Taboo: Racism in GB

To start the "Taboos and other subjects to piss people off" series here is an unplanned article about racism in GB.  The reason for its creation are the events of the past few weeks in GB whereby racism has become a hot topic, and a topic misunderstood or misused by many in GB.

First, a word about truth.

I once heard an Episcopal Priest say that the truth is "in the middle".  That the context was his words about conflicts between Republicans and Democrats in the US it was quite a strange claim.  By any case, there is a marked reluctance by some liberally minded people to not believe in any truth, wishing to avoid being like the likes of Nick Griffin or Jarosław Kaczyński.  While it is the case that some things are heavily nuanced and that we don't know everything, some things are clear.  It is truth that the Holocaust happened, for example.  There is truth, and there are LIES.  Satan was called the "father of lies".  Lies are there to be pointed out, to be named for what they are.  It is liberating to do so.  When I watched the parliament debate about the Hillsborough disaster I was struck with the immense sensation of rightness: This is TRUTH.  One of the whole points about things like museums and memorials for victims of crimes is the public acknowledgement of what truth was.  The truth and the acknowledgement of it can set us free.

Diane Abbott

Bearing all that in mind, let's look at what has been happening with how people have been treating Labour MP Diane Abbott, and Liverpool striker Luis Suarez.

Polish people have often told me that they see GB to be a "tolerant" place.  The ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that "tolerance" is a key feature of Britishness.  Certainly we have come a long way from the 1980's, where Jim Davidson was doing racist jokes on prime-time television, a BBC sport programme also was prone to racism.  Racism was not the taboo that it largely is now (some taboos are good.)

 

Liverpool player John Barnes at a match against Everton backheels a banana thrown by an Everton fan in 1987 From The Telegraph. 

Certainly, the most relevant issue at the moment in GB regarding racism is the trial of the murderers of Stephen Lawrence.  Two of those who took part of the killing have been found guilty.  That this was a racially motivated murder is one thing.  That the way in which the police dealt with the murder to begin with was later heavily criticised; indeed the police were labelled as "institutionally racist".  One would think, then, that now would be a time to reflect on the racism in British culture that made the murder possible.  

Well, no.  The two cases which have got people most caught up in the theme of racism are that of Labour MP Diane Abbott and Liverpool striker Luis Suarez.  To summarise, Diane Abbot spoke on twitter about "white people love playing divide and rule".  This led to a massive outcry about her being "racist".  Richard Seymour deals with this claim well:

"Following the verdict against the two Lawrence suspects, and the way in which this drew attention to the facts of institutional - no, structural - racism in British society, it was a dead cert that the media would search for a way to restore white victimhood."

What we are seeing here is clearly the view of enemy figure of people with coloured skin who are ready to use the "race card", who are out for financial gain and who are in fact racist themselves (this is very much like one subset of anti-semitism). 

Laurie Perry puts it well 

"Defenders of privilege and hierarchy will do anything at all to distract attention from power, and to re-phrase attacks on power as attacks on the powerless."

Or as Sanum Ghafoor put it, "Tackle racism?  No, just #blamedianeabbot.  A convenient scapegoat figure to take the attention away.  That is also a feature of the Luis Suarez case.

Man Utd defender Evra claimed that Suarez had said a "racist word" "ten times".  What actually happened is complicated involving the need to have lingual competence (the conversation between Suarez and Evra took place in Spanish) whereby a word used as a friendly way of greeting a black person in Uruguay was used by Suarez and, seemingly, misunderstood by Evra, who further claimed that other racist things were said by Suarez.  Despite the lack of proof for Evra's claims, they believed his word and Suarez received an eight-match ban and now faces hatred by all manner of football fans, including many who are working in anti-racism initiatives.  (This site deals well with the issue.  The Independent have also began to question the testimony of Evra.)

To tell the truth, what I am hearing is a matter of accepting either Suarez's words or Evra's.  Why then did the FA take the side of the Man Utd player Evra?  There's more to this case than meets the eye:

Other forms of prejudice in GB

There exists in GB from high to low a prejudice against people from Liverpool.  This has led to tragic consequences.   Bear in mind that Man Utd and Everton are two teams who have had players accused of racism, and that Spurs fans and Man Utd fans have been recently singing racist songs (and not just by a few fans either, rather, hundreds.)  In fact this document detailing racist offenses shows that Man Utd fans are in the top spot for racist chanting and abuse, more than double Sunderland fans in second place.  Also to bear in mind is that fact that thousands of Man Utd fans (even in a youth game) and hundreds of Everton fans have been singing chants which make fun of the Hillsborough disaster.  Outside of football prejudice against people from Liverpool is fairly mainstream.  (Of course, by raising this I fulfill the Catch-22 situation of "playing the victim".)

