Some of Europe’s most extreme fascists – including the UK’s Nick Griffin – are heading to Madrid later this month for an international gathering where the far right’s pro-Putinism will be on noisy display.
Several of those hosting the event conference were at the recent St Petersburg event run by Aleksandr Dugin and the Putinist oligarch Konstantin Malofeev.
Spanish puppets
But its central figure is someone very well known to Searchlight: the Italian fascist Roberto Fiore, who has several Spanish puppets in his Europe-wide network.
Fiore’s main front organisation “Alliance for Peace and Freedom” will hold the meeting in Madrid on 23 November, as part of a weekend of fascist events across the Spanish capital marking the 50th anniversary of the death of Spain’s military dictator General Franco.
Fiore’s main Spanish ally Democracia Nacional has advertised the conference as an openly pro-Russian event.
The conference announcement tries to stay on the right side of Spanish hate crime laws by speaking of “Masonic-globalist power groups” rather than Jews, but we expect the main guest speaker, Fiore’s old ally Nick Griffin, will leave the audience in little doubt who are the main targets of such slogans.
Murderous
Griffin, Fiore and APF served their Russian masters at several events supporting Moscow’s Syrian puppet Bashar al-Assad before the murderous Syrian Ba’athist regime was overthrown last year.
Anti-fascists will be watching the Madrid event closely to see whether the fastest growing Spanish fascist group Núcleo Nacional is represented.
NN’s march in Madrid last weekend descended into mob violence after speeches outside the Spanish parliament by its best-known activist, notorious antisemite Isabel Peralta, and its masked leader Ivan Rico.
A large contingent from DN marched with their own banner and DN thugs are thought to have been responsible for provoking violent clashes with police that led to the rally being broken up and several arrests.
Rabble rouser
A veteran DN rabble-rouser Enrique Lemus is one of NN’s leaders and video shows that he was opening speaker at the rally.
We can assume that Lemus will attend the DN event on 23 November as he shares the pro-Putin views of other DN leaders such as Gonzalo Martín who was among Spanish delegates at Dugin’s recent St Petersburg conference. But will other Núcleo leaders such as the Rico brothers and Peralta attend?
Peralta’s closest international allies are pro-Ukrainian, including the German neo-nazi party Dritte Weg and the Anglo-American ‘intellectual’ nazi magazine Heritage and Destiny where she is European correspondent.
The lead article in H&D’s latest edition is a joint effort by Peralta and its pro-Ukrainian assistant editor Peter Rushton, an old enemy of Griffin for the past twenty years.
As well as Peralta at least one other leading figure in NN is also known to be pro-Ukrainian. This is Spain’s best known “white power” music star and hate promoter Alberto Gonzalo de Juan, usually known by his stage name Alberto Pugilato.
If Peralta and Pugilato attend the Madrid conference, former Cambridge boxing blue Nick Griffin might need to get back in training and bring a knuckleduster rather than boxing gloves.
Realignments
The other mystery is how these international realignments affect the two largest British nazi groups.
Patriotic Alternative’s führer Mark Collett is openly pro-Putin, so it was no surprise to see him welcoming American Jared Taylor as a PA conference speaker last month, but PA’s other overseas guest, Dan Eriksson from the tiny groupuscule Free Sweden, is pro-Ukraine.
Eriksson also used to be an ally of Fiore but is now an enemy, and for as long as Fiore stays close to Nick Griffin, there’s no chance of the APF leader building a relationship with Collett and PA. But via H&D, Peralta is friendly with PA’s deputy führer Laura Towler and her jailbird husband Sam Melia.
Bitter rival
Adding to the confusion, Martin Sellner, leader of the Identitarian Movement of Austria, is a friend of Collett’s bitter rival Kenny Smith and his Homeland Party, while Nick Griffin hates both Collett and Smith.
It can’t be easy for European nazis on the conference circuit, especially after a few drinks, to keep track of who hates whom most.
