Britain’s fascists are tearing into each other with accusations of selling out and betrayal, and big problems are looming ahead of a high-profile conference next month.
Searchlight is never surprised when far right leaders place personal ambitions and financial greed above their supposed principles. But the most recent name-calling between Mark Collett of Patriotic Alternative and Kenny Smith of the Homeland Party has become weird even by their standards.
Are you a real nazi?
The dispute amounts to this:
- Is it OK to share a platform with a black man if he is antisemitic and describes himself as a nazi?
- Is it OK to share a platform with a gay man if he is Europe’s leading racist “intellectual”?
- Is it OK to applaud President Donald Trump for supporting Vladimir Putin, and ignore the fact that he also supports Israel and has a Jewish son-in-law?
- Is it OK to cheer for Vice-President J.D. Vance when he endorses European racists, and ignore the fact that his wife’s family is of Indian origin?
- Is it OK to celebrate electoral success for the German far-right party AfD, and ignore the fact that its leader is in a same-sex partnership with a woman of Sri Lankan origin?
It’s a very hard and confusing life being a British nazi in 2025, especially if your main concern is raising funds from dangerously deluded Twitter addicts.
Having failed (some say deliberately) to register Patriotic Alternative as a political party, PA leader Mark Collett spends most of his time making online video streams to encourage donations. For several years one of his regular slots was with the ageing US Klansman David Duke, but with Duke now 74 and in poor health, Collett is looking for new “attractions”.
“honorary Aryan”
His latest guest was Dang Pal, a “black Australian white nationalist”. Collett described him as a “fine gentleman” who had been recommended by many of his viewers. What this comes down to is that Dang Pal hates Jews. This means that for some (though not all) on the British far right, he classes as an “honorary Aryan” alongside the likes of Candace Owens, the African-American conservative turned conspiracy theorist.
Collett’s stream wasn’t a great advert for the master race, as PA’s führer spent six minutes struggling with “technical issues” before he could ask his first question.
His guest’s first words were: “I’m a far right black national socialist.” His online notoriety seems based on having been seen attending a meeting of the National Socialist Network, Collett’s main Australian allies.
Patriotic Alternative is never going to be a political party
The main thing to understand about Collett is that he depends heavily on clickbait. PA is never going to be a political party like the old BNP where Collett cut his political teeth, and it’s never going to develop a coherent ideology like British Movement, the hardcore Hitler-worshippers whose membership has some overlap with PA.
It’s about stunts and cash (say that carefully)
It’s not about votes, and it’s not about ideas. It’s about stunts and cash. The problem is that whether he’s interviewing a Klansman or a black Australian, Collett constantly promotes paranoid conspiracy theories that have been shown to have a disastrous impact on some of his young viewers. For Collett it’s all a cynical game, but for some of his viewers it has destroyed their lives and set them on a path of terrorist violence.
That’s why some observers within the far-right scene believe it’s only a matter of time before Collett’s organisation is banned. Although others suspect his wild extremism is tolerated by the authorities for mysterious reasons known only to certain gentlemen in Whitehall.
Confusion in the ranks
The ranks of Collett’s rivals in the Homeland Party are similarly confused, fresh from last month’s still unresolved controversy over one of HP’s leading “intellectuals”. Pete North, formerly of UKIP, was criticised by Collett and many others for his pro-Israel tweets, including one which called on Israel’s Prime Minister to engage in “ethnic cleansing”.
HP leader Kenny Smith had to strike an awkward balance between defending North’s right to express his views, and insisting that these are not the views of his party. North’s status in Homeland is now unclear. After looking as though he had the leader’s ear, it now seems he is unlikely to remain long at the party’s top table.
Smith has spent most of the last few weeks advertising his big “Remigration Conference” which will take place in the East Midlands on 26 April. The star speaker is Renaud Camus, a French racist author who coined the term “Great Replacement”.
Awkward
It’s quite a coup for a tiny fringe movement led by a former BNP knuckledragger like Smith to recruit this “literary giant” to headline an event. But there’s one problem.
Renaud Camus is gay.
Smith’s former leader Nick Griffin has led the campaign of online outrage, frothing in synthetic “Christian” rage at the idea that an “elderly homosexual” should be allowed to speak at a “nationalist” event.
Griffin pretends to believe that proximity to a gay man might damage the minds and souls of young fascists. Given his own very close relationship during his teens and early 20s with Martin Webster, Griffin perhaps thinks himself an expert on this topic.
PA’s online activists have begun to echo Griffin’s ranting. But Camus’s sexual orientation might turn out to be the least of Smith’s problems.
During the past week, Smith has come out as a cheerleader for Donald Trump, endorsing White House pressure on Ukraine to surrender to Putin. Until recently Smith had kept fairly quiet on this issue, unlike his former friend turned enemy Collett, who is among Putin’s chief disciples on the British far right.
Twitter storm(troopers)
But facing a cacophony of tweets from about 80% of the online right endorsing Trump and Putin, Smith felt he had to join in.
His problem is that next month’s star speaker Renaud Camus is among the minority on Europe’s far-right who take the opposite, pro-Ukrainian line. In recent days Camus has explicitly hailed Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “a hero” and denounced Trump and Putin in strong terms.
Camus is aligned with a minority faction that includes those who think of themselves as Europe’s leading far-right intellectuals (in some cases hardcore national socialists) who might not go as far as Camus in supporting Zelenskyy personally but strongly oppose the Russian invasion
On this issue, Camus is aligned with a minority faction that includes those who think of themselves as Europe’s leading far-right intellectuals (in some cases hardcore national socialists) who might not go as far as Camus in supporting Zelenskyy personally but strongly oppose the Russian invasion: Casa Pound in Italy, III Weg in Germany, Spanish nazi Isabel Peralta, and the UK’s own Heritage & Destiny.
One of the other speakers at next month’s Homeland conference is on the opposite wing. Lena Kotré is a member of the regional parliament (Landtag) in Brandenburg for the German far-right party AfD. Her party is one of the most pro-Putin forces in European politics.
Anti-fascist successful infiltration
Last December, Kotré spoke at a secretive conference in Switzerland on the same “remigration” theme that Smith and the Homeland Party have attached to their event next month. Her hosts in Switzerland were an openly nazi organisation called Junge Tat whose security team were drawn from Blood & Honour. German anti-fascist journalists succeeded in infiltrating the conference.
Kotré and Camus might agree about “remigration” (i.e. deporting non-whites from Europe). But they stand at opposite poles of the dispute about Ukraine and Russia that is causing increasingly personal attacks among European racists and fascists.
For Kenny Smith and Mark Collett, it might all be a question of clicks, likes, and donate buttons. But for Ukrainians it’s a matter of life and death. Opportunist “leaders” of the British far right can’t paper over ideological cracks forever.
Trouble lies ahead for the hatemongers, with their own followers yet again coming to blows.
