EDL Jewish Division Leader James Cohen Talks to European Son About His New Role

The following is from European Son, the story is also covered on the EDL website:

The former leader of the English Defence League’s Jewish Division, Roberta Moore, publicly resigned, citing anti-Semitism among its membership. In September, James Cohen, who resides in Canada, took up the position. European Son spoke to him in early October, to find out why, and to find out what he makes of the controversial political movement.

European Son: Mr. James Cohen, why did you join the EDL, and why did you accept the position of head of the EDL Jewish division. How did that come about?

James Cohen: I’ve been working for various organizations in different capacities, trying to stem the tide of what you could call extremely conservative [Islam]… a tidal wave of theocracy around the world… in defense of classical liberalism. As part of the process one tends to meet a lot of people [and I came into contact with] the principles of the EDL.

I haven’t personally met Tommy Robinson – although I’d certainly like to – but I’ve spoken with many other people… who are central to the EDL, and they always struck me as being decent, gentle, and intelligent, in contradiction to the propaganda one hears about them. I have found [them] to be very high quality people.

I hadn’t really followed the Jewish division. As everybody knows, I don’t live in England; I live in Canada. I knew that the person that was running it – who did go to marches, and did do quite a bit of hard work – had decided at one point that she felt that the EDL was anti-Semitic, and there was a lot of stuff she didn’t like about, and she quit fairly publicly. And, that certainly isn’t my experience. The EDL works with anybody and everybody who is keenly interested in the preservation in values that are uniquely English. Despite the fact that I’m Canadian, or perhaps more because I am Canadian, my values are very much British values… [e.g.] Habeas Corpus, the notion of individual rights and liberty, first expressed through the Magna Carta, and then through the US Constitution, These are ideas that are really worth fighting for, and the EDL seems to want to do that.

ES: Stepping back a minute, what were the organizations you were working for at the time?

JC: I was for a while on the board of the International Free Press Society. And, I still occasionally post articles there, but I just found that there wasn’t enough hours in the day to do the kind of job it deserved.

ES: You say your experience of the EDL is that they’re very nice and not anti-Semitic, but, constantly in the press – especially lately – we see a lot of very rowdy individuals looking pretty tough and maybe not entirely genteel.

JC: Look, here’s how reality works… People go with what options they have. And they go with whichever thing they think is going to advance their goals. And the British government has – and I would say it’s possible, deliberately – disenfranchised its own people so that there could be no resistance to massive immigration and the destruction of British culture – as an end goal, not as an accident of the process – disenfranchising any British person who says, ‘hold on, I think our culture has something of value worth preserving’ – suddenly they’re a racist and a bigot. So what are you going to be left with? The EDL seems to be the only movement in England that actually has any desire to preserve and maintain British values, and there’s going to be an awful lot of people who maybe haven’t graduated university, that maybe they don’t know which fork to eat dessert with, and some of those people are going to be pretty angry and pretty violent. Based on numerous conversations with EDL leaders, they very genuinely are trying to weed out anyone whose attitudes are not in line with what their [the EDL’s] goals are.

ES: You mentioned British values that they’re defending. The media has talked a lot about ‘so-called British values’ and – another phrase – ‘what some people call British values’. So, what would you say they are?

JC: I find the fact that the British media would use those phrases to be first class proof of exactly what I’m talking about. It’s trying to insinuate that there aren’t any [British values]. I would say that British values begin with the notion of individual rights and liberties, and of individual rights before the law [as opposed to group rights]… But, beyond British values, why is it so wrong for indigenous British people to want to have a place for them to be [with their culture]?

In Canada some of the farthest on the Left try to make the flimsy argument that people of European descent in this continent should just pack up and go home. You can’t even make that argument about the indigenous people of Britain. They are home. Where are they supposed to go? Are they supposed to just disappear?

ES: What can you do from Canada? What are you doing for the EDL?

JC: I’m trying to manage the EDL Jewish division Facebook page. What I’m trying to do is create a space where Jewish people in England feel that it’s more reflective of themselves and their values, and [I hope] they’ll join and participate. Hopefully they’ll form a bigger component of the EDL, because for Jewish people who feel threatened by the EDL – and that may be a good proportion of them, actually – I think the best answer to them is to participate, and help form and shape the EDL, as well as the Jewish division of the EDL, into something more reflective of them and their values. Because I can say with absolute certainty that the greater the presence of Islam in the UK, the greater the threat to Jewish people is going to be. The evidence of that is overwhelming. If you look at FBI statistics in the States. If you look at crime statistics where there are large populations of Muslims, Jews are attacked with greater frequency… this starts with Medina… which is now Judenrein, and Mecca, which is Judenrein, and frankly the whole country of Saudi Arabia, to Malmo, Sweden, which is nearly completely Judenrein. It’s simply an empirical fact. So I would suggest that people who are identifiable as Jewish, join the EDL and help shape it into what it is it ought to be.

The full article can be found at European Son.