Marine Le Pen at the Oxford Union

The controversial French politician Marine Le Pen has spoken at the Oxford Union, one of the world's most prestigious venues. I went there hoping to get in and see her; a friend of mine who's a Union member promised to meet me there and sign me in. The reason I wanted to see her speak is because her father, the former French presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, recently made some explosive comments about the Charlie Hebdo massacre. He said that in his opinion it was a false-flag attack carried out by an intelligence agency with the connivance of the French governmeny, see: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/paris-attacks-jeanmarie-le-pen-says-french-terror-attacks-were-work-of-western-intelligence-9985047.html. This echoes my own research very closely, but I never expected such a senior statesman as Le Pen to say such a thing, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/charlie-hebdo.html. Then again, I hear the president of Turkey made a similar statement. Le Pen has pointed out how amazingly convenient it was that one of the Kouachi brothers happened to drop his ID in the getaway car; reminiscent of the 9/11 hijacker's passport at Ground Zero. Both are planted evidence in my view. His daughter now leads his party and topped the polls at the recent European election; she has been trying to make the party more moderate, more like UKIP than the BNP, and is opposed to her father's remarks, but I still wonder if she'd let anything slip. Her party, the Front National, is the principle mouthpiece of the far right in France. It is for this reason that when I arrived at the gate of the Oxford Union a large crowd of protesters had gathered. They were holding placards, banging drums and chanting slogans like "LE PEN- NEVER AGAIN!" and "OXFORD UNION- SHAME ON YOU!" The event was covered by the news, see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-31155755.

As I walked past the demonstration and took my place in the queue waiting outside the gate the protesters glared balefully at us. I felt very uncomfortable because the event was organized by Unite Against Fascism, an organization capable of extreme behaviour. Organizations like the UAF, collectively known as "Antifa", campaign to get employees sacked from their jobs or have students sent down from universities; they post hate mail, burn books, make violent threats and throw stones at people's houses. What's more I myself might be on their hit-list and they have a database of infamous faces. Last year I was "reported" to the UAF by somebody when I announced that I was going to do my speech at BUFOG, somebody on a forum posted that they'd written an open letter to the Birmingham branch of the UAF:

"Dear UAF. I think you have a right to know that there will be a live event in Birmingham soon which will feature a speaker of a nature that opposes democratic values and community health. All the evidence is included in this email. His name is Ben Emlyn-Jones and he comes from Oxford. He will be addressing the Birmingham Unidentified Flying Object Group on Thursday the 15th of May this year. The reasons I think you should be alerted are-

1. He is mentally ill. He believes in flying saucers and space aliens, hence his appearance at a UFO group. He is clearly suffering from autism and also some kind of schizotypal delusional disorder, indeed he claims to have seen UFOs and ghosts and other fantastical nonsense like that. He also has spoken in Birmingham before where he did a two hour lecture claiming that zombies are real!? No, I’m not making this up. Sorry I never warned you beforehand then. He runs an organization called Hospital Porters Against the New World Order. He’s a big fan of David Icke who famously believes that the Queen is secretly a lizard monster from outer space.

2. He’s a '9/11 truther', which means he thinks 9/11 was done by the US Government as an 'inside job'. This makes him a fascist crackpot (Christopher Hitchens)

3. He believes that the world is controlled by a single secret entity which he calls 'Illuminati' or 'New World Order'. He is a raving nutjob firebrand who supports almost every brain-dead conspiracy theory you can think of. The thing is when he says 'Illuminati' he really means Jews. He is using code, as the dedicated campaigner against hate-speech in Canada, Richard Warman, has shown. Emlyn-Jones is actually a Nazi anti-Semite.

4. He’s a racist piece of white supremacist scum who hates black people and would be in the Ku Klux Klan if he lived in America! He wears blackface makeup to mock President Barack Obama! Why do you think he looks like a skinhead? Because he IS one.

5. He hates Muslims too and is probably in the EDL. He mocks them in one of his 'comedy' sketches. He got sacked from his job as a hospital porter for making this film, quite rightly so!

