It’s not easy for Mark Collett to eat even a few crumbs of humble pie. But after a disastrous split in his Patriotic Alternative group, reported last month by Searchlight, he has had to digest an entire plateful.

Image: Mark Collett

Desperate to reclaim some sort of credibility, Collett has taken part in “unity” discussions with four other groups, one of which has for several years operated as a registered political party.

One of the main issues causing the bitter split between Collett and a majority of his regional organisers, led by his old BNP rival Kenny Smith, was that the Smith faction (now called the Homeland Party) don’t believe Collett is serious about registering with the Electoral Commission and fighting elections.

Homeland has already begun the process of registering as a party. If they succeed, Collett risks looking foolish or dishonest.

So, he picked up an offer that had been sitting on his table for the past year, to form an alliance with the British Democratic Party, led by ex-BNP councillor and fanatical Orangeman Jim Lewthwaite, former NF chairman and ex-MEP Andrew Brons, and England’s most right-wing barrister, Adrian Davies.

The BDP’s election results last month were pathetic even by today’s far right standards. They lost their only borough councillor, veteran nazi Julian Leppert, but they do still have several parish councillors and consider themselves almost respectable. Unlike Collett’s PA, you don’t expect to see BDP members routinely turning up in court on terrorist charges, or being secretly filmed undergoing paramilitary training. BDP officials are more likely to turn up in court wearing a wig, rather than in the dock en route to a maximum security prison.

So Collett could see the advantage of a BDP alliance, especially if it allows some PA members to stand for election without his own cash cow having to be properly regulated. Privately he thinks Lewthwaite is a boor, Brons is past it, and Davies is ideologically weak and a semi-Tory. And he positively hates some other leading BDP officials.

A big practical obstacle is that while Lewthwaite might be desperate for friends, those like Davies and Brons who pull the strings in the BDP are not happy to work with Collett until they are sure that he has mended his ways since the Griffin days, when he was one of their worst enemies.

Image: Mark Collett and Laura Towler

For now, it’s any port in a storm. Collett, his deputy Laura Towler, and her husband Sam Melia (PA’s Yorkshire organiser and former activist in National Action, since been banned under the Terrorism Act) were happy to sit down with Lewthwaite at the “unity meeting” on May 28th. The gathering was hosted by some of Collett’s former enemies in the Independent Nationalist Network (INN) and chaired by Joe Strutt, known online as “Anglo Joe”.

Another INN leader at the meeting was Richard Lumby, former organiser of Wolverhampton BNP who was Griffin’s number two in the West Midlands region during Collett’s time as a paid BNP officer.

Strutt and Lumby led a small faction that split from PA two years ago. They were far more conspiracy minded than Collett, especially over the Covid pandemic and their paranoia led them to resent Kenny Smith’s changes to party security. Smith insisted that PA members should be prepared to undergo identity checks, submitting addresses and other personal details, so as to weed out infiltrators from Searchlight, undercover TV crews, and state agents.

But for Strutt, Lumby and their friends this was evidence that Smith himself might be an infiltrator, or working for infiltrators, gathering intelligence on members.

So, they packed their armbands and their anti-vaccination leaflets, and left to form a new, small and imperfectly formed “network”.

And now, thanks to their mutual antipathy towards Smith and his Homeland faction, these “Independents” are back with Collett, at least for as long as it takes to record a couple of podcasts.

Also sitting down for beer and sandwiches with PA, BDP and INN were leaders of an even weirder bunch, the Highland Division. No, not a military unit (except in their dreams) but another gang of conspiracy theorists who quit PA because they thought Collett was too soft.

Some of Highland Division’s activists are keen on collecting weapons, though whether they are sharpening their knives for Jews, Muslims, or their fellow fascists isn’t yet clear. Last month some of their leaders travelled to Derbyshire for a conference of the Mosley fetishist fan club New British Union, where speakers openly praised “lone wolf” terror tactics and recommended distribution of bomb making manuals.

At least one of Mark Collett’s closest allies in PA will soon be tried at the Old Bailey for making similar recommendations, but for the past 18 months Highland Division has seen Collett as pursuing too moderate a tack.

