The British far right has been predictably opportunistic and shameless, but also confused and divided, in response to the recent Hamas attack on southern Israel.

A broad swathe of extremists, ranging from Nigel Farage to EDL founder ‘Tommy Robinson’, have tried to exploit the situation to promote Islamophobia.

At the opposite pole are some of Britain’s old-school nazis including Patriotic Alternative leader Mark Collett, who have been as antisemitic as they dare to be without breaking either the Public Order Act or the Terrorism Act.

And some racists including former BNP führer Nick Griffin have tried to pitch themselves somewhere between Robinson and Collett, taking advantage of the slaughter to stir up racial and religious hatred in all directions, while pretending that they are ‘neutral’ towards Middle East politics.

Mark Collett, Patriotic Alternative Leader

Though the Hamas incursion into Israel took place while he was busy staging PA’s annual meeting in a Leicestershire village hall, Collett was among the first prominent British extremists to gloat about the deaths of Jews.

Some of Collett’s posts on Telegram ought to be investigated by the CPS, as they could be viewed as inciting racial or religious hatred, including:

“Jews helped turn the UK into a place where White Britons are second class citizens, but now they complain about ‘not feeling safe’.”

One recent post came close to endorsing Hamas (contrary to the Terrorism Act):

“In the face of Zionist terror the Palestinians in Gaza are standing firm. …How any nationalist can watch this unfolding and not at the very least respect those brave souls is beyond me.”

Collett’s international allies include the Irish antisemite Keith Woods, who has been predictably active in spreading anti-Israel propaganda. Woods has directed some of his bile against fellow racists, dismissing Tommy Robinson and others as

“Zionist talking heads who redirect their opposition to multiculturalism toward support for Zionism and ‘western liberal values’.”

Irish anti-Semite Keith Woods

The two groups that broke away from PA earlier this year have also been unable to restrain their antisemitic obsessions. Alek Yerbury and his National Support Detachment have tried to keep up a façade of denouncing Muslims as well as Jews, in an even-handed display of hatred. But Yerbury’s partner Katie Fanning (a former UKIP official) has been unable to keep her overriding antisemitism in check, writing on Twitter:

“Jews lying again to drum up war and excuse the genocides they commit against others.”

Steve Laws, another former UKIP activist, appeared alongside Yerbury at a feeble “Stop the Boats” demonstration outside Parliament on 14^th October. He told the handful of racists planning to attend that they were barred from bringing either Israeli or Palestinian flags.

Laws chose not to disguise his disappointment at the failure of the Westminster event:

“Yesterday’s demo in London didn’t go to plan. It was a poor turnout and poorly planned. It was a lack of organisation all round, we can all do more. I think we should now wait until early next year for the next big one. Plan it universally with everyone else. Get everyone to plug it. Go back to what works. A lot of people travelled a long way for something to last an hour. That’s not acceptable. We can do better.”

Steve Laws (foreground) and a disconsolate Alek Yerbury (left) at their ill-attended Westminster rally

Laws is still trying to pretend that the far right can be “neutral”. What he doesn’t realise is that his fantasy of a cross-factional demonstration would depend on gathering together ‘leaders’ of the far right who are mainly obsessive antisemites.

The Homeland Party, another PA splinter group led by former BNP official Kenny Smith, seems to be trying to distinguish itself from Collett by being less overtly anti-Israel, and spewing hatred in both directions. This might be linked to Homeland’s ambitions to register as a political party, which have already been knocked back once by the Electoral Commission.

Searchlight suspects that Homeland will eventually succeed in registering, and will use this to put pressure on Collett and his deputy Laura Towler, painting them as unrealistic ‘extremists’ even by far-right standards.

Similar patterns can be seen among the British far-right’s overseas allies. Greg Johnson of Counter-Currents, often seen (especially by himself) as one of the Alt Right’s leading intellectuals, wrote a week after the Hamas attacks:

“Israel will remain a ticking time bomb until the power of the American Jewish community to dictate US foreign policy is ended. Only when that day comes will Israel be forced to deal decently with the Palestinians and its neighbors.”

