HnH's own supporters agree with Bloom and oppose burning of books

Evidence of the widening gap between Hope not Hate and their own supporters continues to emerge in the comments following HnH's latest articles.

On Friday, Nick Lowles blog featured an article on former UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom's new book, "A guinea a minute" which was ripped off without attribution from the Huffington Post UK. Entitled 'Godfrey Bloom's best quotes from 'A guinea a minute', HuffPo contributor Asa Bennett had managed to whittle the book down to reveal the very best.

Designed as a piece to elicit mockery of Bloom whose trenchant views are already widely known, the responses from Hope not Hate supporters were revealing when it was posted on their Facebook page. Just 5 people 'liked' the article, while 6 commented upon it. Of the 6 comments, 4 were supportive, including a comment by one of the 'likers'. They said:

 

 

There was yet more disappointment for Lowles and his motley crew as the comments thread also developed on the story we covered a couple of days ago on his enthusiasm for overcoming political opponents by simply burning their books in best National Socialist style. While some agreed with HnH's desire for the censorship of opposing political views no matter how absurd or easily disproved, the vast majority of comments showed that HnH's support is hardly foursquare behind them, while many noted the closeness between Lowles position and that of Goebbels, as we noted in our article: that banning books is just one step away from burning them.

 

 

 

It is worth noting that these are not messages from people who appear to be supporters of the far-right or of holocaust denial. Rather these are people who seem to be waking up to the agenda behind Hope not Hate's words and actions. Increasingly comments are appearing beneath their articles which should give any organisation a reason to pause for thought, although that is unlikely to happen with Hope not Hate. A more likely cause of action will be the disabling of the comments threads, or an even heavier handed censorship of what is posted. They already remove anything which appears to be written by persons whom they consider 'far-right'. It is one thing to remove the comments of political opponents, but could Lowles and Hope not Hate be forced to start removing the comments of their own supporters to hide the growing uneasiness within the ranks? It can not be long coming. After all, no dictatorship can survive for long once it permits internal dissent.

When Goebbels' words fit Hope not Hate's actions, you know they've abandoned argument for suppression

Hope not Hate are publicising an article by 'The Kernel' online magazine concerning their investigation into books sold by Amazon (and others) entitled "New Amazon Shame: Holocaust Denial".

Much could be written about The Kernel and its publisher Milo Yiannopoulos (formerly known as Milo Wagner), although beyond the unpaid bills, legal actions, poor humour and public misogynistic comments the basic facts of the article appear correct, even if the title gives the impression that it is

Milo Wagner - like HnH, supports the
freedom so say what he agrees with only.

just Amazon, and just holocaust denial.

In fact, it transpires the Amazon and Barnes & Noble amongst others sell books which cover such topics as holocaust denial but extend further into the realms of anti-Semitism. Written in an appropriate tone of outraged self-righteousness, the article draws as its penultimate conclusion,

"Anti-semitism is also being more widely observed in mainstream commentators and Left-wing public intellectuals. Against this backdrop, it is appallingly lax of Amazon to stock material that gives succour to extremists, agitators and fantasists and which promotes anti-semitic pseudo-history."

We assume by the presence of the article on Hope not Hate's website and FB page that these are sentiments with which they agree: that they wish to shut down rather than defeat by debate any opposing views is hardly fresh news. What it represents is further proof of how HnH are simply abandoning the main purpose of their existence: the education of people about racism and how it is wrong. When they say on their website that "We try to build relationships, give confidence to those who dislike racism and empower communities to provide a more positive alternative to the politics of despair. We both challenge the myths and lies put out by the BNP and their ilk and also positively mobilise those people who are opposed to racism.", they neglect to mention that they hope to achieve this not by education or argument, but by banning anything which opposes their view, and damn the consequences for free speech.

This has of course been tried once before, when it was said,

" It is to this end that we want to educate you. As a young person, to already have the courage to face the pitiless glare..... this is the task of this young generation. And thus you do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past."

Which I think it is fair to say sums up their view pretty well. That is hardly surprising, as it comes from a speech by Josef Goebbels to students in Berlin ahead of the Nazi book burnings of May 1933.

