So, if Marine Le Pen and her Rassemblement National have rejected antisemitism and now stand with Jewish people, how do they explain this? Her UK representative, Max Begon, recently addressing the conference of a party led by a man who once wrote that synagogue bombing was “well-intentioned”.

As Searchlight has reported on other occasions, Andrew Brons, BD’s Deputy Chairman and one of its founders, wrote this in a letter to National Socialist Movement leader Colin Jordan’s wife, Francoise Dior.

Brons was young at the time but has never expressed regret for his remarks nor apologised to the Jewish community. He was later elected as a Euro MP for the BNP.

Dior and other members of the NSM were eventually jailed for a campaign of synagogue arson attacks in London.

The far-right Traditional Britain Group has announced that the guest speaker at its annual Xmas Social in central London on 16 December will be Rhodri Phillips, or Viscount St Davids. They describe him as someone who “got himself into hot water for criticisms he made of the pro-EU campaigner and self-publicist Guyanese-origin Gina Miller, who took the government to court over Brexit…”

Well, not quite. In fact, that’s a rather coy way of saying he offered money for someone to kill her.

In July 2017 he was convicted of sending malicious communications after posting on Facebook that he would pay “£5,000 for the first person to ‘accidentally’ run over this bloody troublesome first-generation immigrant”.

He was also convicted for offering £2000 to anyone who would “carve into pieces” a man who had been reported in the press as having turned down a five-bedroom council house for his family of eight.

Philips was jailed for 12 weeks. Gina Miller had to employ professional security for herself and her family as a result.

TBG is a well-funded far-right group at whose events right wing conservatives rub shoulders with members of further-right extremist and fascist groups. Jacob Rees-Mogg was guest speaker in 2013 (pictured above with TBG founder Gregory Lauder-Frost) despite being warned by Searchlight about what TBG was. He later said this had been a mistake.

Two years ago, the guest speaker at its annual conference was Katie Fanning (below), now number two in deranged Hitler-lookalike Alek Yerbury’s openly fascist National Support Detachment.

Last year’s conference heard from two members of the far-right German AfD and from fascist lawyer, Sam Swerling, the recently deceased Vice President of TBG (see Searchlight obituary: https://www.searchlightmagazine.com/2023/11/good-riddance-we-say/)

Former leading lights in Vox Macarena Olona, pictured above right with party General Secretary Ignacio Garriga, and Iván Espinosa de los Monteros (left)

Before the parliamentary elections in July many people in the Spain feared a right-wing victory, and the formation of a coalition government between the main conservative party, Partido Popular (PP), and the far-right party Vox.

In the event, the PP gained the highest share of the vote, rising from 5 million in 2019 to 8 million. But Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), current Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Labour-type Socialist Party, came an unexpectedly close second with 7.8 million votes, up from 6.8 million last time.

One of the big losers was Vox, which lost more than 600,000 votes, dropping to just over 3 million; in terms of seats gained, it lost out even more, dropping from 52 to 33 MPs.

To the left of the PSOE, there is Sumar, a new coalition led by Yolanda Díaz, the current Employment Minister and Vice-President. It was meant to be a bigger and broader replacement of Podemos, but Sumar actually lost votes and MPs compared with the Podemos-led alliance in 2019.

The overall result in these latest elections made it almost impossible for the right to form a government. This was a great relief. The elections were originally due in autumn 2023, but the then Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez brought them forward following a surge in the municipal and regional elections of 28 May by the right and far right.

With the PP and Vox gaining control of many administrations in many regional governments and local councils women’s and LGBT+ rights have come under attack, as have programmes of historical memory that aim to gain justice for the loved ones of victims of Franco’s dictatorship, whose bodies remain in unmarked graves across the country. They are also pushing against the recognition of (official) languages other than Castilian (Spanish).

In one Valencian town, the newly formed council tried to ban children’s magazines published in Catalan from the local library, but was forced to back down after protests. In another town, the film Lightyear (a spin-off from Toy Story) was banned because it featured a fleeting same-sex kiss between two women.

Vox today

The election setback for the far right contrasts widely with the growth of the right across Europe and has been heralded as a sign that ‘Spain is different’, with Guardian headlines such as ‘Spain bucks European trend of shift towards far right’.

