Conservative Senators aim to lift ban on Fascist Party (Italy)

Mussolini & Hitler

A group of conservative Senators have presented a bill aiming to lift the Italian Constitution's ban on reforming the Fascist Party of Benito Mussolini.

The bill was presented by five members of Premier Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PdL) party and a Senator from a breakaway centre-right group, the FLI. Senate Speaker Renato Schifani, of the PdL, was said to be "aghast" at the initiative. The largest centre-left opposition group, the Democratic Party, called the bill "unacceptable" while the Italian Communists' party said it was "disgraceful".

Ansa.It

Bus advertising campaign tackles Islamophobia (UK)

An advertising campaign to tackle Islamophobia has been unveiled on buses across the UK.

Vehicles in several cities will carry the message "Muslims for loyalty, peace and freedom" in an attempt to challenge negative stereotypes of the faith.

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Association, the group behind the campaign, said it hoped it would educate people about Islam and remove misconceptions.

But some Muslim groups have criticised the campaign as "unrealistic".

The campaign, which began on 26 March, will see almost 100 buses in London and 60 in Glasgow display the poster for four to eight weeks.

It will then be rolled out to other cities including Leicester, Birmingham, Leeds and Bradford over the next six months.

Volunteers will also distribute leaflets door-to-door throughout the UK explaining the peaceful and positive principles of the faith.

''Through this campaign we are trying to clarify the true teachings of Islam, to speak out against injustices, suicide bombings and terrorism," said Rafiq Hayat, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association's national president.

Islamophobia has been seen by some to be an increasing problem in the UK.

Last year, an online YouGov poll of 2,152 adults commissioned by the the Exploring Islam Foundation, found that 58% of those questioned linked Islam with extremism, while 69% believed it encouraged the repression of women.

In a recent speech, Baroness Warsi, co-chairman of the Conservative party, said anti-Muslim prejudice had passed the "dinner table test" to become uncontroversial and socially acceptable by Britons.

Rafiq Hayat said Islam was a religion of peace and should not be hijacked by a minority of extremists.

"As Muslims it pains us when our religion is tarnished by the actions of a minority of people who promote violence and hatred," he said.

''Terror offences committed by a small number of Muslims should not be used to condemn all who follow Islam.

''Islam means peace and we want to convey the real message of the religion to the people of this country,'' he said.

But there was scepticism within the Muslim community of the campaign's effectiveness.

Massoud Shadjareh, chair of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, which monitors Islamophobia, said it had a great deal of evidence showing it was increasing.

He said he was doubtful whether the campaign would change negative perceptions.

''There is nothing wrong with doing something like this, but the reality is that you can't just make people think differently," he said.

''No-one on the street is going to look at the message on the buses and say 'oh is that right, from now on I'm not going to stereotype Muslims'. This is very unrealistic."

But the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association remained confident it would be a small but positive step forwards.

"Shouting slogans is never going to be enough in itself," said Naseer Dean, president of the association's London branch.

''But what it will do is start a debate, a conversation, that perhaps is not being had at the moment, and it is right for the Muslim community to instigate this, because they are the ones primarily being affected."

BBC News

Our View: ELAM members’ arrest provided free publicity for nationalist group (Cyprus)

Six members of the extremist nationalist group ELAM (Greek Popular Front) were taken in for questioning by police over the weekend. A brief police statement said the six individuals were questioned in connection with a case of conspiracy to commit a misdemeanour and public insults.

The six men taken in for questioning were part of a 30-strong group of ELAM members who had gathered outside the Nicosia Central Prisons on April 1st after they had been refused permission to enter the area where EOKA heroes were buried. The group reportedly shouted insulting slogans against President Christofias both on his arrival and departure; it was also involved in minor scuffles with officers at one stage.

Read more at Cyprus Mail

Neo-Nazis 'take over' German town

Cries of "Sieg Heil" in the street, neo-Nazi rallies, far-right slogans on walls: Welcome to Jamel, a tiny northeast German village locals say has been annexed by Nazi sympathisers.

Until recently a sign at the entrance to the village said visitors had arrived at the "community of Jamel: free, social, national", evoking the National Socialists or Nazis.

A wooden signpost pointed the way to Braunau am Inn, the Austrian birthplace of Adolf Hitler.

A campaign poster for the far-right NPD party is one of the first things visible in the hamlet of 10 or so tumbledown houses.

Around six of these houses are home to neo-Nazis, said Birgit and Horst Lohmeyer, a couple fighting a high-profile campaign to tell the world about Jamel.

