Britain First

[MrBarry123]

Revolting bunch.

I would bet that groups such as this become more prevalent as the EU Yes/No referendum looms ever closer. Not because they're intelligent enough to understand the arguments for/against however because they'll use the No arguments to fight back "against da immagrunts".

[BlackLabel]

andymc said:

Did anyone see this last night on BBC3?

Their leader Paul Golding is a former NF and BNP member yet he claims not to be a racist. Anyway, it was nice to see how poorly supported they are. Sure they get a lot of 'likes' on facebook however when it comes to their marches they barely have a couple of hundred people turning up. Compared to the EDL (who used to see several thousand people attend some of their marches) and the BNP (who once had a million votes at a Euro election) Britain First are a bit of a joke in terms of their support. Jayda Fransen, their deputy leader, even stood for parliament at the Rochester and Strood by-election last year and came away with 56 votes.

And their religious views just make them even more contemptible.

[otolith]

Just watching it now - I knew they were knobbers, and I didn't expect a BBC documentary to make me think any better of them, but they're just... Wow.

[powerstroke]

Yes , so its lucky all the left wing groups are so nice and sensible ...

[rscott]

I see they've now published the address of the show's producer along with pictures of him and his supposedly Muslim girlfriend
Presumably in the hope their followers take action of some sort.

[Smollet]

Not the brightest of people although using the number of police there to control them in their attendance total was a master-stroke.
Glad they're small in number and if that progamme was intended to bolster their membership I think they'll sink without trace.

[longblackcoat]

otolith said:

Just watching it now - I knew they were knobbers, and I didn't expect a BBC documentary to make me think any better of them, but they're just... Wow.

If you want to do a decent take-down piece, the best plan is just to let people condemn themselves with their own words. If you're lucky, the mask slips once, maybe twice, and you can then frame your story around that.

These muppets managed to ruin their own reputations with every sentence. Shooting fish in a barrel.

[hairyben]

TBH I get more annoyed (due to my own higher bullst propaganda exposure levels) at the preachy lefty-lites who think diligently posting rubbish on facebook about how much they hate britain first every day is performing some kind of reverent duty, without realising the utter hypocrisy of the sense of superiority they feel by constantly expressing their hate for something.

[Pickled Piper]

FredClogs said:

andymc said:

Did anyone see this last night on BBC3?

Yes, fking imbeciles, if you're a right wing party who hold those sort of views and the Anti fascist league don't even bother to turn up at your events then you know you're and irrelevance.

That said it was quite disturbing the way the turned on the film maker for apparently no reason.

I don't do facebook, are these people really that prevalent on there?

I watched it on iplayer last night. Extremely biased coverage from a programme maker that set out to ridicule and paint a negative picture from the outset. Programmes like this insult the audiences intelligence. We are quite capable of recognising hate filled extremists. We don't need the BBC to bias their reporting just to make sure.

More significantly, it trivialises the genuine concerns that that many have about lack of integration and the negative effect it has on community cohesion.

Remember those inarticulate complaints about large scale street grooming by Pakistani males, infiltration of state schools by Islamic extremists and vote rigging in Tower Hamlets. All of these were trivialised and rejected by the mainstream press because the initial complainants were poorly educated, inarticulate and had trouble expressing themselves.

I would hold the programme maker in higher regard if he had taken the time and effort to separate the vitriolic hate from genuine issues.

[fido]

As much as I loathe Panorama's style of journalism, I notice alot of people on my Facebook 'like' Britain First as they are unaware of what the group are (presumably based on their slick Facebook page) so it's not entirely obvious ..

[Mario149]

fido said:

(presumably based on their slick Facebook page

It's not that slick, last time I checked it has shouty CAPITAL LETTERS on all its posts. I suspect that it's a simple case of a lot of people liking/sharing their "content" have never even visited the page as they're not tech savvy and aren't aware that nutters are allowed FB pages too - this seems to be borne out by the fact that the people I know on FB who like/share the stuff are nearly all friends parents and 50+. I know I almost never visit the page of something I want to share unless my internal bullsh*t detector fires off, but I have a feeling it's a lot more sensitive than theirs

[FredClogs]

Pickled Piper said:

FredClogs said:

andymc said:

Did anyone see this last night on BBC3?

Yes, fking imbeciles, if you're a right wing party who hold those sort of views and the Anti fascist league don't even bother to turn up at your events then you know you're and irrelevance.

That said it was quite disturbing the way the turned on the film maker for apparently no reason.

