Category Archives: Far right racists

Women targeted in rising tide of attacks on Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

More than half of Islamophobic attacks in Britain are committed against women, who are typically targeted because they are wearing clothing associated with Islam, new data reveals.

The figures of anti-Muslim attacks, compiled in the nine months following the murder of soldier Lee Rigby in May 2013, come days after Saudi Arabian student Nahid Almanea was stabbed to death in Essex, with detectives believing that she may have been attacked because she was wearing traditional Islamic clothing.

In a study of calls to the Tell Mama hotline, which records Islamophobic crimes, academics at Teesside University found there were on average two incidents every day over the period.

Victims reported a total of 734 incidents to the hotline between the start of May last year and 28 February 2014, broken down into 599 incidents of online abuse and 135 offline attacks – an increase of almost 20% on the same period the previous year.

One aspect of the figures indicates an apparent lack of trust in police to deal with Islamophobic incidents, with one in six victims choosing not to report the incident to authorities.

The Teesside report, published by the first research unit in Britain dedicated to the study of the far right and its opposition, says more effort is required to foster greater trust between the Muslim community and authorities.

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EDL march meets counter demonstration in Middlesbrough

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Middlesbrough EDL protest and counter-demo

An English Defence League (EDL) march planned for Middlesbrough has been met by a counter-demonstration at Ayresome Gardens in the Teesside town.

More than 350 EDL supporters descended on Middlesbrough with a “significant numbers of officers” deployed to prevent any trouble. The EDL supporters encountered approximately 200 counter-demonstrators, dressed in the red colours of Middlesbrough Football Club and the workers’ movement, protesting against the presence of the right-wing movement.

“Every time the fascists come, we’ll stand together. But we don’t anticipate any trouble,” said demonstration organiser Lawrie Coombs. Councillor for the area Len Junier led the march around Middlesbrough in defiance of the EDL. “We are lucky in Middlesbrough, we don’t have problems with racism,” he said. “We don’t want the EDL splitting our community. We want to celebrate the diversity in our area. But we don’t want to get in anyone’s face.”

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Bendigo mosque a cause celebre for right-wing outsiders

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mark WeragodaThe sinister black balloons started appearing in Bendigo in May. Then 10 days ago, a cluster of them were tied to the home and business of a local councillor who supports the building of a controversial mosque.

The councillor, Mark Weragoda, was born in Sri Lanka and moved to Bendigo in the 1980s. He says the unrelenting and increasingly vengeful campaign against the Bendigo mosque – which has been approved by the council but faces a tribunal appeal – is the first time he has faced racial hatred in the regional Victorian city.

When he spoke to the council in favour of the mosque at a heated meeting the night before he found the balloons, protesters played Middle-Eastern music to try to drown him out. He said the balloons didn’t worry him and he felt sorry for the “minority” groups who opposed the mosque on racial and religious grounds rather than for planning reasons.

A week before, The Bendigo Advertiser received an anonymous email headed “Mysterious black balloons revealed”, which said that by accepting Islam into Bendigo, the community would be “endorsing domestic and child abuse” because under sharia law it was acceptable to “marry off child brides, perform genital mutilation, forbidding [sic] women to express themselves, and not being treated as equal to men”.

The email said: “The misconception that it is ‘racist’ to be against the lifestyle of Islam or Muslims is incorrect as it is not a race, whilst Islam is not a religion and cannot be compared to any other religion as it is an ideology.”

Bendigo’s pro-mosque residents tried to nullify the spectacle of the black balloons – a chilling image, like bunches of dead flowers – by tying coloured balloons around the city. But a metal flagpole flying coloured balloons was torn down at a furniture store in the central business district, while the black balloons’ symbolism of hate and vilification remained.

Until now, it has been unclear who was responsible. The likely answer turns out to be instructive because it helps show exactly how extremist far-right groups from outside have managed to infiltrate and hijack a campaign in country Victoria that, until they got involved, was about planning issues.

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France: the need for a united fight against the fascists

Posted on by Bob Pitt

At the end of May, the Front National results in the European elections sent a shockwave across France. John Mullen looks at the causes of this disaster, and at what can be done.

John Mullen has been active in anticapitalist groups in France since 1986. He is a member, in the Paris region, of Ensemble, an anticapitalist current within the Front de Gauche. He also writes at John Mullen à Montreuil.

