We expose vile racist biker as British leader of the Ku Klux Klan

He tried to hide his identity behind the hideous hood of the Ku Klux Klan – but his tell-tale tattoos are visible for all to see.

This is Chris Hopgood, vile racist leader of a British wing of the white supremacists. In the first evidence of UK Klan activity in decades, the KKK Grand Dragon poses with other senior members of the sick organisation.

A Mirror investigation uncovered the snaps on a German extremist website, set up to lure new recruits to the infamous US-based hate group.

Hopgood, a tattooist living in Co Durham, proudly wears a Klan robe as he stands alongside another KKK Grand Dragon and the European White Knights of the Burning Cross Imperial Wizard. The same group staged a cross-burning ceremony in a field in Germany this year and posted a video of the disturbing spectacle on the internet.




Hopgood, 51, is also a supporter of Nick Griffin’s far-right British National Party and the English Defence League.

He believed he could hide under a Klan hood during secret meetings. But as our photos show, he fails to cover the word KLAN tattooed across the knuckles of his right hand. Also on view are his distinctive spider-web tattoos creeping over both his hands.

In photos we took of the bearded, heavy-set biker out walking in the old mining town of Easington Colliery, the same tattoos are clearly showing – proving he is the hooded Klan leader. The married dad, who has multiple piercings, including a bull-ring through his nose, also sports a Nazi symbol sewn into his leather biker’s vest.

The European White Knights bring together white supremacists in Europe and the US who believe in a racist and anti-Jewish creed called Christian Identity.

HATE

The group claims it is officially recognised by the original KKK in the US and is partnered with several other US groups – including the gay and black-hating Keltin Klan Kirk, whose masked leader is on YouTube preaching hatred in front of a swastika with an assault rifle.

The European White Knights claim to be ­represented in Britain, Germany, France, Greece, Austria, Switzerland and Sweden.

Butch-looking Hopgood ran a separate whiteknights-kkk.co.uk website, which was recently taken down, on which he denounced homosexuality as a “cancer that threatens our way of life”, and warned: “We are a threat for we will never lay down to the oppressors and enemies of our white race.”

He has several tattoos across his body, including his nickname “Hoppy” on the side of his shaved head, and his tag on social networking site Fubar is Hoppy Texas Wolves.

Hopgood has posted dozens of photos of himself on his bikes and posing with the Confederate flag – associated with Southern US heritage but also used by some as a symbol of slavery and racism.

Hopgood – who has spent time in Georgia, a US state with a huge KKK presence – shared a picture with friends on Fubar of a pregnant white woman and blonde child with the words “Love Your Race”.Underneath, he has written: “For our kids and grandkids”. Under Interests, he writes: “www.whiteknights-kkk.co.uk go visit worth a look.”

The Mirror has discovered the whiteknights-kkk.co.uk website was set up using Hopgood’s address in Easington Colliery.

New recruits were invited to join by filling out an application form – and confirming: “I believe in the segregation of the races.”

His Facebook profile picture is the symbol for the EDL Bikers, a section of the right-wing English Defence League.

And Hopgood, born in Aldershot, Hants, also trumpeted his support for Nick Griffin and the BNP on his personal site: “The BNP is a legally elected political party elected by the people of England and as such he has the rights of any other legal party to have his say on our behalf.”

Our investigator made contact with a Chris affiliated to the White Knights site, who claimed to be the KKK Grand Dragon of England.

In emails, he boasted he was recruiting new members and hoped to open KKK branches in Scotland and Wales.

On an online forum used by extremists, a Grand Dragon called Chris wrote: “Greetings brothers and sisters and blessings to you all. I am Chris Grand Dragon ‘European White Knights Of The Burning Cross’ England. It is such an honour to be welcomed so well... and to talk to so many great members of the KKK. It is a hard struggle to bring a united white brotherhood to England. But one that is worth it. I send respect to all brothers and sisters in all parts of the white nation.”

According to a German newspaper, the European White Knights of the Burning Cross have recently printed copies of the Klan bible, called the Klorane.German and English language versions have been distributed to members.

CEREMONY

A video posted in February on their site shows 14 robed Klansmen burning a cross to stirring background music in Grabow, Germany.

They were all wearing gloves so it is not clear whether Hopgood took part in the ceremony.

One Klansman shouts in German: “White Power”. The group responds in chorus: “White Power.”

The arms of the men and women are then raised in a Hitler salute. An entry next to the video, written in German, signs off with: “Our life is for the cross. The cross is our life!...Become a member of our Brotherhood. Rev Imperial Wizard.”

Yesterday the Mirror paid Hopgood a visit but was told he was not home. Five minutes after we left, Hopgood called our reporter claiming he was not a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

When asked why he was dressed in a hood and the full Klan uniform, appearing in photos alongside KKK leaders from Europe, he claimed: “I do it for my personal jollies.”