Is this why a Liverpool player has received a far more hostile treatment than other players accused of racism?  There's much more to it.  Look at the three links you just saw, and note that two of those accused were British, and the other one is Danish (i.e. white).  A clue lies in the allegation that Evra used a word which denotes a prejudice against people from South America.  No furore resulted when that emerged.  Prejudice against people from South America has not an issue that is seen to be relevant in GB.  Add to that the FA wanting to act tough to FIFA and a media campaign with both malicious people and also well-meaning but misguided anti-racist people, as well as the fact that the FA have a heavily criticised disciplinary commission that has a 99.5% conviction rate, together with the mass mania effect and we arrive at the guilty verdict arriving at Suarez's door.  Now we have people falling over themselves to heavily criticise the Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish for backing Suarez, including those involved against racism.


EDIT: Note also that the BBC (and countless viewers) tolerate the xenophobia directed against Mexicans by Top Gear presenters (see this excellent article dealing with that and the contrast with how Suarez was treated.)

Suarez could have said something racist.  Evra could be telling the truth.  We will never know.  That hasn't stopped most people from jumping to a foul conclusion that will stick with Suarez.  Meanwhile away from the public gaze xenophobia against Polish and French migrants exists, Muslims are attacked inside their mosque, all manner of claims are levelled against a woman with coloured skin forced to give birth in a waiting room, a pogrom against Romanian Romany happened within the UK and fascist paramilitaries increase their network, or where black people are seven times more likely to be stopped by the (still institutionally racist) police.  But no, the media are concentrating themselves on "racism" by focussing on two people with coloured skin.  There's truth.  The taboo is that racism is a strong feature of the attacks on Abbott, and xenophobia and prejudice against Liverpool is a feature of the attacks on Suarez.

Incidentally, this leads me to the view that prejudice against the left-wing isn't just about the usual anti-left or anti-communist prejudice, it's also sometimes about what they stand for: Internationalism and anti-fascism.

British people still haven't come to terms with the racism intrinsic to the British Empire.  As promised, I shall return to this theme.

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Wachet auf! (Or, "Against right-wing and police extremism")

The good thing about having a vaguely negative view of political developments is that one doesn't have to wait long to have ones negative view confirmed.  Just over a month ago I wrote this article (which actually reflected my views from June) where I said, to summarise:

The media and liberals focus so much on so-called 'left-wing extremism' that they take away their focus from right-wing extremism.  Right-wing extremism involves things like attacking and killing people and the is no (or there is only very rarely) a left-wing equivalent; certainly, there is no equivalent to attacking and killing people due to the colour of their skin or religion.  One should therefore focus on the extreme right-wing danger.  The state focuses its surveillance on  'left-wing extremism' and Muslims and therefore it misses real violent threats elsewhere.  Any narrative on 'left-wing attacks against the police' should be seen in light of police brutality against peaceful protesters.  Therefore, a focus on right-wing extremism, state violence and mainstream racism is needed.

Then, lo and behold, this news comes from Zwickau, Germany.  Before reading further, please read that article.

"It can't have been German Neo-Nazis, it must have been the victims themselves"

It is a cliche to say "I don't want to say 'I told you so', but I told you so", so I won't say it.  As I say, it is a grim satisfaction to see that things are as bad as one thinks.  Let's go through this step by step (from this from taz, here in English):

On the 9th of September 2000 the florist Enver Simsek was shot in Nuremberg; a tailor called Süleyman Tasköprü was then shot on the 27th of June in 2001, followed by the shooting of the grocer Habil Kilic on the 29th of August, 2001 in Munich.  A Nuremberg newspaper suspected that the killings remind one of 'brutal work of Albanian gangs' who have 'Turks working for them'.

