Germany kicks out US nazi David Duke

David Duke poses in his Klan robes in front of the House of
Parliament in London in March 1978. Photo: Associated Press

David Duke, the ex-Ku Klux Klan leader, former US nazi boss and still close associate of British National Party boss, Nick Griffin, has been kicked out of Germany after being arrested in Cologne last week ahead of speaking at a nazi gathering in the city.

The arrest of the 61-year-old embezzler and fraudster – aka Dorothy Vanderbilt – came at a time of mounting public concern in Germany over the brutal murders, over an eleven-year period, of nine immigrant traders and a female police officer by members of the terrorist National Socialist Underground (NSU). Other NSU violence included bombings in Cologne in 2001 and 2004.

On his release, Duke who, like his pal Griffin, has been closely connected with Germany’s biggest nazi organisation, the National Democratic Party (NPD) – which, in turn, has been linked with the NSU killers – pledged to fight his deportation, begging supporters to send him money. Urgently. “While most of you will be getting ready for the warmth and love and friendship and family of Christmas, I will be far from home fighting the good fight,” he wrote.

Any would-be donors should exercise caution: Duke has form in this regard having served a year in US federal prison for filing a false tax return and mail fraud in 2003-2004 after it was revealed that hundreds of thousands of dollars-worth of donations he had solicited from his followers were actually used to pay off his gambling debts.

Police in Cologne branded Duke an “undesirable foreigner” who was “obliged to leave German territory without delay”. The police statement added that Duke “was not entitled to stay in Germany” because of a travel ban against him in another, unspecified, European country. It was later disclosed that the group he was scheduled to address was the hardcore nazi Freies Netz Köln, in cooperation with the violent Kameradschaft Sturm Rhein-Sieg.

Press reports have compared Duke’s latest escapade to his 2009 expulsion from Czech Republic, following his arrest in Prague on suspicion of “denying or approving of the Nazi genocide and other Nazi crimes” and “promotion of movements seeking suppression of human rights,” which are crimes in the Czech Republic punishable by up to three years’ imprisonment. At the time of his arrest, Duke was being protected by thugs from the nazi group Národní Odpor.

Duke habitually describes the Nazi murder of six million Jews during WW2 as a “myth” and his antics have made him one of world’s most infamous racist extremists. In recent years Duke, who claims he intends to run in the next US presidential elections, has been active in Russia and Eastern Europe as well as in the Middle Eastern states of Syria and Iran.

He was a keynote speaker at the Iranian Holocaust denial conference in December 2006 telling the audience that: “The Zionists have used the Holocaust as a weapon to deny the rights of the Palestinians and cover up the crimes of Israel... This conference has an incredible impact on Holocaust studies all over the world... The Holocaust is the device used as the pillar of Zionist imperialism, Zionist aggression, Zionist terror and Zionist murder.” Duke is also the author of several books including My Awakening (1998) and Jewish Supremacism (2002).

After being expelled to Austria where he now lives, the cosmetically altered racist was, incredibly not questioned by the Austrian police on his return.

Hope not hate

Undeserved honor for Klan founder

Nathan Bedford Forrest was a cotton planter and a trader in horses, cattle and black people. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Forrest, whose business dealings had made him wealthy, [he] raised a cavalry unit to fight for the Confederacy. He is remembered as an instinctive military genius whose daring and unpredictability gave Union forces fits.

He is also remembered for leading a rebel band that overwhelmed a Union stronghold, Fort Pillow, Tenn., massacring 300 mostly black soldiers and civilians, including children, after the soldiers had dropped their weapons. According to official reports, black soldiers were nailed to logs, buried alive, gunned down where they stood.

Finally, Forrest is remembered as a founder and the first "Grand Wizard’’ of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan, of course, is America’s preeminent terrorist group; in its various permutations, it has been responsible for countless acts of violence against African Americans and others it deemed inferior, including the notorious 1963 church bombing in which four little black girls were killed.

This is the legacy of Nathan Bedford Forrest. At this writing, the state of Mississippi is considering whether to honor that legacy through the issuance of vanity license plates. And perhaps an observer might be forgiven for wondering what in the world there is to consider.

The request to honor Forrest was made by the Mississippi branch of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group often found neck deep in attempts to rewrite and sanitize the odious history of the Confederacy.

For what it’s worth, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour has said he doesn’t think the state legislature will approve the vanity plate. But he rejected a call by the Mississippi NAACP to denounce the idea. "I don’t go around denouncing people," he said, piously.

Presumably, he would be equally nonjudgmental if his state were to consider similar honors to Osama bin Laden, convicted spy Robert Hanssen or Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Their legacies, after all, are combined in Forrest: terrorist, traitor, mass murderer.

On April 12, it will be 150 years since the Civil War began. That is the distance from telegraph lines to smart phones, from steam engines to space shuttles, from Lincoln to Obama. And yet even after all that time, some of us are still unable to conquer the moral cowardice exemplified by Gov. Barbour and the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

The South fought in defense of racism and slavery. It was soundly defeated, racism and slavery soundly repudiated. You’d think from that loss the South would have learned signal lessons of human rights and human dignity.

The past exists for one overriding purpose: to prepare us for the future. It is the great and wise teacher, though its lessons are often purchased at monstrous cost. Such was surely the case with the Civil War: 620,000 lives — 2 percent of the population — lost, the South left devastated.

Yet sometimes, you wonder if the South even knows it lost.

Because, instead of learning those costly lessons and moving forward, too much of the South has spent too much of the last century and a half denying them and looking backward. It did so first through the expedient of lynch mob violence and Jim Crow laws. Now it clings to discredited 19th Century symbols like driftwood, obsessively reworks history trying to make the facts other than what they are.

But the facts are immutable.

You wish the South would finally accept that and move on. Instead, too many in that storied region are still absorbed in fighting a war that ended in 1865, seeking to vindicate a cause long ago lost. A man who betrayed this country, founded a terrorist group and committed mass murder is a man unworthy of honor.

It is pathetic that that even needs to be said.

