English Defence League

In the past few months a new nationalist force has emerged and been reported by the media.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/11/english-defence-league-chaotic-alliance

Despite the best efforts of the controlled media to paint this as being directed by sinster 'neo-nazi's' from behind the scenes, the English Defence League appears to be very much a spontaneous uprising with activists drawn from the English Working Class. It's ideology is pretty threadbare and it was formed in reaction to the hatefull protests of Islamic Fundamentalists, which denigrated servicemen returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, supported terrorism and demanded that those who insulted Islam be beheaded. The English Defence League then began confrontational marches of the type that were once the monopoly of the National Front and old BNP.

From the NLF perspective what is noticeable is that they have largely proved the point that the NLF argues in regard to activism. All it took was a handfull of ordinary people with little or no resources to agree to meetup in a certain spot and march. The trouble that was stirred up by the quickly attracted the media who gave them far more publicity than they would if they had merely spent the afternoon quitely leafleting the town.

Naturally the reports are highly distorted, one should be very skeptical of the claims of violence committed by the EDL activists. It is more likely that such violence has been greatly exagerated and not the intention of the organisers, but rather committed by a football holigan element who attached themselves to the protest. The end result is, however, the same free publicity for the English Defence League in the print and TV media. Such publicity will attract more marchers and generate more lurid headlines until the movement finally implodes due to its own organisational and ideological weakness.

That said the English Defence League suffers from many weaknesses that will be its undoing. Firstly its ideology is clearly undefined being merely an expression of anti-islamism, which will I suspect lead it to being infiltrated by both agent provocers and other more ideological nationalists, who will form hostile factions which will rip the movement apart in short order. Secondly without keeping it members and supporters disciplined with a formal organisation it will attract the hooligan element who will discredit the movement and repel quality activists.