As a Special Branch officer I watched the anti-Islam protest movement, the English Defence League (EDL), develop in 2009, I was struck by their apparent strategic acumen, not something normally associated with the far-right or football-related gang. The traditional Special Branch role of providing chief officers with intelligence on public order had slipped down the… Continue reading “Guest Blog: The catalyst for the EDL: March 2009 Luton – a terrible mistake”
Hermeneutical injustice is defined as the inability to communicate and/ or understand one’s own social experience, owing to a lack of concepts available in society used to define the experience. For example, before Carmita Wood’s introduction of the concept of sexual harassment, individuals were incapable of understanding and communicating this social experience and the significant… Continue reading “Hermeneutical injustice and the far right?”
While racism and xenophobia are central tenets of the radical right, so is homophobia – in spite of efforts to appear as allies to the LGBTQ community. The June 2019 Pride month celebrations worldwide also signaled the 50 year anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. While there may be a sense of progressive evolution towards more… Continue reading “The Pride of Prejudice: The Radical Right And The LGBTQ+ Community”
“There is no doubt in my mind that by far the most important and effective element of Channel is mentoring.” “The main reason I left the far right was because of my mentor’s guidance.” (Jack, former Prevent referral) Every year in the UK, Prevent helps hundreds of people leave extremist ideologies behind and walk a… Continue reading “Mentoring the radical right: talking to a Channel referral and his mentor”
The radical right has been small, fractious yet persistent in nearly a century of activism at the furthest reaches of the right-wing spectrum. As this collection of primary source documents makes plain, moreover, there are also a number of surprising elements in British fascism that were not observed elsewhere. While there had long been exclusionary,… Continue reading “The Radical Right in Britain”
Britain’s far-right undertow turns hostile currents against ethnic and religious minorities into a tsunami of hatred. Pause a moment to register two unloved anniversaries. This spring marks a decade since the first anti-Muslim street movement, the English Defence League (EDL), emerged on British streets. Slowly but surely, the Democratic Football Lads Alliance (DFLA), now a… Continue reading “The DFLA: a(nother) new UK far right movement?”
In October 2018, the Democratic Football Lads Alliance (DFLA) took to the streets of London in their thousands to protest against issues such as “returning jihadists” and “rape gangs”. Keen to stress they are not racists but concerned members of the public, a grassroots movement who simply want to be heard, they claim the voice… Continue reading “Catalyst or Catharsis: Inside the DFLA Secret Facebook Groups”
On Thursday, Gerard Batten, the leader of UKIP, hired Stephen Yaxley-Lennon as an adviser, a move which marked a canny awareness of the power of digital influencers to reach new audiences, and suggested an overt shift towards the far-right under the stewardship of Gerard Batten, as well as the embracement of a new digital strategy.… Continue reading “Split Kippers: The Increasing Populism Of UKIP”
Since the events of 9/11 in the USA and 7/7 in the UK, considerable public attention has been paid to issues relating to terrorism, radicalisation, and extremism. As the threats posed by Islamist terrorists have been visible and dramatic, counter-terrorism measures have tended to focus on Muslim communities. In the process of this almost single-minded emphasis,… Continue reading “When Are We Going To Take The Threat of The Radical Right Seriously?”
If you thought the campaign to free Tommy Robinson was a failure, think again. On June 9, London saw a convergence of thousands of demonstrators to protest the jailing of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known to most as Tommy Robinson, formerly of the radical-right English Defence League (EDL). Robinson had been arrested for breach of the peace… Continue reading “The Hidden Success of the Far Right’s “Free Tommy” Campaign”