May 21, 2008

Disquiet in the BNP over a strange invitation

Some longstanding members of the BNP have been asking why Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, took time out from the election campaign only three days before polling day to attend a secret meeting in London with three leading European extremist politicians, one of whom has a recent conviction for Holocaust denial.

Initially billed as a press conference, its true purpose seems to have been to further Griffin’s ambition to become a Member of the European Parliament by building links with far-right MEPs.

The meeting had been organised by Arthur Kemp, the former agent for the South African apartheid regime and now keeper of the BNP’s ideological Holy Grail. Making the arrangements on behalf of the visitors was Georg Mayer, a senior officer in the Austrian Freedom Party. Mayer had also acted as the spokesperson for the short-lived Identity Tradition Sovereignty (ITS) group in the European Parliament until its collapse late last year when five ultra-nationalist Romanian MEPs walked out in protest at anti-Romanian remarks by their Italian colleague Alessandra Mussolini, the dictator’s granddaughter.

Their ill-conceived plan was to send out invitations to the media to attend the press conference only a short time in advance. Initially three MEPs were down to attend, then fairly late in the day Marie-Rose Morel, a member of the Flemish Parliament for the extreme-right Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) and former Flemish beauty queen, said she would come along too.

The star guests were to be Bruno Gollnisch, a French MEP and vice president of the far-right National Front, and Andreas Mölzer, an Austrian MEP and leading member of the Austrian Freedom Party.

Their presence revealed the true face of the BNP and confirmed Griffin’s continued failure to break away from Holocaust denial and antisemitism. In January 2007 a French court handed Gollnisch a three-month suspended prison sentence and fined him €5,000 (£4,000) for denying the Holocaust. The court in Lyon found he had “disputed a crime against humanity” in remarks he made during a news conference in the city in October 2004.

Gollnisch, who was chair of the ITS group, had questioned the number of Jews who died in the Holocaust and said the “existence of the gas chambers is for historians to discuss”.

Mölzer is the publisher of Zur Zeit, an Austrian political magazine in which racism, antisemitism and xenophobia are staple features. Its recent promotion of openly Nazi and antisemitic books prompted the Berlin weekly Junge Freiheit, on which Zur Zeit was originally modelled, to sever all connections. All that did not stop Griffin giving an interview to Zur Zeit earlier this year, in which he assured Mölzer of his firm belief in “nationalist cooperation” to deal with the “Islamic threat” and “the tide of Third World immigration” and to oppose the entry of Turkey into the EU.

The third MEP who was due to come was Philip Claeys, a VB MEP who was the vice-chair of the ITS. He did not want to show his face at the press conference but was keen to join a private meeting.

Claeys had previous links with the British far right. In May 2005 he addressed a conference organised by Right Now!, a now-defunct magazine that claimed to be the “voice of the patriotic and conservative Right”. It was Right Now! that hosted a column by Nick Eriksen, who at the beginning of April was forced to stand down as number two on the BNP’s list of candidates for the London Assembly to save the BNP from further bad publicity over his despicable views on rape expressed on his blog.

Writing in Right Now! under the name “John Bull” Eriksen maintained that voting BNP represents the “only solution” to remedy the current malaise in Conservative politics. BNP members regularly attended the magazine’s conferences and no doubt listened avidly to Claeys railing against Islam in general and Turkey in particular.

Arrangements for the press conference were proceeding in secret, though not without Searchlight’s knowledge through one of our main moles in the BNP hierarchy. What puzzled us was why, at a time when the BNP was trying to shed its antisemitic image in a bid to win Jewish votes, the party leadership should want to parade a bunch of Holocaust deniers before the media.

But Kemp had made a fatal mistake, possibly intentionally, in his choice of Jason Douglas to pick up the guests from the station in his black cab. This decision had also surprised some party members who know what a loose tongue Douglas has. Douglas, a convicted football hooligan, runs three BNP groups in east London.

The BNP had been attempting to play on what it sees as historic enmity between the Jewish and Muslim communities. But Jewish organisations had denounced the BNP’s advances and were giving strong support to calls by the HOPE not hate campaign for a high turnout of Jewish voters against the BNP in the London and other local elections.

Then suddenly despite weeks of secrecy, Simon Darby, the BNP’s press officer and deputy leader, used his blog to announce on 24 April that the party was “honoured to be playing host to a special press conference to be held on the afternoon of Monday 28th April 2008” with “a number of guests from allied Parties from Europe”. He even named Gollnisch and Mölzer.

Had Darby boobed? Two days later the BNP had pulled the plug on the press conference, with Darby lamely declaring: “It looks like we’ve lost the venue, but our foreign friends have been most understanding about this.”

Searchlight was unconvinced, believing this to be a smokescreen to cover up Darby’s breach of security in publicising the event so far in advance. Other senior figures in the BNP then tried to reinforce the claim that the meeting was off.

Sure enough, in the early afternoon of 28 April, Gollnisch, Mölzer and Mayer arrived at St Pancras International station on the Eurostar and were whisked off, not to a press conference but to a private meeting with Griffin. They were two short. Claeys, already nervous, had pulled out as had Morel, so it was just the beasts without the beauty.

Searchlight later tracked down the visitors at the plush Rembrandt Hotel in South Kensington where they were staying. By that time, Griffin had already sped off into the night.

