Category Archives: Right wing

What will it take to stop Paul Dacre’s anti-Muslim scaremongering?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Paul DacreIn view of the role played by baseless fantasies about a Muslim takeover of the West in inspiring the Norway terrorist attacks, even the most insensitive editor of a right-wing paper might have been expected to give anti-Muslim scaremongering at least a temporary rest, in deference to the 77 people who lost their lives at the hands of the murderer whose views were moulded by that sort of irresponsible journalism.

Particularly so in the case of the Daily Mail, given that articles from the paper on the subject of encroaching sharia (here, here and here) are cited several times in Anders Breivik’s 2083 manifesto, along with even more numerous references to the paper’s coverage of immigration issues (here, here, here, here, here and here).

Continue reading →

Settler MKs welcome Russian neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers to Knesset, Yad Vashem

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Russian neo-Nazis

The close links that have been established between a section of the Israeli right and European far-right Islamophobes on the common ground of support for Zionism are well known (see for example here and here). But it is still difficult to credit the report that representatives of a Russian group of Hitler-admiring, Holocaust-denying neo-Nazis recently visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial centre in Jerusalem and were welcomed to the Knesset by two of the most notorious anti-Muslim MKs, Aryeh Eldad and Ayoob Kara. Richard Silverstein has the details:

Under the auspices of Tuvia Lerner, editor of the Russian edition of Arutz 7, the media voice of the settler movement, they inveigled themselves an invitation to meet with far-right MKs Aryeh Eldad and Ayoob Kara. They also toured Yad VaShem without telling anyone there that they were Holocaust deniers. Like I told you, this story has to be read to be believed. The two Russians have been photographed giving Nazi salutes, celebrating Der Führer’s birthday, and they published songs of praise to Adolf Hitler on their website.

Naturally, when they met with the MKs the ideas they espoused were quite different.  One of the neo-Nazis told Israeli TV that the concept of Israel “excites me,” because it involves “an ancient people who took upon itself a pioneer project to revive a modern state and nation.” The TV reporter tartly asked how the neo-Nazi of yesterday suddenly became a Zionist. How they did it, is by finding a common enemy: Islam (sound familiar?). The second neo-Nazi tells the interviewer: “We’re talking about radical Islam which is the enemy of humanity, enemy of democracy, enemy of progress and of any sane society.”

Tikun Olam, 28 July 2011

Mad Mel says left-wing Jews are assisting Muslim extremists who ‘want to destroy our way of life’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

You would have thought that the revelations about her role in inspiring Anders Breivik’s hatred of Labour traitors, who he believed had conspired to destroy national identity by flooding their countries with immigrants in pursuit of the warped ideology of multiculturalism, might have prompted a period of quiet reflection on the part of Melanie Phillips. Not a bit of it. Phillips has a piece in this week’s Jewish Chronicle belligerently defending the paper’s political editor Martin Bright against his critics. According to Phillips, Bright is “a fine and principled journalist” who “exposes both Islamists who want to destroy our way of life and the useful idiots whom they manipulate”. (Presumably she has in mind inaccurate, ill-researched exercises in witch-hunting like this.) Continue reading →

Pamela Geller edits post to conceal violent rhetoric in ’email from Norway’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Little green footballs has the details.

Update:  Geller has posted a “clarification” on her blog. She explains:

Back in June 2007 I received an email from a disheartened reader in Norway who was bereft at the deterioration of the society and the lawlessness of life in Norway. It was a heartbreaking email, and I published it at the time: “Email from Norway.” After the massacre in Norway last week, I removed the following sentence from the email, as I found it insenstive and inappropriate: “We are stockpiling and caching weapons, ammunition and equipment. This is going to happen fast.” The sentence I edited is not an incitement to anything. It refers to self-defense, but I removed it in the light of recent horrific events in Norway. I thought it insensitive. Nothing more.

