After this month’s elections, two of Britain’s representatives to the European Parliament in Brussels will be members of a white supremacist organisation that had previously experienced electoral success only at the local council level.
A few days after this regrettable result emerged, an elderly white supremacist walked into a Holocaust museum on the other side of the Atlantic and shot dead a security guard. There is no evidence of a causal relationship between the two events, but there is at least a casual connection.
It emerged last week that James von Brunn, the 88-year-old who claimed an innocent life at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, had attended meetings of the American Friends of the British National Party, a body set up to collect funds for the BNP from American donors. Whether or not he contributed to the BNP’s coffers, his empathy with British fascism is not particularly surprising.
After von Brunn was shot and wounded by other guards at the museum, a search of his car yielded a handwritten note that read: ‘The Holocaust is a lie. Obama was created by Jews. Obama does what his Jew owners tell him to do. Jews captured America’s money. Jews control the mass media.’ The BNP, in its quest for electability, lately began to couch its propaganda in terms that stopped short of overt racism, but its leader, Nick Griffin, received a suspended two-year prison sentence in 1998 for incitement to racial hatred after publishing a Holocaust-denialist tract.
Griffin, who is one of the BNP’s new members of the European Parliament, has also been quoted as claiming that British Asians were colonisers rather than immigrants, and he once defended a BNP leaflet that declared non-white Britons should be described as ‘racial foreigners.’ The party has in the past supported the involuntary repatriation of immigrants and the sterilisation of non-white women, and Griffin has described Islam as a ‘vicious faith.’
Griffin will be accompanied to Brussels by Andrew Brons, who was once responsible for the election manifesto of an overtly Nazi group known as the National Front — a document that, back in 1983, called for global apartheid, saying that the alternative, ‘multiracialism, envisages an extinction of the white man.’ He also put his name to anti-Semitic articles and was closely associated with one of the Front’s leading Holocaust deniers.
The BNP does not use the word apartheid, but support for a system along the lines of what was once considered the norm in South Africa is implicit in its racist platforms. It is therefore not altogether surprising to discover that Griffin’s leading advisers include a veteran of the South African far right: Arthur Kemp, who is in charge of Excalibur, the merchandising wing of the BNP, was arrested back in the 1990s in connection with the assassination of the exemplary African National Congress leader Chris Hani, which was clearly intended to derail the post-apartheid transition. Kemp wasn’t charged, but it turned out he had indeed drawn up a list of potential targets. Hani was number three on the list. At number one was Nelson Mandela.
The octogenarian terrorist who slew a Holocaust museum guard in Washington is evidently among those Americans who have been driven over the edge by Barack Obama’s election. There is thus far no good reason to question the assumption that an African-American presidency will broadly help to diminish racism in parts of the US where it remains a dominant factor. At the same time, it was inevitable that the phenomenon would infuriate white supremacists of the Ku Klux Klan variety — and these tend to be groups that have historically made little distinction between non-whites and Jews.
Not all of the groups on the far-right fringes of US politics are necessarily white-supremacist, but at least in some cases there is a bizarre phenomenon whereby political support for Israel exists side by side with anti-Jewish prejudice, the idea being that aggressive policies on the part of the Jewish state will facilitate Armageddon.
Another intriguing contradiction in the same general context is that Islamist fanatics with anti-Semitic and Holocaust-denialist tendencies share many of their prejudices with extremists of other confessional persuasions, but the likelihood of them making common cause is gratifyingly small. One can never be too sure, though; after all, the Bush administration was prone to lining up with conservative Muslim states, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, at international conferences on what are euphemistically known as ‘women’s health’ issues.
However, the historically anti-Semitic far right in Europe nowadays tends to be vehemently Islamophobic as well. Britain is by no means the only country where the European Union elections yielded gratifying results for elements that have few qualms about flirting with fascist tendencies, with their electoral support frequently based on visceral opposition to immigration — although in former Eastern Bloc countries such as Hungary, it has been fed by appalling attitudes towards the Romany minority (it’s easy to forget that the Nazis’ spectrum of hatred encompassed Gypsies as much as Jews).
Notwithstanding the tendency, demonstrated by the BNP, of global connections between white supremacists, it remains to be seen whether the extremists voted in across Europe this month can sufficiently overcome their nationalistic predilections to form a bloc in Brussels. There can be little doubt, however, that their success does not reflect kindly on the supposed social democrats at whose expense they have done so well.
To a large extent, this is because European social democracy in recent decades has had trouble distinguishing itself from conservatism and Christian-democracy. Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in Britain, where the price is now being paid for the success of Tony Blair’s project of reinventing the Labour Party in the image of the Conservatives. The betrayal of the working class paid electoral dividends in the short term, but the result is that voters no longer know what the party stands for.
Although the BNP’s good fortune was not based on an increase in its support, the protest vote presages a Labour wipeout at next year’s British elections. And the sleaze factor epitomised by the recent expenses scandal is a symptom rather than a primary cause of Labour’s misfortunes amid the present economic woes. Gordon Brown appears to have survived a revolt within Labour’s Blairist ranks, but the electorate will likely be unforgiving, or at best apathetic.
In the US, the extreme right’s excesses hint at its desperation. In Britain and the rest of Europe, the neo-fascist resurgence is in large part a consequence of social democracy’s suicidal tendencies. And it suggests that, however unpalatable the status quo, the future may well be considerably worse.
Dawn
Showing posts with label Holocaust-denier. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Holocaust-denier. Show all posts
June 17, 2009
June 12, 2009
Racists Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle to be sentenced at Leeds Crown Court
Two racists who fled to America after being found guilty of publishing inflammatory material are to be returned to Britain to face justice.
Simon Sheppard, 52, of Brook Street in Selby, and 42-year-old University of York graduate Stephen Whittle, fled to America in the hope of claiming political asylum after being found guilty of running an internet race-hate campaign. Sheppard was found guilty of 16 charges relating to the possession, publication and distribution of racist material. Whittle, who is from Preston, Lancashire, was found guilty of five counts of publishing racially inflammatory material.
The pair fled to the US last July before they could be sentenced, expecting America’s free speech laws to protect them. Unfortunately for them they have spent the last 11 months locked up after becoming embroiled in the country’s asylum process. They are now due to be flown back to Britain, after Judge Rose Peters ruled they had not been persecuted in Britain in the past and were unlikely to face persecution in the future.
Ironically, if they had not claimed asylum with an airport official and instead walked off into the country and then found themselves an asylum lawyer, the pair may today have been living free in California.
In a prison interview with the Los Angeles Times, Sheppard said: “We thought they’d hold us for a day or so. We couldn’t see how they wouldn’t grant us asylum. The things we supposedly had done in Britain aren’t illegal in America. We came to the beacon of free speech in the western world, which turned out to be a complete fantasy. We’re not cowed and we’re not repentant. We have the right even to make mistakes. We could be wrong, it’s not inconceivable. We have a right to be wrong. All we’re doing is speaking our minds.”
The investigation into Sheppard and Whittle began when a complaint about a leaflet called Tales Of The Holohoax was reported to police in 2004, after being pushed through the door of a Blackpool synagogue. It was subsequently traced back to a post office box in Hull registered to Sheppard.
The pair are expected to be put on a plane for England next Tuesday, and to be sentenced at Leeds Crown Court the following day. Both are expected to be jailed.
The Press
Simon Sheppard, 52, of Brook Street in Selby, and 42-year-old University of York graduate Stephen Whittle, fled to America in the hope of claiming political asylum after being found guilty of running an internet race-hate campaign. Sheppard was found guilty of 16 charges relating to the possession, publication and distribution of racist material. Whittle, who is from Preston, Lancashire, was found guilty of five counts of publishing racially inflammatory material.
The pair fled to the US last July before they could be sentenced, expecting America’s free speech laws to protect them. Unfortunately for them they have spent the last 11 months locked up after becoming embroiled in the country’s asylum process. They are now due to be flown back to Britain, after Judge Rose Peters ruled they had not been persecuted in Britain in the past and were unlikely to face persecution in the future.
Ironically, if they had not claimed asylum with an airport official and instead walked off into the country and then found themselves an asylum lawyer, the pair may today have been living free in California.
In a prison interview with the Los Angeles Times, Sheppard said: “We thought they’d hold us for a day or so. We couldn’t see how they wouldn’t grant us asylum. The things we supposedly had done in Britain aren’t illegal in America. We came to the beacon of free speech in the western world, which turned out to be a complete fantasy. We’re not cowed and we’re not repentant. We have the right even to make mistakes. We could be wrong, it’s not inconceivable. We have a right to be wrong. All we’re doing is speaking our minds.”
The investigation into Sheppard and Whittle began when a complaint about a leaflet called Tales Of The Holohoax was reported to police in 2004, after being pushed through the door of a Blackpool synagogue. It was subsequently traced back to a post office box in Hull registered to Sheppard.
The pair are expected to be put on a plane for England next Tuesday, and to be sentenced at Leeds Crown Court the following day. Both are expected to be jailed.
The Press
June 10, 2009
BNP can't keep me out
The British National Party held a victory rally in a Manchester pub amid chaotic scenes yesterday. Leader Nick Griffin was celebrating his election as an MEP to represent the North West in this week's Euro elections.
He told journalists that the Manchester Evening News was barred from the meeting because he objected to some of our reporting about his party. However, MEN reporter Yakub Qureshi managed to get into the press conference. Here is his report:
Nick Griffin claims to be the only man voters can trust to police Britain's borders - but perhaps he should start by looking at his own party meetings. The BNP put up a wall of burly minders to provide security at the dingy pub where newly-elected Mr Griffin was holding a victory rally, and also to exclude the Manchester Evening News.
As they monitored the credentials of journalists, the minders said that the M.E.N. was barred and they quickly turned away a crew from our sister television station Channel M on the grounds that they were guilty by association. But when I reached the front, I simply showed my card and walked in. I wasn't exactly difficult to pick-out - I was the only non-white person in the room.
The meeting began with a short speech from the party's werewolf-eyebrowed deputy leader Simon Darby, who complained that his party had been told they couldn't use Manchester town hall.
Party leader Nick Griffin stood metres away as he crowed how he had withdrawn the M.E.N's 'privileges' after we highlighted his policies on Ghurkha veterans.
Mr Griffin's party wants 'non-indigenous' Brits - people like me - to leave the country. The party's manifesto says black and Asian families who have been living in Britain for decades should be offered money as an incentive to leave. I was genuinely worried when I heard this. Being Scottish-Pakistani I might only get half the cash.
Mr Griffin, who has denied the Holocaust and who has a criminal conviction for publishing material likely to incite racial hatred, was asked directly if there was the slightest chance that his party, which only signs white people up as members, could be just a tiny, tiny, little bit... racist.
Surrounded by bunting and limp balloons, his answer was emphatic. Every newspaper, radio and TV station in the country, along with political rivals, church and charity leaders, trade unions, had got it wrong and were deliberately distorting his policies.
During an hour-long question and answer session, he continued to refer to the 'mass media conspiracy' but seemed to falter when asked if he would mind living next door to a Muslim family - eventually responding he wouldn't be 'particularly bothered'. However, he caught everyone off guard with the extraordinary claim that the BNP were the natural choice for Asian women suffering domestic violence.
"Asian women come to the BNP for help because no-one else will touch the subject," he claimed.
He was also taken to task by one journalist who asked him to explain a BNP poster which contrasted 1950s schoolchildren looking happy with a recent picture of two grimacing coloured boys.