The hotel confirmed the three men’s presence and a Searchlight reporter had an illuminating telephone conversation with Mayer before he caught the 8.05am Eurostar back home the next morning.

So what was Griffin playing at? Is he so consumed with his desire to join these latter-day fascists in the European Parliament next year that he did not care what damage exposure of such a meeting might have done to the electoral chances of Richard Barnbrook, the BNP’s lead candidate for the London Assembly? Such selfishness would be typical of Griffin.

Some senior and very angry BNP officers think the whole thing was set up by the intelligence services to discredit the party on the eve of the election. Perhaps that is something Colin Auty, who is challenging Griffin for the party leadership, might like to investigate.

One thing we can be sure about is the sort of disgusting company Griffin intends to keep if ever he does manage to make it to the European Parliament.

Searchlight

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nick Griffin has already established a reputation with the soft right of the BNP with all the bullshit about letting Jews and Sikhs in. Perhaps this was just an attempt to bolster up his credentials for the hard right before the coming leadership challenge. He wouldn't want to miss out on any votes from either side.

Anonymous said...

Searchlight has a "mole" in the senior hierarchy? How come is that so when Griffin expelled them all in December, well he did, didnt he or was he lying when he said Graham/Single/Blake/Dawson/Smith were Searchlight moles? He also called them vermin. Are moles vermin? Perhaps if you have a nice lawn they might be classed as vermin. Perhaps Searchlight has lots of moles in the BNP? Perhaps the entire hierarchy is made up of moles, but each one doesnt know the other is a mole.

Intriguing!

Anonymous said...

Andreas Mölzer interviewed BNP leader Nick Griffin for his neo-nazi newspaper “Zur Zeit". The BNP published the interview on their website back in February 2008. Here’s a quote by Nick Griffin from that interview:

“Roma gypsies, who self-evidently have very little in common with true Romanians”.

Andreas Mölzer criticised the parliamentary group of his party, the Freedom Party, for not having an anti-Jewish or anti-Gypsy agenda.

In addition to his anti-Jewish articles, Andreas Mölzer has also written anti-Slav articles (so, Mölzer doesn't like non-Whites, Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, Muslims - who does he like?)

Interestingly, the criminal offence that Andreas Mölzer was prosecuted for was attempting to resurrect the Third Reich. You can’t get more nazi than that.

One should also check out Andreas Mölzer’s book he wrote about the student wing of the Waffen SS in which he said: "The first aim of our fight should be the reawakening of a strong German cultural and spiritual consciousness”.

Check out Andreas Mölzer’s nazi-like targeting of artists with whom he disagrees when he was helping Jörg Haider run the Carinthia province of Austria (reminds you of Hitler's targetting of artists):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2000/mar/28/austria.kateconnolly

(The article is called, ‘Haider's crocodile snaps at Austrian art world’)

Anonymous said...

Here’s some info on the fascist Identity Tradition Sovereignty group in the European Parliament that the BNP and Nick Griffin want to be part of:

Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty: A Who's Who

"Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty" (ITS) is a group in the European Parliament formed on January 15, 2007 by members who share xenophobic, racist and anti-Semitic views. The grouping brings together 20 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from seven countries -- meeting the minimum number of members required to establish a bloc under the Parliament's rules.

The group includes members of notorious far-right extremist parties and well-known anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers from across Europe. One of its most prominent members, Bruno Gollnisch of France, was convicted of Holocaust denial by a French court in January 2007. Like all groupings in the European Parliament, ITS is entitled to about 1 million Euros for staff and administrative costs. The group may also claim greater speaking rights and committee representation.

The group was formed after the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the European Union on January 1. As a result of the accession of these countries, there were enough far-right MEPs in the European Parliament to allow the creation of ITS. It is one of eight multinational political groups in the European Parliament. Christian Democrats, Socialists and Greens are among the other groups. ITS currently has the smallest number of affiliated MEPs, but there are concerns that its influence will spread and that the group will grow.

The group's formation was a sobering reminder that bigoted, racist and anti-Semitic political movements are not only still part of the landscape in Europe, but are willing to unify under one banner if given the chance.

The following is a Who's Who of the "Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty" group (by country):

Austria

Freedom Party

The far-right Freedom Party, which entered Austria's previous governing coalition in 2000, is represented in ITS by Andreas Moelzer. In 2005, Moelzer was expelled from the party for his criticisms of its leader, Joerg Haider, but was readmitted in the same year when Haider and others founded a rival party.

In 1999, as Editor-in-Chief of the weekly Zur Zeit, Moelzer published an article by a writer who praised Hitler as a "great social revolutionary" and denied the basic facts of the Holocaust.

Belgium

Flemish Interest

The Flemish Interest party was formed in 2004 after its precursor, the Flemish Bloc, was declared a racist organization in Belgium's highest court. The party has supplied three MEPs to ITS - Philip Claeys, Koenraad Dillen and Frank Vanhecke. It campaigns for the independence of Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, and is deeply hostile to immigrants and minorities. Under the leadership of Filip Dewinter, the party has tried to court Jewish voters by ratcheting up its anti-Muslim rhetoric. However, its participation in the ITS suggests that its traditional anti-Semitism has not been discarded.

