The Black Lives Matter movement has dominated the news for the past couple of weeks after the death of George Floyd and many organisations and businesses have been called out for their racism, but this story coming out of a Leeds vegan donut shop is definitely the most surprising one I’ve seen so far.
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Vegan restaurants/donut shops/whatever are normally built on the ideas of kindness, inclusivity and activism, so it’s somewhat of a shock to discover that the owners and managers of Temple Coffee And Donuts up in Leeds have been exposed as Neo-Nazis, racists and homophobes. The accusations began when a former employee spoke about being racially abused during her time there and snowballed into evidence that one of the owners – a man called Simon Erl – is actually a Neo-Nazi.
All of the evidence has been collected in an Instagram account, which you can see below:
Damn. Normally I try and play Devil’s Advocate not these things and see both sides of the story, but I don’t really think there’s any way that you can defend what Simon Erl has been posting on his social media here. Maybe there’s some way this James guy can try and justify his actions as they’re not accompanied with screenshots/receipts, but if two people are coming out and saying those things about him then I think it’s going to be very difficult for him to disprove them.
To be honest, it doesn’t sound like he’s going to be able to do so in the slightest, as all of them seem to have deactivated their social media accounts and gone into hiding. I’m not gonna tell you what to do, but if you live in the Leeds area I would suggest boycotting the place unless they end up doing something radical in the next few days to change their ways.
Craziest thing is that Simon Erl seemed to be posting all this Nazi stuff over the internet and was literally hiding in plain site the whole time and nobody noticed. We must do better.
Finally, I’m sure there are those who are going to argue that starting a social media campaign against the shop in light of the accusations is no better than racism, but given the extent and breadth of evidence here I think it’s important to present everything so anyone reading can make up their own mind. Happy to post whatever statement Temple share when they release it, but right now they’ve gone dark which only makes their role in this even more suspicious.
For more of the same, check out when a local town disrupted a Neo-Nazi festival by buying all their beer. Awesome.