Miami Herald

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

White Supremacist Site MartinLutherKing.org Marks 12th Anniversary

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

Where in the www did these kids search?

Google, for starters.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Huffington Post

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

American huge compensation lawsuits after racist crimes

This article was submitted by one of our readers, Roddy Newman. We welcome any contributions from our supporters (as long as those contributions conform to the law and are in reasonably good taste). Please send your articles to us via email.

Some mainstream European politicians have been agonising recently about the growth of racist far right parties, which have recently entered parliament for the first time in Europe's least racist country, Sweden, which are currently propping up, or part of centre-right coalitions in Europe's most liberal countries, Holland and Denmark, and which have recently been part of right wing coalitions in more conservative countries like Italy and Austria.

However, there is a simple solution to the problem of racist far right organisations which could consign the heavily in debt BNP, and also the NF, EDL, SDL, WDL, EFP, BPP, etc. to the history books: The huge compensation award lawsuits after racist crimes which the USA's Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama civil rights law firm, have been using for decades to bankrupt numerous American racist organisations and activists.

For example, after White Aryan Resistance skinheads beat an Ethiopian man, Mulugeta Seraw, to death with a baseball bat, SPLC successfully sued WAR, and its leader, Tom Metzger, for $12.5 million compensation. As a result, Metzger was forced to sell his home, and was bankrupted. WAR continued, but like Metzger, it still has to make regular payments to Seraw's family, in Metzger's case out of his welfare cheques.

In another case, SPLC successfully sued the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, its state leader, and 4 other individual members for $37.8 million compensation (later reduced to $21.5 million on appeal) after they burned down an African American church. As a result of the compensation award, the Christian Knights immediately went from being one of the most active KKK groups in the US, to effectively ceasing to exist.

You can read about these, and other hate and extremism lawsuits on the SPLC website. All of them have been funded by donations from SPLC supporters, as the SPLC do not take any money from the people who they sue on behalf of.

If the BNP, NF, EDL, SDL, WDL, EFP, BPP, etc., and their leaders all faced huge compensation award lawsuits after every racist or religious crime which they or their members engaged in, for engaging in, or inciting racist or religious criminality, or for using malicious and deliberate lies to incite racist or religious criminality, they could all obviously be bankrupted very quickly.

Nick Griffin was of course successfully prosecuted for inciting racial hatred after he denied the Holocaust in an article, but unfortunately, he was not sued for a huge compensation award, which could have been paid to Holocaust survivors.

The USA has no racial or religious hatred incitement laws, which is why so much Holocaust denial literature is printed in the US, and why SPLC lawsuits cannot sue on those grounds, but British laws, and European laws in general, are much stricter, as they should be.

Hitler and the Nazis would have been bankrupted long before they got into power if Weimar Republic Germany had had such laws, and if an SPLC type law firm had used them rigourously.

For example, the Russian Tsarist secret police (Okhrana) forgery, "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion", which the Okhrana created to turn the hatred which much of the Russian public felt for the Tsar into hatred of Russia's Jews, incited people to vote for the Nazis, who popularised the document, and who were later incited by "The Protocols" to organise the Holocaust.

You can buy Norman Cohn's book about "The Protocols" inciting people to vote for the Nazis, and inciting the Holocaust here.

Today, racist organisations are in some cases far more extreme than the Nazis, as I explained in an earlier article which discussed the current or past BNP and EFP leaders who admire, or admired a now dead American fascist party leader who was far more extreme than the Nazis, as he openly advocated killing all of the world's billions of non-white people and Jews, so it is very important that huge compensation award lawsuits are used to destroy racist organisations which have used "Protocols" type malicious and deliberate lies in their propaganda to win votes, and whip up racial hatred, and thus racist criminality.

Anti-racist lawyers could thus contact the SPLC for advice, and could then begin bankrupting all British far right organisations and leaders, by suing them because of racial or religious hatred inciting malicious and deliberate lies in past leaflets, articles, and other propaganda which would have led to past racist or religious crimes by them, or their members.

Anti-racist lawyers could also contact any lawyer friends they have in other European countries, to suggest the same tactic to them.

"Searchlight" magazine, and other anti-fascist organisations, have long been documenting the remarkably large numbers of criminal convictions for terrorism, hard drug dealing, paedophilia, gang rape, inciting racial hatred, racist violence, football hooliganism, etc. which racist activists have, so the law, and a deluge of huge compensation demand lawsuits, are the correct way to deal with the criminals who are responsible for organised racist activism once and for all.

BNP establishes 'social networking' branch in America

The British National Party has set up a branch in the United States – nine years after it abandoned a fundraising drive across the Atlantic amid controversy over its links with American white supremacists.

The far-right party described its new US "unit" as simply a social networking organisation designed to help expatriate BNP supporters stay in touch with one another, and the party, while working abroad. But the Government last night accused the BNP, which has been hit by internal strife following poor general election results, of looking overseas to promote "hate and intolerance".

The new US branch has signed up 90 sympathisers, while a Canadian branch has 60 members. The party is also trying to boost its presence in Europe and the Far East. The American operation is being co-ordinated by an IT worker from Croydon, Adam McArthur, who recently moved to the US to take up a job. Mr McArthur, a BNP officer since February, lives in Berryville, a small town in rural Virginia just over an hour's drive from Washington DC.

The move follows the collapse of American Friends of the BNP, based in Virginia, which was set up to raise cash for the party and was addressed by Nick Griffin, the party's leader. Members of the group included David Duke, the leader of the Ku Klux Klan at the time, who was photographed with Mr Griffin. James W von Brunn, the white supremacist who shot dead a guard at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington last year, attended two meetings.

The organisation was run by Mark Cotterill, a veteran figure on the far right, who drew inspiration from the IRA's success in raising money in North America in the 1990s. It folded amid claims that its fundraising activities were illegal under American law. Mr Cotterill returned to Britain and has left the BNP.

In January, Mr McArthur registered under American law to reactivate the party's presence in the country. According to US government documents, he said the branch would "organise US-based members, so that we can develop social networking campaigns to increase votes for the BNP in the forthcoming local and general elections".

