There is much rejoicing at Hope not Hate this evening over the publication of their latest tract which focuses on Islamic extremism in the UK. Well, when they say Islamic extremism, what they really mean is a very small part of it in the form of Anjem Choudhary and his al-Muhajiroun organisation which - despite being on their list of targeted extremists - they have persisted in not mentioning.
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Lowles - wants praise for 'fighting Islamic
extremism' in rehashed report |
Their 60 page pamphlet - Gateway to Terror - is co-authored by Jo Mulhall and Nick Lowles, and is available for £7 including postage. Readers expecting to find out something they didn't already know look set to be sadly disappointed, as their own article advertising it simply rehashes information which has long been in the public domain, even if Hope not Hate didn't notice because they were more interested in attacking UKIP.
There are many examples of this, not least their turning of a Nelsonian blind eye to Islamic Emergency Defence,
as we discussed back in late June. Hope not Hate were too busy trying to stop Pam Gellar and Robert Spencer from visiting the UK to discuss how Choudhary was deliberately and obviously circumventing government controls.
Lowles himself gets rather carried away in his attempts to sell rehashed media reports as a ground-breaking study. For example, he says:
"
Fundamentally, they seek to impose a system that is intolerant of difference, does not accept anyone or anything that fails to conform and that is totally opposed to democracy and free will."
While apparently forgetting his own 'Purple Rain' campaign directed against UKIP which seeks to achieve exactly the same thing. Still, Lowles goes on to say:
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Lord Pearson - berated as 'racist' for
fighting Islamic extremism |
"
This report will herald a more concerted campaign against extremism by HOPE not hate. Just as we will speak out against Islamophobia and racism wherever it emerges, so too we will begin to campaign against those extremists who justify their actions in the name of Islam."
We certainly hope so, but we won't hold our breath, as Hope not Hate has been saying the same thing for the past 3 years, but with precious little evidence to support it. When former UKIP Leader Lord Pearson said last week that "
UK Muslim communities are home to "thousands of potential home-grown terrorists" - rather what Lowles and Mulhall claim in their pamphlet - he was attacked by Hope not Hate with the implicit criticism that he was a racist.
The truth is that once again, Hope not Hate have failed in what is supposed to be their core mission. While the current pamphlet will undoubtedly help swell the coffers of Hope not Hate Ltd, the full version of it contains nothing which was not readily found on the internet already. While the plots and links between key figures they describe are instructive, all they have really achieved is to draw together other people's work and put their own names on it. It may be that they don't realise this themselves, focussed as they are on trying to keep down UKIP's vote, so we'd hesitate to call it straight plagiarism, but as a piece of original research it is tepid at best. Lowles has clearly learnt well from Labour - this booklet seems to follow the pattern of the last Labour government's 'dodgy dossier', simply culling the most sensational stories from the internet and stitching them together to sound authoritative, while actually barely touching the minds of the authors. If you think this signals a return to fighting genuine extremism by Hope not Hate, be prepared to think again: by this time next week, they'll be back to bashing UKIP.
Is it worth buying? No, of course not: our copy was a preview version. Does it have any value? Again, no, it's just a rehash. The only thing noteworthy about it is the convolutions the authors go to in trying to say exactly what UKIP has been saying for years, without using the same words. Now that, as they say, is priceless.