Nightmare

Visitors can instantly see which houses belong to far-right extremists, said Birgit, a 52-year-old author. "They have all painted their houses the same colour: A sort of reddish-brown," she said in her farmhouse kitchen.

The Lohmeyers moved here from Hamburg, Germany's second city and main port, in 2004, hoping to swap the big-town life for their dream of a rustic farmhouse in an idyllic country setting. But that dream turned swiftly to a nightmare as far-right extremists moved to the village.

"We knew that a famous and convicted far-right extremist, Sven Krueger, lived here with his mother and sister, but we moved here anyway. We were convinced we could deal with it," said Birgit.

"Since then, the situation has got a lot worse. More of Krueger's far-right buddies have moved into the village. They see the village as theirs and they treat it as such. The atmosphere is one of extreme hostility."

The couple has heard reports of children greeting each other with Hitler salutes. They have themselves heard neo-Nazi songs ringing out into the street - "Adolf Hitler is our Fuehrer".

"We get big festivals here, far-right festivals where neo-Nazi songs are sung," Birgit said.

The Krueger in question is a senior NPD member and owns a demolition firm in nearby Grevesmuehlen whose company logo shows a man smashing what seems to be a Jewish Star of David.

Raid

"We're the boys for the dirty work," is the firm's slogan.

Police recently raided the premises.

"Authorities found a machine gun and 200 rounds of ammunition. He is now in custody," said Stefan Urbanek, a spokesperson for prosecutors in nearby Schwerin, capital of the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

Since that raid things have begun to change in Jamel. The "national" sign disappeared, the directions to Hitler's birthplace were taken down.

"We don't know if it was the authorities or Krueger's men," said Birgit.

Repeated efforts to contact Krueger were unsuccessful and an approach to one of the brown-red houses in the village was met with a volley of insults.

Krueger's Grevesmuehlen office is protected by barbed wire, fierce guard dogs and a watchtower, complete with searchlight. "It's amazing, he's created his very own concentration camp," said Horst, shaking his head.

Unexpected recognition

Back in Jamel, the Lohmeyers said they suffer from what they call a "constant, latent threat". People hiss "piss off" over the fence.

But they are unrepentant and decided to fight back. Every year they hold a large music festival "for democracy", attended by a few hundred people.

In 2010, far-right sympathisers infiltrated the concert and broke someone's nose, they said.

They have received much unexpected recognition for their lonely stand. German President Christian Wulff has invited them to Berlin to tell him their plight and they won an award from the Jewish community for civil courage.

"With their extremely courageous stance in Jamel, they are not only giving a brave signal in the fight against far-right extremism, but also encouraging others... not to give up," said Dieter Graumann, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.

Still, the question remains. Why live in constant fear in such circumstances?

The answer is simple: The Lohmeyers see themselves as a bulwark against a creeping extremism they believe is becoming widespread in their part of eastern Germany.

"The problem in Jamel is actually not what we consider the biggest problem. The real problem is that the whole region is being overrun by far-right extremists... Jamel is just a microcosm of the issue," said Birgit.

"They are slowly taking over small places like Jamel and infiltrating them with their ideology," she said. "It's a definite strategy," added her husband.

And despite the fear and the unpleasant atmosphere in the village, it has become a point of principle for the pair.

"Leave now? What sort of sign would that be for the right-wingers? Of course we're not leaving," said Birgit.

"This fight continues."

News 24

Sarkozy woos far right as divisions grow deeper within his party (France)

Twelve months before presidential elections, President Nicolas Sarkozy's centre-right party is threatening to dissolve into a poisonous, three-way civil war.

The tensions, created by the advance of the far-right National Front in local elections last month, will be further laid bare today when the party stages a "debate on secularity" – a euphemism for a debate on Islam.

The Prime Minister, François Fillon, will not attend – a close ally said he was "very uncomfortable" with what he sees as part of a failed strategy to mimic the National Front. About 1,000 Muslims marched through Paris on Saturday to protest against the debate which has been criticised as "misplaced" by moderate leaders of all major religions in France.

President Sarkozy and Jean-François Copé, leader of the ruling centre-right party, l'Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), have insisted on going ahead. They say the debate in a Paris hotel is not an attack on Muslims but an open-minded discussion of ways to prevent Islam, and other religions, from damaging the secular and liberal traditions guaranteed by the law and constitution in France.

