Vladimir Putin’s intelligence service continues to use the European far right for both propaganda and terrorism. Some of the most pro-Moscow fascists from across the continent gathered last month at a luxury hotel in Rome, the Cristoforo Colombo, following an earlier event in Madrid.
As Searchlight recently reported, there have been police raids against a Russian-backed terrorist network known as ‘The Base’, which often recruits mentally unstable young men via Telegram.
Deranged loners
In some cases, such as the 16-year-old from Northumberland recently jailed for terrorist offences, these seem to have little connection with any ‘real world’ organised political group, but online grooming of deranged loners can still have deadly consequences. In other cases, such as recent police raids in Spain, there seems to be some form of terrorist cell in the non-virtual world as well as online.
Spanish fascism also sees some of the closest links between organised extremist groups and pro-Putin propaganda networks funded by the Russian intelligence services.
Last year the country’s fastest growing nazi gang Núcleo Nacional (who recently registered as a political party) played host to a Russian propagandist for the first meeting at its new Madrid headquarters.
NN seems to be divided over such questions, as two of its highest profile activists, ‘white power’ musician Alberto Pugilato and nazi fanatic Isabel Peralta are known to have pro-Ukrainian connections.
Putinist networker
But two of the older Falangist parties that last year merged (FE-Jons and La Falange) work with a third pro-Russian group Democracia Nacional that has longstanding ties to the leading Putinist networker Roberto Fiore.
Searchlight first exposed Fiore soon after he fled to the UK following the bombing of Bologna railway station by fascist terrorists in August 1980. He was safehoused by members of the League of St George, and soon built a political partnership with a wing of the National Front led by Nick Griffin.
This Fiore-Griffin partnership has had some ups and downs (mainly due to financial disputes) but ever since Griffin lost control of the BNP he has been increasingly dependent on his links with Fiore to provide him with an audience and access to donors. Their main vehicle is the “Alliance for Peace and Freedom” (which despite its name actually promotes fascism and Russian military aggression).
Ever since APF’s launch in 2015, Fiore has been its chairman. Griffin is supposedly his deputy, but there’s no doubt this is Fiore’s show.
Violent records
Other leading figures include Ioannis Lagos, a convicted thug from the banned Greek nazi party Golden Dawn, who was an MEP until 2024 and has been sentenced to 13 years in prison for crimes including weapons offences; Gonzalo Martín García from the Spanish fascists of DN; Yvan Benedetti from ‘Les Nationalistes’, a continuation under another name of a violent French nazi party L’Œuvre Française; and leaders of Heimat, a tiny rebranded remnant of what was once Germany’s largest neo-nazi party NPD.
Many of Fiore’s affiliates have little real existence as parties and they are often linked to political violence that has led them or their predecessors to be banned. Frequently they are also groups and leaders whose best days are behind them.
Fiore has mostly failed to win over leaders from the younger generation, but this also means there is no effective challenge to his leadership and no successor in sight even though he will be 67 this month.
Younger generation
It was obvious both at the Madrid conference last November and at the Rome event last month that while the Russian representative (from the ‘Brotherhood of Academists’ run by pro-Putin oligarch Konstantin Malofeev and his ‘intellectual’ front man Aleksandr Dugin) was in his 20s, almost all the other delegates were at least a generation older, often two generations.
On 14 March in Rome, Fiore’s line-up of speakers included Goran Davidović, who proclaims himself “Führer” of a Serbian nazi party, as well as three Spanish fascists, DN leader Pedro Chaparro, his colleague Gonzalo Martín, and Manuel Andrino, whose party La Falange shrank so far that it had to merge with former rivals FE-JONS. Davidović’s fellow Serb Misha Vacic greeted the Rome audience with a fascist salute.
Ever since his youth, Fiore has been partial to the cause of Romanian antisemites and their bloodthirsty pre-war leader Corneliu Codreanu, so it was no surprise to see his Romanian affiliate Cristian Dumitru among the speakers in Rome.
Zionist sellout
The main French speaker (as in Madrid last November) was Pierre-Marie Bonneau, a lawyer from Toulouse and veteran of several tiny fascist splinter groups. Bonneau and Benedetti have recently launched yet another party under the name “Front Nationaliste”, attempting to claim the mantle of Jean-Marie Le Pen and his very similarly named “Front National” which they claim has been sold out to “Zionism” by Le Pen’s daughter Marine and her “Rassemblement National”.
The panel in Madrid was almost identical to the Madrid conference, including Gloria Callarelli, an Italian fascist journalist who writes for Fiore’s party Forza Nuova.
The German speaker was convicted antisemite Claus Cremer, who has been an active neo-nazi in several parties for more than 25 years and after a few years in “Die Rechte” is now in “Heimat”.
One of Fiore’s more recent recruits present at both events was Zois Bechlis, a former naval officer who leads a tiny party that tries to be successor to the banned Greek nazi movement Golden Dawn.
Griffin absent
The biggest surprise in Rome was the absence of Nick Griffin, who had been expected to speak. Perhaps he is now so much yesterday’s man that Fiore and his Russian backers will prefer to recruit Mark Collett for future conferences? Collett has already attended at least one Duginist conference, and he frequently pumps out Russian propaganda on video streams and social media channels.
And the biggest mystery continues to be why Russian propagandists and neo-nazis seem able to tour Europe with no interference from the authorities. In this latest case, the Hotel Cristoforo Colombo knew perfectly well days in advance that they were hosting a gathering of nazis and Putinist agents, yet their management and owners seemed happy to go ahead.
Their next pro-Putin festival will be in Belgrade, where Russia has for many years been forging connections to football hooligans and other extremists.
Top photo: As Roberto Fiore speaks In Rome at his latest poorly attended “international conference”, the young Russian delegate from Aleksandr Dugin’s “Brotherhood of Academists” seems depressed as he considers how to explain this latest failure to his Russian intelligence masters, but is comforted by Spanish Falangist leader Manuel Andrino, who knows that even the tiniest parties can be a meal ticket for life.