How to upset your Nazi friends...

Some of their heroes bombed our chip shops

Nick Griffin, the hapless leader of what is left of the BNP has proved yet again what a tactless host he is.

Griffin is currently touring London and the South East with a group of Flemish ultra-nationalists from the far right Vlaams Belang (VB), the successor to the Vlaams Bloc which was dissolved in November 2004 as a result of a court case concerning its racism.

Griffin is hoping that by appearing on BNP TV flanked by foreign guests this will somehow make him appear more important than he is and help detract attention from the disintegration of his own party for which he and he alone is responsible.

In his latest video, recorded for the BNP website, Griffin outlines his recent jolly to Dover with Filip Dewinter, one of the VB MPs and a senior figure in the party. He and Griffin had just been enjoying a pint and some fish and chips. You would think that Griffin had more pressing concerns to attend to but there you go. Following their meal Griffin took Dewinter to the beach to show him some of the coastal defences that were erected to repel the Nazis in the event of an invasion which, in 1940, looked imminent. Dewinter tried to look interested whilst Griffin prattled on, puffed up with pretended pride. Griffin appears to have forgotten, however, that the VB has its roots in the politics of Nazi collaboration in Belgium. Doh!

Griffin’s newfound pride in the doughty defence of Britain undertaken in the dark days of 1940 stands in stark contrast to much of his early political career which had been spent praising the Waffen-SS and denying the Holocaust. So much for patriotism...

Hope not hate

PayPal spanks Pamela 'Atlas Shrugs' Geller for hate speech

In a bold and courageous move PayPal is refusing to do business with Pamela Geller's website "Atlas Shrugs" because it is an organization that promotes hate and intolerance. Pamela Geller's website "Atlas Shrugs" is a notorious right wing blog responsible for much misinformation. Indeed much of the blogs contents may legitimately be called "hate speech."

Geller's right wing fringe website "Atlas Shrugs" appeals to the worst in people. In particular, the blog breeds hatred and contempt for the President, and for Muslims. It is a voice for the ugliest, most ignorant segment of American society.

On her blog Geller reprints her notice from PayPal:

'Dear Pamela Geller,

We appreciate the fact that you chose PayPal to send and receive payments for your transactions.

However, after a recent review of your account, it has been determined that you are currently in violation of PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy. Under the Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for items that promote hate, violence, racial intolerance or the financial exploitation of a crime.'

About Geller, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs writes:

'The fact is that there are plenty of good reasons to make the judgment that Pamela Geller promotes crazy hate speech, racist groups, and conspiracy theories; her main targets are Muslims, but many of these reasons have nothing to do with Islam, radical or otherwise.

For example, her bizarre racist accusation that Barack Obama is the illegitimate child of Malcolm X. Or her promotion of Birther theories. Or her association with far right fascist parties in Europe, such as the Belgian Vlaams Belang, the BNP-linked English Defense League, and the neo-Nazi-linked Pro-Koln group. Or her outrageous support and whitewashing of murdered South African neo-Nazi leader Eugene Terreblanche.'

Geller is entitled to spew her hater speech, and publish her foul and misleading website: this is a free country. But PayPal is in no way obligated to do business with her. PayPal should be saluted for their conscientious effort to stand up against hate and intolerance.

Thank you PayPal, thank you for doing the right thing.

Examiner

Nick Griffin's foreign fascist festival

Fresh from agreeing to allow blacks and Asians join his party, Nick Griffin is this week embracing a group of men who have funny names and speak foreign languages. Have his regular trips to Brussels and Strasbourg finally brought out the British National Party chief’s cosmopolitan side?

Of course they haven’t. Far from sampling the diversity of Europe, Griffin [shared] a platform with some of the continent’s most narrow-minded politicians in Ghent yesterday (Wednesday).

According to his Facebook fan page, Griffin visited the Belgian city to address a “student symposium”. Yet the poster for the event indicated there will be precious little of the academic chin-rubbing you’d normally expect at a meeting billed as such. The poster depicts a burqa-clad woman standing in front of a European flag studded with minaret spires.

