Hungary party to follow European extremism's move away from fringes

Extremist anti-Roma group Jobbik on course for success at this Sunday's elections in Hungary

It has been a good few weeks for racists, populists and rightwing radicals across Europe. A comeback for Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front in French regional elections. Big gains in Italy for the anti-immigrant Northern League. The Islam-baiting campaign of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands has taken his Freedom party to 25% and poll position ahead of June's general election.

And this weekend, Hungary is facing its biggest political earthquake in 20 years of democracy. On Sunday, the mainstream right and the neofascists are expected to take over the Westminster lookalike parliament on the banks of the Danube. It will be a landslide victory.
The left and the liberals who have run the country for eight years, taking Hungary to the brink of bankruptcy and into the arms of the International Monetary Fund, will be reduced to a rump.

The next prime minister, Viktor Orban, a combative populist, is leading his centre-right Fidesz party to a huge majority, running at more than 60% in the opinion polls. He may even secure a two-thirds majority enabling him to rewrite Hungary's constitution at will.
But the biggest breakthrough will be for Jobbik, the extremist antisemitic and antigypsy movement "for a better Hungary", which will win seats in the parliament for the first time and may emerge as the second biggest party.

"It's a flood that's coming. Everyone knows it's coming. We're just waiting for it. Will we drown or will we swim," said Pal Tamas, director of Budapest's Institute of Sociology. "People are trying to use the antifascist argument against Jobbik. But it's not working. It's being very poorly received."
During the past week a rabbi's home in the capital has been attacked during Passover and a Holocaust memorial was defaced. Budapest Jews have taken to the streets to protest. The country's large and marginalised Roma and gypsy communities are bracing themselves for a surge in racism and harassment.

Roma solution
"In terms of the gypsy issue, the situation in certain parts of the country is akin to civil war," said Jobbik's young leader, Gabor Vona. "Now only drastic interventions are capable of helping ... we must produce an environment in which gypsy people can return to a world of work, laws and education. And for those unwilling to do so, two alternatives remain: they can either choose to take advantage of the right of free movement granted by the European Union, and leave the country, because we will simply no longer put up with lifestyles dedicated to freeloading or criminality; or, there is always prison."

Though banned, Jobbik maintains a "Hungarian guard" of paramilitaries who dress in 1940s fascist paraphernalia. Vona wants this "gendarmerie" to police Roma "ghettos".
"Jobbik is openly legitimising anti-Roma violence. It is openly antisemitic. And it will do very well on Sunday," said Anton Pelinka, an Austrian political scientist working in Budapest.
Gaspar Miklos Tamas, a liberal and veteran anticommunist dissident, wrote this week that "a national tragedy" was befalling Hungary. "There are many factors, but the most important is the success of the post-fascist Jobbik party."

Jobbik won 15% of the vote in last summer's elections to the European parliament and could repeat the trick on Sunday, threatening to push Hungary's governing socialists into third place.
The breakthrough comes as the far right across Europe becomes more than a fringe presence. In France a fortnight ago, the xenophobic National Front won 11% of the vote in regional elections, with 20% of those who voted for Nicolas Sarkozy three years ago opting for the far right.

Silvio Berlusconi's rightwing coalition coasted to victory in Italian regional elections last week, but the real winner was Umberto Bossi's Northern League which captured the regions of Piedmont and Veneto and made big inroads in the working-class areas of northern Italy, normally a stronghold of the left.
Ahead of the Dutch elections, Wilders appears to be going from strength to strength, while later this month in Austria, the far-right mother of 10, Barbara Rosenkranz (left), whose husband publishes a neo-Nazi newsletter, will contest the Austrian presidency with the support of the country's bestselling tabloid, the Kronen Zeitung.

In Belgium the extreme right separatist Vlaams Belang party has been joined by mainstream rightwing parties, so secessionists now enjoy almost 50% support among Flemish voters, according to the polls.
A conventional explanation for the breakthrough of the far right sees the success as a protest vote, waxing and waning depending on the performance of the mainstream parties of the centre-right and left.

"This is not such a big victory for Jobbik and Fidesz, more a result of the failures of the previous government and its incredible incompetence," said Julius Horvat, head of European studies at Budapest's Central European University.

But analysts detect a more durable pattern, particularly in western Europe, entrenching the far right as an established presence in politics.

"This is no longer a sudden surge that then vanishes. The far right has become a permanent fixture in our societies now," said Jean-Yves Camus, a specialist in European radical movements at the Paris thinktank the Institute of International and Strategic Relations.

In France, Le Pen has been a major factor in politics for 25 years. In Austria, the far right has been a key player since the late Joerg Haider hijacked the political agenda in the 1990s.
Today in Rome, the "post-fascist" National Alliance of Gianfranco Fini held a centre-right conference on whether Italy should be transformed into a presidential system modelled on France. This week Bossi held a "summit" with Berlusconi to push his agenda of federalising Italy, meaning his wealthy northern power base stops subsidising the south.

The Northern League has been in government in Italy for seven of the past nine years. In Denmark the far right has long been propping up a conservative government in parliament, and in Switzerland it is the strongest party. The far right leaders are now central and not peripheral players in their national politics.

Disaffected conservatives
Political scientists note that while there is much talk of "neofascism", in western Europe some of the most successful parties are rooted less in 1930s European fascism than in disaffection with mainstream conservativism. Whether out of opportunism or conviction, many have shifted to the far right to exploit the potent issues of immigration and Islam and to broaden their electoral base. This has occurred in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy.