He also said he would advise the party's supporters on how to vote in British elections. The move was part of efforts co-ordinated by the BNP's overseas liaison officer, Andy McBride, to forge links with sympathisers around the world.

Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities, told The Independent: "This just shows there's nothing British about the BNP. It's a sign of the party's own weakness that it has to look outside Britain to try to peddle their messages of hate and intolerance."

Mr McBride said the new branch would be carefully monitored to prevent extremist sympathisers of organisations such as the KKK from joining.

"People are told that if they come into this party because they hate people, or hate the colour of their skin, it's the wrong party for them," he said. Mr McBride added that the party did not encourage donations from members living abroad because it involved completing "immense" amounts of paperwork.

Meanwhile in Britain

The British National Party is struggling under a weight of debts estimated at more than £500,000 and has suffered a series of resignations of prominent activists. Its cash crisis has arisen because of unpaid bills to suppliers and the cost of fighting legal actions with Unilever over the use of an image of a Marmite jar in an election broadcast and with the Equality and Human Rights Commission over its constitution.

Nick Griffin fought off a challenge to his leadership and has promised to step down in 2013. Last May, he said he wanted to "make way for a younger person" and focus on getting re-elected to the European Parliament in 2014. But infighting has continued to destabilise the party, with Eddy Butler, its former campaigns director, and Richard Barnbrook, the BNP's sole London Assembly member, both recently expelled.

Last week, Wiltshire's only BNP councillor, Michael Simpkins, quit the party over the scale of its debts and said he would sit on Corsham Town Council as an independent. He said he knew of two local printers that waited six months for the BNP to pay its bills. Meanwhile, Jim Dowson has said he will be stepping down as the BNP's chief fundraiser. He has faced accusations of making inappropriate advances to a young female activist. He has denied the claims and said he is the victim of a dirty-tricks campaign.

Independent

New BNP? Same old nazis and thugs

The BNP claims it has changed. A quick review of its election candidates shows that they are the same old nazis, thugs and racists that they always were

Tom Gower
Coventry North East

Gower works full-time as the BNP enquiries officer. He is also the Coventry contact for the racist and pagan Woden’s Folk and was involved in the English Heathen Front (EHF), ‘a racist group espousing “blood and soil” ideology. The EHF was the English “chapter” of the Allgermanische Heidnische Front (AHF), an international network of “tribes” that evolved out of the Norsk Hedensk Front, a group founded in 1993 by Varg Vikernes, the Norwegian black metal musician and murderer whose own brand of heathenism included a heavy dose of national socialism, antisemitism, eugenics and racism.

Shelley Rose
Luton North

A rising star in the BNP, Rose is part of a social group of BNP activists in the East Midlands and an antisemite who wrote on her Facebook page, “I would rather put myself out and pay a bit more at a smaller local shop, than line the pockets of the kikes that run Tesco”. She attended the National Front Remembrance Day parade in 2009 with Chris Hurst, the BNP PPC ‘for Twickenham.

Robin Evans
Blackburn

Evans was once a Blackburn BNP councillor but found the council budget too much to cope with. “It’s all mumbo jumbo, I don’t understand a word of it,” he stated. He resigned from the BNP in 2003 after an internal dispute and joined the openly fascist British National Socialist Party, returning to the BNP.

Ken Booth
Newcastle upon Tyne Central

Booth is the former North East National Front organiser who caused widespread disgust in 2007 when he compared the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz to Disneyland. He refused to believe the “official figures” of those who died in the Holocaust and did not recognise the “authenticity” of the buildings at Auschwitz.

Lynne Mozar
Buckingham

Mozar, who runs the BNP’s Trafalgar Club fundraising group, is notorious for her appearance on the Sky TV documentary BNP Wives in which “in private sometimes” she admitted calling black people “niggers”. ‘She also claimed that “Pakis” was the ‘“legal term for them [Asians]”. While manning a stall opposite a mosque in Fareham, Mozar shouted “fat slag” at a passerby who questioned her views.

Mathew Tait
Milton Keynes South

Tait, the Buckinghamshire BNP organiser, travelled to the cancelled 2010 American Renaissance conference, where he moaned to those who turned up that the Equality and Human Rights Commission court case had forced the BNP to accept “people who we would wish to not have in our country really to be members of our party”.

Mike Shore
Broxtowe

Until 2003 Shore was the National Front’s East Midlands organiser and treasurer. He was also Midlands convener of a British incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan. His conversion to the BNP came as a surprise to former colleagues.

Richard Hamilton
Milton Keynes North

A former soldier, Hamilton took part in the mock trial and execution of a gollywog at the 2009 BNP Red, White and Blue festival. The News of the World noted that before the trial, “Hamilton’s ghettoblaster blared out songs supporting Hitler and attacking ‘niggers’”. The BNP claimed his membership had been “suspended” as a result of the affair, though evidently not for very long.

Chris Beverley
Morley and Outwood

Beverley is a leading figure in Yorkshire BNP and a key link with the National Democratic Party (NPD) in Germany whose leader believes that Hitler was a “great statesman”. Beverley works as PA and constituency office manager for Andrew Brons, the BNP MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber, and recently refused to condemn Hitler in a radio broadcast saying that he did not hate him.

Ian Meller
Leicestershire North West

Meller, a BNP councillor in North West Leicestershire, is a former National Front activist who took part in a demonstration against a Gay Pride march in Leicester in August 2000. Meller, then 35, was fined £400 and £55 costs for carrying an offensive weapon, believed to have been a chair leg.

Charlotte Lewis
Carshalton and Wallington

Lewis was jailed for six months in 2001 for sending a series of “chilling” death threats to employees of Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) animal research laboratory in Cambridgeshire. She posts racist comments on social networking sites but claims she is ‘not a racist but a “racial survivalist”. ‘In 2009 Croydon Council considered taking action against her after she boasted of participating in a racist hate campaign against her neighbours.

