Fakebook call-out from Midlands Anti Fascists (from FB event page here): JOIN US – Midlands Antifascist Network, the Anti-Fascist Network and the people of Birmingham to block the racist PEGIDA march in Birmingham City Centre. **MORE INFO TO COME!** ==========PEGIDA or EDL? WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?========== Tommy Robinson, ex-EDL leader, is now trying to set up EDL version 2.0 in the UK, called “PEGIDA UK”. It aims to be a more exclusive, middle-class and ‘better behaved’ racist group than the EDL. BrieDL? Now the Tories have tried to make islamaphobia acceptable in government and education, PEGIDA aim to make islamaphobia ‘acceptable’ on the streets. PEGIDA (translated from German: “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West”) are a recently formed group of explicitly anti-Muslim fascists, that started in Germany. The German antifascist movement is very strong, and despite PEGIDA attracting big turnouts of hundreds of racists (including neo-Nazi’s), antifascists have more than matched PEGIDA in their thousands. Often they’ve successfully blocked the demos, completely embarrassing PEGIDA, as well as the police who try so hard to allow racists to march. ============”SHOULDN’T WE JUST IGNORE THEM?”============ No. Street mobilisations by the likes of PEGIDA and the EDL aim to exert “dominance” in the streets. When they are allowed to march, they think they can get away with spreading their racial hatred in public. Their movements grow and become more bold. This ramps up the rate of racist hate crimes and far-right activities – on the streets and at the ballot box. This has repeatedly been shown in the history of far-right movements in the UK and across Europe. There are enough racist attacks now as it is. When we don’t allow fascists to march and spread their poison, it empowers communities by teaching us that together we are stronger! Birmingham has a very solid and proud multicultural heritage. Keeping Birmingham fascist-free for good is our objective here. ===================DIVIDE AND CONQUER=================== For the government, anti-Muslim hatred is a convenient way to distract taking aim at the real enemy – the rich. If we allow ourselves to be convinced of the racist myths about immigration and multiculturalism, the working class becomes divided making austerity easier to impose on us. It is this division that the fascists capitalise on, and we refuse to let this happen. Muslims, migrants, refugees, single-mums, the homeless, the unemployed and working poor – we are NOT to blame for our poverty. Instead, it is the rich and super-rich that impose our poverty upon us, by austerity. But through constant propaganda in the media and from the government, they gloss over this and instead, create suspicion and hatred between us, where there should be none. PEGIDA (and groups like them) only protect their own enslavement. Our enslavement. ====================PARIS AND FASCISM=================== Within a 6 month time span, the press and politicians have jumped from “Je suis Charlie” free speech hype, to seeing the Paris attacks used as an excuse for French police to impose curfews, raid thousands of French Muslim family homes, close lectures and events on climate change and raid the homes of activists – events that just reek of impending state fascism. With the rise of the fascist party ‘Front National’ in France, the leader Le Pen recently admitted admiration for David Cameron. We need to be aware of the rise of the far-right across Europe, including the UK, and remember our shared, bloody history.