"What's new is that some of the conservatives have moved to the radical right, rejecting multiculturalism, Islam and immigration," said Camus. "It's … a radical right that is disconnected from the traditions of European fascism."

In colonising the far-right territory, these former conservatives are winning over traditional leftwing voters. Where previously their powerbase was made up from small businesses, shopkeepers, and lower middle class, they are now making inroads into the working-class vote among those hostile to immigration and worried about job losses.
In Hungary and in the young democracies of central Europe, the situation is different.

"In post-communist Europe, it's the old-fashioned far right. In Western Europe, it's the postmodern far right," said Pelinka. "In central Europe it's still the old enemies — the Jews, the gypsies, the national minorities."

If wealthy societies of western Europe are seized by new phobias, in the east old prejudices die hard. While 55% of Hungarians do not want Romas as neighbours, half are opposed to a homosexual or lesbian next door and 22% are averse to having a Slovak, Romanian or a Jew for a neighbour,according to a poll by Pal Tamas, leading Hugarian sociologists.

The Guardian

Police probe house fire as arson victim suspects retaliation for anti-Nazi activity (Canada)

Abbotsford police are reporting that accelerant was used in a fire that damaged a home 2am Monday had a fused device connected to it.

The presence of the device caused investigators to request outside assistance, said spokesman Const. Ian MacDonald.
"We didn't relinquish the investigation, we asked for some expertise from the [RCMP] bomb squad," he said.

A resident of the house in question, Maitland Cassia, identified himself as a member of Anti-Racist Action, and said he was jolted out of bed by what he described as a loud "blast."
Cassia fears the fire was in retaliation for an anti-Nazi rally he helped organize that took place at New Westminster's Braid SkyTrain Station on March 21.
The rally generated media coverage and subsequent photos from the event splashed Cassia's name and face across several Lower Mainland newspaper websites, making him a target, he said.

He said he is fearful of further retaliation, and planned on moving out.
Members of the bomb squad were on scene Monday, said MacDonald, and collected several items of interest in evidence bags and containers.
Heavy black scorching and damage to the exterior could be seen beside a door at the side of the house.
Police suspect the device was used as a way to create distance when the accelerant was set off, and are treating the incident as arson.
The Braid rally in March drew hundreds of anti-Nazi protesters, and was in response to a planned white supremacy, neo-Nazi rally that never materialized.
Online sites quoted Cassia declaring the rally a "victory" for those opposed to racial discrimination.

Vancouver Sun

Hypocrisy in action – Ignoring the Christian Terrorists

With all the talking in the UK from the far right about Islamic terrorists Douglas Todd makes a really good point in his blog for The Vancouver Sun.

If a follower of Islam can be called an Islamic Terrorist, why shouldn’t a Christian be called a Christian Terrorist?
Here’s what he wrote.

When the opportunity has arisen since September 11, 2001 and even before, the North American media hasn't hesitated to expose the evils of "Muslim terrorists." We also do so in regard to "Sikh terrorists," as Canadians are highly aware ever since an Air India jet was blown up in 1985.

But what about "Christian terrorists?"
The phrase does not often fall from our lips. Not even when there is ample reason for it to do so.

Why are the media not referring to the nine recently arrested members of a paramilitary extremist U.S. organization called Hutaree as "Christian terrorists?"

This is not an idle, mischievous thought. It is a serious question about the kind of labels we put on any militants who plan to wreak havoc in the name of a religion, philosophy or ideology.

Even though they have ample reason to do so, both the FBI and the U.S. media are rigorously avoiding describing the nine men and women as "terrorists." Sometimes they don't even mention "Christian."

Still, these Michigan-based Hutarees have put together a weapons stockpile, train to fight while wearing camouflage gear, believe in the Biblical battle against the Anti-Christ, judge President Barack Obama to be controlled by Satan, think of themselves as martyrs and were allegedly planning to kill a policeman and then bomb his funeral, killing more innocents and starting a war.

Even their website defines the word, Hutaree, as "Christian warrior." {Here's their website.)

Yet, what are these would-be terrorists being called by federal officials and the media?

"Extremists."

"Militants."

"Radicals."

Even "patriots."

The media don't seem to want to call them "Christian terrorists," because it might suggest Christianity is itself illegitimate and dangerous. And that's a hard sell on a continent where most people remain loyal in various ways to Christianity, which they consider a religion of love.

Yet that is exactly the argument made by Muslims. Why, they ask, does their entire religion, which they associate with peace and altruism, get maligned by being intimately and constantly linked with foreign terrorists who are Muslim?

Is it time for some fairness in labelling? Or, simply, better labelling? What do you think the Hutarees should be called by the FBI and media? What do you think Muslims who are extremists should be called?

{Jokes not at all appreciated.}

Vancouver Sun

Neo-Nazis increase online social network activity for new recruits (Germany)

Right-wing extremists are increasing their activity on online social networks to reach young people, the Lower Saxony state intelligence service warned on Thursday.

Neo-Nazis are using sites like Facebook, and similar German sites such as SchülerVZ, StudiVZ, Wer-kennt-wen and StayFriends to find new recruits, head of the agency Hans Wargel told daily Die Welt.

The danger is that many young people are unable to recognise propaganda and attempts at indoctrination from these groups at first glance, he said, explaining that instead of blatant symbols such as swastikas, many are using graffiti and other less-recognisable imagery from youth culture.

“The right-wing extremists appear as a wolf in sheep’s clothing online,” he told the paper. “At first they seem very harmless, and try to surreptitiously gain the trust of other users.”