Barry Bennett
Gosport

Bennett was, until recently, a regular user of the American-based nazi Stormfront website, despite being half Jewish, “from ancestry not religion” he is keen to stress. “I believe in National Socialism, WW2 style, it was best, no other power had anything like it,” ‘he wrote. “The ideology was fantastic. The culture, nothing like it. If it was here now, I’d defect to Germany.”

Eddy Butler
Harlow

Butler has been involved with the far right since the early 1980s when he was the Tower Hamlets organiser for the National Front. After he joined the BNP he and a team of thugs laid into a group of anti-fascists with hammers and other weapons in east London in 1992. In 1993 he organised the “Rights for whites” campaign that won the BNP its first councillor, Derek Beackon, in a Tower Hamlets by-election, though he only held the seat for seven months. Until his sudden demotion Butler was the BNP’s national organiser and elections officer. He is also standing for Barking and Dagenham council, despite still living in Loughton.

Chris Forster
Hayes and Harlington

A National Front supporter in the 1970s and a former treasurer of the Conservative Monday Club, Forster, who is also standing for Barking and Dagenham council, works as a psychic but failed to foresee Searchlight’s exposé of him in the Evening Standard in 2009. Forster helped compile the BNP’s 2009/10 Barking and Dagenham council budget, which attracted great opprobrium. Hypocritically, he is married to a Chinese woman with whom he has a child.

Tess Culnane
Orpington

Tess Culnane was a BNP member until a row with the party after which she stormed off to join the National Front for which she stood in the 2008 London Assembly election. She also addressed meetings of the openly Nazi British People’s Party. The BNP denounced the NF as “neo-fascist” but this has not proved an impediment to Culnane rejoining the BNP and working for Richard Barnbrook, the BNP’s London Assembly member.

Edward Sheppard
Coventry North West

Sheppard stood for the BNP in the 2001 general election in Coventry North East, but could not stand in 2005 as he was jailed for three years in 2002 for shooting a man at point blank range. Mold Crown Court heard how Christopher Willans had mistakenly knocked on Sheppard’s window, believing it to be part of a property owned by a close friend. ‘On discovering his mistake, Willans apologised to Sheppard and left the area. While walking home Willans was confronted by Sheppard who shot him at close range with a .22 calibre pistol through his car window.

Marlene Guest
Rotherham

Guest is the Rotherham BNP organiser. Like Mozar she appeared on the Sky TV BNP Wives documentary in which she claimed that the number of deaths in the Holocaust had been exaggerated and that the Jews were putting Germany on a guilt trip. ‘Asked if any good had come out of ‘the Holocaust, she replied: “Well, apparently, didn’t they get a lot of dentistry and plastic surgery”, referring to the Nazis’ barbaric “medical experiments”.

Jeffrey Marshall
Eastbury ward, Barking and Dagenham Council

Marshall, the central London BNP organiser, displayed the poisonous side of the BNP in February 2009 following the death of the six-year-old son of David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader. In a cruel and warped outburst against those who had expressed their condolences at the death of Ivan, who suffered from cerebral palsy and epilepsy, Marshall wrote in an internet politics group: “We live in a country today which is unhealthily dominated by an excess of sentimentality towards the weak and unproductive. No good will come of it.”

Marshall continued his sick tirade, stating that although it would be “a kindness” to kill children with disabilities, this was not the same as advocating such a measure as compulsory state policy. “But so what if it is,” he declared. “At least we would all know where we stand. There is actually not a great deal of point in keeping these sort of people alive, after all.”

Sharif Abdel Gawad
Bolton and Undercliffe ward, Bradford Council

Abdel Gawad of Bowling, Bradford, was convicted for possession of heroin by Bradford magistrates in December 2007. He first stood for the BNP in Bradford in May 2006, when his candidacy caused uproar in the party because of his less than Aryan credentials. The party insisted that he was of Armenian descent and most certainly “Christian” not a Muslim. Interviewed by The Independent he said he was “concerned about law and order, particularly the drugs epidemic in Bradford”.

Hope not hate

Nick Griffin to address US white supremacist conference

BNP leader Nick Griffin will join Ku Klux Klan members, neo-Nazis, holocaust deniers, anti-immigration extremists and eugenicists at the white supremacist American Renaissance conference in Virginia next month

The convicted racist will appear alongside Dan Roodt, author of “Afrikaner Survival Under Black Rule”, David A. Yeagley, author of “What’s Up With Dark Men?”, lawyer to white supremacist groups Sam G Dickson, segregationist Jared Taylor – who believes Martin Luther King “left a legacy of division and resentment” – Raymond Wolters, a ’scientist’ who wishes to conduct experiments into race and IQ, and racist filmmaker Craig Bodeker.

American Resistance, a newsletter published by Taylor, promotes pseudoscientific research which argues that non-whites are genetically and morally inferior; their conference seeks to bring together various right-wing racist people and ideas. Infoshop News adds that:

“The Anti-Defamation League writes that AmRen, “promotes their views by attacking racial, ethnic, and religious diversity, which they call ‘one of the most divisive forces on the planet’ and therefore ‘dangerous’” and that, “many of North America’s leading intellectual racists have written for American Renaissance or have addressed the biennial American Renaissance conferences”.”

A campiagn has been launched to put pressure on the hotel hosting the event to cancel or face a boycott. Yesterday Left Foot Forward reported Griffin’s attempt to use the Haiti earthquake for political gain.

Left Foot Forward

2009 in review - Nick Griffin appears on Question Time

Police hold people back outside Television Centre
protesting BNP leader Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time

Baroness Warsi recalls the most controversial TV show of the year

Normally before a television appearance you're all in the same green room and you mingle in the make-up rooms, too, but this time we all had our own rooms and our make-up was done separately. It wouldn't have been fair just to isolate him.

The only time I felt nervous was when I saw the piles of paper Jack [Straw] and Chris [Huhne] had. I felt like a student who hasn't done enough revision for an exam.

