Protestors to march on Hackney art gallery after it hosted ‘openly racist’ shows
Controversial: LD50 art gallery on Dalston’s Tottenham Road. Photograph: Google Streetview
Anti-fascist campaigners are set to demonstrate outside Dalston’s LD50 gallery this Saturday after it hosted an alt-right exhibition and a series of talks from right-wing speakers, including one who praised mass murderer Anders Breivik.
The Tottenham Road gallery, owned by Lucia Diego, recently held an exhibition featuring art from the alt-right, a pro-Donald Trump movement accused of promoting a far right ideology.
Last year, LD50 hosted a series of talks from speakers including Brett Stevens, who runs Amerika.org, a blog that calls for the “reversal of Leftist policies” and demands the “repatriation of the non-indigenous”.
Stevens has previously lauded the “bravery” of right-wing extremist Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 people in 2011.
Another speaker, Peter Brimelow, is described by American anti-fascism group Southern Poverty Law Center as “a leading anti-immigration activist”.
Andrew Osborne, who set up the Shutdown LD50! blog, said: “The gallery is using the cover of the contemporary art scene and academia to legitimise the spread of these materials and the establishment of a culture of hatred.
“It is imperative that this is not allowed to continue, that the gallery is shut down, and those responsible for it understand that their views are not welcome in our diverse city. The materials produced by the gallery, and the culture they promote, are a real threat to many of the communities living in Dalston.”
Gallery owner Lucia Diego faced a backlash from artists on Facebook after a private conversation appeared to reveal her support for Donald Trump’s “Muslim ban”.
She defended the gallery by saying: “We feel that the exceptionally aggressive, militant and hyperbolic reaction this has provoked vindicates our suspicion that at some point, as a society, we have drifted into a cultural echo chamber.
“A position on the left has become the only permissible orientation for cultural practitioners and apparently any who dare eschew this constraint are now publicly vilified, delegitimated and intimidated with menaces.
“The attacks against us have come from a position of ignorance, fuelled by emotions that have ratcheted up a group dynamic that has, intentionally, obviated the possibility of rational interpretation.”
One only needs to look at archive footage of the Holocaust to realise that Lucia and her ‘artists’ are the ones speaking from a position of ignorance.
How sad that so-called ‘leftists’ (ie. centrists, left-wing people and people who actually have empathy for others) are villifying, delegitimising and intimidating these ‘artists’ with ‘menaces’!
Perhaps we should use guns, bombs and gas chambers like they want to and traditionally have.
The ‘Right’ is allowed to tell everyone else that some peoples’ lives are not worth living and that they should suffer prejudice, upheaval or even death to assuage the Right’s fears but if those people defend themselves, or if anyone else defends them, we’re oppressing them.
Oh Andrew, the Andrew who has a penchant for Nick Land and who was for years on his cock proudly pontification of worthy his philosophy is, is that’s you Andrew Osborne?
Please stop calling it the “alt-right” as that term is a step towards legitimising the ideology of the far right, and denies it the significance of it being something to oppose quite so strongly. Call it what it is: white supremacism, neo-Nazism, fascism…
you put this stuff out in the public domain – supporters or the mass murderer Breivek – and then cry when you are called out and people object? whinging right wing wimps
It’s telling that their Twitter handle is private!
To be honest, these neurotics give the Left Wing a bad name, make it look weak, deranged and stupid …
I mean, if you want a fight with real “far right” all you have to do is take a bus out to Essex or down to Medway but instead they start a witch hunt targetting a woman art gallery owner.
Anyone outside of their teenages who spends their time bandying around words like “nazi” or “fascist” has to be an idiot.
There should be a rule like, “one has to have at least one tank division and some natty designer uniforms before anyone gets call to one a fascist” otherwise it’s all just idiotic hyperbole.
Please put free speech first, before these self-important deluded morons … what next, book burnings at “Pages of Hackney” in Clapton?
Damn right left is deranged, weak and stupid!
Right wingers argue that if it looks like a duck… and you people prove them right with every overblown intolerant reaction.
Let it be known that the top comment just advocated organised armed violence and if that was done by a right winger they would be brought up on hate speech charges.
Can lefties not see that they are very intolerant of these legitimate criticisms!? I would get back to being tolerant and engaging with opposition without hate and with a lot more respect for other human beings. You will find the right wing of any nation to be a most brutal adversary and i just dont think the cartoon watching, pokemon playing kids that call themselves Antifa or left wing know what they are in for if they decide to continue down this path of double standards, intolerance, violence and destruction of property.
Stop acting on the feelings these words generate and start thinking about them rationally! We can then discuss like human beings!
I don’t know what your position is, Rick, but I hugely value everything the genuine and authentic “Left” or “Liberals” worked hard, even fought and died for to bring into being (at least through the first half of the 20th C); anti-slavery, worker’s rights, women’s right, children’s rights, welfare etc etc etc.
The problem is, it seems to have lost its way from about the 1970s onwards which coincides with the rise the the SWP and the Anti Nazi League, from which much of this ‘hate mob rhetoric’ arises … the latter being little more than an SWP front.
Their modus operandi appears to be based on creating anger which at best seems to end up in no more than their “foot soldiers” vandalising property or punching a police officer … noting, of course, that they are too cowardly to actually go and do so one on one. Instead they generally have to hijack someone else’s 1,000s strong demonstration to do so.
The thing is if you really want to “fight fascism”, anti-democratic or Nazi-equivalents … they really do exist out there in the world; Boko Haram, Isil, Jemaah Islamiyah, Pemuda Pancasila (and they are not all Islamic, you’ll pretty much find the same going on everywhere the big American corporations seek to expand their interests).
But what do these do?
Attack a small business owner in Dalston … a woman gallery owner at that.
It would be laughable if it was not so pathetic.
Unfortunately, Hackney has had a long history of the “angry brigade” (including the so called “black bloc”) and if you examine them closely, you’ll find that they cannot create, they are bent on destroying.
They merely parastical nihilists dependent on the produce and benefits paid for by their “enemies”.
Perhaps, psychologically, this is the root of their problem. It’s a sort of jealousy of those who cannot create, who cannot start up small business, who cannot even support themselves, and their own causes?
I mean, all respect to those who go off and join the YPJ. They are up there with the socialist who went off to fight in the Spanish Civil War. But these punks getting their panties in a twist about an art gallery show!?! Don’t make me laugh …
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/female-kurd-soldiers-fighting-isis-8732664