Please do everything you can to stop this individual infecting Birmingham with his Nazi hatemongering, racist, demented drivel. I have shown you all the evidence in words from his own lips to prove that he really is exactly what I say he is. Thank you."

I have consulted a solicitor over this matter and am in the process of tracking down the individual responsible. It hasn't helped that a former friend of mine of Facebook is also spreading rumours that I'm a racist and misogynist; mud flung by Antifa is hard to wash off. Luckily anybody who knows me will not believe these lies. However these so-called anti-fascists tend not to take much notice of retractions. See how they pelted David Icke with pies in a bookshop in Canada (from 39 mins): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2ypYcZ7qfw. It struck me that there were only two policemen outside in the street; all the others were inside guarding Marine Le Pen. The UAF outnumbered us considerably and could charge into us if they wanted.

The protesters did manage to cover the ground around the gates forcing the staff inside to shut them so a few of us in the queue couldn't get in; I heard that the seats were almost full by then anyway. Some of them scaled the fence and jumped into the grounds to be ejected by the police and Le Pen's personal bouncers. Their objection is that the Oxford Union is giving a platform to a "fascist" and therefore promoting "fascism". How do we know Marine Le Pen is a fascist? Because the UAF tell us she is. We can't know by listening to her ourselves, if the UAF had their way, because they'd shut down all her platforms. We just have to take their word for it! This is all very Orwellian I think. In any situation when there is official censorship there has to be, by definition, an "enlightened elite" who sit around a table vetting everything and everyone, deciding what we, the ignorant masses, get to see and not see. These people don't seem to realize that any platform, even the Oxford Union, is a double-edged sword. I personally disagree with most of Marine Le Pen's views. She has made a vocal stance for the anti-immigration lobby whereas I think that is a mistake, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/illegal-immigrants-and-proud.html. However the best way to deal with somebody whom you disagree with is to let them have their say and then explain why they're wrong. Don't tell them to shut up; that will turn them into a free speech martyr and ghettoize them. Then their ideas will fester, preying on the immature, disillusioned and desperate who can never hear them detracted and so will believe them blindly. To have her policies demolished by a wrecking ball of logic in a free and open debate would be the biggest blow Marine Le Pen could endure. I remember when Nick Griffin of the BNP was due to appear on Question Time there was a similar protest outside the BBC, but when Griffin got in front of the cameras he made an utter pig's arse of himself in front of millions of viewers and the BNP dropped several percent in the opinions polls; it was one of the most amusing episodes of QT ever, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iKfrY9l2kY. At one point I yelled at one of the protesters: "Don't tell me what to think!" The mob was right up close to us now as we were near to the gate. Some of them had earlier blocked the gate and so it was locked from the inside. They weren't violent, but they were yelling loudly and pointing fingers at us. Some of them were wearing facemasks to hide their identity and one was waving the flag of the Communist Party. It was getting cold and my feet were numb; there were only about ten of us still there, but we were staying put. The crowd had chanted at us "GO HOME! GO HOME!" and I felt I had to wait there just to defy them and make a stand for free speech. The protest broke up when it was announced that Ms Le Pen had finished her speech and so I left. As I walked up Cornmarket Street I saw a squad of policemen guarding the alleyway that leads to the back entrance of the Union and across the road in Market Street a car with blacked out windows and a gaggle of men in suits stood waiting. So that was how they planned to get Ms Le Pen out. I considered waiting to see if there was a chance to speak to her when she made her exit, but the expressions on the faces of the men in suits discouraged me. I hear she can't speak English; she used an interpreter for her speech. How much did she really know anyway? Would she let anything slip to me personally? She's spoken out against her father's "conspiracy theory". Interestingly a few days after he made those remarks, Jean-Marie Le Pen narrowly escaped with his life when a fire broke out in his house... coincidence? See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11370225/Jean-Marie-Le-Pen-injured-in-house-fire.html.