Terry Jones and the EDL
Terry Jones isn't coming over, then.* Which might on the face of it seem like a bit of a PR disaster for our not-at-all-extremist friends at the EDL; except they've put quite an interesting sheen on things:
But a spokesman for the EDL confirmed the invitation to Mr Jones had been withdrawn because of his critical views on homosexuality and race.
No, you stop laughing. That's true, apparently. Thank goodness for those considerate chaps at the EDL, proud defenders of diversity and anti-racism. Thank goodness they're here to prevent such a nasty man as Terry Jones from coming over to Britain! If only they had known about his views on race and homosexuality before they booked him... I am sure it was just a silly oversight and they're worried about their mistake.
Amusingly enough, the tactics of the EDL remind me of those favoured by Anjem Choudhary and his rum bunch of coves, whatever they're calling themselves nowadays: set up something controversial and inflammatory, get maximum publicity, then retreat at full speed and make yourself out to be the good guy all along. I'm not sure if the EDL or Choudhary would appreciate the comparison but that's how they both behave: they know how to get themselves in the papers and on the news, then portray themselves as un-extreme by distancing themselves from the storm they themselves have created. It's an excellent tactic and one which the plodding media in this country seem to fall for every time, so you can't really blame them.
Theresa May, meanwhile, has simply carried on from where Labour left off. She might not appreciate that comparison either, but just as Geert Wilders was refused entry to speak to Ukip, now May was prepared to see off Jones, having seen him on 'her radar' some time ago. Yet again, it's the wrong decision. Jones's views, while deeply unpleasant, are not criminal as far as I'm aware; just as Wilders's views were only a cigarette paper away from certain high-profile columnists, Jones isn't a whole world away from fairly mainstream media opinions on Islam. Just as Choudhary and his bunch of idiots should be allowed to march up and down Wootton Bassett High Street if they want, the likes of Jones and Wilders should be allowed to spread their poison, with a minimum of fuss. Yes, it will upset a lot of people, but yes, it's still the right thing to do if we value freedom of expression in this country.
And there's something else as well. The initial excuse for the likes of Wilders and Jones not being admitted is that they're obnoxious so-and-sos who will create tension; but the underlying message is this: those Muslims will probably kill him, and we can't afford that. It's another way of depicting Muslims as being 'the problem'. Sure, there may well be tension, and problems, and all sorts of issues arising from a Wilders or Jones speech, but that is part of being in a free society, to ensure people can say even such appalling things.
The problem comes when we all get so emotional about these fools that we give them the acres of newsprint and hours of news footage they crave. And there's too much fear - fear of one of these idiots getting murdered, or there being uncontrollable tensions which lead to violence. But what if these events were just quietly waved through and allowed to go ahead - what then? You have to wonder whether that would really be what the people behind them want. I suspect they prefer the outrage, the shock, the controversy, the appearances on the news, the ability to position themselves as the voice of reason in the end.
You have protesters who want publicity more than the right to protest - if that means they don't actually protest in the end because of the storm they've created, then they've still achieved their goals. Simply think up something inflammatory, or invite over someone inflammatory, and the media will do the rest. There'll always be a helpful home secretary to do the banning required to make you out to be the victims in all this, and there you are: you've won. How do you fight against that? It's not easy, but I think successive governments have got it wrong.
* It's tempting to squawk "He's not the messiah for pretending-they're-disenfranchised whites who claim to be railing against extremism but who are actually angry at all Muslims and immigrants regardless of whether they're extremists or not; he's a very naughty boy!" but I've decided not to write that, because it would be silly and facetious and well, just plain wrong really.
Time travel, Charlie Chaplin and the EDL
I find this fascinating, in lots of ways. It is what appears to be a woman, on a mobile phone, in a 1928 Charlie Chaplin film. When you look at it, you can only see it that way. Anyway, see for yourselves.
