and Birmingham.
The group's website was set up by a BNP activist, and Paul Ray - who was a leading figure in directing football supporters' "firms" into "anti-extremist" protests - maintains that the BNP's racism is residual and that God is in the process of guiding it into a non-racial nationalism. Ray's pro-BNP views meant that American conservatives such as Phyllis Chesler, who had initially championed him after his arrest last year, quickly dropped him (although Pamela Geller remains supportive).
A bitter feud with Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs followed, with Ray accusing Johnson of being "the equivalent of a Second World War Nazi collaborator who would have been shot because of his treason". Ray has also appeared on an American radio station claiming that the word "Paki" is just a neutral term like "Brit" or "Aussie", and that only Islamic extremists claim otherwise; however, everyone in the UK knows it to be a very offensive term of racial abuse. Ray has since fallen out with other EDL leaders, and he is now detached from the movement.
They found common cause with other "soccer casuals" and "firms" associated with major clubs. The chatter concluded that this was a national problem and they had to put aside club rivalries. Things really took off after the same Islamist group "converted" an 11-year-old boy in Birmingham city centre in June. That incident caused a minor tabloid furore - but a greater reaction on the net, particularly on websites and forums associated with football violence and far-right activity. By the summer there were English Defence League "divisions" run by football supporters in Luton, north London, Bristol, Portsmouth and Southampton, Derby, Cardiff and the West Midlands.Well then.... if the BNP has disowned them.... they gotta be either
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The British National Party has distanced itself from the EDL, but anti-racism campaigners have named party activists they have photographed at demonstrations. They add that some demos have included people with a record of football violence.
The British National Party has declared the “English Defence League” a proscribed organisation and it will be a disciplinary offence for any party member to be involved with that group.Stormfront is with the EDL all the way - except for that Israeli flag shit