The tactic is new for these groups, he added, referring to a newspaper for the neo-Nazi NPD party called

Deutsche Stimme, which recently encouraged its members to appear on online forums as people with humour, hobbies, and serious cultural interests.
They were also told not to openly identify with the NPD and its ideology, he said.

The Local Germany

When rightwing hate goes mainstream (USA)

The Republican party is indulging extremists, hoping they'll put down their guns long enough to vote for them this November.

Late Monday afternoon I received an email from the American Patriot Foundation informing me that Terrence Lakin, a lieutenant colonel in the US army, needed my help. It seems that Lakin had refused to obey orders unless his commander-in-chief – that would be Barack Obama – produces evidence proving he was born in the United States and is thus constitutionally qualified to serve as president. Lakin now faces a court-martial and prison.

Well, good for Lakin. What struck me about the missive, though, was not the banality of his foolish quest. Rather, it was the atmospherics surrounding the group that has taken up his cause. The American Patriot Foundation has a nice office in Washington. Its spokeswoman, Margaret Hemenway, is a former government official who has written for the Washington Times, among other publications. Its founder is a former Republican senator, Bob Smith, who told Salon that he no longer controls the group, but who pointedly declined to criticise Lakin.
In other words, Lakin's outburst of birtherism should not be seen in isolation. Instead, it's further evidence that rightwing hate, aided and abetted by leading Republicans, has gone mainstream.

The first warning came a year ago, when the department of homeland security predicted a rise in rightwing extremism fuelled by economic calamity and the election of our first black president. News of the report, and especially about a warning contained therein that military veterans might be pulled into the movement, set off criticism among conservative bloggers. Yet it proved prescient.

The most recent and oddest manifestation was last week's arrest of nine people involved in what authorities have referred to as a "Christian militia" intent on sparking revolution. But there have been other examples, each treated by the media as isolated incidents. The murder of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller, whose killer was sentenced to life in prison last week. The pilot who crashed his plane into an Internal Revenue Service facility in Austin, Texas, in February. Protesters whipped into a frenzy during the healthcare debate who yelled racist and homophobic slurs at members of Congress, who spat upon one and who phoned in threats of violence.
According to Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Centre, the number of rightwing extremist groups has risen exponentially during the past 18 months. And in an interview with National Public Radio's On the Media last week, he was unstinting in placing at least some of the blame for that with their enablers in the Republican party and in the media. Potok said:

"I'm talking about when [Republican congresswoman] Michele Bachmann says President Obama is setting up political re-education camps all around the country, presumably to turn our children into Marxist robots. I'm talking about when Steve King, a congressman out of Iowa, says that 25 Americans every single day are either murdered or run over and killed by drunken, as he would say, 'criminal illegal aliens', or when Glenn Beck on Fox News talks about the possibility that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is running a set of secret concentration camps to intern good patriotic Americans, all of that and much more. And that is becoming quite common today."

The right is ever fond of pointing out that leftwing extremists have also been among us for lo these many years, from the Weather Underground during the Vietnam war to the 9/11 truthers of recent years. But such groups have never received an iota of support from Democrats. Indeed, when Beck, of all people, ferreted out someone who might be called a truther sympathiser last year in the Obama White House, that person lost his job immediately.
By contrast, a mainstream conservative figure like Sarah Palin posts a map on her Facebook page of Democratic congressmen she wants defeated that is festooned with gun-sight crosshairs and then hosts a Fox News special on inspirational Americans.
"At the least, the Republicans are playing footsie with extremism – while extremism seems to be spreading," writes the veteran progressive journalist David Corn.

We are living through a frightening moment in American history – the near-collapse of the economy, followed by a slow and uncertain recovery, a mountain of public debt and war seemingly without end.
A responsible political opposition would find a way to oppose Obama and the Democratic Congress while at the same time standing up to the forces of extremism. Instead, today's Republican party coddles and indulges them, hoping they'll put down their guns long enough to vote for them this November.

It's a sick and cynical game, and we can only hope it doesn't end in tragedy.

By Dan Kennedy writing in The Guardian

POLICE INVESTIGATE LATEST ATTACK AGAINST ROMANIES (Czech Rep.)

Late on Saturday night, two bottles containing an unknown substance were thrown into the doorway of a block of flats inhabited by Romany families in Opava, north Moravia. The bottles failed to catch fire and didn’t cause any damage. The police are investigating the incident as a threat to public safety. A similar attack took place only three weeks ago, in the nearby city of Ostrava. Unknown perpetrators threw a Molotov cocktail into the room of a fourteen-year-old Romany girl who was woken by the noise and was able to extinguish the fire before it could spread. Though nobody was injured in both recent cases, Czech Romanies says they feel at high risk from neo-Nazi violence. Last year, the worst arson attack on a Romany family in Vítkov shocked the country: the family’s two-year-old daughter Natálka suffered burns on eighty percent of her body. With the trial of the Vítkov attack perpetrators coming up in May, Kumar Vishwanathan, a social worker and Romany rights activist, is hoping for the court to send a clear signal. “I think it’s really necessary for the courts to make it clear that such brutal attacks with Molotov cocktails are not welcome in this country, that it is a grave crime and that it will be punished very severely. We are hoping that the court will send a clear signal and will be bold enough not to downplay the significance of this attack.”


