Fighting over the flag

In my previous post I discussed evidence pointing to the white dragon flag - the symbol of the ethnic English nationalist movement - having been created by a neo-Nazi group called Woden's Folk. Exhibit A in my argument was a thread at the Anglo-Saxon Foundation, a forum with close ties to Woden's Folk, in which a member openly admitted that WF had created the flag.

I would like to take a closer look at that thread...

The thread was started by a member called Valkyrie, who correctly pointed out that the only historical instances of the white dragon being used as a symbol of the English are found in a small body of legend that may be of Welsh origin:




The other ASFers were outraged at the suggestion that their beloved white dragon might actually be a Welsh symbol, and strove to prove Valkyrie wrong. They failed.

Some members pointed to Saxons and other Germanic peoples using dragons as emblems, which misses the point- Valkyrie was asking specifically about the white dragon:

A fine example of moving the goalposts is provided by Andy Cooper. Apparently colourblind, he seems to think that Harold flying a gold dragon is evidence that the Anglo-Saxons had a white dragon emblem:

Seaxan, the board owner, accused Valkyrie of being a "Facepunch troll" (Facepunch being forum that was making fun of the ASF at the time - had the discussion taken place a few months before or after, she would likely be accused of being a UAF troll instead)

Paul Young - a Woden's Folk cultist who posts under the pseudonym Yngvi - was similarly outraged at Valkyrie casting doubt on the symbol of his movement:

He goes on to insist that the white dragon is "an ancient symbol of our ancestors" and then claims that Valkyrie prefers the rainbow flag of gay pride - because anybody who questions the historical basis of the white dragon flag must be homosexual, apparently:

Paul Young then proceeds to go completely off the deep end, offering the completely baseless theory that the dragon in the Book of Revelation represents the English, and that the fallen angels are actually Angles:

Inevitably, the thread then collapses into common-or-garden racism:

It is pretty clear from this discussion that the ASFers have a deep emotional attachment to the idea that the Anglo-Saxons of pre-Norman England were boldly marching into battle beneath white dragon banners, the symbol of their superior race. Anybody who points out the complete lack of any historical evidence for this would be most unwelcome, as Valkyrie found out...

English Advocates plan to strip ethnic minorities of their rights

English Advocates - a Facebook page run by Lee Ingram - has started a new campaign. It hopes to ensure that all ethnic minority citizens will be barred from holding positions of authority in England, and that anyone who stands in the way of this movement will be arrested.

The Advocates believe themselves to have solid legal grounds for this endeavour, using a quotation from the Bill of Rights 1688 as a basis:

In their rush to justify their racist agenda, however, the English Advocates have grossly misrepresented the document in question.

Here is the relevant passage in full:

New Oaths of Allegiance, &c.
And that the Oathes hereafter mentioned be taken by all Persons of whome the Oathes of Allegiance and Supremacy might be required by Law instead of them And that the said Oathes of Allegiance and Supremacy be abrogated. 

Allegiance.
I A B doe sincerely promise and sweare That I will be faithfull and beare true Allegiance to their Majestyes King William and Queene Mary Soe helpe me God. 

Supremacy.
I A B doe sweare That I doe from my Heart Abhorr, Detest and Abjure as Impious and Hereticall this damnable Doctrine and Position That Princes Excommunicated or Deprived by the Pope or any Authority of the See of Rome may be deposed or murdered by their Subjects or any other whatsoever. And I doe declare That noe Forreigne Prince Person Prelate, State or Potentate hath or ought to have any Jurisdiction Power Superiority Preeminence or Authoritie Ecclesiasticall or Spirituall within this Realme Soe helpe me God.

So, what the Advocates are quoting is part of a pair of oaths. Oaths are binding only to people who actually make them, and the Bill of Rights does not specify who is required to make these oaths.

In this day and age, of course, nobody is required to make either of these oaths - the fact that one of them mentions William III and Mary II indicates just how outdated this section of the Bill of Rights is. These oaths are historical artifacts, nothing more.

This is not the only fatal flaw in the English Advocates' plan. Notice that the second oath refers specifically to positions of religious authority; this is evident even in the section quoted by Ingram and company, who are apparently unaware of what the word "ecclesiastical" means.

As anybody with any knowledge of English history will tell you, the Bill of Rights was drafted at a time of great strife between Catholics and Protestants. The reference to "noe Forreigne Prince Person Prelate, State or Potentate" is not directed at immigrants or descendants of immigrants living in England, but rather to individuals and bodies based in foreign countries - it is an obvious allusion to the Roman Catholic Church.