Over at Antiwar.com Justin Raimondo points out that in the comments which follow the original post one of Geller’s readers warns that the author of the email could be prosecuted in Norway. Geller replies that this is “why I ran it anonymously”.

Raimondo observes:

So here is some nut stockpiling “weapons, ammunition, and equipment,” because “this is going to happen fast” – with Geller’s enthusiastic encouragement. Indeed, she’s so concerned her correspondent might be arrested that she’s protecting his identity.

Who is Geller’s mystery correspondent – is it the same Norwegian nut-case who ruthlessly cut down dozens of children, or a different one waiting in the wings to do the same? Come on, Pamela – clear up the mystery. Or would you rather continue to shield your fellow “counter-jihadist”?

Right wing warns against threat of ‘Islamisation’ – in the Czech Republic, where Muslims are 0.1% of the population

Posted on by Bob Pitt

AntiMesitaThe twin terror attacks in Norway have refocused attention on Islamophobia in Europe and closer to home are sparking questions about a recent decision to use taxpayer money to fund an anti-Islamic campaign group.

“I can confirm it,” said Imrich Dioszegi, a spokesman for the Hradec Králové Regional Authority. “The council supports two [campaign] groups of a similar name with a total amount of 15,000 Kč.”

Those groups, both going by the name AntiMešita, or anti-mosque, are headed by Valentin Kusák, who said their goal is to “fight against the Islamization of the Czech Republic”. “A month ago, we got a financial gift for our activities from the Hradec Králové region, which really delighted us,” he added. “This gift will help us to cover our expenses.”

The groups were formed in response to what Kusák said were plans to create a mosque in the city of Hradec Králové. The project he originally opposed has turned out to be an already-existing 50-square-meter building where members of the local Muslim community – many of them students at the nearby university – gather. The building was purchased by the Organization of Muslim Communities in the Czech Republic (UMO-ČR), and leaders of that group term it “a small house for worship.”

“Islam is in its nature aggressive, and it tries to be dominant everywhere it enters,” Kusák said. “Muslims are lying to us about their intentions; after all, that is what the Koran orders them to do in relationships with ‘infidels.’ The mosque is for me one the elements of Islamization, and that is why I oppose it. I am for religious freedom. … But Islam – as preached by Muslim representatives and lecturers around the world as well as in the Czech Republic – is incompatible with democracy.”

The Czech Statistical Office has no official numbers on the country’s Muslim population, but estimates put it at around 15,000, a number that would account for just more than 0.1 percent of the population, as compared with an estimated 8 percent in France, Germany’s 5.4 percent and Norway’s 3.4 percent.

“The fact that a council supports the activities of AntiMešita is totally not right, but others are to judge such actions,” said UMO-ČR Chairman Muneeb Hassan Al Rawi. “I compare such initiatives to fascism. Especially after Friday in Norway, everyone should clear up their perspective, because it came to light that not only Muslims have a patent on terrorism.”

Asked if he was worried about Islamophobia in Europe and the Czech Republic, Al Rawi said: “Of course, the concerns are growing.”

“I am a Czech citizen. I have lived here for 25 years, and still every time I return from abroad I get stopped at the airports by customs officers,” Al Rawi said. “Now, after Norway, when a guy does it to his own people and he is not Muslim, basically anything can happen. We knew this a long time ago, but if I said this a week ago you would have considered me a fool.”

Prague Post, 28 July 2011

‘Counter-jihadism’ and terrorist violence

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In the wake of the attacks, Fjordman, Geller, and other prominent counter-jihadists have condemned Breivik’s actions and argued that they have never condoned violence. However, their dystopian fantasy world – in which the white Christian martyrs of Eurabia are constantly subjected to rape and murder at the hands of bloodthirsty Muslims – clearly provided what former CIA officer Marc Sageman has described in The New York Times as “the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged”.

Øyvind Strømmen analyses Anders Breivik’s roots in the “counter-jihad” movement.

