Author Archives: Searchlight Team

Far right and nazis mobilise on Madrid streets

Peralta poses with German neo-nazi Matthias Fischer next to the monument to the
Francoist División Azul (Blue Division) during his visit to Madrid in November

The Spanish election results have served to energise the more astute of nazi elements, who are busy bolstering links with like-minded Europeans. Roger Pearce reports

This article was first published in the Winter 2023/24 of Searchlight magazine

A narrow victory for Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his allies has brought a coalition of conservatives, populists and open nazis onto Madrid’s streets. While these forces are too divided to form a credible opposition to Sánchez, the Spanish far right has greater momentum than at any time since the death of Franco. And Spanish nazis are again seeking to network with some of the most militant Hitler-worshippers in Europe.

Isabel Peralta, a 21-year-old history student, has been seen regularly at the violent demonstrations outside the headquarters of Sánchez’s party in Calle de Ferraz. Apologists for the conservatives and populists who claim to lead these demonstrations have tried to argue that Peralta was shouted down and banned from later demonstrations, but this is blatantly untrue.

Although it is true that the events included a wide range of political tendencies, the fact is that Peralta continued to be visible on the front line, together with other leading figures on the Spanish fascist and nazi scene. The Falangist anthem Cara al Sol and other songs and symbols of Spain’s anti-democratic past have been regular features at Calle Ferraz.

Football hooligan gangs and skinheads have also played a prominent role in the street violence, and police have often had to use tear gas to disperse the crowds. Peralta and her allies, who include nazi veterans active since the 1960s, hope to channel the more intelligent elements of these mobs into a new, cadre-based organisation called Sección de Asalto (Assault Section), whose objectives are obvious from its name and its initials, SA.

This blatant nazi symbolism is unsurprising. Peralta has never disguised her commitment to national socialism, which led to her being excluded from Germany. She has continued to maintain links with one of Germany’s most militant neo-nazi parties, Dritte Weg, whose leader Matthias Fischer visited Madrid for the November 20th anniversary of the death of Falangist leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera.

This was the second time that a Dritte Weg delegation has visited Madrid. They are also part of a European network that includes the Nordic Resistance Movement (banned in Finland as a terrorist organisation), several football hooligan mobs and Peralta’s friends at the British nazi magazine Heritage and Destiny.

Members of Peralta’s SA were in Munich in November to join Dritte Weg’s celebration of the centenary of Adolf Hitler’s “Beer Hall Putsch”.

At the start of December, Peralta spoke in Valencia at a meeting organised by another small ultra-militant fascist group España 2000, led by a controversial lawyer called José Luis Roberto, who has combined violent extremism with owning gyms and clothing companies and is also known for representing “night club entrepreneurs” and the prostitution industry.

Another fascist lawyer linked to Peralta’s own organisation is José Luis Jerez Riesco, a prolific writer and activist whose involvement with the most militant sections of Spanish fascism dates back to the days of CEDADE and the notorious violent networker Stefano Delle Chiaie. Jerez and another CEDADE veteran, retired architect Ramon Bau who now leads the openly nazi Devenir Europeo, are among the septuagenarians advising Peralta.

Bigots whipped up hatred to incite Dublin riots

Austin Harney explains how the right uses social media to spread poisonous lies about asylum-seekers and specifically how this tactic led to recent events in Dublin

This article was first published in the Winter 2023/24 issue of Searchlight magazine

The end of November saw the Irish far right organise a dangerous riot in Dublin after three schoolchildren and a school care assistant were attacked and stabbed outside a city centre primary school.

A five-year-old girl and the care assistant were seriously wounded; the girl was stabbed in the chest and lay critically ill in hospital for several days. The care assistant, Leanne Flynn Keogh, was wounded when she flung herself in front of the children to protect them.

The five-year-old’s life may have been saved by nurse Leo Ralph Publico, who happened to be passing. He gave first aid and called the emergency services. A Deliveroo driver used his crash helmet to bring down the attacker, who was then arrested.

On social media, far-right agitators immediately blamed the attack on Islamist terrorism and within hours a serious riot had erupted, with the capital descending into chaos during the evening rush hour. The Irish police force, the Garda Síochána, lined up with shields as bottles and fireworks were thrown. The rioters set fire to a police car, which exploded, and other vehicles, including a bus. Shops were attacked and looted.