This crass Islamophobia is typical of promotional material produced by the far-right party Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), whose de facto youth wing, the National Student Association (NSV), is organising the event. Like the BNP, the Vlaams Belang has had to amend its rulebook in recent years after its precursor, the Vlaams Blok, was banned for flouting anti-discrimination laws.

Frank Vanhecke, the Vlaams Belang leader, also scheduled to speak in Ghent, is not as openly xenophobic as he used to be – he once denounced an Amsterdam mayor who named a square after Nelson Mandela as a “renegade towards his own people and race”. Yet he has no qualms about inciting hatred against Muslims. Women who wear a veil, he has said, have signed a contract for their deportation.

Another guest in Ghent was Bruno Gollnisch, deputy-leader of the French National Front. Gollnisch has been helping the BNP finesse its electoral strategy, according to a story in the Daily Mirror. By turning to him for advice, Griffin evidently no longer appears as keen to emphasise that he is “not” an anti-Semite as he was during his Question Time appearance. In 2004, Gollnisch suggested that the Nazi gas chambers may be a myth.

Griffin is no “gravy train or career politician”, a message directed at his constituents in northwest England recently declared. How then does he explain his use of a budget that is supposed to be reserved for parliamentary researchers and secretarial help to pay his bodyguard? Or his use of the European Parliament chamber to score the most parochial points imaginable? During a debate on the Haiti earthquake in January, he argued that no humanitarian aid should be given to its victims because the disaster had happened “in somebody else’s backyard”. Griffin quoted the Bible to claim that EU governments only had duties to their own citizens. The central teaching of Christianity – “love your neighbour as yourself” – is conveniently omitted when fascists interpret scripture.

It would be comforting if Griffin and his ilk were confined to the political margins. But the truth is that “mainstream” parties and European institutions have happily stolen many of the extreme right’s clothes and invariably wear them with greater ease. For example, Griffin’s wish for boats carrying asylum-seekers to be sunk is not far removed from what Frontex, the EU’s border management agency, is already doing. Last summer this agency helped the Italian authorities force a vessel to land in Libya; in contravention to international law, the people on board it were not granted the possibility to apply for asylum. Frontex is also planning to use pilotless drones – the type of warplanes that have caused numerous civilian deaths in Palestine, Afghanistan and Pakistan – in future operations designed to prevent migrants entering Europe.

If there is one thing more nauseating than Nick Griffin himself, it is how “respectable” politicians pander to his agenda.

The Samosa (article slightly edited)

If you can't beat 'em...Europe's new tactics in the battle against the far right

Ruling parties forced into ever-closer allegiances to contain rise of extremists

A brace of baronesses, sundry patrician Tories, Labour party staffers, journalists and eurocrats quaffed the bubbly and nibbled at the cream cheese on brown bread.

On the fourth floor of the grandiose cylinder that is the European Parliament building in Strasbourg last Wednesday evening, the main topics were Brits in Brussels, the UK in Europe. And nosepegs were metaphorically applied when the gossip turned to the two new MEPs from the north of England who had just taken their seats in the chamber below.

Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons of the British National party were the only ones of Britain's 72 MEPs not invited to the champagne reception hosted by the government.

That is one way of dealing with the extreme right — exclude them from polite company and hope they will fade away. That strategy might work in Britain, where the BNP is seen by the political class as a disturbing, but not threatening phenomenon thanks to the first-past-the-post system. In the rest of Europe, where proportional representation and coalition government are the rule, the extreme right – whether racist, neo-fascist, xenophobic, or just plain populist — is not being so easily dismissed or contained.

In Italy, the far right is in government and occupies leading parliament posts. In Austria it governs part of the country. In The Netherlands it has soared to become the second most popular party. In Poland it has been co-opted into the main opposition party and, as in Slovakia, has served or is serving in government.

The far right has seldom had it so good. Its success represents a dilemma for the mainstream political parties of Europe. But their responses to the rise of extremism differ widely.

"There is no systemic pan-European answer to the extreme right," said Anton Pelinka, an Austrian political scientist at the Central European University in Budapest. "In Belgium or in France, the mainstream parties won't touch the extreme right, while Berlusconi in Italy is a rightwing populist who has absorbed it."

