Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, rallies to the defence of a far-right racist.
Category Archives: Far right racists
Berlusconi to appoint far right Islamophobe to cabinet
Roberto Calderoli, 52, a senior member of the Northern League, enraged Muslims two years ago during the row over a set of Danish cartoons featuring the Prophet Mohammed. He appeared on television wearing a T-shirt printed with one of the cartoons. The Italian consulate in Libya was set on fire and 11 people died in riots.
Mr Calderoli has also threatened to defile the proposed site of a mosque in Padua by walking a pig over the ground. When Italy beat France in the 2006 World Cup, he said France had “sacrificed its identity by fielding niggers, Muslims and communists”.
Despite the controversies, which forced him to resign as a minister for reform in 2006, Mr Calderoli is likely to get another job when Mr Berlusconi picks his cabinet because of the strong results obtained by the Northern League in the general election.
See also “Muslims feel under siege as Italian Right sets up town vigilante groups” in the Times, 3 May 2008
A new era of Islamophobia?
“What an election! We have the first Conservative Mayor for London and we also have the first racist Islamophobe from the BNP in the London Assembly. So what do we make of this? Is this the end of an era or is it a beginning of a new one? …
“So what caused this shock result? Was it anti-Brown or anti-Labour sentiments? Was it the recognition that ‘the Conservatives have changed into a party that can again be trusted after 30 years’? Was it the overt support of Muslims 4 Ken, as some have commented? Or was it the politics of fear created by the government and media? Can it even be as simple as ‘he’s been there too long’? We may never know the real reasons, as most voters will have different reasons for voting the way they do – but here is my thought on why the BNP got its first Assembly Member.
“If you recall the last 2 to 3 years, you will no doubt notice that the most discussed subject has been Islam and Muslims. The rancorous manner in which the government – a Labour government – attacked Islam and Muslim has been unforgivable. Together with the relentless and vitriolic media, it created the perfect atmosphere for the racist BNP to peddle its malevolence with impunity. In the eyes of the BBC this racist party has now become ‘The anti-immigration British National Party’. Anti-immigration! When Jack Straw said that it’s not Ken’s fault alone and that everybody in government had some responsibility, I sincerely hope he together with the likes of Ruth Kelly and others recall their Islam bashing and how they allowed the BNP to espouse the myth of ‘Islamofascism’. And how the hatred they spew is becoming acceptable and mainstream. Maybe this is the ‘new era’ that has begun!”
Azad Ali assesses the results of the London elections.
Barnbrook calls for flying of Union Jack and a ban on burkas
The mainstream party candidates walked off the stage when Richard Barnbrook stepped up to speak after becoming, early on Saturday morning, the first member of the British National Party to win a seat on the London Assembly. Mr Barnbrook was unpeturbed. He expects to be treated as a pariah for the next four years, but insists that he will not be cowed. “If I have to be a lone wolf I will be one,” he told The Times.
Mr Barnbrook, 47, said that he intends to become the voice of “true Londoners”, fighting against political correctness and preferential treatment for racial minorities. He will press for the Union Jack to be flown permanently over City Hall, for burkas to be banned from public buildings and for official celebrations to mark St George’s Day. He will resist the planned construction of a huge new mosque, the biggest place of worship in Britain, in Newham, East London.
Mad Mel warns against ‘the progressive Islamisation of London’s East End’
“From the East London Advertiser comes further news of the progressive Islamisation of London’s East End, and the lengths to which Ken Livingstone is going to court the Muslim vote for tomorrow’s mayoral election.”
Melanie Phillips responds to the report that – shock, horror – Ken Livingstone has pledged to help raise funds for a major revamp of the Jamme Masjid mosque in Brick Lane. And, what’s worse, the proposed development would feature a minaret.
“The height of this proposed minaret is no incidental matter”, Phillips informs us. “The fact that it would tower over Brick Lane is designed to make a powerful symbolic statement of the supremacy of Islam over that area and the subjugation of all non-Islamic creeds. Like the proposed vast Olympic village mosque, also in east London, it is thus in itself an act of jihad against British society. That is what Ken is endorsing.”