Other good news is that a series of key figures have resigned their positions in Vox, most notably Iván Espinosa de los Monteros. He was a founder member of the party and its main parliamentary spokesperson in the previous legislature. He quit citing personal reasons, but his departure was seen widely as a sign of division between the ultra-liberal, neo-conservative wing — which is losing influence — and the outright fascist wing, which has been gradually taking control of the party, adopting politics based on Catholic fundamentalism and Falangism, the Spanish form of fascism born in the 1930s. An earlier high-profile resignation was that of Macarena Olona, who abandoned Vox in 2022 and spoke of nazi tendencies within the party. Olona was a Vox member in the Congress of Deputies.

However, as often happens with the far right, confusion flourishes.

Some commentators exaggerate the differences between those who have left Vox and those who remain, presenting the former as ‘liberals’. They forget that Espinosa de los Monteros — like Olona before him — was Vox’s spokesperson in Congress when it was promoting brutally racist and sexist positions, going as far as to harass women MPs. Other commentators mistakenly put the party differences down to personal rivalries.

In reality, Vox seems to be following the same pattern as the German far-right party, Alternative for Deutschland (AfD). This initially started out as a right-wing split from mainstream conservatism, but became the new home for increasing numbers of outright fascists and neo-nazis. AfD has seen a long battle between the racist and nationalist conservative hard-right faction and the truly fascist wing led by Björn Höcke. The fascist wing is now in charge, so the AfD is in effect a fascist party (and such organisations operate on top-down control, not bottom-up democracy!).

Vox includes members, even among its leading lights, who simply want a more extremist version of the conservative PP. But, over time, it has attracted individuals who do not simply want slightly more extreme institutional politics, but want to put in questions, from the radical right perspective, the whole system of liberal democracy: that is, fascists.

The strengthening of this faction has contributed to the resignations of party members willing to promote racism, sexism, homophobia, and the attempted elimination of Catalan and Basque national rights etc, but who are interested in neither the rhetoric of a radical break with the current system nor in building a real fascist movement.

The indications are that Vox is closer than ever to becoming a fascist party. The setback it suffered on 23 July may help accelerate the process, with more of those who predominantly want an institutional party returning to the PP, leaving a harder core in charge that is willing to focus on street politics.

New home for extremists

This is especially the case in Catalunya. Here, a decade ago, the former Le Pen-type party Plataforma per Catalunya was the strongest far-right electoral project in the whole of the Spanish state. It almost got into the Catalan parliament in 2010; in 2011, it gained councillors across Catalunya, going as far as to become the second largest party in one city. Thanks to a campaign led by Unity Against Fascism and Racism (UCFR), it was defeated in every election from then on, falling from 67 councillors to just 8 in the 2015 municipal elections.

The party ended up disbanding, with some leading members assimilating into Vox. They may have numbered just 30–40, but these were experienced and committed far-right activists, not simply discontented conservative voters, who rapidly began to take leading positions in the party. They include neo-nazis who have led violent physical attacks on children’s homes sheltering migrant children.

Vox General Secretary Ignacio Garriga, from Catalunya, has made clear his support for far-right thugs involved in street violence, especially targeting Catalan independence supporters. He himself broke off a speech to go and physically confront local people who were heckling an election meeting in July. (Paradoxically, Garriga is black: his mother is from Equatorial Guinea in central Africa, a former Spanish colony.)

In any case, Vox is most certainly a far-right party and, with more than 3 million voters, it is a significant and malignant influence on Spanish politics. But, whatever the exact diagnosis, it is a serious problem.

We must stop them

If one typical reaction to Vox is confusion, the other is passivity. Some newspaper columnists have suggested ignoring Vox, believing that it will just collapse, while others have expressed the view that it is unstoppable. There is little or no serious analysis of what strategies have previously been proven effective in stopping the far right.

This is disappointing, especially given that one such significant example is the defeat of Plataforma per Catalunya in 2015, following a united, focused campaign led by UCFR.

Another key lesson are the series of victories achieved through united struggles against the far right in Britain. These range from the work of the Anti-Nazi League in the 1970s and the defeat of, first, the British National Party and then the English Defence League to, more recently, local protests led by Stand Up To Racism and others against the rump far right in towns across Britain. Another example is KEERFA, the united movement in Greece, whose efforts put the neo-nazis of Golden Dawn behind bars.

These fightbacks show how the broad united struggle against Vox across the Spanish state can be successful – and must be extended.

David Karvala is a founder member and one of the spokespeople of Unity Against Fascism and Racism, the Catalan sister organisation of Stand Up To Racism. He is a co-ordinator of the international network World Against Racism and Fascism and a member of the anti-capitalist group, Marx21.net

This article was first published in the Autumn 2023 issue of Searchlight magazine 

Ilias Kasidiaris   Credit DTRocks

The failure of neo-nazi Golden Dawn to pass the electoral threshold of 3% in the 2019 Greek general election, along with the disintegration of its organisational network and the conviction of its leadership in October 2020 on charges of forming a criminal organisation at the end of a five-year long trial, gave the impression that the political and electoral appeal of this particular form of neo-fascism had started to recede.

