So, when the English Defence League held their anti "Islamic Extremist" protest in Birmingham today, there were sporadic violent clashes with various Anti-Fascist groups, were there? Who would have anticipated that then? Sarcasm aside, the EDL claim that they are not a fascist organisation, not a racist organisation and not a violent organisation. They are, they say, simply protesting against extremists and that any Moslems who don't support terrorist extremists should applaud them rather than opposing them. Of course the flipside of that disingenuous nonsense is that any Moslems who don't support the EDL must be opposing them because they support the terrorists.
But leaving all that aside too, what I'd like to know is, even if they are as they claim, what on Earth can an anti "Islamic Extremist" protest conceivably be for? Who is going to take any notice of it?
Imagine the situation reversed for a moment and that a group of English terrorists are planning an attack in, for the sake of argument, Afghanistan not such a far-fetched scenario, given that every country and every religion and just about every other group of people has its own home-grown varieties of nutcase. Does anyone seriously believe that a rag-tag bunch of "anti-English extremist" protesters in Islamabad would have the slightest effect on them or their views?
Of course not.
And if, and I stress if, there are any Islamic extemists knocking about I wouldn't expect them to take any notice of the protesters in Birmingham, beyond maybe either laughing at them or perhaps seeing it as confirmation of their opinions.
Somewhere in a cave at this very moment Osama Bin Laden is probably not discussing the English Defence League.
But leaving all that aside too, what I'd like to know is, even if they are as they claim, what on Earth can an anti "Islamic Extremist" protest conceivably be for? Who is going to take any notice of it?
Imagine the situation reversed for a moment and that a group of English terrorists are planning an attack in, for the sake of argument, Afghanistan not such a far-fetched scenario, given that every country and every religion and just about every other group of people has its own home-grown varieties of nutcase. Does anyone seriously believe that a rag-tag bunch of "anti-English extremist" protesters in Islamabad would have the slightest effect on them or their views?
Of course not.
And if, and I stress if, there are any Islamic extemists knocking about I wouldn't expect them to take any notice of the protesters in Birmingham, beyond maybe either laughing at them or perhaps seeing it as confirmation of their opinions.
Somewhere in a cave at this very moment Osama Bin Laden is probably not discussing the English Defence League.
4 comments:
To paraphrase Grant Morrison, anti-fascists are people who want to meet anti "Islamic extremists" and can only do so within a socially-accepted framework of mutually agreed confrontation.
I'm a bit of a Grant Morrison fan myself. What was the original, unparaphrased quote?
It was something he wrote on his old website. I guess it's been removed now. It went like this:
"Uncool is the new cool and counterculture is shop counter culture. Anything weird and cool you need to see will be sourced, bled and copied into the next Robbie Williams video, better than the original. You can stop looking now. There’s nothing to see. Nothing will ever make you weirder or more culty than Geri Halliwell is. ‘Culture jammers’ are just anti-matter advertising executives. Anti-corporate activists are people who want to meet Policemen and can only do so within a socially-accepted framework of mutually agreed confrontation. As Gnostics hated ‘the Flesh’, so do Situationists hate ‘the Spectacle’."
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