"It's not racist. It's factual," he said. "It's not a matter of immigration. It's a matter of colonisation. Places like Blackpool and Preston have been smashed up by the liberal elite."
The party do have other policies apart from race - but they seem a bit woolly. The BNP's website describes the party as 'Britain's only true green party'. However, Mr Griffin told reporters one of his first priorities in Europe would be an urgent campaign for more nuclear power stations.
He also cast doubt on evidence that human activity has caused global warming, saying: "They say the icecaps are melting. The ice has melted on Mars and there are no 4x4s there."
After being pelted with eggs in London the previous day, Mr Griffin and his party had adopted a cloak-and-dagger approach to the Manchester meeting. Party organisers had originally told journalists to meet outside the nearby Sheridan Suite - a well known venue for Asian weddings and other multi-culture events - where they were told they would receive further instructions. But this approach failed when BNP activists were chased off by managers at the Sheridan Suite, who took exception to their car park being used as a staging area.
Unsurprisingly the 'secret location' for the meeting turned out to be the Ace of Diamonds pub some 200 yards away, which is owned by BNP candidate Derek Adams and currently fighting a closure notice. Around 50 anti- BNP protesters chanted slogans outside the Miles Platting boozer as police tried to prevent the egg-pelting scenes which marked Mr Griffin's ill-fated visit to London on Tuesday.
Yesterday, one passer-by was arrested for apparently verbally abusing Mr Griffin as he left the meeting. Minutes before, the newly-elected MEP had told reporters: "There are far more controversial people than me in Europe."
Manchester Evening News
He told journalists that the Manchester Evening News was barred from the meeting because he objected to some of our reporting about his party. However, MEN reporter Yakub Qureshi managed to get into the press conference. Here is his report:
Nick Griffin claims to be the only man voters can trust to police Britain's borders - but perhaps he should start by looking at his own party meetings. The BNP put up a wall of burly minders to provide security at the dingy pub where newly-elected Mr Griffin was holding a victory rally, and also to exclude the Manchester Evening News.
As they monitored the credentials of journalists, the minders said that the M.E.N. was barred and they quickly turned away a crew from our sister television station Channel M on the grounds that they were guilty by association. But when I reached the front, I simply showed my card and walked in. I wasn't exactly difficult to pick-out - I was the only non-white person in the room.
The meeting began with a short speech from the party's werewolf-eyebrowed deputy leader Simon Darby, who complained that his party had been told they couldn't use Manchester town hall.
Party leader Nick Griffin stood metres away as he crowed how he had withdrawn the M.E.N's 'privileges' after we highlighted his policies on Ghurkha veterans.
Mr Griffin's party wants 'non-indigenous' Brits - people like me - to leave the country. The party's manifesto says black and Asian families who have been living in Britain for decades should be offered money as an incentive to leave. I was genuinely worried when I heard this. Being Scottish-Pakistani I might only get half the cash.
Mr Griffin, who has denied the Holocaust and who has a criminal conviction for publishing material likely to incite racial hatred, was asked directly if there was the slightest chance that his party, which only signs white people up as members, could be just a tiny, tiny, little bit... racist.
Surrounded by bunting and limp balloons, his answer was emphatic. Every newspaper, radio and TV station in the country, along with political rivals, church and charity leaders, trade unions, had got it wrong and were deliberately distorting his policies.
During an hour-long question and answer session, he continued to refer to the 'mass media conspiracy' but seemed to falter when asked if he would mind living next door to a Muslim family - eventually responding he wouldn't be 'particularly bothered'. However, he caught everyone off guard with the extraordinary claim that the BNP were the natural choice for Asian women suffering domestic violence.
"Asian women come to the BNP for help because no-one else will touch the subject," he claimed.
He was also taken to task by one journalist who asked him to explain a BNP poster which contrasted 1950s schoolchildren looking happy with a recent picture of two grimacing coloured boys.
"It's not racist. It's factual," he said. "It's not a matter of immigration. It's a matter of colonisation. Places like Blackpool and Preston have been smashed up by the liberal elite."
The party do have other policies apart from race - but they seem a bit woolly. The BNP's website describes the party as 'Britain's only true green party'. However, Mr Griffin told reporters one of his first priorities in Europe would be an urgent campaign for more nuclear power stations.
He also cast doubt on evidence that human activity has caused global warming, saying: "They say the icecaps are melting. The ice has melted on Mars and there are no 4x4s there."
After being pelted with eggs in London the previous day, Mr Griffin and his party had adopted a cloak-and-dagger approach to the Manchester meeting. Party organisers had originally told journalists to meet outside the nearby Sheridan Suite - a well known venue for Asian weddings and other multi-culture events - where they were told they would receive further instructions. But this approach failed when BNP activists were chased off by managers at the Sheridan Suite, who took exception to their car park being used as a staging area.
Unsurprisingly the 'secret location' for the meeting turned out to be the Ace of Diamonds pub some 200 yards away, which is owned by BNP candidate Derek Adams and currently fighting a closure notice. Around 50 anti- BNP protesters chanted slogans outside the Miles Platting boozer as police tried to prevent the egg-pelting scenes which marked Mr Griffin's ill-fated visit to London on Tuesday.
Yesterday, one passer-by was arrested for apparently verbally abusing Mr Griffin as he left the meeting. Minutes before, the newly-elected MEP had told reporters: "There are far more controversial people than me in Europe."
Manchester Evening News
April 23, 2009
URGENT KIRKLEES UNITY NEWS
Richard Edmonds - Holocaust-denier and racistThe meeting which is due to start at 8pm is to be held at The Royal Hotel public house which is located on High Street Heckmondwike WF16 0AL. The guest speaker for the night once again is Richard Edmonds the former deputy leader of the party under the John Tyndall regime.
Former teacher Edmonds has a string of criminal convictions. In 1988, The Sunday Times revealed that Holocaust News, a publication that claimed The Holocaust was an "evil hoax", was being published by Edmonds, on behalf of a BNP front organisation, the Centre for Historical Review, and distributed by members. The theme was returned to on 8th April 1991 edition of Panorama where Edmonds described the publication as 'a wonderful statement of the truth'
Edmonds also spent time in custody over a racial attack in 1993 and had previously been convicted for smashing a statue of Nelson Mandela on London's South Bank. Further controversy came in 1993 when he told The Guardian that 'we [the BNP] are 100% racist'.
Surprisingly to some, Edmonds was co-opted by Nick Griffin onto the BNP's Advisory Council in September 2008, thereby returning him to the top tier of the party and ending his period of apparent dissidence.
Edmonds was due to address a North Kirklees meeting at the Royal Hotel back in November 2008, however down to pressure from antifascists the meeting was called off. Because of the meeting cancellation the North Kirklees organiser at the time Ian Roper was sacked by Yorkshire organiser Adrian Marsden.
As The Royal is a Free House we are asking people to ring the pub and POLITELY lodge their complaint with the management. The Royal Hotel's telephone number is 01924 403265
We have proven already what can be done in November.
For more information on Richard Edmonds see here.
Kirklees Unity
April 04, 2009
Reader report: BNP's Lie Lorry comes to Lancaster (but not for long)
A van towing a large mobile advertising hoarding promoting the BNP was spotted in Lancaster today (Friday 3rd April). It drove around the one-way system several times with loudspeakers blaring out its racist messages, and also parked for a while in Dalton Square. BNP footsoldiers were spotted handing out leaflets promoting their campaign for the forthcoming Euro-Elections that will be held this June.This BNP incursion encountered spontaneous opposition from Lancaster people, who don't want these fascists whipping up racist and xenophobic hatred. Local people are proud of our diverse and tolerant city. Within an hour of the BNP's appearance, locals using text messages were assembling a crowd of devoted anti-fascists in Dalton Square. However, the BNP fascists had fled before this crowd could mount an organised protest! So instead, the local anti-fascists busied themselves by handing out hundreds of leaflets exposing and opposing the BNP to local shoppers.
The BNP were almost certainly from the small but highly active unit that party has in Cumbria. They are focusing all their energies on the Euro-election, and hope to get their leader, Nick Griffin elected as a Euro-MP for the North West Region, which is their main target. They only need around 8% of the vote to win a MEP seat here in the North West, and received 6.4%. last time in 2004. That's why they are standing their fuhrer Nick Griffin in our region. We could therefore possibly wake up to find a neo-Nazi, convicted racist and holocaust denier as our MEP. He would then be provided with an local office, plus staff and £250,000 a year from the taxpayer to fund his propaganda machine.
He would also get to hang out at the European Parliament and enjoy the EU gravy train with his old friends from the growing band of European neo-Nazi parties, which have MEP's from racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic ultra-nationalist formations in Poland, Latvia, Italy, Austria, France, Romania, Bulgaria and elsewhere. These are the old allies of Griffin.
Local community campaigners will be taking a stand, and building a campaign against the BNP. Info-stalls are planned in Lancaster City centre in the next few weeks - watch this space. Volunteers needed.
This Saturday (April 4th) anti-fascists will also be leafleting in Barrow-in-Furness, South Cumbria, Manchester and other parts of the North West. Please prepare to help the campaign over the coming weeks - with money, offers to distribute leaflets and any ideas you have.
The 'Hope Not Hate' campaign commented:
"Nothing is certain in politics and while the terrain is certainly getting tougher the BNP can be defeated. However for this to happen requires a massive campaign to mobilise everyone opposed to the politics of hate to turn out and vote. We have shown time and again that there is a huge anti-BNP vote out there and if it is organised and motivated then it will turn up at the polling stations and be decisive in an election".
Barry Kade
Labels:
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February 09, 2009
Holocaust-denying bishop removed from seminary post
Ultra-conservative Society of St Pius X relieves British-born Richard Williamson of duties at seminary in Argentina
A Roman Catholic bishop who said he does not believe the Nazis murdered millions of Jewish people in gas chambers has been removed from his seminary. Richard Williamsom caused outrage with his remarks, which surfaced shortly after the Vatican's decision to welcome him back into the Catholic church last week.
The Diarios y Noticias news agency reported today that the ultra-conservative Society of St Pius X was relieving the British-born Williamson of his post as the director of its seminary in La Reja, Argentina.
Williamson is reported to have claimed in a television interview last month that historical evidence was "hugely against six million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler ... I believe there were no gas chambers". He added: "I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but none of them by gas chambers."
In a statement, Father Christian Bouchacourt, the head of the Latin American chapter of the Society of St Pius X, said Williamson had been relieved as the head of the seminary on the outskirts of the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires. "Monsignor Williamson's statements do not in any way reflect the position of our congregation," the statement, reported by Reuters, said.
The row led the Vatican to order Williamson to recant his views last week. It issued a statement saying the bishop must accept the widely accepted historical truth that millions of Jews had been killed by the Nazis.
"Bishop Williamson, in order to be admitted to the episcopal functions of the church, must in an absolutely unequivocal and public way distance himself from his positions regarding the Shoah [Holocaust]," the statement said.
Pope Benedict XVI faced anger in his homeland of Germany and severe criticism from Jewish groups over his decision to lift an excommunication of the bishop. Williamson's excommunication was lifted along with those of three other bishops ordained without Vatican permission by the renegade French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
The Vatican said the Pope did not know about Williamson's views on the Holocaust when he agreed to lift the excommunication. The pontiff's actions led to him being criticised by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.
