“Britain First” Group Initiates “Christian” Patrols in East London
I’ve heard of these guys before, some wingnuts on my Facebook feed occasionally posts a Britain First meme.
I’ve know for awhile that it’s a hate group, but some of my acquaintances occasionally like their WWII mockups or “English only” memes.
But now, Britain First has started putting internet hate into real action:
Controversial group stakes out “Christian areas” in London
By Clarissa Ward, CBS News
LONDON — On a Friday night in East London, activists with a group called “Britain First” took to the streets for what they call a Christian patrol. Our cameras went along with them as they entered a “predominantly Muslim occupied area,” according to one of the group’s members.
It wasn’t long before there was a confrontation.
“What are you filming me for?” shouted a passerby.
“This ain’t your area pal, it’s a Christian area, always has been,” shouted back Paul Golding, the 32-year-old leader of Britain First.
A former truck driver, Golding has been convicted for harassment. While it’s difficult to know how many supporters he has, the group’s Facebook page has more than half a million likes.
“We’ve got to stop putting our heads in the sand and allowing this Islamic extremist cancer to grow in our country,” Golding told me. “We’ve got to confront it head on and that’s what we seek to do.”
“Do you believe that a confrontation is inevitable?” I asked.
“When they’re 40 percent or 50 percent of the population and they’ve got a huge block in parliament, I imagine there will be a civil war in this country,” Golding answered.
Golding says the Christian patrols are a response to Muslim patrols, in which Islamic extremists have harassed people on the streets for behavior that they deem to be un-Islamic.
Ward also reported:
but the 60 Minutes piece was mainly about rallies led by - (you guessed it), radical leader and USA Today OpEd writer Anjem Choudary, who I doubt has half-a-million likes on Facebook. The second part of the interview is focused on one of Choudary’s followers, Abu Rumaysah, who is a jerk who leads so-called “Shariah patrols” in East London. He sounds no different to me than your run-of-the-mill fundie tea-partier or Britain Firster who wants to take public space back from the Others.
That’s what strikes me as so dangerous about these two parties… they sound exactly the same. I worry that 2015 will be a year of bad crazy.