Before last year’s highly publicized attack in Vítkov, arson attacks did not receive as much attention as they do now, says Mr. Vishwanathan. “Such arson attacks have been happening here for the past ten years. I think there is a greater sensitivity to this issue now, both from the Roma community and the Czech public and institutions and the media. So what used to hardly be reported on in the past, because nobody was really injured, now it’s being dealt with and people are giving it the necessary attention and in the past, it used to be ignored or the victims themselves didn’t even report it. It’s a serious issue, especially in the northern Moravia region.” Earlier this year the extremist far-right Workers’ Party was banned by the Supreme Administrative Court; many people believe this at least is a step in the right direction when it comes to combating such violence. Miroslav Brož is an expert on extremism. “I think with the dissolution of the Workers’ Party, the Czech state has demonstrated that it is willing to fight against extremism, and I’d rather use the word neo-Nazism to be precise, and that it does not have a place in our society. And I think that the development has been that to a certain extent, neo-Nazi activities have been on the decline. If you think back to late 2008 and early 2009, neo-Nazis held marches through Czech towns every weekend.”

Radio Prague

2 appeal sentences for role in neo-Nazi drug ring (USA)

Two more men sentenced for their roles in a drug ring run by a neo-Nazi group operating in Nebraska and Iowa are appealing their sentences.

Bradford Winnie of Blair and Gregory Stanek of Omaha have filed notices to appeal in U.S. District Court in Omaha.
Winnie was sentenced Monday to more than 17 years in prison. Stanek was ordered Thursday to serve almost 32 years.
They're among eight men who pleaded guilty to gun and drug charges tied to the group.

Chad Winters, Jeffrey Welker and Justin Snelling, all of Omaha, and Justin Hawthorne, Michael Davis and Kenny Dofner, all of Council Bluffs, Iowa, have been given prison sentences ranging from eight to more than 32 years. Snelling filed his appeal notice in August and Welker in October.

KWQC

BNP’s Mark Collett Victim or Villain - You Decide !

British National Parties Mark Collett is staying pretty quiet except for posting a few random things around the web about what has happened in the BNP.

But what it all comes down to is this
Would you/ Do you believe Mark Collett’s claims

Is he lying his racist ass off or is he a victim of the BNP.

Please fill out the survey via the link below and the results will be posted on the 16th of April on this Blog.

http://www.smart-survey.co.uk/v.asp?i=20819nagnu

Hungary’s Jews march after anti-Semitic incidents

More than 1,000 Jews marched through Budapest's Old Ghetto district on Tuesday in response to a series of anti-Semitic incidents in the lead-up to Hungary's elections.

The marchers defied a police recommendation to keep a low profile, marching in the neighbourhood of the Great Dohány Street Synagogue wearing yarmulkes. The police recommendation was issued last week, after the windows of Rabbi Shmuel Raskin were stoned in the same district during a Passover Seder.
Over the last week, anti-Semitic graffiti has appeared in various places in Budapest, a Holocaust memorial was damaged in the western Hungarian city of Zalaegerszeg and neo-Nazis held an anti-Semitic rally in the eastern city of Tiszaeszlár, where a notorious blood libel against the local Jewish community led to pogroms in 1882-83.
Organized by the Association of Hungarian Jewish Religious Communities, the Budapest demonstration was secured by the police and no violance was reported.
Jews have expressed concern about anti-Semitic overtones in the national election campaign. In election set for April 11 with a possible runoff on April 25, the ruling party Socialist party is expected to be toppled by the country's main Conservative party. A far-right party is also expected to score significant gains. Hungary's Jews traditionally vote center-left.
JTA

Hamburg police search for car arsonists after fiery weekend (Germany)

Hamburg police on Tuesday were searching for suspected left-wing arsonists who destroyed 10 parked vehicles early in the morning, as part of a continuing car-burning spree in the northern German port city.

The fires in the Flottbek district spurred a search for the arsonists that included more than 20 patrol cars, but officers reported no trace of the perpetrators so far.

On the previous night unknown culprits lit six other vehicles on fire in the city’s Harvestehude district. There fire fighters were able to save a nearby apartment building and a carport from the flames.

In the last year, about 150 cars have been burned in Hamburg, many attributed to left-wing extremists and anarchists.
In late March daily Bild reported that the number of politically motivated offences in Germany had soared to its highest level since record began.
Citing an Interior Ministry report, the paper said there were 33,917 politically motivated crimes committed in 2009. Many of these include car burnings in Hamburg and Berlin.

Although offences committed by right-wing extremists are twice as common as those committed by the left, it is a massive jump in left-wing crime that is responsible for the new peak.
The number of left-wing extremist crimes climbed 39.4 percent to 9,375. Among those were 1,822 violent offences – a rise of 53.4 percent.
Crimes by the far right, meanwhile, fell by 4.7 percent compared with 2008, totalling 19,468. Assault is a particularly common far-right crime, the report said.
Towards the end of last year, there was a spate of far-left attacks, including incidents in which perpetrators threw Molotov cocktails, paint bombs and cobblestones at Berlin’s Treptow district Federal Criminal Police (BKA) office. Around the same time, offices for the centre-left Social Democrats and the conservative Christian Democrats were also vandalised with anti-war graffiti.

And in Hamburg, about 10 masked perpetrators attacked a police precinct in the Schanzenviertel neighbourhood, setting a police cruiser alight, damaging other police cars and breaking windows with stones.
At the time, the head of the German Police Union, Rainer Wendt, branded the attacks a “declaration of war.”
Meanwhile the car burnings have spawned copycat crimes. According to a Hamburg police spokesperson, on Monday night an eight-year-old in Osdorf district managed to light two cars on fire using paper.
The Local Germany

Google removes Russian terrorist’s video from Youtube

Google has removed a video from its Youtube video service in which a Chechen warlord claimed responsibility for recent attacks in the Moscow Metro.