David Cameron felt that everything Nick Griffin finds repulsive about today's Britain is embodied in me. I'm a Yorkshire-born, Muslim daughter of hard-working, working-class parents. It was quite a brave decision. It was a high-profile, high-risk programme, politically. Once we got started, I enjoyed it. I find Nick Griffin an unpleasant and manipulative man, and intellectually shallow. He's part of the "anti" brigade. Always anti-someone: first Jews, then Blacks and now Muslims. But I think the BBC should have him on. As long as you're not beyond the pale – violent and beyond rational debate – you should be engaged, and exposed.

I was hoping the programme would follow the usual format, with questions on the economy, the Royal Mail, etc. Instead there was an obsessive concentration on race and what Nick Griffin had said in the past. I would have been intrigued with the BNP's policy on getting Britain out of the economic recession.

Nick Griffin was both extremely nervous and trying extremely hard to please. This was his big chance to seem a nice, reasonable guy. It looked very forced. David Dimbleby pulled him up, asking, "What are you smiling about?" At times it was like a comedy – especially when he talked about "non-violent versions of the Ku Klux Klan".

Later, Jack was waffling on that immigration was not an issue in Britain today. It was a difficult moment because I had to acknowledge that there was an element of legitimacy to what Nick Griffin was saying. I said, "I don't agree with the guy on the end, but you, Jack, aren't being honest on this."

Afterwards, my phone was jammed with texts and I had hundreds of emails. I read each and every one. There were some nasty ones saying, "Go back home," but 95% of them were positive. I also got a lot of emails from British Muslims, saying they were proud to see someone comfortably British and Muslim and able to articulate a sensible view – rather than the hotheads the BBC usually have on.

I don't think the BNP have had a poll boost. The poll questions are couched so wide that almost everyone would fall into them. Academics from the University of Manchester told me if there was a rise it was from about two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half per cent. I've also been told that on fascist and racist websites Griffin has been pilloried: things like: "He was trying so hard to hug the black woman and be nice to the Asian woman." So he's upset his core vote.

I'd happily share a platform with Nick Griffin again, but I'd much rather do it in a format where you can really debate the issues. I wanted to get behind and below the BNP beliefs; Question Time is more about point scoring.

Observer

Nasty Nick's paedo pal

BNP leader Griffin shares platform with neo-Nazi paedophile

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

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

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

News of the World

Ex-KKK man ditches 'irrelevant' Griffin

Right-wing friends Nick Griffin and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke have fallen out in the wake of the humiliating Question Time appearance.

The former Grand Wizard blasted Griffin’s shambolic performance on the show as “horrendous”. He revealed on an internet blog that he is “considering legal action” after Griffin implied Duke was still involved with the KKK in 2000. Griffin drew howls of derision from the BBC audience when he said he had shared a platform with the former KKK leader and described the group as “an almost totally non-violent organisation”.

A spokesman for 59-year-old Dr Duke said: “The impression was clearly given that Dr Duke was still a member of the organisation at that time. The truth is, he had left many years earlier and had already served a successful term as a Republican on the Louisiana state senate.”

Four years before his meeting with Griffin, Duke unsuccessfully ran for a seat on the US Senate. His aide added: “Any statement that refers to Dr Duke being a member of the klan at the time is a blatant lie. He is very unhappy with this and is considering what course of action, legal and otherwise, to take.”

The BNP leader was dismissed as “irrelevant” by a KKK recruiter at the race-hate group’s office in Harrison, Arkansas. He said: “This guy is irrelevant to us, but he should think very carefully before bandying the klan’s name around. We can do without the kind of publicity he might attract.”

At its peak in the 1920s, the KKK boasted a membership of more than 4million in America. Today, the KKK, classified as a “hate group” by the US government, has about 8,000 supporters.

Express

Griffin tried to make small talk, says Bonnie Greer

Question Time panellist reveals how BNP leader tried to ingratiate himself

The BNP may have expended considerable energy in the week leading up to last night's BBC Question Time programme attacking her, but the black American playwright Bonnie Greer reveals today in the London Evening Standard that the party's leader, Nick Griffin, spent the evening trying to ingratiate himself with her.

Greer, who had the dubious pleasure of sitting next to Griffin on the panel, tells interviewer David Cohen how she left her dressing room before the show's recording began, "prepared for combat", and came face to face with the BNP man in the corridor at Television Centre.

"It was as if he'd been waiting for me in the corridor," Greer, 60, told the Standard. "I was the last to emerge and when he saw me, he turned and smiled his greasy smile and clumsily half extended a hand. I ignored it and thought to myself: What are you about? Are you forgetting I'm black? Are you trying to show me you aren't racist?"

Last week the BNP website referred to her as a "black history fabricator" for her work on the radio documentary In Search of the Black Madonna, which was, it said, an "Afrocentrist daydream". The website said that she would be the "joker in the pack" on the panel and sneered at her claim that she was a 'refugee' who fled the Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

So Ms Greer was understandably surprised to find the party's leader making nervous small talk with her as they sat down in the studio. "As we were having our microphones attached, he leaned towards me like I was his new best friend... 'Bonnie, how many times have you been on?’ he asked. 'Bonnie, do you find it scary?' I looked him straight in the eye. 'No,' I replied sharply, 'but you might.'"

Describing last night as "probably the weirdest and most creepy experience of my life", Greer says that her composure almost snapped at one point of the evening - presumably when Griffin looked like he was about to hug her or when he made a jocular reference to the white hoods of the Ku Klux Klan.

"I spent the entire night with my back turned to him. At one point, I had to restrain myself from slapping him. But it was worth it because he was totally trounced," Greer says. "I had thought we'd face a formidable orator, somebody who knew his facts and had his ducks in a row, but the guy was a mess!"

The First Post

Jeered, scorned and ridiculed - still BNP's Nick Griffin milks his moment in spotlight on Question Time

In for a rough ride - Griffin on the Question Time panel

Nick Griffin was booed, jeered and mocked by a hostile television audience on the BBC's Question Time last night. But the British National Party leader's priceless air time still left the Corporation facing accusations of 'publicity-seeking' naivety.

Senior Labour figures warned of racist attacks in the coming days, leaving the BBC with 'blood on its hands'.

