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.