On the 25th of February 2004 the doner seller Yunus Turgut was shot in Rostock.  Then again in Nuremberg on the 9th of June 2005 the doner seller Ismail Yazar was shot.  After that the Greek Theodorous Boulgarides was shot in his locksmith in Munich.   Die Welt spoke of 'the work of a gang from the Anatolien mountains'', and later spoke of an 'Istanbul export firm which deals in the smuggling of drugs and people throughout Europe'.  A special commission was set up by police called "Bosporus".  (This is also the name given to the murders on wikipedia.)  Finally, on the 6th of April 2006 Halit Yozgat was shot in an internet cafe in Kassel.

In the same month Das Bild spoke of a "Drug mafia, organised criminality, silence-money and money-laundering".  Focus interviewed the "Bosporus special commission" leader Wolfgang Geier, who spoke of his dismissal of a "Xenophobic background" to the murders.  In the May of 2006 the Hamburger Abendblatt complained that investigators received "perhaps a tea with mint but no answers" from the Turkish community.  The Spiegel spoke of the "parallel world of the Turks that is difficult to get into which protects the killers".  The senior prosecutor of Bavaria spoke of the Turkish friends of the victims "knowing more than they say", while Geier spoke in the Süddeutsche Zeitung that he faces a "wall of silence" and he had the impression that "Turks still haven't properly arrived into this society".  The moderator of the programme "Aktenzeichen XY...Ungelöst" Rudi Cerne spoke of three possibilities: "Organised crime", "Contract killer" or "did the victims work in criminal business?"

In the August of 2006 the criminal profiler Alexander Horn theorised that the perpetrators had something against people who look like Turks, though he said that he ruled out any right-wing extremist act.  Then on the 25th of April 2007 the policewoman Michele Kieseweter was shot in Heilbronn; though no connection was guessed to the other executions.  The Spiegel spoke of  the connection between the killings and "German and Turkish gamblers".  Then on the 21st of February 2001 Spiegel guessed that the acts was made by a "powerful alliance between right-wing nationalist Turks, the Turkish secret service and gangsters".

...and there's more

So, here we have the scapegoating mechanism that blames the victims themselves for them being killed.  There's more to this, though.  Someone from the German domestic intelligence was present at the murder in the internet cafe in Kassel.  Notice that still right-wing extremism was not considered by the police.  From here we have the quote: 

Kerim Simsek, whose father Enver was shot down on 9 September 2000, claimed police said his father "was mixed up with the mafia and smuggled drugs – no one even mentioned a rightwing extremist motive," he told Bild.

Hans-Christian Ströbele, a member of the parliamentary committee which monitors Germany's secret service agencies said that  Germany's elite had totally underestimated the threat of rightwing terrorism. 

"They have been determined to play it down. Just a few weeks ago, Hans-Peter Friedrich, the interior minister, was saying there was no rightwing terrorism in Germany," he said. "They are always very quick to jump to conclusions if they think leftwing terrorists or Islamist fundamentalists are responsible for a crime and yet they didn't want to believe there could be a serious problem with neo-Nazis."  Ströbele said that 160 officers worked on Operation Bosphorus, investigating 11,000 people "Why didn't they follow the trail to rightwing radicals?" he said, as he called for a thorough investigation to discover how the terror cell managed to evade capture.

Well bloody hell, he speaks like I do.

That the Neo-Nazi cell group (Uwe Mundlos, Uwe Böhnhardt and Beate Zschäpe) had connections to the NPD is causing many to call for the party to be banned.  In fact I am against this, for democratic reasons.  For me calls for them to be banned are symbolic and serve to take attention away from police and media mainstream mistakes.  The media continued their (let's face it) racist and xenophobic tendencies after the Nazi group was discovered, calling the murders the 'Doner murders' (thus dehumanising those who were killed).  The *ahem* Spiegel contains this excellent article which contains the line:  

The term "doner killings" represents a radical ostracisation of immigrants. It provided distance, allowing Germans to sit comfortably and be creeped out by reports they read in the newspaper about the series of gruesome murders.

Indeed, the head of the sister party to the government CSU Horst Seehofer said in the March of this year that "We will defend ourselves against immigration into the German social system -- until the very last cartridge." (NEWS JUST IN: The secretary of the Kassel-Nord CDU Daniel Budzynski is a Nazi.  Of course, the left-wing Piraten also contain one or two Nazis; it seems the difference is that they as a party with recent success have received new members with dodgy backgrounds.  I am unaware of any of them being put in relatively powerful positions like Budzynski.  I am grateful to this news from Netzgegennazis on Facebook).