The fundamental quandary for mainstream parties, in government or opposition, is whether to accept or to ostracise the extreme right.

When the new European Parliament convened this week, its ranks included Hungarian gypsy-haters, French Holocaust deniers, Dutch Islam-baiters, Austrian antisemites, Italian racists, and Flemish separatists, as well as Griffin, for whom Islam is a cancer and who wants boats of illegal immigrants sunk at sea. The parliament bigwigs promptly moved to marginalise them, conspiring to keep the extremists out of the key posts and committees. But in the countries of Europe, the picture is much more varied. Take Italy.

"Berlusconi has tried very hard to form the big tent party," said James Walston, a politics professor at the American University in Rome.

He has absorbed the "post-fascist" National Alliance and given the interior ministry to Robert Maroni of the separatist and anti-Muslim Northern League.

"There are a lot of racist elements," said Walston. "The Northern League certainly has a lot of people not afraid to be explicitly racist."

Berlusconi's strategy of co-opting elements of the extreme right, benefiting from their support and adopting some of their policies, is replicated in Poland, where the rightwing opposition Law and Justice party of the twin Kaczynski brothers, Jaroslaw and Lech, has destroyed two extreme antisemitic, anti-German, and ultra-Catholic parties on the fringes of Polish politics by appealing to their voters and opening up to leading members.

This approach contrasts with France or the Flanders half of Belgium where the mainstream right and left collude where necessary to keep the far right out of power.

Most famously, the French left voted for the Gaullist Jacques Chirac in 2002 to keep the National Front leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, out of the Elysee Palace. A fortnight ago the same scenario was enacted in a mayoral contest in northern France, where the National Front won more than 47% of the vote but was still beaten by a right-left alliance. "The exclusion strategy has worked in France. Le Pen is almost finished," said Pelinka.

And in Flanders, the rise of the secessionist Flemish Interest party has been stymied by a "cordon sanitaire" agreed by the other parties to keep the separatists in opposition.

Pekinka said that, too, has been successful, but many disagree.

"That's the wrong way to deal with parties like that," said Martijn van Dam, a Dutch Labour MP. "The Flemish Interest just got stronger because of the cordon sanitaire."

In his country the far right has soared this year, with the anti-Islam maverick Geert Wilders and his Freedom party coming second with 17% of the vote in the European elections in The Netherlands. Any party getting 15-20% of the vote in a coalition system has the right to take part in government negotiations.

But the establishment is split. The Labour party says it won't go into coalition with Wilders, but Van Dam said: "We're not saying never. I don't believe all these voters are extremely rightwing. It's just that the traditional parties are not trusted any more. It's impossible to imagine a coalition government with Wilders because of his ideas. But we are very careful always not to exclude his voters."

The Christian Democrats of the prime minister, Jan-Peter Balkenende, however, are divided over Wilders and have not quite ruled out governing with a man who describes Islam as fascism and faces trial for racial incitement and hate speech.

The strategy of exclusion can only work if the centre-right and the centre-left agree to maintain it. The centre-right Austrian chancellor, Wolfgang Schüssel, broke that tacit bargain when he brought the late Jörg Haider into government in 1999. It did not last long and supporters of that option say that the best way to weaken the extreme right is to give them power and watch them self-destruct.

Mainstream leaders such as Berlusconi, the traditional parties in Austria or Holland, and Nicolas Sarkozy in France have blunted the far right by copying policies and rhetoric on immigration, law and order, nationalism, and Euroscepticism.

In Hungary, the black-shirted militants of the Jobbik movement, anti-Gypsy and overtly antisemitic, are currently the third biggest party. The centre-right Fidesz party is expected to win a landslide at elections next year. Pelinka in Budapest said that liberals who would never vote for Fidesz will do so next year to ensure an absolute majority lest it is tempted to form a coalition with the extremists.

