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Defending Free Speech: a new front for resisting Islamification
Last month, Britain’s far-right milieu confirmed its new approach to demonstrating against Muslims and Islam. Following the permanent banning of the former leader of the English Defence League (EDL) and UK wing of PEGIDA, Tommy Robinson from Twitter for hateful conduct and the conviction of two of Britain First’s leaders, Jayda Fransen and Paul Goulding for religiously aggravated harassment, key figures from within the far-right and wider counter-jihadi movement have come together under the banner of defending free speech.
The catalyst for this shift in focus of course, relates to activities involving — and more appropriately, targeting — Muslims and Islam. For Robinson, he was banned after tweeting that “Islam promotes killing people”; Fransen and Goulding were jailed for a series of hate crimes against Muslims some which involved screaming “paedophile” at Muslims in a shop and shouting Islamophobic abuse through the letterbox of a Muslim man who had been a defendant in the trial of another Muslim. These and indeed other incidents were filmed Britain First’s supporters and uploaded to the internet for all to view.
While the prosecutor in the trial of Fransen and Goulding stated “…these defendants were not merely exercising their right to free speech but were instead aiming religiously aggravated abuse at…