However, this did not mark the end of the electoral presence of the far right in Greece. Far-right Greek Solution, led by Kyriakos Velopoulos, did manage to enter Parliament in 2019. But, above all, there were signs that, despite the impressive anti-fascist mobilisation that coincided with the end of the Golden Dawn trial, the far right maintained a political dynamic.

The Greek government’s answer to this challenge on the eve of the 2023 general election was to find ways to prevent any party directly or indirectly controlled by persons convicted on charges, such as those of which the Golden Dawn leadership had been accused, of contesting the election.

The main concern was that Ilias Kasidiaris, who was convicted and jailed for his involvement in running a criminal organisation, namely Golden Dawn, would try to either set up a political party under his own leadership, or form one that he controlled, but without necessarily direct participation. In contrast to other leaders of Golden Dawn, even as he sat behind bars, Kasidiaris continued to maintain a political presence, mainly through speeches made in prison that were broadcast on YouTube.

The Greek government’s legislative initiative prohibited the participation of Kasidiaris’s own new party, called The Greeks and formed in 2020, in elections. However, for the elections that took place in May and June 2023, it became evident that Kasidiaris had a ‘plan B’. He announced his support for a small and, until then, unknown party called the Spartans, made up of individuals from the far right, but without any leading members of Golden Dawn. The party was small and did not really wage any campaign, but the call by Kasidiaris was widely reproduced in various far-right social media and Telegram channels.

As a result of his call to support the Spartans, the party managed to obtain an impressive 4.68% of the national vote and elected 12 members of Parliament, the highest proportion of the vote for far-right parties.

This was a harsh reminder that a significant segment of the electorate was looking for a party such as Golden Dawn or similar, and that it views Kasidiaris as a political leader, to the extent it would follow his electoral recommendation. This points to the continuous appeal of this particular version of neo-fascist politics in Greece. What is also important – and worrying – is that the 25 June election saw an increase in broader support for the far right.

This included Velopoulos’s Greek Solution party, which survived the pressures from the other far-right parties, coming just behind the Spartans with 4.4% of the vote. In addition, a new party, Nike (Victory), which represents a version of the religious far right with strong connections to particular ultra-conservative segments of the Orthodox Church, managed to gain 3.7% and elect 10 members of Parliament.

As a result, the 25 June election saw a combined share of the vote for the far right of 12.8%. The three parties have their differences, but they nevertheless share the same ultra-nationalist, authoritarian and racist-xenophobic outlook.

Neo-liberal

There is still open debate on the reasons for this resurgence of the far right. But we can point in a number of directions.

One significant factor was a broader right-wing shift in terms of both the political debate and forms of governance. The governing New Democracy party, under Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has opted for a cynical combination of aggressive neo-liberal reforms, taking a very authoritarian stance and adopting anti-immigrant and anti-refugee policies that have made this aspect of far-right politics part of the political mainstream.

Moreover, the defeat over the previous decade of the mass movements that campaigned against European Union-dictated austerity, which took the form of a supposedly left government implementing austerity politics, created a broad sense of disillusionment, but also disorientation among the popular classes in Greek society during this period.

The inability of the left to deal with some of the consequences of the pandemic measures gave space to conspiracy theories that helped to increase the appeal of the far right. Above all, it became obvious that the left had failed to take a leading role in countering the right-wing rhetoric that would have prevented the shift of some segments of the population to the far right.

And, as we painfully realised in the 2010s, the far right is not simply an electoral dynamic, it is also responsible for concrete forms of violence. Despite the fact that there has not been a resurgence of an organisational apparatus such as that of Golden Dawn, there has been a return of far-right violence. The most recent examples were the vigilante patrols that went out to capture ‘illegal migrants’ in Thrace near the Greek-Turkish border, co-ordinated by local far-right activists, including a Greek Solution member of Parliament.

Kasidiaris is currently running for mayor of Athens. His conviction means that he will be prohibited from assuming office if elected, but the law does not prohibit him standing. This poses a big challenge for the anti-fascist movement. One important development is that the broader radical, anti-capitalist left has agreed on the candidacy of Kostas Papadakis, one of the lawyers who represented victims in the Golden Dawn trial.