Critics on the left – and in the moderate and centrist factions within the UMP – say the initiative is part of a drive to appeal to far-right voters which began last year with the clampdown on Roma migrants from eastern Europe. They say that the resurrection of the National Front (NF), under its plausible new leader, Marine Le Pen, suggests this strategy is not only crass but counter-productive.

Tensions between Mr Sarkozy and Mr Fillon, reappointed last November, are now so pronounced that the President is rumoured to be considering another government reshuffle – the third in six months – to dump his Prime Minister.

Mr Sarkozy faces a potentially calamitous defection this week by the former environment minister, Jean-Louis Borloo, leader of a "radical" or centrist party within the UMP. Mr Borloo is expected to announce on Thursday that he is leaving the UMP and will run in the presidential election next April as a centrist "one nation" candidate.

Though unlikely to reach the second round, two-candidate run-off, Mr Borloo is said by opinion polls to command around 8 to 10 per cent of the first-round vote, which could elbow Mr Sarkozy into third place. Recent opinion polls have suggested that French voters may be confronted with a choice in the second round between a Socialist (identity as yet unknown) and Ms Le Pen.

In other words, the rise of the new NF leader and Mr Sarkozy's unpopularity threaten to make him the first sitting president of the Fifth Republic (ie since 1958) to be eliminated in the first round of a presidential election.

An opinion poll in Le Parisien yesterday suggested that Mr Fillon would be marginally better placed than his boss to win next year's election. On the other hand, 78 per cent of UMP voters told the pollsters that they thought Mr Sarkozy should still run.

The President, who was in China and Japan last week, is said to regard the "debate over the debate" as a storm in a tea-cup. He believes last week's local elections, in which the NF gained ground but won only two out of 1,000 county council seats nationwide, was, overall, an encouraging result.

His strategy remains to "neutralise" Ms Le Pen by stealing some of her themes while attacking her on her muddled social and economic programme.

The identity of the likely centre-left challenger to Mr Sarkozy may become clearer in the next few days. The former Socialist party leader, François Hollande, confirmed last week that he would run in the party's primary in November. The opinion poll favourite, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the IMF in Washington, is expected to declare his hand next week.

The Independant

Judge postpones decision on neo-Nazi Bill White (USA)

Two days before he was to sentence a neo-Nazi leader, a federal judge said he needs more time to consider whether William A. White was improperly convicted of encouraging his fellow racists to harm a juror whose verdict they disliked.

White, head of the Roanoke-based American National Socialist Workers Party, had been scheduled for sentencing Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Chicago. But on Monday, Judge Lynn Adelman postponed the hearing indefinitely while he considers a request by White's lawyers to reverse his conviction.

In January, a Chicago jury found White, 33, guilty of using his website to solicit violence against the foreman of a jury that convicted another white supremacist of trying to have a judge killed.

Defense lawyers are hopeful that Adelman -- who had previously dismissed the charge against White on First Amendment grounds before being reversed by an appeals court -- will again rule in their favor.

"The fact that he's doing this gives me hope," attorney Nishay Sanan said of the judge's decision to put off the sentencing.

White, whose Internet postings earned him prison time and a reputation as one of the nation's loudest neo-Nazis, has already completed a two-and-a-half-year sentence for making racially motivated threats from his home computer in Roanoke.

Read more at Roanoke

Newsflash – Chris Beverley defects to the English Democrats (UK)

Chris Beverley, a Leeds BNP stalwart and personal assistant to Andrew Brons, the BNP MEP for Yorkshire  and the Humber has defected to the English Democrats Party (EDP) and is standing for them as a candidate in the forthcoming local elections in Leeds.

Beverley, who is also Brons Constituency Officer manager and the BNP’s long term link-man with the openly neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD) in Germany is standing for the EDP in Morley South on 5 May. Beverley was also responsible for posting photographs of anti-BNP campaigners to Redwatch together with his then sidekick Mark Collett whose pronouncements on the virtues of the Hitler and the Third Reich became widely known as a result of the undercover television documentary Young, Nazi and Proud.

The move comes after Beverley, who is well liked and respected within the BNP, was recently suspended by the party chairman Nick Griffin as part of his on-going war on internal dissent within the party which has become increasingly vocal in its criticism of his lacklustre leadership.

Beverely who describes his decision to defect to the EDP as “huge” has promised to reveal his reasons to for defecting from the BNP tomorrow morning. “I am very excited about the coming campaign,” said Beverley, “and am proud to have been selected as a candidate for the English Democrats”.

Quite how EDP members themselves will react when news filters down that the party leadership have allowed a hard line fascist to join their ranks will be of interest.

Hope Not Hate