In 2005, Claeys abstained on a European Parliament resolution paying homage to the victims of the Nazis and condemning Holocaust denial. Dillen is well-known as a supporter of the late Leon Degrelle, a notorious Belgian Nazi who was a decorated officer in the Waffen SS and later became a prominent Holocaust denier. In 2002, Vanhecke was one of a group of European far-right leaders who met at the home of the then Austrian Freedom Party leader, Joerg Haider, to discuss cooperation in the European Parliament.

Bulgaria

Attack Coalition

Led by Volen Siderov, who is infamous for his anti-Semitic and racist remarks, the Attack Coalition polled 9 percent of the vote in Bulgaria's 2005 elections. Attack Coalition's MEP and ITS representative, Dimitar Stoyanov – at 23, the youngest member of the European Parliament – used the occasion of ITS's foundation to launch a bitter attack on what he called the "Jewish establishment". Stoyanov has also refused to retract comments in which he railed against "…powerful Jews, with a lot of money, who are paying the media to form the social awareness of people. They are also playing with economic crises in countries like Bulgaria and getting rich." Stoyanov has also accused Roma parents of selling their young daughters into prostitution.

France

National Front

The National Front is arguably the best-known far-right party in Europe. The party is led by an avowed racist and anti-Semite, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who is also one of the six National Front MEPs represented in the ITS group. The others are Bruno Gollnisch, Marine Le Pen (daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen), Carl Lang, Fernand Le Rachinel, Jean-Claude Martinez and Lydia Schenardi.

Gollnisch, the leader of the party's European Parliamentary grouping, was convicted by a Lyon court on January 18, 2007 of "disputing a crime against humanity". He received a three month suspended sentence and a fine of $6,450. The conviction was based on remarks Gollnisch made at a press conference in October 2004, when he questioned the existence of the Nazi gas chambers and and suggested that the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust might have been exaggerated. These remarks fit a well-established pattern of National Front figures questioning and demeaning the Holocaust; Le Pen himself became notorious in 1987 when he dismissed the Holocaust as a "minor detail" in the history of World War II.

Italy

Social Alternative
Tricolor Flame

Social Alternative, a coalition of far-right parties, is represented in ITS by MEP Alessandra Mussolini, the grand-daughter of the late fascist dictator and Hitler ally, Benito Mussolini. Mussolini's involvement in far-right and neo-fascist politics stretches back over decades. MEP Luca Romagnoli, the Tricolor Flame party's representative in ITS, has flirted with Holocaust denial. In February 2006, he declared on Italian television: "You ask me if the gas chambers existed. Frankly, I have no way of confirming or denying it." Romagnoli's comments were widely condemned by Italian and European Parliament politicians.

Romania

Greater Romania Party

The Greater Romania Party is infamous for its anti-Semitic and anti-minority stance. Party leader Corneliu Vadim Tudor has a strongly anti-Semitic reputation and frequently attacks the Roma and the Hungarian minorities in Romania. The party has contributed five MEPs to the ITS group - Daniela Buruiana Aprodu, Eugen Mihaescu, Viorica Pompilia Georgeta Moisuc, Petre Popeanga and Cristian Stanescu. Tudor, the Party leader, has reached out to Romania's Jewish community in the past but was rebuffed, as the Greater Romania Party's xenophobic and anti-Semitic stance remains fundamentally unchanged.

United Kingdom

Independent

The sole British representative to ITS is Ashley Mote, an independent MEP. Mote was previously a member of the marginal UK Independence Party, which opposes British membership of the European Union, but was expelled in 2004 after he faced allegations of fraud. Mote's description of ITS as "center-right" in orientation was widely ridiculed by observers who pointed to the presence of Holocaust deniers and neo-fascists in the group's ranks.

http://www.adl.org/main_Anti_Semitism_International/ide

Anonymous said...

Around the same time or on the day of the BNP meeting with neo-nazi Holocaust deniers from Europe, Lee Barnes (director of the BNP's legal department) congratulated the Italian fascist party, Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance), over its win in Rome. Also, shortly after his election to the London Assembly, BNP mayoral candidate Richard Barnbrook also welcomed the Alleanza Nazionale win.

This how one British newspaper described the Alleanza Nazionale win:

Italy's new parliament met for the first time today with applause for Rome's mayor-elect, Gianni Alemanno, a day after followers celebrated his triumph with straight-arm salutes and fascist-era chants.

(Cries of 'Duce! Duce!' salute Rome's new mayor, The Guardian, April 29 2008).

This is what Lee Barnes wrote in the BNP's praise of the Alleanza Nazionale's fascist win:

"Congratulations to the Eternal City’s new mayor Gianni Alemanno, the new mayor of Rome who has promised to clean up the streets of Rome from the immigrant scum and criminals that have invaded it.

The Revolution of the Right has now conquered Italy , the next step is the return of power to the people all across Europe.

This is a good example of the BNP's open support for fascism and racism.

Here is an interesting article on the fascist Alleanza Nazionale:

Prescott plays into fascist leader's hands

December 2002

John Prescott's meeting with Gianfranco Fini, the Italian fascist leader, went unnoticed by the British media but for Fini it was a major coup in his party's campaign to gain inter-national respectability. The two Deputy Prime Ministers shook hands in London at a time when Prescott was busy attacking trade unionists in Parliament and Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing government was doing much the same at home. In an exclusive report for Searchlight, Alfio Bernabei explains why the meeting on 22 October was so important.