Guardian
A Roman Catholic bishop who said he does not believe the Nazis murdered millions of Jewish people in gas chambers has been removed from his seminary. Richard Williamsom caused outrage with his remarks, which surfaced shortly after the Vatican's decision to welcome him back into the Catholic church last week.
The Diarios y Noticias news agency reported today that the ultra-conservative Society of St Pius X was relieving the British-born Williamson of his post as the director of its seminary in La Reja, Argentina.
Williamson is reported to have claimed in a television interview last month that historical evidence was "hugely against six million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler ... I believe there were no gas chambers". He added: "I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but none of them by gas chambers."
In a statement, Father Christian Bouchacourt, the head of the Latin American chapter of the Society of St Pius X, said Williamson had been relieved as the head of the seminary on the outskirts of the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires. "Monsignor Williamson's statements do not in any way reflect the position of our congregation," the statement, reported by Reuters, said.
The row led the Vatican to order Williamson to recant his views last week. It issued a statement saying the bishop must accept the widely accepted historical truth that millions of Jews had been killed by the Nazis.
"Bishop Williamson, in order to be admitted to the episcopal functions of the church, must in an absolutely unequivocal and public way distance himself from his positions regarding the Shoah [Holocaust]," the statement said.
Pope Benedict XVI faced anger in his homeland of Germany and severe criticism from Jewish groups over his decision to lift an excommunication of the bishop. Williamson's excommunication was lifted along with those of three other bishops ordained without Vatican permission by the renegade French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
The Vatican said the Pope did not know about Williamson's views on the Holocaust when he agreed to lift the excommunication. The pontiff's actions led to him being criticised by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.
Guardian
October 02, 2008
Holocaust revisionist held at Heathrow
Hutton Gibson (father of actor Mel Gibson) with Fredrick Töben (right)A holocaust revisionist will appear before a British court on Friday after being arrested at the request of the German authorities.
Gerald Fredrick Töben was detained at Heathrow yesterday by officers from Scotland Yard's extradition unit as he stepped off a plane from America. Last night, he was remanded in custody at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court to reappear on Friday.
The 64-year-old Australian is wanted in Germany, accused of publishing material on the internet "of an anti-Semitic and/or revisionist nature deliberately contrary to historical truth", that denies, approves of or plays down the "mass murder of Jews planned and implemented by the Nationalist Socialist party". He was detained yesterday under an EU arrest warrant issued by the German authorities, which accuses him of committing the offence in their country, his native land and others.
The former teacher, who was born in northern Germany in 1944 but emigrated to Australia as a 10-year-old, set up the Adelaide Institute in 1994, an internet site that questions the "story, legend, myth" behind the Holocaust. It also doubts whether HIV causes Aids.
While he denies being anti-Semitic or calling the Holocaust a lie, Dr Töben, a doctor of philosophy, has previously insisted killings took place on a much smaller scale. In 2006, he met Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and dismissed as "mere puffery" evidence of the Nazis' mass killings of Jews.
In 1999, his fellow revisionists declared him a "martyr" after he was sentenced to 10 months in prison for breaching Germany's holocaust law. The Mannheim court cleared him of the more serious charge of incitement to racial hatred because the material was written outside Germany. In 2000, Germany's Supreme Court made foreigners liable for internet crimes.
In 2002, a judge in the Federal Court of Australia found that his website "vilified Jewish people" and ordered him to remove offensive material from it. However, it did not enforce an earlier order made by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission that the site be closed down and that he issue a written apology to the Executive Council of the Australian Jewry.
On the website, Dr Töben lists the "victims imprisoned for refusing to believe in the Holocaust". He adds: "If you wish to doubt the Holocaust-Shoah narrative, be prepared for sacrifice, marriage and family break-up, loss of career, and to go to prison. This is because Revisionists are... dismantling a massive multibillion dollar industry that the Holocaust-Shoah enforcers are defending, as well as the survival of Zionist-racist Israel.
Independent
April 25, 2008
Legal victory for B&B owner who evicted Irving for being too moody
In his long history of legal calamity, David Irving has confronted and lost to courtroom adversaries from the publisher Penguin, to a British Second World War convoy commander, to the Austrian state. To that list can now be added Jennie Allen, the 60-year-old owner of a B&B in the genteel London suburb of Kew.
Amid claim and counter-claim about boorish behaviour and an eviction made with the help of two police officers, the 69-year-old writer, who was famously described by a High Court judge in 2000 as an "active Holocaust denier... anti-Semitic and racist", went to Wandsworth County Court this week to claim that Mrs Allen had wrongly asked him to leave her premises while he was researching his latest tome.
But in a pattern which must be becoming grimly familiar to the much-criticised historian, the judge dismissed his claim for £2,000 in damages for breach of contract after finding that diverging interpretations by Mr Irving and his landlady of her terms and conditions meant she had been within her rights to ask him to leave. He was ordered to pay Mrs Allen £60 towards her costs and her bus fare to the court.
Mr Irving, who was sentenced to three years' imprisonment by an Austrian judge in 2006 for remarks he made in 1989 claiming there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz (views he has now revised), had booked a two-week stay last July at Mrs Allen's bed and breakfast, Melbury, so he could visit the nearby National Archives in Kew, used by thousands of academics every year to study government documents.
But, within four days of his arrival at the £300-a-week guest house, relations between the researcher and his host, who has been running B&Bs for 35 years, had deteriorated dramatically.
Mrs Allen declined to comment in detail on the case when contacted yesterday but said she was pleased that the court had found in her favour.
She said: "Mr Irving's behaviour was such that I considered it upsetting for myself and my guests. I asked him to leave and he said he would sue me for breach of contract. I won the case because the judge determined there had been no contract between us. I'm delighted to have won."
Court documents seen by The Independent show that Mrs Allen believed Mr Irving was unjustifiably moody throughout his stay, unsettling her other guests and behaving rudely towards her. In her statement to the court, she alleged that the scholar said "get out of my sight you evil witch" during a row over his conduct.
Mr Irving "strenuously denied" making the remark or being guilty of any "abusive or intimidating behaviour" towards the other guests at Melbury. He said in his statement of claim to the court that he had only two brief conversations with those in the B&B and spent most of the time in his room or at the National Archives.
The saga came to a head on 4 July last year when Mrs Allen said that, after repeated refusals by Mr Irving to accept her request to leave, she was forced to call police to ask him to end his stay. The historian claimed his landlady only cooled towards him after her solicitor sent her a copy of his Wikipedia entry detailing his views and controversies. Mrs Allen, who emphasised she has never before clashed with a guest and has a long list of repeat visitors to her B&B, denied the claim.
In his statement, Mr Irving said he agreed to leave within two hours of the arrival of the two officers, packing his belongings shortly after 5pm. He added: "I remarked in a conversational tone that no doubt we would next meet in court."
At the hearing this week, Mr Irving was told his claim for breach of contract was invalid because both he and Mrs Allen held diverging views of a clause in her terms and conditions which guaranteed a guest's stay for one night only. The landlady argued this meant she was entitled to ask a guest to leave after a single night.
The historian was sanguine about his latest legal setback. "The judge found there was no case to answer," he said. "But I very strongly reject the suggestion that I behaved obnoxiously."
Mr Irving was once a respected authority on Nazi Germany until he made clear views on the Holocaust which led to his defeat in an 1996 libel case against the author Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher Penguin. His £1m Mayfair flat was seized to meet the costs awarded against him from the case.
The writer lost his first libel case in 1970 when the commander of a British convoy claimed Mr Irving unfairly blamed him for its heavy losses. He most recently hit headlines when he sought to address the Oxford Union with the BNP leader, Nick Griffin.
He is hoping to change his luck with two other lawsuits surrounding the aftermath of the 1996 libel trial. In the meantime, he is working on an autobiography, entitled As I Lay There Drowning.
Independent
Amid claim and counter-claim about boorish behaviour and an eviction made with the help of two police officers, the 69-year-old writer, who was famously described by a High Court judge in 2000 as an "active Holocaust denier... anti-Semitic and racist", went to Wandsworth County Court this week to claim that Mrs Allen had wrongly asked him to leave her premises while he was researching his latest tome.
But in a pattern which must be becoming grimly familiar to the much-criticised historian, the judge dismissed his claim for £2,000 in damages for breach of contract after finding that diverging interpretations by Mr Irving and his landlady of her terms and conditions meant she had been within her rights to ask him to leave. He was ordered to pay Mrs Allen £60 towards her costs and her bus fare to the court.
Mr Irving, who was sentenced to three years' imprisonment by an Austrian judge in 2006 for remarks he made in 1989 claiming there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz (views he has now revised), had booked a two-week stay last July at Mrs Allen's bed and breakfast, Melbury, so he could visit the nearby National Archives in Kew, used by thousands of academics every year to study government documents.
But, within four days of his arrival at the £300-a-week guest house, relations between the researcher and his host, who has been running B&Bs for 35 years, had deteriorated dramatically.
Mrs Allen declined to comment in detail on the case when contacted yesterday but said she was pleased that the court had found in her favour.
She said: "Mr Irving's behaviour was such that I considered it upsetting for myself and my guests. I asked him to leave and he said he would sue me for breach of contract. I won the case because the judge determined there had been no contract between us. I'm delighted to have won."
Court documents seen by The Independent show that Mrs Allen believed Mr Irving was unjustifiably moody throughout his stay, unsettling her other guests and behaving rudely towards her. In her statement to the court, she alleged that the scholar said "get out of my sight you evil witch" during a row over his conduct.
Mr Irving "strenuously denied" making the remark or being guilty of any "abusive or intimidating behaviour" towards the other guests at Melbury. He said in his statement of claim to the court that he had only two brief conversations with those in the B&B and spent most of the time in his room or at the National Archives.
The saga came to a head on 4 July last year when Mrs Allen said that, after repeated refusals by Mr Irving to accept her request to leave, she was forced to call police to ask him to end his stay. The historian claimed his landlady only cooled towards him after her solicitor sent her a copy of his Wikipedia entry detailing his views and controversies. Mrs Allen, who emphasised she has never before clashed with a guest and has a long list of repeat visitors to her B&B, denied the claim.
In his statement, Mr Irving said he agreed to leave within two hours of the arrival of the two officers, packing his belongings shortly after 5pm. He added: "I remarked in a conversational tone that no doubt we would next meet in court."
At the hearing this week, Mr Irving was told his claim for breach of contract was invalid because both he and Mrs Allen held diverging views of a clause in her terms and conditions which guaranteed a guest's stay for one night only. The landlady argued this meant she was entitled to ask a guest to leave after a single night.
The historian was sanguine about his latest legal setback. "The judge found there was no case to answer," he said. "But I very strongly reject the suggestion that I behaved obnoxiously."
Mr Irving was once a respected authority on Nazi Germany until he made clear views on the Holocaust which led to his defeat in an 1996 libel case against the author Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher Penguin. His £1m Mayfair flat was seized to meet the costs awarded against him from the case.
The writer lost his first libel case in 1970 when the commander of a British convoy claimed Mr Irving unfairly blamed him for its heavy losses. He most recently hit headlines when he sought to address the Oxford Union with the BNP leader, Nick Griffin.
He is hoping to change his luck with two other lawsuits surrounding the aftermath of the 1996 libel trial. In the meantime, he is working on an autobiography, entitled As I Lay There Drowning.
Independent
Labels:
anti-semitic,
David Irving,
Holocaust-denier,
racist
January 16, 2008
Holocaust revisionist to face trial
French revisionist historian Robert Faurisson is to face trial on charges of attending an anti-Holocaust conference in Iran. Faurisson said he received a letter from the French judicial police (DCPJ), demanding he should present himself before the court on January 24, IRNA reported.