Hopgood added: “I have no views on the KKK. The fact that I have my political views is known by 99.9% of my customers.

“One of the royals dressed as a Nazi stormtrooper, but that does not make him a Nazi. I am not a member of the Ku Klux Klan and I am not recruiting in England, Scotland or Wales.”

A spokesman for anti-extremist organization Hope Not Hate said he was shocked the KKK had a ­presence in the UK.

He declared: “It’s chilling to see the KKK bringing their message of hate to the heart of England.

“It shows how far the tentacles of international extremism have spread. This is why we must all remain vigilant to prevent racists getting a stranglehold on our ­communities.”

In 2009, the BNP demanded a former Klan leader be allowed into Britain.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith had put ex-KKK Grand Wizard Don Black on a blacklist of extremists but Mr Griffin urged her to let him in. He said: “The only people who can be kept out are those who inflict violence, which Don Black has not.”

But in 1981, Black had been found in possession of weapons and ammunition and was jailed for three years. And Griffin was photographed with the white supremacist in New Orleans in 2005 and Washington in 2006.

Daily Mirror

EDIT - EDL News have been having a dig around on Facebook looking for more evidence and have come up with this

White Supremacist Site MartinLutherKing.org Marks 12th Anniversary

Recently, a diverse group of New York City high school students was assigned to write reports on Martin Luther King, Jr. Searching the Internet, several students learned that the renowned civil rights leader had in fact been a drunken philandering con man. Others concluded that the federal holiday marking King's birthday should be repealed.

Where in the www did these kids search?

Google, for starters.

If you enter "Martin Luther King, Jr." as a search term, the site netting the third-highest ranking is martinlutherking(dot)org, which purports to be "A valuable resource for teachers and students alike." Visit the site and you can read the "truth" about King -- communist, wife-beater, plagiarist, sexual deviant and all-around fraud. There are flyers to the same effect that children can download, print and bring to school.

As you have probably guessed, this site is not run by the King Center, the memorial established in 1968 by Coretta Scott King to the advance her husband's legacy (TheKingCenter.org ranks seventh on Google). Rather, MartinLutherKing(dot)org is a spinoff of Stormfront(dot)org, the "white nationalist" online community created in 1995 by former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard Don Black. Stormfront's Web forum now claims nearly 214,000 participants. Black registered martinlutherking(dot)org on January 14, 1999, later adding MLKing(dot)org and MLKing(dot)com.

A Google spokesman told me, "Our search results are generated objectively and are independent of the beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google. A site's ranking in Google's search results is automatically determined by computer algorithms using hundreds of factors to calculate a page's relevance to a given query. The only sites we omit from our search results are those we are legally compelled to remove or those maliciously attempting to manipulate our results."

MartinLutherKing(dot)org also ranks third on Yahoo and Bing.

According to sociologist Jessie Daniels of RacismReview, "The decision to register the domain name 'martinlutherking(dot)org' relatively early in the evolution of the web was a shrewd and opportune move for advocates of white supremacy."

While proponents of the King Center message would love to pull the plug, they face multiple obstacles, not least of which is the First Amendment. Unless the Web content contains libel, a credible threat or incitement to imminent lawless action, the law offers little recourse. In a 2008 Atlanta Journal-Constitution interview, King Center CEO Isaac Farris, Jr., cited the "thin line between opinion and slander," adding, "You never authorize a lawyer to do whatever it takes because that could be a black hole."

The law also insulates Internet Service Providers from liability to the same extent telephone companies aren't responsible for crimes committed over their wires. Per the Telecommunications Act of 1996, "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."

Providers may prohibit racist or bigoted messages of their own volition, however--such prohibitions don't violate constitutional rights because a commercial provider isn't a government agency. MartinLutherKing(dot)org's ISP, Dallas-based SoftLayer, has a strict acceptable use policy. "We try to be as proactive as possible in eliminating any and all content from our network that breaches the terms of this policy," a SoftLayer spokesperson told me. "But this is not always an easy task. In aggregate we have nearly 80,000 servers under management, and we host millions of domains."

Daniels sees general awareness about the way propaganda works online as a more effective agent of change. "We have to get smarter about racism," she says.

Adds educational psychologist Brendesha Tynes, "We need media literacy programs that foster the development of a critical lens to help children recognize the difference between propaganda and legitimate sites."

Toward that end, the Anti-Defamation League offers a Combating CyberHate Toolkit that suggests steps to counter pernicious sites, including posting videos, counterpoints, or comments that oppose offensive content--for example, constructing counter-MartinLutherKing(dot)org programming on YouTube or Facebook.

And as Martin Luther King, Jr., said, "All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem."

Huffington Post

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

Nasty Nick's paedo pal

BNP leader Griffin shares platform with neo-Nazi paedophile

BNP chief Nick Griffin shows his true colours - holding aloft the hand of a neo-Nazi paedophile.