To gain respectability and widen their European network is a prime objective of Italy's fascists, or so-called "neo-fascists" or "post-fascists". Whatever they are called, they are all the political descendants of Mussolini's Blackshirts who took orders from Hitler.

The acquisition of respectability is a strategic step, part of the rebranding process required to gain acceptance in times of intense media scrutiny. The fashion conscious Armani-clad Italian fascists have becomes masters of the media game. They strive to present the electorate with an acceptable face of fascism to gain an ever larger foothold in local and national government.

Under Silvio Berlusconi's government they have the best chance of success of the past 50 years. Berlusconi has made a series of pacts with the fascists and the fascists are wasting no time. To them Mussolini's ascent to power remains the best example of how to succeed.

First, skilful use of the media. Second, the use of democracy as a means to gain power. Thirdly, the injection of large doses of xenophobia and racism among the population to help justify a strong government as the "protector of the race", as Mussolini put it.

The world let it happen in 1922, the year of the so-called "march on Rome". European governments simply watched as Mussolini was developing the doctrine that gave inspiration to Hitler and Nazi Germany.

After the Second World War Italian fascism reemerged under the leadership of Giorgio Almirante, who was an official in the nazi-backed Salò Republic. His chief protégé, Gianfranco Fini, later took over from him.

Thanks to Berlusconi's victory in the 2001 general election Fini is now Italy's Deputy Prime Minister. Still unwelcome in a number of countries because of his fascist background, a few weeks ago he was in London seeking to make himself acceptable to the British government and by implication to propel the advance of so called "post-fascism" internationally and provide succour to the extreme right everywhere.

And what welcome did he get from New Labour? Even the British conservative press knows what Fini represents. On the day of his arrival in London The Times described his party, now called Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance), as the "post fascist successor to Mussolini's power base", adding that "he has not yet been invited officially as Deputy Prime Minister to any EU countries".

This reluctance to invite him is because he epitomises the fascist who is opportunistically trying to win respectability by profiting from Italy's present situation. The country is morally bankrupt, with the Prime Minister and his cronies enmeshed in corruption trials, and the third government party, Lega Nord (Northern League), fanning a wave of racism unseen since Mussolini's racial laws of 1938.

Fini has learned how to move tactically to reach his goal. He joined the fascist movement in 1967 aged 16 and grew in it to become general secretary to the fascist party, Movimento Sociale Italiano. He remained its leader until 1995. When asked if he considered his 28 years of fascist militancy a mistake he replied: "No, why a mistake. It was a historical phase, a movement like the MSI was useful to Italy, to have a political formation which fought the demonisation of a part of our history."

He continued: "I claimed the fascist label ... because it meant belonging to my political family, the MSI. The Roman salute and homage to Mussolini were to us the manifestation of an identity."

Fini owes his current position entirely to the Berlusconi phenomenon. The two formed the short-lived 1994 government together with the xenophobic Umberto Bossi of the Northern League. Soon after this government fell, Fini understood that in order to renew his chances and gain from the disintegration of the Christian Democratic electoral base he had to move to the centre. He renamed the MSI the National Alliance.

There was international dismay when Berlusconi first brought Fini into government with three National Alliance ministers. This was reflected in headlines in the British Press. "Berlusconi appoints neo-fascists", said The Guardian. "Berlusconi picks three Fascists", declared The Times. "Berlusconi attacked for 'Duce' praise", noted The Sunday Times referring to the fact that the tycoon as well giving posts to neo-fascists was going round defending Mussolini: "He did a few good things".

Fini's visit to London in 1995 was disrupted by Anti Nazi League protests. Several politicians, among them Peter Hain and Denis MacShane, stopped him speaking at Chatham House. MacShane, now minister for Europe in Tony Blair's government, called Fini "the rising star of Europe's reborn Fascism movement" intent on polishing his image as a charismatic television performer while at National Alliance meetings the "standard Italian antisemitic text is prominently on sale".

Fini had arranged his latest visit to London in the hope of demonstrating his acceptability in Europe and trying to impress Israel. The issue of his European ostracism was raised in an interview with an Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz. Fini retorted: "As a member of the European Convention I can call a meeting anywhere, including London". During the interview he also refused to call Mussolini a criminal and tried generally to evade questions about responsibility for fascism and its crimes.

Of course there are many other questions that Fini has not yet addressed. For example, up to the present time he has not shown any intention of wanting to apologise for the death of thousands of British and Commonwealth soldiers in the war declared by Mussolini. Not that he was "personally" involved of course. As he told Ha'aretz, "I was born in 1952". But he must have something to say about the responsibility borne by a party that after the events, in the full knowledge of all the links with Hitler's Germany and of Italy's contribution to the Holocaust, he personally rekindled and presided over for so many years.

Only days before Fini arrived in London Hain, then the Minister for Europe, cancelled his meeting with him. Whether this was a deliberate snub by the man who once called Fini a Nazi is not known. Whatever the reason, at the last moment another minister stepped into Hain's place, ready to shake hands with Fini. John Prescott, never afraid to get his hands dirty, held a half hour meeting with Fini, unnoticed in Britain but big and welcome news for Fini's camp. The sudden way in which it was organised prevented anti-fascist demonstrators from gathering outside Prescott's office, although the Anti Nazi League mounted a small demonstration outside Claridge's hotel where Fini was staying.

