Three years ago we published our first article, exposing a new far-right party: Active for Plymouth. Now they are barely active at all. But AFP didn’t leave without a fuss! In fact they did everything in their power to shut us down – all the way from calling the police to threats of violence against people they think write for us. We are still here, and we will not be silenced.
The far-right have no problem with hypocrisy. They still act like they are the “defenders” of free speech, accusing critics of everything they themselves have been dishing out. For the record, no-one involved with this website has ever threatened AFP. We have never published their personal information – only PUBLIC photos from facebook, public names, public statements. We wrote about on them here for anyone to read. That’s all they’re afraid of – the truth.
Today, we are publishing some of the things did to try and shut us up.
Legal Threats
The first thing Jason Shopland and his party did, was threaten us with the law. To start with he called the police, hoping they’d do his dirty work for him. Here he is posting about a crime report:
When that didn’t work, they threatened us with lawyers. We’ve never heard a word from any of these solicitors. It was just an empty threat to intimidate us into silence:
We have never called the police even after getting threats. We know which side they are on and we don’t grass. Safety comes from strong communities, not from calling the police.
Playing the Victim
We know that the far right are hypocrites. They complain about facebook taking down their posts, but here is a video of them telling their followers to report our posts to facebook!
They have to justify the hypocrisy to their followers. They do it by making their “enemies” out to be the worst people possible. A united front of the meanest, most violent people you can find. That way their supporters don’t pay attention to anything we say. To them, everything is an “attack”. If we name them that is “doxxing” and a “threat” (even though their names are on the ballot papers!). This is how they prepare people for violence. When anything happens to us, their supporters will think we had it coming.
Here’s the latest nonsense from their page:
For the record, we have never “brought their kids into the equation”. Read the rest of this site! We have never mentioned anyone’s kids. None of us are members of the Labour Party or the Socialist Party. All we have ever done is post things that Active for Plymouth wrote themselves, or pictures they made public on social media. But to them, the truth is “hate and misinformation”.
Violence and Doxxing
After failing to sue us, they tried to make a hitlist of anti-fascists in Plymouth, searching for names and addresses:
So far as we can tell, they were too disorganised to find out anything about us. Next came the threats of violence from their supporters, all encouraged by Jason Shopland who “liked” everything they had to say…
Who are the people making these threats?
This is Syd More’s facebook. And some pictures:
This is Pete Wilke’s facebook. And his face:
Stephen Williams we’ve already written about
And finally Robert Dupon, aka “Urbanexboi”. This is his youtube channel. This is his personal facebook, this is his facebook page. His website seems to be offline. And his picture:
It’s not just locals that AFP are after either. Here’s them calling for attacks against Owen Jones…
Some of those threats were from 2019 after our first article came out. But Jason Shopland still hasn’t forgotten about us. Here’s a post from earlier this year, saying violence is the only way to stop us speaking out:
For the record, we have no problem with violence against child abusers. But how sick is it, that they think writing a few articles is as bad as child abuse? They’ve shown no respect for victims of Child Sex Abuse, putting doxxing and CSA in the same sentence. That’s how low they will sink, just to get back at people. It’s another example of playing the victim – accusing us of a whole list of things we have never done, and then associating us with child abusers.So far as we know AFP aren’t involved in anything like this, but the wider far right has a bad record when it comes to abusers in their own ranks: see this article, and also this one. To be clear we aren’t accusing anyone in Plymouth, only asking anyone reading this who has contact with the far right to please be vigilant and do what you can to stop this, as the far right is rife with abuse.
Conclusion
The threats may look bad, but here’s the thing: we are still here. Their threats didn’t work. That’s why it’s important to stick together. The more of us who speak up, the less they can do about it. We felt safe because of the friends and supporters who stood by us, who will always have our back. Bullies expect victims to cower and hide. The best reply is always this: speak up even louder!