On December 11, 2006, Iran hosted a two-day conference entitled 'Review of the Holocaust: Global vision' aimed at probing the West's allegations, claiming that over six million European Jews were killed by Germany during World War II. Faurisson in Tehran repeated his theories about gas chambers and said that in the past 32 years, he had been waiting for someone to show him one of those chambers.
The French Holocaust revisionist was convicted of 'Holocaust denial' by a Paris court in July 2006 over remarks he made on Iranian television. Faurisson, then 77, was given a three-month suspended prison term and was also fined 7,500 euros.
Speaking on the Sahar 1 Iranian satellite channel in February 2005, Faurisson said there was never a single execution gas chamber under the Germans. "So all those millions of tourists who visit Auschwitz are seeing a lie, a falsification,” he said.
In 1989, Faurisson was hospitalized after he was attacked by French Jews. He suffered a broken jaw and ribs and severe head injuries in a savage attack by a number of radical Jews while he was walking his dog in the town of Vichy. In 1991, he was removed from his university chair under the Gayssot Act, a French statute passed in 1990 that prohibited any doubts over the Holocaust.
PressTV
Labels:
Holocaust-denier,
Iran,
revisionist,
Robert Faurisson
January 11, 2008
Irving sent packing from Liverpool
A meeting organised by the notorious David Irving was cancelled 24 hours before it was to take place after Searchlight learned of the booking at a Liverpool hotel. The convicted Holocaust denier was going to speak to an audience of up to 20 people at the Liner Hotel on Saturday 12 January, after failing to secure an invitation to Liverpool’s universities. The room had been booked falsely under the name of the Liverpool Historical Society.Irving’s presence would have cast a shadow over the launch of the city’s year as the European capital of culture.
The hotel’s guest services manager told Searchlight that he knew nothing about David Irving but became concerned when we mentioned Irving’s attempt to speak at the Oxford Union. Uncertain whether he could cancel the meeting because the organisers had paid for the room in advance, he said he would discuss the matter with the police.
But after the hotel was contacted on Friday 11 January by Alec McFadden, President of Merseyside TUC, the meeting was quickly cancelled.
Soon afterwards Irving’s website announced that the meeting had been cancelled “on police advice” and promised that “a full refund will be made”. The audience would not have got much for their money as no refreshments had been booked. Irving thanked “Bob J and his friends who had organised”.
In fact the room had been booked by Michael Sheil, who stood as a British National Party local election candidate in Liverpool in 2003 – so much for Irving’s constant denials that he has any contact with the BNP.
Labels:
David Irving,
Holocaust-denier,
Liverpool
November 25, 2007
Oxford braced for protest over BNP
Hundreds of protesters are expected to gather at Oxford University after students yesterday voted to allow BNP leader Nick Griffin to speak at their union. Controversial historian David Irving, who was jailed for Holocaust denial, has also been invited to the free speech event tomorrow.Their presence on the list of speakers had already prompted a series of high-profile withdrawals from the platform, including Defence Secretary Des Browne.
Despite opposition, the Oxford Union Debating Society members voted by a margin of two-to-one to extend an invite to Griffin. Martin McCluskey, president of the Oxford Student Union, said it was "disgraceful" the pair were being given the same platform as past speakers who included Mother Theresa and the Dalai Lama.
Anti-fascist leaders, who were organising a demonstration at tomorrow's event, have claimed that some union members were excluded from the vote. Sabby Dhalu, secretary of campaign group Unite Against Fascism, said: "If the event goes ahead as it stands, it does not even have the appearance of a 'debate'. Oxford Union will have to hold itself responsible for any subsequent repercussions on the threats to the safety of students if it proceeds with this decision."
Lee Jasper, secretary of the National Assembly Against Racism, added: "Oxford Union is jeopardising the safety of the students by continuing with this event. It is not too late to rescind these invites. Oxford Union gathers growing condemnation with every moment it continues being complicit with facilitating a meeting promoting fascism and Holocaust denial."
The move was also opposed by the university's Muslim and Jewish societies.
Defending its decision, the Oxford Union Debating Society said it was important to give people of all views a platform. Luke Tryl, president of the society, said: "They will be speaking in the context of a forum in which there will be other speakers to challenge and attack their views in a head-to-head manner."
The university's newspaper, Cherwell, has quoted Duncan Money, a second-year student, as saying he received death threats after criticising fascist groups in an internet blog. He said: "My family has been threatened, my friends have been threatened and I've been threatened. Someone rang in the middle of the night and said they would cut my throat."
The Scotsman
Labels:
BNP,
David Irving,
Holocaust-denier,
Luke Tryl,
Nick Griffin,
Oxford Union
November 19, 2007
Poor old David Irving: a response to the lies
Just a few days we printed a Searchlight article written by Gerry Gable about David Irving, entitled 'Poor Old Soul: The return of David Irving'. Irving, who seems convinced for some reason that I am Gerry Gable, has responded to some of the comments in the article.
Just for the hell of it, and because it's always interesting to keep tabs on the lies and misleading statements of the far-right and its apologists, we thought we'd invite Gerry to respond to Irving's counter-claims.
The original article (with additions) is below:
Poor Old Soul: The return of David Irving
Posted by "Antifascist" (Gerry Gable, according to Irving)
The late comedian Frankie Howerd was well known for saying, "it's wicked to mock the afflicted".
It has long been tempting not only to call the rightwing quasi-historian David Irving a liar, in the words of the judgment in his failed libel action against Dr Deborah Lipstadt, but also to question his grasp on reality, particularly about his past and present political associations.
I admit I have a personal axe to grind. In 1964 I pleaded guilty with a colleague [arsonist and burglar Manny Carpel] at Middlesex Sessions of entering Irving's north London flat "by artifice" (not burglary as the far right insist). I also admitted stealing by finding a GPO telephone engineer's pass. Charges against a third defendant, David Freedman, were dismissed, but for the past 44 years Irving has insisted that Freedman was also guilty. Well let's not let the facts get in the way of Irving's warped thinking.
Around ten years ago Irving said [Irving: No he didn't] I had made his life a Holocaust for the previous 30 years, an accusation I happily accept. Now in his dotage Irving appears to be making a late bid to gain fame in place of his infamy -- which brings to mind another Frankie Howerd phrase, from Up Pompeii!: "Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me". Too right.
David, you were certainly quoted in the press as saying that.
Some years ago Irving threatened [Irving: No he didn't] to sue me and the publisher Pearson Longman over a chapter I had written in a book on the far right in Europe. I was able to provide documentary evidence of the truth of each of the points he claimed were defamatory of him, and demonstrate that he was associated with the extreme right in Britain. [Irving: Gable is confusing Mr Irving with somebody else]
You really have lost the plot, David. Have a look at your own web site archives, Don't forget lawyers never throw threatening letters away, unless they are empty threats.
What puzzled our libel lawyer was another reference to something Irving claimed I had written. It was at this point we wondered whether he was suffering from early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, as the passage complained of did not exist.
Irving is keen to distance himself from the BNP and claims on his website that he has "no point of contact whatever" with Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, or the BNP itself. Yet when he last tried to take the country by storm with a speaking tour in the early 1990s it was the BNP that made the arrangements for his meetings in London and Brighton. [Irving: No it wasn't]
Yes, you did David, unless somebody is writing up your web site for you. I have a copy of the Thames film made about you at the time of one of your German Tours and the failed Leuchter fiasco.
One of Irving's rallies was to be at Chelsea Old Town Hall. He had invited the US Holocaust denier and all-purpose fruitcake Fred Leuchter despite a ban on him entering the country. Leuchter claimed to have proved there were no gas chambers in the Nazi death camps in Poland. The meeting was packed with leading nazis from around the world, including John Tyndall, then the leader of the BNP. It broke up after a few minutes when Home Office officials and several police officers entered to remove Leuchter. He was deported a few days later.
Video evidence shows Griffin with Chris Marchant, a former Balkans War mercenary, telling Thames TV's This Week that Irving had hired their new security firm to protect the meeting. [Irving: No he didn't, this is totally untrue; security outside was provided by the Metropolitan Police, and inside by Mr Irving's colleagues]
Not what the Thames film shows, by the way the Police and Home Office officials stopped the meeting and removed the illegal entrant Leuchter and deported him a couple of days later. The police threatened to arrest Tyndall and other British and foreign nazis who were obstructing them in their lawful duty. This is also on film.
Irving's failed attempt to hold a meeting at the Royal Warwicks Club in Coventry on 21 September in the wake of a small meeting in Rugby shows that he still has dealings with far-right extremists. [Irving: The Coventry meeting went ahead at its proper location. The RWC was the decoy for which Gable's thugs fell] The Rugby meeting was organised by Steve Kerr, a long-time nazi, as was the Coventry meeting booked under the guise of the "Military History Book Club". [Irving: No he didn't]
Who did then; the local BNP organiser?
Irving's speaking tour was set to continue with a meeting in Birmingham on 26 October followed by a second attempt in Coventry on 14 November, Liverpool on 26 November and Halifax. His website does not advertise that he has been invited to take part in a "free speech forum" at the Oxford Union on 27 November, to which an invitation to Griffin has already been withdrawn. [Irving: No it hasn't]
We now understand that he and Griffin are likely to show up at Oxford on the 26th November despite Irving advertising a meeting in Liverpool on the same date.
Irving recently moved into a ten-bedroom house in large grounds in Windsor, where he has already held a meeting and garden party for the rich suckers who continue to support this liar.
Irving's position on the Holocaust has become a movable feast. He has threatened to sue The Jewish Chronicle if it calls him a Holocaust denier, though he reproduces on his website without comment a recent Guardian article that does just that. He now says he is not sure of the numbers killed. Our view is that to minimise the Holocaust by claiming that "only" two million died, or whatever number he plucks out of the air, is just another version of Holocaust revisionism. And two million in a planned genocide would still be two million too many.
Well David I think the Jewish Press and the rest of the media can't wait to see the colour of your writ.
I am sure all decent people will oppose this apologist for Hitler wherever he goes. Watch the Searchlight websites for news of his movements.
Keep it up David your so much funnier than most of your nazi chums.
Gerry Gable
Just for the hell of it, and because it's always interesting to keep tabs on the lies and misleading statements of the far-right and its apologists, we thought we'd invite Gerry to respond to Irving's counter-claims.
The original article (with additions) is below:
Poor Old Soul: The return of David Irving
Posted by "Antifascist" (Gerry Gable, according to Irving)
The late comedian Frankie Howerd was well known for saying, "it's wicked to mock the afflicted".
It has long been tempting not only to call the rightwing quasi-historian David Irving a liar, in the words of the judgment in his failed libel action against Dr Deborah Lipstadt, but also to question his grasp on reality, particularly about his past and present political associations.
I admit I have a personal axe to grind. In 1964 I pleaded guilty with a colleague [arsonist and burglar Manny Carpel] at Middlesex Sessions of entering Irving's north London flat "by artifice" (not burglary as the far right insist). I also admitted stealing by finding a GPO telephone engineer's pass. Charges against a third defendant, David Freedman, were dismissed, but for the past 44 years Irving has insisted that Freedman was also guilty. Well let's not let the facts get in the way of Irving's warped thinking.