It's incredible, isn't it? Now, I have no explanation of my own. I can make guesses. I can try and work out what's going on. But the one thing I'm pretty sure about - and I'm afraid I have to disagree with the chap who first pointed this out - is that it isn't a time traveller. (Why would the woman be on a mobile phone anyway? She couldn't be talking to anyone, since there weren't phone base stations in 1928 to carry a signal - unless somehow the signal was travelling through time as well, but I find that a little far-fetched for my tastes. Would she be trying to plant proof of time travel into the past, by sticking it in a Charlie Chaplin film? Why, in an era of time travel apparently not yet discovered, would someone have what seems to be a clunky old brick-style phone rather than a microchip inserted in their brain, or something? And so on, and so on.)
What I find most fascinating of all, though, is the way in which the brain - my brain, your brain, most people's brains looking at that footage - processes what the eyes are seeing. Would we do so if we hadn't been prompted to do so by being told it was someone on a mobile phone? Probably even still. Because it just looks like something we're familiar with - the woman appears to be talking, and holding a phone up to her ear. We see this kind of thing all the time in the streets around us, so it doesn't seem that she's doing anything else. So that's what we decide she's doing, even if it's preposterous to imagine she really is.
So when you're faced with something confusing, you look for an explanation. You look for what to expect, and what seems natural - particularly if you're prompted to see it there in the first place. I think this is similar to the way in which news information can work, and the way in which organisations like the EDL, the BNP and the other fearmongerers can spread their hatred.
So if you're feeling angry, disappointed, upset, impotent, whatever, if you feel like you have no career prospects, if you feel isolated and cast adrift from society, you might look around for reasons why. Why is it all so unfair, and why are you - part of the white majority, apparently, with all the advantages that should be available to the group with the hegemony - seemingly a loser, a failure, incapable of achieving what you want? That seems somehow ridiculous, and it jars with what you've been taught about working hard and paying your taxes and everything falling into your lap. So what's gone wrong? Well, what if someone tells you that Islamists are trying to take over the country, and that everyone's looking the other way because they're too scared about offending them? What if someone tells you immigrants are taking your homes and your job prospects, and no-one does anything to stop them, because of this invisible barrier called political correctness? Suddenly that anger doesn't seem so impotent - it makes sense. No wonder you haven't got what you wanted in life; it was those pesky terrorists and their traitor/helpers who have pulled out the rug from underneath you!
Articles like the Daily Star one I wrote about yesterday in which Christmas was apparently being 'banned' for the millionth time, which received such a delighted response from some EDL members, are part of the picture. Today and tomorrow we will see articles about first names of children, which will bring up the old chestnut about Mohammeds/Muhammads apparently taking over the country and drowning everyone in a sea of Islam - articles which are so sadly predictable that you can look back at this post by me from last year to see where the agenda is coming from and where the problems lie with the cherrypicking, the failure to put things into context, and so on.
It's much more complicated than someone pointing you at what appears to be a woman on a phone in an old Charlie Chaplin film and saying "Look, it's a woman on a phone!" because this kind of pressure is coming from all angles, in all places, at all times. But how to counter it? Well, one way is to point out that the EDL is wrong to talk about Christmas being banned, as some brave souls have already done on EDL Facebook groups. Another way is to take the media to task for the inaccurate and skewed reporting, as this and other media blogs will try to do. And there are other important avenues to explore as well - not the counterproductive 'getting the white folk angry' of Phil Woolas, who is still, I remind you, a shadow minister, but a genuine attempt to try and reach out to the kind of people who are suffering from the injustices and perceived unfairness that the EDL, BNP and other groups prey on.
That last task is one for politicians, community groups and all kinds of miscellaneous others, but it's important. I know that not all possible EDL folk can be engaged with - some are out-and-out racists, wilfully ignorant, and don't care what they're told - but I think people need to try. It's one thing to just say that the myth-making about immigrants and Muslims is wrong (and it is), but that's not the whole picture; if you don't try to offer some alternative explanations for what's going on, offer some hope, offer some way of dealing with stuff other than taking to the streets under a ruddy great banner and inflaming racial tensions, then things are going to get pretty nasty pretty quickly. But who's going to step in and do that?