Johnson’s website has tried to throw some mud at the pro-Palestinian left and at American Muslims, but he finds it hard to disguise his essential Hitlerism.

His fellow racist Jared Taylor chooses to avoid any taint of antisemitism, instead attacking American anti-racists for their pro-Palestinian sympathies and warning of “possible terrorists” entering the USA. Whereas Mark Collett’s nazi friends emphasise the presumed power of the “Zionist lobby”, Taylor and the supposedly philosemitic wing of racism choose to emphasise the handful of pro-Palestinians in Congress and strain to draw an equivalence between Black Lives Matter and Hamas.

Jared Taylor, American Renaissance

Jared Taylor chooses not to remind his readers that his organisation American Renaissance has regularly played host to antisemites at its annual conferences. Speakers at AR events have included Taylor’s closest ally Sam Dickson, as well as Nick Griffin, and two once-prominent but now deceased columnists dismissed by conservative American publications for antisemitism, Joe Sobran and Sam Francis.

Here in the UK, there is sure to be intense and legitimate debate about Israeli policy, and we may well see the most right-wing elements of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition seeking alliances with European racists including thugs and fraudsters like Tommy Robinson.

Searchlight will continue to monitor these associations, just as we urge pro-Palestinian organisations to distance themselves from nazis, Holocaust deniers and antisemites such as Michèle Renouf and James Thring, who have repeatedly attended anti-Israel demonstrations and meetings in London.

EXCLUSIVE

By Tony Peters

Wealthy Holocaust revisionists across the world are planning a campaign against the establishment of a Holocaust Memorial in London. Plans for the memorial, intended both as a monument to all victims of the Holocaust and as a learning centre, have been advancing since 2015, but are now attracting the hostility of a range of far-right Holocaust deniers.

The prime movers are close associates of the convicted Holocaust denier Vincent Reynouard, including Reynouard’s fellow neo-nazi Boris Le Lay, who has spent several years in Japan on the run from criminal charges in France. Le Lay is a prolific online activist.

Older nazi apologists intend to use London again as a base for their denial campaigns. These include Yvonne Schleiter, sister of the notorious French revisionist Robert Faurisson, and Faurisson’s former translator, William Nichols, an American who now lives in Europe. Also involved are Germar Rudolf, a convicted German Holocaust denier and a far-right Spanish lawyer, Armando Rodriguez Perez.

Perez is suspected by some on the right of having other loyalties: he moved rapidly from a left-wing, human rights background to an extreme right-wing position. Their suspicions are compounded by the fact that he has spent time in Israel.

Support for the campaign will also come from Canadians, including the militant anti-Semite Paul Fromm and a much-travelled couple, John and Linda Mortl, who have in the past provided funding for Faurisson and for Ernst Zundel, the German neo-nazi and publisher of revisionist literature. In 2009, The Guardian had to apologise for publishing a letter from John Mortl in defence of John Demjanjuk, the former Nazi concentration camp guard convicted of war crimes in 1988. Mortl denied that the wartime murder of Jews had happened. Linda Mortl was reported to have been in contact with discredited author and Holocaust denier David Irving.

Also in 2009, the Mortls, then resident in London, attended the court hearings of Holocaust denier Fredrick Toben, who had been detained at Heathrow on a European Arrest Warrant.

Delay or prevent

The individuals likely to be organising on the ground in the UK are Peter Rushton, the deputy editor of Heritage and Destiny, and Michèle Renouf, both currently cosying up to Patriotic Alternative.

Tactics for the campaign that are being discussed include encouraging and providing financial support for any planning consent disputes or judicial reviews that might delay or prevent the memorial going ahead. It would also involve a political campaign involving ostensibly respectable activities such as letters to upmarket newspapers and organising conferences.

Politically, the revisionists think that this is an opportunity to raise the argument publicly that the Holocaust did not happen and that the memorial is being foisted upon the people and the UK Parliament by ‘the usual suspects’. They will also claim that this is a slippery slope: until now the UK has been one of the few places where you could argue that the Holocaust did not happen without fear of legal consequences, but that this freedom will be targeted next.