Griffin tries to pretend his whites-only party is NOT racist. But our exclusive picture nails that lie, showing him cosying up to a leader of a group which described Hitler as "the greatest man of our era".

Griffin shared the platform with Kevin Alfred Strom while in America to drum up BNP support in 2005. Also on stage were former Ku Klux Klan chiefs Stephen "Don" Black and David Duke. Vile Strom was a lead member of America's neo-Nazi National Alliance, which says whites are superior and wants whites-only schools and workplaces. The group claims the "sickness of multiculturalism" is destroying America and Britain. Last year Strom also pleaded guilty to possessing ten child porn images and got a 23-month jail term.

News of the World

BNP in European Parliament is no laughing matter

There's an old Groucho Marx joke about how he’d never join a club that would have someone like him as a member. It’s a shame more white people don’t feel that way about the British National Party.

Groucho’s self-deprecating one-liner was funny and clever, but if the BNP were the club in question, no one would be laughing. How can any political party that bans blacks, Asians and Jews – like Groucho – be taken seriously in a democracy, let alone garner enough votes to win two seats in the European Parliament?

But surely no non-white person in their right mind would want to join the BNP anyway, I hear you say, so what’s the problem? To which my answer is this . . . whether they want to or not is irrelevant. What’s important is that they should be able to.

Turning a blind eye to institutional racism is unacceptable in a civilised society. And you can’t get more “institutional” than writing a racist clause into your constitution. The fact that no one of ethnic origin would wish to associate themselves with the BNP is beside the point.

The Government’s new Equalities Bill will make it illegal for any organisation to insist – as the BNP does – on an “indigenous Caucasian” membership. We’ve waited too long for such legislation. Meanwhile, the BNP has been allowed to grow like a tumour by convincing disaffected Brits that it is benign. People concerned about immigration – not necessarily racists, perhaps even realists – have been suckered into supporting these fascists either through a misplaced sense of patriotism or as a consequence of giving Labour a good kicking.

Blinded by the glaring shortcomings of the Government and its main rivals, some view the BNP as a viable alternative instead of seeing the party for what it really is . . . a watered-down Ku Klux Klan. And if you think that’s going too far, let me remind you that during the BNP’s Euro campaign, photographs emerged of its leader Nick Griffin with the Klan’s grand wizard Stephen “Don” Black.

Black – who has an unfortunate surname for a white supremacist – famously defended a BNP leaflet that said black and Asian Britons should be referred to as “racial foreigners”. It also emerged on Friday that James Von Brunn, the crazed anti-semite who shot and killed a security guard at Washington’s Holocaust Memorial Museum, had close ties with the American Friends of the British National Party. That’s the calibre of “friends” they attract.

In all probability, the Equality Bill will not change the way people think about the BNP. The hardliners who support it will continue to do so. And the enforced change to the party’s constitution is unlikely to result in blacks beating a path to its door. But even if the new law turns out to be purely academic and the BNP’s odious membership rules are never tested, it’s important to have a legal sledgehammer with which to smash this apartheid constitution should the situation arise.

I sullied myself by looking on the official BNP website before writing this. On it, the party’s leader, Nick Griffin, claims its membership qualifications are “wholly within the law as dictated by the Race Relations Act”. He adds: “Nothing the Government does will change the party’s commitment to serving the interests of the indigenous population of our country.”

I don’t doubt that. An Equality Bill will not change what the BNP stands for. It won’t even clarify what is meant by the term “indigenous population”, which can be interpreted in a number of ways. What it will do is open up the BNP to greater scrutiny, and lay bare the myth that it serves the interests of anyone other than bigots and thugs.

Sunday Sun

Why race-hate spouting BNP chief Nick Griffin should have no place at garden party

I've never been to a Royal garden party, and I'm not sure if you have either. The principle is clear though - they're an opportunity for the Queen to meet and thank those people who have made a significant contribution to their country and their community.

Obviously the great and the good get invited. But so do thousands of ordinary hardworking Britons who have quietly but steadfastly done their bit to improve our society.

Nick Griffin is not one of those people.

He's a criminal, with a conviction for incitement to racial hatred. He's a racist, who said last week that black Britons, including footballers David James, Sol Campbell and Rio Ferdinand could never be British. Griffin's also got some pretty nasty friends.

A couple of weeks ago the Mirror exposed his meeting with Don Black, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan banned from the UK on grounds of national security. And last month he sent his Deputy Simon Darby to meet up with Roberto Fiore, a man convicted for his links to the Armed Revolutionary Nuclei terrorist group responsible for the Bologna railway bombing, which killed 85 people, including two British tourists.

You'd think on security grounds alone, there would be questions about the BNP leader gaining entry to Buckingham Palace. But he is set to sneak in as a guest of BNP activist Richard Barnbrook, who is a member of the London Assembly.