The May 28th “unity meeting” suggests that Collett is dropping any pretence of “moderation”. This is likely to confirm the views of those who defected from PA to the Homeland Party, but it looks as though Collett has given up on those fascists who favour constitutional politics and thrown in his lot with the online conspiracist fringe.

There might not be many votes on the fringe, but there are donors. Collett’s problem is that one of his most active former PA officers is also trying to win over those donors and street activists, and it’s not certain whether he wants any truck with “unity” on anything but his own terms.

Image: Alex Yerbury

This is Alek Yerbury, an Australian-born former squaddie who quit PA a few weeks before the Homeland split to form his own “National Support Detachment”. The NSD is run on military lines, with Yerbury styling himself “Commanding Officer” and until recently disparaging Collett for being too “intellectual”. Although he hates Kenny Smith far more than he distrusts Collett, even Yerbury doesn’t yet seem sure whether he is prepared to work with the new “unity” project.

For now he is too busy with fellow conspiracy theorist Katie Fanning (once of UKIP and founder of the grandly named but inactive White Indigenous Rights Alliance) organising street rallies (notably in Leeds on Saturday) and trying to link the anti-vaccination movement with what’s left of Tommy Robinson’s EDL. Searchlight will be monitoring these rallies during the next few weeks.

Perhaps by then we shall know what Andrew Brons makes of all these moves towards unity with people he has often derided as dangerous nutters. But is Brons as moderate as he seems? This is a question we will return to…

UKIP had opened its doors to let fascists and neo-Nazis join the organisation, ditching a ban on former member of fascist groups that has been in place since the party’s earliest days. The move is part of a further rightwards shift by a party desperately trying to avoid collapse.

Membership rules before and after the recent change

UKIP has provision in its Rule Book which allows for former members of certain proscribed parties or organisations to be barred from membership. In the past, organisations specified under this rule included Britain First, the British National Party, the English Defence League and the National Front. Former party leader Nigel Farage frequently cited this ban as evidence that UKIP was not an extremist party.

However, at a meeting of the UKIP National Executive Committee on 15 April, this all changed. By an unanimous vote, the list of banned extreme right groups was removed completely, and replaced with a list of proscribed left-wing groups, including Antifa, Hope Not Hate, Left Unity, Extinction Rebellion and Stop The Oil (sic). (Hope Not hate was, in fact, already the subject of a ban voted through by the 2013 UKIP Conference).

UKIP has thus flung open its doors to fascist and neo-Nazis who, as long as they no longer actually belong to another extreme right organisation, are now free to join up.

The move is part of a long term rightwards shift by the former anti-EU party which foundered after the Brexit referendum. It was damaged by the departure of Nigel Farage in 2018, and the subsequent launch by him of the Brexit Party, now called Reform UK.

UKIP leader, Neil Hamilton, disgraced former Tory MP whose Parliamentary career ended when he was found to have taken cash for asking questions in the House of Commons

Farage left, he said, in protest at the appointment of Tommy Robinson as a UKIP adviser on “rape gangs” by former party leader Gerard Batten and support for the appointment from the UKIP NEC. Batten also allowed notorious conspiracy theorists to join. In 2021, the current UKIP Leader Neil Hamilton and Chairman Ben Walker attended the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)’s conference on Family Policy in Dresden.

But the party is in crisis and needs to find numbers somewhere: membership which four years ago stood at around 30,000 has now collapsed to under 4,000. In the recent local elections, it lost all its remaining local council seats.

Ann Marie Waters: Welcomed back into the fold and instantly appointed Justice Spokesperson and candidate for Hartlepool

Faced with such rapid decline, it is stepping up its courting of other right-wing parties. Three days after the April Rule Book change Anne Marie Waters, the founder and leader of For Britain, rejoined UKIP which she left in 2017 and was immediately appointed the party’s Justice Spokesperson.

