As regular readers of this blog will by no doubt know, I see some value in the use of Non-Violent Direct Action (NVDA) as a method of protest against some of the problems facing Britain today and especially against some of the problems caused by the Establishment Left. NVDA could be used to highlight and inform the wider public about the various issues of concern that are rising up at present. NVDA may be an effective tool in the hands of clued-up patriots to oppose Islam, to promote a US style freedom of speech culture in the United Kingdom and mock and protest against a political class that gives the distinct impression that it cares little if anything for the plight of the ordinary struggling Briton.

But for NVDA to be effective and not counterproductive, it must be well planned, well targeted and carried out by the right people for the job. An action that took place last Saturday under the auspices of the Make Britain Great Again group was in my opinion the very opposite of effective, well planned, targeted or carried out by the right people for the job. This was also an action that turned out to be extremely counterproductive. I will try to analyse briefly each of the failures and make some constructive suggestions and give plaudits and criticism where necessary.

Many people who are aware of the politics scene in the United Kingdom may well have heard of the so called ‘invasion’ of Bookmarks a socialist bookshop in London. This occurred following a protest by MBGA against the removal from the Internet of conspiracy theory lunatic Alex Jones and which has, rightly in my view, become an issue of freedom of speech.

I became aware of this action via a Tweet from Tell Mama who were gleefully promoting a video carried by Right Wing Watch of what they claimed was a masked gang of thugs and MBGA activists trashing the bookshop. I watched the video which can be viewed below, and was extremely disturbed by it. I have not written much about this particular incident other than to express my displeasure to the organisers of it, as I wanted to see how this story developed and what facts emerged during the week.

Here’s the video put up by ‘Far Right Watch’ of the protest at the Bookmarks Bookshop in London

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=287&v=R9J6r9Q2DGI

The video showed an extremely badly planned and frankly ad hoc mission to challenge the Left wingery of a left wing bookshop. Now I can understand that the action of entering private property for protest is merely an analogue of actions taken by the Left against organisations that are claimed by the Left are ‘fascist’ or ‘far right’, but maybe we on the Right should be better than the thugs of the Left? This bookshop mission was the tit for tat equivalent of the Left wing lunatics who entered a World War II themed café and whinged on about ‘xenophobia’. If this target was chosen for tit for tat reasons, then that is a very childish reason. I am highly uneasy about activists targeting bookshops as not only is it a curtailment of the rights of the shop to sell what they damn well want it is also very easy for the opposition to sell such a protest as an example of ‘far right authoritarianism’. If this was a protest at a public library where politically biased censorship was being imposed, then that is public property that we all pay for and some form of peaceful protest might be justified in that situation, but a bookshop well it’s a free market and there is less justification for such a protest.

If the organisers of the protest considered it wise to engage in debate with those in a socialist bookshop, something that I don’t think I would have sanctioned, with the hope of changing minds and exposing the denizens of the shop to intellectual diversity, then there may have been a better way of doing it than this. I would have preferred to see something a little more subtle that didn’t automatically alienate either the customers or the management of the shop. This more nuanced sort of action, although it may be derided by the more ‘shouty’ types out there, might have changed some minds, which is something we want isn’t it? Better planning and targeting for this sort of action would certainly not have handed the left a propaganda victory on a silver platter as this action did. Poor, ad hoc planning went a long way to turning an unwise idea into a public relations catastrophe.

I move now from commenting about how poorly targeted and organised this action was to the behaviour of some of the people involved in it. On viewing the video I did not see any overt or obvious problems coming from the core MBGA team of Luke Nash-Jones and others involved in managing this organisation. From what I could see, Mr Nash Jones in particular was trying to be calm and looked like he was trying to engage the shop’s staff members in some form of debate. However the behaviour of some others, people whom Mr Nash-Jones describes as ‘third parties’ left a lot to be desired and bad behaviour has been mercilessly exploited by the Left. The piss-poor behaviour of at some of the third parties, in particular the man identified by Mr Nash-Jones as the YouTuber ‘Buska in the Park’, helped to turn was was merely an ill-advised protest, into a complete shit-show. In a statement given by Luke Nash-Jones on YouTube after coverage of the incident went somewhat viral, Mr Nash-Jones took great pains to distance MBGA from the actions of the third parties. MBGA has also banned ‘Buska’ from any further demonstration organised by MBGA. I would like to express my support for MBGA’s swift and justifiable actions in trying to deal with the problems caused by the third parties. They’ve lanced a boil that needed to be lanced swiftly.

I presume from the specific and publicly declared action of the MBGA to deal with the problems caused by ‘Buska’ that it was also he who was the extremely shouty one who is heard throughout the video shouting and screaming. In particular ‘Buska’, if it is he, disgraced himself and those around him by screaming ‘paedophile’ at everyone and everything, including books where it was obvious he had no idea of the content of the book in question. For me the height of political cringe was when ‘Buska’ pulled out a book called ‘The Jewish Question’ and used it as an excuse to scream ‘Jew hater’ (as well as paedophile) at the shop’s manager. However, it didn’t take long for it to emerge that this particular book was a historical account, from a Marxist perspective, of the position and plight of Jews in Europe, by Abraham Leon. Ironically, Leon was a Jewish Trotskyist who not only wrote, but was involved in resistance to the Nazis and was later murdered by the Nazis in Auschwitz. This use of this book as an excuse to accuse the shopkeeper of being a Jew hater was a massive own goal by ‘Buska’ and one that was swiftly and effectively exploited by the Left. The Left have very easily used the shouting and screaming of ‘Buska’ and his ignorance about the books he was slagging off, along with the ripping up of an anti-Tommy placard that was on display in the shop by as a way of portraying all nationalists and patriots as having ‘one brain between the lot of them’.

Although as I said earlier I question the wisdom of targeting a bookshop for this sort of action, the failure of this protest/action/happening is in large part down to the bad behaviour of the third parties, those not I believe directly connected to the running of MBGA. The fall-out from this cock up has been severe. Some UKIP members who are also involved in MBGA have been suspended from the party pending further investigation and the Left has had an absolute field day with this incident. This case shows therefore how absolutely essential it is that groups that are going to engage in NVDA take along the right people for the particular job. Morons who scream ‘paedophile’ randomly at everyone, or who rip up signs or make wildly inaccurate assumptions about both books and people, are not the sort of people an activist should take with them when your NVDA may require some form of subtlety, guile or discipline among those who are taking part in an act of NVDA.

I’m pleased to see that the MBGA group have issued statements both refuting the left wing narrative surrounding this story and being contrite about how badly this protest went wrong. I’m also pleased to see that MBGA, a group that I’m not a member of and do not wholly support, recognised that there was a problem with this protest and have vowed to do something about it.

For the reasons that I have mentioned above, this was a classic example of an act of non-violent direct action that went badly wrong. I hope that both the MBGA group and other patriot groups and civic nationalists who are considering NVDA or studying this subject, learn from how this particular action failed so spectacularly, and how its failure handed the Left a whole raft of weapons that they can now use to beat the MBGA group with. I think this furore about the ‘shop invasion’ will recede soon but it should spark discussion about how we can peacefully protest effectively. I have no reservations in condemning the actions of the shouty bastards or the sign rippers as these actions are not freedom of speech, they are thuggery of the sort that we’ve seen all too often from the Left.