Mr Griffin ran the gauntlet of 1,000 angry protesters who had laid siege to the Question Time studio at Television Centre in West London. The 50-year-old, who has a criminal conviction for inciting racial hatred, was loudly booed as he went before the cameras under tight security.

Facing angry heckling, and at times looking shaken, Mr Griffin:

• Repeatedly refused to give his views on the Holocaust, drawing attacks from Jewish members of the audience.
• Claimed that Winston Churchill would have joined the BNP.
• Was branded 'disgusting' by one black member of the audience.
• Was forced to deny he had said that black men 'walk like monkeys'.
• Was laughed at when he admitted meeting Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and claimed the organisation was 'non violent'.
• Was jeered by a lesbian member of the audience who told him: 'The feeling of revulsion is mutual'.
• One Asian member of the audience called for a whip round to pay for him to go and live at the South Pole where he could enjoy a 'colourless landscape'.

The BBC was forced on to the back foot over the decision to invite Mr Griffin on to the show. David Dimbleby, who chaired the session, tried to calm audience unrest by insisting that the programme 'won't be the Nick Griffin show'. But he refused a request to take an audience vote on the rights and wrongs of the decision.

Baroness Warsi, the Tory panel member, said: 'If you look at the audience and reaction outside, people are outraged by his views and he has been exposed for what he is.'

Justice Secretary Jack Straw said the evening capped a 'catastrophic week for the BNP'.

They were joined on the panel by Lib Dem home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne and black poet Bonnie Greer. Mr Huhne said Winston Churchill would be 'rolling' in his grave if he could hear Mr Griffin speak today.

Around a thousand anti-fascists protest against the BNP at the BBC

Things get a tad hairy as flares are set off in the crowd of angry protestors

About 25 protestors breached security and were promptly hauled out

Earlier Mr Griffin's appearance provoked angry scenes outside Television Centre. Three police office officers were injured and six protesters arrested. At one stage, around 25 people stormed inside the West London building as they attempted to find the Question Time studios. Flares were let off and women dragged kicking and screaming back outside by security guards.

Mr Griffin, meanwhile, was smuggled in via a side entrance by up to 40 dark-suited security guards. Inside, he attacked Mr Straw saying his own father was in the RAF in the Second World War, while Mr Straw's was arrested for refusing to fight.

A black man in the audience was cheered when he confronted Mr Griffin. His voice shaking with emotion, the man said: 'For just one minute could you not think of the benefits my parents brought to this country and other parents from an Asian, Indian or Pakistani background have brought? No, all you're thinking of doing is trying to poison politics and poison the minds of people in this country. The vast majority of this audience find what you stand for to be completely disgusting'

Mr Griffin smirked when he was asked whether he denied the Holocaust but refused to answer detailed questions on the issue. Of his previous comments, he said: 'I can't explain why I used to say those things.'

He acknowledged that the BNP had been a 'racist and anti-semitic organisation', but claimed it had changed under his leadership. 'I am not a Nazi and never have been,' he said. He was wearing the poppy he rarely removes. He says he wears it in protest at the poor treatment of soldiers injured in Afghanistan.

Shimal Thakrar, 33, from Edgware in London, said: 'It certainly wasn't as controversial as had been made out beforehand. The guy couldn't stand his ground at all. He contradicted himself throughout. He had no consistency. It was a needed debate. But he's not a politician.'

Mr Thakrar said the audience hissed and booed during the filming and shouted 'Liar' and 'Get out the door,' at Mr Griffin. The BBC had received more than 1,000 complaints ahead of the broadcast.

Senior Labour politicians predicted that black and Asian people would face a violent backlash in the coming days. The BBC insisted it had no choice but to offer an invitation to the BNP following the party's success in the European elections. But critics have accused the corporation of being naive and driven by a desire to boost ratings.

Higher Education Minister David Lammy, one of Britain's first black ministers, said ordinary people from ethnic minority backgrounds would face violence as a result. He added: 'This is a seminal moment for the country. I am very worried about the days that will follow. Many people across the country, black and white, will be appalled that Nick Griffin has been given a platform on the BBC's flagship current affairs programme for his terrible racist views. Many others, a long way from Broadcasting House, will be left very scared.'

However Mr Lammy acknowledged that the mainstream parties had to accept some of the blame for the rise of the BNP.

Former Home Secretary David Blunkett criticised the BBC for 'publicity seeking'.

'To spend the first ten minutes of the Six O'Clock News covering their own decision and the consequences of putting the leader of the BNP on Question Time, was a total distortion of news priority and a deliberate promotion of their own publicity-seeking decision,' he said.

BBC Director-General Mark Thompson yesterday defended the decision to offer an invitation to Mr Griffin. Mr Thompson said the Government should change the law if it did not want the party to appear on news and current affairs programme. He said: 'Censorship cannot be outsourced to the BBC.'

Daily Mail

Note: If you missed the programme, you can watch it and laugh at Griffin here.

Nick Griffin’s hidden agenda

Griffin speaks to an audience of hardcore racists - the Ku Klux Klan and friends

I’m surprised that I’ve never seen the above clip before. I’m equally surprised that it’s been viewed less than 9,000 times. This is the kind of evidence that needs to be spread far and wide. Nick Griffin openly declares that the BNP hide behind a soft lexis of propaganda in order to gain popularity. Perhaps more shockingly, he happily reveals his true agenda — a whites-only Britain.

In the video, Griffin imparts BNP spin-tactics. He says:

'There’s a difference between selling out your ideas and selling your ideas. The British National Party isn’t about selling out its ideas — which are your ideas too — but we are determined now to sell them. That means to use saleable words.'

Basically, Griffin has told an audience consisting of David Duke supporters, i.e. racists, that the BNP holds the same views. He categorically says that the BNP has not changed at its core. It’s still the same fascist National Front that it used to be. Yet it is gaining popularity. Some people are starting believe that they aren’t racist, just realist. They’re falling for the softly-softly BNP spin and being lured in by the buzz-words. Griffin sheds light on their new propaganda tactic:

'[selling our ideas] basically means using saleable words… free­dom, security, identity, democracy. Nobody can criticise them. Nobody can come at you and attack you on those ideas. They are saleable.'