Guardian

BNP’s ‘devils’ find they are without friends in Europe as right-wing bloc fails to materialise

Influence reduced as MEPs’ debating time to be strictly limited

Nick Griffin, a man who clearly believes he is above the law

Their success in the recent European elections sent shockwaves through the British political establishment but the arrival in Strasbourg of the British National Party's two newly-elected MEPs this week could not have got off to a more shambolic start.

Travelling to the picturesque French city for their first week at the parliament's inaugural session after June's elections, BNP leader Nick Griffin and his sidekick Andrew Brons found themselves on the wrong side of the law, having to explain to the police why their car had broken the speed limit. The car was doing about 10mph above the limit and Griffin was fined £50, small change compared to the combined £350,000 a year he and Brons will receive in parliamentary salaries and allowances.

A further, far more damaging, setback for the two "devils" - Griffin's mocking self-description - was their failure to find enough far-right comrades across the EU to form a new bloc. However, the BNP still had plenty of friendly fellow travellers to hang out with. Griffin has been getting matey with several groups. One is Jobbik, the far-right Hungarian party that won 14.8% of the vote in the Hungarian European elections despite its anti-gypsy stance and unpleasant comments about the nation's Jews.

Griffin and Brons even stayed in the same hotel as three Jobbik MEPs. The party, also known as the Movement for a Better Hungary, won nearly as many votes as the ruling socialists, securing three seats in the European parliament. Others involved in talks with the BNP were France's Front National - which won three seats, including the re-election of its veteran controversial leader Jean-Marie Le Pen - Belgium's Vlaams Belang and Ataka, the nationalist Bulgarian party.

Griffin said: "We needed at least 25 members from seven different member states to form a group but we failed and, yes, it is a setback. There is no doubt that we would have been able to wield a lot more influence if we could have formed a group."

Griffin hit the headlines even before he and Brons landed in Strasbourg, following his call for the EU to sink boats carrying illegal immigrants. He also told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show that the EU had created a "super-state that isn't far from fascist".

Accompanied by two burly bodyguards because of what Griffin says have been personal threats, the newly-elected neo-fascists swaggered into the institution they have vowed to abolish.

"If and when the free nations of Europe get their destinies back, perhaps this building could be turned into a monument to the follies of imperialism. We must get rid of this ridiculously wasteful circus," declared Griffin.

British officials had already imposed a "cordon sanitaire" around the BNP and the pair were told they would be banned from a UK government reception, hosted by Glenys Kinnock, the Europe minister. Under new guidelines, agreed by UK foreign secretary David Miliband, Griffin and Brons will be isolated and kept at arm's length from the world of diplomatic socialising.

The pair of BNP MEPs have been placed in seats numbered 780 and 781 for the next five years, close to and just one row in front of the new Conservative and Reformist Group founded by the UK Tories. As they took their seats in the assembly's debating chamber, Griffin and Brons were surrounded by like-minded colleagues: three Hungarian Gypsy-haters, four Muslim-baiters from the Netherlands, a couple of Austrian deputies elected on a platform of anti-semitism, Le Pen and his daughter Marianne, who both believe the Holocaust is a myth, and an assortment of Italian racists.

Glenis Willmott, the Labour Party's leader in Europe, was prompted to say: "This is a sad day for Britain. Two UK fascists are taking their seats in this parliament for the first time."

Richard Howitt, a Labour MEP, said he was ashamed, as a Briton, that the BNP was taking part in the parliament.

However, Timothy Kirkhope, who leads the UK Tory group of MEPs, said he was "not particularly uncomfortable" sitting in the Strasbourg assembly with two extremists behind him. He added: "I'm not happy, but they were elected by the people of Britain."

Griffin, who is expected to sit on the environment committee, appeared unconcerned by all the fuss around him, or by the fact that the Democratic Unionist Party's MEP Diane Dodds abandoned her seat when she discovered she had been put next to Brons. He was equally untouched by news that 90,000 British voters signed a petition stating that the BNP does not speak for them. He said: "We're speaking happily with European nationalists. I even spoke to several German Greens. But there is very childish behaviour from some of the British."

