Suspect in US Holocaust museum guard killing has links to BNP

James Von Brunn attended meetings of the American Friends of the British National Party

A white supremacist who killed a security guard at a Holocaust memorial in the US has links to the British National party, which gained two MEPs in last week's European elections.

Thousands of visitors fled the museum in Washington yesterday after James Von Brunn opened fire, killing a security guard. In the gunfight that followed the 88-year-old was shot and is now being treated in hospital.

Today it emerged that Von Brunn, a longtime antisemite, had attended meetings of the American Friends of the British National party (AFBNP), the party's fundraising arm set up to raise cash from rightwing activists in America.

Mark Cotterill, who ran the US-based organisation before it folded in 2001, said: "He did attend meetings. I have just checked my database and he is down as 'meetings only' so he was not a major donor, although he may have put some money on the plate when it was passed round."

The AFBNP treasurer, Todd Blodgett, also told the Washington Post that he and Von Brunn had attended fundraising meetings together in Arlington county, Virginia. Nick Griffiin spoke at least two AFBNP meetings and the BNP leader said the money raised by the organisation made a "significant contribution to the BNP's [2001] general election campaign".

Yesterday a spokesman for the party said: "You get a lot of people coming to meetings but I don't think you can blame us for that. Even if he did go to meetings it was nothing to do with us."

However, anti-racism campaigners said Von Brunn's links to the BNP underlined its extremist agenda.

"It is clear that Nick Griffin is at the centre of an international network of white supremacists," said Dan Hodges from Searchlight. "The BNP must explain the full extent of his organisation's links with this antisemitic gunman."

The far-right party gained its first two MEPs in last week's European elections – Griffin in the north-west and former National Front leader Andrew Brons in Yorkshire and the Humber.

During the campaign photographs emerged of Griffin alongside the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard Stephen "Don" Black – one of the extremists banned from the UK by the then home secretary, Jacqui Smith – and he was widely criticised for defending a BNP leaflet that said black and Asian Britons "do not exist" and should be referred to as "racial foreigners".

US police today said Von Brunn, who is in a critical condition in hospital, would be charged with murder and may also be charged with hate crimes and civil rights violations.

At a press conference in Washington police chief Cathy Lanier said security guard Stephen T Johns was shot when he opened the door of the museum for Von Brunn. Other security guards opened fire, and Von Brunn slumped to the ground just outside the museum door.

Joseph Persichini, assistant director of the Washington FBI field office, said Von Brunn was known to the police "as an antisemite and a white supremacist, who had an established website that had espoused hatred against African Americans, Jewish [sic] and others".

Von Brunn wrote an antisemitic treatise, Kill the Best Gentiles, decried "the browning of America" and claimed to have exposed a Jewish conspiracy "to destroy the White gene-pool".

In 1983 he was convicted of attempting to kidnap members of the US federal reserve board. At the time, police said Von Brunn wanted to take the members hostage because of high interest rates and the nation's economic difficulties. On the website, Von Brunn blames his six-year imprisonment on "a Jew judge" and "Negro jury".

Civil rights groups said they had been monitoring Von Brunn for decades. Heidi Beirich, director of research for the Southern Poverty Law Centre's intelligence project, said: "He thinks the Jews control the Federal Reserve, the banking system, that basically all Jews are evil. He's an extreme antisemite."

His Internet writings say the Holocaust was a hoax: "At Auschwitz the 'Holocaust' myth became Reality, and Germany, cultural gem of the West, became a pariah among world nations."

Guardian

English nationalist rival moves in on BNP territory

As the elections for London’s Mayor and the London Assembly approach all eyes are on the British National Party. Looking ahead to the 2009 European elections, the North West promises to be a particularly fraught battleground as the BNP comes up against a determined anti-fascist campaign.

Another hurdle the BNP will have to contend with in the North West is a resurgent England First Party (EFP) whose message of unabashed white supremacy continues to threaten the hegemony of the BNP in the region. With Nick Griffin arrogantly disregarding the wishes of local party members by appointing himself regional organiser instead of the preferred candidate Chris Jackson, there will be much more to play for than seats in European Parliament. Griffin will also be putting his personal reputation on the line in an area where his political opponents on the far right are strongest.

The EFP was founded in 2004 by Mark Cotterill, a former chairman of the American Friends of the British National Party (AFBNP), which channelled tens of thousands of dollars into the BNP before a change in UK electoral law made it illegal to raise money abroad. Cotterill, who had been involved with the nazi National Alliance while living in America, was subsequently deported because his fundraising also contravened US law. Upon his return to England he fell out with the BNP, Griffin seemingly unwilling to reward his endeavours with a commensurate party position. Disaffected, Cotterill moved to Blackburn, Lancashire where he formed the EFP.

The EFP makes no bones about its white supremacist ideology which marks the party out as more vocally extreme than the “modern” BNP. The EFP wants to “win back” the country from hordes of “immigrant invaders”. To do so requires the “repatriation of all immigrants to their lands of ancestral origin”, which will not be a voluntary matter.

To the EFP ethnic minorities are unassimilable and unwanted, their very presence creating friction: “… their clothes, their food, their culture, their psychology, their biology, their physiology and their history challenges ours at every point of the compass”. To reenergise the sense of national identity it believes has been corrupted by these “aliens”, the EFP advocates the teaching of “the Aryan histories of Western Europe” in schools and “the abolition of the Islamic faith and the demolition of all mosques”.

Many BNP members agree with these sentiments but they would perhaps be loath to couch them in such uncompromising terms. The EFP regularly operates in tandem with both the National Front and the openly nazi British People’s Party. Its meetings are graced by individuals such as Lady Michele Renouf, David Irving’s chief cheerleader who is particularly close to Peter Rushton, deputy editor of the EFP’s magazine, Heritage and Destiny.