Dream Deferred, 25 June 2014

Le Pen and Wilders fail to form anti-EU bloc

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Marine Le Pen and Geert WildersFrance’s far-right National Front (FN) has failed to form an alliance with the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV) of Geert Wilders, reducing both parties’ influence in the European Parliament.

Pan-European party blocs get more funding, staff and speaking time in the parliament. The deadline for forming a bloc expired on Monday night.

The new 751-seat assembly, elected in May, holds its first session next week.

The UK Independence Party (UKIP) has formed a bloc with other Eurosceptics. UKIP’s new allies are the Italian Five Star Movement of comedian-turned-politician Beppe Grillo, Lithuania’s Order and Justice Party, the nationalist Sweden Democrats and a few anti-EU MEPs from Latvia, the Czech Republic and France. Jointly they are called the New EFD (Europe of Freedom and Democracy).

Under parliament rules, a faction has to consist of at least 25 MEPs from a minimum of seven EU countries. The EU has a total of 28 member states. The FN and PVV failed to satisfy the seven-country rule.

Before the election Mr Wilders and FN leader Marine Le Pen had spoken of their common ambition to return powers from the EU to the nation states.

Ms Le Pen’s triumph, leading the FN to first place in the French election, gave her party 23 seats. It was one of the biggest surprises on an election night that saw big gains for anti-EU parties across Europe. In the last parliament the FN had just three seats.

Mr Wilders was disappointed with the PVV’s result, however. The party won just three seats and fell to fourth place in the Netherlands – well behind liberal and centre-left, pro-EU parties.

Both the FN and PVV want tougher immigration controls, reject the euro and want their countries to leave the EU. Both parties also campaign strongly against the spread of Islam in Europe.

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Rainbow balloons torn down at Bendigo shop

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jimmy Possum rainbow balloonsMembers of the local Muslim community, a Bendigo business and a city councillor are among those to have received supposed threats from anti-Islamic protesters in recent days.

Jimmy Possum’s Margot Spalding believes rainbow balloons, which were hung on her shop-front in support of diversity, were torn down by mosque protesters on Monday. She said it seemed like a concerted effort because four concrete beams bolted to the wall had been pulled out.

“In 18 months these flags haven’t once been targeted by vandals and the timing of this doesn’t seem like a coincidence,” Ms Spalding said. “It’s disappointing that people feel the need to be disrespectful. These things make you feel pretty threatened.”

And Ms Spalding says she isn’t the only one to be targeted – with many of her Muslim friends feeling the brunt of the protests.

“I know some Muslims living in Bendigo who feel fearful in town at the moment,” she said. “They feel like they can’t speak out from fear of reprisal in their own country and also what’s going on locally. And when there is a whole group in town that don’t like you, who are saying hateful, insidious things about you, you can understand why.”

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Spite club: Race-hate group who target Muslims organise street fighting sessions to train recruits

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A far-right group led by a notorious Scots rabble-rouser are promoting sinister “fight clubs” for their followers. And anti-racism activists claim Jim Dowson’s Britain First organisation are training boot boys to fight Muslims on the streets.

Mathew Collins of Hope Not Hate said: “They have been booking mixed martial arts gyms so they can fight among themselves, training for confrontations with Muslims.” Vicky Burns of Show Racism the Red Card Scotland added: “Britain First’s brand of racism and prejudice simply is not welcome here.”

Britain First have used a series of Facebook posts to attract recruits for fight training. One ad says: “Things are bad and will only get worse. Don’t you think it’s time to learn how to protect the ones you love – and yourself?” It adds that the fight clubs – apparently named after Brad Pitt’s 1999 film – will be rolled out UK-wide and free of charge.

Another ad says of the plan: “We feel this is a vital part of building a real movement for the future struggle to take back our country.”

Dowson’s rag-tag mob of former BNP members have already targeted Muslims in Scotland and beyond. They swaggered into mosques in Glasgow, Cumbernauld and several English cities, handing out Army Bibles to worshippers and telling them to stop Muslim men grooming young girls for sex. The invaders claimed to be carrying out a “Christian crusade”.

Britain First have also staged “Christian Patrols” in London, with supporters in military style fatigues marching through Asian areas waving Union flags.

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