Around ten years ago Irving said [Irving: No he didn't] I had made his life a Holocaust for the previous 30 years, an accusation I happily accept. Now in his dotage Irving appears to be making a late bid to gain fame in place of his infamy -- which brings to mind another Frankie Howerd phrase, from Up Pompeii!: "Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me". Too right.
David, you were certainly quoted in the press as saying that.
Some years ago Irving threatened [Irving: No he didn't] to sue me and the publisher Pearson Longman over a chapter I had written in a book on the far right in Europe. I was able to provide documentary evidence of the truth of each of the points he claimed were defamatory of him, and demonstrate that he was associated with the extreme right in Britain. [Irving: Gable is confusing Mr Irving with somebody else]
You really have lost the plot, David. Have a look at your own web site archives, Don't forget lawyers never throw threatening letters away, unless they are empty threats.
What puzzled our libel lawyer was another reference to something Irving claimed I had written. It was at this point we wondered whether he was suffering from early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, as the passage complained of did not exist.
Irving is keen to distance himself from the BNP and claims on his website that he has "no point of contact whatever" with Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, or the BNP itself. Yet when he last tried to take the country by storm with a speaking tour in the early 1990s it was the BNP that made the arrangements for his meetings in London and Brighton. [Irving: No it wasn't]
Yes, you did David, unless somebody is writing up your web site for you. I have a copy of the Thames film made about you at the time of one of your German Tours and the failed Leuchter fiasco.
One of Irving's rallies was to be at Chelsea Old Town Hall. He had invited the US Holocaust denier and all-purpose fruitcake Fred Leuchter despite a ban on him entering the country. Leuchter claimed to have proved there were no gas chambers in the Nazi death camps in Poland. The meeting was packed with leading nazis from around the world, including John Tyndall, then the leader of the BNP. It broke up after a few minutes when Home Office officials and several police officers entered to remove Leuchter. He was deported a few days later.
Video evidence shows Griffin with Chris Marchant, a former Balkans War mercenary, telling Thames TV's This Week that Irving had hired their new security firm to protect the meeting. [Irving: No he didn't, this is totally untrue; security outside was provided by the Metropolitan Police, and inside by Mr Irving's colleagues]
Not what the Thames film shows, by the way the Police and Home Office officials stopped the meeting and removed the illegal entrant Leuchter and deported him a couple of days later. The police threatened to arrest Tyndall and other British and foreign nazis who were obstructing them in their lawful duty. This is also on film.
Irving's failed attempt to hold a meeting at the Royal Warwicks Club in Coventry on 21 September in the wake of a small meeting in Rugby shows that he still has dealings with far-right extremists. [Irving: The Coventry meeting went ahead at its proper location. The RWC was the decoy for which Gable's thugs fell] The Rugby meeting was organised by Steve Kerr, a long-time nazi, as was the Coventry meeting booked under the guise of the "Military History Book Club". [Irving: No he didn't]
Who did then; the local BNP organiser?
Irving's speaking tour was set to continue with a meeting in Birmingham on 26 October followed by a second attempt in Coventry on 14 November, Liverpool on 26 November and Halifax. His website does not advertise that he has been invited to take part in a "free speech forum" at the Oxford Union on 27 November, to which an invitation to Griffin has already been withdrawn. [Irving: No it hasn't]
We now understand that he and Griffin are likely to show up at Oxford on the 26th November despite Irving advertising a meeting in Liverpool on the same date.
Irving recently moved into a ten-bedroom house in large grounds in Windsor, where he has already held a meeting and garden party for the rich suckers who continue to support this liar.
Irving's position on the Holocaust has become a movable feast. He has threatened to sue The Jewish Chronicle if it calls him a Holocaust denier, though he reproduces on his website without comment a recent Guardian article that does just that. He now says he is not sure of the numbers killed. Our view is that to minimise the Holocaust by claiming that "only" two million died, or whatever number he plucks out of the air, is just another version of Holocaust revisionism. And two million in a planned genocide would still be two million too many.
Well David I think the Jewish Press and the rest of the media can't wait to see the colour of your writ.
I am sure all decent people will oppose this apologist for Hitler wherever he goes. Watch the Searchlight websites for news of his movements.
Keep it up David your so much funnier than most of your nazi chums.
Gerry Gable
Labels:
David Irving,
Gerry Gable,
Holocaust-denier,
nazi-apologist
Oxford Union faces boycott over invite to Holocaust denier
The Defence Secretary, Des Browne, is leading a group of politicians and public figures who are boycotting an increasingly divided Oxford Union over the decision by its president to host a talk involving the Holocaust-denying historian David Irving and the BNP leader, Nick Griffin.
The event, entitled Free Speech Forum, which is planned for next Monday, has provoked uproar at the university and beyond. Some Oxford students say they have received death threats and fear they will be targeted by far-right groups.
More than a thousand people have signed a petition on the Downing Street website calling on Gordon Brown to condemn the talk. A protest rally in Oxford against what many students see as a cynical publicity stunt by the union's current president, Luke Tryl, is planned for tomorrow.
A string of politicians and celebrities have now pulled out of events at the world's most famous debating society, the credibility of which appears to have been badly damaged by Mr Tryl, a former chairman of the Halifax branch of Conservative Future, the Tory party's youth wing, who sees himself as a future prime minister.
Among those who have cancelled appearances are the television presenter June Sarpong, the Labour MPs Chris Bryant and Austen Mitchell, and Mr Browne. Sources close to Mr Browne said he did not wish to be "on the same programme as such people", and that "if he had known they had been invited he never would have agreed to speak in the first place".
Mr Tryl is said to be increasingly isolated in the society. One union insider said: "He has sacrificed so many great guests, simply for the sake of a fascist and a Holocaust denier to speak."
Denis McShane, the former Europe minister, pulled out of a meeting at the union last Thursday night after writing to Mr Tryl to object to plans for "two notorious anti-Semites to be given a platform at the Oxford Union". Mr McShane said: "To put four-star Jew-haters on to a prestigious platform like the Oxford Union is to validate modern anti-Semitism. If the Oxford Union has a right-wing ex-Toryboy president, he is entitled to invite whoever he wants. But those who think there should not be a platform for Jew-baiters are entitled to their view, too."
Asked about his position Mr Tryl, who describes himself as a "very liberal, modern person", said: "The BNP are in a minority, but they gain support when they say the liberals are silencing them." Pressed on BNP policies, however, Mr Tryl called them "abhorrent".
Yair Sivan, of the Union of Jewish Students, said: "There is no place for racists and fascists at universities ... Democracy does include the right to free speech, but it also includes the right to tell extremists they are not welcome – that democratic right would be one far more fitting for the Oxford Union."
The Oxford University newspaper, Cherwell, said students had received death threats from neo-Nazis. It is believed that BNP supporters are planning to "target" demonstrators at tomorrow's rally and at the event next Monday.
Divided union
* October 1994
Kermit the Frog was invited, prompting accusations of "dumbing down". Kermit told the 1,000-strong audience: "The responsibility of representing an entire species rests upon my shoulders. Frogs usually only get in here by being in an experiment."
* May 1996
O J Simpson made his only public speech in Britain after the not guilty verdict in his trial for the murder of his wife and her friend.
* October 2000
Ann Widdecombe pulled out of a debate after her proposal of a zero-tolerance approach to cannabis use was followed by eight shadow cabinet members confessing they had smoked the drug.
* March 2001
Michael Jackson lectured on his plans for a universal bill of children's rights. The speech, made after a teenage boy alleged the singer had molested him, was met with barely muffled sniggers.
Independent
The event, entitled Free Speech Forum, which is planned for next Monday, has provoked uproar at the university and beyond. Some Oxford students say they have received death threats and fear they will be targeted by far-right groups.
More than a thousand people have signed a petition on the Downing Street website calling on Gordon Brown to condemn the talk. A protest rally in Oxford against what many students see as a cynical publicity stunt by the union's current president, Luke Tryl, is planned for tomorrow.
A string of politicians and celebrities have now pulled out of events at the world's most famous debating society, the credibility of which appears to have been badly damaged by Mr Tryl, a former chairman of the Halifax branch of Conservative Future, the Tory party's youth wing, who sees himself as a future prime minister.
Among those who have cancelled appearances are the television presenter June Sarpong, the Labour MPs Chris Bryant and Austen Mitchell, and Mr Browne. Sources close to Mr Browne said he did not wish to be "on the same programme as such people", and that "if he had known they had been invited he never would have agreed to speak in the first place".
Mr Tryl is said to be increasingly isolated in the society. One union insider said: "He has sacrificed so many great guests, simply for the sake of a fascist and a Holocaust denier to speak."
Denis McShane, the former Europe minister, pulled out of a meeting at the union last Thursday night after writing to Mr Tryl to object to plans for "two notorious anti-Semites to be given a platform at the Oxford Union". Mr McShane said: "To put four-star Jew-haters on to a prestigious platform like the Oxford Union is to validate modern anti-Semitism. If the Oxford Union has a right-wing ex-Toryboy president, he is entitled to invite whoever he wants. But those who think there should not be a platform for Jew-baiters are entitled to their view, too."
Asked about his position Mr Tryl, who describes himself as a "very liberal, modern person", said: "The BNP are in a minority, but they gain support when they say the liberals are silencing them." Pressed on BNP policies, however, Mr Tryl called them "abhorrent".
Yair Sivan, of the Union of Jewish Students, said: "There is no place for racists and fascists at universities ... Democracy does include the right to free speech, but it also includes the right to tell extremists they are not welcome – that democratic right would be one far more fitting for the Oxford Union."
The Oxford University newspaper, Cherwell, said students had received death threats from neo-Nazis. It is believed that BNP supporters are planning to "target" demonstrators at tomorrow's rally and at the event next Monday.
Divided union
* October 1994
Kermit the Frog was invited, prompting accusations of "dumbing down". Kermit told the 1,000-strong audience: "The responsibility of representing an entire species rests upon my shoulders. Frogs usually only get in here by being in an experiment."
* May 1996
O J Simpson made his only public speech in Britain after the not guilty verdict in his trial for the murder of his wife and her friend.
* October 2000
Ann Widdecombe pulled out of a debate after her proposal of a zero-tolerance approach to cannabis use was followed by eight shadow cabinet members confessing they had smoked the drug.
* March 2001
Michael Jackson lectured on his plans for a universal bill of children's rights. The speech, made after a teenage boy alleged the singer had molested him, was met with barely muffled sniggers.
Independent
Labels:
BNP,
David Irving,
Holocaust-denier,
neo-Nazis,
Nick Griffin,
Oxford Union
October 13, 2007
Fascists have no place in Oxford
Unite Against Fascism has learnt that Oxford Union debating society has invited Fascist BNP leader Nick Griffin and convicted Holocaust denier David Irving to a debate on 'Freedom of Speech' on 26 November. UAF understands they both have been confirmed for this 'debate'.
Wherever fascists have a presence, violence and intimidation increases. Fascists stand against the principles of freedom of speech and as history shows, they destroy all opposition by physically annihilating entire people and ending all freedoms. They represent a real threat to people in Oxford. This is why, as in the past, the National Union of Students and Unite Against Fascism have joined forces to stop this event from taking place by calling on Oxford Union to reverse its decision to invite Griffin and Irving.
Gemma Tumelty, NUS President said: "The Holocaust denier, David Irving and leader of the fascist BNP, Nick Griffin have no place in our multicultural society. NUS utterly opposes racism and fascism wherever it arises and will certainly oppose any attempt by Oxford Union to invite Irving and Griffin to speak.