Among the protesters was one of the Britons wounded in Genoa last year during the barbaric police assault on the Diaz School. Women were threatened with sexual violence; dozens of people were brutally beaten up and held in what was described as a torture chamber. The police forced some of them to sing fascist songs. Fini was at the police headquarters during the crucial hours leading up to the attack. It is all too easy to surmise what the presence of a man like Fini, associated with fascist violence, might have inspired in the police forces. A number of agents are now under investigation for planting incriminating evidence in the school and for faking wounds they never received.

Prescott's decision to see Fini may have something to do with the same political pragmatism that earlier this year produced Blair's visit to Berlusconi for the signing of an agreement on furthering the so called "liberalisation" of labour protection in Europe. John Monks, the General Secretary of the TUC, described the meeting as "stupid". Fear of a Franco-German axis in Europe and the sharing of a common stance against European centralism is probably the main reason why London finds it useful at the present time to seek an ally in the Italian government.

If however the price to pay for this alliance is to lend respectability to a post-fascist like Fini serious questions must be asked of Blair's New Labour. In view of the prospective expansion of Europe to 25 countries, it seems doubly dangerous to send out encouraging signals to fascists or neo-fascists groups within their borders, which is how the welcome to Fini will be interpreted.

Fini celebrated his "success" in London in his own way. Minutes before he met Prescott he made a point of publicly praising Mirko Tremaglia, a National Alliance minister in the current Italian government, who joined Mussolini's Fascist army which terrorised the population of Northern Italy after the 1943 Armistice, killing anti-fascists and Allied soldiers on orders from Hitler.

Tremaglia is one of Fini's friends who truly remains proud of his past. He has said that Fini has nothing to apologise for, least of all for having led Mussolini's Blackshirts after the war. Only last month Tremaglia reiterated that the Italian Fascist Army "deserved" to win at Al Alamein in the battle against the British Army. "I am always happy when I hear Tremaglia being praised," said Fini, as he was about to leave Claridge's heading for Whitehall to meet Prescott, "He is a very good friend of mine".

Another good friend of Fini with deep roots in fascism is Francesco Storace, the National Alliance president of the Lazio Region, who in his youth joined the MSI. A few years ago he made a point of welcoming back to Rome some Italian fascist terrorists who had taken refuge abroad to escape police questioning and jail sentences. One of them has since formed Forza Nuova, a racist and fascist party. Last month Forza Nuova staged a rally in Rome during which pro-fascist and antisemitic slogans were shouted including: "Back to the gas ovens". The government looked on silently.

Any encouragement given to the "respectable" Fini filters through the network of fascist and racism movements, and not only in Italy.

http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/index.php?link=template&story=42

Some other interesting articles on Alleanza Nazionale:

http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/index.php?link=template&story=134

http://www.internationalist.org/italybonapartism0602.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/02/italy.thefarright

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/30/italy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/29/italy1

Anonymous said...

The meeting had been organised by Arthur Kemp, the former agent for the South African apartheid regime and now keeper of the BNP’s ideological Holy Grail.

Found an interesting posting on another site about BNP man Arthur Kemp.

Arthur Kemp and the American Nazis

Arthur Kemp is another Griffin man with strong ties to the neo-Nazi National Alliance in America as the following broadcast on American Dissident Voices Broadcast in November 26, 2005 clearly shows.

“Hello and welcome to American Dissident Voices, the weekly voice of the National Alliance. I'm Shaun Walker. We have just finished mailing off the newest issue of ADV. The cover story for this issue is: "White South Africa: What went wrong?" by the well known author, Arthur Kemp. This article explains exactly how South Africa collapsed because of the use of non-White labour.”

The broadcast then goes on to speak exclusively about Holocaust denier David Irving – the same one who spoke at Oxford Uni with Griffin - and his arrest in Austria. The programme was titled “David Irving's Arrest: Freedom or Jewish Supremacy by Shaun Walker.” (http://www.natall.com/adv/2005/11-26-05.html.

Having already written material for their publications in 2005, Kemp was billed to speak at a Holocaust denial conference organised by the National Alliance in May 2007, but appears to have pulled out at the last minute.

“Our Holocaust Revisionist conference will feature several prominent speakers who are connected in one way or another to the revisionist cause. As described on the National Alliance's main page (www.natvan.com) and news site (www.natallnews.com), speakers we have already booked include:

Arthur Butz, author of Hoax of the 20th Century

Ingrid Rimland-Zundel, wife of imprisoned activist Ernst Zundel and author of Lebensraum

Arthur Kemp, author of March of the Titans and the world's leading historian on European Civilization

Joseph McGinnis, well-known attorney who has defended countless Americans who have been falsely branded as "war criminals" by the Justice Department's OSI (Office for Special Investigation)

Lady Michele Renouf, renowned activist who attended the Holocaust Conference in Iran
Mark Franklin, world's leading producer of Holocaust revisionist documentaries and an authority on Zionism

Paul Fromm, former Canadian schoolteacher and renowned speaker of Free Speech issues
and others, to be announced.”

The quote above comes from “Taking a Second Look at the Holocaust by Erich Gliebe” another of the American Dissident Voices Broadcasts this time aired on January 13, 2007 (http://www.natall.com/adv/2007/01-13-07.html).

