The EDL are not heroes.
As you said, the EDL are ex-football hooligans (which is bad enough). Sorry, but they are not simple decent patriots, many DO have links to neo-nazi and far right racist/antisemitic groups. If you think they are non-racist patriots, you are very nieve.
Vanders and I and a few others here are British. We know what the EDL are better than you or anyone. And they ARE a group with questionable links and identity.
Just because they oppose the Muslims dosent make them heroes or right. You want to support us, then support the decent British person who opposes extremism and mass immigration but does it without hatred of skin colour.
Any advice for the US?
I know a couple of them personally and I am more interested in what they say about their group than what ultra-biased critics like the Anti-Fascists have to say.
The fact that they have put a wet blanket on some of Anjem Choudary’s planned activities is good enough for me.
Football hooligans? Formerly, yes. Some of them. And God bless them! The right needs more tough guys and fewer dilettantes on its side to match the strong-arm tactics of the left-—mainly union goons in this country.
I wish we had an analogous organization in the US. Confront the SEIU with a group like the EDL and you won’t get anywhere near the usual nastiness from them. Right now, they feel very safe in attacking blue-haired tea partiers (I’m one myself, only balding, not gray) and female candidates. If the TP’s had a contingent of EDL-type guardians, things might be different. Lefty thugs are known cowards. Beating up on wheelchair-bound flag salesmen is typical of their style.
Get a clue, please. The bad guys in the world today are Muslims and leftists, not patriots and lovers of Western culture like my hero Geert Wilders.
The EDL looks like it’s doing the hard work the rest of the “conservatives” in England won’t do.