Another barrier is the genuine ideological difference between the EFP and the BNP over “English” and “British” nationalism which, though it might seem of minor importance outside far-right circles, certainly contains the potential for a major ideological split. There are certainly people in the BNP who would prefer to “ditch Scotland” if not Wales, especially since the recent internal crisis in which Scottish activists were prominent opponents of Nick Griffin, the BNP leader. The BNP’s monthly magazine Identity has recently attempted to jump on the “English” nationalism bandwagon so as not to be usurped by the EFP not to mention the larger English Democrats party, which recently adopted Matt O’Connor, founder of Fathers 4 Justice, as its candidate in the London mayoral election.

By virtue of its very existence the EFP impedes the progress of the BNP in its main Blackburn base and is beginning to pose a threat elsewhere. Griffin was furious when Cotterill and his fellow EFP candidate Michael Johnson, a local publican, were elected to Blackburn council in 2006, not least because Cotterill again trounced the local BNP organiser in the process.

Cotterill’s triumph did not last. Within a year he had resigned and Johnson had left the EFP, joining the For Darwen group on the council. Cotterill cited the offer of a job in Preston as the reason for his departure not only from the council chamber but also as party leader. He remains actively involved behind the scenes, however, as the party’s nominations officer and, more importantly, as the editor of Heritage and Destiny.

The departure of Cotterill and Johnson does not seem to have diminished support for the EFP in certain areas of Blackburn and Darwen. Although the EFP has not won any more council seats in Blackburn, in May 2007 it polled strongly in Higher Croft (15.2%) and in Mill Hill (18.2%), where it beat the BNP candidate.

Steve Smith took over the reins from Cotterill. Smith had previously been the chairman of Burnley BNP and is widely credited with orchestrating the party’s breakthrough in the town between 2001 and 2003. John Tyndall, the BNP’s founder and veteran nazi leader, was certainly impressed, writing: “Steven Smith is the most successful branch organiser in the history of the British National Party”. Smith alas was unable to enjoy the fruits of his labours. He was arrested and jailed for forging signatures on BNP nomination papers.

The BNP rapidly moved to dissociate itself from its erstwhile hero. Smith claims that Griffin was motivated by vanity, fearing paradoxically that the rise of the BNP in Burnley threatened his own position as chairman. Similar sentiments have been voiced in connection with the expulsion last December of Sadie Graham, another capable organiser now outside the BNP.

With Smith at the helm the EFP expanded its base of operations into Burnley with the intention of taking it back from the BNP. His first move was to stand in a by-election in Daneshouse with Stoneyholme in February 2007. He came third with 141 votes (7%), beating the Conservative candidate into third place. In this predominantly Asian ward Smith never had a hope in hell of being elected and knew it. His candidacy was meant to deliver a simple message: Smith was back in town.

In May 2007 Smith stood in Cliviger with Worsthorne. He came second with 372 votes (17%), though a long way behind the victorious Conservative candidate. More importantly, however, Smith utterly thrashed the BNP candidate Dave Shapcott, who had taken over from Smith as Burnely BNP organiser, beating him into third place. Between them the far-right vote was 29% and Smith appears bent on capturing it all. In Queensgate ward, Simon Bennett polled a creditable 26% for the EFP, coming third.

Smith also has his eye on Brunshaw ward, which once yielded a strong vote for the BNP and returned one BNP councillor. BNP support has dissipated since those heady days and Smith believes he can displace the BNP as a “nationalist” alternative to the Liberal Democrats. Smith fired the opening salvo in October 2007 with “Operation Blanket Burnley” – his plan to saturate the town with 25,000 “wonderfully controversial” leaflets, which stated, “England is being deliberately destroyed by cowards, liars, anarchists and traitors” and alleged that white Britons were “becoming an ethnic minority in their own land”. The Burnley Police hate crime unit is currently investigating the leaflets’ content for incitement of racial hatred. Not that this has stopped Smith handing them out: he claims he only has 8,000 left to deliver.

Shapcott is not amused by the support the EFP is gaining and even less amused by his own members fraternising with the EFP despite its proscription, something surely of concern to the BNP leadership.

The EFP has also begun picking at the bones of other areas in which the BNP has begun stagnating. Since May 2007 it has moved into Wigan where it has won the support of Ian Hague, the former Wigan BNP organiser, and Oldham, where the former BNP organiser Martin Brierley has joined up, another sign that the EFP is gaining in areas where the BNP has failed to capitalise on what was once fertile ground.

The party has also begun to move southwards, establishing a presence in Hastings, Sussex, through the good offices of Alan Winder, another BNP renegade. The EFP fielded a candidate in Whaddon ward, Milton Keynes in June 2007, which caused some strife for the BNP. Anna Seymour, the EFP candidate, came third of six beating the Liberal Democrats, UK Independence Party and an independent candidate. Her campaign drew support from local BNP members including Barry Taylor who has since been expelled.

It is important not to exaggerate the threat posed by the EFP to the BNP. It remains a minute outfit in comparison to its rival. It is, however, the only far-right party capable of mounting a serious challenge to BNP hegemony in the North West. Smith appears to have reenergised the organisation following Cotterill’s “departure”. Shapcott and Griffin have been left bristling with annoyance as the EFP encroaches on its former power base in Burnley. And although there is no indication at present that the EFP are on the cusp of displacing the BNP in Burnley, Smith’s zeal and organisational ability must be a cause for concern within the BNP and indeed for anti-fascists too.

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