Griffin himself obviously can't wait to crash the party. As the editor of the BNP magazine said yesterday: "The Palace garden party publicity stunt is reaping 100 times more attention than we had envisaged."

He certainly doesn't want to go so he can pay his respects to the Queen or her family. Griffin has branded Prince Charles a traitor because "he has made known his desire to represent people of all faiths and races". Mark Collett, the BNP director of publicity, was filmed saying: "The Royals have betrayed their people. When we're in power they'll be wiped out." There's a little part of me that would quite like Nick Griffin to meet the Queen.

Given Her Majesty is head of the Commonwealth, I'd like to see him explain his party's policy of rounding up all her black and Asian subjects and removing them from the country. I'd also like him to meet Prince Harry, recently returned from Afghanistan where he fought alongside the Gurkhas. When asked about the Gurkhas' campaign to stay in the UK Griffin responded: "Our policy position is the country is full. No more immigrants."

But though I'd love to watch Griffin squirm defending his hateful agenda it wouldn't be much fun for the other guests. Imagine you're a local community or charity worker. You've received an invite to the Palace. You put on your best dress or suit. You arrive, possibly with your elderly mum or dad on your arm. You feel proud.

Then you walk on to the Palace lawn, and who's standing in front of you. Nick Griffin. Racist. Criminal. Imagine how you'd feel. If you're black. If you're Jewish. If, unlike Griffin, you have hope, rather than hate, in your heart.

I've heard all the arguments. He's got a right to attend. His views may be controversial, but you can't censor him. Don't make him a martyr. Yes Nick Griffin's got rights. The trouble is, if he got his way those rights would be removed from millions of British citizens who don't have the same colour skin as him.

His views aren't just controversial. They're so extreme they have lead to his conviction in a court of law. A martyr? Because he might be denied a cup of tea and a cucumber sandwich? It's 70 years since Nazi boots first marched into Poland. People fought, and died, to prevent those same boots marching across the lawn of Buckingham Palace.

Some of those who lived through that struggle will no doubt be there on July 21. They have earned their invitation.

Nick Griffin has not.

Mirror

BNP want banned KKK leader back in Britain

The Griffins and former KKK Grand Wizard and Stormfront-owner Don Black

The far-right British National Party is demanding a former Ku Klux Klan leader be allowed into Britain.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith last week put former KKK grand wizard Stephen "Don" Black on a blacklist of "extremists".

Now BNP leader Nick Griffin has called on her to let Black in. Mr Griffin said: "The only people who can be kept out are those who inflict violence, which Don Black has not." In 1981, Black was found in possession of weapons and ammunition, and jailed for three years.

Mr Griffin - whose party wants the deportation of illegal immigrants - was photographed with the white supremacist in New Orleans in 2005 and Washington in 2006.

Anti-racist group Searchlight said: "Nick Griffin thinks hardworking Britons of Commonwealth descent should be kicked out, and the doors flung open to his lunatic Ku Klux Klan friends."

Mirror

Exposed: BNP leader Nick Griffin spotted meeting KKK chief Don Black

The far-right party leader met former KKK chief and American Nazi Party thug Stephen "Don" Black at racist conferences in the US.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith named the 55-year-old as one of 16 more extremists yesterday blocked from ever entering our shores. The former KKK Grand Black Wizard was once jailed for trying to invade the Caribbean island of Dominica with mercenaries. But despite Black's criminal past, Griffin - who is standing in next month's European elections - was happy to be pictured alongside him.

Black, boss of hate-fuelled website Stormfront, was banned from Britain along with other hate preachers, Islamic extremists and far-right US talk show host Michael Weiner.

Ms Smith said: "Coming to this country is a privilege. I refuse to extend that privilege to individuals who abuse our standards and values. I will not hesitate to name and shame those who foster extremist views as I want them to know they are not welcome here."

The UK banned list now includes more than 100 people. Islamic hate preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed, who now lives in Lebanon, is on it.

Griffin was pictured with Black at the American Renaissance conference in Washington DC in 2006. BNP head of publicity Mark Collett and Leeds organiser Martin Reynolds were also present, as was Black's predecessor as KKK chief, David Duke.

The BNP said: "We shared a platform with these people, but it doesn't mean we share their beliefs. In fact, we were arguing for a sensible nationalism."

The Mirror's third Hope Not Hate bus campaign starts this month. Our red double decker will tour Britain spreading an anti-racism message in the run-up to the June 4 European elections.

Mirror

Britain's least wanted

Former KKK leader, Stormfront-owner
and Nick Griffin's good buddy, Don Black

From the 'Aryan Barbarian' to Slav skinhead leaders, they stand accused of fostering hate.

Islamist preachers, white supremacists, a radio shock- jock, an Arab terrorist and two anti-gay evangelicals are just some of the people to have been banned from entering Britain recently, it emerged yesterday.

