In what Hope not Hate will undoubtedly see as a victory, news reaches us this afternoon that Home Secretary Theresa May has banned US anti-Islamic campaigners Pam Geller and Robert Spencer from entering the UK - read more
>here< - on the grounds that their presence is not conducive to the public good.
On the whole this is consistent with government policy, and the list of people banned on the same grounds includes significant numbers of what might be broadly termed 'Islamic hate preachers'. We disagree with the notion of banning people because they express views which are not widely shared, but that is not really the point of this article.
More interesting is the response to Hope not Hate's triumphalism on their Facebook page. While Lowles and Co celebrate the halting of free speech by foreigners - it's not as if there aren't already a multitude of people in the UK who express the same views - the views of those commenting are far from wholly supportive. Several comments regarding censorship have been removed from the comment string, but as Hope not Hate feel that too much democracy is not a good thing, this is not surprising.
For all the 'hurrah's on their post, they still resolutely refuse to address one burning issue: how can they justify running a campaign against the two Americans, while failing to address the issue of Mohammed al-Arefe or Yasser al-Habib mentioned earlier today? Their views are just as reprehensible in a democracy, so where is the petition campaign? Or would that be just too much democracy?
I note that when introducing a petition to bane Robert Spencer and Pam Geller from entering the U.K., Lowles quickly claimed that he had procured the twenty thousand signatures that he desired and spread that information widely all over the Internet......And yet as Robert Spencer points out in This Here Video nobody knows if Lowles claims are true...
ReplyDeleteNow obviously Nick Lowles has never been know to lie.........Cough, cough, splutter....
I doubt whether the government cared one way or the other, to be honest. Although as it was submitted to the Home Office, I assume it would be possible to get a copy via an FoI request?
Delete"Truth", "Openness" or "honesty" doesn't exactly play high in a situation like this, so requesting access to Lowles petition is essentially a no go area.
ReplyDeleteYou've essentially got more chance of being hit by a snow storm in the Sahara, as you'll simply be fobbed off with the "we need to protect the names and addresses of anti Fascist activists".
It doesn't matter if you manipulate and indoctrinate like Lowles and his grouping frequently do, so long as you don't publish what can be cited as "hate speech", you tick all the boxes and obtain a free ride.
The major factor in this particular case, is that it was the EDL that invited Spencer and Geller to walk with them on British streets. Rightly or wrongly, the EDL are seen as pariahs by the British establishment, and so it's pretty damned easy for Lowles to inject his poison using the tried and tested methods of "Anti Fascist outrage"...
At this particular juncture, it's the views of Lowles and his Labour party cronies that still carry weight in the higher echelons of power....Will that ever change?....Not with the usual suspects continually at the helm.