In fact, the riot had been incited online through a quickfire far-right campaign of lies and incitement. First, the incident was mentioned on the “Ireland is Full” hashtag, claiming a “cowardly terrorist attack” had taken place. Even if that were true, the author could not possibly have known at that time, and it transpired later this was not the case: police said there was no terrorist motive.

But that did not stop the contagion. One of the first to leap in was Britain First leader Paul Golding, who posted: “Reports of multiple children stabbed in Ireland. Eyewitnesses claim ‘a man of foreign descent’ went on a stabbing spree injuring at least three.” Another tweet, from “Michael O”Keefe”, went further, claiming a foreigner had entered a school and stabbed five children, and multiple children were dead.

All of this was untrue, but the far right in Ireland, the UK and abroad continued to inflame the story. A Dutch right-winger posted a video claiming to show the attack, but it was of a totally unrelated incident several months earlier. A UK far right-right account claimed the suspect in the attack was on a terrorist watchlist – this was also untrue.

Someone called “Aney Stokes”, who has over 50,000 followers, then posted using the hashtag “Enough is Enough”, calling for people to assemble in Dublin and “stand with your fellow Irish people”. Calls such as this then led to far-right and anti-immigrant crowds assembling and the subsequent riots.

The ironies of the story are that the nurse who tended to the wounded five-year-old is from the Philippines, the Deliveroo driver who tackled the attacker is Brazilian and that a Frenchman intervened to stop the attack and was himself injured. The five-
year-old, although Irish-born, is the child of
non-Irish parents.

The man suspected of carrying out the attack, Riad Bouchaker, is an Irish citizen; he has been in Ireland for 20 years, but is believed to be originally from Algeria. He has been charged with attempted murder.

Despite such events, politicians and some of the media view the far right as harmless, with low support in elections. However, extremist parties exploited the pandemic, with anti-vaxxers and conspiracy communities. The government’s failure to deal with ongoing social problems has also given them further opportunity to grow.

Far-right parties are feeding the poison that immigrants are taking Irish people’s homes during a housing crisis, under the slogan “Ireland is full”, they are exploiting farmers’ fears about environmental policies, and they are targeting LGBTQ+ and disabled people. Earlier this year, an angry group shut down a public library in Cork for having LGBTQ+ books on its shelves.

Populist PVV take most seats in Dutch elections – Charles Fox analyses the results

Geert Wilders’ anti-immigration party gained the most seats in November’s elections, but forming a government in the Netherlands in never simple. Charles Fox sees parallels with past events

This article originally appeared in the Winter 2023/24 issue of Searchlight magazine

Even by the standards of the often higgledy-piggledy world of Dutch politics, the results of the general election on 22 November sent the system into something of a spin with the emergence of populist Geert Wilders’ anti-immigration/anti-Islam Party for Freedom (PVV) as the largest group in the Second Chamber (or House of Representatives, roughly the equivalent of the UK’s House of Commons), with 37 seats out of 150. The party with the next largest number has 25.

As is usual following a general election under the country’s proportional representation system, the various parties – there are 15 with at least one elected member – are horse-trading to assemble a coalition. (No single party has formed a majority government in the country for well over a century.) Also as is usual, the pre-election cabinet remains in office until a new arrangement is finalised: at worst, negotiating such coalitions has been known to take the best part of a year. What is not usual this time around is that the lingering Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, is no longer leader of a political party and is not even in the Chamber.

The election was brought about by the collapse of the regime sometimes referred to as “Rutte IV”, the fourth coalition cabinet led by the man who has been Prime Minister since 2010. The fracture was largely centred on immigration policy, in particular proposals to reduce the figures for family members allowed to join asylum-seekers in the country.

Rutte’s own centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) was behind the proposals, with Christian Democratic Appeal pretty much onside. The two other coalition partners – Democrats 66 and the Christian Union – were not happy. Although the CU might be considered conservative, it is strongly opposed to splitting up families, especially refugees from war-torn regions. The rift was declared irreconcilable, and a general election was called.

Rutte announced that he would not lead the VVD into the election (he was replaced by Dilan Yeşilgöz) and would stand down as Prime Minister once a new government was formed. There was a moment of embarrassment for Yeşilgöz, who immigrated to the Netherlands as a child, when she discovered she had dual nationality, which the VVD explicitly discourages. She quickly renounced her apparently unwitting Turkish citizenship.