Griffin clearly identifies areas that the BNP can manipulate and distort in order to gain support for the party. The idea that your freedom is at risk from foreign invaders, you should feel insecure because of the risk of terrorism, misrepresent­ing perceptions of political correctness as erosion of identity and heritage. I could go on. Hyperbole, fear-mongering, and scapegoats are the BNP’s most powerful weapons.

The man showed that he is intent on duping the public into thinking the BNP holds legitimate views when he said if the BNP is “subtle enough” then they may find themselves in control of the media, and subsequently in a position to brain­wash the electorate into wanting the removal of all non-whites from Britain. This is abhorrent, scary, and once again highlights that the BNP are not fit to be listed as a political party.

Griffin says:

“If you hold that [fascist policy] out as your sole aim to start with, you’re going to get nowhere. So, instead of talking about racial purity we talk about identity.”

The evidence just comes through thick and fast. The BNP do not want non-whites in Britain, no matter what they say in the press or on their website. They will use the public’s desperation at our current ruling elite to gain popularity and pursue their hidden motives. The truth lies under the surface as has been proven time and time and time again.

Nick Griffin once said:

'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.'

There’s no room for the BNP in Britain.

The Linc

File on 4 - Is far-right extremism a threat?

Yet another right-wing nutcase

Britain's security services have focused on Islamic extremism since the late 1990s but as BBC File on 4's Allan Urry discovered there are now concerns some resources should be devoted to the growing threat of far-right terror plots

When two attackers firebombed the Islamic Centre, a mosque in the heart of Luton's Bury Park area in May, they created a siege mentality for local Muslims, according to mosque official Farasat Latif.

"We are on edge as a community; everyone is expecting another attack," he told File on 4.

Tensions have been high in Luton since Al Muhajiroun, a group banned at the firebombed mosque, organised a demonstration in March against the war in Afghanistan as the Royal Anglian Regiment marched through the town after a tour of duty. This in turn sparked a counter-demonstration by a group called the United Peoples of Luton. This group became the English Defence League (EDL), whose protests against Islamic extremists around England have led to claims that it attracts far-right extremists hoping to foment racial tensions and encourage further protests, which the group denies.

The Islamic Centre received hate mail after the March protest, but there are fears the firebombing was more sinister - a premeditated attack rather than a hot-headed reaction to the controversial demonstration.

"Police told us that the getaway car was stolen nine months before the incident and had been kept off the road for a good eight to nine months," said Mr Latif. "Maybe the next attack could be an incendiary device left in the mosque, because people come with bags and we have many nationalities, so an English person wouldn't stand out."

He said mosque officials have been considering whether people should be searched before they enter, which could be a wise precaution in the current climate.

Earlier this month Neil Lewington, 44, a white supremacist from Reading, was jailed for being found in possession of explosives as he was about to board a train. Lewington, a fascist loner who hated Asians, regularly visited two white supremacist websites - Combat 18, a British neo-Nazi group, and a website for the Ku Klux Klan. According to Dr Matthew Feldman, an expert in far-right extremism who gave evidence at Lewington's trial, the authorities were fortunate to arrest him before he took any drastic action.

"I have every reason to believe this person has posed a very serious threat to public order in this country," he told File on 4.

Lewington, however was only arrested by chance, after being found drunk at a railway station.

Another lone far-right extremist, Martyn Gilleard, who was found to have four home-made nail bombs when police raided his flat, was also arrested by chance as part of an investigation into child pornography. Like others described as "lone wolves", he visited extremist websites and web forums that provided information about how to make bombs.

Edmund Standing, author of The BNP and The Online Fascist Network, said: "The fact that a lot of people [who use these websites] may be fantasists and do not pose a direct threat, doesn't mean these forums and websites don't, because for every 20 of them there could be one person who is actually twisted enough do something like this. These kind of groups and these kind of forums create an atmosphere in which it is seen to be more and more acceptable to express these hateful views."

He said the websites advocated "lone wolf tactics" where anonymous individuals turned up at meetings and carried out subversive and violent actions.

"We face a far more difficult task dealing with these individuals, lone extremists who go to these groups or hang around the edges of these groups and become radicalised," added Mr Standing.

In fact, the threat posed by lone extremists was recently flagged up by a member of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), while a senior member of the Metropolitan Police has voiced concerns about the possibility of a major terror attack by right wing extremists.

In April 2007 the government began its Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) action plan to work with Muslim communities to "isolate, prevent and defeat violent extremism". There are suggestions the government is planning to widen the scope of PVE to cover far right extremists as well, but no minister would be interviewed by File on 4. But a statement from the Department of Communities and Local Government said: "Government is working to address all forms of extremism, including violent far right groups. Over the coming months, we will be implementing a more comprehensive strategy to strengthen resilience to such extremism."

Dr Feldman thinks the move would be a timely intervention: "I can't recommend enough the work that the police are doing in terms of a preventive agenda and I'm sure it's going to move into considering these very overtly racist and far-right websites that are clearly inciting violence and racial hatred."

He said most security service resources had been devoted to Islamic extremism since the late 1990s and the attacks of 7 July 2005. But he added: "I think the appreciation now is that doesn't mean the far right has gone away... some of the treatment and attention to these issues has in fact galvanised a white British nationalist in terms of acting where before they would have stayed at home grumbling."

Listen to the programme here
Download the podcast from here

File on 4

The tendency to go to extremes

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

BNP in European Parliament is no laughing matter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday Sun

The BNP's rise is a fantasy created by anti-democrats

The real cause of our anxieties is not the potential of the far right. It's the emergence of people power

Never underestimate how fast fear can swell in Britain. Sophisticated politicians and commentators analyse the "moral panics" of the masses about immigration and crime while remaining unaware of their own irrational prejudices. For in its nervous moments, polite society is just as panicky as the most hysterical tabloid reader. The veil of good manners slips and it describes its fellow citizens as tattooed and shaven-headed brutes who, given the right circumstances, would vote for the modern equivalent of the Nazi party.

