Propaganda ‘own goals’ are always interesting. A couple of self-described anti-fascists from United Against Fascism produced a happy, confident video in which they laughed at the beating administered to a female English Defence League supporter by members of the UAF. The left-wing site Harry’s Place described it as horrifying. In the Telegraph, Brendan O’Neill called it “A glimpse into the class hatred at the heart of the anti-EDL clique”.
The woman concerned is a racist. She gloated on Facebook over the death of a Muslim woman whose burka became caught in a go-kart. But that’s not the point, as the author of the second post from Harry’s Place makes clear.
In the Independent, Laurie Penny writes Class snobbery about the EDL won’t halt the far right. Lady, that ain’t the half of it. The upper middle class laughter – oh, yes, in England laughter has a class – of Ben and Anthony as they call the victim a “the most tattooed horrible scrote of a woman” and their Rag Week chuckles as they say, “Never hit a woman – but they are not women” and “Never hit a woman – but DO kick a dog” will be like salt on raw skin to many working class men.
Anthony and Ben put this video on YouTube themselves, before the EDL got hold of it. They did not forsee how it would look to others. Like ‘No Pressure’ with real violence.
There is a further twist. The boiling surface of the internet has thrown up what are claimed to be the full names and personal details of Ben and Anthony. However one of the men named strongly denies that he is the person who made the video. One act of mob violence may give rise to another.
The woman may be a racist, but not because she gloated about the death of a Moslem woman. Islam is not a race. If libertarians adopt the crude and ill-conceived language of socialists and communists, they will never win.
I see now why Britain bans firearms. The EDL should have used self-defense upon the Socialist hate-filled mobs denying them their human rights.
Socialism has a habit of defining their political opponents as subhuman; actually, not a habit: mass murder of Jews, Kulaks, and Capitalist Roaders is the purpose of Socialism.
I see no class-snobbery in that video? I’m confused. He is calling a spade a spade. I don’t understand what class has to do with it. The EDL the video allures to are hardly typical of the working or lower classes.
“He is calling a spade a spade.”
Oh so you think the woman is a “dog” worthy of being kicked and punched in the street just because she holds views you disagree with?
If she had it coming, then so do you.
Poosh, it should horrify not amuse any decent person to see multiple assailants kick and beat someone on the ground who was no threat to them – irrespective of the politics, class or gender of the victim. I thought that was too obvious to need saying.
One unfortunate thing about this is that Samizdata is the only place I have read about this event. Okay, I don’t read too many newspapers.
But. This information should be more widely known.
That old saw about being able to fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, has the corollary that, unfortunately, to retain control, it is only necessary to control enough of the people enough of the time.
And they do.
Indeed. The enemies of our enemies are very often also our enemies.
True. And also irrelevant. Whilst you examine the semantics of describing the the elephant’s tusks, you render yourself unable to see the elephant the tusks are attached to.
I would put good money on the fact *she* hates moslems because she hates ‘pakis’ and in her mind there is simply no meaningful difference. Moslem, Jew, Hindu… these just mean the dehumanised Hated Other… and in that respect her collectivist axioms are not all that different to the vermin who laughed at her being beaten.
ErisGuy, I agree that Islam is not a race, but the facebook dialouges which can be seen by clicking the link text “racist” show that she is a racist generally.
There is nothing wrong with pointing that out, nor in pointing out that she is poorly educated, judging from the way she writes. That far I agree with ‘calling a spade a spade’. It is also overwhelmingly probable that she is a member of the underclass, though that I don’t know for sure.
If Ben and Anthony had confined themselves to mocking EDL women with tattoos in sexist and class-tinged terms it would have revealed the shallowness of the socialist, feminist principles that members of UAF are meant to hold, but this video wouldn’t have gone viral.
It is because they combined calling her a a “dog” and saying that she didn’t count as a woman with laughing at her assault that it is such propaganda gold to the EDL. Many EDL supporters already feel, with some reason, that assaults on their class* are ignored. Beyond that there is something primal about the insult felt by men of any group when they hear men of another group saying that their women are not women, and that the taboo against harming women does not count for them. I’m a middle class woman but I felt shock at it.
*Speaking in general terms. I am aware that not all EDL members are the same social class or hold the same views. Nor are all UAF members either.
The EDL and the UAF are like when the Westboro Baptist Church and the Klan locked horns at Arlington last spring:
Taking sides is wring in the case at hand. We SHOULD be praying for an earthquake.
I’m actually shocked at “internet violence” being directed at me by some of the comments here. At no point did I say she deserved anything or anything of the sort. I am very confused by this. I did not at any point condone this, and I’m not sure how this has been inferred by my words. The message of the post was that this is “class hate” – I asked where exactly the ‘class hate was’ ? Is calling someone a ‘dog’ a class reference?
The woman clearly is a ‘dog’, but I don’t think dogs let alone humans should be attacked or hurt. Nor do I think .. you know, I have no idea why I’m defending myself. So I’m just going to stop.
I am shocked at the responses here. The event was horrific, and that went without saying, but I am confused as to why “class” is being brought into this.
Class is a factor Poosh.
This was a group of university types violently attacking a women – partly because they hated her opinions (perhaps rightly so), but also because she was poor and uneducated.
Leftists always claim to love the working class – actually they normally hate and despise working people.
Before it is pointed out – I know that “Ben and Anthony” did not attack the women personally.
They just gloated and laughed about it – and said how they would have “kicked this dog”.
Poosh, you write, “At no point did I say she deserved anything or anything of the sort. ”
I’m glad of that. But when you wrote, “He is calling a spade a spade.”, it could very easily be read as agreeing with Ben and Anthony’s statements that EDL women are not women, or are “dogs”, and hence can be hit. If you intended it to refer to their description of her as “scrote of a woman”, well, even that is deliberately offensive and goes beyond just calling a spade a spade.