Norfolk Unity

A far-right contender to become Austria’s head of state was forced to denounce the Nazis today, promising to uphold a national ban on denying the Holocaust after previously insisting that it was a matter of free speech.

Amid growing uproar over a tabloid campaign to make her president, Barbara Rosenkranz, a deputy leader of the far-right Freedom party, surprised the Austrian elite last week by announcing she would challenge the incumbent, Heinz Fischer, for the Austrian presidency next month.

Rosenkranz, a mother of 10 married to a man who was prominent on the Austrian neo-Nazi scene for two decades, has repeatedly criticised Austria’s laws criminalising denial of the Holocaust. Asked on national radio last week whether she believed the Nazis murdered millions of Jews in concentration camp gas chambers, she answered evasively, adding that freedom of expression also meant allowing “absurd, bizarre opinions”.

Following an outcry and criticism from her main backer, the mass-circulation Kronen Zeitung newspaper, she publicly signed a statement today pledging never to contest the country’s anti-Nazi legislation.

“Democracy, freedom and human dignity have always been the foundations of my views and my political activities. This is why I condemn the crimes of the era of the National Socialistic regime. I distinctively dissociate myself from Nazi ideology,” she said in the statement, according to the Austrian Times.

The about-face was dismissed as meaningless by her political opponents, and an opinion poll showed that two out of five Austrians believed she was damaging the country with her views.

Rosenkranz is the sole challenger running against Fischer, a Social Democrat, with the mainstream Christian democrats, or Austrian People’s Party, failing to put up a contender.

While she has little chance of winning, her campaign is seen as a test by the extreme right and its powerful backers to gauge how much support they can muster. They hope she will be helped by the absence of a mainstream centre-right candidate.

Rosenkranz is running a campaign strong on xenophobia and opposition to the European Union, opposing immigration and calling for the closure of Austria’s borders with the newer EU countries of central Europe.

The Kronen Zeitung and its elderly publisher, Hans Dichand, are very powerful in Austria. Last week Dichand endorsed the Rosenkranz candidacy, writing that she was “a courageous mother” who would make a “good Austrian president”. He added that her main pitch would be to blame the EU for “the completely incomprehensible opening of the borders to the east”.

Vienna’s Jewish community said it was unacceptable for “other political posts in the country to be occupied by cellar Nazis” and described her candidacy as “contempt for the 65,000 Austrian Jews murdered in the Shoah”.

The far-right Freedom party leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, said Rosenkranz might win 35% of the vote next month.

Guardian

The prospective Tory candidate caught up in a racism row in Sandwell insists that he has done nothing wrong. But he admits signing nomination papers for the BNP in 2008.

Tony Roper unsuccessfully complained to the standards board after Labour councillor Derek Rowley accused him of being a racist – a result which has almost certainly cost him his hopes of standing in the Princes End ward in the forthcoming local elections.

Roper denies the claim that he once signed the nomination forms for National Front candidate John Salvage, and refutes the suggestion that he made any racist reference to Sandwell’s deputy mayor Amadul Haque in a row over Xmas lights.

“I did say he was the wrong colour, but that was a reference to his political beliefs” Roper said. And he added: “I am not a racist. I have served on many committees and worked with every colour under the sun.”

He did, however, admit signing nomination papers for a BNP candidate in 2008, a decision which cost him a place on the board of governors at the Alexander School in Tipton.

“I signed the papers but I did no canvassing, no leafleting… I could chop my hand off now, but I did it because I wanted Labour out. They’ve ruined this town [Great Bridge].”

Roper accused Cllr Rowley of being a “bully boy” and said he would be complaining to the ombudsman, after the standards board failed to call him to make a personal representation – relying instead on written evidence.

The Stirrer

The British National Party’s boast that it’s changed its rules to let non-whites join is today exposed as a sickening sham. A senior figure in the far-right party openly told a British Asian reporter posing as a wannabe supporter he would not be welcome.

Yet only weeks earlier, the BNP voted to end its ban on non-whites, with leader Nick Griffin bragging: “We are happy to accept anyone as a member providing they agree this country should remain fundamentally British.”

Our reporter tried to join the BNP’s branch in Barking, London – the party’s heartland where Griffin plans to stand against Labour MP Margaret Hodge in the next General Election. But Christine Knight, 60 – one of a dozen BNP councillors for the borough of Barking and Dagenham – left him in no doubt about the party’s real attitude to non-whites.

Knight, a close ally of BNP Greater London Authority member Richard Barnbrook, told him: “The constitution may have changed but our core members would have a problem with you.” And making no attempt to hide the BNP’s vile views, she said: “You are for your people and I’m for mine.