In a bid to regain the initiative after weeks of negative publicity and fears that anti-immigration parties will sweep the board at the forthcoming European elections, the Home Office took the unprecedented step of "naming and shaming" 16 individuals who were barred from coming to the UK between November and March.

Most of those on the list are foreign Muslim preachers whom the Home Office believes would incite hatred or glorify terrorism if they were allowed in. But the list also includes a number of white supremacists, homophobic preachers and an anti-Arab Jewish militant. Two Slav supremacists on the list have been incarcerated in a Russian jail since October 2007.

Under a new law introduced in 2005, Britain is able to pre-emptively ban anyone who promotes hatred, terrorism or serious criminal activity. Since the measure was introduced, 101 people have been refused entry. In the five months to March, 22 were excluded; the Home Office refused to name six of the people, citing national security reasons.

The Government claims such bans are vital to prevent hate preachers from spreading their messages, but critics argue that the orders are a form of pre-emptive policing that stifles free speech and, in the age of the internet, have little effect on halting hateful remarks.

Some of the most prominent Islamists on the list include Safwat Hijazi, a populist Egyptian cleric who preaches on a hardline Arabic television station, and Wagdy Ghoneim, an Islamic scholar expelled from the US in 2004 for alleged terrorist links.

Two Pakistani nationals with links to militancy are also on the list. Nasr Javed, a Kashmiri separatist believed to be a member of the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group, and Amir Siddique, a preacher at a notorious Islamist mosque in Pakistan's capital Islamabad, have been banned.

Among the white supremacists excluded are Don Black, a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard and founder of the neo-Nazi website Stormfront, Erich Gliebe, a West Virginia-based neo-Nazi, and Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky, two Russians whose skinhead gang murdered at least 20 people and were jailed in December.

However, Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslim Council of Britain, believes people should be arrested if they break anti-hatred laws, rather than pre-emptively banned from the country. He said yesterday: "This whole process seems to be a futile and gimmicky attempt by the Government to look tough on the issue of hate preachers.

"I would like to know how many of these people have actually expressed an interest in coming to the UK over the past six months. The two Russian skinheads have been in jail for more than a year."

Samir Al Quintar: Lebanese Militant

The former fighter with the Palestinian Liberation Front took part in the attempted kidnapping of an Israeli family in Nehariya in 1979 which resulted in the deaths of five people, including two children.

He was imprisoned by the Israelis in 1980 but released last year as part of a prisoner swap between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hizbollah. He is considered a national hero in Lebanon but is reviled as an unrepentant terrorist in Israel.

Since his release, he has given a number of interviews calling for further attacks on Israel.

Nasr Javed: Militant Leader

Believed to be a Kashmiri nationalist involved with Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based Kashmiri terrorist organisation thought to be behind the recent attacks in Mumbai and Lahore. India has accused Javed of being a mid-ranking Lashkar operative who helps train their suicidal fedayeen fighters. After the Mumbai attacks, Javed was widely quoted by the Indian and Pakistani press as promising more assaults by Lashkar militants.

Amir Siddique: Preacher

Siddique is said to be deputy prayer leader at Islamabad's Red Mosque, a notorious stronghold for Islamic militants. The army laid siege to the mosque in 2007 after militants kidnapped foreigners and imposed strict rules on shopkeepers. Hundreds of people, including the mosque's leader, were killed. It is supposedly back under Pakistani government control but many survivors of the siege have gone on to fight for the Taliban in the Swat Valley.

Fred Waldron Phelps Snr & Shirley Phelps-Roper: Anti-Gay Evangelicals

Fred Waldron Phelps founded the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church, a highly controversial but small sect of evangelicals who believe God is punishing the world for tolerating homosexuality. The church is primarily made up of members of Phelps's family and its followers have caused outrage in the US by picketing the funerals of Aids victims and soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Phelps's daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper is the pastor and senior leader of the Westboro Baptists. The Home Office banned her from entering the UK after she threatened to picket a school play in Basingstoke, Hampshire, about an anti-gay murder.

The Westboro Baptists regularly claim that they will picket events outside North America but they have yet to do so. They are largely ignored by the American media, which treats them as an insignificant congregation of radical believers who hold little sway beyond their families.

Don Black: White Supremacist

Don Black, photographed above with the British National Party chairman Nick Griffin at a conference in New Orleans in 2005, is one of America's most prominent white supremacists.

A former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, he went on to set up Stormfront, one of the most popular white power websites in the US. In 1981, he led a farcical KKK attempt to take over the island nation of Dominica to create a white supremacist state and was later jailed. Mr Griffin and the BNP's deputy leader, Simon Darby, have met Black on numerous occasions.

Yesterday, Mr Darby said: "Just because the BNP shares a platform with someone doesn't mean we agree with what they say."

But a spokesperson for the anti-racism group Searchlight, said: "The fact that Nick Griffin is prepared to embrace someone as vile as Don Black says everything you need to know about Griffin and his party. The European election campaign has only just started and already the BNP's mask of moderation has been torn away."