Rightward swing

Democrats 66 was the biggest loser in the election, dropping from 24 to 9 seats, while the tiny CU fell from 5 to 3. Coupled with Wilders’ PVV leaping from 17 to 37 seats, the fledgling New Social Contract party (NSC), which favours immigration reduction, with 20 seats and the right-wing populist Farmer-Citizen Movement rising from 1 seat to 7, this looks like a landslide swing to the right, but Dutch politics is never quite that simple.

The two coalition parties that had argued for tighter immigration were also seriously punished by the electorate. Rutte’s former outfit went from being the biggest party in the assembly with 34 seats to third place with 24, while Christian Democratic Appeal fell from 15 to 5 seats. Meanwhile, the Green Left-Labour alliance jumped from 17 to 25 seats.

Certainly, there has been an electoral swing to the right, but there is too much inconsistency in the results to characterise this as simply an anti immigration result. There is even doubt as to whether “far right” is an adequate description of Wilders and his party. He is a nationalist, generally anti-immigration and particularly anti-Muslim immigration. His opposition to Islam has manifested itself at various times in him calling for a nationwide ban on the Quran, bans and/or taxes on headscarves and the closing of all mosques. He is strongly anti-EU, which he wants the Netherlands to leave (a move unsurprisingly dubbed “Nexit”).

On the other hand, the party is pro-LGB rights (it teeters a bit on transgender), including same-sex marriage – not always a feature of far-right politics. Unlike many far-right European groupings, there is no anti-Semitic strand.

Some would argue that Wilders is in many ways a successor to the late LPF leader Wilhelmus “Pim” Fortuyn, who was assassinated in 2002. Like Wilders, he did not really fit the mould of a stereotypical neo-nazi. He did hate multiculturalism, was anti-immigration and especially anti-Muslim. A point on which the two appear to differ (although this is perhaps splitting hairs) is that Wilders has stated that he does not hate Muslims, only Islam as a religion. Fortuyn claimed not to hate Islam, but to regard it as a “backward culture”.

Fortuyn was an openly gay man, and this certainly played into his aversion to Muslims. “I have no desire to go through the emancipation of women and homosexuals all over again” – a situation he feared would come about if Islam was allowed to flourish in the Netherlands.

Like the PVV now, Fortuyn’s party (the somewhat egotistically named Pim Fortuyn’s List (LPF)) presented a pick‘n’mix set of policies, straddling the political spectrum. He liked to portray himself as a “liberal” (in the US sense of the word), arguing that only by suppressing growing Islamisation could the Netherlands protect the hard-fought rights of women and the LGB community. It is a posture that Wilders has not attempted openly thus far, but he might do so as a lever in negotiations to form a coalition.

Expedient thinking

Normally outfits like the PVV are kept out of power by other parties declining to negotiate with them. This happened in 2017, when all the significant Dutch parties stated, even before election day, that they would not go into a coalition with PVV, which they regarded as beyond the pale. Six years later this seems less certain.

Wilders should face little difficulty in getting the Farmer-Citizens on board, enlarging his bloc to 44. To get past the halfway mark of 75, he will need to woo the NSC and the Rutte-less VVD. Weakened and with internal problems, VVD has ruled out joining such a cabinet, but is not ruling out propping up a Wilders-led coalition with a confidence and supply arrangement. NSC is signalling it is not exactly keen, but it will hold its nose and sit down for talks about cabinet posts.

It remains possible that PVV’s success in 2023 will prove a flash in the pan. The LPF made a significant impact in 2002, grabbing 26 seats in its first election campaign, but by the following year’s election it had shrunk to minnow status, retaining just 8 of those seats.

The big difference is that Fortuyn was shot and killed nine days before the first election, prompting an appreciable sympathy vote. In 2003, it was a ragbag personality cult that had been stripped of the vital personality. It is not clear what might prompt collapse on that scale for Wilders’ VVD.

Eco-fascism A new found ‘concern’ for the climate emergency – writes Luke Michael

Under the guise of concern for the planet, far-right parties are using green issues to legitimise and promote their extreme ideologies. Luke Michael highlights their tactics

This article originally appeared in the Winter 2023/24 issue of Searchlight magazine

As the climate and ecological crisis starts to devastate communities worldwide, more people will consider green issues and how to deal with them. According to the Office for National Statistics, 74% of the adult population is worried about climate change. But there are also concerns that this will be used by the far right to build support for its organisations and dangerous ideologies. An analysis of the web pages of Patriotic Alternative (PA) and its new splinter group the Homeland Party shows themes of nativism and romanticisation of the British countryside, as well as racist and anti-immigration rhetoric.