Anonymous said...

The meeting had been organised by Arthur Kemp, the former agent for the South African apartheid regime and now keeper of the BNP’s ideological Holy Grail.

Another interesting article on BNP nutter Arthur Kemp. It’s taken from the South African-based ‘Guardian and Mail’ newspaper.

Camp and cowardice

18 Jun 2004

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?: The British National Party (BNP), the premier neo- fascist organisation in the United Kingdom, is reeling from worse-than-expected results in local elections last week — not least in London, where the campaign was coordinated by some- time South African Arthur Kemp. The 41-year-old Kemp, whose high point of notoriety came from his role in the assassination of Chris Hani in 1993, is a close friend of BNP party leader Nick Griffin, who drafted him to coordinate its bid to win a seat on Ken Livingston’s London assembly. It failed. Born in what was then Rhodesia, raised in Cape Town and now living with his family near Oxford, Kemp is a strange creature with an even stranger political past. I first met him in 1982 when I was a member of the students representative council at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Kemp, then in his first year, was elected as a “joke” candidate in an uncontested by-election. Unintentionally camp, weedy and unsmiling, his contribution extended no further than planting stink bombs at public meetings. After one such incident, a left-winger threatened to thump him and Kemp immediately backed down, leading Tony Karon (then a leftie student, now a New York-based Time editor and television pundit) to dub him a “gutless fascist”. It wasn’t long before Kemp was heading determinedly in that direction. It had already emerged he was a member of the New Republic Party (a short-lived, right-of-centre, English-speaking affair). Soon after, however, he made a brief and futile attempt to ingratiate himself with the “broad left”. Making no headway, Kemp helped revive the Conservative Students Alliance — a right-wing group funded by the security police. But unlike most of his right-wing student allies, who drifted towards the National Party and later Tony Leon’s Democratic Alliance, Kemp took a more idiosyncratic path — serving the apartheid security and intelligence machinery on the one hand, and the extreme right on the other. He joined the police and then the security police after leaving university while drifting steadily towards a harder-line, pro-apartheid political stance than he was prepared to own up to in his UCT days. He became a prominent stalwart for the South African Conservative Party. Surrounded by burlier men, he had acquired a more confident swagger along with his supercilious sneer. He seemed to be doing well in his attempts to inveigle himself into their circles, working as political secretary to party leader Andries Treurnicht and writing a sympathetic book on the Afrikanerweerstandsbeweging (AWB) in 1990, and becoming a prominent writer in Die Patriot. As an English-speaking right-winger with a dramatic flair, he appealed to the flamboyant side of the Pretoria- based CP couple, Clive and Gaye Derby-Lewis. Kemp supplied Gaye with what became a list of the names and whereabouts of prominent anti-apartheid activists, including the name and address of Hani. Clive passed the list on to his hitman, Polish-born fascist Janusz Walus, who murdered Hani. Kemp’s list was later found in Walus’s flat. What the Derby-Lewises did not realise was that Kemp also informed the National Intelligence Service (NIS) of his list and where it had gone (although the NIS later claimed it had no role in Hani’s murder). Kemp was arrested along with Walus and the Derby-Lewises and held for a couple of days. He became a state witness, admitting his role in supplying the list, including Hani’s details, while denying prior knowledge of its purpose. By this stage Kemp was regarded as a gutless sell-out by his extremist comrades and further infuriated them with his reluctance to assist their amnesty bid. He emigrated soon after South Africa became a democracy and settled in Britain, where he promptly got to work building on his past ties with neo-fascist groups. In 1996 Searchlight, the anti-fascist newspaper, exposed the fact that Kemp had addressed pro-Nazi meetings in Germany and had written for the fascist publication Nation und Europa. He later wrote a 32-chapter racist history book entitled March of the Titans: History of the White Race, and his musings have been highlighted on the Nazi-supporting website Stormfront. Kemp developed a close relationship with BNP leader Griffin and began to make regular contributions to the party’s website and publications on subjects ranging from the Iraq War to “non-white” immigration. One of his most quoted is a lengthy racist diatribe entitled Third World Immigration: Importing Poverty, not Prosperity — a kind of reworking of Enoch Powell’s notorious Rivers of Blood speech, arguing against black immigration to Britain. He joined Griffin at a rally of BNP supporters in Bromley. As with so many things in Kemp’s past, this one did not work out (mainly because of the relative success of the more mainstream right-wing United Kingdom Independence Party). The BNP is defensive about the exposure of Kemp’s past. “He’s a fantastic fellow and I don’t see anything wrong with what he’s doing,” said a spokesperson. However, some British neo-fascist activists are pointing to Kemp’s role as an informer against right-wing comrades in South Africa, saying that he is not to be trusted. If his past is anything to go by, they may have a point.

http://www.mg.co.za/articledirect.aspx?area=%2Finsight%2Finsight__national&articleid=131007

Anonymous said...

This Arthur Kemp has been a busy BNP nazi.

Dangerous Liaison
South African Shores Up Neo-Nazi Group

Winter 2007

A notorious South African white supremacist, once accused of participating in planning a major terrorist assassination in his home country, has become a key player in the National Alliance, formerly America's leading neo-Nazi group.

