Paul Mason’s report on the resurgence of Spanish neofascism is a must see.
It is available on Iplayer, starts 01:05.
The Wikipedia entry on España 2000 is quite revealing.
I hope that Newsnight have the wits to release the clip onto YouTube, allowing it to reach a wider audience.
Keeping up with the cranks, thugs and racists that comprise the Far Right is a full-time job.
These flaky individuals often work together for a few months or years then split off after a drunken argument, or simply because they can’t get on with each other or the rest of humanity.
Cataloguing the changing face of the Far Right is often a difficult job and the new Extremis Project is a useful resource in that respect.
Their Beginners guide to new groups on Britain’s far right is short, but it provides valuable insights:
“Whether culturism is a genuinely new strain of ideological thinking or a cynical euphemism for race remains unclear. However, Britain’s far right have long understood that openly racial language serves to alienate much of their core demographic. Hence, it is no surprise that an ideology that replaces racial preservation with cultural preservation may well be seen as an easier sell. Whether the language of culturism becomes more widely disseminated among Britain’s far right, or whether it proves to be an ideological cul-de-sac, is yet to be seen.
However, as the BFP scramble to jettison their far-right image in advance of their electoral endeavors, the language of culturism could perhaps prove useful in their pursuit of respectability and the ‘silent majority’. Further to this, the EDL’s leader, Tommy Robinson, yesterday resigned as deputy leader of the BFP. The motivation behind his surprise departure remains unclear, but it is possible that with several impending court cases Robinson is attempting to detoxify the BFP/EDL link and put distance between his criminal reputation and Kevin Carrolls attempt to become a Police and Crime Commissioner. Following his surprise departure from the BFP Robinson has indicated that he intends to develop the English Defence League as an independent political party, possibly targeting the 2014 European elections. Where this leaves the fledgling alliance between the BFP and the EDL remains unclear but the consensual belief that the BFP was now the political wing of the EDL is likely no longer the case. “
Matthew Goodwin has graciously provided the line up of assorted misfits, bigots and neo-fascists attending a “Global Counter Jihad” rally in Stockholm on 4th August 2012:
I doubt this is the first occasion Pam Geller and Robert Spencer have found themselves in the company of neofascists (Lennon, Carroll, etc) or that it will be their last.
It shows that once you start down the road to bigotry you will often end up in the company of some very unsavoury types, normally on or about the Far Right.
Update 1: Thanks to TellMama UK for pointing out this piece by SPLC:
“Speakers, according to Geller’s blog, will include some of Islamophobia’s most influential and vicious voices. In addition to herself, Geller lists Robert Spencer, a colleague and self-taught “expert” on Islam who is greatly admired by Anders Breivik, the Oslo terrorist who in July 2011 slaughtered 77 people he thought were enabling Muslim immigration into Norway; Steven Lennon and Kev Carrol of the EDL; Anders Gravers of SIOE; and a host of European and Australian Islamophobes whose names are less well-known in America. Noteworthy among them is Richard Abrahamsson (also known as Richard Abrams), a leader in the Swedish Defence League (SDL) who, according to Islamophobia Watch, has blogged about a plan to “reclaim the Swastika,” writing, “If you want US to respect OTHER cultures, you must also respect OUR culture and its symbols.”
Update 3: Richard Bartholomew is typically thorough:
“
Abrams’ website is for the most part macabre and disturbing: among weird occultic images we find statements such as “I will be remembered as the one who beheaded presidents in righteous wrath”. He is also a musician, sometimes using the fuller name “Richard Isak Abrams”. According to a blurb for his band on LastFM:
Iblis Industries (or 1blis 1ndustries) is a Swedish project created in 2005 by Richard Abrams (also in Sitra Ahra and Hypothermia.)
The music released so far consists of a variey of elements such as; Neoclassical, Downtempo, Black metal, Industrial and Noisestep.
The themes of Iblis Industries is mainly cultivated in a search for the divine embers.
Of course, a provocative interest in the grotesque and and the dark is par for the course with this kind of music, and it is unclear how far one can extrapolate from stage persona to political identification. However, for an organisation seeking wider credibility, the impression given by Abrams’ site is unattractive. And given the links between the self-described “Counter-Jihad Movement” and elements of the Christian Right, such an association is likely to be awkward.
” [My emphasis]
Having looked at Richard Abrams’ site I can confirm that he has serious hangups with the swastika.
Update 4: This is a bunch of EDL members and supporters who were very keen on the swastika so much so they had it tattooed on their chests, watch them giving the Nazi salute:
In light of Rev. Stephen Sizer linking to an antisemitic site, Calvin Smith has asked some pertinent questions:
“What is Veteran’s Place? Is it properly anti-Semitic or predominantly anti-Israel?”
The quick reply is, yes, Veterans Today (run by Gordon Duff) is most definitively an antisemitic web site.
Nevertheless, I think Calvin Smith and readers deserves a fuller answer.
Veterans Today is a sullenly obsessive site, whose target is Jews, across the world and throughout history.
We can verify the nature of this site by sampling some of its pages. Readers should be warned that the following are specimens of racist material, used to illustrate the character of Veterans Today.
