Kit

An open letter to Britain First by Kit

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Reuters Jo Cox MemorialI can completely understand why there is so much anger directed towards you, Britain First at the suggestion your party could be implicated in such a brutal murder. It is a perfectly reasonable assumption for most people that your poisonous ideology could have consumed a person to such an extent, it’s led to loss of life. But whether you are indirectly involved or not, you need to take a look at WHY people have made assumptions about you.

Britain First, this should be a wake up call for you. The reason so many people jumped to conclusions is because of the hate and lies you swamp social media with every single day. You use vile and threatening language towards your opposition. You have threatened to hang people you label ‘traitors’. You have described MP’s as ‘creatures’ and you have threatened some of them with ‘direct action’. You post up publicity stunts where you deliberately provoke communities and start the camera rolling when you get a reaction.

You deliberately mislead your followers by posting videos without source, context or dates and you delete comments pointing out the facts. You have created an echo chamber by deleting dissent but leave up disgusting, hateful and often threatening comments. You use military terms such as “foot soldiers” to describe members of your political party and wear uniform. You’ve videoed yourselves attending an “activist training camp” and you have begged for donations to set up fight clubs. You use terms such as “rise up”, “fight back” and post hundreds of images relating to war. You are encouraging violence!

You can no longer try to distance yourselves from assumptions people make about your organisation. You cannot escape the depth of feeling people have towards you. You cannot blame anyone other than yourselves for the assumptions people are making. You may or may not have blood on your hands this time but it’s only a matter a time before you do.

Stop the propaganda, stop the lies and stop the hate. Most importantly, you need to accept responsibility for your actions and change now.

Why I Expose Britain First – Kit

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As Landlord decided to write a blog about why he decided to join the EBF, I thought I (Kit) would give it a go.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always challenged injustice, even if it goes against popular opinion. I was always the child that asked ‘but why’ about everything, even if it got me into trouble, which it often did.

BF EBF Kit injustice mosque invasion

Since the birth of the Internet, I’ve kept up with the news online. What struck me was the increasing lack of empathy and judgemental attitudes, coming from people on news and social media sites. There is one story I recall, it was on my local news site. It was about an elderly man who forgot to change the batteries in his smoke alarm. His house burned down. He escaped with his life but he lost everything and he didn’t have insurance. I was utterly appalled by the comments on the article. There was little sympathy for him at all, in fact most people said it was his own fault. When I commented to offer my sympathy and to express my horror at the lack of empathy, I was insulted and called a do-gooder. It’s all too familiar now.

This brings me onto Britain First. I stumbled across it because a family member had shared a meme. I clicked on it and at first I thought that it seemed to be a place in which to debate things people seem to be worried about. So I started joining in. I was a bit confused with some of the memes and stories because they weren’t factually correct. I could see people were getting angry about things that weren’t true, so I started to provide more factual sources. I wasn’t called a do-gooder then. I was subjected to a tirade of abuse on their page and in private messages. Then I was blocked from commenting. I saw that the people who had abused me were allowed to remain, that was an injustice! I could not believe that there was a page like it. I was immediately concerned about the nastiness that was allowed to breed there while any dissent was blocked.

I started to do some research about Britain First. It didn’t take me very long to find groups commenting about them. I found Exposing Britain First. I could see that EBF were challenging Britain First and more and more people were joining who’d had the same experiences. So I started joining in, helping with research. I couldn’t challenge Britain First on their own page but I wanted to let them know that they may have created an echo chamber of hate but they could and should be challenged. So when I was offered an admin roll, I jumped at the chance and here I am.

Exposing Britain First doesn’t just deal exclusively with exposing Britain First. It also provides a space for people to counter some of pure hatred that exists on many social media platforms. It’s really helped to know just how many lovely caring people there are and that empathy does still exist. – Kit