Alan Lake (English Defence League)
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Alan Lake is the pseudonym used by Alan Ayling, a computer expert from
Highgate Highgate ( ) is a suburban area of north London at the northeastern corner of Hampstead Heath, north-northwest of Charing Cross. Highgate is one of the most expensive London suburbs in which to live. It has two active conservation organisat ...
,
London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
. Until 2011, he was a director of Pacific Capital Investment Management. Ayling was described by the media in 2011 as a millionaire, and as the "chief financier" of the
English Defence League The English Defence League (EDL) is a far-right, Islamophobic organisation in the United Kingdom. A social movement and pressure group that employs street demonstrations as its main tactic, the EDL presents itself as a single-issue movement ...
(EDL), which Lake reportedly "fiercely denied". He did admit to having "given some money to help some EDL things happen" in his first television interview, on Norwegian '' TV 2''. According to then EDL leader Tommy Robinson, Ayling had never been a member of the EDL, and the EDL had not received funding from him. Responding to media claims saying the opposite, Robinson said that "he ylingspoke at two demos and he wore a suit, and all of a sudden he was a millionaire funder." Lake was considered a central figure in organising international
counter-jihad Counter-jihad, also spelled counterjihad and known as the counter-jihad movement, is a self-titled political current loosely consisting of authors, bloggers, think tanks, street movements and campaign organisations all linked by apocalyptic bel ...
contacts. Lake spoke at a seminar on
Islamisation Islamization, Islamicization, or Islamification ( ar, أسلمة, translit=aslamāh), refers to the process through which a society shifts towards the religion of Islam and becomes largely Muslim. Societal Islamization has historically occurre ...
in
Malmö Malmö (, ; da, Malmø ) is the largest city in the Swedish county (län) of Scania (Skåne). It is the third-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg, and the sixth-largest city in the Nordic region, with a municipal pop ...
, Sweden, in 2009, organised by the Sweden Democrats. Lake has since said that he continues to maintain good relations with many of the party's members and that he is a good friend of MP
Kent Ekeroth Kent Alexander Ekeroth (born 11 September 1981) is a Swedish politician and economist, who represented the Sweden Democrats. Early life Ekeroth was born in Malmö to a Jewish mother, Janina Kazarina, originally from Kazakhstan in Central Asia ...
. He has considered that the state "might as well" execute Islamists who seek to impose sharia law in the UK, and according to ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' he called for discussion about killing the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Prime Minister David Cameron and the deputy PM
Nick Clegg Sir Nicholas William Peter Clegg (born 7 January 1967) is a British media executive and former Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom who has been president for global affairs at Meta Platforms since 2022, having previously been vicep ...
for allegedly supporting sharia law for Britain. Ayling also founded the far-right "4 Freedoms" website. Lake rarely speaks with the press. According to Professor Nigel Copsey, Lake represented the more "respectable" intellectual wing of the EDL. In October 2011, Norwegian police formally investigated Lake to discover any potential ideological influence he may have had on mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik. He was awarded 5,000 euros in damages by a Maltese court from Paul Adam Cinato for defamation of character after Cinato blogged that Lake was Breivik's mentor. In January 2012, after the true identity of "Alan Lake" was revealed, Ayling was suspended from his management post at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in the
City of London The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London f ...
.


References


External links


Interview with Lake on Norwegian TV 2
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lake, Alan Living people Counter-jihad activists People from Highgate English Defence League British critics of Islam Year of birth missing (living people)