“You’re saying you’re British but you are still siding with people who are not indigenous to the country. People can say I’m a racist for saying it but it’s my opinion.”

During a half-hour hate-filled rant she even claimed she could not get state benefits because she was “the wrong colour”. Knight – whose dad was an immigrant from Ireland – said: “I’m British, my parents were, my grandparents were, their parents were and my parents’ parents’ parents were. I’m trying to point out that things that we’ve paid out for thousands of years don’t go to us any more.”

She added: “My father came over here and joined the Army. My husband was born and bred here. But it’s going to change – we’ll be ethnic minorities in our own country.”

The BNP decided to rewrite its constitution after being warned it broke discrimination laws.

After the party voted for the change, Griffin said he expected a “trickle rather than a flood” of applications from blacks and Asians. The whitesonly policy had been in force since the party was formed in 1982.

It was challenged in the High Court by the Equality and Human Rights Commission last year and judges are due to rule on the case next week.

Griffin – who caused outrage when he appeared on BBC1’s Question Time show in October – took over as BNP leader in 1999 and has since tried to tone down the party’s fascist image. But he has been accused of choosing Barking to fight the next election as a way of deliberately exploiting local fears about immigration.

Barking has more BNP councillors than anywhere else.

And more than 40 per cent of voters backed them in wards contested by the racist party at the last local elections – compared with a Labour average of just 33 per cent.

Following The People’s confrontation with Christine Knight, a BNP spokesman said last night: “As Britain’s fourth biggest political party it’s inevitable members will hold differing viewpoints. Should our new constitution be accepted by the High Court on Tuesday, membership will be open to all who support the policies and principles of the British National Party.”

The People

Today’s Politics Show in London covers the battle for Barking and Dagenham, which in electoral terms mostly means the struggle of the Labour-run Council and Labour MPs Jon Cruddas and Margaret Hodge to keep the BNP at bay. As we know, BNP leader Nick Griffin is contesting the Barking seat. As we also know, he has taken part in BBC television debates before. So why did he turn down an invitation to participate in today’s Politics Show discussion with fellow candidates for the Barking seat?

A BNP press release predictably foams on about a “lynch mob set-up” and quotes Griffin being affronted that a local channel covering elections in a particular locality appears to want to ask him questions about local issues. He is also rather rude about the Liberal Democrat candidate, who he describes as:

A failed journalist and plastic candidate…whose sole intention is to lie about me instead of dealing with the national issues.

This candidate, who will be on the show along with Hodge and Tory Simon Marcus, is Dominic Carman. He is not only the son of the late George Carman, a rather famous libel lawyer, but also Griffin’s biographer. From The Times’s Fiona Hamilton:

Mr Carman said that his only motivation for running was to try to stop Mr Griffin from taking the seat. He intends to use information from his research into the biography to attack his opponent. It was never released because publishers were unwilling to associate their brand with the BNP leader.

“I will put it to good use in exposing Griffin beyond what’s already been in the public domain,” he said. “It’s very important to fight a strong campaign and it will be critical to challenge Nick Griffin every step of the way. I want to make people think long and hard about voting for him in Barking. It’s very, very important.”

Mr Carman has more than 20 hours of videotaped interviews with Mr Griffin over two years from 2003. He has interviewed Mr Griffin’s family and associates, including the National Front leaders who shaped his views, on numerous occasions. “I do not claim to have a silver bullet — one specific piece of info so damaging that Nick Griffin would lose all credibility. But the cumulative information I have can be presented in such a way…it will make him uncomfortable.”

Carman’s candidacy only become known a week ago. Is it already having the desired effect?

Dave Hill at Comment is Free

came to the UK to promote his brand of Islamophobia last year, he made it only as far as Heathrow before being unceremoniously turned away and flown back to his native country.

Yesterday, after a wait of more than a year, he returned to screen his anti-Islamic film in the House of Lords, but unlike his earlier visit, which provoked a storm of debate about the right to free speech, this time few people seemed to notice.

The politician’s flowing locks of swept-back blond hair have led some to nickname him Mozart. So it was unfortunate that Mr Wilders was forced to address the world’s media yesterday in a tiny room with a piano prominently displayed in one corner.

On the wall behind him was a portrait of Peregrine Bertie, the Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven, whose 18th-century wig bore more than a passing resemblance to Mr Wilders’s hairstyle. The Duke’s expression remained calm throughout, a remarkable feat considering the events which unfolded in front of him.