It's mainstream racism and xenophobia that gives support to the far-right; they are more dangerous than any so-called "left-wing extresmism".

In other news

Here's a round up of other stuff:

In Denmark  (in English: Intelligence warns of "race war") the intelligence services are warning of a 'Breivik-style attack in Denmark", though they are not totally aware of the threats of the far-right due to their putting together of "Left-wing extremism" (the article's inverted commas, not mine), Islamic and Neo-Nazi terrorism in one category.  It's left to the left-wing monitor group Redox to raise concerns of groups not known by the intelligence services who are against immigration and contain Neo-Nazis, who also have contacts to businessmen and women and members of the police and military.

In Bavaria (in English: Police under suspicion of violence) a 15 year old boy was kicked in his knees and had his head banged repeatedly against the wall by members of the police.  According to Amnesty International 385 accusations of violence or abuse were made against the Bavarian police in 2009, though it is unknown how many led to a prosecution.  (Remember that is the Bavarian police who set up the 'Bavaria against left-wing extremism' website, who claim that 371 acts of such extremism took place in 2009, of which 200 were minor offenses like graffiti.....Perhaps we need a 'Bavaria against police brutality' link.)

In Austria (in English: Police trade union sees themselves as Nazi-slave workers) complains that their work standards are like that of Nazi slave workers.  Furthermore they complain that the cost of the Mauthausen concentration camp memorial site, the new state department for integration and also the care of asylum seekers are a burden to the financing of security.

While in the US we have examples of, if you believe conservatives and certain liberals, violent left-wing protestors getting what they deserve/getting nothing as bad as their like used to get in the past.

84-year-old Dorli Rainey, a retired schoolteacher, being helped after receiving a blast of pepper-spray by Seattle police on October 15.

While here we see people rushing to help Scott Olsen (who had just been wounded by being hit by a police tear-gas canister) and having a stun bomb thrown at them by a member of the police for their troubles. 

This excellent article contains many other examples of police brutality at the Occupations in the US.

Indeed, this article shows that the police in the US are moving (and even attacking) journalists who wish to report such cases.  The attack on Occupiers in the US is co-ordinated and violent and is caused by the fact that the Occupiers are speaking out against Congressmen and women profiting from congress decisions being made about industries they work in, as well as other measures.  Thing is, in the US people are becoming more supportive of the Occupiers.

In GB as well, people are getting more behind actions against the Tory/Lib Dem government (note the public sector strike in GB this Wednesday.)

People are certainly waking up to the abuse by those in power.

I wish you a blessed Advent.

Oh, and if you want to keep in touch with this blog blah blah blah.

Indian POW graveyard, Zehrendorf

Owing to some of my work I occasionally work in Wünsdorf, a town in Brandenburg.  It's a very interesting place, as the majority of it was closed off and used as a bunker complex by the Nazis.  The same place was used by Soviet forces and at its height about 60,000 Soviet forces were living there, thus being biggest place for them in the GDR.

In fact the place had been used by the Imperial Army from 1910 as a training ground, i.e. in preparation for what was to the WWI.  During the war it was used as a POW camp for Indians.  The first ever mosque in Germany was consequently built.  It is for that reason why this graveyard is now close to the site.

Translation: 

Indian graveyard Zehrendorf

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission is responsible for the honoured remembrance of the almost 1.7m members of the Commonwealth Armed Forces who gave their lives in both world wars.  The graves and memorial stones are for men and women from all parts of the Commonwealth, with different or no beliefs and from about 150 countries.

The graves of 206 soldiers and sailors of the Armed Forces of the undivided India who died in the First World War in the Zossen POW camp, 5km from here.

Ever since the end of the Second World War until the early 1990's this land where the graveyard is was in the occupation of Russian (sic.) military forces, and was used as a training camp.  That the care of this graveyard during this time was not possible for the Commission, the war victims buried here were commemorated on special boards in the Indian memorial site in Neuve-Chappelle, France.

After the unification of Germany in 1990 the Commission began to restore the graveyard.  The work finished in 2005.

Translation: Gravestone of Muslim Rasan (?) Tatar who died while being POW's under the government of Wilhelm II during the world war

Apart from the standard rules on how one should treat the dead, this graveyard is important for another reason: There are some who believe that only those born in Britain fought as British people.  There are some who want to use commemoration of the two world wars in order to make their racist points.  Such a graveyard shows that Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, Buddhists, Christians and people of no faith fought alongside each other during WW1. 

