Fascist, Go Home! After Bombing, Manchester Residents Shut Down Anti-Muslim Demo
In the aftermath of
Monday’s tragic bombing, the people of Manchester showed little patience with
the racist opportunists of the extreme right English Defence League, quickly
confronting EDL attempts at provoking a xenophobic and anti-Muslim backlash. The
immigrant-scapegoating EDL picketed outside of the Arndale Mall Tuesday,
spewing Islamophobic slurs and hoisting the Union Jack. The demonstration
followed shortly after the panicked evacuation of the shopping center.
However, the far-right
horde was quickly outnumbered by counter-protesters. One man, filmed by
Reuters, strongly denounced the EDL fascists while onlookers clapped and
nodded.
“The people of
Manchester don’t stand with your xenophobia and racism,” he said, adding, “The
people of Manchester are going to stick together, no matter what religion you
follow, no matter what the color of your skin is. “We’re not going to
stand with people like you,” he shouted at the right-wingers. “We’re going to stick
together because together we are stronger and the people of Manchester are not
going to be afraid of who is responsible for this violence,” he continued.
The explosion at the
Ariana Grande concert claimed 22 lives and led to over 59 injuries and is being
treated as a terrorist attack by the Greater Manchester Police. Responsibility
for the suicide bombing has been blamed on Salman Abedi, a 22-year-old
Mancunian whose parents are Libyan immigrants with longtime ties to the opposition
against the late Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
The United Kingdom
under Prime Minister David Cameron took the lead — along with the United States
— in the overthrow of Gaddafi in 2011, which also included France and some Gulf
State monarchies. An alleged “humanitarian intervention” of limited scope, the
campaign rapidly became a “regime change” effort that led to the dramatic
downfall of Gaddafi and Libya’s plunge into all-out civil war, anti-Black
African ethnic cleansing, and the transformation of the North African country
into a base for various transnational extremist factions such as al-Qaida, the
Islamic State group and the Libyan Islamic Fighting group.
The attack was met by
denunciations from a vast cross-section of people in the U.K., including Muslim
leaders from the Ramadhan Foundation and Muslim Council of Britain. Muslim taxi
drivers immediately offered victims and concert-goers free rides home following
the explosion, providing them with water and letting them charge their phones to
contact family and friends.
Hopkins, a leading columnist for the Mail Online, was reported to police
following her genocidal tweet. She soon deleted the tweet. Right-wing extremists
were quick to voice their own hatred toward Muslims, with one leading columnist
for the Mail Online saying “we need a final solution,” referring to the Nazi
plan for the ethnic cleansing of Europe, also known as the “Final Solution to
the Jewish Question.” Likewise, the EDL used the attacks as a rallying-cry to
join their racist organization and “stand up to Islamism.”
Likewise, Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to cynically ride the coattails of
Monday’s tragedy, scurrilously tweeting that attackers like Abedi would
“receive a stipend” from Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas in a
hypothetical scenario where the attacker was Palestinian and the targeted
civilians were Israelis. Netizens were quick to denounce the Zionist leader’s
shameless attempt to exploit the grief of Britons, pointing to the Israeli government’s
tacit alliance with extremist Wahhabi Gulf kingdoms such as Saudi Arabia and
its support for extremist anti-government forces in Syria.
https://www.juancole.com/2017/05/fascist-manchester-residents.html