If no-one does, though, things are going to get worse. One national newspaper is now happy to report unquestioningly on groups like the EDL; will it stay at one, or will others follow, for easy angry newspaper-buying poll-texting readers, a whole revenue stream of racists just waiting to be tapped?
As for the woman in the Charlie Chaplin film, I really can't offer any explanation. I thought maybe she was holding on a wig, or a hat, or something like that, but the more I look at it, the more it looks like a phone. All I do know, though, is that it isn't. All I know is that much.
The Mail and the EDL
The Mail distances itself from organisations like the BNP and the EDL, despite providing a lot of their ammunition with inflammatory and misleading articles about race and immigration. Today's story is no different:
A chief constable is seeking emergency powers to ban the far-Right English Defence League from marching through a city's Muslim neighbourhood, amid fears it could provoke widespread violence.
Up to 10,000 EDL supporters are expected to descend on Bradford over the bank holiday weekend in what is claimed will be a rally against Islamic extremism.
But residents fear the provocative march could cause a repeat of the 2001 race riots.
I tend to call people like the EDL and BNP 'ultranationalist' rather than 'far right' nowadays, but that's just a matter of taste really. The EDL are an odd bunch, hard to define in some ways but easy to define in others. They claim to be set up against Islamic extremism, but you have to wonder whether that's really the case, and it isn't just the case that they're a bunch of needle-dicked racist thugs looking for a punch-up rather than protesting about 'their' country.
But as I've written before, the Mail's straight reportage of the EDL and BNP, for example, and the attempts at handwashing by the likes of Melanie Phillips and Richard Littlejohn, finds an angry response from readers. It's no different today, with many readers getting angry with the way the Mail reports the story and calls the EDL a 'magnet for neo-Nazi thugs' and compares them with Oswald Moseley's Blackshirts (who, as we all know, the Daily Mail supported back in the day, but that's by the by). The commenters pile in under the article, firstly with a classic bit of 'whataboutery', comparing the EDL march with the one (which never happened) by Islam4UK through Wootton Bassett; secondly by claiming that Unite Against Fascism are 'the real thugs' and thirdly by claiming that they are just 'English patriots' and there's nothing wrong with the lovely, cuddly EDL.
Have a look for yourself, if you must, but it's not pretty reading. The comments most in favour of the EDL receive positive votes; those against receive negative votes. Now you might suggest these are readers whisked over to the Mail by message boards and forums, and I dare say there's an element of that.
But what if there's something else going on? What if, when you talk about 'white British' mothers explicitly, and wring your hands about the number of 'white British' births, worry about white British mothers, write about 'white flight', and you talk about white people as being 'nationals', and you suggest that second-generation immigrants aren't really British, you're creating a dialogue in which people begin to believe that the only true Brit is a pale pink one? Is the Mail really an innocent bystander in this argument, or actually part of it?
As for banning the march, it is of course provocative and unpleasant, but should go ahead if at all possible. The last thing anyone should do with little Englander 'patriot' types is give them an even bigger chip on their shoulder and give them a genuine sense of victimisation, opposed to the 'stranger in my own country' mentality they carry around with them. The police aren't planning to ban the protest altogether, just the marching element (which you could presume has more potential to be difficult to police). But even so. Scum like the EDL have the right to protest, even if they're completely wrong, and even if they trying to be inflammatory and provocative. Stopping them just makes them believe their own paranoia.
As ever, papers like the Mail fuel groups like the EDL, then step away and pretend to distance themselves from their views when it comes to the crunch. But there's not really a million miles between the obsession with 'white Britons' and the EDL's thoughts of 'patriotism'. Certainly not as much distance as these newspapers would like to think.
