As we run into the last week of campaigning for the London Mayoral election, it seems that far right extremist groups like Liberty GB and their coterie of haters have decided to play on the Muslim heritage of Labour candidate Sadiq Khan. We have highlighted Liberty GB before and more information can be found here.

We have also highlighted key activists in Liberty GB like Paul Weston. Yet, Liberty GB seems to want to reach the bottom of the league in its campaigning effort and by lacing campaigns with anti-Muslim prejudice and bigotry. The following post on their Facebook page should be parodied, given the abysmal focus on one aspect of the identity of Labour MP and mayoral candidate, Sadiq Khan.

Furthermore,  the kinds of abhorrent comments that are posted on the Facebook page of Liberty GB show the kind of audience that is attracted to them. We hope that the British public respond by parodying groups like Liberty GB whose aim seems to attract supporters who generally think the worst of Muslims. The least we all can do is make clear that their messages of prejudice are unacceptable, inflammatory and downright vile. Not so much Liberty GB as the gross abuse of all of our liberties and freedoms.

The post Such Abuse Against Sadiq Khan is Unacceptable & We Must Collectively Counter It appeared first on TELL MAMA.

At a Bedfordshire pub, the UK branch of Pegida announced a new leadership structure, following its disastrous relaunch in late 2015.

At the helm is Paul Weston, leader of the fringe party Liberty GB. Weston stood in the 2015 General Election and mustered just 0.4 per cent of the vote (158 votes) in Luton South. His party came bottom in the 2014 European Elections with 0.02 per cent of the vote (2,494 votes).

He stood in the 2010 General Election for Ukip and achieved just 664 votes in the Cities Of London & Westminster constituency. In a 2010 interview, Weston warned that immigration results in the “ethnic cleansing of the English”. And that a civil war could occur in the next ’20 years’.

Apocalyptic and self-victimisation narratives continue to pervade his ideology and writings.

Following the murder of Lee Rigby in May 2013, Weston warned that ‘we are losing a racial war, we are losing a cultural war‘. He claimed that you would find ‘no white people in Tower Hamlets’ due to rising demographics of non-whites and Muslims.

In response to accusations of racism, Weston responded “If I want to avoid a civil war happening in my country, I am prepared to accept being called a racist“.

Weston quit Ukip after Lord Pearson stood down as leader. For him, the party would take a soft line towards Islam under Nigel Farage. He wrote in 2012 that “I think Islam will cause even more death and destruction in Europe over the 21st century than Nazism and Communism caused over the 20th century”.

Ukip, however, are happy to exploit anti-Islam sentiments when politically expedient.

Weston took on the chairmanship of the British Freedom Party (BFP) in 2011. A year later and the party announced an alliance with the English Defence League (EDL). The EDL’s founder and ex-leader, Tommy Robinson, and his cousin, Kevin Carroll, joined the leadership structure.

In the 2012 Local Elections the BFP stood six candidates (five in Liverpool and one in Basildon) with derisive results.

Weston left the BFP before it dissolved. He launched Liberty GB in 2013. The foundations of Liberty GB are contingent on cultural nationalism and anti-Islam sentiments.

In 2014, police arrested Mr Weston after quoting from Churchill’s book The River War. In truth, the arrest had more to do with a failure to follow a dispersal order, and charges were later dropped.

Nor is Mr Weston a stranger to Pegida. He spoke at their Newcastle rally in March 2015; where he went on to compare the Prophet Muhammad to the ISIS extremist Mohammed Emwazi. A year earlier, his speaking engagements included EDL rallies.

Mr Weston’s links counter-jihad circles runs deeper than his political career. His blogs on the counter-jihad site Gates of Vienna began in 2007. He attended a Brussels conference in in that same year alongside Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, Lars Hedegaard, and Bat Ye’or. Mr Weston attended the 2008 counter-jihad conference in Vienna. And in 2011, Weston brought a delegation of BFP members to the London counter-jihad conference. At the 2012 counter-jihad conference in Brussels, Tommy Robinson spoke on behalf of the BFP and EDL.