The hot and cramped venue was selected for two reasons: its proximity to the House of Lords, where Mr Wilders had finally succeeded in screening his controversial short film Fitna, and its security. Only one person from each media organisation was permitted, and all bags were searched.

Here, under the watchful eyes of his three earpiece-wearing bodyguards, the 46-year-old leader of the Freedom Party told a tense and sometimes heated press conference that Islam was a “fascist ideology” and that the Prophet Mohamed was “a mass murderer, a barbarian and a paedophile”. He said: “I have nothing against Muslims, but I have a problem with the Islamic ideology, which I believe is a totalitarian ideology to be compared with other totalitarian ideologies like communism or fascism. I believe Islam is a violent and dangerous religion and even a retarded culture. I think we should stop the Islamisation of our society. Islamism and democracy are incompatible. The more Islamism we have, the more freedom we will lose and this is something worth fighting for.”

He added that if his party was elected at the Netherlands’ general elections in June, he would attempt to halt all further immigration of Muslims into European countries, and would deport Dutch citizens with Moroccan or Turkish parentage “as soon as possible”.

Mr Wilders’ film Fitna, an Arabic word meaning “strife”, is an incendiary anti-Islamic piece of propaganda which the Dutch Prime Minister once said served “no purpose other than to offend”. In the 15-minute movie, sections of the Koran are read out alongside footage of the 11 September terrorist attacks. Disturbing images of lynchings and executions are shown, as is the beheading of the British civil engineer Ken Bigley in Iraq in 2004. No facts or figures are quoted other than a graph showing the increase in the number of Muslims living in Europe over the past century. Even to be sitting in front of the cameras in central London marked an important victory for Mr Wilders, who is awaiting trial in his home country for discrimination and fomenting hatred. If convicted, he faces 16 months in prison, but the trial has been suspended until after the Dutch elections, at which his party is tipped to become the second-largest in parliament.

He has been waiting to screen his film in this country for more than a year. In February 2009, he was detained at Heathrow and ordered to return to the Netherlands. The then Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, used EU laws to prevent his visit, describing Mr Wilders as an “undesirable person” whose presence would “threaten community harmony and therefore public safety”. But his ban was overturned at an asylum and immigration tribunal, allowing Mr Wilders to claim a victory for free speech and misquote George Orwell.

“Even if you don’t subscribe to my views, I’m able to come here and to speak out my mind,” he said. “Like George Orwell once said, the right of freedom is especially to listen to somebody who says something that you do not want to hear.”

He was invited to Britain by Lord Pearson, the leader of the UK Independence Party, and the cross-bencher Baroness Cox, who said they did not subscribe to Mr Wilders’s views but felt it was important he was given the chance to air them. Lord Pearson described Mr Wilders as “a very great man” who lived with the constant threat of assassination.

But the Ukip leader was forced to admit that only six MPs and peers had attended the screening, and that most of the audience had been made up of parliamentary staff. “Don’t forget it’s Friday,” he said. “The important thing about this debate is that it took place.”

On his way to face the media, Mr Wilders drove past protesters against British far-right groups such as the English Defence League (EDL) and the British National Party (BNP). Their placards read: “EDL + BNP = Nazi racist thugs”. Jonathan Dodds, a 26-year-old student, said: “There’s been a huge rise of far-right groups across Europe, which is extremely alarming. That we’re giving a platform to fascists like this is scary.”

But there can be no denying that Mr Wilders is a far more impressive speaker than other far-right party leaders. After 45 minutes of questioning he had not come close to being ruffled. And shortly after Lord Pearson declared: “We’re got to go, we’re going to be late for lunch”, the politician known as Mozart climbed into his bulletproof car with his bodyguards and set off once more for the House of Lords.

It was, if nothing else, a virtuoso performance but one that may well have been avoided had Britain allowed his entry in the first place.

Not welcome: Banned from Britain

*Since 2005 hundreds of people who promote hatred, terrorist violence or serious criminal activity have been banned from entering the UK. In May last year the Government published a list of 16 “least wanted” people.

*Those excluded in recent years include religious extremists, neo-Nazis, animal rights activists, rap artists and lifestyle gurus. But banning people based on their political views is rare.

Independent

The anti-Islamist party led by Dutch firebrand Geert Wilders has triumphed in municipal polls in The Netherlands, opening the way for a political breakthrough for the far-right in general elections in June.

Mr Wilders, known for his blond mane and due in London today to show his anti-Islam film in the House of Lords at the invitation of a Ukip peer, has campaigned for an immediate freeze on immigration and a ban on the wearing of Muslim headscarves in public. His Freedom Party was declared the surprise winner yesterday in Almere, a city just east of Amsterdam with a large immigrant population. It came second in The Hague, the only two cities where it chose to participate in the polls.

