Paul Weston

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Paul Weston is a British counterjihad activist.[1]

Weston, a former UK Independence Party parliamentary candidate, was chairman of the far-right British Freedom Party from November 2011[2] until he was replaced by the former EDL deputy leader Kevin Carroll in early January 2013.[3]

He is now the chairman of Liberty GB, which describes itself as 'a patriotic counter-jihad party for Christian civilisation, Western rights and freedoms, British culture, animal welfare and capitalism'. [4]

Weston is standing in the 2015 general election against Labour Luton South MP Gavin Shuker, who has branded him as 'racist'.

Weston, who is from Dorset, has described Luton as 'a hotbed of [Islamic] extremism' and is calling to 'remove the "supremacist" ideology of Islam from Britain'.

Activities

Arrested on suspicion of religious or racial harassment

Weston was arrested by Hampshire Constabulary after complaints from members of the public about his reading of a Winston Churchill quote describing Islam as “militant” and “retrograde” through a megaphone outside Winchester’s Guildhall on Saturday afternoon.

The Southern Daily Echoreported that Weston had addressed passers-by with an excerpt from former Prime Minister Churchill’s book The River War, written in 1899 while he was a British army officer in the Sudan. [5]

UKIP candidate

Weston stood as the UKIP parliamentary candidate for the constituency of Cities of London & Westminster in the 2010 general election, gaining 664 votes.[6]

Weston later left UKIP, claiming that after Nigel Farage replaced Lord Pearson as leader the party had gone soft on Islam. [7]

Israel visit with far right European party leaders

In December 2010, Weston visited Israel with a counterjihad delegation which included "Filip de Winter of the Vlaams Belang; Heinz Christian Strache of FPO and Rene Stadtkewitz, leader of the Geert Wilders inspired and recently formed German Freedom Party, or Die Freiheit", according to Weston.[8] Haaretz columnist Adar Primor, described the visit as part of "the very unholy alliance between figures on Israel's right and extreme nationalists and even anti-Semites in Europe that is gaining momentum in the Holy Land."[9]

Views

Following the Utoeya massacre in Norway, Weston attacked the BBC in an article which appeared on the English Defence League website, writing:

have written before that a future religious civil-war will be preceded by tit-for-tat small scale atrocities and now we have seen the start. By shamefully closing down a desperately needed debate in order to pursue perverse and politically driven objectives, Paxman, the BBC and the entire political liberal/left have ensured the inevitability of potential carnage and thus have the blood of future innocents on their hands alongside those of the inevitable psychopathic perpetrator.[10]

Criticism

Liberal Democrat candidate Antony Hook has described Liberty GB as holding “unpleasant and deeply Islamophobic” views.


Affiliations

Conferences

Publications

Gates of Vienna posts

EDL website posts

Contact

External Resources

Notes

  1. Paul Weston, Ethnically Cleansing the English, Gates of Vienna, 12 March 2010.
  2. New Executive Council Announced, British Freedom Party, 9 November 2011
  3. Kevin Carroll becomes British Freedom chairman BritishFreedom.org (link now dead)
  4. Liberty GB Facebook page, accessed 10 November 2014
  5. European election candidate arrested on suspicion of 'religious or racial harassment', Southern Daily Echo, May 2014, accessed 20 January 2015
  6. Candidate: Paul Weston, UK Political Database, telegraph.co.uk, accessed 29 June 2010.
  7. Bob Pitt, Paul Weston arrested on suspicion of religious or racial harassment, Islamophobia Watch, April 28, 2014, accessed 20 January 2015
  8. Paul Weston, The Metaphorical Front Line of Islam, Gates of Vienna, 5 December 2010.
  9. Adar Primor, The unholy alliance between Israel's Right and Europe's anti-Semites, Haaretz, 12 December 2010.
  10. Paul Weston, The BBC, Breivik, The EDL and Islam, English Defence League, 30 July 2011.