"The pair's racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic and Islamophobic views threaten the safety of our diverse university communities. For example, wherever the BNP is active, racist attacks and other hate crimes increase.
"With freedom of speech comes the responsibility not to abuse it. All students have a right to learn in an environment free from discrimination or harassment. It is unacceptable to expose students and staff to the possibility of attacks and to give a platform of academic respectability to Griffin and Irving. We will certainly be active in a campaigning to ensure that they are not given a platform."
Unite Against Fascism Joint Secretary Weyman Bennett said: "Fascist organisations such as the British National Party, are not normal political parties and should not be treated as such. Many leading BNP members have convictions for violent offences including bombings.
"Fascism stands for the annihilation of entire communities and the complete destruction of freedom of speech, democracy and human rights. The BNP denies the Nazi Holocaust and calls for an 'all white Britain' which could only be achieved through murderous violence.
"The infamous images of fascist students burning books shortly after Hitler's ascent to power should serve to remind us, both that our campuses are not immune from fascist ideas, and that fascism is itself the complete antithesis of reason, logic and rational debate.
"Millions were murdered in the Holocaust, not because their arguments weren't good enough, but because those who could have stopped fascism under-estimated the threat that it represented. Many thought its flaws so obvious they could easily be exposed. Once allowed a foothold fascism unleashed its campaign of violence and terror. If we can learn from the mistakes of the past we will not be forced to repeat them."
UAF
Wherever fascists have a presence, violence and intimidation increases. Fascists stand against the principles of freedom of speech and as history shows, they destroy all opposition by physically annihilating entire people and ending all freedoms. They represent a real threat to people in Oxford. This is why, as in the past, the National Union of Students and Unite Against Fascism have joined forces to stop this event from taking place by calling on Oxford Union to reverse its decision to invite Griffin and Irving.
Gemma Tumelty, NUS President said: "The Holocaust denier, David Irving and leader of the fascist BNP, Nick Griffin have no place in our multicultural society. NUS utterly opposes racism and fascism wherever it arises and will certainly oppose any attempt by Oxford Union to invite Irving and Griffin to speak.
"The pair's racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic and Islamophobic views threaten the safety of our diverse university communities. For example, wherever the BNP is active, racist attacks and other hate crimes increase.
"With freedom of speech comes the responsibility not to abuse it. All students have a right to learn in an environment free from discrimination or harassment. It is unacceptable to expose students and staff to the possibility of attacks and to give a platform of academic respectability to Griffin and Irving. We will certainly be active in a campaigning to ensure that they are not given a platform."
Unite Against Fascism Joint Secretary Weyman Bennett said: "Fascist organisations such as the British National Party, are not normal political parties and should not be treated as such. Many leading BNP members have convictions for violent offences including bombings.
"Fascism stands for the annihilation of entire communities and the complete destruction of freedom of speech, democracy and human rights. The BNP denies the Nazi Holocaust and calls for an 'all white Britain' which could only be achieved through murderous violence.
"The infamous images of fascist students burning books shortly after Hitler's ascent to power should serve to remind us, both that our campuses are not immune from fascist ideas, and that fascism is itself the complete antithesis of reason, logic and rational debate.
"Millions were murdered in the Holocaust, not because their arguments weren't good enough, but because those who could have stopped fascism under-estimated the threat that it represented. Many thought its flaws so obvious they could easily be exposed. Once allowed a foothold fascism unleashed its campaign of violence and terror. If we can learn from the mistakes of the past we will not be forced to repeat them."
UAF
Labels:
BNP,
David Irving,
Holocaust-denier,
Nick Griffin,
NUS,
Oxford Union,
UAF
September 18, 2007
David Irving to speak at university near you?
David Irving is to speak in a university debate on 23 November on "free speech". However the Holocaust denial writer, who was recently barred permanently from entering Austria, was careful not to reveal which student union had been so misguided as to ask him.Students and university staff are asked to let us know about any debates booked for 23 November, or thereabouts, that might be the one hosting Irving so that we can take steps to prevent this blatant misuse of academic freedom to promote his Nazi agenda.
Irving was released from an Austrian prison last December after serving part of a three-year term for denying the Holocaust. Since then he has been active promoting Holocaust denial in Hungary, where he addressed a far-right rally on 15 March 2007. He fared less well in Poland where he was expelled from the 52nd Warsaw International Book Fair because his writings contravened Polish law.
The reason for Irving's caution over his debating engagement was clear from his correspondence, reproduced on his website, with Andrew Mackenzie, president of the European Society at the University of St Andrews. Mackenzie had asked Irving to suggest dates on which he could come and speak about "the holocaust and Adolf Hitler", but rapidly withdrew the invitation after the university "raised concerns" about "security and use of their property".
Later this week Irving is due to speak at two public meetings - Coventry on 21 September and the following evening in Windsor, where he moved into a large house earlier this month. His subject will be "who dug the grave of the British Empire - Hitler or Churchill". Strict security is to be observed with "rights of admission strictly reserved". Those wishing to attend are warned to bring "satisfactory ID".
This is certainly a step up for Irving who has recently been seen hawking his books from a tent in a field at a Second World War re-enactment event in Kent, where middle-aged men got the opportunity to dress up as SS members. The event attracted all shades of extremist opinion including a number of members of Belgian Blood and Honour.
Stop the BNP
May 21, 2007
Holocaust denier David Irving expelled from Warsaw book fair
British historian David Irving, a convicted Holocaust denier, was escorted out of an international book fair in Warsaw where he was planning to display his books, Polish organizers said Saturday. Irving, who was arrested in Austria after his arrival on a visit in November 2005, spent more than a year in an Austrian jail for denying the Nazis organized mass murder of six million Jews during World War Two.
"We asked him to leave," said Grzegorz Guzowski, the book fair organizer. "Our employees helped him pack up his things, and our car drove him to the address he specified."
He said Irving's publishers did not send materials detailing his work to the fair until a few hours before the deadline, giving organizers too little time to prevent the self-taught historian from setting up a table at the exhibition. Unlike many European countries, Polish law does not expressly forbid Holocaust denial, Warsaw University law professor Piotr Kruszynski told Reuters.
"Polish laws prohibiting the promotion of fascism and defamation of people on racial and religious grounds could conceivably be extended to include Irving's writings," he added.
Irving plans to remain in the country for a few more days to visit Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps in Poland.
"It's ironic that it's come to a situation like this in Poland, which fought against restrictions on speech for such a long time," Irving was quoted by daily Zycie Warszawy as saying.
Haaretz
"We asked him to leave," said Grzegorz Guzowski, the book fair organizer. "Our employees helped him pack up his things, and our car drove him to the address he specified."
He said Irving's publishers did not send materials detailing his work to the fair until a few hours before the deadline, giving organizers too little time to prevent the self-taught historian from setting up a table at the exhibition. Unlike many European countries, Polish law does not expressly forbid Holocaust denial, Warsaw University law professor Piotr Kruszynski told Reuters.
"Polish laws prohibiting the promotion of fascism and defamation of people on racial and religious grounds could conceivably be extended to include Irving's writings," he added.
Irving plans to remain in the country for a few more days to visit Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps in Poland.
"It's ironic that it's come to a situation like this in Poland, which fought against restrictions on speech for such a long time," Irving was quoted by daily Zycie Warszawy as saying.
Haaretz
Labels:
Auschwitz,
David Irving,
fascism,
Holocaust-denier,
Poland,
Warsaw,
WWII
May 18, 2007
Italian university closes campus to block French professor who denies Nazi gas chambers
An Italian university closed one of its campuses for the day Friday to prevent a planned lecture by a retired French professor who denies gas chambers were used in Nazi concentration camps.
Robert Faurisson, who has been convicted five times in France for denying crimes against humanity, had been expected to speak at a local hotel instead but that conference too was later canceled after scuffles with protesters.
Faurisson had been invited to give a lecture at the University of Teramo, in central Italy, by Claudio Moffa, a professor of Asian and African history and director of a master's program in Middle East studies.
Police in Teramo said both Moffa and Faurisson had to be escorted out of a cafe where they were having a small press conference on Friday after a group of about 100 people staged a lively protest in the street, shouting insults at them.
Moffa was also pushed by a protester, said police official Mimmo De Carolis. When reached by telephone, Moffa said the lecture had been canceled because of the attack but gave no other details.
The University of Teramo had cited security fears surrounding the lecture in announcing the closure of its campus housing the law, political sciences and communications departments. "(There is) a climate of tension which could put in danger the safety of the students," the university said in a statement.
Faurisson has caused outrage in France, arguing for a decade against evidence that Nazi Germany systematically destroyed the Jews. He maintains that no gas chambers were used in Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
The university administration had issued an official warning to Moffa to cancel the invitation, arguing that Faurisson's qualifications were "absolutely inadequate and don't deserve academic legitimation."
Moffa had cited his right to teach freely in defending his invitation to Faurisson.
"I want to specify that I am not a denier, but I think it is fair to allow a free debate and different interpretations of historical events," Moffa wrote on his Web site.
The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center had urged the university to cancel the event.
"To welcome Faurisson is an embarrassment to Italian academia, offends the families of Italian martyrs who fell in fighting the scourge of fascism ... and encourages a perverse propaganda to incite a new generation to anti-Semitism and racist doctrine," the center said in a statement.
Last year, Faurisson took part in a conference in Iran, which gathered some of the most well-known U.S. and European Holocaust deniers, to debate whether the World War II genocide of Jews took place.
The gathering touched off a firestorm of indignation across the world and particularly in Europe, where many countries have made it a crime to publicly disavow the Nazis' systematic extermination of 6 million Jews.
International Herald Tribune
Robert Faurisson, who has been convicted five times in France for denying crimes against humanity, had been expected to speak at a local hotel instead but that conference too was later canceled after scuffles with protesters.
Faurisson had been invited to give a lecture at the University of Teramo, in central Italy, by Claudio Moffa, a professor of Asian and African history and director of a master's program in Middle East studies.
Police in Teramo said both Moffa and Faurisson had to be escorted out of a cafe where they were having a small press conference on Friday after a group of about 100 people staged a lively protest in the street, shouting insults at them.
Moffa was also pushed by a protester, said police official Mimmo De Carolis. When reached by telephone, Moffa said the lecture had been canceled because of the attack but gave no other details.
The University of Teramo had cited security fears surrounding the lecture in announcing the closure of its campus housing the law, political sciences and communications departments. "(There is) a climate of tension which could put in danger the safety of the students," the university said in a statement.
Faurisson has caused outrage in France, arguing for a decade against evidence that Nazi Germany systematically destroyed the Jews. He maintains that no gas chambers were used in Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
The university administration had issued an official warning to Moffa to cancel the invitation, arguing that Faurisson's qualifications were "absolutely inadequate and don't deserve academic legitimation."
Moffa had cited his right to teach freely in defending his invitation to Faurisson.
"I want to specify that I am not a denier, but I think it is fair to allow a free debate and different interpretations of historical events," Moffa wrote on his Web site.
The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center had urged the university to cancel the event.
"To welcome Faurisson is an embarrassment to Italian academia, offends the families of Italian martyrs who fell in fighting the scourge of fascism ... and encourages a perverse propaganda to incite a new generation to anti-Semitism and racist doctrine," the center said in a statement.
Last year, Faurisson took part in a conference in Iran, which gathered some of the most well-known U.S. and European Holocaust deniers, to debate whether the World War II genocide of Jews took place.
