Daily Telegraph Part Deux

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BNP candidate boasts of fighting Britain and about his pro-Nazi and slave-owning family

Daily Telegraph Part Deux

Many people have been outraged by The Daily Telegraph providing the BNP’s only London Assembly member, the Mein Kampf-reading Richard Barnbrook, his own blog in their My Telegraph section.

However, Richard Barnbrook isn’t the only BNP acolyte with his very own Daily Telegraph blog. Carlos Cortiglia, a BNP member who stood as a BNP London Assembly candidate in 2004, has had his own Daily Telegraph blog for roughly a year. Proudly boasting on his Daily Telegraph blog that “I am a BNP supporter”, Carlos Cortiglia’s blog sometimes reads as an online BNP propaganda sheet crowned with the seeming legitimacy of the Daily Telegraph masterhead. And, Carlos Coriglia’s writing activities don’t stop here. Quite recently, in an article for the London website of the BNP, Carlo Coriglia told us of his attendance at a meeting of the notorious anti-Jewish Croydon branch of the BNP.

Fighting against Britain, support for the Nazis during World War 2 and slave owning

In an interview with The Nation newspaper about Argentinean immigrants to England (though he was born in Uruguay) , Carlos Cortiglia admits to volunteering to fight for the Argentinean military dictatorship against Britain during the Falklands war. We provide Carlos Cortiglia’s original Spanish interview with the English translation:

Original from here.

“Soy argentine oriental, o dicho de otro modo, uruguayo de nacimiento, y me siento muy ligado emocionalmente a la Republica Argentina. En 1982 me ofreci como voluntario par ir a las Islas Malvinas”.

Translation:

"I am Argentine East, in other words, Uruguayan by birth, and I feel very emotionally linked to Argentina. In 1982 I volunteered to go to the Falkland Islands”.

So, here we have Carlos Cortiglia admitting in his own words that he fought against Britain. So, why is he in the UK as a BNP member, writer and past candidate? In 1982 Argentina was under the tight grip of a fascist-supporting military dictatorship. Desperate to shore up its nationalist credentials, the military junta invaded the British Falkland Islands, claiming them as Argentinean territory. 258 British soldiers and sailors lost their lives in the recapture of the Falkland Islands. Another 777 British soldiers and sailors were wounded, some of whom died of their injuries after the war. Yet the BNP fielded Carlos Cortiglia as a candidate for the London Assembly and to this very day permits him membership of the BNP. If it is true that Carlos Cortiglia fought against British forces, then there is the possibility that Carlos Cortiglia killed British soldiers and sailors. This aside, Carlos Cortiglia would have been involved in the illegal armed occupation of British sovereign territory.

Not only this, but Carlos Cortiglia tells us how his family in Uruguay supported the Nazis during World War 2 in their fight against Britain and that his family owned slaves! He further recounts how he met in the 1970s former Nazi officers, including SS commanders in Montevideo, Uruguay. This is one hell of a BNP member!

The mind of Carlos Cortiglia

And, we have some interesting snippets from the mind of Carlos Cortiglia as it pours out of his Daily Telegraph blog. He tells us that the attack on the Stephen Lawrence building (named after the Black teenager Stephen Lawrence, murdered in a racist attack by a pro-BNP gang) was a “prank”. Claiming to be a Catholic, he accuses the Church of England of being “a backwards organisation”. He also accuses British Hindus of “inbreeding”. Not only this, but incredibly Carlos Cortiglia argues for the racist re-colonialisation of Africa, arguing that “Africa would be much better off under European rule” (I guess this is why his family owned slaves!). He also seems to have a latent anti-American streak, peppering one of his postings with terms such as “American stupidity” and “American incompetence”. Further, many of his postings are obsessed with the British government and media being involved in some great anti-Russian conspiracy (interestingly, he questions the genetic relevance of Anglo-Saxon identity, which will no doubt get Carlos Cortiglia into a lot of trouble with his BNP mates). In another posting he complains that, given his name, people mistake him for an Italian or Spaniard, not recognising that he comes from a White Uruguayan/Argentinean background).

Join the campaign!

Anti-fascists have launched a campaign to get The Daily Telegraph to stop hosting Richard Barnbrook’s racist BNP blog. We urge that this campaign be expanded to removing Carlos Cortiglia’s BNP blog also hosted by The Daily Telegraph.

Some of us are trying to put pressure on The Daily Telegraph to reconsider. You can join that campaign by emailing your protest to telegraph@blj.co.uk, telegrapheditorial@telegraph.co.uk or the Letters page at dtletters@telegraph.co.uk joining the Facebook group and spreading the word about the Telegraph's irresponsible behaviour.

¡No Pasarán!

See also here and here.