ABSTRACT
Even the activists who most vehemently insisted that they were not-racist and not-far-right acknowledged that the English Defence League (EDL) had attracted some people with racist or far right views. This chapter first outlines a series of discursive moves that the activists used to do this. Second, it discusses the consequences of the strategies for the EDL's emergent movement culture. The EDL had small but high-profile Sikh and Jewish contingents, and there was even a Muslim activist, Abdul Rafiq, a fan of Glasgow Rangers, who became a celebrity within the activist community. EDL activists and activists from several cognate groups have worked on one of the great British moral panics: paedophiles. The idea that EDL was a non-racist single-issue group also permeated everyday interactions at grassroots of the movement. The cognitive and emotional resonance of the EDL narrative was partly achieved by the way it worked on and enabled activists to refer a range of other fears and anxieties.
