The Ideology and Discourse of the English Defence League: ‘Not Racist, Not Violent, Just No Longer Silent’
| Author | George Kassimeris,Leonie Jackson |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-856X.12036 |
| Published date | 01 February 2015 |
| Date | 01 February 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
The Ideology and Discourse of the
English Defence League: ‘Not Racist,
Not Violent, Just No Longer Silent’
George Kassimeris and Leonie Jackson
Research Highlights and Abstract
• This is the first discursive study of the EDL’s publicly available articles and gives an
important insight into their ideology.
• The study problematises the EDL’s claim to be an anti-racist human rights organi-
sation and analyses EDL discourse as racial discourse, demonstrating that the appar-
ent gulf between the group’s ideological Islamophobia and their violent and
intimidating street protests is largely illusory.
• Understanding Islamophobia as culturally racist and the EDL as a culturally racist
organisation is important to deconstructing their claim that Islamophobia is a
rational reaction to deviant Muslim presence in the UK.
• The key contribution is not only a deeper understanding of the group and why they
have been so successful in mobilising a section of the public to demonstrate against
Islam, but also how this discourse fits in to the larger public debate on Islam and
Muslims in the UK.
The English Defence League (EDL) emerged in 2009 and quickly became a major ‘anti-Islamist’
street protest movement, able to attract thousands to its national demonstrations. Despite the
violence and anti-Muslim rhetoric associated with its protests, the group claims to be an anti-racist
human rights organisation dedicated to protecting liberal freedoms. This article employs a critical
methodology to address these claims, analysing EDL literature alongside strategies identified as
typical of racist discourse construction. The representations, narratives and rhetorical strategies used
by the group support the analysis of EDL Islamophobia as a form of cultural racism that constructs
opposing ‘British’ and ‘Muslim’ subjects and functions to maintain traditional ethno-cultural
dominance of the former over the latter.
Keywords: English Defence League; British Muslims; Islamophobia; racist
discourse construction
Introduction
The English Defence League (EDL) emerged in 2009 as a mass street protest
movement able to attract supporters in the thousands to demonstrate against
‘Islamic extremism’ in towns and cities across the UK. Dozens of protests have been
staged (including marches, static protests, and ‘flash demonstrations’), which have
often descended into violence as supporters broke through police lines to assault
local Asians, confront counter-protesters, and attack Asian businesses and property
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doi: 10.1111/1467-856X.12036 BJPIR: 2015 VOL 17, 171–188
© 2014 The Authors. British Journal of Politics and International Relations © 2014
Political Studies Association
(Copsey 2010, 26). By September 2011 the cost of policing demonstrations was
estimated to be in excess of £10 million, with more than 600 arrests made in
connection with EDL protest (P.Jackson et al. 2011, 68; 71–73). The movement has
repeatedly asserted that it is only opposed to ‘Islamic extremists’, rather than
‘ordinary Muslims’, yet at street level this distinction disappeared, with protest
chants including: ‘I hate Pakis more than you’ (Booth et al. 2009); ‘Give me a gun
and I will shoot the Muzzie scum’ (Garland and Treadwell 2010, 25); and ‘Allah,
Allah, who the fuck is Allah?’ (Tweedie 2009).
Despite the violence and anti-Muslim rhetoric that have become associated with
the EDL, the group consistently denies Islamophobia, claiming to be a human rights
organisation dedicated to preserving free speech against encroaching ‘Islamic
extremism’. The strong anti-racist position espoused in the EDL’s mission statement
(EDL 2011a) is expressed in the protest chant: ‘not racist, not violent, just no longer
silent’ (EDL 2012a), and was dramatically demonstrated in a 2009 publicity stunt
during which masked men gathered under a large banner proclaiming ‘black and
white unite’ and set alight a swastika flag as they announced to invited journalists:
‘There are no racists or fascists in the English Defence League. We are black and
white, united. The proof is in the pudding’ (Tweedie 2009).
There have been a number of academic studies of the group, (Allen 2010; Copsey
2010; Garland and Treadwell 2010; Bartlett and Littler 2011; Burnett 2011; P.
Jackson et al. 2011; Treadwell and Garland 2011; Feldman 2012; Goodwin and
Evans 2012; Treadwell 2012; Busher 2013; Goodwin 2013a), which have focused
primarily on the attitudes and ideology of EDL supporters. These studies address an
important aspect of the popular appeal of the EDL, yet it is remarkable the extent
to which the group’s own justification for its existence and ideological position has
been ignored. The present study contributes to the literature by discursively ana-
lysing publicly available texts produced by the English Defence League in order to
determine the central tenets of the group’s ideological representation of Muslims
and analyse the claim that they are not racist.
In this article we show that despite the group’s claims to the contrary, EDL
Islamophobia is an example of (culturally) racist discourse construction. Through
the demarcation of a non-Muslim in-group, presented as superior in culture and
values, and a Muslim out-group, which is represented as threatening the privilege
and position of the former, EDL discourse functions ideologically to maintain
traditional ethno-cultural privilege and exclude Muslims from the national com-
munity. An analysis of the articles published on the EDL News section of its website
reveals three central narratives that make up the core of EDL discursive represen-
tation of Muslims; that Muslims are uniquely problematic, that ‘Islamic ideology’ is
the source of these problems, and that all Muslims share responsibility for reform-
ing their religion. These narratives are critiqued in order to identify the contestable
claims that the discourse rests upon, before moving on to demonstrate how EDL
Islamophobia functions as a culturally racist discourse. Muslim culture was
essentialised as an immutable obstacle to integration, and through strategies typical
of racist discourse construction, such as denials, projection, diminutives, and
positive-self/negative-other representations, the EDL rearticulated Islamophobia as
anti-racism and attempted to normalise it as the natural perspective of those
172 GEORGE KASSIMERIS, LEONIE JACKSON
© 2014 The Authors. British Journal of Politics and International Relations © 2014 Political Studies Association
BJPIR, 2015, 17(1)
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