Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer: The EDL’s American Apologists
Harry’s Place has an excellent post by Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens on the repellent English Defence League (the xenophobic British gang supported and promoted by both Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer): The EDL’s American Apologists.
It’s a good follow-up to my piece for the Guardian, getting deeper into the EDL’s history of associations with groups like the violent neo-Nazi movement “Blood and Honor.”
Meleagrou-Hitchens posts this horrific video showing the thugs of the EDL at their recent rally in Leicester, terrorizing and attacking a restaurant full of Asian families. It’s sickening.
These are Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer’s allies at work, and this is what Geller and Spencer are working to bring to America.
When faced with the ever-mounting evidence of far-right thuggery at their rallies, the EDL leadership and their apologists often try to wriggle out by claiming that the rally was ‘hijacked’ by extremists who don’t represent the movement. In an email to Newsweek’s Declassified blog (which ran a story about her support for the EDL), Geller defended the EDL in precisely these terms, writing: ‘The left and real neo-Nazis frequently attempt to infiltrate EDL rallies in order to discredit the EDL.’ This is just not good enough. If a Muslim group that claimed to be moderate had regular appearances by al-Muhajiroun (or, to take a US example, Revolution Muslim) at their rallies, something tells me that the EDL, Geller and company would not be so ready to excuse this.
Geller’s ally Robert Spencer also attempts to defend the EDL in a response to Johnson’s piece:
I don’t believe they’re [the EDL] neo-fascist white supremacists, as Johnson claims. There is no way that Pamela Geller or I would ever work with, endorse, or approve of any genuine neo-fascist or white supremacist individual or group in any way, shape or form.
Spencer has also defended the EDL as patriots who ‘stand for freedom’, and reproduces materials from their official website. If Spencer were to apply a tenth of the amount of online research he does on Muslims to the EDL, he would find that his claims about the group are simply wrong.
I have to differ with Alexander here; I think both Spencer and Geller know full well who their allies are, what they do, and what they stand for.