Lee Ingram, the man behind English Advocates.

To recap, Lee Ingram and his comrades are making three fatal errors in their reading of this document:

1: That the oaths are legally binding to everyone in the country, even those who have not actually made them;
2: That "foreign" refers to ancestry, rather than geographic location;
3: That the second oath covers all positions of authority, rather than merely religious authority.

Nice try, Lee. But while the replies to your post demonstrate that your followers have fallen for your misrepresentation of the Bill of Rights, not everyone is quite so gullible. Any legal expert would laugh their socks off if you came to them with this nonsense.

This is not the first time that Ingram has expressed interest in removing the rights of ethnic minorities.  Take a look at these posts he made at the now-defunct Cross of St. George forum back in 2007 (the thread is archived here):

The article he links to, with obvious approval, is hosted on the white supremacist website Heretical Press. Written by Kenneth McKilliam, a Nazi sympathiser who was closely involved with the BNP during its early days, the article argues that Jews should not be allowed to hold positions of authority in Britain:

Being prohibited aliens by the Edict of Expulsion Jews have no right to sit in our houses of parliament, nor on our local government councils. They have no right to be in the judiciary nor to hold office in the executive of government nor in the police force. All purported laws and purported acts of parliament in which Jews have taken part in the voting are illegal, unconstitutional: null and void. 

Stripping ethnic minority groups of their rights, it would seem, is a cause dear to Lee Ingram's heart.

Englisc Resistance

I decided to make a post about a racist Facebook page called Englisc Resistance, partly because I've seen a degree of misinformation about it being spread in antifascist circles. During the course of my research, however, the page closed down - although you can see an archive of it here. The Englisc nationalist movement can notch up yet another casualty...

As far as I can tell, the first significant mention of Englisc Resistance in an antifascist context is in this Vice article from September 12 2014, which briefly namechecks it as one of multiple "small but likeminded ethnic English groups".

Three days later Vice.com published an article by a different author, about a protest that was attended by members of far-right groups; "From the flags, it looked like it included the National Front (NF) and someone from the Englisc Resistance (that is the correct spelling)", states the article. This comment is illustrated with a photo showing the flags referred to:

This is where things have started to become distorted. The author appears to be working on the assumption that the symbol on the left-hand flag, showing a white dragon, a stylised swastika/fylfot and the slogan "Englisc - We Fear No Foe", is associated specifically with Englisc Resistance. This is presumably because both use the antiquated spelling "Englisc".

What the author seems unaware of is that Englisc Resistance is one part of a larger movement which also includes the Anglo-Saxon Foundation, the Steadfast Trust and other groups. Multiple people within this movement - which I have termed Englisc nationalism - have used the logo in question; for example, the Anglo-Saxon Foundation member Wodensson has it as his forum avatar:

I've also noticed a variation of the symbol, with St. George's Cross instead of a swastika, being used by some of the slightly less extreme nationalist groups:

A few months after the Vice.com articles went up, the Bristol Antifascists blog ran a list of various far-right groups. Influenced by Vice's work, this list includes Englisc Resistance in relation to the "Fear No Foe' swastika logo:

The description beneath the photo actually fits Englisc nationalism as a whole - the blog is confusing Englisc Resistance with the wider movement to which it belongs. The reference to burning crosses in forests is clearly derived from the first Vice article, which covers an unspecified nationalist group engaging in this activity but gives no indication that Englisc Resistance was responsible.

The following month, Brighton Antifascists published a list of far-right symbols which identifies the "Fear No Foe" swastika as the logo of Englisc Resistance:

 

I believe the man in this photograph to be Piers Mellor, who briefly appeared in the Exposure: Charities Behaving Badly talking about his involvement in the BNP, British Movement and National Front. Here is Mellor's response to the above snippet:

To give Mellor his due, I believe that he's entirely right in this tweet.