If you are Christian and wish to help take a stand against such a racist abuse of history, please join this group on Facebook. 

Why prejudice against 'left-wing extremism' helps the far-right

This article is aimed at people who are concerned with issues like discrimination and racism, while also being concerned about 'left-wing extremists', possibly believing that 'they are just as bad as the far-right'.

I don't tend to write explicitly about politics here, but in various conversations I have had with people combined with things I have seen in media sources have prompted me to write this article.  Here's why:

I believe an attack on 'left-wing extremism' to be misguided and runs counter to our aims of working against discrimination and for more equal societies.  A prejudice against the left-wing exists that runs counter to the aim of being anti-discrimination, and indeed hinders work against discrimination.  I believe it is better to pay attention on those who actively work for prejudice and violence: the far-right, as well as the mainstream that offers fuel to their fire.  (Regular readers may be surprised to see me use a lot of the imperative rather than the conjunctive case; I do this simply because it seems to read better.)

Don't focus so much on 'left-wing extremism'

The term 'extremism' is a subjective term.  In news reports and by the far-right it is applied to groups and people on the left who have a wide variety of beliefs.  To be 'extreme' means to hold a view outside of the mainstream, as highlighted here on Latte Labour, who goes onto say that surely we need to be extreme about the fact that many in the world lack access to clean water.  It is surely right to be extreme in being against racism.  Having an extreme view is not necessarily a bad thing.

A bizarre example here is that of Ernst Grube.  He is Jewish and was put into a Jewish camp in Munich by the Nazis before being sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.  He survived and was active with the Association of former Nazi persecutees, as well as 'Lion fans (1860 Munich) against the right-wing'.  The Bavarian state authority 'Bavaria against left-wing extremism' contains an open file detailing people considered to be a possible danger.  Ernst, now 78 is on that list, simply as he is a member of the German Communist Party.

Another example is that of the British police, who want people to tell them who are anarchists.  That's one entire political group!  Perhaps here they/we are considered to be 'extreme' due to violence.  Largely I am against violence and have nothing against attacking tactics that cause concern.  Within anarchism there are a wide variation of views regarding violence.  The violence that happened during various anti-cuts protests in GB or at the anti-Nazi protest I attended in Dresden this year led some to blame the  'extremists' on the left, who were being 'just as bad as those on the right', without testing the facts given to them by the media or their own prejudices.

This is a fallacy for the following reasons:

People on the far-right commit more crimes

If you have coloured skin; belong to a non-Christian religion, are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transexual; are disabled or homeless, you are much more in danger of being assaulted by a member of the far-right.  In Wales and England in the 2010/11 period a total of 51,187 'racist incidents' took place (classed as such according to incidents where 'race', religion, sexuality or disability took place.)

While no statistics exist for the 'left-wing extremist' equivalent, I daresay that they follow the pattern in Germany, where extreme right-wing crimes by a wide margin outnumber those of the left.  The great majority of 'left-wing extremist' crimes (based on 2009) are acts of defense against the police at demonstrations (I shall return to this theme later) or the burning of cars, that's according to youth-violence expert Michael Kohlstruck (see same article), who goes on to say that these crimes are largely concentrated in Berlin and Hamburg, whereas right-wing crimes can be seen throughout Germany.  Uwe-Karten Heye (from the initiative 'Gesicht zeigen') highlights the fact that more than 140 people have died in Germany due to right-wing extremists since 1989, while no-one has died due to left-wing extremists in the same time period (ibid.)

Simply by how you are born or due to your life circumstances opens you to being a target of the far-right, and of course this goes beyond GB and Germany.

(2) The police play a part in 'left-wing extremist' crimes 

Let's be careful here.  When I worked in GB I had dealings with the police and they were good at their work and helpful.  I have little against the police as an institution.  However, a basic human right is the right to free speech and the right of assembly.  There are countless examples where these rights have been curtailed by members of the police.

This document details (in German) police attacks on peaceful demonstrators at the protest against Nazis in Dresden this February.  One can see a few videos displaying such attacks here, and here.  In GB we have seen the police abusing a disabled man in a wheelchair during a protest.  In Greece we have seen the police hitting a peaceful man with a baton and then firing teargas at peaceful protesters. 

Now, regarding violence against the police, I ask you to look at this video. 