Propeller Alla Zubrovskaya, a spokeswoman for Google Russia, told the Russian News Service website that the video in which terrorist Doku Umarov claimed responsibility for the Metro attacks had been found and removed from Youtube by Google moderators. However, she admitted that the video was accessible for several days. The official said this was due to huge amount of videos Google has to check daily. She also said that several more videos by Doku Umarov were still available, but promised that they will be found and deleted.

“If we take this particular subject, it is against the rules to upload such videos. That is why it was deleted. Google does not support terrorists,” Zubrovskaya said.
RT News

Hungary's reputation tarnished by extremism, analysts say

Hungary's reputation abroad has been tarnished in the past few years by the rise in extremism, street riots and tensions in Slovak-Hungarian relations, Nepszabadsag daily said on Friday.

Street riots in 2006 following the leak of a speech by then Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany telling his party members that they had lied about public finances, the growing popularity of the radicals and attacks against the Roma minority have dented Hungary's image as a liberal country open to reform, Gereon Schuch, a researcher for the German Council of Foreign Relations (DGAP) told the paper.

The stand-off between the two main political camps makes problem-solving - handling the economic crisis, implementing social reform, integrating minorities and maintaining good bilateral relations - next to impossible, Schuch said.
A new Fidesz government, with a comfortable majority in parliament and broad social support, presents not only an opportunity but a responsibility, too. Fiscal consolidation must continue and energy should not be wasted on political battles, he said.
Michael Schafir, a political scientist at Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj Napoca, said that all the efforts of Hungary's Socialist governments to improve Hungary's reputation after the "catastrophic heritage" from the 1998-2002 Orban cabinet had been made in vain due to extremist and racist trends over the past year and a half. The Socialists have exacerbated problems due to corruption, a cause which the radical nationalists have taken up to powerful effect, he added.
Slovak political analyst Miroslav Kusy said Hungary's two main political camps are both responsible for Hungary's declining reputation. The Socialists maintained irresponsible spending that resulted in high indebtedness, while Fidesz torpedoed all reform efforts of the government.

Despite having a Socialist government in both Slovakia and Hungary over the past four years, bilateral relations worsened, Kusy noted.
"Viktor Orban ... will have to be far more empathetic and pursue more careful political relations with neighbouring states than he has promised so far. At home, he will have to tackle the extremists because that's the only way to maintain the stability of central Europe," Kusy said.

politics.hu

“You’ll be found dead on the streets” – the message from a BNP supporter (UK)

“You’ll be found dead on the streets” – the message from a BNP supporter
By Dominic Carmen
‘You’ll be found dead on the streets.’ That was the message I received a few weeks ago from an identifiable BNP supporter. Why? Because I was taking a stand against Nick Griffin. When someone writes this to you because you’re fighting as a Lib Dem in a parliamentary campaign against Griffin and the BNP, it makes you think very hard about your political opponent and the campaign they intend to fight. It also makes you think about how you should respond.

I reported the threat immediately to the police. They came to my house and have since referred the matter to SO15 – Counter Terrorism Command. I also urged Nick Griffin to intervene and condemn the culprit. I wrote: “This is London in 2010, not Berlin in 1933.” The response: silence.
The Guardian reported the matter. And that of another death threat – a video put on the web in the name of Wandsworth BNP, featuring Equality and Human Rights Commission chief Trevor Phillips. It suggested he be “dealt with”.
On March 21st, a BNP activist was arrested for threatening to kill Labour peer, Baroness Uddin. His Facebook message read: ‘were (sic) going to hang you one day. Regards the BNP.”
This weekend comes the news that senior BNP official and parliamentary candidate, Mark Collett has been arrested on suspicion of making threats to kill Nick Griffin. Collett was arrested after Griffin made a statement to the police. A Humberside Police spokesman said: “A 29-year-old man has been arrested and bailed on suspicion of threats to kill. We can’t comment further.”
Griffin becomes the fourth person in four weeks to have received a death threat from a BNP member. As BNP chairman, he should not be surprised. His party membership list is full of criminals with convictions for violence. This is the true face of the BNP showing itself in public: a party of violence, committed to violence, using the language of violence.
And Griffin himself uses the language of violence frequently. He once called for a defence of white rights with “well directed boots and fists.” He told me in interview that people “have the right to hurt people to maim and blow things up when they are not allowed any other any way of expressing a legitimate grievance.”

When he had Dominic Kennedy of the Times roughed up and ejected from a BNP meeting in February, Griffin said it proved his party was “not going soft.”
When I asked Nick Griffin who was his political hero, it was not Adolf Hitler or Oswald Mosley. The man he chose was Gerry Adams. Griffin would perhaps do well to remember: ‘Hate begets hate; violence begets violence.’ If he has received death threats from within his own party, then it is perhaps a true reflection of the culture of violence he encourages and supports.
libdemvoice
 
Admin: The incident mentioned by Dominic in regard to the death threat's made to Trevor Phillips on a You Tube video was also reported to the counter terrorism unit and is being investigated.