Arthur Kemp, who now lives in Britain but was for years an intelligence operative working for the South African apartheid government, has visited the Alliance's West Virginia headquarters and several of the group's other chapters over the last two years. He also writes for and helps to edit the Alliance's National Vanguard magazine, as well as drafting speeches and radio essays for its leader.

It's unclear what Kemp's aims are — he refused repeated requests for an interview — but he is obviously helping to shore up the Alliance, which has largely collapsed since the death of founder William Pierce in 2002. He also may be trying to build stronger alliances between white supremacists in America and Europe, where he is a high-level cadre of the whites-only British National Party (BNP) and has important ties to other European white supremacist organizations.
A Radical in Uniform
Born in 1963, Kemp was raised in white-run Southern Rhodesia by a Dutch mother and a British father. In the early 1980s, he went to school at South Africa's University of Cape Town, where he tried to revive a "conservative" (meaning pro-apartheid) student club, and he has been a diehard ideologue ever since.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Kemp was a pro-apartheid journalist, and in 1990 he wrote a glowing history of the white supremacist Afrikaner Resistance Movement (Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, or AWB). Founded in 1970, the AWB was created to establish a new Boer nation that would preserve white rule. In the 1980s and 1990s, the group was implicated in terrorist violence against anti-apartheid activists and, later, supporters of the post-apartheid government. The AWB's leader, Eugène Terre' Blanche, was finally imprisoned for six years for attempted murder.

Kemp ultimately went to work as a sergeant in the South African security forces, which were implicated in assassinations and other violence directed at the African National Congress (ANC) and other militant opponents of apartheid. Then, in 1993, leading ANC activist Chris Hani was assassinated, shot three times in the head at short range as he stepped from his car in Johannesburg. The assassination produced serious rioting and President F.W. de Klerk warned the country was on the brink of a race war. ANC leader Nelson Mandela appealed for calm and, ultimately, the crisis was resolved with a historic agreement to hold free elections in 1994.

Kemp, described by British newspapers at the time as an official of the National Intelligence Service (which denied any link to the Hani assassination), was interrogated by police in the murder but never charged. He admitted to drawing up a roster of names, headed by Mandela and followed by Communist Party leader Joe Slovo and then Hani, which authorities described as a hit list. Kemp claimed he didn't know it was to be used as a murder guide and offered up shifting explanations of the list, including the claim that it was "to be used merely for research purposes."

Later in 1993, murder charges in the Hani assassination were brought against the assassin (not Kemp) and a couple, Clive Derby-Lewis and his wife, Gaye. Kemp testified against the couple, saying they admitted to involvement during a lunch the three had together two days after Hani's death. (Kemp and Clive Derby-Lewis then both worked for a far-right newspaper, The Patriot.) Clive Derby-Lewis and the actual assassin, Janusz Walus, were found guilty and sentenced to death (both death sentences were later commuted to life), while Gaye Derby-Lewis was acquitted.

The fact that Kemp apparently avoided prosecution by cooperating with prosecutors and giving damning testimony against the Derby-Lewises may have made it difficult for him to remain on good terms with the South African radical right. Many activists in the racist movement believe Kemp moved on to Europe and the United States later because his former comrades came to detest him.

In any case, in 1996, two years after South Africa held free elections, Kemp relocated to Britain (he now resides near Oxford, England). That same year, the British anti-fascist magazine Searchlight reported that Kemp had addressed a neo-Nazi meeting in Germany and that one of his speeches was published in the German fascist publication Nation und Europa, founded by a former SS officer.

In the late 1990s, South Africa held Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings that offered amnesty to many of those who carried out violence either for or against the apartheid regime if they publicly confessed to those crimes. During one of those hearings, Gaye Derby-Lewis accused Kemp of aiding the assassination by providing the hit list and knowing what it was for. Kemp denied it.
Back in the USA
In the United States, Kemp is best known for a sarcastic racist essay, "An Apology to the Black Man from the White Race," that has been widely circulated by white supremacists. In his mocking response to the 1995 decision of the Southern Baptist Convention to apologize for slavery, Kemp "apologizes" to blacks for "teaching you how to read and write" and "for building you thousands of schools which we have repaired after you vandalized them and burned them down."

Kemp also is the author of March of the Titans: The History of the White Race. His massive 2006 book tracks the "white race" from 35,000 B.C. through the 20th century, ascribing nearly all cultural and scientific advances to white people. Kemp warns that multiculturalism and race-mixing are destroying this font of all that is good since "all civilizations rise and fall according to their homogeneity and nothing else." The book is anti-Semitic, containing chapters on such matters as "The Suppressed Link: Jews and Communism." Kemp and his book are favorites on the white supremacist forum Stormfront, where he occasionally weighs in on various topics. Stormfront's moderator, Jamie Kelso, has read sections of the book on the air, and the site carries a copy of Kemp's glowing history of the AWB.

(The 2006 hardback edition of March of the Titans is published by Burlington, Iowa-based Ostara Productions, a previously unknown outfit whose post office box is used by David Otto. Kemp thanks Otto in the hardback edition of the book.)

It was through his research for March of the Titans that Kemp first came into contact with the National Alliance. While reading up on "white history," he ran across the late Alliance founder William Pierce's series "Who We Are," which was published in the group's Attack and National Vanguard magazines. By 2000, Sam van Rensburg, then the Alliance's membership coordinator and himself a South African military veteran, was telling Alliance members about his countryman, Kemp. Two years later, Kemp told the neo-Nazi website, Tightrope, that Pierce's articles were "the best resource I found" and led him to contact the group.