One of the delicious ironies of free speech is that if you believe in it, you find yourself arguing in favour of the rights of some pretty unpleasant causes to have their views heard. However, we do so confident that they can be defeated not by banning them and making their proponents martyrs, but by logical argument and the simple truths of reality.

There is an absurdity here which appears to be in Hope not Hate's blind-spot. In this instance, we are talking about a handful of books out of the 600,000+ titles carried by Amazon. In addition to the thousands of books available from the same source which disprove the content of this handful, we also have contemporaneous newsreel footage, millions of pages of testimony from hundreds of war crimes trials, and the recorded memories of tens of thousands of survivors, witnesses and participants. It is not difficult to prove the factual errors in the work of holocaust deniers, so why should we seek to ban their books in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence?

There is of course a supreme irony in this which the hypocrites at Hope not Hate can not see - at the same time they applaud the Kernel for advocating Goebbels like censorship, they are also running a campaign complaining that the government's new lobbying legislation would gag them on the front of their website.

Hope not Hate - seeking the exclusive right to decide who is gagged in British politics

The government is trying to find a way to regulate lobbyists, and its current attempt is the Transparency of Lobbying, non-Party campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill. I think we can all agree that its provisions do not match the aims of what the government was trying to achieve.

Hope not Hate are also campaigning against the Bill. They have produced the following graphic to aid their campaign

As Hope not Hate say on their website,

"Under these new proposals every organisation which seeks to influence public opinion, in the 12 months before the General Election – either directly or as a consequence of its actions – will now be covered. This will include charities, think tanks, trade associations and even blogs and websites.
The amount an organisation can spend is being drastically cut yet the scope of costs which have to be accounted for – such as staff time – has dramatically widened. Indeed, the restrictions on third parties are now far more extensive than those on political parties."

In some respects, Hope not Hate have missed the point - third parties should be subject to tighter scrutiny than political parties for a very simple reason. Parties are accountable to the voters through the ballot box. Third Parties like Hope not Hate are accountable only to their funders; in Hope not Hate's case these are the large trades unions and the Labour Party.

The irony of the situation is almost wonderful to behold. For many years, Hope not Hate has gone out of its way to gag those it deems to be 'far-right'. As if that wasn't bad enough for the political process, we are now seeing their aim turned not on the far-right, but on UKIP - simply because their funders are frightened of them, and have no clue how to stop the party's rise. Intimidation of candidates, fraudulent claims about public statements backed up by photoshopped internet comments, fake social media profiles: a whole panoply of tricks which would shame a Murdoch newspaper and which do nothing but drag the whole political process into the gutter.

Hope not Hate are right. This legislation is bad for freedom of speech and democracy, and should not enter the statute book. What they can't seem to grasp is that it is the actions of groups such as theirs which has made people think it is necessary, and even as they campaign - and raise funds to keep their now pointless organisation afloat - they are still attempting to gag their political opponents. To quote a Central American revolutionary, Jose Marti,

"Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy"

Sadly, Hope not Hate would rather its supporters merely chanted 'Four legs good, two legs better' at every opportunity. The freedom of speech they argue for is the freedom to censor what their opponents think.

"You're not singing any more" - Hope not Hate silent on new Daily Mirror poll - UKIP only 1.2% behind Tories

After a number of articles on the Hope not Hate website pointing at a dip in UKIPs polling results in an ICM survey in June, they've been very silent on the latest results of a poll commissioned by their own funders, the Daily Mirror. That said, the Daily Mirror have been very quite on the results too: this is from their NHS Anniversary Poll which is all over their paper today, apart from the voting intentions bit, which their online coverage fails to mention!

As Hope not Hate are 'putting UKIP under a magnifying glass' with their 'Purple Rain' campaign, their failure to mention this result is nothing more than censorship, plain and simple. So much for their claims to stand for free speech and democracy - their approach is more fascist than the NF's!!