First off, we find articles either praising Adolf Hitler, excusing him or trying to deflect attention from his murderous crimes:
Hitler and the Banksters: The Abolition of Interest-Servitude posted by Dr. Ingrid Rimland Zundel, wife of well known Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, author of “The Hitler We Loved and Why”
If you have any doubt about the sympathies of the author, or Veterans Today, then this article puts them to rest, when he argues:
” On August 30, 1939, in an act of great statesmanship, Hitler again offered to the Poles the Marienwerder proposals,(21) namely retention of the existing 1919 borders, the return of Danzig (97% German), the construction of a 60-mile autobahn and rail link connecting West and East Prussia (from Schoenlanke to Marienwerder) and an exchange of German and Polish populations. On the orders of the international bankers, the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, strongly advised the Poles NOT to negotiate. This is how and why World War II was started. The ensuing forced war resulted in victory for the international financiers and defeat and slavery for all the people of Europe.
Today the bankers reign supreme. The European Union with its commissars in Brussels and its so called “European” Central Bank headquartered in Frankfurt,(22) increasingly resembles the old Soviet Union. However, with the recent ongoing “sovereign” debt crisis and the collapse of the Euro, the plan for a united Europe anchored in perpetual debt enslavement has received a major setback and has indeed started to disintegrate
.
Notwithstanding the inability of Adolf Hitler to permanently liberate Europe, it behooves us to appreciate that what he achieved was not done in vain. It is incumbent on us to learn and understand the fundamentals of usury and to spread that knowledge relentlessly, until our material and spiritual liberties have been restored. “
This is not isolated, another vile piece by J.B.Campbell states:
” We now know that the insane Jewish liars are guided in this by a mystical attachment to the number six, as seen with their national symbol, the six-pointed star. Six, or six hundred, or six thousand, or six hundred thousand, or six million Jews must be removed before the messiah returns or Israel reappears or whatever. It’s not important to us, just that this is a magic number to them. And they should be wholly burnt in ovens. Hence, Holocaust (wholly burnt). Read >>> Jewish History and the Scriptual Orgin of the 6 Million Dollar Number “
It goes on in a similar vein. Yuck.
The owner of Veterans Today, Gordon Duff dives straight into Holocaust revisionism:
“Two thousand people in Europe are in prison today for questioning some part, no matter how minor, of the holocaust. The official story of the holocaust is a compendium of testimony of several hundred thousand people as there was little physical evidence left at the end of the war. Some facilities were reconstructed based on testimony, for historical perspective but in general, it is believed that the Germans destroyed all evidence of death camps and mass graves when they learned they were losing the war.
Thousands of those who find this explanation unsatisfactory and had chosen to disagree, some noted historians, some scientists and some simple troublemakers and activists, have been imprisoned. At the trials, holocaust victims claimed that such questioning harmed them irreparably. However, not one holocaust victim has ever spoken up about the endless numbers of phony holocaust victims who besmirch them every day and have for nearly 65 years. Why is that?
One thing the revisionists claim is that almost every story from the holocaust, including notable books and even world famous holocaust survivors are, in actuality, the worst phonies of all. The analogy of the “phony veteran” is applicable here. After each war, endless numbers of those, who for reasons legitimate or not, felt their contribution to the war effort was less than honorable or noteworthy, claim accomplishments they are undeserving of. It is also known that combat veterans are seldom seen on bar stools at service organizations talking about heroic exploits. “
All of this repellent material was found in a cursory search of Veterans Today.
Any thoughtful individual would not have chosen to link to this site without first verifying the source of the material, and as we have seen Veterans Today is full of the most unspeakable antisemitic filth around.
Looking down its “Featured Columnists” is like a mini-Who’s who of bigots, conspiracy theorists and semi-professional Jew haters.
Alan Hart
Allen L Roland
Anthony Hall
Bob Johnson
David Swanson
Debbie Menon
Denise Nichols
Dr. Ingrid R. Zundel
Ed Mattson
Eileen Fleming
Gordon Duff
James Petras
Jim Fetzer
Jim W. Dean
Johnny Punish
Ken O’Keefe
Ken Smith
Kevin Barrett
Khalil Nouri
Kourosh Ziabari
Paul J. Balles
Raja Mujtaba
Robert O’Dowd
Sami Jamil Jadalla
Sherwood Ross
Stephen Lendman
Stewart Ogilby
Stuart Littlewood
Tim King
Tom Valentine
Vojislav Milosevic
So, the fuller reply to Calvin Smith’s question is, yes, Veterans Today is most certainly an antisemitic web site and I have not even mentioned references to David Duke, ex-Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan or 911 conspiracy theories.
It is hardly coincidental that hard antisemitic sites are replete with conspiracy theories, as such notions are central to anti-Jewish racism.
Whilst it’s true to say that, not every conspiracy theorist is an antisemite, every committed antisemite is a conspiracy theorist, as it is integral to their racism.
In my view, no considered or attentive person would use, link to, associate with the Veterans Today site or any of its authors.
If they did, then you must question their judgement, commitment to anti-racism and above all their attitudes towards Jews.
I think Rev. Sizer should truly reflect on this issue and ask himself the questions:
1. What impulse made me use material from the antisemitic site, Veterans Today?
2. Why was I drawn to it?
3. How can I avoid making this mistake once more?
Soupy One 