Today, Kemp is working actively to rebuild the Alliance, which has fallen from more than 1,400 active members to a tiny handful (its chairman, Shaun Walker, was recently sentenced to seven years in prison on federal civil rights charges). And the Alliance has tried to repay the favor. In 2005, when Kemp's byline started appearing in Alliance publications, the group awarded him the "Dr. William Pierce Award for Investigative Journalism," which brought with it a $250 prize, for his article in National Vanguard, "White South Africa: What Went Wrong?"

Kemp writes for that magazine both under his own name and the pseudonym Richard Preston. He also has also been ghostwriting at least some of current Alliance Chairman Erich Gliebe's speeches and his "American Dissident Voices" shortwave broadcasts and other material — something that has not escaped movement stalwarts who don't believe the former boxer is capable of articles such as last year's "Iberian Drama: An Essential History of Spain from Antiquity through the Reconquest." "Who do they think they're kidding?" asked one post on a private E-mail list that includes many former Alliance leaders. "Erich couldn't find Spain on a map."

Gliebe's wife, Erika Snyder-Gliebe, has boasted to friends that she and Kemp share the Preston pseudonym and that she sometimes posts comments under that name to the website of Resistance Records, a music label owned by the Alliance. Kemp spent part of last two years in the United States, visiting the Alliance headquarters compound near Mill Point, W.V. and also some state chapters. He was slated to speak at the Alliance's May 2007 "Holocaust Revisionist Conference," but did not attend (Kemp did speak in 2006 at a Holocaust denial conference hosted by The Barnes Review, a denial journal run by veteran anti-Semite Willis Carto that has published Kemp). Kemp has major articles in the latest issue of National Vanguard and is believed to have visited the United States as recently as February.

Kemp's American outreach may be part of an effort to build bridges between white supremacists in Europe and the United States. In Britain, Kemp has worked for the white supremacist BNP since 2004, and he is well respected by the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party of Germany. According to Searchlight, Kemp this June was given the BNP's Excalibur merchandise outlet to run with another BNP activist. The magazine also reported that Kemp was put in charge of the ideological training of the BNP's "voting members" as part of plan to build a new elite within the party loyal to its leadership, particularly party chairman Nick Griffin (Griffin often travels to the U.S. to attend white supremacist events and solicit funds for his party). Searchlight also noted that Kemp isn't the only radical South African in a key BNP post. Lambertus Nieuwhof, who tried to bomb a mixed-race church school in South Africa in 1992, is also on their payroll and runs BNP Internet operations. Surprising no one, Nieuwhof has said he considers Kemp "a very good friend."

Kemp is clear about his goals for the white race. As he writes in his book on the AWB, "with new leadership, a new generation could easily once again take on the tradition of struggle handed down to them from previous generations." It may well be that his networking, along with his attempts to reinvigorate the Alliance that was once widely respected by white supremacists around the globe, is part of a concerted attempt to create "a new leadership" in both Europe and the U.S.

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=853

Anonymous said...

Some senior and very angry BNP officers think the whole thing was set up by the intelligence services to discredit the party on the eve of the election.

Anymore info on this? Who are the 'senior' and 'angry' BNP officers?

Anonymous said...

very angry BNP officers

I thought that BNP members were always angry. But, I guess this time they were ‘very angry’.

Anonymous said...

"In any case, in 1996, two years after South Africa held free elections, Kemp relocated to Britain (he now resides near Oxford, England)."

No he doesnt, he lives in a grace and favour house near Wrexham, rent free, paid for by BNP members being taken for a ride. Can sometimes be found cruising the gay bars of Leeds (allegedly).

Anonymous said...

http://maryportagainstracism.wordpress.com/2008/05/20/cockermouth-by-election/

Cockermouth by-election

Maryport Against Racism is busy again as coming up on June 5th is a by-election in All Saints ward in Cockermouth, triggered by the resignation of the current councillor.

Why are we interested? Because along with candidates from the Tories, Labour, the Greens and an independent the British National Party are also standing in their first outing in Cockermouth.

Interestingly, the BNP candidate is Paul Stafford, from Wigton, not prominent local member Clive Jefferson who lives in Cockermouth.

The fact that BNP leader Nick Griffin was up in Cockermouth to support the campaign suggests that they’re taking this one seriously, and that Cumbria remains a key target for them.

Members of Maryport Against Racism with shortly be helping out locals to leaflet the ward, get in contact with us if you want to help with the campaign:

maryportagainstracism ‘at’ hotmail.co.uk

If you are a local BNP member or other assorted racist idiot, please follow these guidelines before trying to get information of what we’ve got planned out of us.

Anonymous said...

Any South African Nationalists won't go near Kemp because of his links to the Intelligence Services, but he has come from nowhere to the high ranks of the BNP in no time.

Anonymous said...

So Kemp lives near Oxford. Didn't our NWN friends say that the Barnes 'spoof' e-mail came from an I.P address in Oxford?

Anonymous said...

Didn't our NWN friends say that the Barnes 'spoof' e-mail came from an I.P address in Oxford?

Can you expand on what our quasi-sane Tyndallite friends at NorthWest Nationalists having been saying about the Oxford I.P address?