Locals remove sticker of far-right Polish clothing brand in Walthamstow
A sticker promoting a far-right website in Poland found on a bus stop in Walthamstow has since been removed.
A resident waiting for a bus on the evening of January 19 on Hoe Street saw the sticker, which read “F*** the system,” but did not learn of its violent, hateful nature until they researched it further on their route home.
To understand more about the website, Tell MAMA spoke with Never Again – one of Poland’s most prominent anti-racism organisations.
A spokesperson confirmed its links to the violent football hooligan scene with strong far-right links, with an assortment of its “products” offering violent messages (including violent death threats against police and alleged informers).
Never Again mentioned how the far-right political actor and agitator Marian Kowalski had promoted their materials on social media. The t-shirt Kowalski promoted in 2017 pushed a racialised, harmful, anti-Muslim and Islamophobic trope of so-called “Islamisation” – and remains available to purchase in 2022. The backprint of the product depicts a burning mosque with blood splatter in the background. As late as 2017, the company also sold a t-shirt variant of this violently anti-Muslim and Islamophobic product – archives confirm.
Poland is 99.9 per cent Christian, according to the 2011 census. European Union data shows that whilst Poland has no official religion, an overwhelming majority (around 87 per cent) of the population are Roman-Catholic. A wealth of academic research, including on “Islamophobia without Muslims” and how such narratives (in politics and sections of the press) stigmatised and targeted refugees.
A further item for sale included a dog tag that promotes the conspiracy, linking Muslims to ISIS.
Our investigation revealed how the Facebook profile of the clothing brand shared an Islamophobic conspiracy video from 2013 about demographics in a video titled “Who can stop Islam?”.
A year earlier, the Facebook page shared a racist and homophobic meme about throwing such minoritised groups off a plane in alphabetical order to prevent a fictitious plane from crashing.
That same year, the company promoted the white supremacist slogan “anti-Antifa” as a marketing tool on Facebook on multiple occasions.
During our investigation, the local resident who contacted us, to begin with, made further contact. In correspondence with Tell MAMA, they stated that the sticker had its URL link scratched off before someone had removed it, attaching photographic proof dated January 31.
Wanting to remain anonymous, they expressed gratitude at however removed it, adding that, for its multiculturalism, it remained of concern that individuals with racist, far-right agendas felt emboldened to spread hate and propaganda in the area.
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Categories: conspiracy theories, Islamisation, News, Waltham Forest, Walthamstow