ISLAMOPHOBIA ON THE RISE AFTER MOSCOW METRO ATTACKS (Russia)

After the suicide bombings in Moscow, attributed to two female suicide bombers from the North Caucasus, religious leaders and Muslim intellectuals have sought to distance terrorism from Islam. "As a matter of justice, because terrorism has no religion ever" as some say, but also for the well-founded fear that in the wake of the massacre in the metro the community is being overwhelmed by a veritable wave of xenophobic attacks, as some episodes in the news already indicate. The greatest risk is that Islamophobia, which has been creeping into Russian society, is being exploited for political purposes by those who aspire to an independent Caucasus, but also by those who aim to implement a political agenda aimed at repression and the strengthening of central power. Several Internet sites dealing with religious information, such as Portalcredo.ru denounce the dangers of the authorities "ambiguity”: "On one side pointing the finger at Islamic terrorism, on the other claiming that Islam has nothing to do with violence". While attacks continue in Ingushetia and Dagestan and the investigators dig into the lives of the two "black widows" responsible for the deaths of 40 people in Moscow, two women have already been attacked and beaten by unknown groups after the March 29 bombings. Their crime was they wore a veil or had a dark complexion, a characteristic that is associated immediately with the Caucasian population. Nargiza, 17, has been forced to leave the city: the daughter of an Armenian mother, she was attacked in the street. "They pulled her hair, tore her clothes and bruised her face," says Galina Kozhevnikova of the Sova Centre in Moscow, which deals with racially motivated crimes. A similar incident occurred, according to Radio Echo of Moscow in the afternoon the same day when, on the capital’s Metro, two Muslim girls wearing headscarves were beaten and forced off the train by a group of men and women. According to witnesses, no one reacted or called the police. The fear is that, as reported in local blogs and websites, it is now rare to see veiled women outside the borders of the Russian Federation republics with a Muslim majority.
Beyond the natural condemnation of the Moscow bombings, the Islamic community in Russia is pondering the cause of the massacre. For Ruslan Kurbanov, from the Institute of Oriental Studies, the Moscow suicide bombers are "a provocation to increase anti-Muslim hysteria and give new impetus to the process of destroying the social, cultural and political life of Russian society and of distancing the Caucasus from the rest of the Federation". According to Gaidar Jemal, president of the Islamic Committee of Russia, the fact that blame was immediately placed at the door of "Chechen separatism, which no longer exists, shows a renewed intention to demonize Caucasian Islam as a whole ... Maybe to justify an enhanced Central power, similar to what happened in the aftermath of Beslan in 2003”. Yesterday, reports of graffiti such as "Allah Akbar" and "Death to Russia" appearing on the walls of the Planernaya stop in Moscow Metro, rekindled Muslims’ suspicion that the wave of Islamophobia is being exploited for political purposes. The news appears to fit ad hoc: it comes from an anonymous witness and police say it is difficult to identify those behind the graffiti because of "the absence of cameras on site”. Hard to believe, not even a week after the bombs. Interpretations aside, the line on which all agree is well expressed by Berdijev Ismail, President of the Coordinating Centre of Muslims of Northern Caucasus: "The important thing now is to stay united and not panic".
Asianews

JEWISH TOMBSTONES DESECRATED IN SLOVAKIA

Despite the fact that no Jews have resided in the Slovakian town of Zvolen since the days of the Holocaust, it appears anti-Semitism hasn't left the region. A Jewish cemetery in the area was recently desecrated when unknown individuals broke into its gates and spray-painted hate slogans on the site's walls and tombstones. Eyal Bloch, whose father grew up in Zvolen and escaped the town when World War II broke out, saw pictures of the desecration. He told Ynet that the town's cemetery contains the graves of the majority of the local Jewish community, which originally consisted of 700 members who died during the Holocaust. Only 10 survivors originally from Zvolen currently live in Israel, in addition to Bloch's father, who fought as a partisan in its nearby forests. Bloch noted that over the years the townsmen stole dozens of tombstones from the cemetery, which makes it harder for Jews arriving in the region to trace the burial spots of their relatives. "My father warned me over the years not to deal with what's going on in the cemetery since the population there is very anti-Semitic. When I showed him the photos he was horrified. " Over the years family members of Jews who originated in Zvolen tried to commemorate their loved ones whose tombs have been removed by installing a plaque with their names on the cemetery's wall. "Whoever did this never met a Jew in his life and it really hurts," Bloch said.


'Local authorities to blame'
He also noted that he installed locks on the gate two years ago, which have now been ripped out. The cemetery was declared a heritage site by the Zvolen Municipality, according to Bloch. Bloch blamed Slovakian authorities for failure to punish the perpetrators. "I turned to the embassy in Israel as well as the Israeli embassy there and filed a complaint with local police. I highly doubt they'll do anything." He further noted that in the past there were 500 tombstones in the cemetery and now only 50 remain due to repeated desecrations. He is scheduled to visit Zvolen on Wednesday in order to find ways of solving the matter with local authorities.
Ynet News

South Africa face-off at Eugene Terreblanche hearing (S.Africa)

Black and white South Africans have scuffled outside a court building as two farm workers were charged with the murder of a white supremacist leader.

Police stepped in to stop the face-off between people from the local black community and supporters of Eugene Terreblanche, found dead on Saturday.
Officers built a barricade from razor wire to keep the two groups apart in the north-western town of Ventersdorp.
The killing has raised racial tensions in the country.

Drink-throwing
But the authorities have played down any political motive to the killing, and police said the pair had admitted beating Terreblanche to death in a dispute over unpaid wages.
The suspects, aged 28 and 15, did not enter a plea but face four charges, including murder, housebreaking with intent to rob, attempted robbery with aggravating circumstances and crimen injuria - assaulting the dignity of the victim.