In a Survation poll released yesterday the results were as follows:

• Labour - 36%
• Conservative - 22.8%
• UKIP - 21.6%
• Lib Dem - 9.6%
• Green 4.3%
• SNP 3%
• BNP 1.1%
• PC - 0.4%
• Respect - 0.2%
• TUSC - 0.1%

This may explain the apparent panic at Hope not Hate, and the increasingly threatening behaviour of UNISON and their union allies as they attempt to shut down debate.

These figures were taken from Survation's data tables and can be found on Table 11, described as
 

"Q8 Voting Intention Tables - Special Table (After Replacing the Undecided/Refused Responses with 2010 Voters responses)

Q8.1. If there was a General Election taking place tomorrow, and there was a candidate from all political parties standing in your constituency, which party do you think you would vote for?

Base : All Respondents Would Vote and Excluding Undecided/Refused"
 These were not the most favourable figures - Table 10, which excludes undecided/refused and does not redistribute their votes, shows UKIP 0.4% ahead of the Tories!!

A 'cut out and keep' guide to Danes and Somalis for Hope not Hate

Readers of Hope not Hate's Facebook page who were busy attacking the far right after a suspect package was left at the Al Rahma mosque in Liverpool may be wondering why their comments - and the story - disappeared overnight.


A visit to Hope not Hate's main website provides the answer - for now. Despite Hope not Hate crossing their fingers and wishing that the perpetrator was a far right activist of some sort, police initially stated that the man arrested was actually Danish. This was then corrected yesterday when it was revealed that the man who had been arrested and released with a caution was in fact Somali.

Hope not Hate will no doubt consider it a job well done in any case. While the initial posting appeared on Facebook and allowed their followers to speculate as to who was responsible, the correcting article appears only on their website, and even then with no accompanying explanation. Still, this is what happens when truth and harmonious inter-community relations come a distant second in a race to justify your own existence.

In order to help prevent Hope not Hate from making a similar mistake in the future, we have attached a handy 'cut out and keep' guide to aid them in distinguishing between Danes and Somalis in future.

It would be foolish to believe that the next time a visitor to a mosque forgets to take their laundry with them that Hope not Hate will not use the opportunity to do their best to stir up fear and hatred. Tomorrow, we will include the dictionary definition of 'hope', as they appear to have forgotten what it means.

Democratic engagement vs Encouraging censorship: what a meeting with no empty chairs looks like, Nick!

Hope not Hate continue to post articles poking fun at the low attendance at assorted rallies and meetings which they deem to be 'far right'. Some of them even are. Low attendances are not a problem for UKIP though, so instead they send along their UAF bully boys, even though officially both HnH and UAF have declared UKIP to be non-racist and non-fascist.



Several rows of empty chairs turned up to hear Nick Lowles
speak in Basildon. They were devastated when he ran away
rather than face democratic argument.

Meanwhile, Hope not Hate's own meetings continue to go from strength to strength. After kicking off with attendances of 5 (Warrington), 20 in Shrewsbury and 70 in Leicester (from a population of almost half a million), the meeting in Basildon was cancelled after the organisers ran away. This was followed by attendances of 9 in Harrow, and then the meeting in Woolwich - the events there being what they are trying to cash in on - was cancelled, apparently through lack of interest. We now hear from another source - although it is unconfirmed - that other Hope not Hate meetings in Ipswich and Hackney drew record attendances of 7 and 3 respectively. No news has reached us yet regarding their meeting in Wimbledon earlier this week, but we can be sure that had there been a decent turnout, it would have been all over their website by now.

Now, we understand how depressing it must be for poor old Nick Lowles to spend hours addressing row upon row of empty chairs. One of the problems is that at a public meeting, people will disagree with the speaker: Nick has attempted to overcome this by holding secret public meetings, with the venues publicised only at the very last minute. And who said there was nothing he could learn from the BNP?

Here at Nope, not Hope, we are concerned that Nick might forget what a roomful of people looks like and so as a public service, we have attached below the video of UKIP MEP Paul Nuttall addressing the Stourbridge branch of UKIP a couple of nights ago. Not only did people buy their own meals, but at the end of the evening, the collection raised more than the scrapings of peoples Giros and some shirt buttons. This is what happens when like UKIP you engage in the democratic process and rely on the power of your ideas rather than encouraging the censorship of the state, Nick.