Abdullah Qadri Al Ahdal: Preacher

An extremist who is banned because he is considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour, including justifying or glorifying terrorist violence.

Michael Weiner: Shock Jock

A conservative commentator and "shock jock" DJ, Savage's regular rants on US radio are as controversial as they are popular. He is a best-selling author who once called the Koran a "book of hate" and said an autistic children was "a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out". He also once suggested that America should let its immigrants starve to death in order to ease overcrowding.

Wagdy Ghoneim: Islamic Writer

A prolific writer and Islamic scholar who has frequently called for jihad against Jews, Ghoneim was thrown out of the US in 2004 after serving as an imam in a California mosque. The Americans accused the Egyptian of raising funds for terror groups, but expelled him because they did not have enough evidence to prosecute. Ghoneim denies any terrorist links and says he is just an Islamic scholar.

Yunis Al Astal: Hamas MP

A preacher with a sizeable following among the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, Al Astal is a Hamas member of the Palestinian parliament.

He has described Jews as "the brothers of apes and pigs" and in a sermon last year called for a jihad, or holy war, to conquer Europe and the US. Last April, he declared that Rome, "the capital of the Catholics", would soon be overtaken by Islam.

Abdul Ali Musa: Islamic Writer

A controversial US-born Muslim convert who heads the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought in Washington, a global Islamic think-tank that promotes orthodox Sunni Islam. The Anti-Defamation League has accused Musa of regularly making anti-Semitic statements. He believes the 11 September attacks were a Jewish conspiracy and has previously praised Palestinian suicide bombers.

Mike Guzofsky: Jewish Supremacist

A militant Jewish leader and follower of Kahanism, an ideology which critics say is quasi-fascist.

The US government says Guzofsky has links to Kahane Chai, a group named after the extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane. A fundamental tenet of Kahanist ideology is that the state of Israel should defend itself against Arab and Nazi enemies, and give full citizenship only to Jews.

Artur Ryno & Pavel Skachevsky: Slav Supremacists

The former Moscow art student-turned-supremacist led a gang of skinheads which carried out 20 racist murders and 12 attempted murders. At his trial, the 19-year-old claimed he wanted to cleanse Russia of non-ethnic Russians. At his sentencing in December, he shouted: "For faith, tsar and fatherland." It is unlikely he ever applied to come to the UK: he has been in custody since October 2007.

Pavel Skachevsky acted as Ryno's right-hand man and was found guilty of murder at the same trial. Little is known about him because the hearing was held behind closed doors. Their gang is thought to have carried out at least 20 racist murders between August 2006 and October 2007. Their victims included Tajik labourers, Chinese migrants and a chess master from Russia's far east.

Safwat Hijazi: Televangelist

This popular Egyptian preacher appears regularly on Al-Nas [The People] TV – an Arabic-language satellite channel which promotes a hardline Salafi interpretation of Islam. In 2006, the station dismissed all of its female staff. Israel wanted the station shut down after Hijazi issued a fatwa allegedly permitting the killing of Israeli Jews in Arab countries and the Palestinian territories.

Eric Gliebe: Neo Nazi

A former professional boxer who fought as the "Aryan Barbarian", Gliebe is chairman of the Nationalist Alliance, America's best organised and most effective white supremacist group, based in West Virginia. His activity in racial nationalism was inspired by his father, who served in the German army in the Second World War. Gliebe has also helped to pioneer the white supremacist music scene.

Independent

The 'new' BNP is still the Nazi BNP

The BNP's merchandising wing - Excalibur - has hit tough times recently since Searchlight exposed its whereabouts and it got kicked out.

But, fear not, for the BNP still has its nascent digital downloads service. There are currently only four songs available, but, rest assured:

This may not be MTV, in fact it is of better cultural quality that the disposable factory-produced music that glorifies violence, drug use and sexual depravity, but this is our first steps towards developing our own music broadcast channel.

What is on offer at present are three tracks by the ever-unpopular BNP minstrel Dave Hannam, and a song called 'We are one', of which we read: 'Battlecry, an American based rock band have produced this powerful track with patriotic lyrics'.

Taking a look at Battlecry's website we discover that this track was indeed specially produced for the BNP. We also find that the band likes neo-Nazi symbolism:

Their albums also have some rather dubious content, it seems. Here's a sample of the lyrics to their self-titled track:

For I am revenge
The furrowed seed
grown to avenge
In Dresden's fire
First breath was born

Devastation
Annihilate
Extermination
Come and seal your fate

They feed on their Prey
The carrion of social decay
The scavengers shall now disgorge
For I am the sword
The tempered blade of Aryan lore
In tower fire I was forged

Then there's the song 'Triumph of the Will'. Does the title ring a bell? It should.