I don't do facebook, are these people really that prevalent on there?

I watched it on iplayer last night. Extremely biased coverage from a programme maker that set out to ridicule and paint a negative picture from the outset. Programmes like this insult the audiences intelligence. We are quite capable of recognising hate filled extremists. We don't need the BBC to bias their reporting just to make sure.

More significantly, it trivialises the genuine concerns that that many have about lack of integration and the negative effect it has on community cohesion.

Remember those inarticulate complaints about large scale street grooming by Pakistani males, infiltration of state schools by Islamic extremists and vote rigging in Tower Hamlets. All of these were trivialised and rejected by the mainstream press because the initial complainants were poorly educated, inarticulate and had trouble expressing themselves.

I would hold the programme maker in higher regard if he had taken the time and effort to separate the vitriolic hate from genuine issues.

The program was about the people not the issues. The "issues" the protagonists had seemed to boil down to an "our god is better than your god" level of debate. I understand there are issues in places like Rotheram or Luton, but I don't think Britain first are a group all that interested in investigating them.

[eatcustard]

Not sure who are worse, the Brit first mob or the BBC.
The so called BF mob fighting at the end were the Anti fascist fascists and the the BF.

BF have good intentions (of sorts) but the wrong type of people running it.

[rohrl]

eatcustard said:

BF have good intentions (of sorts) but the wrong type of people running it.

That's...ahem...one way of looking at things.

Another way might be to say that Britain First are just the latest iteration of a nasty, small-minded strain of the extreme right which previously existed as the National Front then the BNP with a lot of the same faces in evidence.

[otolith]

What I found particularly amusingly ironic was this statement;

"If you believe in something whole-heartedly you should be prepared to die for it, and I think that this path was chosen for me and so what I'm doing in my life is God's will and if I succeed that will be God's will, if I'm taken out tomorrow that will be God's will."

Which doesn't look far off;

"I am willing to die for Jihad, Insha'Allah"

Except that religiously driven maniacs are not funny, whoever their imaginary friend is.

[rscott]

Mario149 said:

fido said:

(presumably based on their slick Facebook page

It's not that slick, last time I checked it has shouty CAPITAL LETTERS on all its posts. I suspect that it's a simple case of a lot of people liking/sharing their "content" have never even visited the page as they're not tech savvy and aren't aware that nutters are allowed FB pages too - this seems to be borne out by the fact that the people I know on FB who like/share the stuff are nearly all friends parents and 50+. I know I almost never visit the page of something I want to share unless my internal bullsh*t detector fires off, but I have a feeling it's a lot more sensitive than theirs

The way they present content has changed somewhat recently. Now, most are links to 'stories' on their own website whereas they used to have the actual content on FB. Probably changed because of the number of their posts removed by Facebook.

[TTwiggy]

eatcustard said:

Not sure who are worse, the Brit first mob or the BBC.

Let's see:

One are a far-right hate group fuelled by religious extemism intent on singling out one racial/religious group as the source of all ills and throwing them out of the country, while the other are a slightly lefty, possibly poorly-managed multi-national broadcaster that, despite some failings, generally manages to turn out decent programming. Yep, I can see how you might be confused.

[andymc]

TTwiggy said:

eatcustard said:

Not sure who are worse, the Brit first mob or the BBC.

Let's see:

One are a far-right hate group fuelled by religious extemism intent on singling out one racial/religious group as the source of all ills and throwing them out of the country, while the other are a slightly lefty, possibly poorly-managed multi-national broadcaster that, despite some failings, generally manages to turn out decent programming. Yep, I can see how you might be confused.

other than only fools and horses I think the BEEB are st

[ninjacost]

I agree

andymc said:

other than only fools and horses I think the BEEB are st

[Digga]

TTwiggy said:

Let's see:

One are a far-right hate group fuelled by religious extemism intent on singling out one racial/religious group as the source of all ills and throwing them out of the country, while the other are a slightly lefty, possibly poorly-managed multi-national broadcaster that, despite some failings, generally manages to turn out decent programming. Yep, I can see how you might be confused.

That's one way of looking at it. Another might be this:

One is a privately-funded, small but determined group of hard-right nutters, using plausible memes to garner greater ostensible social-media support from less extreme individuals.

The other is an organisation run largely on taxpayer's money, which is supposed to be apolitical - certainly at it's inception - and entertaining also (but that's another matter altogether) but which has become inextricably entangled in various politics of the left.