Having - hopefully - cleared up some misconceptions about Englisc Resistance, let's take a look at exactly what the people behind this now-defunct Facebook page stand for...
To start with, ER engaged in the tried-and-true Englisc nationalist practice of referring to non-white people as "orcs" and gloating over their deaths:

Despite being ostensibly focused on England r ather than the southern USA, the page showed a strange fascination with the Confederate flag. The first of these images is my favourite, making a nonsensical relation between the losing side of the American Civil War and the Anglo-Saxon festival of Eostre:

There are flags which Englisc Resistance was less keen on, however - such as the rainbow flag of gay rights:

In this post, Englisc Resistance republished an antisemitic cartoon from Der Sturmer:

In July the group posted a set of photos from a military exhibition; I did some digging and found that these images come from the War and Peace Revival in Kent. Predictably, English Resistance focused on the Nazi exhibits:

Englisc Resistance also appreciated this display of Ku Klux Klan memorabilia:

Who was behind Englisc Resistance? Well, the page was rather secretive on this front. Just look at the crudely scrawled-out faces in these photographs:

(Incidentally, the last of these images is from a Woden's Folk event at Avebury - more photos from the occasion can be seen in this video)

I couldn't help but notice that all three photos appear to show the same person. Each time the subject shares a similar build and, in two of them, even wears the same coat. So who is this mystery man?

Well, looking closely at the second image, I spotted something awfully familiar about that half-shaved haircut. He reminded me of Darren Clarke, one of the Steadfast Trust supporters seen in the Exposure: Charities Behaving Badly documentary. Here's a comparison:

I then compared the other two photos of the Englisc Resistance mystery man with one of Darren Clarke, taken at a March for England event:

Yup. I think we have our man.

Who is Darren Clarke? Well, when I first mentioned him on this blog, he was just another racist in the Englisc nationalist movement. He then went on to become the secretary of the Ipswich English Community Group. Not long afterwards he became an unlikely TV star when he turned up in the undercover footage seen in the Exposure documentary. I later demonstrated that Clarke was almost certainly the author of the book White Wyrm Rising: A Journey into Modern English Nationalism; in the same post, I provided strong evidence that Clarke is also the identity of the Stormfront member "Atrociter".

There is further evidence tying Clarke to Englisc Resistance. He was a regular poster in the page's comments section; here he is, showing his support for the Confederate flag:

Like many in the Englisc nationalist movement, Clarke likes to paint himself as an ordinary Englishman. But how many ordinary Englishmen feel such a passionate commitment to the cause of the Confederate States? How many would literally fly the flag for a neo-Nazi cult, as Clarke appears to be doing in the photo of the Woden's Folk gathering?

I will be keeping an eye out for Englisc Resistance in case it turns up again in a different form...

The last days of the Anglo-Saxon Foundation?

The Anglo-Saxon Foundation has been one of the richest sources of material for this blog, so it is with mixed feelings that I report on the likelihood of its impending demise.

The ASF is run by a Manchester-based racist who calls himself Seaxan. Back in April, Seaxan made a lengthy post announcing his retirement, and the closure of the ASF if nobody steps in to save it. He also talks about setting up a private forum, but it seems most unlikely that this would attract anyone outside of the ASF's dwindling pool of regulars.

The post is not publicly viewable, but here's a screencap I dug up with my mole powers:

In fact, Seaxan has been pouring this kind of seemingly drunken rambling onto his forum for some time now, these two long-winded rants being typical of his posting style:

Seaxan is, to put it mildly, an odd chap. He seems to live in some sort of parallel universe, one in which the British police force is "gladly beating and arresting white racist Heathens for the sake of diversity" (er, got any evidence of this taking place, Seaxan?)

As the above screencaps demonstrate, Seaxan believes that he is fighting in a war. If this is the case, then he is practising the redoubtable martial technique which military experts refer to as "sitting around ranting about gay people":

Seaxan is also a graphic designer, although his attempts at setting up an English nationalist graphic design outfit never really took hold. A few years back he set up a sticker and t-shirt label called White Wulf Merchandise, but he had to abort this endeavour in late 2011 due to a lack of sales (good lord, who could possibly have predicted that...?)

Still from this video of the "English Folcmoot" in 2011. The video's description claims that White Wulf Merchandise had a stall at the event, and this would appear to be it: just compare the items on sale there with the t-shirt and sticker designs posted here.

And as I showed in my history of the ASF, Seaxan was involved with a similarly ill-fated graphic design website called Saxon North; this site was run by someone called Jamie. I do not have much information on Jamie, but in researching Englisc nationalist circles on Facebook I came across a Manchester-based nationalist graphic designer named Jamie Ashcroft:

A coincidence? A business partner of Seaxan's? Seaxan himself, maybe? Who knows?
Ah, the mysterious world of nationalist graphic design.

As a final note, Seaxan's domain Englisc-Gateway.com is set to expire on 4 September. I wonder if anyone will put it to good use after that; perhaps I could buy it to use as a gay dating website.

Hmmm, the design will need bit of an overhaul, though...

Much better.