Foreign Affairs, 27 July 2011

After Oslo, right-wing group accuses thousands of American Muslims of being a part of a ‘fifth column’ that has ‘infiltrated’ the US

Posted on by Bob Pitt

CNS MB network

Days after a Norwegian terrorist allegedly motivated by a fear of Muslim infiltration killed 76 people, a Florida group took to Capitol Hill to accuse thousands of American Muslims of being a “fifth column”. Its presentation, a link analysis compiled from “open source” material, is collected into a database and brought to Washington by an influential Congressman.

An obscure nonprofit called Citizens for National Security compiled a “database” of “almost 6000 individuals and almost 200 organizations” in the United States linked in some way to the Muslim Brotherhood, the influential 80-year old Egyptian Islamic group.

These individuals and organizations “form a fifth column movement, a subversive movement intended to help undermine the United States as a secular government, as a Judeo-Christian society”, said Peter Leitner, one of the founders of Citizens for National Security. Leitner identified himself as a retired federal employee who used to perform “counterterrorism-type analysis”.

Citizens for National Security would not name any individual listed in the database, which it maintains is compiled exclusively from “open-source” material. Asked by Danger Room who would have access to it, Leitner said it would be available to “someone in the government [or] law enforcement”. U.S. intelligence and Homeland Security agencies have recently warned about the rising threat of “lone-wolf” homegrown terrorists, which al-Qaida is trying to inspire.

But U.S. citizens don’t need to have been charged with any crime to be mentioned in the database, he said, only “connected” to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is not a banned organization inside the United States.

To release the database to private citizens would be “irresponsible”, Leitner said, but he aggressively rejected any association between his research and the rampage allegedly committed by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway on Friday. In a sprawling online manifesto, Breivik accused European elites of acquiescing to a campaign of Muslim infiltration that threatened European civilization.

Breivik believed that “there was a certain type of threat” and might have been “correct”, Leitner said, but Breivik was a mere “lunatic”. “Having situational awareness of your condition,” Leitner said, “is in no ways inimical to national survival.”

Citizens for National Security released its accusation in the basement of the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill, thanks to the patronage of Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), who blessed the group’s work. West, an Army officer whose career ended after he fired a gun at the head of an Iraqi detainee, said the group’s research “is about the protection of each and every American citizen”.

Wired, 25 July 2011

See also Matt Gertz, “Fox doesn’t even know who they’re using to smear Muslims”, Media Matters for America, 25 July 2011

Berlusconi ally praises Norway killer’s ideas

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Mario Borghezio
Mario Borghezio at a rally organised by the German far-right organisation Pro-Köln

An ally of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has triggered a storm of protest after he described as “excellent” some of Norwegian terrorism suspect Anders Behring Breivik’s ideas.

Mario Borghezio, a European Parliament member for the anti-immigration Northern League, said he agreed with Breivik’s “opposition to Islam and his explicit accusation that Europe has surrendered before putting up a fight against its Islamisation.”

Borghezio told the host of talk radio programme La Zanzara that he did not agree with Breivik’s use of violence, nor with the “Protestant” Norwegian’s “anti-Papist” stance. But he said that “some of the ideas (of Breivik’s) are good, in certain cases even excellent.”

The Northern League is the junior partner in Berlusconi’s conservative government.

The centre-left opposition called for Borghezio to resign from the European Parliament. “It is a matter of shame for all of us that a representative of the ruling coalition made apologetic remarks about one of the cruelest acts of terrorism,” said the Democratic Party’s David Sassoli and the Italy of Values party’s Niccolo Rinaldi, both European parliamentarians.

Times Live, 26 July 2011

Update:  See also “Ex-Berlusconi minister defends Anders Behring Breivik”, Guardian, 28 July 2011

Northern League MP and former minister Francesco Speroni is quoted as saying: “I’m with Borghezio. I don’t think he should resign. If [Breivik’s] ideas are that we are going towards Eurabia and those sorts of things, that western Christian civilisation needs to be defended, yes, I’m in agreement.”