Now UKIP’s Deputy Leader, Rebecca Jane, has been tasked with uniting the political parties of the populist radical right in Britain, namely the Alliance for Democracy and Freedom (ADF), Heritage Party, The Reclaim Party, Reform UK and the National Housing Party United Kingdom (NHPUK). Overtures have already been made to Lawrence Fox’s Reclaim party which now has an MP in the form of anti-vax ex-Tory, Andrew Bridgen.

How many of these will be tempted by UKIP’s advances remains to be seen, but one thing will certainly attract them and provides UKIP itself with a compelling reason to remain in existence in some form – there are a large number of significant legacies pledged to the party in the wills of elderly, right wing supporters which have yet to be harvested and will certainly catch the eye of groups it is wooing. Groups it does not formally approach may simply be tempted to join up en masse and try to take it over.

First published in Spring 2023 issue of Searchlight magazine

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s comments on the Fosse Ardeatine massacre during the Second World War set an alarming precedent, signalling the start of a process by the far right government to recast the past, warns Alfio Bernabei

Italian President Sergio Mattarella (left), with the unwholesome trio of Ignazio La Russa (second left), Lorenzo Fontana and Giorgia Meloni 

Photo: Palazzo del Quirinale

In 2016, a little-known Italian parliamentarian, Lorenzo Fontana, addressed the congress of the Greek neo-nazi party Golden Dawn that was already under investigation as a criminal organisation. Founded in the 1980s, Golden Dawn was held responsible for a string of attacks on immigrants. In 2013, one of its leading members, was accused of the murder of the celebrated rapper and anti-fascist activist Pavlos Fyssas.

Fontana, then 36 years old, was in no doubt about lending his enthusiastic support for the ‘combatants’ of a movement internationally known as one of the most dangerous neo-nazi outfits in Europe.

He said: ‘I am happy to send greetings to the friends of Golden Dawn on the occasion of their congress. At this difficult time for Europe your contribution will be decisive. Europe cannot do without Greece. Greece is the beacon of that classical Europe that we all love and the one we want to see reborn from its ashes. It is a difficult moment, we need to fight. I know that you are combatants and together with us I am certain that we will relaunch this Europe and return her as a beacon of civilisation. Greetings to all.’

Fontana’s remark, ‘together with us’, must have been intended as a pledge of solidarity and co-operation with the Italian party to which he belonged and of which he is still a member – the League – formerly called the Northern League (La Lega). He joined the youth wing of the party as a student, before graduating in political science at Padua University and in philosophy at the Pontifical University St Thomas Aquinas in Rome.

After being elected to the Verona city council, in 2009 he was elected to the European Parliament. This role was renewed at the 2014 European Parliament election and in 2016 he was appointed by Matteo Salvini, leader of the League, as the party’s deputy federal secretary.

Political earthquake

Fontana’s name has been barely mentioned in the British press, but in Italy his career has blossomed. Today, he is the President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, the equivalent of the House of Commons in the UK. He was elected to this position following last year’s general election that resulted in Giorgia Meloni, leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia), becoming the country’s prime minister.

Fontana is currently properly described as the politician who holds the third highest ranking office of the Italian Republic, after Meloni and the President of the Senate, Ignazio La Russa.

It is when the role of Fontana with his political background is given its proper place in the ranking order of who holds power in Italy that the threat posed by the trio of Meloni–La Russa–Fontana can be seen in its full significance, highlighting the political earthquake that struck the country with the results of the 2022 election that landed Italy with its most right-wing government since the Second World War.

Meloni was only 15 when she joined the youth wing of the neofascist Movimento Sociale Italiano, inheritor of Mussolini’s fascist party that was set up during the Second World War to support the puppet government of the Salò Republic under the control of the Third Reich.

La Russa, a member of the Meloni-led Brothers of Italy party, has candidly admitted his love for fascist memorabilia. He found it perfectly normal to keep a bust of Hitler’s ally, Mussolini, at his house.

The political results of this trio in charge of key institutions will manifest in due course through administrative and legislative matters, but one of the consequences that is already clear is in the realm of culture. The process of rewriting history has begun – on a scale that surpasses anything that happened since Silvio Berlusconi’s first victory of 1994, which brought into government the racist Northern League with the Alleanza Nazionale party led by Gianfranco Fini, formerly secretary of the post-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano.

