Several days ago I posted a photo from Internet vigilante Charlie Flowers' Facebook page that i contended showed he had an English Defence League connnection. Richard Bartholomew looked at the same photo and thought I had made an 'imaginative leap.'
Flowers' or one of his 'Cheerleader' associates has resolved the issue themselves by posting new photos to Facebook of Flowers meeting with EDL youth division leader Joel Titus, an activist with a history of violence who was recently arrested for assaulting a photojournalist, and Matthew Kaplan, who Bartholomew reports is the paid EDL publications coordinator responsible for leaflets and press releases.
In comments to Bartholomew's earlier post, Flowers' or one of his supporters seems to have been most animated by the accusation that Flowers may be affiliated with or have affinity for racists or white supremacists. This latest photo seems a calculated response meant to subvert that conclusion. An anti-Fascist publication describes the mixed-race Titus as the figure the EDL "parades to the media as proof of their non-racist agenda." Kaplan is a Jewish American student from Seattle, which supposedly rebuts the EDL's reputation for Nazi affinities. Kaplan has appeared at several EDL demonstrations waving the Israeli flag. However the presence of minorities and Jews is hardly a defense. Racism and religious persecution are as much about who you exclude as who you let in.
Flowers and his Internet vigilante friends the 'Cheerleaders' claim to be opposed to Islamic extremism, but they are actually against Islam and target Muslims indiscriminately, just as their fellow travelers in the EDL do, and there is no better evidence of that than the intimidation tactics they engaged in the at Talk Islam blog, publishing several front page contributors' home addresses and sending mail to one blogger's home. They have also repeated threatened me (I also contribute at Talk Islam).
None of those targeted - Hussein Rashid, Aziz Poonawalla or myself - could be described as anything other than moderate or progressive Muslims who have wrtten against extremism and religious violence.
Richard Bartholomew reviews my post on Charlie Flowers EDL connection and concludes that I've made an "unsustainable imaginative leap."
However, I believe Bartholomew has gone too far in the other direction of being too restrained in appraising the photo I posted from Flowers' Facebook page showing him and several activists from different groups gathered around a St. George's Cross flag. Bartholomew writes:
The obvious problem here is that just because the EDL uses the St George's Flag, it hardly follows that anyone who makes use of a St George's Flag must be an EDL sympathizer.
Who else in the UK is marching in public with the flag except members of the EDL and their supporters?
But Bartholomew's objection raises a new possibility: It may be that there is now developing a loosely connected alliance of small political groups for whom the flag is a signifier, all of whom declare themselves to be in opposition to Muslim extremism and Shariah law.
For Muslims and Asians though, this is the flag of the mobs that have been engaged in a number of acts of violence and intimidation against their communities, and it would be hard for anyone in the UK who pays attention to this issue not to know that. The people who fly this flag must know that they are tapping into that history of intimidation when they display it in public.
I doubt you will find a UK organization that is sincerely trying to confront extremism among Muslims without impugning the larger Muslim community that is flying the St. George's Cross at their demonstrations.
So are Flowers and the 'Cheerleaders' supporters or members of the EDL, or just in solidarity with its history of intimidation against Muslims? I don't know, but it may be a distinction without a difference.
Flowers' group ('the Cheerleaders') vows to engage in vigilante intimidation campaigns against online Islamists, but of the actions we know of, he and the group have mostly harassed moderate and progressive Muslims (against me here at this site as well as several bloggers at Talk Islam), and UK leftists like Tim Ireland who has written against the BNP, an even more extreme right-wing, racist group than the EDL. Ireland was also the subject of a 'Cheerleaders' death threat, when Flowers or someone affiliated with the group threatened a "machete to your throat."
Flowers is the balding, middle-aged man at far left in the back. The date the photo was taken is unknown, but it was posted to Facebook on Dec. 2. The others in the photo are Darren Marsh, 'Shooter Kirpachi' and Bill Baker. Marsh, on his Facebook page, is a 'fan' of a number of British nationalist affinity sites such as "English and proud," "English Democrats - Putting England first!" and "England," the latter two being fan pages of the English Democrat Party. The London mayoral candidate for the EDP withdrew in 2008 after he found that the party had entered into an alliance with the "avowedly racist" (Wikipedia) England First Party not to stand against one another. The candidate, Matt O'Connor, described EDP members this way:
"They present themselves as respectable 'Middle England' with leading members being solicitors and housewives.
"But the reality is something far different.
"Social events run by the party brought out the real feelings of key members and it was very uncomfortable for me and the people I had innocently invited along, many of whom advised me to leave after what they had seen and heard."
The flag in the picture is the St. George's Cross, which EDL supporters fly at their rallies. The EDL is a right-wing political group with nativist/white supremacist leanings that appeared in England last year. See this Loonwatch article, "EDL hallmarks: Mosque vandilization, racism and intimidation."
Richard Bartholomew continues to cover the latest threats and harassment activities of 'The Cheerleaders' with this new article about the group.
