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alp227

(32,025 posts)
Sat Mar 31, 2012, 07:21 PM Mar 2012

(white nationalist) EDL summit in Denmark humiliated by low attendance

Anti-fascist demonstrators outnumbered far-right supporters more than 20 to one in Denmark as an English Defence League-led attempt to form a pan-European movement was humiliated.

Estimates suggested as few as 160 defence league members from several countries gathered at the inaugural far-right summit in Aarhus for the European counter-jihad meeting, devised to "send a clear message to the leaders of Europe" that Islamism would not be tolerated.

EDL leader Tommy Robinson admitted only 15 supporters from England made the trip, despite earlier speculation that hundreds might attend. By comparison, an anti-fascist demonstration in the same city, to protest against the arrival of the EDL, attracted up to 4,000 people.

Fears of violence had seen local police mount their biggest operation on the Jutland peninsula with the tense atmosphere amplified by the start of the trial this month of Anders Behring Breivik, the far-right extremist and anti-Islamist who confessed to the murder of 77 people in Norway last July.

FULL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/31/edl-summit-denmark-low-attendance

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(white nationalist) EDL summit in Denmark humiliated by low attendance (Original Post) alp227 Mar 2012 OP
Oh, that's so sad. No one in Europe speaks English anymore, I guess. freshwest Mar 2012 #1
K&R for the lulz nt eppur_se_muova Mar 2012 #2
hee Liberal_in_LA Mar 2012 #3
Not surprising, given that just 8 months or so ago, one of their own massacred salin Mar 2012 #4
They should have fanned out to inflate their numbers like the teabaggers do. muntrv Apr 2012 #5

salin

(48,955 posts)
4. Not surprising, given that just 8 months or so ago, one of their own massacred
Sat Mar 31, 2012, 08:08 PM
Mar 2012

Norwegians in Oslo - for the same cause. Guessing that it isn't that the cause has diminished (though one would hope that was the case), but that the willingness to be overt about supporting such a cause has become a bit intimidating.

I was in Oslo, blocks from the attack, a few weeks before the attack, and a couple of months after the attack. Like 911, it traumatized a nation and a region.

Norway is a smaller country, and the percentage of the population lost in that attack was larger than what was lost here in the US on 911.

It isn't surprising that Denmark, with a long shared heritage with Norway - and a quick flight or boat rid away - would not be a place that this virulently racist (and potentially violent - as Breivik's massacre demonstrates) group would feel comfortable gathering and showing their public support for the beliefs that spawned the massacres.

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