EDL Hate Mob Coming to Bristol

UPDATE: The EDL has cancelled its march until further notice. Heartbreaking.

The English Defence League has declared plans for a ‘peaceful protest’ (lol) through the city next month.

The march will take place on the 7th of December, and is apparently because they’re pissed off about a planning application to turn a former comedy club in Stokes Croft into a mosque.

National Front Disco: The EDL are coming to Brizzle. Photo: Dan Regan

When the group marched through Bristol town centre in July of last year there were violent fights and clashes across the city, while earlier in the summer EDL members smashed up a pub in St George in the wake of the murder of serviceman Lee Rigby.

In a strongly worded call to arms (pictured above) posted on their Facebook page, the Bristol Division also claimed to be protesting against ‘peadophile grooming gangs in Bristol’ (sic).

The post was shared with the inherently creepy words, “Be there my lovers.”

News of the protest comes during the ongoing trial for the murder of Bijan Ebrahimi in July, an Iranian man who was attacked, set on fire, and left to burn to death in a Brislington front garden, after rumours that he was a paedophile spread across the neighbourhood.

It’s hard not to see the EDL’s fatuous complaints about ‘paedophile gangs’ being part of a poisonous underlying narrative that mixes racism with the fear of paedophilia: the exact cocktail of attitudes that led to the death of Mr. Ebrahimi.

Nevertheless, focus on the EDL’s Facebook page was centred around the proposed mosque in Stokes Croft. Here’s a flavour of the rigorous debate that took place: