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Tag: anti-semitism

  • Police fear far-right terror attack

    Police fear far-right terror attack

    • Extremists want to stoke race tensions, officer warns
    • Counter-terrorism unit diverting resources to threat
    • No specific intelligence of planned strike, sources say

    Vikram Dodd

    Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command fears that right-wing extremists will stage a deadly terrorist attack in Britain to try to stoke racial tensions, the Guardian has learned.

    Senior officers say it will be a “spectacular” that is designed to kill. The counter-terrorism unit has redeployed officers to increase its monitoring of the extreme right’s potential to stage attacks.

    Commander Shaun Sawyer told a meeting of British Muslims concerned about the danger to their communities that police were responding to the growing threat.

    Sawyer said of the far right: “I fear that they will have a spectacular… they will carry out an attack that will lead to a loss of life or injury to a community somewhere. They’re not choosy about which community.”

    He said the aim would be to cause a “breakdown in community cohesion”.

    Sawyer revealed that the Met commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, had asked the counter-terrorism command, SO15, to examine what the economic downturn would mean for far-right violence. The assessment concluded that the recession would increase the possibility of it.

    Sawyer told the meeting last Wednesday that more of his officers needed to be deployed to try to thwart neo-Nazi-inspired violence. He said the terrorist threat posed by al-Qaida remained the unit’s priority, but said of its far-right section: “It is a small desk … we need to grow that unit.” Sources have told the Guardian that while they believe the neo-Nazi terrorist threat has grown, they have no specific intelligence of an attack.

    “There is an increased possibility of violence from the far right. There is a trend,” said one senior source, adding that the ideology of the violent right was driven by “people who don’t like immigration, people who don’t like Islam. We’re seeing a resurgence of anti-semitism as well.”

    The meeting at which Sawyer spoke was staged by the Muslim Safety Forum, whose chair, Abdurahman Jafar, said: “Muslims are the first line of victims in the extreme right’s campaign of hate and division and they make no secret about that. Statistics show a strong correlation between the rise of racist and Islamophobic hate crime and the ascendancy of the BNP.”

    It is a decade since an extreme rightwing terrorist has used bombs to claim lives in Britain. In 1999, David Copeland struck three targets in London. His attack on a gay pub in Soho, London, killed three people and left scores injured. It followed attacks against the Muslim community in Brick Lane, east London, and the bombing of a market in Brixton, south London.

    The senior source said: “When Copeland attacked we did not have the religious tensions with the Muslim community. What kind of schism would a Copeland-type event cause now?”

    The far-right threat to Britain’s Jewish communities is monitored by theCommunity Security Trust, which says attempted terrorist violence by neo-Nazis has increased in the past few years. It says nine white men have been “convicted of offences involving explosives, terrorist plots, violent campaigns or threats to carry them out”.

    David Rich, of the CST, said: “There’s no one directing people, it’s a mindset” – a reference to the easy availability of extremist right-wing material and information about making bombs.

    Source: www.guardian.co.uk, 6 July 2009

  • RACIST RANTS OF ELECTED BNP MAN, ANDREW BRONS, REVEALED

    RACIST RANTS OF ELECTED BNP MAN, ANDREW BRONS, REVEALED

    Jamie Doward, home affairs editor

    The Observer, Sunday 14 June 2009

    Yorkshire MEP Andrew Brons drew up some of the National Front’s most inflammatory policies

    British National party MEP Andrew Brons. Photograph: BNP/PA
    British National party MEP Andrew Brons. Photograph: BNP/PA

    One of the British National party’s first MEPs’ attempts to play down his past links to the extreme right as “silly” teenage posturing are today exposed as a sham after it emerged that for many years he played a crucial role in shaping the National Front’s most overtly racist policies.

    In 1983, when he was in his late twenties, Andrew Brons edited the National Front’s general election manifesto that called for a global apartheid to prevent the “extinction” of whites everywhere.

    The Let Britain Live! manifesto was prepared by the party’s policy department, chaired by Brons. It outlined a series of hugely controversial positions, crystallised in one of its opening statements: “The National Front rejects the whole concept of multiracialism. We recognise inherent racial differences in Man. The races of Man are profoundly unequal in their characteristics, potential and abilities.”

    The manifesto claimed the UK had been “swamped” by “racially incompatible Afro-Asians” and that “Black muggings of White people, especially elderly ladies, occurs regularly”.

    It continued: “The eruptions in Bristol in 1980 and Brixton in 1981 were just two examples of the ‘cultural enrichment’ promised to us by the multiracialists.” And it claimed: “We believe the gradual dismantlement of the Apartheid system over the last 17 years to be retrograde … The alternative to Apartheid, multiracialism, envisages an extinction of the White man.”

    Brons was also an enthusiastic contributor in the 1970s and 1980s to Spearhead, a far-right magazine considered so extreme even the BNP tried to distance itself from it. In two lengthy polemics for the magazine, Brons outlined the supposed importance of nationalism and interpreted genetic studies to suggest Europeans had a “greater cognitive ability” than non-whites. He attacked the influence of “people of Jewish ethnic origin” and peddled the myth that a number of predominantly Zionist organisations were controlling the world.

    The now retired college lecturer wrote: “One ethnic, national and religious group whose power and influence has undoubtedly increased has been the Jews. It can be no mere coincidence that the number of people of Jewish ethnic origin to be found in internationalist and multiracialist schools of thought and organisations of action is out of all proportion to their numbers in the population.”

    Brons, who was elected as the BNP MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber this month, has tried to distance himself from his National Front days. “People do silly things when they are 17,” he said recently. “Peter Mandelson was once a member of the Young Communist League but we don’t continue to call him a communist.”

    But his critics say his relationship with the National Front was more than a youthful dalliance and question the extent to which he has left his past behind. A 1980 edition of National Front News, the party newspaper, carried an article about Brons saying he was prepared to go to jail for his beliefs. It noted that Brons refused a “Negro reporter permission to attend two National Front ticket-only meetings” and explains that Brons, then 29, has “campaigned against Coloured Immigration since he was a teenager” – suggesting his extremist views have been a feature as much of his adult as his teenage life.

    Brons seized the NF chairmanship in 1980 when John Tyndall quit to form the BNP. In 1984 Brons was convicted of using insulting behaviour towards an ethnic-minority police officer and left the party, citing family problems.

    At the National Front, Brons was a close ally of Richard Verrall, the author of the Holocaust-denial tract Did Six Million Really Die?, who was vice-chairman. In 1981, while Brons was chairman, the NF endorsed We are National Front, a pamphlet carrying an introduction from Verrall. It had photographs of Brons and Verrall as well as a picture of a gorilla and a black man stating: “These two creatures look the same, don’t they?”

    Anti-racism and Jewish support groups yesterday described Brons’s failure to condemn his past activities as disturbing. “From a young man until well into his middle age, Andrew Brons was very much involved in a series of viciously antisemitic and racist far-right movements,” said a spokesman for the Community Security Trust, which monitors attacks on the UK’s Jewish community. “It’s hard to believe he has undergone a serious conversion since then.”

    Searchlight, the anti-fascist organisation, said Brons was influential in shaping the NF and it was important that those voting for him should be aware of his past views. “The fact that Brons is an intellectual fascist and bigot rather than an ignorant fascist and bigot cuts little ice,” a spokesman said. “We are unimpressed by his claims that his prejudice was a result of youthful exuberance.”

    Attempts to contact Brons through the BNP were unsuccessful.

    Source:  www.guardian.co.uk, June 14th, 2009

  • Killer at Holocaust museum linked to BNP

    Killer at Holocaust museum linked to BNP

    Man who killed guard at Holocaust museum has links to BNP

    • White supremacist injured in Washington gunfight
    • Records show 88-year-old was at fundraising events

    Matthew Taylor and Daniel Nasaw

    F.B.I. investigators examining a bullet-riddled door at the entrance of the Holocaust Memorial Museum, where a gunman entered the building and shot and killed a security guard. NYT
    F.B.I. investigators examining a bullet-riddled door at the entrance of the Holocaust Memorial Museum, where a gunman entered the building and shot and killed a security guard. New York Times

    A white supremacist who killed a security guard at a Holocaust memorial museum in the US has links to the British National party, which gained two MEPs in last week’s European elections.

    Thousands of visitors fled the museum in Washington on Wednesday after James von Brunn opened fire, killing a security guard. In the gunfight that followed, the 88-year-old was shot, and is now in a critical condition in hospital.

    Yesterday it emerged that Von Brunn, a longtime antisemite, had attended meetings of the American Friends of the British National party (AFBNP), which was set up to raise funds from far-right activists in America.

    Mark Cotterill, who ran the US-based organisation before it folded in 2001, said: “He did attend meetings. I have just checked my database and he is down as ‘meetings only’, so he was not a major donor, although he may have put some money on the plate when it was passed round.”