Melanie Phillips’s blog, 30 April 2008
Predictably, the fascists of the British National Party find common ground with Phillips on this issue.
The BNP, anti-semitism and Islamophobia
Do not be fooled, the BNP is a fascist organization and racist to the core
By David Landau
“Of course we must teach the truth to the hardcore…. when it comes to influencing the public, forget about racial differences, genetics, Zionism, historical revisionism and so on…. we must at all times present them with an image of moderate reasonableness.” Nick Griffin, Chairman of the BNP, writing in the Patriot, Spring 1999.
LAST WEEK the Argent newspaper group, who produce local newspapers across London and the South East, took an advertisement from the BNP with a picture of a white nuclear family saying “People Like You Vote BNP – British National Party Putting Londoners First”. We know that they are very selective about which Londoners they want to “put first”. But the it seems that the Argent Group were not simply seduced by the money, but fooled into thinking that the BNP is just another party participating in the political process.
The fact that the BNP is just a newish manifestation of an old party going back to the British Brothers League through the British Union of Fascists through the National Front was completely lost on them. They now seem to have seen the error of their ways and have agreed to put the money made on this advertisement to charity. Part of this rumour of respectability is the suggestion that the BNP isn’t anti-Semitic any more. The fact that their leader Nick Griffin used to be an outspoken Holocaust denier, who compared believing that 6 million were murdered with believing that the earth is flat can be put aside as a youthful indiscretion. They have apparently changed their ways.
They even have a Jewish councillor in the person of Pat Richardson (nee Feldman) in Epping Forest. To understand this we need to recognize that anti-Semitism plays a different role in fascist thinking than other forms of racism. Anti-Semitism has been an organizing principle of most fascists. Jews are the Bankers and the Bolsheviks who conspire together to control the world in which the rest of us are pawns and victims of their evil plans. These ideas borrow heavily from medieval Christian ideas about Jews as Christ Killers and Usurers.
This conspiracy theory has been upset by the rise of Islamaphobia. For many fascists, and Nick Griffin and other leaders of the BNP are part of this wing, the central organizing principle is now Islamaphobia. It is the Oil Sheikhs and the Terrorists who are calling the shots, dividing the world against itself and threatening ‘our’ Christian way of life. Leaflets and papers by the BNP portray Muslims praying outside a church on the village green and bombed buses.
BNP replies to the BoD
“Loyal British Jews are our natural allies in the fight against the Islamic fundamentalists who want to destroy the Western civilisation so many of whose core values we hold in common. That is just one reason why many Jews will be voting for the BNP. Let’s remember also, however, that this is only one reason. Jews will be voting British National Party for other reasons too: because they are concerned about crime, because they are worried about the economic decline of our country, because they are concerned about the disintegration of community spirit and decent values. In other words for the same reasons as so many other British voters, including many Sikhs and Christian West Indians. As Martin Wingfield commented in our paper Freedom recently: ‘today there are an increasing number of Jews campaigning for the BNP and feeling very comfortable with their political choice.’
“When the Chief Rabbi a few years ago wrote a book entitled ‘Will Our Grandchildren Be Jewish?’ he articulated precisely the same concern that we have for the future of our people in the same overcrowded multi-cult nightmare that threatens traditional Jewish and British identities alike. Just because a Jew wants to preserve and celebrate his ancestral culture and identity doesn’t make him a ‘hater’ of Gentiles, and nor does our wanting to preserve and celebrate our ancestral culture and identity make us ‘haters’ of Jews, or any other ethnic group for that matter.”
The fascist British National Party continues its campaign to win support in the Jewish community on an anti-Muslim programme.
See earlier comments by Henry Grunwald of the Board of Deputies here.
Of course, the idea that significant numbers of British Jews will be voting for a party whose leader Nick Griffin was convicted only a decade ago of inciting racial hatred, in an article that dismissed the Holocaust as the “Holohoax”, is laughable. What the BNP hopes to do is to attract a few disoriented right-wing individuals from the Jewish community, just as it has attracted the odd individual Sikh sympathiser, and publicise their support in an attempt to cover up its Nazi origins and continue the pretence that it is a mainstream political party.