And a sample of the song's lyrics:

Like a phoenix we will climb
From the ashes of mankind
For together we are strong
And now it won't be long

In victory we raise our hands
From all across our sacred lands
Shouting out the triumph of the will
Our enemies shall fall disgraced
As we march out to save our race
Now they'll see the
triumph of the will

The band's website features an embedded YouTube video for the 'Triumph of the Will' song, which includes images of Nick Griffin, former Klansman and anti-Semite David Duke, and Don Black, founder of the neo-Nazi Stormfront forum, as well as a logo supporting Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel. And which YouTube account might be hosting this video? None other than that of the Thurrock BNP branch!

Finally, there's the song 'My Awakening'. Again, the name rings a bell. Of course, it's the title of David Duke's 'political' autobiography:

According to Duke's website, 'My Awakening is the most powerful book in print on the race and Jewish Question'.

It turns out that Battlecry's song 'Keepers of the Light' features a guest appearance by 'Prussian Blue', a two girl act that promotes neo-Nazism:

Lamb and Lynx Gaede, adolescent twin girls who make up the band Prussian Blue, have gained recognition in white supremacist circles while preteens by singing about preserving the white race and Nazi heroes. Prussian Blue is the name of the blue residue left over by the use of Zyklon B, the poison the Nazis employed to kill millions of Jews and others in concentration camps during World War II.

Their perfomances are unambiguous:

"Strike force! White survival. Strike force! Yeah," they sing, punctuating each "Strike force!" with miniature sieg heils. Some of the men in the audience return the salute, and when the girls finish, thunderous applause fills the room.

As is their image:

And they come from a 'lovely' family background:

April home-schools the girls, teaching them her own unique perspective on everything from current to historical events. In addition, April's father surrounds the family with symbols of his beliefs -- specifically the Nazi swastika. It appears on his belt buckle, on the side of his pick-up truck and he's even registered it as his cattle brand with the Bureau of Livestock Identification.

No wonder Battlecry like the girls! And how kind of them to sell the girls' music via their site.

But then Battlecry are a very philanthropic pair. Not only have they written a song to support the BNP but they also donate $1 from every CD sale to the neo-Nazi Stormfront forum.

Such kindness is not without its rewards, of course, and they have been interviewed by none other than Blood & Honour Magazine. And Blood & Honour is the name of the neo-Nazi race hate music organisation founded in the '80s in the UK, and allied with:

...Which in turn brings us back to the BNP's leader Nick Griffin and his connections to Blood & Honour and Combat 18:

Particularly illuminating was the testimony of the Scottish Blood and Honour boss Steve Cartwright who went on record with his memories of Griffin in Wales in the mid-1990s. “Our meeting with Griffin went well,” recalled Cartwright, “he pushed all the right buttons, emphasising militancy as well as paying due respect to the Nationalists and National Socialists of the past. He also spoke of the need to re-package and modernise our beliefs in the hope of reaching the British public.”

[...]

[A]s Griffin hastily prepared for his trial on charges of inciting racial hatred in 1997, he decided that one of the planks of his defence would be that C18 had produced far worse and had never been prosecuted for it. Needing some documents he asked Steve Cartwright, head of Blood and Honour, to contact Will Browning, leader of C18, telling Cartwright to reassure Browning that he and C18 were on “the same side”.

Browning later sent Griffin a “bumper pack” of C18 material. Griffin phoned Cartwright asking him to pass on his thanks to Browning. As Cartwright recalled, “Griffin was particularly tickled by the name of the parcel sender – Mr Beast, London”.

The 'modernised' Nick Griffin is trying hard to disassociate the BNP from its Nazi roots. Trying, but constantly failing. As we have seen, the BNP currently offers a track for sale on its website that was specially made for the Party by a band that is clearly pro-Nazi and is connected to the international neo-Nazi and skinhead movement (and a BNP branch has uploaded one of its music videos). This speaks volumes about how hard Griffin and his 'new BNP' are finding it to cut the chord tying them to the Third Reich. And they are finding this hard for the very good reason that, beneath the modern sheen, the BNP remains, as it always has been, a neo-Nazi organisation.

I kid you not

Stormfront Founder’s Wife Sets Off Firestorm

A revelation published earlier this month by Hatewatch — that Chloe Black, wife of former Klan leader Don Black, was the public relations contact for a philanthropist’s efforts to build a campus for children of poor black and Latino children in Florida — caused quite a stir in the media and elsewhere. The Gawker.com website was one of the first to revisit the story, recounting the Hatewatch item under the headline, “The Socialite’s Nazi Publicist.” (The title referred to the fact that Chloe Black, whose husband founded and runs the major white supremacist website Stormfront, was the contact for a school established by Emilia Fanjul, whose wealthy family runs the Florida Crystals sugar conglomerate.) Then it was the turn of The New York Post’s Page Six — probably the best known celebrity gossip column in America — which ran “Sugar Baron’s Aide’s KKK Link,” setting off a whole bevy of similar reports on celebrity gossip websites.