A discussion of Pegida’s new leadership is not complete without reference to Anne Marie Waters. She chairs an organisation called Sharia Watch. In May of last year, Ms Waters invited Tommy Robinson to speak at the launch of Voice UK – Victims of Islamic Cultural Extremism.

In the past she has contributed to Lars Hedegaard’s counter-jihad website Dispatch International. And shared a platform with him in 2011. In 2013, Anne Marie Waters

Before the 2015 election, a Daily Mirror sting exposed her anti-Islamic views during a Mothers Against Radical Islam And Sharia (MARIAS) rally. As Ukip’s parliamentary candidate for Lewisham East she went on to gain 3,886 votes (9.1 per cent).

Waters and Weston were due to speak at the ‘Draw Mohammed’ cartoons exhibition. Amid security concerns, the event was later cancelled.

So why the change? Pegida hope to tap the wellspring of anxieties towards Islam and appeal to ‘middle England‘ and individuals put off by the violence of the EDL. Pegida affords a new platform for Tommy Robinson’s unrepentant views towards Islam – without the toxic legacy of the EDL.

George Whale, Liberty GB’s Treasurer, who sat on the BFP’s Executive Council, has been invited into Pegida UK’s administrative team. So has Liberty GB’s Outreach Officer Jack Buckby – who posed for photos with former BNP leader Nick Griffin.

Pegida’s leadership change demonstrates the insulated yet interconnected networks within counter-jihad circles. This contiguous ideology extends across Europe and North America. It creates its own online echo chambers and speaks to simplistic, binary world views.

Pegida hopes this interconnectivity will come to fruition with simultaneous protests across Europe on February 6.

The post Who is Pegida UK’s new leader Paul Weston? appeared first on TELL MAMA.

Mona Chalabi’s BBC documentary titled, ‘Is Britain Racist‘, was a fascinating insight into prejudice and the ways that different races and faith groups are affected by racism and prejudice. We had the pleasure of advising the producers in sending a Niqab wearing female to Dudley, to see what reactions this would elicit, if she walked on the streets. The reactions by some were just as expected with abuse meted out to the female from cars that drove by. The young female was left shocked and feeling extremely vulnerable in the exercise which highlighted what some visible Muslim females go through. The documentary was an excellent insight into the way that we perceive race, nationality and religious differences.

Yet, we should not fail to highlight the online world which is a toxic mix of a range of prejudices, allied to the benefits that social media sources and the Internet provide. Our report to be launched with Dr Imran Awan and Dr Irene Zempi will highlight some of the anti-Muslim hate and prejudice that is promoted on-line.

Sadly, we have also highlighted some of the abuse that we receive on a regular basis which shows the kind of prejudice that exists. This account for example, promotes the very real intolerance which permeates social media, and in this case Facebook, and the message was directly sent to us. We have notified Facebook and sent a copy to the police for their records. Sadly, these incidents are not unique given the work that we do.

The post Who Says This Work is Abuse Free? Mona Chalabi Highlights Key Issues appeared first on TELL MAMA.

This leaflet was circulated today on social media by an anti-fascist campaigner who suggested that these leaflets are being circulated in the North Shields area of Newcastle.

The text reads – “Muslim paedophile gangs operate in this area. Are your children safe.”

This abhorrent leaflet is meant to stir up hatred and intimidate communities, whilst trying to drive a wedge between communities. This leaflet shows the nature of the vile English Defence League which seems to push against legal boundaries with no care about communities and the cohesion or future stability of our country. A parent who received that leaflet would no doubt be alarmed and worried and the last thing any parent should do is to contact this vile group.

We have seen how CSE (Child Sexual Exploitation) is used by extremist far right groups to whip up tensions and hatred. We have previously highlighted this in posts (see below) where far right groups use the revulsion that we all feel and attempt to tap into it and manipulate it in order to gain support for their vile extremist set-ups.

This was a previous posting from another far right extremist group – Liberty GB. Once again, the Rotherham grooming scandal is used though what is interesting are the anti-establishment and anti-police messages. They characterise the extremist far mentality of fear of existing Government structures, yet they promote the twisted narrative that they have solutions to tackle CSE. They simply do not. All they do is to try to light the fire of conflict.

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