Welsh anti-fascists challenge ‘extraordinary’ BNP claims
Welsh anti-fascist campaigners challenged a Carmarthenshire BNP candidate to justify the “extraordinary” claims in his election propaganda or resign on Wednesday.
Far-right fantasist Carmarthenshire County Council Penygroes ward British National Party candidate Kevin Edwards claimed in his election leaflets that soldiers at Birmingham hospitals had had to remove their uniforms to avoid offending Muslim staff and visitors. The leaflet also stated that homosexuality was being taught to schoolchildren as young as four.
Anti-fascist campaign Searchlight Cymru secretary Darron Dupre said: “We were a bit bemused by such claims, but were happy to give Mr Edwards the benefit of the doubt, so we checked. We can find no evidence of his claims anywhere. We know of an unsubstantiated newspaper report on Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham, but that was disproved some time ago. We also asked the NUT about the subjects taught to four-year-olds. They were most bemused about Mr Edwards’s claims.”
Mr Edwards’s leaflet argued that British people should get priority in housing over asylum-seekers, even though – as Mr Dupre pointed out – asylum-seekers are not entitled to council housing. “He further states that asylum-seekers get free cars and TVs,” said Mr Dupre.
“Everyone at Searchlight Cymru is intrigued to learn exactly where this is happening. As Mr Edwards obviously knows something that no-one else knows, then we ask that he backs up claims with some facts. If he cannot substantiate such inflammatory claims, then we would expect him to do the honourable thing and resign his candidacy.”
Morning Star, 24 April 2008
Arabist Hans Jansen causes irritation among his peers
In his recent book Islam for pigs, monkeys, donkeys and other animals, Dutch Arabist Hans Jansen has put a cat in among the scientific pigeons. However, it looks like the media are taking him more seriously than his fellow Islam experts are.
Fellow Arabist Professor Martin van Bruinessen from the Institute for Studies in Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) in Leiden expresses the growing irritation with Hans Jansen among his colleagues.
He remembers when in the 1990s, Dr Jansen wrote facetious pieces about Islam. But since the Netherlands became obsessed by fear of Islam after 9/11, the professor from Utrecht has grown into a real phenomenon in the media, in which he presents himself as the only Dutch expert who dares to talk about the inconvenient truth of Islam without political correctness getting in the way.
Dr Jansen’s work is an important source of inspiration for anti-Islamic MP Geert Wilders. In the days after his film Fitna was put on the web, Dr Jansen appeared in several television programmes to explain its content.
In Islam for pigs, he sets out his vision by answering 250 questions about Islam. In the book, Islam is portrayed as a dangerous and violent religion. The Qur’an preaches peace, Dr Jansen admits, but only once everyone has submitted to the religion. Up to that time, evil and unbelievers have to be conquered, using violence if necessary.
The number of Dutch Muslims that reject al-Qaeda’s brand of terrorism could be “lower than we think”, according to the professor. Most Muslims do not see Bin Laden as a madman, but rather as a “super-activist, who is taking the ultimate steps according to Islamic rules in the fight against infidels.”
The title of the book refers to the terms used by the Qur’an for unbelievers and Jews, explains the author in the introduction. Professor Van Bruinessen says: “If you take the time to look at the passages in question – for example on the bibleandkoran.net site, you will see that this is just not true. The Qur’an tells about a people in the past that disobeyed God and was turned into pigs and monkeys as a punishment.”
Professor van Bruinessen thinks this is typical of Mr Jansen’s style. “Since Mr Jansen received the title of professor, but in particular since the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, he has set all scientific scruples aside. He has become an anti-Islam polemist who has no reservations about completely misrepresenting the issues on purpose.”
BNP courts Jewish voters, but their bigotry is unchanged
The BNP is trying to use anti-Muslim racism to win Jewish support. Simon Behrman argues that behind this lies an attack on both groups.