Yes, people do attack the police.  To tell the truth, in all videos I have seen the worst I have seen protesters do is throw banners.  What you shall notice in the video is that the throwing of banners started after the police charge.  It's the same with kettles (see this article).

Police tactics often cause protesters to get scared and agitated.  I know this.  I was kettled once.  It does not really result on calming a situation down.  When people get scared or agitated they feel in danger, and are liable to do things that they are not usually likely to do.  I am not justifying violence against the police per se (I admit that a very minute minority of people do go to be violent to the police), just explaining it.  Bear in mind that the fight is not equal.  Police have all manner of protection, and as representatives of the state are allowed to do violence, and often get away with it.  It's called the 'monopoly of violence'.  Of course, it could be alleged that police are actively working undercover in order to spur protestors on to 'violent' acts, thus enabling the police to 'react' and also feed the media with some nice images of those nasty black-block people doing 'violent' things. 

The German philosopher Jan Philipp Reemtsma has written of how one needs both trust in society (in each other, or possibly I may add in state authorities that work on behalf of us, to whom we delegate our potential to violence) as well as an unsparing realism, in order to avoid barbarism.  I would say that many in the mainstream trust the police too much and unquestionably accept what they and the mainstream media says.  This leads to tragic consequences, as any Liverpool fan can tell you.

A young lad told me this year 'People who go to protests should expect that the police may be violent to them'.  Is this the kind of country you want to live in, where the police can willy nilly attack peacefully protesting people?

Focussing on 'left-wing extremist violence' plays into the hands of conservatives and reactionaries, who are fed images of the very few violence incidents (as a proportion) that involve the left-wing that occur and then generalise.  Criticise tactics of some members of the left-wing by all means.  However, a simple prejudice that 'the 'extreme-left are as bad as the extreme-right' adds to what the right wing are doing: trying to delegitimise the left-wing and its assorted aims of working for good hospitals and education for all irrespective of economic status.  A focus on the small minor incidents of 'left-wing extremist violence' by liberals adds to that, and takes away from the message of protests.  

Our attention needs to be elsewhere: 

Attack right-wing extremism...

Aside from the previously given statistics of hate-crimes in GB and right-wing extremist crimes in Germany, we have the obvious example of the murders by Anders Breivik in Oslo.  I wonder if other people noticed what happened after the tragedy regarding the 'ownership' of it.  On Facebook many people put Norwegian flags as their profiles as a way of respect.  This is understandable, it was an attack within Norway, on Norwegians and affected the nation of Norway.  Thing is, these people were not killed because they were Norwegians, they were killed because they were left-wing.

The links of Breivik to the English Defense League have been made clear.  They're another organisation with people with dodgy beliefs in them (from Unite Against Fascism):

There are other examples of EDL-dodginess in England, where this time Labour party members have been attacked.  In Berlin Nazis attacked left-wing counter-demonstrators as well as migrants (This site documents Nazi attacks in Germany)

What you must understand is this: These are just a few examples of something widespread.  As well as hating people with different coloured skin/of different religions/of other sexualities/homeless people, etc. the far-right hate the left-wing.  They are out to get the 'reds' and are quite happy in using violence is doing so.  As is their right, when the police do nothing left-wingers have to defend themselves.  That does not mean 'left-wing extremism'.

Who are you to ally yourselves with, then?  The mainstream?  Thing is, this right-wing extremism is helped by the mainstream:

....and those who help to encourage them

The debacle of Gordon Brown's 'British Jobs for British people' and David Cameron's wish to get ordinary British people to shop illegal immigrants are two examples of how British politicians have added to prejudices about immigrants.  We also had Jack Straw's at best clumsy words about Muslim women.

It is Islamophobia and prejudice against the 'extreme left-wing' that I now wish to concentrate.  In their report, 'The Cold War on British Muslims' Spinwatch has shown that the way in which surveillance of the left-wing during the Cold War period is now being continued with regards to Muslims in GB.

Governmental surveillance of the left-wing

The M15 has been doing counter-subversion of the left-wing since the late 1960's.  Remember that this was the time in which student protests across Europe were criticising the establishment (in Germany this, together with a number of trials in Germany at that time finally brought Germany into beginning to deal with its Nazi past).  Now, branch F of M15 was devoted to monitoring

..activities threatening the security of the state, or well-being of the state and intended to undermine or overthrow parliamentary democracy by political, industrial or violent means (from the Spinwatch report.)