As a "non-attached" member, the amount of speaking time Griffin will be given in debates will be strictly limited, but he used his first speech, during a debate on Iran, to denounce alleged human rights violations against "nationalist dissidents" in Britain.

He accused Labour, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats of routinely deploying "intimidation and violence against nationalist dissidents in Britain". He claimed they were using taxpayers' money "to fund their own militia, which breaks up opposition meetings and attack their opponents with bricks, darts and claw-hammers" and described the Unite Against Fascism movement as an "organisation of far-left criminals".

Griffin told a two-thirds empty chamber that "warmongers" were itching to attack Iran and were using human rights as a new "casus belli". He invoked Elvis Costello's song Oliver's Army to protest against the prospect of British youths being sent to die in Iran.

"Do not leave the war which hypocritical rhetoric will help to justify and unleash to the usual brave British cannon fodder: 18-year-old boys from the Mersey and the Thames and the Tyne," he said. "Instead, send out your own sons to come home in boxes, or without their legs, their arms, their eyes or their sanity. Or mind your own business."

However, there were no publicity-seeking tactics - that was left to the UK Independence party. UKIP leader Nigel Farage, whose new desk is next to commission president Jose Manuel Barroso in the debating chamber, plonked a mini Union Jack in front of himself during a debate. Barroso responded by asking an aide to get a mini EU flag for his own desk.

Griffin returned to his home in mid-Wales on Thursday at the end of what had been an eventful first week.

This week, it's back to Brussels, where Griffin's notoriety has already seen Brons and himself banned from Fabian O'Farrell's, an Irish pub popular with Eurocrats, something he says amounts to "a form of apartheid". They say they will be keen attenders at the parliament over the next five years, a prospect that is likely to fill many of their fellow MEPs with dread.

Sunday Herald

BNP's Griffin: Islam is a cancer

As the BNP struggles for right-wing support in the European Parliament, leader Nick Griffin tells Cathy Newman he believes there is "no place in Europe for Islam"

The BNP leader Nick Griffin has described Islam as a “cancer” that should be removed from Europe by "chemotherapy".

In an interview with Channel 4 News, Mr Griffin, who has just been elected to the European Parliament, said there was "no place in Europe for Islam". He added: "Western values, freedom of speech, democracy and rights for women are incompatible with Islam, which is a cancer eating away at our freedoms and our democracy and rights for our women and something needs to be done about it".

The BNP leader said he agreed with a candidate for the Flemish far right party, Vlaams Belang, who had declared: "We urgently need global chemotherapy against Islam to save civilisation."

The remarks will fuel controversy over the BNP’s success at the European elections last month. The party’s two winning candidates - Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons - take up their seats in the European Parliament next week.

Mr Griffin has been holding talks with other far right parties in Europe such as Vlaams Belang and Jobbik, from Hungary. The BNP had hoped to team up formally with a range of European rightwingers, giving them access to up to €1m of public money to spend on staff and offices. However, those talks have ended in failure.

The BNP will still work together informally with Jobbik, with both parties saying they share common ground on issues such as law and order. Jobbik has formed its own militia, the Hungarian Guard, which wears Nazi-style uniform and marches across the country to tackle what it calls “gypsy crime” by Roma travellers.

Mr Griffin told Channel 4 News that he believed Britain had “got a problem with Romanian gypsy crime”. Jobbik’s use of the term has led to accusations that it is seeking to criminalise an entire ethnic group. The BNP leader said: “There are two sorts of gypsies in Britain. There are the old fully-established anglicised Romanies who have been here for generations and who when they go to an area, when they leave it, it is spotlessly clean and you can not see they have been there. We have got no issue with that.

"And on the other hand there are the travellers - mainly from Ireland - and the Roma gypsy beggars and pickpockets in London. And while the liberal elite may say it is politically incorrect to say so, I would say that they have a very high level of criminality."

One of Jobbik’s MEPs, Krisztina Morvai, has been accused of anti-Semitism after text she wrote on an online forum. Questioned by Channel 4 News about the remarks, she did not deny writing them, but said she did not want to make any comment. She then terminated the interview.