This is reminiscent of “Blood and Soil” ideology, described by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a nazi slogan used to convey the idea of the “Aryan” race and its territory. The “blood” is “Aryan” people, while the “soil” connects the “Aryan” people to the land by a special relationship. Groups such as PA and Homeland, while not directly employing the term, push similar ideas, in that allowing those without British ancestry into the country will have a “negative effect” on the soil. Homeland’s responses to the environment are nativist and can be closely connected to blood and soil ideology. It constantly refers to “our people”, who should be protected by those who have “put down roots”. This blood and soil ideology and anti-refugee rhetoric have also been evident in news posts on the Homeland website. These were posted last summer, for example, “Our people should come first in their homeland, not profits for ‘green’ energy firms and not climate refugees”, [and] “new houses, which will be for people who have migrated here from the third world and in doing so will exponentially increase their CO2 output”.

Furthermore, according to Homeland’s immigration policy, it would “put a moratorium on mass immigration to protect our people and our land”. It suggests that the people are connected to the land and any new people coming in is detrimental, an idea linked to blood and soil ideological thinking. The romanticisation of the countryside is also prevalent in Homeland ideology. This can be seen in an article that promotes working on organic countryside farms. It is also evident in a leaflet (pictured above) that has the tag line “Concrete the country? Or choose the right path […] Homeland Party The REAL green solution”. A darkened city skyline is juxtaposed with a countryside scene of a path bordered by traditional dry stone walls disappearing into the distance between green fields.

However, the Homeland ranks include those who are sceptical about the media and climate change. Some Homeland news posts, such as “The floor is lava” by a David Gardner, argue that some of the mainstream media are scaremongering on climate change to control the population. Another post by Gardner objects to a wind farm in Scotland, as this would “ravage” the countryside. This suggests Homeland’s main priority is the countryside and that its main solution to the climate and ecological emergency is to end migration. Green issues thus legitimise their extreme beliefs. Patriotic Alternative PA is a fascist, anti-Semitic, white nationalist organisation that also links the countryside to blood and soil ideas. This is made clear in the “our plan” page of its website. First, it states that only the British “indigenous” people can lay claim to the UK, and they should never become a “minority or second-class citizens in their ancestral homeland”. Second, they claim that the environment and British countryside are part of their “ancestral inheritance”. Like Homeland, PA claims that halting immigration will protect the countryside from house-building projects. Their claim that “a healthy and vibrant people needs space” connects with blood and soil ideology used by Nazi Germany as a justification for the seizure of land and the expulsion of local populations.

In another web article, PA criticises Survival International, an organisation that fights for the tribal people’s land rights, for not campaigning to save the British countryside from construction projects, which PA claims will make way for “outsider tribes to occupy and replace the native inhabitants”. This suggests that PA thinks it has a special connection to the British countryside, which is linked to blood and soil ideology, but it also reveals its white nationalist framework and belief in the “great replacement” theory. Imagery PA regularly uses nature and countryside imagery on its website. A post about the far right’s “2023 international day of pro-white Action” listed several PA events for the day. One was in Yorkshire at Captain Cook’s Monument, featuring banners with slogans “White Lives Matter” and “Anti-Whites rule over us” against a backdrop of fields. The post also featured a picture of a stone with the words, “we will not be replaced”, painted on it.

Another image used by PA is a picture of a sky lantern with “White Lives Matter” painted on it. Ironically, according to animal charity RSPCA, these lanterns are themselves a danger to nature and wildlife. In March 2022, PA delivered leaflets through doors in the town of Springwell, depicting a red squirrel and entitled “Love your country – Love the countryside”. The tag lines spoke of protecting native species, stopping building on the green belt and banning kosher/halal meat. The use of the red squirrel, displaced by the grey in Victorian times, is not only a symbol of nature but an echo of the great replacement theory. Britain First used this symbolism on Facebook back in 2016. The countryside is also used for more internal events.

In July 2023, PA organised a weekend summer camp and hike, which reportedly had 148 in attendance. This event was also badged with a sign of a red squirrel. During the hike, PA members posed for a banner drop, again with a countryside background, with banners stating, “We will not be replaced [and] white lives matter”. One of the main guests was Michèle Renouf, who as Searchlight previously reported, was arrested in Germany for hate speech, and regularly attends Holocaust denial meetings. It is clear that some in the far right will use the climate crisis to spread fascism. Environmental movements must be alert that it could be a prime target for eco fascists.