This led to a monitoring of 'far and wide left' groups and people and therefore a whole generation of people later to be part of the Labour government of 1997-2010 were monitored (Jack Straw, Peter Mandelson, Patricia Hewitt and Harriet Harman, among others).  In the 1980's they were also to monitor Rowan Williams (now the Archbishop of Canterbury), members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament as well as some involved with the Greenham common women's peace camp.  Now, these are not terrorists we are talking about here, they are people using peaceful methods to achieve their aims of peace and social justice

This surveillance led to some strange events: the Communist Party of GB were heavily monitored, even through the miner's strike when M15 themselves admitted that they had played a moderating role; also, M15 decided in 1973 that the Official IRA (which declared a ceasefire in 1972) were a bigger danger than the Provisional IRA (who were about to deepen their armed campaign; in total about 1,800 people were killed by them.)  Why was that?  Well, the Official IRA were left-wing!

My point here is that security agencies and governments can define all kinds of people to be a danger, or to return to the theme, 'extreme'.  So can the media.  Peaceful individuals get stigmatised.

The mainstream and Muslims in GB

The Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC) ("a non-partisan think-tank that studies issues related to community cohesion in Britain") were founded in 2007.  A click on that link will show you that one issue particular interests them: Islam.  This questionnaire was biased against Muslim students (a mainstream newspaper, the Daily Mail, ran with this in the usual fashion), trying to portray them as being more likely to support violence in the name of religion.  Damien Thompson from the Telegraph is a fan of the CSC and is quoted as saying: 

It is people of his generation who recognise the major threat to social cohesion in this country: Islam.

I know I should say “militant” Islam, but to be honest I’m finding it increasingly difficult to tell the difference between the militants and the moderates. 

Add to that the think-tank Policy Exchange ("shaping the political agenda") with links to the Tory government.  It is alleged that they falsified documents that seemed to demonstrate that mosques in GB were home to literature that supports terrorism.  In their report 'Living apart together' a whole chapter is Islamophobia and discrimination faced by Muslims, whereby it is said that both are 'myths' and part of a 'victim mentality'. 

The mainstream and Muslims in Germany 

This article shows that the right-wing blog 'Politically Incorrect' has links to the far-right 'Pro Deutschland', an organisation containing Neo-Nazis as well as 'Die Freiheit', an organisation with links to racists.  Is also has fans among the ruling party, the CDU.  They are connected to the notorious Islamophobe Geert Wilders, through the 'International Freedom Alliance', with with the English Defense League also has contacts.  Of course, in Germany we also have the example of Thilo Sarrazin, who has openly espoused Islamophobic and anti-semitic views, says the Daily Mail (!)  Sarrazin, it should be known, is a member of the SPD (the German Social Democrat Party).  The SPD decided to not throw him out of the party.

Islamophobia is within the German state, I purport.  One question on the Citizenship test (that enables people to gain German citizenship) is "Which religion has shaped European and German culture: (a) Hinduism, (b) Christianity, (c) Buddhism or (d) Islam."  The official answer is of course (b), neatly ignoring, say, the history of Islam in Spain (and the eventual ethnic cleansing by Christians of Muslims) or in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the fact that oranges, sugar, pasta, the Principle of Pendulum, which was used to measure time, among others.  Of course, had the answer been multi-choice it would offer a more realistic answer.  As it is, this test is a form of discrimination against Muslims.

In both British and German examples we see the mainstream (respected intelligent people) providing a forum that the far-right feeds on.  Such examples fan the flames of prejudice.

The 'one must respects all sides of the argument' method is not always the best

I understand the standard liberal need to see 'the other side'.  However, regarding things like racism and state violence, there is no need to respect the other side.  One can respect the humanity of the other person, one can understand how they came to their view/actions, but ultimately I consider it to be a (more well-off person's) luxury to be cautious regarding things like shouty-types, people protesting, people doing things like occupations (here I hold to the maxim that not everything that is legal is good, and not everything that is illegal is bad.)  I know people who are trying to work against racism; trying to help homeless people, working in youth clubs in poor areas, protesting about better benefits for people who are disabled.  They are not violent people.  They are hard-working, unassuming people who don't have the power of the mainstream.  They, and people like them need your support.  Oh, and should you be Christian, please join this group on Facebook.

Thank you for your time.