EDL founder reinvents the wheel

Lennon: What lies beneath?

He claims he has never been an extremist; even when threatening all of Britain’s Muslims that they would “pay” for another Islamic terrorist outrage.

He claims he has never been an extremist, even when he and fifty two others were arrested with their faces covered by balaclavas on their way to occupy or attack (depending on who you believe), a London Mosque.

Even when he was in the neo-Nazi BNP, even when his close friends and associates were giving Nazi salutes, he says he has never been an extremist himself. Indeed, most of those people are now, to him, “scum”.

Even when he was entering the United States illegally, to visit Muslim haters, he was apparently, not an extremist.

He’s going to continue to fight against Islamist extremism, whatever that is-as he hasn’t quite defined it yet, and will now also tackle neo-Nazis. But not the English Defence League, they are apparently not extremists, either.

Perhaps Stephen Lennon is unaware that neo-Nazis hate Muslims too?

Being the patient and polite types of people that we are, we’re still waiting for clarity on how far up the road to Damascus the EDL founder has travelled. Personal experience tells me that road is far longer and rockier than one imagines when first facing it. Lennon appears to have taken a taxi for at least part of the way. But we cannot even call him an ex-extremist, because he’s apparently never been one.

On Tuesday an interview appeared with Lennon on one of the many “Counter-Jihad” websites that laud the work of Lennon, Pam Geller, Geert Wilders etc, etc. It also carries stories-endless amounts of them, of often unsubstantiated tales of how the west is being conquered by savage Muslims who do not even have the temerity to be pissed whilst doing it.

The title of the interview is good. Rightly, it declares that Lennon’s “long journey has only just begun”. I concur, (if it has at all). The background setting the intrepid writers’ give of their journey to do this interview is that Lennon lives in Luton and it has a lot of Muslims there who are led, apparently, by an aggressive man who is also on the town council. As with anything to do with the EDL or “Counter-Jihadism” it also laments that a pub has closed down; not a school, not a hospital or library, but the local ale house.

The writer assumes that the pub “seems to have been popular.” I don’t know how they decided this, perhaps there were dozens of discarded condoms outside, or lots of broken glass that gave the game away. Who knows? What they do know is that the art gallery is “grotesque”.

But it gets worse. The little sod Lennon (I refuse to call him by his for-criminal purpose moniker ‘Tommy Robinson’) has not turned up. Our intrepid writers are forced into a pub where a potential bloody benefit scrounger [white] is playing pool.

When Lennon does finally turn up, he refuses a glass of wine and opts instead for a glass of water!! Upon reading this bit, I’m filled with outrage!! Surely he’s not gone bloody native and joined the aggressive Muslims on the town council??

But, like he does with the intrepid writers who have already made it clear they’re slumming it in down town Luton, Lennon allays my fears. He begins telling them that in prison he could not even go to church. How often he does that outside of prison, they do not ask.

It’s not a great interview if Lennon is trying to convince all of us that he has turned his back on his non-extremist past. In fact, the more of it I read, the more it concerns me that he is just convincing the old mob that he is still carrying on as usual but without the “scum” who make up the infidels or the South East Alliance.

“Look at my new platform. I was recently in a TV program where the viewers could vote – 95 percent agreed with me. Had I still been the leader of the EDL, that would never have happened” Lennon tells them.

Excitedly, they tell us that Lennon “doesn’t mince his words.”

“What I’m saying now is the same as I’ve been saying for four and a half years and it is neither racist nor right-wing extremist. It is logical and common sense” he assures them. This must include being bladdered and shouting “Breivik” at the Channel Four camera crew that time.

The interview goes on and on with what Lennon’s benefactors Quilliam have described as his “mainstream views” on such things as the Burkha and his obsession with female genital mutilation. Such a paradox; to care so much (rightly) about that, yet at the same time wanting to dictate to women what they can and can’t wear.

But the worrying part is how Lennon described the future, his future: He’s going to start a new organisation. It will be a “think tank”.

He takes it further in another interview later given to the American Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) website,  where he says “The last thing we want is a war in this country, but it is the inevitable outcome for the way the country is going,” sounding remarkably like Nick Griffin. “Now, the British people are not going to sit back and take much more” he warns.

Like BNP leader Nick Griffin, Lennon believes the political tide is turning after the murder of Lee Rigby and news coverage of Muslim grooming gangs.

“I am terrified for the entire next generation of this country, and its history, its culture, its identity — it’s all under attack” he finishes, no doubt leaving the “CBN” reporter breathless with joy while the rest of us wonder what this particular culture is.

We are still waiting for something new from Stephen Lennon, something that gives us hope. I’m not finding it. At the moment, it sounds like he has just reinvented another wheel to attempt to force people to obey his will and demands. Maybe he is going to demand they reopen that popular pub and force Muslims inside and make them get pissed?

At the moment, I’m thinking that when Lennon told his former followers to “trust me” that he’s doing everything possible he can to prove to them that nothing has changed. It is in fact, the rest of us that need to be convinced.

But of course,these are just my own personal opinions. Having one’s motives constantly questioned is always annoying. But to stop the questions that he by all accounts does not like, Lennon will have to invent another and different language and mechanism entirely, even as a former non-extremist, because some of us are now less than convinced.

But we’ll wait. Patience is a virtue, even if it is stretched.

Interview one