Tensions over Brexit, and warnings of a backlash from nationalists if it does not happen soon, have rekindled fears of political violence in Britain. The threat seemed acute on Wednesday, as video of British soldiers using a photograph of opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn for target practice appeared on Snapchat, and the trial of a neo-Nazi who planned to assassinate a pro-European member of Parliament ended.
Corbyn said that he was āshockedā by the video, which was shared on Twitter by current and former members of the British armed forces, after he emerged from talks with Prime Minister Theresa May aimed at finding a way to allow the stalled British exit from the European Union to proceed.
In the House of Commons, Rosie Cooper, a member of Parliament for Corbynās Labour party, described a neo-Nazi plot to kill her as part of a trend in which MPs have been subjected to threats based on their views about Brexit. āI was to be murdered to send a message to the state, to send a message to this place,ā Cooper said. āMembers of this House are regularly abused and attacked. Our freedoms, our way of life, our democracy is under threat.ā
Jack Renshaw, the young neo-Nazi who confessed to plotting Cooperās murder, was a member of a banned group that had celebrated the assassination of Jo Cox, another pro-European Labour MP, just before the 2016 referendum on the United Kingdomās membership in the European Union.
The end of Renshawās trial permitted the activist group Hope Not Hate to reveal its role in exposing the plot, through the undercover work of a former member of the banned group.
Cooper, who voted for the U.K. to remain in the EU in the 2016 referendum but represents a region that voted to leave, was one of the few Labour MPs to support Mayās Brexit deal when it was rejected by Parliament last week. āMy position on Brexit has been consistent and remains unchanged,ā she explained. āQuite simply the will of the people and the outcome of the referendum should be respected. In West Lancashire a majority of people, 55% voted to Leave the EU.ā
After she supported the Brexit deal in Parliament, Cooperās name was added to a list of āBrexit Quislingsā by a pro-European Twitter activist.
A spokesperson for the British defense ministry told Sky News that the video of the soldiers firing at Corbynās image, which was recorded at a base in Afghanistan, āshows totally unacceptable behaviorā and āa full investigationā into the actions of the paratroopers would be conducted.
Concerns about the apparent spread of far-right politics inside the military previously surfaced in October, when a group of soldiers was filmed cheering for Tommy Robinson, the anti-Muslim founder of the English Defence League.
Robinson, who is now an adviser to the pro-Brexit party UKIP, addressed an angry āBrexit Betrayalā protest outside Parliament last week, in which MPs were denounced as ātraitorsā and the threat of violence was never far below the surface.
Robinson was invited to join UKIP by the partyās new leader, Gerard Batten, who said last week that Brexit had been delayed through āthe connivance of the traitors, quislings, and collaborators in the British parliament.ā
Corbyn is reportedly viewed with extreme skepticism by some senior members of the British armed forces, due to his long record of opposition to its nuclear weapons and his support for dissidents in Northern Ireland, including former members of the Irish Republican Army.
The video of paratroopers firing at Corbynās photo was roundly condemned by members of his party, who called it incitement, and by the defense minister.
Owen Jones, a Guardian columnist, wrote that the clip was āabsolutely horrific, and speaks of a growing dangerous radicalisation on the right against Corbyn in particular and the left in general.ā
āThe Tory Party and much of the British media portray Jeremy Corbyn and the left in general as terrorist-supporting Britain-haters,ā Jones added. āThis video is one of the consequences.ā
Pro-Brexit Conservative MPs, outraged by the prime ministerās decision to look for compromise with Corbyn, continued to denounce him in such terms even after the video emerged on Wednesday. Iain Duncan Smith, a former Conservative leader, told the BBC that Corbynās āsole purpose in life is to do real damage to the country.ā
In a letter resigning from Mayās cabinet over her talks with Corbyn, another Conservative MP, Nigel Adams, denounced the prime minister for seeking a deal ācooked up with a Marxist who has never once in his political life put Britainās interests first.ā
Tracy Brabin, the Labour MP who now holds Jo Coxās seat, condemned Priti Patel, a former minister in Mayās cabinet, for even more extreme comments about Corbyn.
As Brabin noted, Darren Osborne, a white supremacist terrorist who drove into a crowd of Muslims outside a mosque in London in 2017, killing one man, said in court that he had hoped to kill Corbyn, figuring āit would be one less terrorist [on] our streets.ā
Osborneās partner later testified that he had been ābrainwashedā by obsessively watching Tommy Robinson videos online.
āI think we are in an incredibly febrile atmosphere,ā Martin Hewitt, chair of the National Police Chiefsā Council,Ā told reporters. āI think there is a responsibility on those individuals that have a platform, and have a voice, to communicate in a way that is temperate and is not in any way going to inflame peopleās views or cause any actions out of there.ā
The video of the soldiers pretending to assassinate Corbyn was, predictably, defended by a trans-Atlantic alliance of far-right trolls. James Delingpole, a Breitbart columnist, asked, āHow is it wrong for the Army to train against terrorist-supporting, Jew-hating, Commie revolutionaries?ā Jonathan Schanzer, a vice president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a neoconservative think tank, wrote that it was āreassuring that British soldiers find him repugnant.ā (Accusations that Labour has been slow to discipline or expel party members for making anti-Semitic remarks have been distorted by Corbynās political enemies into supposed proof that his criticism of Israeli rights abuses is motivated by anti-Semitism.)
One of the the former soldiers who approvingly shared the clip on Twitter, an Iraq war veteran from Belfast named Trevor Coult, dismissed it as āa bit of tomfoolery.ā (A screenshot of a tweet Coult later deleted shows that the copy of the video he shared was uploaded to Twitter by a petty officer who is currently serving in the Royal Navy.)
Last month, Coult suggested that British Army veterans were showing restraint by not killing Corbyn for his prior criticism of myth-making around the British role in World War I.
Coult, a former sergeant, also tried to defend the soldiers, who were all members of the Parachute Regiment, by claiming that their hatred for the left-wing leader was to be āexpected when you consider that Corbyn supports the very men who thrived on killing Paratroopers!ā Coult was referring to Corbynās support for former IRA members who fought with soldiers from the British Parachute Regiment in Northern Ireland.
The Parachute Regiment is notorious in Ulster for carrying out the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972, killing 13 unarmed civil rights marchers in the city of Derry. Last month, prosecutors in Northern Ireland reopened that case and decided to charge one of the former paratroopers with two counts of murder and four of attempted murder.
Coult, whose father was deployed to Northern Ireland as a soldier in 1969, has been an outspoken critic of the prosecution of the former paratrooper, known only as Soldier F.
The primary stumbling block over Brexit has been concern that it could reignite violence in Northern Ireland by effectively repartitioning Ireland with customs and immigration checks along the British-imposed border that divides the island in two.
Coult has also campaigned for a new fringe political party that recently threatened to ādeleteā every member of the British Parliament.
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