Wednesday’s vote, in which the two main parties in the ruling coalition, the Labour Party (PvdA) and the Christian Democrats (CDA), suffered heavy losses, was the first electoral test since Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende’s government collapsed last month.

Tensions between the two sides and the recession played into Wilders’ hands, while he refused to depart from his uncompromising stance on Muslim immigration or engage in mainstream political debates. If the local results were to translate nationally on 9 June, 46-year-old Wilders, who faces criminal charges for inciting hatred, could emerge as a kingmaker. An opinion poll yesterday also showed that the Freedom Party could take most seats in the national parliament in June.

Many Muslim residents in Almere were deeply shaken by the outcome, which gave the Freedom Party 21.6 per cent of votes. “I will stand here until my toes freeze,” said Ayse Bayrak-de Jager, a Muslim student taking part in a silent protest outside the town hall. Her friend, Zaitoon Shah, added: “It’s just appalling to think that I might not to be able to go to the library soon.”

Kadriye Kacar, a 35-year-old IT student of Turkish origin, said: “I don’t normally wear a headscarf but I decided to today as a sign of protest. Others are doing the same, until Wilders leaves. It’s terrible. People are looking at us differently today, as if to say ‘we won and you’re going to leave’.”

Celebrating in a rowdy local café late on Wednesday, a beaming Wilders told the city’s Muslims not to be afraid “as long as they don’t break the law”, but he insisted that his party would refuse to go into talks with any parties that did not support his views. “We’ve always maintained that it would be unthinkable for us to work with them. We can talk about a number of policy issues like education and finance, but upholding the basic rights of all the people living here is non-negotiable,” said Labour councillor Alphons Muurlink.

Many shoppers at the local market told Dutch television they felt ashamed for their city. “It’s a big black stain, I don’t even want to talk about it,” said one elderly woman. The Dutch Muslim Party, which failed to gain any seats, said it was “a sad day” for the country. Leader Henny Kreeft said Wilders had traded on “baseless fears”.

The collapse of the Dutch government was triggered by a deadlock over whether to keep some Dutch soldiers in Afghanistan after December, when a parliament decision to withdraw from the country comes into effect. The debacle was the last in a series of crises to have plagued the coalition, with the Christian Democrats locking horns with their Labour colleagues over retirement age and budget reform.

Independent

You’d have thought by now the BNP would have got a bit wise when it comes to using pictures of nice happy smiling (decidedly white) families on their leaflets that it’s probably not best when trying to depict ‘British’ people, to use foreigners.

Not that they haven’t got form for it in the past, using Italian pensioners and the like but you’d have though they’d be clever enough not to get caught doing the same thing twice. Or perhaps they simply don’t have any members or friends and family who are reasonably aesthetically pleasing who are prepared to appear on their leaflets.

So, without further ado, I give you exhibit 1:

Fresh off the presses and being delivered in the Walsall North constituency today.

Now I don’t know if it’s just me. Call me picky if you will but for some strange reason, they just don’t look very British. I can’t place my finger on it, perhaps it’s the perfect pearly white teeth, the distinct hint of having a bit of a sun tan or the fact that it’s taken outside and there’s actually some sun about but this got me in the mood for a little Googling and what should crop up but this:

Exhibit 2:

An orthodontics practice in Missouri. Incidentally, the website is here. Now you’ll notice that it’s not an identical photograph, clearly a stock photo from the same set but definitely of the same people.

Now I guess they could be a bunch of Brits who have a penchant for nutty right-wing parties who happen to do a bit of modelling that ends up on American orthodontics websites but I’m betting it’s a bunch of American models, which begs the question, why are the BNP using them on their literature, all patriotic n’all as they are?

Political Penguin

Past form – The Mirror – The Sun – Telegraph

A British National Party activist and former North-East teacher who was sacked for absenteeism has lost his case for unfair dismissal

A judgement against former Sunnydale Community College teacher Mark Walker was issued by an employment tribunal last month. Mr Walker, 39, was suspended from the school, in Shildon, County Durham, in March 2007, and claimed he was the subject of a political witch hunt. Twenty months later, he was officially sacked over his sickness record and took the school’s governing body to an employment tribunal.

The Newcastle tribunal, which was met in January, unanimously dismissed Mr Walker’s case, but has not yet published its reasons. Patrick Harrington, a spokesman for Mr Walker’s union, Solidarity, said there could be further action against his employers, Durham County Council. Mr Harrington said he would be studying the tribunal’s reasons with a view to a potential appeal, but an appeal was not the only option.

