Alan Ayling

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Alan Ayling is a British businessman. In December 2011, he was accused by the Sunday Times of being a counterjihad activist operating under the pseudonym Alan Lake. Lake had previously come to attention as a businessman with links to the English Defence League (EDL).

In October 2009, the anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate described Lake as a 45 -year-old businessman from Highgate, North London, who claims to have made his money through computers, and runs a series of intranet services for far-right groups around the world:

In addition to funding materials and publicity, Lake has established a website that he hopes will become a clearing house for the EDL and like-minded organisations. He says that people in the movement must choose their roles. Some can debate on forums, some can be experts on the Koran. He is, however, quick to distance himself from fascist organisations and one of his only demands of the EDL in return for his funding is that it distances itself from groups such as the British National Party.

The Guardian reported in September 2009 that Lake was advising the EDL:

"We are catching a baby at the start of gestation," said Lake, who is considering funding the EDL. "We have a problem with numbers. We have an army of bloggers [in the far-right] but that's not going to get things done.

"Football fans are a potential source of support. They are a hoi polloi that gets off their backsides and travels to a city and they are available before and after matches."

According to the Telegraph, Lake "admits to having met Robinson and some 10 other EDL supporters, but denies any connection to the Far Right."

In April 2010, Lake admitted to a Norwegian TV channel that he had helped to fund the EDL.

Sweden Democrats Seminar

Lake spoke at a seminar organised organised by Kent Ekeroth of the Sweden Democrats in Malmö on 6 September 2009.

Lake referred his audience to a number of people associated with the counterjihad movement as experts in Islam:

We have got people out there who can win these arguments, people like Robert Spencer, Daniel Pipes, Brigitte Gabriel.

How many experts do you want? There's Robert Spencer, Daniel Pipes, Bill Warner, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Brigitte Gabriel, Geert Wilders is an expert, fantastic, he can argue any of these, Pamela Geller, Jay Smith.

Describing the pitfalls of 'counterjihad work', Lake went on to add:

It's difficult to form alliances in general and its difficult to form alliances between the groups. The groups tend to fragment a lot. There's loads of counterjihad groups out there. They don't work very well together, and some groups appear to be on the wrong side or neutral. It's astounding to find some Jews that actually support Islamic groups. We're not so suprised to find left-wingers in there, but it strictly speaking doesn't make sense.

Lake claimed that intimidation contributed to paranoia among counterjihad activists:

You've got to have pseudonyms, you've got to have, you know, five email addresses, one for your friends, one for your counterjihad, one for your really extreme counterjihad comments, and all the rest of it.

He went on to describe the role of the internet in counterjihad strategy:

The solution for the problem of numbers is to build alliances. I've made a website, it's called 4freedoms.com [actual url not clear from video], which is a community or it's a hub where lots of people can go and make their own groups. There was a preceding website to that called mnemosyne [name indistinct in video] , but the security was so tight it was very difficult to expand it. So at this website you can go and make your own room, so that room could be a Swedish Democrats room, or it could be a room for the Free Press Society so from that room, it can be a platform to reach out and make messages to the web. You could have two rooms. Another room could be the private room, and the private room would be one where you have discussions which we don't want to be public.

It is quite crazy I always think. I'm sure lots of you have looked at Jihad Watch. You look at some of these blogs out there on the web, and some of the discussions really shouldn't be had in public, certainly discussions about strategy.

In an apparent reference to his links with the English Defence League, Lake added:

Another strategy we're trying to do in the UK, is reach out to more physical groups like football fans, get them involved. Well actually they're contacting us, because they're concerned, and these are people who are happy to go out on the street. I mean your average intellectual is happy typing on his PC, but we've reached the end of that road. You're not going to get a fat lot more mileage out of that.

You can blog and write letters to your MP as much as you like. Your MP doesn't care, he doesn't care what you say. The only thing that is going to make people start caring again, that is our nobility, our elite leaders, is if we have more numbers, and if we sometimes get out on the street. Ten they'll care but they don't care about our words. They don't care whether we're right or wrong and they don't read the blogs.

So if you can engage with the physical groups, people who are quite happy to go on the street, the thing about the football fans is they go see a match, and then after the match, they're already there on the street, so if you can then bring them off for a demo that works really well. You get the numbers. And they're not scared as well. Everybody else is scared of being beaten up and attacked. They're not scared of that.

Lake also advocated Buddhists, Hindhus, Sikhs, gays and women, arguing that "All non-Muslims are under threat from Islam."

4freedoms.com

Lake's 4freedoms.com site is a social network on the Ning platform. The site lists both the English Defence League and the International Civil Liberties Alliance as affiliates. Both sites have reciprocal links back to 4Freedoms.com.

On the Utoya massacre

Following the Utoya Massacre in Norway on 24 July 2011, Lake commented:

Apparently, in a long screed Anders Behring Breivik posted on line, he did this attack to protest against the way that Islam is taking over large parts of Europe. By attacking the leftist politicians that are enabling this, the chickens have actually come home to roost - altho I'm sure it won't be depicted that way.

External resources

• Puppet master: Searchlight investigates the man behind the English Defence League, Searchlight, March 2011.
• EDL financier Alan Lake talks of executing people on Norwegian TV., Liveleak.com, 24 July 2011.
• Jamie Doward, Vicus Burger ande James Burton, EDL leader demanded debate on killing David Cameron and archbishop, guardian.co.uk, 30 July 2011.
• Gwladys Fouche, Bullet holes mark Norway islet, officials voice regret, Reuters, 3 October 2011.
• Richard Bartholomew, Oslo Police Prosecutor “Would Like to Speak To” Alan Lake, Bartholomew's Ntes on Religion, 4 October 2011.

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