    The AFBNP treasurer, Todd Blodgett, also told the Washington Post that he and Von Brunn had attended fundraising meetings in Arlington County. The BNP leader, Nick Griffin, spoke to at least two AFBNP meetings and said the money raised by the organisation made a “significant contribution to the BNP’s [2001] general election campaign”.

    Yesterday a spokesman for the party said: “You get a lot of people coming to meetings but I don’t think you can blame us for that. Even if he did go to meetings, it was nothing to do with us.”

    However, anti-racism campaigners said Von Brunn’s links to the BNP underlined its extremist agenda. “It is clear that Nick Griffin is at the centre of an international network of white supremacists,” said Dan Hodges, of Searchlight. “The BNP must explain the full extent of his organisation’s links with this antisemitic gunman.”

    The far-right party gained its first two MEPs in last week’s European elections – Griffin in the north-west and former National Front leader Andrew Brons in Yorkshire and the Humber.

    During the campaign, photographs emerged of Griffin alongside the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard Stephen “Don” Black, who was banned from the UK by the then home secretary, Jacqui Smith. He was also criticised for defending a BNP leaflet that said black and Asian Britons should be referred to as “racial foreigners”.

    Yesterday Von Brunn was charged with murder and killing in the course of possessing a firearm at a federal facility, both capital offences under US federal law; police said hate crime charges were also possible.

    At a press conference in Washington, Cathy Lanier, the Washington police chief, said security guard Stephen Johns was shot when he opened the door of the museum for Von Brunn. Other guards opened fire, and Von Brunn slumped to the ground.

    In his car, officers found a notebook with a handwritten note saying, “You want my weapons, this is how you’ll get them. The Holocaust is a lie. Obama was created by Jews,” according to a court affidavit.

    Von Brunn’s .22-calibre rifle held 10 more bullets and investigators found more in his car and at an apartment in nearby Annapolis, Maryland, that he shared with his son and his son’s fiancee.

    Joseph Persichini, assistant director of the Washington FBI field office, said Von Brunn was known to the police as an antisemite and a white supremacist, who had a website that espoused hatred against African-Americans, Jews and others.

    “We know what Mr Von Brunn did at the Holocaust museum. Now it’s our responsibility to determine why he did it,” said Joseph Persichini, assistant director of the Washington FBI field office. “We have to ask ourselves did all these years of public display of hatred impact his actions.”

    A self-described artist, advertising man and author, Von Brunn wrote an anti-semitic treatise, Kill the Best Gentiles, decried “the browning of America” and claimed to expose a Jewish conspiracy “to destroy the White gene-pool”.

    In 1983 Von Brunn was convicted of attempting to kidnap members of the US federal reserve board. At the time, police said he had wanted to take the members hostage because of high interest rates and the nation’s economic difficulties. On the website, Von Brunn blames his six-year imprisonment on “a Jew judge” and “Negro jury”.

    Last night civil rights groups said they had been monitoring Von Brunn for decades.

    Heidi Beirich, director of research for the Southern Poverty Law Centre’s intelligence project, said: “He thinks the Jews control the Federal Reserve, the banking system, that basically all Jews are evil. He’s an extreme antisemite.”

    Source:  www.guardian.co.uk, 12 June 2009

  • BNP wins two seats in Europe

    BNP wins two seats in Europe

    [1]

    LONDON (AFP) — The British National Party on Monday won its first seats in the European Parliament, in a major breakthrough for a party reviled by mainstream politicians for its anti-immigration stance.

    Party chairman Nick Griffin was elected an MEP in the northwest of England region with eight percent of the vote, hours after Andrew Brons won the BNP’s first ever European seat in the nearby Yorkshire and the Humber region.

    Griffin had earlier hailed Brons’ win — with almost 10 percent of the vote — as “a huge breakthrough” for his party, and used the victory to reiterate his party’s anti-immigration and anti-Islam stance.

    He denied his party was racist, but said: “We do say this country is full up. The key thing is to shut the door.”

    Griffin told Sky News television: “This is a Christian country and Islam is not welcome, because Islam and Christianity, Islam and democracy, Islam and women’s rights do not mix.

    “That’s a simple fact that the elites of Europe are going to have to get their heads round and deal with over the next few years.”

    The result is a vindication of efforts by Griffin, who was educated at the prestigious Cambridge University, to recast the party since taking over in 1999, emphasising its grassroots activism over extreme-right ideology.

    Amid concerns about soaring unemployment and a deep recession and in particular the demise of the country’s manufacturing base, the BNP has pledged British jobs for British workers.

    It is opposed to European integration and wants to pull Britain out of the European Union and halt all immigration to the country.