He said: “What we would point out is that Mr Walker’s ill health was largely contributed to by the employer and, in particular, the way they handled the disciplinary process. There may be a personal injury claim for the stress caused.”

Mr Harrington also cited an NSPCC report about Mr Walker, who is from Rievaulx, Spennymoor, County Durham, that was leaked to The Northern Echo. The report reveals the disciplinary inquiry uncovered a large number of emails indicating a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old former pupil. It makes it clear that no illegal content was found on Mr Walker’s school laptop or desktop computers.

It concludes: “There is sufficient evidence from the emails, and from previous matters concerning his professional conduct, to conclude that Mr Walker’s behaviour has resulted in his conduct being less than one would expect of a teacher placed in a position of trust.”

Mr Harrington said: “This report was very damaging to Mr Walker and there is a duty of confidentiality and a question of damages for the breach. The report was in the hands of the county council and the NSPCC and has to have been leaked by staff.”

Durham County Council declined to comment because of legal reasons.

* A tribunal into the case of Mr Walker’s brother, Adam Walker, also a BNP activist, has been adjourned until the end of May. The General Teaching Council, in Birmingham, is considering allegations he posted inappropriate comments on the internet. The former teacher at Houghton Kepier School, in Houghton-le-Spring, Wearside, was suspended in 2007.

The Northern Echo

John Day is a pretty little Eastern Oregon town that up until last month was known mostly for the good fishing in the John Day River and good fossil-hunting in the nearby John Day Fossil Beds.

But in mid-February, a group that embraces fossilized political and racial ideas cast an unwelcome spotlight on John Day. Paul R. Mullet, who calls himself the national director of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations group, breezed into town in a swastika-bedecked shirt and let it be known that he was looking at some real estate. The group is planning to relocate from northern Idaho, he said, and John Day looks like the perfect place to establish its new headquarters.

Aryan Nations is a virulently racist white supremacist organization founded in the 1970s and originally headquartered in northern Idaho. It’s anti-black, anti-Semitic and anti-Hispanic, and dreams of creating a “Fourth Reich,” a whites-only “Aryan” nation within the United States.

After Mullet showed up in John Day, the local weekly newspaper, the Blue Mountain Eagle, wasted no time in sounding the alarm, and the citizens of John Day and surrounding Grant County promptly and loudly made it clear that the “Aryans” and their poisonous ideology were not welcome.

Groups of local citizens marched down the main street with picket signs telling the Nazis to stay out of their town. Two informational meetings arranged by the Eagle drew overflow crowds of more than 300 – in a town with a population of 2,000. The Eagle has started distributing green ribbons that people can tie on their vehicles to show their opposition to the “Aryans” and their doctrines.

It’s tempting to dismiss Mullet and his followers as just a bunch of nutbags running around in the woods of northern Idaho, but that would be a dangerous mistake. Hitler and his followers were once just a bunch of nutbags ranting about Jews in a Munich beer hall.

Though Mullet insists his organization isn’t violent, its website seethes with violent rhetoric, including a quotation from Hitler: “Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.”

And the group has a history of violence. In 2000, the Southern Poverty Law Center won a $6.3 million jury judgment on behalf of two people who were beaten with rifles by drunken Aryan Nations thugs in Coeur d’Alene. The FBI has called the organization a “terrorist threat” and the RAND Corporation described it as the “first truly nationwide terrorist network” in the United States.

Mullet says the opposition in John Day has made him all the more determined to move his group there. “They want to mess with me, they mess with the wrong bird,” he told a reporter.

Well, we’ll see about that. In the meantime, the people of John Day and Grant County – and especially Eagle Publisher Marissa Williams and Editor Scotta Callister – have earned the GLASS SLIPPER for taking a firm and unequivocal stand against his brand of bigoted lunacy.

The Source Weekly

Protest this Friday 5th March, 11am at House of Lords, Westminster.

UAF demo against the rally called by the EDL to greet and support Gert Wilders, the Islamaphobic Dutch MP. Wilders has been invted to the House of Lords by Malcolm Everard MacLaren Pearson, Leader of UKIP, to show his racist film Fitna.

Wilders was banned from coming to the UK before due to his racist remarks. He has described the Netherlands as facing a “tsunami of Islamification” – the Netherlands Musilim population is 6%. Also, he has said that a “head rag tax” should be issued on Muslim women who wear headscarves.

Protest against this racist coming to whip up race hatred and bolster the BNP.