Atrocities

An illustration of how history is being rewritten is the uproar that occurred in March during commemoration of the 79th anniversary of the Fosse Ardeatine massacre, one of the worst atrocities committed by the Nazi-fascists in Italy during the Second World War.

On 24 March 1944, 335 men, including Italian soldiers, civilians, political prisoners, Jews and common detainees were rounded up, killed and buried in a cave in Rome as an act of reprisal following an attack by partisans on Via Rasella that had caused the death of 33 Nazis. The partisans had placed explosives that were detonated when a formation of armed members of the Polizie Regiment ‘Bozen’ entered the street.

The head of the Gestapo in Rome, Herbert Kappler, immediately enacted instructions from Hitler that ten Italians should be executed for every German victim. The hurried selection of those to be killed was completed with the assistance of Italian fascist members of the police and of Mussolini’s Salò Republic puppet government. Prominent on their list were anti-fascist politicians, members of the partisan brigades and 73 Jews.

It was Meloni’s choice of words in her message of commemoration of the massacre that caused alarm among anti fascist organisations. She said that the victims were executed ‘because they were Italians’, as if the list had been compiled on the basis of nationality alone.

Gianfranco Pagliarulo, president of the National Association of Partisans, the ANPI, was quick to respond. ‘The Prime Minister Meloni does not remember everything. She said that the 335 martyrs of the Ardeatine Caves were killed ‘only because they were Italians’. It is important to be more precise: certainly, they were Italians, but they were chosen for execution on the basis of a selection that was aimed at anti fascists, partisans, political opponents and Jews.

‘It is necessary to add that the list of some of those who were massacred by the Nazis was compiled with the complicity of the Italian fascist police superintendent Pietro Caruso and the Home Secretary of Mussolini’s Salò Republic Guido Buffarini Guidi, as well as that of the war criminal Pietro Koch, all of them fascists.’

Giorgio La Malfa, Secretary of the Republican Party, was more direct: ‘Meloni is exhibiting the cultural inheritance of Giorgio Almirante, former leader of the [fascist party] Movimento Sociale Italiano. Her words are aimed at watering down differences [between fascists and anti-fascists].

Nicola Fratoianni, secretary of the left-wing party, Sinistra Italiana, asked: ‘Will the day ever come when Meloni will be able to write that word: anti-fascist?’

More indignation was caused by La Russa when he commented, jokingly, that, far from deserving to be considered an act of noble resistance to Nazi-fascism, the partisans’ attack had been baseless and dishonourable because it had killed only ‘old-age pensioners, members of a music band’.

He sought to further denigrate the resistance movement by adding that the partisans must have been aware there would be some sort of retaliation. Later, he was forced to apologise ‘for any offence caused’, but his aim was the same as Meloni’s revisionist attempt to rewrite history and avoid calling the massacre of 335 men, some children, and Jews, what it was: an execution perpetrated with the assistance of Italian fascists following Mussolini’s alliance with Hitler.

Revisionist language

Commenting on La Russa’s belittling and distortion of the events, the writer Edith Bruck, a survivor of the Holocaust remarked: ‘Such words are the more serious, given that they come from a representative of government institutions.’

When Meloni finally responded to the criticism provoked by La Russa’s comments, it was only to make things worse by showing that she was not too worried by false statements about the resistance movement. In her opinion, the President of the Senate had only trampled on language and committed a sgrammaticatura, the term that might be used to comment on a grammatical mistake by a school pupil, nothing to worry about.

It is through language astutely used that historical revisionism operates. This old stratagem is becoming an instrument of influence guided by the top representatives of the most important institutions in Italy.

It is a dangerous exercise that does not bode well for the country that invented fascism and never completely rid itself of it. Italy now finds itself landed with a prime minister who only last year, when asked to drop the fascist symbol – the flame – from the logo of the party she represents, simply turned a deaf ear to all appeals.