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Monday 6 February 2012

The BBC’s Phantom Menace: a 'Far Right' Terror Threat


Last July, shortly after the atrocity committed by Anders Behring Breivik, I concluded my piece on his crime with the following words:
Breivik may claim that his acts of murder were intended to defend the Norwegian nation and Western civilisation, but in reality this man has done nationalists and counterjihad activists across the whole of Europe a massive disservice: he has handed our enemies a huge propaganda coup. Although we have nothing to do with him and roundly condemn him, we will be stigmatised by association no matter how tenuous and unfounded it may be. Just as the Stephen Lawrence case was used by the last Labour administration to implement and embed its anti-indigenous racist kulturkampf in the UK, so will the advocates of multiculturalism and appeasers of Islam across Europe use Breivik’s atrocity as a means to accelerate and embed their multiculturalist project. This is happening already, as Channel 4 reports that the Metropolitan Police are to launch an investigation into Breivik's claimed links with the EDL. There is thus a considerable risk that the flimsiest of pretexts will be employed to limit the operations of the EDL, or even to proscribe it. How much further might our liberties be whittled away as we become a new phantasmogorical enemy within to which our security agencies will misguidedly devote their attentions?  Breivik, contrary to his self-professed objectives, will thus go down in history as an enabler of the Islamisation of Europe.
My analysis and prognosis appear to have been correct, although for the time being the EDL continues to operate as a legal protest group. That said, two key figures in the development of the EDL – Alan Lake (Alan Ayling) and Aeneas (Chris Knowles) - have recently been suspended from their jobs for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Leeds Children’s Services Department, with the latter citing Knowles’s seeming contravention of the Councils ‘equality and diversity’ policy as the reason. Both Ayling and Norwegian blogger Fjordman – Peder Jensen – have been investigated for alleged links with Breivik. Neither of course belonged to Breivik’s fantasy reconstructed order of the Knights Templar, but this has not stopped the post-Breivik witch-hunters from employing Breivik’s crime as a pretext to call for security agencies to focus upon the activities and opinions of critics of Islamisation and other members of what they purposely misrepresent as the ‘far right’.

It is against this backdrop that the sinister implications of an interview on this morning’s Today Programme on Radio 4, together with a companion piece in The Guardian, should be considered. Matthew Goodwin, an academic from the University of Nottingham claiming to be a specialist in ‘far right’ politics, made it known via both his interview and the printed article that he believed in state censorship of the internet – with specific reference to blog content – to prevent the dissemination of ‘right wing extremism’. He claims that such blogs engage in ‘narrowcasting’, focusing upon topics such as the ideological and demographic Islamisation of European societies, and then makes a massive leap from criticising what he believes to be a paranoid Eurabian fantasy to claiming that such analysis of our current situation gives birth to ‘far right [by which he does not mean Islamist] extremism and terrorism’. When asked to provide examples of this ‘far right’ phantom menace, Goodwin named Breivik and Timothy McVeigh. Neither of course have anything to do with nationalist parties or movements in the UK or elsewhere in Europe, and are also roundly condemned by the Counterjihad movement. Goodwin states:  
"What we simply know much less about is violence and also terrorism from within the extreme right wing subculture, and also the interplay between these different forms of extremism."
We don’t know about it because it doesn’t exist. It seems to me that Goodwin needs to invent this fantasy threat in order to secure funding to continue his academic research at the University of Nottingham. This story has more to do with his personal interest in career advancement and securing a research grant than in combating any putative ‘far right’ threat. To have slandered the EDL, the Gates of Vienna blog and others who share their concerns about Islamisation as potential ‘terrorists’ and ‘violent extremists’ is not only deeply distasteful, but intensely alarming. The question this poses is: for how much longer will any semblance of free speech be permitted on the internet in the UK and Europe?

We have already witnessed Ayling, Knowles and Jensen lose their jobs because of their political stance. How long will it be before others sharing their dissident analysis with respect to Islamisation and mass immigration are deprived of their livelihoods, misrepresented and transformed into pariahs? Might this not be linked to the huge amounts of Saudi and other Muslim petrodollar finance being sought to prop up the collapsing European economies? George Osborne, it would seem, has a $62 billion reason for allowing the Saudi proselytisation of Wahhabism in Britain, and who is to say that he, along with other members of his political clique, might not engage in a little censorship of domestic criticism of Islam for the sake of keeping the Saudis sweet? 



