Hypocrisy over Anjem Choudary
This is a cross post by Edmund Standing
Compare and contrast:
Anjem Choudary and the British media: Recruiting for the BNP – Harry’s Place, March 16, 2009
The BNP’s Recruiting Sergeant? – Sky News Blog, January 4, 2010
Of course, what Sky News’s Glen Oglaza fails to mention in his post is the instrumental role the media have played in the rise to prominence of Choudary and his cult. Thanks to the constant media platform Choudary has received for a number of years now, we see him organising yet more outrages, knowing full well that the British media will be there to report everything in salacious detail. The media have been every bit the recruiting sergeants for the BNP that Choudary is.
The Telegraph is reporting that Choudary admits that the planned Wootton Bassett march is a ‘publicity stunt’. Well, of course it is. And of course The Telegraph has long been one of his main proxy media outlets.
On the topic of giving a platform to people like Choudary, Dizzy Thinks offers another ‘compare and contrast’: Compare and contrast the reaction of the ‘no platform’ anti-fascists to the appearance of Nick Griffin on Question Time with their (once again) muted reaction to the planned activities of a brown skinned fascist and the thuggish crew of Islamist fascists he leads…
Comments
| 4 January 2010, 9:23 pm |
Speaking of compare and contrast about Anjem Choudary’s media treatment, check out David Oslers blog which contains an ill judged piece on that matter.
http://www.davidosler.com/2010/01/islam4uk_even_bigots_get_free.html#comments
| 4 January 2010, 9:48 pm |
Why ‘ill judged’, Hugh?
I hope I make it absolutely plain that I despite Choudary’s politics. But on balance, I think the left should defend his right to march.
Interestingly, my post has also been picked up by ConservativeHome’s new ‘Left Watch’ project. It has backfired on them; some rightwing civil libertarians agree with me.
| 4 January 2010, 9:48 pm |
If you want hypocrisy, just look at the UAF. Have they protested the “legitimisation” of Choudry through his being invited on a flagship BBC political programme?
Have the arranged a counter demo in Wootten Basset as they do against the EDL?
Does their website say anything about this?
No. On all counts. Odd really. It’s like some types of fascists are okay.
| 4 January 2010, 10:12 pm |
David T – I take your general point, but Choudary in numbers and following is a pinhead compared to Nick Griffin. What are his chances of getting to be MEP? All this counter-demonstrating is simply giving him what he wants – publicity. As Edmund says, the Daily Telegraph denounces him for seeking publicity while giving him publicity.
I’ve just heard this idiot’s antics and the PM’s reaction to it as the first item on the 10pm news on Radio 4. Please – a minute’s silence for dead soldiers, fifty years silence for Choudary.
| 4 January 2010, 10:17 pm |
UAF is run by Ken Livingstone. UAF exists for three reasons – firstly, to provide an organisation large enough to exert control over anti-Nazi activism in the UK and set the agenda for everyone else, especially undermining activism which opposes anti-Semitism or which could subvert the interests of the people who run the organisation. UAF has in the past even sunk to the level of trying to persuade the police to ban a legitimate anti-Nazi demonstration organised by Trade Unionists to oppose the BNP’s “Red, White and Blue” event, so that the Trade Unionists would be forced to protest under UAF banners, thereby giving UAF the impression of greater numbers. Secondly, it exists to prop up the establishment by presenting the narrow and simplistic view that supporting the establishment in the form of the three major parties, though primarily Labour, is the only way to oppose the rise of the far right. Thirdly, it exists as a moneymaking exercise for the people who run it, organising concerts and other events where they can get well-known musicians and speakers to attend for free and use the “anti-fascist” shtick to get gullible middle-class teenagers to shell out twenty quid a ticket.
| 4 January 2010, 10:41 pm |
Choudary was given a lengthy opportunity to ramp up his stunt in through an interview on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning. It didn’t take long for it to be clear it was all just a stunt- Chowdary said as much. So why didn’t the Today team just report it as a stunt and demonstrate through evidence from quotations from other sources that Chowdary was just astutely trying to use the media to give him publicity he’d otherwise stand no chance of getting? There was absolutely no need to have given him an interview slot.
The Telegraph may also be stupid enough to allow itself to be used to provide him with further publicity, but I don’t have to contribute towards the cost of producing the paper.