"After they assaulted the deceased, they pulled down his pants and exposed his private parts," said chief prosecutor Menzi Simelane.
Terreblanche's paramilitary group AWB (Afrikaner Resistance Movement) had threatened to take revenge for the killing, but retracted their threat on Monday.
The BBC's Jonah Fisher in Ventersdorp says about 500 people gathered outside court - divided equally between white supremacists, local black residents and the police.
Pushing, shoving and scuffles broke out after a woman in the crowd of AWB supporters appeared to throw a drink at a group of black people.
The police stepped in and coiled razor wire between the two groups to keep them apart.

Inciting to kill?
Pieter Steyn, an AWB leader, apologised for the drink-throwing incident.
He had earlier reiterated that the AWB was not a violent group.
"As soon as the court proceedings are completed, we will all disperse and go home and gather again on Friday for the funeral," he told AFP news agency.

The group blames ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema for contributing to the killing by recently singing a song from the anti-apartheid struggle called "Shoot the Boer".
Boer is an Afrikaans word for farmer, which has become a derogatory term for all white people.
Mr Malema has denied any responsibility for Terreblanche's death and the ANC argues that the song does not incite people to kill but is part of the country's history and the fight against white minority rule.

t is planning to appeal against a court judgement banning the song as hate speech.
President Jacob Zuma has appealed for calm and condemned the killing.

Past conviction
Terreblanche, 69, was fiercely opposed to the end of apartheid in South Africa, which led to the ANC winning the country's first democratic elections in 1994 and Nelson Mandela becoming the country's first black president.
He served three years in jail after being convicted in 2001 of the attempted murder of a farm worker.

Court papers identified one of those suspected of his murder as 28-year-old Chris Mahlangu.
Because the other suspect is classed as a minor, his identity is not being released and the case is being held behind closed doors.

The pair are due to appear in court again on 14 April.
BBC News

Auschwitz theft suspect extradited 'this week' (Sweden)

Former Swedish neo-Nazi Anders Högström is to be extradited to Poland this week to answer charges in connection with the theft of the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign from the Auschwitz death camp, a prosecutor said on Tuesday.
"He hasn't appealed, the decision is final since the 1st of April," the prosecutor in charge of the case, Agnetha Hilding Qvarnström, told AFP.

"Then according to the law the Polish authorities have 10 days to come and get him, so the 10th of April is the last day to come and get him," she added.
"We keep him here in Stockholm until they come and get him ... but I can confirm that he's still in Stockholm."
Högström, 34, was arrested on February 11th over the theft of the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign which disappeared on December 18 from over the gate of the notorious World War II camp set up in occupied Poland by Nazi Germany.
On March 11th, a Stockholm court allowed his extradition to Poland to face trial for the theft.
Högström in 1994 founded the National Socialist Front, a Swedish neo-Nazi movement he headed for five years before quitting.
He has told Swedish media he was supposed to act as an intermediary to pick up the sign and sell it to a buyer, but claimed that he ended up informing Polish police about the people behind the plot.

Polish police recovered the five-metre metal sign, whose German inscription means "Work Will Set You Free", on December 20, two days after the theft. They arrested and charged five Polish men.
The sign, which had been cut into three parts, was returned by investigators to the Auschwitz museum on January 21, less than a week before commemorations marking the 65th anniversary of the camp's liberation by Soviet Russian troops.
The sign has long symbolised the horror of the camp where some 1.1 million people - one million of them Jews - were victims of Nazi German genocide from 1940 to 1945.
Polish judicial authorities indicted Högström in January and issued a European arrest warrant for him on February 2, after Sweden provided additional information on his place of birth, parents' names and residence.
The Local Sweden

Main parties accused of failing to confront the BNP

An all-party campaign against the British National Party has accused Labour, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats of boosting the BNP's general election prospects by not tackling the party head-on.

In an interview with The Independent, James Bethell, director of the Nothing British group, warned that Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg were adopting hopelessly out-of-date tactics and failing to address the legitimate grievances of alienated white working-class voters.
Mr Brown called the BNP a "nasty extreme party", Mr Cameron labelled it a "ghastly piece of filth" and Mr Clegg said it was made up of "fascist thugs". But Mr Bethell said mainstream parties should be more open about policy issues such as immigration to address the anger of up to five million people. He warned that the BNP had "struck a nerve" among people with "no hope" and could become a permanent force in British politics, with a potential 12 per cent share of the vote.

The BNP will field a record number of general election candidates on 6 May – possibly more than 300. Nothing British is sending a guide to the other candidates in constituencies where the right-wing party is standing. It warns that the BNP is modernising, has shelved talk of forced repatriation and is as likely to campaign against the war in Afghanistan as immigration. It is choosing presentable candidates including more women, and screaming "fascists" at the party is as likely to annoy the public as persuade them, says the guide.

Mr Bethell, a Conservative who was managing director of the Ministry of Sound nightclub, said: "The mainstream parties must have the guts to confront toxic issues – immigration, national identity, Islamism and the divided nature of our society."
He argued that traditional attacks on the BNP would not work because they did not accord with people's experience of the party. Its members now wore suits and fluorescent jackets and took part in social action projects such as building a scout hut, clearing snow and even removing racist graffiti.
Mainstream parties have often sought to deny the BNP the "oxygen of publicity" – refusing to share a platform with it or addressing its policies directly. But Mr Bethell said: "In the old world of a handful of newspapers and the BBC, it was possible to keep the BNP out of the headlines. Those days are over. It doesn't need the national media. It operates below the radar using 'guerrilla marketing', and has a strong online presence. People turning to its politics have bona fide grievances.