    In recent weeks it has also capitalised on public anger over the row over lawmakers’ expenses, which has severely damaged the reputation of parliament and the mainstream Labour and Conservative parties.

    Health minister Andrew Burnham described the BNP’s first MEP victory as a “sad moment“, and following Griffin’s success in the northwest, local Labour MP Tony Lloyd said he was ashamed at how some people had voted.

    “I am genuinely not just disappointed, I think it is a matter of shame, this country has a deserved reputation for a tolerant society,” said Lloyd, the Labour MP for Manchester Central.

    “Their (the BNP) vision for Britain is a nightmare for Britain. I think many people will wake up with some sense of shame.”

    Government ministers and the Conservative party had sought to remind voters of the BNP’s policies, which include calls for the immediate halt to all immigration to Britain and the “voluntary resettlement” of all immigrants.

    Source: www.google.com, 08.06.2009

    [2]

    Sarkozy: “Islamization is Inevitable”

    From the desk of Tiberge on Sat, 2009-06-06 18:36

    There is nothing new here. We knew what Sarkozy’s vision of the future was: an “Islam of France”, “métissage” between races and ethnic groups, dissolution of nationalist, regional, and ethnic identities, subjugation to Brussels, openness to socialism, and a Turkey as closely aligned with Europe as possible, etc…

    But it’s always sobering to hear it again, from one who knows Sarkozy personally. Philippe de Villiers was interviewed by the weekly Famille Chrétienne. The Catholic blogLe Salon Beige relates part of the interview:

    – Why are you so focused on the theme of Turkey and Islamization?

    – Quite simply because we will see the first transformations of churches into mosques in the coming three years. At any rate, that is what Nicolas Sarkozy told me.

    – When?

    – I had an in depth discussion with him at Elysée at the end of last year. He said to me: “You have intuition, I have the figures. And your intuition is confirmed by my figures. The Islamization of Europe is inevitable.” Careful: it’s a process that will not occur overnight, but will take decades.

    – Why does this issue appear to be of central importance to you?

    – Most politicians have a comforting ignorance of what Islam is and propose transforming Europe into a supermarket of competing religions. Unaware that Islam is not only a religion since, by melding the temporal and the spiritual, it imposes a law. But behind this comforting ignorance of politicians, there are those who know. (…) The reality is that we are headed for a criss-cross [chassé-croisé] with, on one side, Europe and its en masse abortions, its promotion of gay marriage, and on the other, immigration en masse (…)

    “Chassé-croisé” is virtually impossible to translate. Originally a choreographic term, it usually refers to a crowded movement in one direction that passes but never encounters a crowded movement in another direction. Sometimes it is just kept as is in English.

    – Aren’t you exaggerating the dimensions of the phenomenon?

    – No. The crux of the issue is simple: Europe is refusing its own demographic future. And it is working with a fearsome weapon towards this end, written into the Charter of fundamental rights appended to the treaty of Lisbon: the promotion of gay marriage. This in turn is accomplished through the principle of non-discrimination and the disassociation of marriage from the sex of the spouses (which appears in article 7 of the Charter of fundamental rights). In reality, there are two weapons being used by European leaders to kill Europe demographically: the promotion of gay marriage and en masse abortions. And a third: the recourse to immigration that is 80% Islamic in order to replace the people who are no longer there (…)

    As usual there are LSB readers who question Villiers’ sincerity and motives. But this time, there are also many who applaud his courage. He is certainly putting more muscle into his words on the eve of the election.

    A spokesman for Elysée protested saying: “Philippe de Villiers is not the spokesman for Elysée. He makes multiple declarations on this topic, declarations that obviously need to be regarded with caution.”

    Source: www.brusselsjournal.com, 06-06-2009

  • Jewish group: Turkey promotes dialogue

    Jewish group: Turkey promotes dialogue

    [Combined Jewish Philanthropies]

    ANKARA, Turkey – The head of the European Jewish Congress says Turkey has a key role in promoting tolerance and dialogue between the Jewish, Muslim and Christian faiths.

    Moshe Kantor says Turkey represents “moderate and tolerant Islam,” which puts the country in position to help fight xenophobia, racism and anti-Semitism.

    Kantor was speaking to The Associated Press on Tuesday after meetings with Turkey’s president, prime minister and foreign minister during which he invited Turkey to participate in the new European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation. The council works to fight intolerance in Europe.

    Kantor says he was assured there is no state anti-Semitism in Turkey and welcomed the Islamic-rooted government’s effort to combat anti-Semitism among the people.

    Source: www.cjp.org