Although Jobbik still sees the BNP as an ally, Vlaams Belang distanced itself both from Mr Griffin and the call by one of its candidates for "global chemotherapy" against Islam. One of its MEPs said he did not agree with comparing "people to diseases".

Channel 4

BNP fails to find support among European far-right parties

The British National Party’s first foray into Brussels ended in failure yesterday after it was unable find enough allies on the far-Right to form an official group in the European Parliament.

Nick Griffin, the party leader and one of its two newly elected MEPs, has agreed instead to work informally with a loose group of five ultra-nationalist parties, notably the Front National of the veteran French racist Jean-Marie le Pen.

Mr Griffin had pinned his hopes on persuading the nine MEPs of Italy’s Northern League to ally themselves with the smaller far-right parties, but was shunned by the party, led by Umberto Bossi and part of Silvio Berlusconi’s ruling coalition.

The failure to meet the threshold of 25 MEPs from at least seven countries to form a parliamentary group means the loss of up to a million euros a year for the far-right parties which could have been spent on staff, offices and publications in Brussels, Strasbourg and their home countries.

“It appears at present we are below the threshold,” said Mr Griffin, after talks at the European Parliament in Brussels with its key allies from France. He spent two days there with fellow Andrew Brons, his fellow party MEP. “We have to see how the other political groups get on with their negotiations and if they cannot do a deal whether they will deal with us.”

Mr Griffin said that he had had a friendly response from other MEPs and added: “Virtually everyone is here to do the best by their constituents and on that basis we will work with anybody.”

The ultra-nationalist parties interested in working together informally included Jobbik — the Movement for a Better Hungary — Vlaams Belang from Belgium (the Flemish Interest) and Attack from Bulgaria, he said. But despite the increased number of MEPs elected this month from the far-right end of the political spectrum, the BNP grouping could attract only 12.

Besides the Northern League’s nine MEPs, the putative group was also shunned by the anti-Islamic Dutch Freedom Party of Geert Wilders, which won four seats. Although banned from Britain for his outspoken views, Mr Wilders has also expressed his dislike of the Front National and Flemish Interest as he attempts to appeal to mainstream voters in Holland.

Similarly, the anti-immigrant Danish People’s Party, regarded as right-wing nationalist, will not sit with the BNP or Mr Le Pen, who repeated his denial of the Holocaust in the last parliamentary session. The DPP, which has two MEPs, regards itself as more centrist and has been a coalition partner in the Danish Government.

Nobody, however, seems prepared to touch the Greater Romania Party, whose MEPs were involved in the break-up of the far-right Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty group in the last Parliament. They broke up the group after only 11 months in a row with Alessandro Mussolini, the daughter of Il Duce, after she called all Romanians criminals.

The Northern League has been vetoed by David Cameron from joining the new anti-federalist group being formed by the Conservatives with Czech and Polish MEPs. The Italian party may now link with the UK Independence Party as it tries to find at least six allies to meet the threshold for a formal group.

Parties are expected to declare their groupings in time for the European Parliament’s inaugural sitting on July 14.

Times Online

Far Right extremists flee anti-mosque rally in Germany

Militant anti-fascists rout the far-right in Cologne, Germany

A weekend gathering in Cologne of far-right European extremists ended in farce when the main rally was cancelled as the organisers fled for their own safety

Pro-Cologne, a group counting some of Europe's most prominent hardliners in its ranks, had intended to campaign against the construction of Germany's largest mosque, due to be completed in 2010 in the Ehrenfeld district of the city. The building has attracted controversy because of its size, aiming to cater for up to 4,000 worshippers under a dome 37m (121ft) high and two 55m minarets - although they are shorter than the twin 157m spires of the cathedral that dominates the skyline of Cologne.

Politicians invited to the protest included Filip Dewinter, head of the Belgian Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) party, Andreas Mölzer, an MEP from the Austrian Freedom Party, and Mario Borghezio, an MEP in the Italian Northern League. Two members of the British National Party were also in town, including Richard Barnbrook, its sole member of the London Assembly.

