Because the region’s far right isn’t doing anything interesting right now, I thought it would be useful to highlight this recent post by Exposing the English Defence League. It features the words of former EDL member, Steve Littlejohn, about his disillusionment with the organisation and reveals some insights into the cynical strategies they’ve employed.
Littlejohn says that the EDL manipulate their followers into hatred:
EDL post stuff giving you a negative view about Muslims and if you around people who think the same it becomes normal and believable until you hate with a passion
“[I]t’s dangerous stuff” he says “The influence they have on people’s thinking is unbelievable and it takes just one really fucked up individual worse than me and you’ve got another Norway episode.”
He claims the leadership aimed this hateful ideology at “football hooligans and really aggressive people” because they knew they “were goin to face violent opposition” but “as it got publicity they didn’t want us kind and tried to get over this peaceful protest shite”.
Littlejohn is critical of EDL leader, Tommy Robinson, who he said was manipulating the group’s propaganda to be “all about boosting Tommy up to be a messiah”. This was important in attracting a certain kind of follower:
[T]here’s so many people in it that need leading and their the people that would fire bomb a mosque to feel like their hardcore
The cost of this blind devotion to hatred to ordinary members is serious:
You,l b surprised how many fellas lost their mrs to EDL it’s powerful stuff you see them as a little street group but it’s dangerous stuff
Indeed, Steve himself left “because it was a case of leave or lose my family plus towards the end I’d lost faith in it all and started to see the bigger picture.”
We hope that Steve and many other followers get out of the fucked up little cult that is the English Defence League and can rehabilitate themselves.