The gathering touched off a firestorm of indignation across the world and particularly in Europe, where many countries have made it a crime to publicly disavow the Nazis' systematic extermination of 6 million Jews.
International Herald Tribune
Labels:
Holocaust-denier,
Italy,
Moffa,
nazi,
Robert Faurisson,
Simon Wiesenthal Center,
Teramo
April 25, 2007
BNP - the stupid and the sinister
Betraying in every respect the low calibre of this year's crop of BNP local election candidates, it was with a good deal of merriment that we read of Windsor candidate Matt Tait's assertion to his local newspaper that: "We should not allow mass immigration, especially in the Thames area, because the more immigrants there are, the less drinking water there will be." .
Immigrant-induced droughts aside, the fact that the likes of Matt Tait (who was too coy to be photographed by his local paper) are being touted as credible election candidates by the BNP shows just how deeply the racist party is scraping the barrel.
Did I say "racist"? Not according to Hastings BNP's Nick Prince: "We are not a far-right party and we are not racist."
Mr Prince is either delightfully deluded, or telling porkies. He might like to have a word with former colleague Sharon Ebanks to find out what the BNP thinks of people who aren't quite "white" enough, especially when it finds them in its own ranks. It's not a pretty story.
The BNP can always be relied upon to produce far more than its fair share of jokers - which is just as well, because it can also be relied upon to produce far more than its fair share of characters who definitely aren't jokers.
One such is Simon Charles Smith, sitting BNP councillor for Great Bridge ward of Sandwell council.
Councillor Smith is more like your true BNP man - one thing in public, and quite another in private.
In his election campaign Smith perhaps neglected to tell his prospective voters of his obsession with Holocaust Denial, or, for their delectation, to compare Adolf Hitler with Jesus Christ, and was still less likely to admit, "I want White Denmark to beat the mongrel 'England' [football] team…" We won't mention his apparent belief in UFOs or suggestions of starting a new religion.
Smith posted all this and more on the Nazi Stormfront website, hiding behind the nom-de-plume "Steve Freedom". Not being quite as bright as he believes himself to be, "Steve Freedom" left so many clues as to his true identity on Stormfront that it was only a matter of time before he was outed as Cllr. Simon Smith, and the people at Ministry of Truth were happy to perform that service.
Cllr. Simon Smith could never tell his constituents - that's Joe and Josephine Public to him-: "The reason why Blacks disproportionately don’t vote is that the frontal part of the brain associated with postponing immediate gratification is not so well developed as in other races."
But "Steve Freedom" could and did say that. Which isn't so very far on the stupidity scale from saying that hordes of immigrants are about to drink the Thames Valley dry or a failure to notice that there aren't many black people in the BNP.
Thus far Cllr. Smith comes over as something of a chump, but behind the standard-issue idiocy lies something more sinister.
On Stormfront Smith posts:
I’d certainly agree with the notion that "holocaust denial"... should be avoided amongst Joseph and Josephine Public.. but then again anything that challenges the average attention span should be as well… One idea forming in my mind lately is think and study deeply but communicate superficially, touching on what sales people call the "hot spots"…
Which suggests, as Ministry of Truth notes, no very great admiration on the part of Smith for the people ("sheeple") who voted for him.
He also maintains: "The 'Holocaust' is the biggest lie of all time…." (a stock phrase amongst neo-Nazis) put about by "The Globalist Elite" - Jews, to you and me.
Cllr. Smith is never explicit in telling us what his real ideology is, unless we can read something into his remark: "As you say we are 'Nazis' whatever…." But maybe Cllr. Smith is merely communicating superficially with his like-minded comrades on Stormfront, where admissions of swastika admiration aren't really necessary.
So there we are - from the stupid to the sinister in one easy lesson: a racist BNP candidate presumably hoarding all the bottled water he can lay his hands on, a BNP organiser who apparently doesn't believe his racist party is racist, and a Holocaust-denying racist BNP councillor who seems to have made a study of the brains of black people relative to ethnic voting patterns.
Anybody for a big blue pill?
(The full exposure of Simon Smith is at the Ministry of Truth.)
Immigrant-induced droughts aside, the fact that the likes of Matt Tait (who was too coy to be photographed by his local paper) are being touted as credible election candidates by the BNP shows just how deeply the racist party is scraping the barrel.
Did I say "racist"? Not according to Hastings BNP's Nick Prince: "We are not a far-right party and we are not racist."
Mr Prince is either delightfully deluded, or telling porkies. He might like to have a word with former colleague Sharon Ebanks to find out what the BNP thinks of people who aren't quite "white" enough, especially when it finds them in its own ranks. It's not a pretty story.
The BNP can always be relied upon to produce far more than its fair share of jokers - which is just as well, because it can also be relied upon to produce far more than its fair share of characters who definitely aren't jokers.
One such is Simon Charles Smith, sitting BNP councillor for Great Bridge ward of Sandwell council.
Councillor Smith is more like your true BNP man - one thing in public, and quite another in private.
In his election campaign Smith perhaps neglected to tell his prospective voters of his obsession with Holocaust Denial, or, for their delectation, to compare Adolf Hitler with Jesus Christ, and was still less likely to admit, "I want White Denmark to beat the mongrel 'England' [football] team…" We won't mention his apparent belief in UFOs or suggestions of starting a new religion.
Smith posted all this and more on the Nazi Stormfront website, hiding behind the nom-de-plume "Steve Freedom". Not being quite as bright as he believes himself to be, "Steve Freedom" left so many clues as to his true identity on Stormfront that it was only a matter of time before he was outed as Cllr. Simon Smith, and the people at Ministry of Truth were happy to perform that service.
Cllr. Simon Smith could never tell his constituents - that's Joe and Josephine Public to him-: "The reason why Blacks disproportionately don’t vote is that the frontal part of the brain associated with postponing immediate gratification is not so well developed as in other races."
But "Steve Freedom" could and did say that. Which isn't so very far on the stupidity scale from saying that hordes of immigrants are about to drink the Thames Valley dry or a failure to notice that there aren't many black people in the BNP.
Thus far Cllr. Smith comes over as something of a chump, but behind the standard-issue idiocy lies something more sinister.
On Stormfront Smith posts:
I’d certainly agree with the notion that "holocaust denial"... should be avoided amongst Joseph and Josephine Public.. but then again anything that challenges the average attention span should be as well… One idea forming in my mind lately is think and study deeply but communicate superficially, touching on what sales people call the "hot spots"…
Which suggests, as Ministry of Truth notes, no very great admiration on the part of Smith for the people ("sheeple") who voted for him.
He also maintains: "The 'Holocaust' is the biggest lie of all time…." (a stock phrase amongst neo-Nazis) put about by "The Globalist Elite" - Jews, to you and me.
Cllr. Smith is never explicit in telling us what his real ideology is, unless we can read something into his remark: "As you say we are 'Nazis' whatever…." But maybe Cllr. Smith is merely communicating superficially with his like-minded comrades on Stormfront, where admissions of swastika admiration aren't really necessary.
So there we are - from the stupid to the sinister in one easy lesson: a racist BNP candidate presumably hoarding all the bottled water he can lay his hands on, a BNP organiser who apparently doesn't believe his racist party is racist, and a Holocaust-denying racist BNP councillor who seems to have made a study of the brains of black people relative to ethnic voting patterns.
Anybody for a big blue pill?
(The full exposure of Simon Smith is at the Ministry of Truth.)
March 14, 2007
NICK GRIFFIN: profile of a fascist
As we approach the beginning of the Hope not Hate Anti-Fascist Fortnight, we thought we'd pinch the odd useful article from the website to help spread the word. Here's the first, starting at the top with Nick Griffin, fascist and Holocaust-denier.
The British National Party (BNP) leader, Nick Griffin, presents himself as a modern, respectable politician but he is nothing of the sort. For over 30 years he has been a hardline fascist. He denies the Holocaust happened, believes that Jews are conspiring against white British people and even today cavorts with some of the world's most hardline Nazis.
Born in 1959 Nick Griffin comes from a wealthy right-wing family. His father, Edgar was a Conservative party member, involved in Iain Duncan Smith's campaign for election as party leader until he was discovered answering a BNP hotline in the absence of Griffin's mother who had also stood as a BNP candidate against Duncan Smith in during the 2001 general election.
Influenced by British Union of Fascists literature on the "Jewish Question" Griffin attended his first National Front aged 15, though did not officially join the party until he was a student at Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied law gaining a lower second-class degree. He rose quickly through the ranks, becoming the national student organiser in 1978.
In 1980, Griffin launched Nationalism Today, a font of "Third Positionist" fascism, which claimed to transcend the evils of both capitalism and communism. Both ideologies, Griffin claimed, were identical as both concentrated private ownership in very few hands, infringing on the right of independence of nation states and, most fundamentally, being Zionist (that is, Jewish) controlled.
Strange bedfellows
During this period Griffin became influenced by Italian fascist Roberto Fiore, a member of the Italian Third Position who introduced Griffin to the blood and soil philosophy of Italian nazi theorist Julius Evola. Under Griffin the NF embraced Third Position politics. Becoming known as "political soldiers" NF representatives met with Colonel Gaddafi's regime through the Libyan People's Bureau in London, and expressed support for Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini. Griffin and other leading NF figures then took an all-expenses-paid fundraising trip to Libya as guests of the Gaddafi regime.
Expressing his support for Muslim fundamentalism (which the BNP now paradoxically deplores) Griffin wrote in National Front News that "common interest must be turned into practical cooperation" and that he and his colleagues were not afraid "to be seen standing side by side with Third Way nations such as Libya and Iran." Griffin also backed black separatist Louis Farrakhan who likewise called for racial apartheid.
In 1989 Griffin left the NF to form the International Third Position, a small reactionary fascist sect, which campaigned against Coca Cola, McDonald's, urbanisation and "Zionism" (the Jews). Griffin's involvement was not to last.
In 1990 he lost an eye in an accident. In 1991, after a failed business venture, which cost another member several thousand pounds, Griffin went his own way.
Political chameleon
In 1995, Griffin joined the BNP. His personal journal The Rune, an antisemitic quarterly produced by Croydon BNP served as a platform for opposing the "modernisation" of the BNP, accusing those who wanted change of "rainbow Conservatism". He also announced that the BNP should prioritise denying the Holocaust to schoolchildren.
Griffin became editor of Spearhead, the flagship BNP journal in 1996 and set out to take over the party, initially seeking a merger with the National Front. In the process Griffin jettisoned many of his core beliefs - at least publicly. Recognising that the BNP was unelectable with some of its policies, Griffin dropped its commitment to compulsory repatriation - though the small print allows for the option to be considered if not enough people accept their financial offer to return home.
In 1998 Griffin was found guilty of distributing material likely to incite racial hatred and was given a two year suspended sentence.
In 1999 he ousted BNP founder John Tyndall to become BNP chairman. In a bid to emulate the success of groups like the French National Front, with which the BNP has close links, Griffin has deliberately toned down the hardline rhetoric of the "old" BNP in exchange for limited electoral success.
Puzzled by Griffin's apparent conversion to the ballot box his former ITP comrades asked pointedly: "He has been a conservative, a revolutionary nationalist, a radical national Socialist, a Third Positionist, a friend of the 'boot boys' and the skinhead scene, a man committed to respectable politics and electioneering, a 'moderniser'. Which is he in reality?"
Replying to criticism within the far right, Griffin told a private meeting of American nazis and racists that while the BNP needed to change to get elected, his core beliefs - that of the superiority of the white race - remained his driving force.