A press conference to launch the pan-European movement against “Islamification” descended into chaos when its secret location - on board a Rhine river cruiser - was leaked. Left-wing activists arrived en masse to disrupt the event and were so successful that only two Pro-Cologners made it on board before the captain cast off in panic and headed for open water

A Pro-Cologne spokesman said: “Stones, bricks and paintbombs were thrown and the panoramic windows of the Moby Dick were shattered.”

The group had then planned to tour the site of the mosque but this was stopped by the police on the ground that a busload of right-wing extremists cruising through a predominantly Muslim area might not be conducive to law and order.

So the only chance that Pro-Cologne had to make an impact was at its main rally on Saturday afternoon in the Heumarkt square. The organisers hoped for about 1,500 people. They had not reckoned on 40,000 screaming anti-fascists trying to break into the square to remonstrate with them.

With leading delegates stuck at the airport and the Heumarkt besieged, the rally was called off after only 45 minutes. The organisers began dismantling their microphones and stage, hoping that the security cordon would hold as police battled against the more violent protesters who were throwing paintbombs and snatching batons.

Although some of them were spirited away, many were penned in for several hours, unable even to get a beer as the bar owners in the square refused to serve them. Finally the BNP representatives got out, scuttling out the back of some of the buildings lining the Heumarkt, their attempts to present a united European front against Islamification in tatters.

“This was a victory for the democratic forces in this city,” Fritz Schramma, the Christian Democrat mayor, said. The city has a 120,000-strong Muslim community, part of the three million Muslims who make up about 4per cent of the German population.

Times Online

Far-right European parliament group on verge of collapse

The anti-immigrant far-right political group in the European Parliament is on the verge of collapse following internal fighting over comments made by an Italian member about Romanians and criminality.

The Greater Romania party on Thursday (7 November) announced that it was withdrawing its five members from the Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty group following comments expressed by Alessandra Mussolini, grand-daughter of the facist Il Duce, about Romanians after a much publicised murder of an Italian last week.

The suspected perpetrator is thought be a Romanian immigrant from the Roma community and prompted harsh rhetoric from far-right politicians in Italy, including Ms Mussonlini.

In response, a letter by the head of the Greater Romania party, Corneliu Vadim Tudor, states that "The unconsciousness of this lady [Ms Mussonlini] who makes easily generalisations, leaving to understand that all the Romanians are living like delinquents and are making dreadful crimes - remind us of her grandfather, the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini (...)."

"With the exit of the 5 Romanian MEPs, who became independent again, the Identity-Tradition Sovereignty group disappears," says the letter.

According to Mr Vadim, whose own party has been regularly accused of racism, Ms Mussolini is quoted in Romanian newspapers as saying: "Breaking the law became a way of life for Romanians. However, it is not about petty crimes, but horrifying crimes, that gives one goose bumps."

Later on Thursday, it emerged that the Romanians were considering trying to stay in the group but get Ms Mussolini removed - in this way the group would be able to continue to exist. A decision is to be made next Tuesday. A spokesperson for the ITS group told EUobserver that they are going to "use the weekend" for negotiations and that it was "not possible to say" yet whether the group would survive. Under EU assembly rules, a party must have at least 20 members from six member states.

The turmoil in the group - which was less than a year old - has already caused a certain amount of schadenfreude among officials and MEPs in the parliament. Some already sent out press releases announcing welcoming the demise of the group.

"Watching these people argue amongst themselves warms the heart," said Scottish MEP Alyn Smith in a statement. "The European Parliament is a home to Europe's democracy and it is right that all views are represented but I dislike everything these people stand for and am glad to see theirgroup collapse," continued the MEP.

The diverse group also houses politicians from France's and Belgium's anti-immigrant National Front and Vlaams Belang, as well as Andrew Mölzer (an Austrian MEP kicked out of a far-right party in Austria for being too extremist), Dimitar Stoyanov (a Bulgarian MEP who caused a ruckus in the parliament last year when he circulated a derogatory email about Roma people) and two Italian MEPs Luca Romagnoli and Alessandra Mussolini.

Another of its members, UK MEP Ashley Mote, is currently in jail for benefit fraud.