Near the knuckle, down to the bone
A little while ago, in Halal, is it meat you're looking for? I wrote about how the Mail (among others) had got itself into a tizzy about some bloke who wanted to have a chicken & bacon burger in his local KFC, only to discover it was a franchise that was trialling a Halal policy, and that it was all a big shame for the poor crybaby who couldn't get the exact fried chicken product that he wanted, a boo hoo hoo.
If there's a point to this blog - and god knows I wonder sometimes if there really is - then it's this: a lot of people might say that it's not doing anyone any harm, simply churning around these stories, but I do. It allows there to be a culture of acceptability surrounding bigoted and prejudiced opinions, where they are not only allowed to exist but also in a sense encouraged, particularly through the 'user generated content' catflap of reader comments which repeat particular views over and over again.
You might say, well it's not as if anyone's done a picture of the KFC Colonel with a turban-bomb, conflating all Muslims with terrorists, then surrounded it with some sophistry about animal rights and discrimination, but:
Yes, there it is, from our friends at the English Defence League. Now I should point out that they're perfectly capable of being completely prejudiced without the Mail's help, and indeed on this occasion they don't refer to the Mail story, preferring a News of the World link. And I'm not saying that turban-bomb cartoons are the result of things like the Mail story. Nor (before some idiot bothers) am I saying that these people shouldn't have the 'freedom of speech' to be offensive towards KFC, or Muslims, or whoever they want - just so we're clear on that.
But. A lot of times you'll find that where the mainstream media leads, the ultras follow - and sometimes it's the other way around. When you see someone protesting against Halal meat you think to yourself, why is he doing that?
What's that little symbol in the corner of the sandwich board there... is that a clue as to what the real motivation is - perhaps nothing to do with animal welfare concerns? (Interestingly this 'cruelty' protester has the same name as a former BNP organiser in Burnley, though I cannot say if it's the same person or not - the local papers who reported his protest didn't seem to make the connection).
The original Mail article, though, is eagerly discussed on many ultra-nationalist forums, with one commenter on a forum I looked at adding the caveat "The Jews are just as bad" and another complaining that at KFC "our Indian friends wipe their arse with their left hand, run it over a tap then touch our food". And there's something else: these folk seem pleased and delighted when a story about something like this makes it into a national paper like the Mail, as if that's verification of the story, and verification of their views. That's something really worth bearing in mind - while a lot of people might have given up on national papers, they still give off a certain legitimisation.
All the more reason, maybe, for national newspapers when they do cover these stories to make sure they do so responsibly, rather than just ramping up the outrage and fear. Well all the more reason if they gave a shit about the consequences of what they do.
Next stop: Racism central
This journey terminates at Riot, calling at Fear, Exploitation, Prejudice, Xenophobia, Lies and Shit Journalism.
Yes, it's the Mail again, doing what they do best: lying about immigration. You'll see from the URL on this story about the clearance of "The Jungle" that originally the story was about "Britain-obsessed" asylum seekers who were going to be allowed in to Britain 'at the earliest convenience' thanks to the European Justice Commissioner.
Yesterday, that Justice Commissioner says:
On Monday a spokesman for EU justice commissioner Jacques Barrot denied reports he had called for a change in the law to allow some migrants to be fast-tracked into the UK.
Michele Cercone told the BBC there was no attempt to force countries to take asylum seekers and Mr Barrot was urging France and the UK to "find a joint solution".
How odd that the Mail didn't ask him for a quote before saying he'd said the exact opposite! Why, it's almost as if they wanted to create an entirely false impression. Whoopsy! Of course, having said something which has been directly contradicted, the Mail have done the decent journalistic thing and printed a correction. Oh no hang on a minute, they haven't. They've simply deleted the original story and pretended it never existed. Classy.
Also in the original story, there was a claim that the "Britain-obsessed" asylum seekers had been 'groomed as suicide bombers'. Yet in fact these are people who had fled from the Taliban. Kind of almost as if they didn't like suicide bombings, or something.