8 comments:

  1. Of course it doesn't exist. The "extreme right wing" label is used by people like him to groundlessly vilipendiate the ones who oppose his views. If logical arguments (which, however, people like him simply don't have) fail, then one can always pick out the right wing extremist jolly joker with swastikas hanging from his clown-hat. The problem is that the bulk of the population is prone to hold this arguments true due to the massive indoctrination to which they are exposed.

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  2. The swastika clown-hat image is a good one. It would raise a laugh at any rate. But yes, you are right about the public's susceptibility to such negative propaganda because of routine indoctrination equating any expression of nationalism with the 'far right'.

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  3. Ivan

    Many thanks for submitting your comment. However, I hope that you don't mind me having removed part of one sentence for the sake of discretion.


    Durotrigan

    Matthew Goodwin is of course the author of 'New British Fascism. The Rise of the BNP'. I reviewed this book for Heritage & Destiny magazine. You are correct in your assumptions. Goodwin will say what he thinks his paymasters want to hear. For the book he took existing assumptions and stereotypes about BNP supporters & voters and then, using a flimsy methodology, produced 'evidence' to support those assumptions. The book and other outpourings from Goodwin (he is regularly on the TV, Radio, writing for the Guardian etc etc) is as shallow as some of the 'Jewish conspiracy' exposes that the hard line Fascists regularly announce that they have found. Maybe Goodwin feels 'at home' writing about the far right ?

    Ivan Winters
    Democratic Nationalists

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  4. Ivan, I'll track down and read your review. It sounds interesting, and appears to highlight the unscientific methodology of the 'social sciences' in our higher seats of learning. Owing to the way that the university system in our country is currently structured, academics are compelled to bid for funding through various research exercises, so it would hardly be profitable from Goodwin's perspective to reveal that there isn't a 'far-right' menace when the whole of his career appears to be predicated upon its existence. If he acknowledged the reality of the situation, his sponsors would be about as likely to provide him with funding as they would someone conducting research into "exclusionary attitudes within the WI". There's not much money to be wrung from the ESRC however in researching jam makers and cardigan knitters, just as there wouldn't be in researching peaceful legitimate political parties and movements without the pariah tag of 'far right'.

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  5. i can't help but think that the effectiveness of leftist indoctrination is over estimated.
    if it isn't, how is it that the likes of the EDL can show increasing public support coupled with increasing government disquiet?

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  6. Bilbo, I think that the indoctrination is particularly strong amongst younger people, for consider this: anyone under 28 would have been thirteen at the oldest when Blair came to power, and since then (and indeed, before to a lesser extent) the education system has been focused upon inculcating multiculturalism and 'respect' for 'diversity'. Since 2001 of course, 'respect' for Islam has been added to the curriculum, meaning that anyone within the compulsory education system since then - roughly the same age group once again - will have been force-fed propaganda about the "religion of peace."

    EDL support therefore is likely to be at its highest amongst older age groups in those areas that have been directly exposed to demographic Islamisation. Of course, even children today in those areas suffering the negative impact of this phenomenon - such as Bradford in the case of St Bede's School - will surely be more open to the EDL's message. As for the trajectory of the EDL, that is hard to gauge, but it has had a positive impact (witness Tommy Robinson's two Newsnight interviews) in drawing Islamisation to wider public attention.

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  7. I do not wish to sound too paranoid or doom-laden, but I think the days are soon going to be coming where blogs like this - and mine - are clamped down on, and we find ourselves being investigated for fomenting terrorism and "extremism" or "hate crimes".

    They are already trying to pass laws which put the onus on internet service providers to be responsible for filtering content (and liable for it, if it is not removed from their services), people have already been arrested for comments on facebook and myspace (or video clips like Emma West), and Mr Fox has been down to see the plod over some of his work that appeared in the Brievik manifesto.

    It is potentially possible that sites will dry up, be completely filtered, people prosecuted and intimidated into silence about their country being transformed and taken over. Resist, and you will be deemed a threat to society.....

    Hopefully not, but knowing this country, anything is possible! That reminds me - maybe I should change some of that video I made!

    Seriously, it is on my mind now!

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  8. Hello BA. Unfortunately, I tend to share your gloomy thoughts on this matter as the prognosis does not look good. I'll have to keep my reply short right now as I need to head out, but please ensure that if you do change any of your video that you keep a copy of the original because I do think that it's good. Some people - our opponents that is - will naturally find it "vile" and "racist", but it lays out things pretty honestly and starkly with a black humour that fits in with the lyrics.

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