Panagiotis Sotiris is a journalist working in Athens

This article was first published in the Autumn issue of Searchlight magazine

Nazi crew The National Front on the terraces in 1987  Pic credit: Searchlight

It has long been known that the state uses undercover agents to infiltrate political organisations and feed back to the security services all manner of information. The quality of this intelligence, however, is another matter. Recent revelations about police infiltration of an anti-fascist group of football supporters is a case in point.

In 2014, the then Home Secretary Theresa May announced a public inquiry into undercover policing to investigate such outrages. This was prompted by the revelation that undercover officers had gathered intelligence on the family of Stephen Lawrence, infiltrating their campaign for a properly conducted police investigation into the murder of Stephen in 1993 by racist thugs.

Others who have been on the receiving end of appalling behaviour from the Metropolitan Police Special Demonstration Squad, for instance, have now bravely come forward. This includes Helen Steel, of McLibel fame, and other women who were deceived into having relationships with men who, it later transpired, were undercover police officers. In some cases, the relationships led to children. These officers had been given the identities of dead children to provide cover for their work.

Left was main target

The inquiry, led by retired judge Sir John Mitting, is far from completing its work, but the initial findings include much of interest to anti-fascists. Mitting published an interim report in June, presenting his findings into operations between 1968 and 1982, with later years still to be investigated. It is estimated that between 1968 and 2010 some 1,000 groups were spied on. Unsurprisingly, the main targets were anti-fascists and left-wing organisations, with extreme right-far groups considered to be of lesser interest.

Undercover cops such as ‘Doug Edwards’ ‘Paul Gray’ and ‘Colin Clark’ had been set to ‘work’ spying on anti-fascists as part of their infiltration of the Socialist Workers Party. In particular, some officers focused on West Ham football supporters campaigning against fascist activity at the club’s ground.

In the early 1980s, the British Movement (BM) was targeting working-class teenagers at football grounds and music gigs, both in terms of recruitment and to attack the left. There was a BM group on the West side of Upton Park, based around the vicious Morgan brothers. (One of the Morgans later resurfaced in the Football Lads Alliance and mobilised racist Hammers fans.) Several were BM Leader Guard thugs.

Johnny Clark, an active East London anti-fascist, told Searchlight: ‘Twenty‑five to 30 West Ham fans and supporters of the Anti-Nazi League (ANL) regularly leafleted fans at the gates of the ground in 1981, when the ANL was relaunched. This was to counter an emerging BM threat.’

Things came to a head a few years later when West Ham hooligans from the Inter City Firm seriously took on the BM thugs in the Boleyn Tavern. After that, BM was never a significant presence at the ground. The National Front (NF) also turned up regularly at West Ham selling Bulldog, a Young NF hate sheet, round the back of stadium until, under pressure, the club banned them.

Leeds, Chelsea, Leicester and Tottenham ANL supporters were among those who also leafleted the terraces at this time.

The spycops made no difference to Hammers ANL or the ANL nationally. As Johnny Clark said: ‘The mass nature of what we did meant that any attempted infiltration wouldn’t have gained much. Some of those around us, like dockers’ leader Micky Fenn, would have acted quickly and very sharply over such a thing.’

On the periphery

The common view among those active at the time is that the sheer scale of the movement and openness of ANL activity meant that spycops could operate on the fringes, but have little impact. But they did try: one West Ham ANL member thinks that ‘Colin Clark’ and ‘Paul Gray’ may have tried to incite ANL members to covertly attack known NF members. However, they stupidly put the plan to Fenn, who gave them short shrift.

Johnny Clark observed: ‘If you weren’t a face, like Micky, then obviously you’re going to arouse suspicions if you suggested anything adventurous.’ This caution helped confine the activity of spycops to the periphery of the movement.

‘Colin Clark’ has claimed he fears retribution if he is identified, so it has been agreed that he will not be called to give evidence to the inquiry. He has, however, stated that it was right to spy on the ANL because it was known ‘to use violence and seek confrontation’.

However, there was little attention paid to the far right, despite its considerable propensity for violence. Anti-fascists were seen as the greater threat to the state and that spying on the NF, the inquiry has been told, would have been ‘too dangerous’. Tell that to the many brave souls who infiltrated the extreme right for Searchlight and the anti-fascist movement.

The inquiry will, hopefully, hold characters such as Clark and Gray up to further public scrutiny. There are still issues at West Ham, but as Johnny Clark said: ‘We held our ground, and a lot of fans came to respect our stance. The BM never really tried it on with us and the spooks, whatever they intended, were clearly non-League standard, in all ways.’

This article was first published in the Autumn 2023 issue of Searchlight.