So there you have the Mail's journalistic standards. Print a load of fearmongering rubbish about immigration and asylum, then hastily delete it from the internet and walk away whistling, pretending it never happened.
You can bet that some will have noticed those bullshit headlines, though - our friends at the EDL, who used a compendium of Mail atrocities to further their cause in a recent video. They'll have lapped it right up thanks to their friends at the Mail. Is it irresponsible of the Mail to be like this? Undoubtedly? Do they care? Of course not. Immigrants painted as perpetrators when in fact they're victims: perfect. "They're all coming over here" when in fact they're not: perfect. Job done.
Why it matters
If you've ever wondered why I started blogging about the excesses of the right-wing press then this spectacularly good post by Five Chinese Crackers tells you everything you need to know.
Our friends at the English Defence League recently released a video to plug a forthcoming rally in Manchester. What did they use to justify their arguments about Islamic extremism? They used a pack of lies from the Mail and other tabloids. Like the Mail and the other right-wing papers, they conflated unpleasant extremists like Anjem Choudhary with all Muslims. Like the papers, they look for what they want to find, find it regardless of the evidence, and drive a fucking great train through the truth in order to create fear, hatred and exploit prejudice.
It matters to call out this rubbish because newspapers shouldn't be twisting the truth to create a false narrative which is easily picked up by extremists. The fear is of extremism, but the irony is that in order to create a climate of fear through distortion, sleight-of-hand and downright lies, it whips up extremism of a different kind.
Well done to the press. You created the EDL. Happy with yourselves? Proud of what you do for a living? Glad there's a bunch of thinly-disguised football nuts marching around trying to have a ruck with Muslims? Pleased with that? Job well done? Go home and pat yourselves on the back did you? Enjoy seeing your lies in that EDL video?
That's why it matters.
I have a feeling there won’t be too many clickthroughs
But you never know!
Spotter: currybet
What do Mail readers think about the EDL?
The Mail don't skew everything, and very often their straight reportage is insightful - which is what makes it such a tragedy that they can't manage it all the time and resort to such low tactics when it comes to concocting stories they want you to read rather than ones you do. This article, for example, about the English Defence League, is a pretty good summary of what's been happening over the past few days with the EDL. I can't help thinking that's because it's by 'Daily Mail reporter' and has been pieced together by some diligent scribe from other national papers' coverage rather than just starting out with a target an aiming long-range salvoes at it, regardless of the facts.
Yesterday a commenter on my 'What do we call these scum' piece said there were 'non-white' people at the protests. I looked at the Mail's coverage, then, expecting a happy rainbow nation of faces united against the tyranny of Islamism - sadly, the photographers have clearly been complete bastards by deliberately leaving out all the hundreds of ethnic minority protesters who happily marched along with the English Defence League and deliberately taking pictures of growling nuts in England tops! Outrageous!
The sadness for me comes that after a rather good piece of news reporting from the Mail, there's a predictable response in the comments. You'll see that the worst-rated comment is this
while this also gets bombarded with red arrows
but this
and this
are considered worthy of praise by readers, and this
is voted up, despite being entirely factually wrong. What does that tell you?
It's sad that the Mail can execute accurate and interesting stories about touchy subjects without feeling the need to skew things over to a predetermined point of view. I say sad because it makes it seem all the more deliberate an act when they do, rather than being just the result of laziness. Clearly the ability exists to report things without blowing one side or the other out of all proportion; perhaps there isn't always the willingness.
There. And I managed to do a whole blog post on that story without resorting to the cheap, easy and juvenile tactic of comparing this
The dispute came as a Cabinet minister raised fears of a return to 1930s fascism, comparing modern Right-wing groups to Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts.
with this
If the Blackshirts movement had any need of justification, the Red Hooligans who savagely and systematically tried to wreck Sir Oswald Mosley's huge and magnificently successful meeting at Olympia last night would have supplied it.
from the Daily Mail of 1934. Oh bugger, I just did.
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