But it was when a version of Hatewatch’s revelations was published in the Palm Beach Post this past Saturday that sparks flew in the white supremacist circles that Chloe, her husband, and ex-husband David Duke inhabit. Even though she had just attended a June event put on by the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens, Black told the Post: “I am not involved with the Web site [Stormfront] and do not agree with extremist or racially prejudiced views.” Not only that, but the Post, based on information provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center, also reported that Don Black had recently toned down Stormfront, banning many symbols of Nazism that formerly were common on the site, including swastikas and SS lightning bolts, and getting rid of particularly offensive terms, including “nigger.”

White supremacists were not happy. In racist Web forums, they ripped both Don and Chloe Black, denouncing them for caring more about money than their beliefs.

Alex Linder, the head of the neo-Nazi Vanguard News Network (VNN), was particularly incensed. “It’s not that small a deal,” wrote Linder to a defender of Chloe Black who was minimizing the importance of her comments. “It shows that at the end of the day money matters more than principle to WN [White Nationalist] leaders.”

Others were cruder in their comments. “What’s so hard to understand or face about the idea that Don Black (Black is a very common Jewish surname) from Palm Springs [Black actually is from West Palm Beach, Fla.] Florida (a city with the highest Jewish population per capita than anywhere else in the world outside of Israel) is a kosher motherfucker!?” wrote “melcur” on VNN. Bill White, head of the neo-Nazi American Nationalist Socialist White Peoples Party and a friend of Linder’s, attacked the Stormfront founder under the headline, “Don Black Whores Himself to the Jew.” White accused Black of selling out “to the Jew in exchange for a bit of media exposure and some promotion for his dying and has been website Stormfront.”

At least one prominent anti-Semite defended Black: April Gaede, mother of the teen twins who make up the neo-Nazi singing group Prussian Blue. “Very few people in White Nationalism have the ability to earn a living openly being racial,” wrote Gaede. “If she can earn a living and support her family and nationalism then who cares.” However, Gaede’s post was not well received. “But at the cost of helping the muds and jews? Don’t be stupid,” wrote “Akingu” on VNN. “That’s like teaching an attack dog to attack yourself!”

In a Stormfront post, Don Black, who the Palm Beach Post reported had recently suffered a stroke, dismissed the hoopla as absurd and blamed the “gutter press.” He also mocked his increasingly disgruntled Stormfronters, noting, “With the never-ending internal drama among members, we often joke about ‘How the Stormfront Turns.’”

Hatewatch

BNP's leadership challenger loses before he even starts the challenge

News from the BNP bunker reaches us to the effect that the current BNP leadership is fighting off the proposed challenge from Chris Jackson in the only way it knows - by completely subverting the democratic process.

Curiously for a party that purports to be the only truly democratic party in the known universe, its internal structure is probably as far away from democracy as it can possibly be. It certainly has nothing remotely like one member one vote and has recently introduced voting rights at its conference - where all the really big decisions should be made - for those who donate large sums of money into Nick Griffin's pock- party coffers.

Now it has been revealed that the leadership challenger, although he fulfils all the convoluted requirements designed solely to keep Griffin in place until he dies or the membership has made him rich enough to retire, cannot use the internet, printed, electronic or recorded material to advance his case. What, one wonders, is left? Semaphore?

This denial of fair opportunity for any challenger to put their case before the membership is indicative of the corruption and anti-democratic values of the fascist British National Party. It talks democracy all the time yet can't even manage to use it for its own membership.

This lack of democracy extends beyond the party itself. The Stormfront nazi forum - an essential online meeting place for the net-savvy BNP member as the party's own forum is regarded as too strongly censored to be of any use - has been keeping talk of the challenge (and the challenger) at an absolute minimum. Now Stormfront owner, ex-Klansman Don Black (a close friend of Nick Griffin), has come in for a mountain of criticism for closing down a huge and largely supportive Chris Jackson thread. Speculation on and off the forum is that one of the senior moderators, John Joy Tree (Andy Robertson in real life), has used his influence as a substantial financial backer of Stormfront and a staunch BNP supporter, to have the thread removed, no doubt at Nick Griffin's behest. Griffin, it should be noted, is now frequently referred to as 'Crook' Griffin. Very apt.

A 'nationalist' blog, run by one 'NorthWest Nationalist', has also reported that Chris Jackson is suddenly having problems with his phone and internet connections at this most unfortunate moment. As NWN points out, conspiracy theorists, both in and out of the far-right, will be having a field day.

Jackson should be careful. The ranks are closing to protect the BNP's Fuhrer and Jackson should bear in mind that Tony Lecomber, bomber, psycho, suspected security service grass and Griffin's greatest and most lunatic supporter, is wandering around like a loose cannon, allegedly suffering bizarre mood swings and wondering who to have a go at next.