I do however have to pay a hefty no-choice tax to the BBC and I really object to any part of it helping to fund Chowdary’s publicity stunts.
| 4 January 2010, 10:43 pm |
I think the right to hold a protest should generally be upheld. But the right to determine the location and time should be subject to restrictions. There are lots of public places, which are too sensitive for protests to be allowed, for example cemetaries. And smaller towns and neighbourhoods really don’t have the financial resources to police large or controversial demos. You should be allowed to have anti-war demos, but not on Remembrance Sunday at the Cenotaph. You should be able to organise a march to excoriate your MP, but not at his wedding.
| 4 January 2010, 10:49 pm |
>> UAF has in the past even sunk to the level of trying to persuade the police to ban a legitimate anti-Nazi demonstration organised by Trade Unionists to oppose the BNP’s “Red, White and Blue” event, so that the Trade Unionists would be forced to protest under UAF banners, thereby giving UAF the impression of greater numbers.
Bloody hell. D’you have a source?
| 5 January 2010, 12:06 am |
Judy, I absolutely agree with you.
Why should the licence fee payer have to fund the assistance of the self promoting activities of people like Anjem Choudary, and then have to listen to the faux hand-wringing about how his activities might drive people into the arms of that other disgusting organisation known as the BNP.
The BBC has totally lost any connection it used to have with the concept of public service broadcasting.
| 5 January 2010, 2:05 am |
Islam4uk is just the tip of a massive iceberg. By which I mean there are a huge amount of young Muslims in Britain that think that killing in the name of religion is justified, that a caliphate is good news and that this, their home country, is at war with their religion. Their demonstration, if it had gone ahead, would have caused the first major battle of a second English civil war which now looks unavoidable in any case. How decisive Brown and Johnson are on this for once, how unequivocal! That’s because they too know it would become the first battle – and also be nicely illustrative the logical end of doctrinal multiculturalism, something both man have backed for years. A street battle between bearded fanatics and respectable middle-Englanders in a country town like WB would demonstrate vividly the mess that modern socialism and its siren suicide note of moral relativism and cultural Marxism has got silly old England into. No, you bet your arse they don’t want that.
| 5 January 2010, 11:27 am |
I can just picture Brown’s hand now hovering over the civil contingencies Button.
| 5 January 2010, 1:01 pm |
Considering the amount of time this blog spends publicising Lee John Barnes, don’t you think you are being a tad hypocritical?
| 5 January 2010, 2:24 pm |
Koppers -
Not at all.
(1) HP is not a mainstream mass media outlet.
(2) The BNP gained two MEPs last year and was voted for by almost a million British citizens.
Anjem Choudary has none of this influence or following. Constantly reporting on every idiotic pronouncement of Choudary’s stirs up bigotry against ordinary Muslims who have no interest in the Choudary cult and its fascism. Exposing a leading BNP member, however, serves the purpose of – hopefully – showing how twisted the BNP really is. Apparently many voters are unaware of this or unwilling to accept it. Nobody is unaware of what a twat Choudary is.
| 5 January 2010, 3:02 pm |
Choudary just needs a few normal Muslims, enough to outnumber his lot maybe fifty to one (not difficult) to follow him around at every “rally” he tries to stage, laughing derisively at him.
| 5 January 2010, 3:21 pm |
Let it out! Lance the boil. Cut out the cancer. What with ethnic profiling at airports the demeanour of Islamists like Choudray, MCB and MPAC UK is coming home to roost.
Its about time that Brits came together and said “No! This is NOT what we want!”
The shame is that its only the EDL and BNP prepared to confront it. There is no moderately voiced group prepraed to tell groups like Choudray’s where to stick it.
Being in the States at the moment I know what would happen if a group like Choudrays threatened to march and protest in Homestead. They would be wiped-out by gunfire. Of course, they wouldn’t get so far. This is a clear intent to breach the peace. As another poster says above, its the appropriateness of the event and venue that determines this.
| 5 January 2010, 7:15 pm |
“Nobody is unaware of what a twat Choudary is.”
That’s why he is so useful to the media in providing those headlines for non-stories!
| 5 January 2010, 7:15 pm |
“Nobody is unaware of what a twat Choudary is.”
That’s why he is so useful to the media in providing those headlines for non-stories!
| 5 January 2010, 7:47 pm |
My goodness! How British Maven makes me feel. Do you actually gun down unarmed protesters in the USA? I’ve heard of the Kent State shootings back in the 1970s but I thought the USA had rather given up that habit of late?
| 6 January 2010, 11:12 am |
Exposing a leading BNP member,
##
More like exposing yourself to a ‘leading BNP member’.
The more you mugs attack the BNP, yet offer uncritical support for Israel and its violence and extremism, the more you expose yourselves.
“Liberty, if it means anything, is the right to tell people what they don’t want to hear.”