Britain First. A worrying development.

BISHI

These people keep popping up on my FB feed uninvited. This is certainly something to worry about but is its arrival an inevitable consequence of media hysteria, the economic situation and events in the Middle East.? I worry that things are on the verge of escalating to a point that no decent and reasonable citizen of this country really wants.

Britain First: inside the extremist group targeting mosques - Channel 4 News

krish

I've followed them ever since they broke away from the BNP. Paul Golding is one dumb Nazi prick bankrolled by the sinister Dowson.

johntheexpat

So how are the leaders of this bunch any better than "old Hooky" who was deported to the US as a terrorist?  They strut around spouting their hate and vitriol, spurring others on to acts of violence and terror against a specific section of society.

Why not just call them terrorists?

Cliff

Not sure what you mean about media hysteria?  
The number of Jihadi fighters being recruited to join ISAL in Iraq and Syria from England and the rest of Europe is particularly worrying. If these groups succeed in creating a Levant in Iraq and Syria, then they will expand the ideology everywhere. That will not only be the middle east but back home as well. Unfortunately far right groups are bound to spring up but these are unpleasant schoolboy thugs compared to the brutality and mass murder committed by the Sunni extremists in Iraq.
America is doing little to stop them, so it is likely they will succeed in there aims.

They will want to bring their successes back to Britain and elsewhere, bullying moderate Muslims to join forces. (in Iraq, the choice is join or death)

Most British people don't support these far right groups, especially the older people who remember Naziism.

But things are not good in the world, and small incidents, like the vicious murder of a Saudi girl student inflame things beyond our borders that the British media miss.

BISHI

But is the media making things worse .? They certainly are not reporting any positive Islamic stories are they .? All I was trying to point out is there seems to be a perfect storm brewing that will facilitate extremism from all sides and that everyone, Muslim , secular or otherwise, within our borders should be concerned.
Now I am prepared to be proven wrong, but I cannot recall any incidents of 'home grown Islamist extremism' before Blair took us to war. It is my opinion that it is that single event that started the ball of polarisation rolling.

pragmatic

This is a power vacuum problem, the government and authority are not dealing (or aren't perceived as such) with the genuine issue of Muslim extremists, out of fear of calls of racist or xenophobic or simple ineptness to deal with a growing issue that is concerning people.

We see on the news, Syria, "well thats their problem" people might say, "its a civil war".
Then we see Somalia, "well it was a one of terrorist attack" people might say, "awful but these things happen every decade or so".
Then we have boko haram in Kenya, "well this isn't good, kidnapping kids, ransacking and routing towns and villagers while the government stands impotent, they need a better army in Kenya", people may say.
Then we have Isis moving into Iraq, 'conquering' towns and cities, driving a well armed army away, effectively taking control of a nation one city at a time.  People no longer have anything to say.  We've yet reached the point were people actually say somthing, somthing that is not an excuse.

This has moved on from the narrative of a few crazies with bombs, that have allied themselves to a backward culture like the Taliban in goat herding Afghanistan to a serious threat to a nation and a region, bringing barbaric Mongoul'esc slaughter with them, not something envisionable at the beginning of the 21st century .  All along we have people in the UK sympathetic to these ideals, with some to the extent that they travel halfway around the world to get involved in it, take up arms and fight, not for democracy but the exact opposite, a fight for oppression.

We have ideological and now physical armies creating the hoard battering the doors of civilised society, yet we are apparently doing nothing to nip what of this exists in the UK in the bud.  No one in the UK should be wanting to join this insanity, no one in the UK should truly be sympathetic to this barbarity, we need education, and in extreme cases expulsion/deportation.
Rather than being a valuable incubator for this unacceptable face of humanity, we need to set hard limits, punishments and extol the benefits and advantages of a democratic western nation over that which these fanatics are trying to create.
British values can't come soon enough, although they will simply be general western values with a union jack stuck on the top for the most part.  We can no longer take for granted that people know, understand and cherish these values and those that don't can quite frankly find a country that shares their values rather than trying to change/impose theirs on ours.

BISHI

I agree with much of what you say, unfortunately your last paragraph would not look too out of place on a Britain First manifesto and I would like to think you would not place yourself in that category.

pragmatic

What would you propose we do when we have people with extreme ideologies in our societies,
either spreading the insidious bile via non violent means, or traveling over there (where ever it may be) or worse practising their violent intents in the UK?

Our traditional solution is prison unfortunately that is a gift to such people.
There is a huge problem in prisons where muslim extremists are converting prisoners in jihadi fighters*.
Any tools we have in our country to deal with criminal and unsavories in our country is used to further their aims, they abuse the freedom of speech, they are empowered by the legal system with the likes of the european court of law for human rights and use prisons as recruitment outposts.

People have the right to live in the UK, as long as they take their responsibilities to the UK and fellow citizens seriously.  Ideology is the most difficult thing to route out, as a civilised society we don't kill people as thankfully we've moved beyond that but we have no effective ability to deal with diametrically opposed ideology, one which uses all our freedoms and our laws in an ultimate aim of removing them from us.

*It's easy to recruit extremists in prison, notorious convert claims - Telegraph
British prisons: Incubators for Islamist extremism? - Inside Time Newspaper

And its not even just the UK, this pattern is followed throught the western world
Hearing To Examine Terrorist Recruitment In Prisons : NPR
Dangerous Convictions: Extremist Recruitment in America's Prisons

McCol

I've yet to discover what these British values are.  In my 43 years I've seen people's values change, who decides what these values are?

pragmatic

The civilised thing to do is to say to people, if you do not want to live in this country as it is, with our values, then please find another that meets your requirements.  A perfectly civil way of dealing with acrimonious matters.

I'm not talking skin heads, knocking down doors, dragging people from their homes because they own a koran and throwing them on a boat or a plane.  
I know thats what a number in the OP would want, and my first post was trying to explain why people may feel this way, but mostly why more moderate people may be persuaded when there is a lack of alternative except for tolerance and acceptance of ideologies that go against our way of living, and maybe even more ideologically motivated killings on our streets.