Out of the glare of the British media Griffin maintains close links with white supremacists and racial scientists who promote spurious racial science. Griffin denied being a racist but is only too happy to consort with leading American extremists including former KKK leaders David Duke and Don Black through forums such as American Renaissance, which seeks to promote the "clear conception of the United States as a nation ruled by and for whites".
Griffin speaks of the need for community-based politics to build respectability for the BNP in the eyes of voters. Yet this is the same Nick Griffin who only a few years before wrote in The Rune that the only "well-directed boots and fists" could back up BNP policies "not of rational debate."
Griffin stood in Oldham in the hope of exploiting race riots during the 2001 general election. He gained 16%. During the 2005 general election Griffin stood in Keighley, West Yorkshire, again trying to exploit racial tensions. He polled 4,240 votes (9.16%).
In 2006 he was charged again with inciting racial hatred after calling Islam "a wicked, vicious faith" and that Muslims were guilty of turning Britain into "a multi-racial hell hole." He was acquitted of all charges, subsequently basking in unheralded publicity, which helped raise the profile of the BNP ahead of the May 2006 local elections.
Griffin is a typical fascist - a man for all people. He is also an outrageous opportunist. There is not a bandwagon or campaign he would not exploit or a political belief he would not jettison if he thought he could benefit.
Griffin the Holocaust denier
Despite Griffin's new moderate image, he remains a Holocaust Denier. He has attacked Holocaust denier David Irving for being too moderate (!) for admitting that some Jews did indeed die during the Holocaust claiming the "True Revisionists will not be fooled by this new twist to the sorry tale of the Hoax of the Twentieth Century." His views on the Holocaust led in 1998 to a conviction for distributing material likely to incite racial hatred. He received a two-year suspended jail sentence.
Griffin remains an ardent Holocaust denier. Even today, he still refuses to accept the Holocaust happened. In 2006 he was quoted in the Mail on Sunday as saying: "It's well known that the chimneys from the gas chambers at Auschwitz are fake, built after the war ended."
On his farm in Wales Griffin has, according to Wales on Sunday, two pigs one called "Anne" and another called "Frank" - a crude anti-Semitic parody of Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl whose wartime diary, written whilst she was in hiding in Amsterdam is a world famous indictment of Nazi persecution of the Jews. Anne Frank was later betrayed and died in a concentration camp. Apparently Griffin thinks this is funny.
Griffin admitted to the Mail on Sunday that the legacy of Hitler gave British Nationalism a bad name, but in the same interview he traces the roots of the BNP back to the 1930s - to the British Union of Fascists who were praised in Griffin's own magazine The Rune during the 1990s.
Griffin the anti-Semite
In 1997 Nick Griffin produced Who are the Mindbenders? Adapted from a US Nazi publication of the same name, it claims to prove that the minds of British people are brainwashed through Jewish control of the media. The booklet includes a list of all known Jews working in the media as though they are working together for a joint cause. He proves Jewish control of the BBC by naming a mere 19 Jews who work for the corporation. He has never repudiated this work.
Griffin in quotes
On the Holocaust
I am well aware that the orthodox opinion is that 6 million Jews were gassed and cremated or turned into lampshades. Orthodox opinion also once held that the earth is flat… I have reached the conclusion that the 'extermination' tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie, and latter-day witch-hysteria."
On Race
Without the White race, nothing matters. [Other right-wing parties] believe that the answer to the race question is integration and a futile attempt to create 'Black Britons', while we affirm that non-Whites have no place here at all and will not rest until every last one has left our land."
On power
When the crunch comes, power is the product of force and will, not of rational debate. We have to have a body of trained young men capable of defending our organisation. If people come to crack our heads we will break theirs."
On Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf
The chapter I most enjoyed was the one on propaganda and organisation - there were some really useful ideas there."
Hope not Hate Anti-Fascist Fortnight
The British National Party (BNP) leader, Nick Griffin, presents himself as a modern, respectable politician but he is nothing of the sort. For over 30 years he has been a hardline fascist. He denies the Holocaust happened, believes that Jews are conspiring against white British people and even today cavorts with some of the world's most hardline Nazis. Born in 1959 Nick Griffin comes from a wealthy right-wing family. His father, Edgar was a Conservative party member, involved in Iain Duncan Smith's campaign for election as party leader until he was discovered answering a BNP hotline in the absence of Griffin's mother who had also stood as a BNP candidate against Duncan Smith in during the 2001 general election.
Influenced by British Union of Fascists literature on the "Jewish Question" Griffin attended his first National Front aged 15, though did not officially join the party until he was a student at Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied law gaining a lower second-class degree. He rose quickly through the ranks, becoming the national student organiser in 1978.
In 1980, Griffin launched Nationalism Today, a font of "Third Positionist" fascism, which claimed to transcend the evils of both capitalism and communism. Both ideologies, Griffin claimed, were identical as both concentrated private ownership in very few hands, infringing on the right of independence of nation states and, most fundamentally, being Zionist (that is, Jewish) controlled.
Strange bedfellows
During this period Griffin became influenced by Italian fascist Roberto Fiore, a member of the Italian Third Position who introduced Griffin to the blood and soil philosophy of Italian nazi theorist Julius Evola. Under Griffin the NF embraced Third Position politics. Becoming known as "political soldiers" NF representatives met with Colonel Gaddafi's regime through the Libyan People's Bureau in London, and expressed support for Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini. Griffin and other leading NF figures then took an all-expenses-paid fundraising trip to Libya as guests of the Gaddafi regime.
Expressing his support for Muslim fundamentalism (which the BNP now paradoxically deplores) Griffin wrote in National Front News that "common interest must be turned into practical cooperation" and that he and his colleagues were not afraid "to be seen standing side by side with Third Way nations such as Libya and Iran." Griffin also backed black separatist Louis Farrakhan who likewise called for racial apartheid.
In 1989 Griffin left the NF to form the International Third Position, a small reactionary fascist sect, which campaigned against Coca Cola, McDonald's, urbanisation and "Zionism" (the Jews). Griffin's involvement was not to last.
In 1990 he lost an eye in an accident. In 1991, after a failed business venture, which cost another member several thousand pounds, Griffin went his own way.
Political chameleon
In 1995, Griffin joined the BNP. His personal journal The Rune, an antisemitic quarterly produced by Croydon BNP served as a platform for opposing the "modernisation" of the BNP, accusing those who wanted change of "rainbow Conservatism". He also announced that the BNP should prioritise denying the Holocaust to schoolchildren.Griffin became editor of Spearhead, the flagship BNP journal in 1996 and set out to take over the party, initially seeking a merger with the National Front. In the process Griffin jettisoned many of his core beliefs - at least publicly. Recognising that the BNP was unelectable with some of its policies, Griffin dropped its commitment to compulsory repatriation - though the small print allows for the option to be considered if not enough people accept their financial offer to return home.
In 1998 Griffin was found guilty of distributing material likely to incite racial hatred and was given a two year suspended sentence.
In 1999 he ousted BNP founder John Tyndall to become BNP chairman. In a bid to emulate the success of groups like the French National Front, with which the BNP has close links, Griffin has deliberately toned down the hardline rhetoric of the "old" BNP in exchange for limited electoral success.
Puzzled by Griffin's apparent conversion to the ballot box his former ITP comrades asked pointedly: "He has been a conservative, a revolutionary nationalist, a radical national Socialist, a Third Positionist, a friend of the 'boot boys' and the skinhead scene, a man committed to respectable politics and electioneering, a 'moderniser'. Which is he in reality?"
Replying to criticism within the far right, Griffin told a private meeting of American nazis and racists that while the BNP needed to change to get elected, his core beliefs - that of the superiority of the white race - remained his driving force.
Out of the glare of the British media Griffin maintains close links with white supremacists and racial scientists who promote spurious racial science. Griffin denied being a racist but is only too happy to consort with leading American extremists including former KKK leaders David Duke and Don Black through forums such as American Renaissance, which seeks to promote the "clear conception of the United States as a nation ruled by and for whites".
Griffin speaks of the need for community-based politics to build respectability for the BNP in the eyes of voters. Yet this is the same Nick Griffin who only a few years before wrote in The Rune that the only "well-directed boots and fists" could back up BNP policies "not of rational debate."
Griffin stood in Oldham in the hope of exploiting race riots during the 2001 general election. He gained 16%. During the 2005 general election Griffin stood in Keighley, West Yorkshire, again trying to exploit racial tensions. He polled 4,240 votes (9.16%).
In 2006 he was charged again with inciting racial hatred after calling Islam "a wicked, vicious faith" and that Muslims were guilty of turning Britain into "a multi-racial hell hole." He was acquitted of all charges, subsequently basking in unheralded publicity, which helped raise the profile of the BNP ahead of the May 2006 local elections.
Griffin is a typical fascist - a man for all people. He is also an outrageous opportunist. There is not a bandwagon or campaign he would not exploit or a political belief he would not jettison if he thought he could benefit.
Griffin the Holocaust denier
Despite Griffin's new moderate image, he remains a Holocaust Denier. He has attacked Holocaust denier David Irving for being too moderate (!) for admitting that some Jews did indeed die during the Holocaust claiming the "True Revisionists will not be fooled by this new twist to the sorry tale of the Hoax of the Twentieth Century." His views on the Holocaust led in 1998 to a conviction for distributing material likely to incite racial hatred. He received a two-year suspended jail sentence.
Griffin remains an ardent Holocaust denier. Even today, he still refuses to accept the Holocaust happened. In 2006 he was quoted in the Mail on Sunday as saying: "It's well known that the chimneys from the gas chambers at Auschwitz are fake, built after the war ended."
On his farm in Wales Griffin has, according to Wales on Sunday, two pigs one called "Anne" and another called "Frank" - a crude anti-Semitic parody of Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl whose wartime diary, written whilst she was in hiding in Amsterdam is a world famous indictment of Nazi persecution of the Jews. Anne Frank was later betrayed and died in a concentration camp. Apparently Griffin thinks this is funny.
Griffin admitted to the Mail on Sunday that the legacy of Hitler gave British Nationalism a bad name, but in the same interview he traces the roots of the BNP back to the 1930s - to the British Union of Fascists who were praised in Griffin's own magazine The Rune during the 1990s.
Griffin the anti-Semite
In 1997 Nick Griffin produced Who are the Mindbenders? Adapted from a US Nazi publication of the same name, it claims to prove that the minds of British people are brainwashed through Jewish control of the media. The booklet includes a list of all known Jews working in the media as though they are working together for a joint cause. He proves Jewish control of the BBC by naming a mere 19 Jews who work for the corporation. He has never repudiated this work.
Griffin in quotes
On the Holocaust
I am well aware that the orthodox opinion is that 6 million Jews were gassed and cremated or turned into lampshades. Orthodox opinion also once held that the earth is flat… I have reached the conclusion that the 'extermination' tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie, and latter-day witch-hysteria."
On Race
Without the White race, nothing matters. [Other right-wing parties] believe that the answer to the race question is integration and a futile attempt to create 'Black Britons', while we affirm that non-Whites have no place here at all and will not rest until every last one has left our land."
On power
When the crunch comes, power is the product of force and will, not of rational debate. We have to have a body of trained young men capable of defending our organisation. If people come to crack our heads we will break theirs."
On Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf
The chapter I most enjoyed was the one on propaganda and organisation - there were some really useful ideas there."
Hope not Hate Anti-Fascist Fortnight
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