Be Excellent To Each Other

Man I hate people. If I'd seen a police on my way back I might have said something.

Glad you got out intact.

Yeah, I suppose it could've been worse by what you describe.

I saw on East Midlands today video taken of those matching for Freedom Against Facists (or whoever the anti-march people were calling themselves) breaking away from the police to get to the EDL who were clearly just young Asian men looking for a ruck. No doubt there were white EDL members doing the same although it wasn't shown. Scumbags.

Seriously though, why let two marches for polar opposite groups happen on the same day? It just seems like madness to me.

I'm sorry that happened to you, mrak. It would have shaken me up terribly.

I don't think you can justify it by telling yourself that you can understand these men's anger at rallies and racism that has been unfair to them. They are themselves racist, and that's the short message of it.

People who go around trying to intimidate others are absolute jerks. I wonder how many people they scared/upset/intimidated that day? The EDL and these idiots alike are all cut from the same cloth of stupidity.

I hope your guitar is wonderful and will bring you many many hours of joy. Try and forget about your trip and have a good strum.

We happened to go into Birmingham when they were having a rally last year, and they seemed to be *exactly* like the stereotypes you'd expect. A couple of bus loads went past with them chanting, jeering and banging on the glass, generally trying to intimidate everyone.

The police were doing a decent job of keeping them herded away from the rest of us, but the atmosphere through the whole city centre was very tense so we didn't stop long.

Apparently the only arrests were when they started fighting amongst themselves....

The Police would have done nothing because the 15 guys where Asian and they are a “minority” so as a white person you are automatically in the wrong.

Living near Rushholme in Manchester gives you a fine appreciation for the racism that occurs everywhere. During Eid was especially bad because the main roads would get taken over by people beeping, honking, banging on car windows, and generally being really fucking annoying. I remember being particularly annoyed because that level of public disruption on a main road wouldn't be tolerated as it not been a religious 'ethnic' celebration of some kind. The specific racism in this example is when my white friends were trying to pass through the area and were told directly to 'get out of my country whiteboy' by the charming folk hooliganising the street at the time.

Yeah, us poor white people. If only someone would do something.

I'm not taking racism on the chin because of ancestral heritage and misguided generational guilt. That's bullshit.

Yeah, and people aren't remotely afraid to call those on the march a bunch of absolute wankers.

Or Thatcher's funeral? Or the London marathon?

I lived in Rusholme for two years though, and know what you mean. Bloody scary!

A funeral isn't a religious or ethnic celebration, and the marathon is a sporting event.

And, my point being that people would feel it very easy to publically criticise both of the above without risk of being tagged as racist.

So we're treating the white religious assholes the same way as the "ethnic" ones. What was your point there again?

The point was we're clearly not treating them the same way. Do keep up.

How are we treating them differently? I don't like orange marches and wish they didn't happen, but they're legal and carry on regardless of what I think. The same thing can be said of your Eid celebrators. To quote the specific words of yours that I've been referring to here throughout, both involve a "level of public disruption on a main road" being "tolerated". If there's a difference here you haven't drawn it, hence my question.