A ‘Robert Faurisson International Prize’ is also being used to promote the late French academic’s Holocaust denial agenda, in association with anti-Semites in the Arab world. Iranian and Lebanese journalists attended Faurisson’s final public appearance in London, the day before his death in 2018.

The Prize Committee is chaired by Giuseppe Fallisi, an Italian tenor with close ties to the anti-Semitic fringe of Palestinian activism. Fallisi travelled to Gaza with an aid flotilla and has sought to infiltrate extremist ideas into pro Palestinian campaigns.

It was 40 years ago…when Searchlight first exposed connections between Italian fascist fugitive Roberto Fiore and UK nazis like Nick Griffin. And all in connection with London tourist guides.

Thirty years ago, with much fanfare, the founding conference of UKIP took place at the London School of Economics with a very mixed audience of over 500 in attendance. This weekend, the 30^th anniversary conference, again with much fanfare, was held in a former cinema in Newport, south Wales, but with only 65 in attendance, the vast majority over the age of 60.

The event had to relocate to the Neon, Newport when the original venue in Swansea decided to cancel the booking. As it was, the party’s officers and employees (who comprised around 15 of the total audience) were locked inside the Neon building till the start time of 9.30 out of an unfounded fear of possible counterdemonstrators outside. And a series of embarrassing technical glitches (courtesy of the UKIP surrogate Voice of Wales) meant that the whole thing was rather late starting anyway.

The Voice of Wales tech team, Dan Morgan and Stan Robinson – an embarrassing shambles

VoW did not exactly cover themselves in technical glory throughout the day: the live stream they provided (£10 a time on Zoom) was pretty much unwatchable and almost entirely unlistenable.

UKIP youth wing: almost the entire membership of Students Against Tyranny (sic) including (far left) Sydney Jones, speaker and Tommy Robinson chum, James Harvey, Christopher Cousins and Jack Thomson

Addressing the faithful was a small group of right-wing proselytisers: Viscount Christopher Monckton, the climate denier and advocate of the anti-net zero Car26 group, James Harvey of the ill-named Students Against Tyranny, and party luminaries: charman Ben Walker, deputy chair Rebecca Jane (now known as ‘Barbie Jane’ by increasing numbers of unimpressed member), the virulently anti-Islamic Anne Marie Waters, and Leader Neil (‘Liar and Cheat’) Hamilton. And, of course, there was Robin Tilbrook, leader of the English Democrats who are currently hopping into bed with UKIP in the guise of the jointly launched Patriots Alliance.

According to one of Searchlight’s sources, Ben Walker seemed oddly nervous throughout the proceedings. This may have something to so with the controversy around the JP title which he has recently started to append to his name, and which is now the subject of a number of enquiries to the Ministry of Justice. Magistrates, of course, are supposed to be people in whom the public can have total trust – whether this might be true of a man only four years ago was convicted of a string of building regulation offences, fined £11,000 by Bristol Magistrates and branded a “rogue builder” by the local press is a matter to which the Ministry will, we are sure, have given the most careful consideration.

It goes without saying that Walker would, of course, have declared the conviction when applying for his seat on the bench…

His defence, when this was raised by the Welsh Nation.Cymru news agency just before the conference, was a touch fanciful: these were not real convictions, apparently, just fines: “I was fined. Never convicted. If I was convicted, I would have a police/court record. I don’t…”

Clearly, he has some way to go before he successfully completes his magistrate’s training.

The guest speaker who stood out from the pack, however, was Alexander Wiesner of the far right AfD (Alternative for Germany) Party, currently giving much cause for concern in Germany where they are enjoying certain electoral successes. They plainly do not have their finger on the pulse of the British far right, however, or they wouldn’t waste their time with a deadbeat outfit like UKIP.

By the time party leader Neil Hamilton wrapped up his speech at the end of the day, the audience had thinned out even more: the party activists, who throughout had been segregated in the upper tier, were down from around 50 to a mere 25. And who could blame them…

The question, of course, is why on earth do they struggle on, when they could just wind up the whole miserable enterprise and join Reform UK, or even the deranged Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party. And the answer, of course, is the gravy train of legacies which is coming down the track as wealthy, ageing loyalists die, and their wills are read…