The conditions ought to be right this summer. Indeed, I cannot imagine better conditions for a neo-fascist advance. Britain is coming to the end of the longest wave of immigration in her history. I argued when it was at its height that we could take a modest pride in the absence of rioting mobs and burning crosses, but I had to temper my patriotic sentiments with the admission that mass immigration came while the economy was booming and the public was more interested in shopping than taking to the streets. At the risk of stating the obvious, the boom is over. Unemployment is rising and anger at foreigners taking British jobs is rising with it.

To make matters worse - or better from the point of view of extremists - this parliament has disgraced itself. Its frauds turned Westminster into a tax haven and the House of Commons fees office into a cash machine that kept on giving. The electorate has gone from its normal state of surly acquiescence into a righteous fury.

Even before the scandal broke, no less an authority than the Archbishop of Canterbury warned that Britain needed to heed the lessons of Nazi Germany and accept "a very high risk of financial stringency leading to political extremes - anger finding its expression in xenophobia. The fact that the BNP can win a seat in Sevenoaks is a straw in the wind and we have to watch the horizon very, very carefully for the tempest that might be behind that".

I would mock him for imagining the leaders of the British National party crying: "Today Sevenoaks! Tomorrow the world!" But then it is just the kind of thing the leaders of the BNP would say and, in any case, the archbishop is hardly a lone voice. The combination of economic and political crises has led many politicians and journalists to predict sweeping BNP advances - five, six maybe seven European seats.

The party was hiding its roots in European fascism, they argued, and putting on respectable suits and friendly smiles to calm the electorate. It looked set to prosper.

I accept that it is foolish to call an election before a vote has been cast, and low turnouts can produce freak results, but the evidence that the BNP is surfing popular outrage is hard to find. On Thursday, the voters of Salford's Irwell Riverside ward ought to have given the far right an easy victory. If Salford is no longer Friedrich Engels's classic slum of "dirt and poverty", most of the ward's white, working-class voters still live in run-down terraces. Hazel Blears, Salford's Labour MP, did not share their struggles. She claimed for three different properties in one year, along with assorted televisions, beds, mattresses, curtains, pots, pans and overnight stays at one of London's chicest hotels.

After journalists worked out that she had managed to avoid capital gains tax after selling one home she had done up at public expense, she waved a cheque for £13,000 on television and announced she would send it to HM Revenue. Her gesture would have been less tactless if the idea of ever being in a position to write a cheque for £13,000 were not beyond the dreams of many of her constituents. Yet Blears stood at the count in Salford and saw Labour hold the seat. Its support was down, but despite the recession and the scandals, the BNP stayed stuck in third place, its share of the vote up a mere 3.8% on last year.

The anti-fascist campaigners, who gather around Searchlight magazine, were not surprised. They say that internal BNP documents show it to be a feeble organisation, running out of money and credible candidates. They do not think its strategy of dressing thugs in suits is working and nor do I. Not the least of the BNP's problems is that Nick Griffin was caught on camera at a meeting with the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke explaining how he would seek to con the public by using warm words - freedom, security, identity, democracy.

"Perhaps one day, once by being rather more subtle we've got ourselves in a position where we control the British broadcasting media, the British people might change their mind and say, 'Yes, every last one must go.' But if you offer that as your sole aim to start with, you're gonna get absolutely nowhere. So, instead of talking about racial purity, we talk about identity."

Griffin has fooled the occasional journalist, but the regular convictions of BNP members for racial assaults, drug dealing and sex crimes leave most people in no doubt that the new BNP is no different from the old BNP: an alliance of criminals with criminal policies. If it fails to break through even in these propitious circumstances, however, it will still have revealed a latent prejudice in the British elite.

Alongside honourable concerns lurks a suspicion of popular power. Listen carefully whenever proposals are discussed to improve local democracy by, say, electing chief constables and police authorities. Eventually, an authoritative voice will tell you that the British cannot be trusted with more power because they may let the BNP take over the police forces. Similarly with reforms to the national voting system. Once again, we are told that a fairer election system cannot be contemplated because it will let the BNP out of its cage.

The best reason for hoping that it is trounced is not that a vile party will have gone down to a deserved defeat, but because it will make it harder for the opponents of reform to argue that their fellow citizens are nasty children whose betters cannot allow them to run their own affairs.

Comment is free

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

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

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

Nick Griffin is not one of those people.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nick Griffin has not.

Mirror

BNP Welsh on the deal

The full list of West Midlands’ candidates for next month’s European elections has been announced – and it includes more than a few notes of interest. Not least that the BNP’s top man for the region apparently lives in, er, Wales.

Simon Darby, who is the party’s deputy leader, already spends part of his week in the capital, where he’s the personal assistant of Richard Barnbrook, the far-right party’s sole elected representative on the London Assembly.

Given that he gives his address on the nomination papers as Powys, his commitment to the West Midlands is questionable to say the least.

Darby was, of course, voted onto Dudley Council in 2003, and lasted all of a year until an ungrateful electorate showed him the door.

His most recent intervention on the local scene was to turn up with his fuhrer Nick Griffin at the West Bromwich St George’s Day march Griffin – an avowedly non political event – thereby guaranteeing that it will never be funded by Sandwell Council again. Gee, thanks Simon.

In 2005, Darby shared a platform with former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard Don Black who is banned from entering Britain because of his extreme racist views; while at a meeting in Italy in April, he was greeted with a flurry of fascist salutes.

Other fringe candidates – albeit with a very different political complexion - come from the Christian Party, the English Democrats, and the Jury Team, funded by millionaire Sir Paul Judge, who is backing a wilfully diverse group of political virgins, selected via an online poll.

Former Labour MP Dave Nellist pops up with the No2EU: Yes To Democracy party, while Stirrer blogger John Tyrrell is standing for Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party.

The West Midlands has seven Euro MPs.

To see the full list of candidates click here (pdf file).

The Stirrer

BNP want banned KKK leader back in Britain

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mirror