During its months as a group, it has failed to act as a coherent political faction appearing to bear out analysts predictions that its various parts have little to unite them.

EUObserver

BNP caught reporting rubbish (as usual)

A report currently topping the main page of the BNP website claims that police in Brussels smashed up a birthday party that was 'to celebrate a Flemish patriot’s birthday'. The 'Flemish patriot' is Filip Dewinter, a leader of Vlaams Belang, a Belgium-based Islamophobic far-right group that was formed from the ashes of Vlaams Blok, which disbanded in 2004 after it was convicted of 'repeated incitement to discrimination'. Vlaams Belang is the almost identical successor to Vlaams Blok though it has, in the exact same way that the BNP has, cleaned up its act, cosmetically at least.

Some of its views may sound familiar to those who follow the varied machinations of the British National Party. It calls for a return to 'traditional values', the woman to be returned to the home, the end of the multicultural society, opposition to the law enabling same-sex marriage, and opposition to the proposal enabling adoption by same-sex couples, the removal of the right to abortion except in the case of rape or for medical reasons, the repeal of anti-racism and anti-discrimination legislation on the dubious grounds of free speech and (in something of a giveaway that the BNP has managed to avoid) full and unconditional amnesty for people convicted for collaboration with Nazi Germany in World War II.

The birthday party wasn't a birthday party at all, of course. A few weeks ago an anti-Islam demonstration was proposed which was to take place in Luxembourg Place in the centre of Brussels. The Mayor, Freddy Thielemans, banned the demo on the grounds that the organisers, a coalition of far-right groups (including Vlaams Belang) calling itself Stop Islamization of Europe (SIOE), was deliberately inflammatory and that the demonstration was a threat to public order. The demo was planned for, surprise-surprise, the eleventh of the month - the sixth anniversary of the Twin Towers attacks.

The demonstration, which SIOE claimed would pull in up to 20,000 protestors, only managed 200 - but even these couldn't stay out of trouble for the mere thirty minutes that the illegal demo took place. The birthday champagne was hardly open before the police piled in to close the whole event down, arresting Filip Dewinter and Vlaams Belang Party Secretary Luk Van Nieuwenhuysen after scuffles began.

Rather than attack Vlaams Belang for going ahead with an illegal demonstration (which it certainly would if it had been organised by Muslims, liberals, gays or 'reds'), the BNP simply expresses its forlorn hope that 'Europe looks set for more of these kinds of protests as decent European patriots become more and more frustrated and angered...'.

If you'd like to read a report of the demo without the BNP's bizarre bias, there's one here.

Belgians brave rainstorm for anti-racism weddings

Braving rain and hail, hundreds of Belgians took part in a symbolic ceremony yesterday in a town where three couples refused to be married by a black official.

In an impressive show of solidarity against those who have given the term "white wedding" a bad name, the couples exchanged or renewed their marriage vows in the Flemish town of St-Niklaas.

The demonstration was in support of Wouter Van Bellingen, who was born in Rwanda but adopted by a Flemish family at birth and was elected a councillor in the town last October. In February, when the three couples refused to be married by him, Mr Van Bellingen, the town's deputy mayor, described the incident as "the most primitive form of racism", because it was motivated by "nothing but the colour of my skin".

Yesterday he appeared to have made the most of his adversity, as the mass wedding he organised attracted the attention of the international media. At least 2,000 letters and emails have poured in since the incident.

By early evening, couples had gathered in the town's market square in their finery before an event held in a marquee. Chosen to coincide with the International Day against Racism the ceremony began with a group hug before the assembled couples exchanged or renewed vows in a ceremony overseen by Mr Van Bellingen. Couples then took part in a mass wedding photo, before tucking into a "multicultural dessert buffet" and taking part in a wedding dance.

The row has focused attention on attitudes towards race in a part of Belgium renowned for its sympathy with the far right. In last year's elections the anti-immigration, Flemish separatist party, the Vlaams Belang won 26 per cent of the vote.

The group has accused Mr Van Bellingen of using the mass wedding to further his own political ambitions.

Independent