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Anti-Islamic groups across Europe to attend far-Right rally

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Anti-Islamic groups across Europe to attend far-Right rally

Postby Les » Thu Jan 19, 2012 10:04 am

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... rally.html

Far-right anti-Islamic groups from across Europe are planning to rally in Denmark, for what organisers have billed as the birth of a European movement.

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/arc ... 13315a.jpg
Stephen Lennon, the former football hooligan who formed the EDL three years ago, described the gathering as the 'first proper European event' Photo: JULIAN SIMMONDS

By Richard Orange, Malmo

7:57PM GMT 18 Jan 2012

More than 10 anti-Islamic groups, led by the English Defence League, are expected to send representatives.

"There will be speeches from every defence league in Europe," said Isak Nygren, the spokesman for the Swedish Defence League. "I hope we can show that there's resistance against Islamisation of Europe, that we can inspire each other."

The EDL has held one European rally before, sending members to Amsterdam in 2010 in support of Dutch anti-Islamic politician Geert Wilders, who was in court accused of insulting religious and ethnic groups.

Mr Wilders, who has moved to distance himself from the EDL, is not expected to attend the event.

Stephen Lennon, the former football hooligan who formed the EDL three years ago, however said he was inspired by the Amsterdam gathering to link up with other far-Right groups in Europe, setting up the European Freedom Initiative.



He described the planned gathering, in Aarhus on March 31, as the "first proper European event".

"We're hoping this will be the launch of a wider European Defence League," he said. "We don't expect it to be big, but our first event wasn't that big, and they're just going to get bigger and bigger."

Mr Lennon, who was convicted of assault in November 2011 after headbutting another EDL member at a rally, said his members were prepared for violence.

"The likelihood is that the local Islamic community will come and attack us, aided and abetted by the far-Left," he said. "We come to protest peacefully, it's not our fault that when we come out, that they come to try and bash our heads in."

Imran Shah, the spokesman for the Islamic Society of Denmark, urged Muslims to stay away from the rally and called on the Danish government to act against the growing movement, especially in the wake of last year's massacre of 77 people by Norwegian far-Right extremist Anders Behring Breivik. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8993195/Norway-killer-Anders-Behring-Breivik-is-not-psychotic.html.

"We've seen what the rhetoric of hate can do in Norway. Do we want some deaths here before we react?", he said.

Breivik was an early European supporter of the EDL http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8661139/Norway-killer-Anders-Behring-Breivik-had-extensive-links-to-English-Defence-League.html, attending a rally in Bradford in 2010, and claiming hundreds of EDL members as his Facebook friends.

Matthew Goodwin, an expert on the far-Right at Nottingham University, said that the EDL's move into Europe is worrying.

"It shows us something that I don't think British commentators have grasped, which is that elsewhere in Europe, the EDL is seen as being quite a significant movement," he said. "When you look at guys like Anders Breivik and the Danish Defence League, we can see how groups in Europe are looking at Britain and the EDL as a model."

Weyman Bennet, a spokesman for Unite Against Fascism, said: "Everywhere they've called a demonstration there's been violence. Across Europe, the Sweden Democrats and the Danish People's Party, all of them are growing by using this rhetoric. We see them as a group of people who will try and encourage fascist politics they've simply swapped anti-semitism for anti-Islam."

Denmark is a natural choice for the EDL to launch its first European march.

The Danish People's Party is one of the most electorally successful anti-immigrant parties in Europe, winning 12.3 per cent in elections last September. The Danish Defence League has grown rapidly since its founding a year ago, with chapters already set up in more than 10 Danish cities.

: Anders Behring Breivik was a "male chauvinist" who did not know how to treat women, his last known girlfriend has said.

Breivik met the woman, who the paper refers to as Natascha, on a dating site in 2005, and then travelled to see her in her home town of Minsk, Belarus, before bringing her to stay with him in Oslo.

The woman said discovering that her former boyfriend had killed so many people had been "simply terrible".
Les
 
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