Don’t underestimate Vox – warns David Karvala

Since the elections, the ultra-right Vox party has been busy mobilising street protests, but has failed to have a great impact. David Karvala warns, however, it is too early to relax

This article originally appeared in Winter 2023/24 issue of Searchlight magazine

In our Autumn issue we carried an analysis of the biggest Spanish far right party, Vox, and the growing influence of its more clearly fascist wing. We warned that their recent electoral setback could further reinforce this section of the party, more oriented on street politics. Events since have confirmed that prediction.

As Pedro Sánchez’s Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) laboriously put together deals to get a parliamentary majority and form a government, the right and far right became more and more vociferous in their denunciations of “concessions” to nationalist parties, especially the Catalan pro-independence parties. The PSOE’s acceptance of an amnesty for those who have peacefully promoted Catalan independence, especially around the 1 October 2017 referendum, was presented as treason. This led to big street protests involving the conservative Partido Popular (PP), Vox, and open neo-nazis.

In their shared indignation, they forget (or hide) the meetings in 1999 between representatives of the then PP Prime Minister, José María Aznar, and the Basque nationalist armed group ETA. These led to the PP reducing the repression against Basque prisoners in Spanish prisons.

Also forgotten are the PP’s repeated amnesties and pardons for tax dodgers and their own corrupt politicians.

Now they insist on defending the “independence of the judicial system …”, where many judges have Francoite sympathies and the courts habitually interfere in politics, overturning laws approved by democratically elected institutions. Even Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has denounced this “lawfare”.

A far-right fruit salad

Faced with a probable new centre left government — backed by all parties except the PP and Vox— the right started trying to win on the streets what it had lost in the ballot box.

The protests against a possible amnesty for Catalan activists started in October. In early November, these escalated into demonstrations in front of the PSOE headquarters in Calle Ferraz, Madrid. The largest action, on 6 November, involved thousands of protestors of various persuasions. Other actions were smaller and narrower. There were also some sizeable protests in other cities around the country.

On some nights in Madrid, a clearly fascist contingent tried to break through police lines to reach the PSOE offices, leading to arrests and charges. This police response —in fact much more moderate than their frequent repression against progressive social movements— caused indignation among far-right protestors, normally favourable to police charges.

In theory, the protests were spontaneous or called by new non-party groups. In reality, they were mainly promoted by Vox. They involved a wide range of forces, from the growing Trumpist sector of the PP, through Vox, to neo-nazis and other far-right groups.

The individuals participating were even more varied: conservative families in Lacoste sweaters from the richest parts of Madrid, ultra-traditional Catholic priests, rabid anti-abortionists, swastika-tattooed skinheads doing Nazi salutes … One night, protestors were joined by Tucker Carlson, the sacked former pro-Trump US Fox TV presenter who was visiting Vox.

The protests claimed that Spain would collapse if an amnesty is conceded, and some of the slogans focused on this. But they also included condemnations of Sánchez as a traitor, along with anti-communist, sexist and homophobic chants. Some leading far-right protestors even included in their social media posts denunciations of “globalism”, “woke” and the UN’s 2030 Agenda.

In fact, the newly formed Vox-led youth organisation Revuelta (Revolt), which made itself known with the protests, reproduces in its manifesto many of these standard themes of today’s fascist and neo-nazi groups.

Grave threat

All told, these were large scale right and far-right street protests, sustained over several weeks. They were not, of course, on the same scale as the attacks on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, or the copycat attack in the Brazilian capital on 8 January 2023, after Jair Bolsonaro’s party was defeated in the presidential elections.

Nonetheless, unchallenged, they represent a grave threat. If the newly formed government fulfils the promises it made to obtain a majority, these forces will find new reasons to protest.

The protestors’ diversity is both a strength and a weakness. It means they can involve people from beyond the neo-Nazi hard-core. But it also means they have profound internal differences. Vox denounces the PP as the “cowardly right”; some neo-nazi groups denounce Vox for being pro-Zionist and neoliberal.

But as the Le Pens (father and daughter) have shown in France, if they seem to be advancing, and if there is no broad and effective opposition, they can grow despite these divisions. The building of united movements against fascism is a more urgent task than ever.