"The people thinking of voting for it will have been hardest hit by globalisation, which has been good for the better off but an unmitigated disaster for those whose jobs have moved somewhere else. Politicians need to stop sitting on their hands and get stuck in."

Mr Bethell praised Mr Cameron for taking social issues seriously but said he had been "overly cautious in confronting the extremism and racism of the far right". Anti-BNP campaigners think Tories with northern roots such as party chairman Eric Pickles have taken a more proactive stance against the BNP than the "Notting Hill" set around Mr Cameron, who favour a low-key approach to immigration after the Tories were branded "the nasty party" for raising it during the 2005 election.
"The [Tories'] missing component is not necessarily policies. It is empathy and being prepared to engage with people who are angry and frustrated," said Mr Bethell.

Yesterday senior BNP figures met after the sacking of the party's publicity chief Mark Collett, who was arrested on suspicion of threatening to kill its leader Nick Griffin.

The Independant

BNP leader calls for white people to "maim and blow things up"

If you want a reason not to vote BNP in May, this is it.
From the excellent anti-racist group Expose the BNP:

Nick Griffin, British National Party leader and election candidate for Barking and Dagenham, says white people "with a legitimate grievance" have the right "to hurt people, to maim and blow things up".

BNP supporters "have a right to take up arms, arguably in fact a duty to take up arms", using "physical force" against their enemies, he says.
Griffin's chilling words were caught on film by the journalist Dominic Carman, who spent days interviewing and videotaping the racist leader.
Given the news yesterday of the death threats bandied about by BNP leaders, the findings from this investigation provide further evidence that violence is at the core of the party's politics.

The revelations of Griffin's call for armed resistance follow the jailing of BNP member Terence Gavan in January for terrorist offences after he accumulated a stockpile of bombs and weapons. Next week [12 April], white supremacist Ian Davison is on trial for producing the deadly poison ricin.

Posted today in the New Statesman

BBC plunged into BNP election row (UK)

Senior BBC journalists are furious that the BNP leader Nick Griffin is being guaranteed prime time interview slots in compensation for his omission from the first ever televised prime ministerial debates.

A new directive issued by corporation executives forces the editors of flagship news programmes to give airtime to minority parties, including the BNP, immediately after the live debate between Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

Insiders have revealed they are deeply unhappy and believe that the edict – overseen by the BBC's deputy director general and head of journalism Mark Byford – could wreck proper reporting of the debates.

The editors and presenters on Radio 4's Today programme have been told they must interview representatives of the BNP, Ukip, the Green party, SNP and Plaid Cymru on the same show, the morning after the debates.

Sources said this will leave almost no room for serious discussion of how the mainstream leaders performed.
One source said: "We're all spitting feathers here. This is further proof that the BBC's obsession with 'compliance' is destroying its news coverage and journalism.
"The only result of this directive from Mark Byford and the rest of the overpaid detached senior management is that listeners will simply switch off in droves.
"The idea of having to interview the Ukip leader Nigel Farage – let alone Nick Griffin – is turning people's stomachs."

Another senior source added: "People are very angry indeed. The Today programme has an audience of 6.5 million people and everybody knows it is easily the most important of the BBC's morning news programmes.

"And yet it is being treated like the man at the Lord Mayor's Show who has to walk behind the main parade sweeping up the muck with a bucket and a shovel. "The Today programme is being used to assuage the minority parties rather than doing what it is meant to which is analysing the performance of the three main party leaders."
In addition to the Today Programme slot, the minority parties, including the BNP, will be given air time immediately after the debate on BBC One's News at Ten as well as on Newsnight on BBC Two – both of which will inevitably attract large audiences.

The directive will infuriate campaigners who believe the BBC has already pandered to Mr Griffin by allowing him to appear on Question Time last year.
The BBC was accused of needlessly giving Mr Griffin the oxygen of publicity to boost ratings.
Under the new rules, the nationalist parties will also get their own local television leadership debates in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
There will be three, 90-minute televised debates, each taking place a week apart in the run up to the election expected on 6 May.
The first will be broadcast on ITV1, the second on Sky News and the third on BBC One, each on different topics.
The BBC will screen the debates on rival channels later that evening 'as live' which will then be followed by further discussion with the fringe parties.
BBC insiders fear they will have to give the minority parties compensatory airtime after each of the three debates – not just following the BBC contest, although that has been denied by the corporation.

The BBC defended its decision to give slots to the minority parties, saying it was necessary to maintain impartiality.
Ric Bailey, the BBC's chief political adviser, said: "This [row] is a complete nonsense. This is about the BBC ensuring due impartiality to make sure the other parties get fair representation."
"During an election we have a very high threshold for making sure that minority parties – based on their electoral support – get appropriate coverage.
"Because this [debate] is so new and different we are trying to plan this ahead. In the past it would have been a judgment for each programme. This time we are making sure in advance where and when these parties will get coverage."

Sky News sources said the channel would also have to accommodate the minority parties in the wake of the debates but since it has 24 hours of rolling news, little in the way of analysis will be sacrificed to make space for them.
The source said: “We have a lot of airtime – 24 hours a day in fact – so it’s relatively easy for us to reflect the views of the minority parties.”

ITV was unavailable for comment.

The Telegraph