Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #519 More on the History of the Islamic Fascist Axis

Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad ral­ly, 4/15/2005. PIJ is an off­shoot of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Do the par­tic­i­pants in this ral­ly appear to be mak­ing an Islam­ic ges­ture?

Record­ed July 24, 2005

REALAUDIO

In the wake of 9/11, the Lon­don bomb­ings and oth­er, less-pub­li­cized ter­ror­ist inci­dents, this pro­gram sets forth more infor­ma­tion about the his­tor­i­cal devel­op­ment of the fascist/Islamist rela­tion­ship. (FTR#456 is a com­pendi­um of many of the fascist/Nazi links to con­tem­po­rary terrorism—9/11 in par­tic­u­lar.) After high­light­ing a num­ber of arti­cles rel­e­vant to 9/11 and fas­cist con­nec­tions to that inci­dent, the broad­cast presents an infor­ma­tive paper detail­ing the devel­op­ment of the Third Reich’s rela­tion­ship with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem—an SS offi­cer, key Axis spy and (even­tu­al­ly) the first leader of the Pales­tin­ian nation­al move­ment. Hus­sei­ni was an offi­cer in the Turk­ish army in World War I, dur­ing the peri­od in which the Turks com­mit­ted geno­cide against the Chris­t­ian Arme­ni­ans. After the British assumed con­trol of much of the Arab ter­ri­to­ry for­mer­ly held as part of the Ottoman Empire, they groomed al-Hus­sei­ni as a pri­ma­ry func­tionary of theirs in the Mid­dle East. A mur­der­ous anti-Semi­te, al-Hus­sei­ni even­tu­al­ly became the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem—the lead­ing Mus­lim cler­ic in the British pro­tec­torate of Pales­tine. It is note­wor­thy that the British reversed their 1922 agree­ment to abide by a League of Nations man­date to pro­vide for a Jew­ish home­land in Pales­tine, in order to cur­ry favor with the Arabs. (Of course, the Arabs con­trolled the vital oil resources of the Mid­dle East and, because of that, were deemed more impor­tant for British impe­r­i­al aspi­ra­tions in that part of the world.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Yeslam Binladin’s offer to pay for his brother’s legal defense in the event of Osama’s cap­ture; a state­ment by the father of 9/11 hijack­er Mohamed Atta sup­port­ing the Lon­don tran­sit bomb­ings; the fact that Atta’s father bears the same name as a key al-Qae­da weapons pro­cur­er (who’s broth­er financed al-Qae­da and was rep­re­sent­ed by Home­land Secu­ri­ty chief Michael Chertoff); the con­ver­sion of British fas­cist David Myatt to Islam; Myatt’s asso­ci­a­tion with the Islam­o­fas­cist imam of the Fins­bury Park mosque; the League of Nations’ 1922 endorse­ment of the con­cept of a Jew­ish home­land; the Grand Mufti’s ille­gal ele­va­tion by the British to his posi­tion of pow­er between the wars; the Grand Mufti’s ini­ti­a­tion of pogroms against the Jews between the World Wars; the Grand Mufti’s even­tu­al align­ment with Nazi Ger­many dur­ing World War II; the World War II era Arabs’ say­ing “In Heav­en Allah, on earth, Hitler.” For more about the gen­e­sis of the fascist/Islamist axis, see—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#’s 371, 383, 414, 416, 453, 473, 514.

1. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of Osama bin Laden’s half broth­er Yeslam, the pro­gram notes that he has vol­un­teered to pay for Osama’s legal expens­es should he ever be cap­tured. This is sig­nif­i­cant. Yeslam has main­tained that he has had noth­ing to do with his half broth­er or ter­ror­ism. The evi­dence sug­gests oth­er­wise. For infor­ma­tion about pos­si­ble terror/9–11 con­nec­tions of Yeslam and the bin Laden family’s Euro­pean hold­ing com­pa­ny SICO (which Yeslam heads), see—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#’s 355, 498, 499. “One of Osama bin Laden’s half broth­ers said he would pay for the ter­ror mastermind’s defense should he ever be cap­tured, Yeslam Bin­ladin said in a broad­cast inter­view. ‘For sure,’ Yeslam Bin­ladin respond­ed when asked if he would help pay. ‘Every­one has the right to defend him­self, any­one who is accused of doing some­thing.’”
(“Bin Laden Rel­a­tive to Pay for His Defense” by Nadia Abou El-Magd [AP]; Las Vegas Sun; 7/3/05; p. 1.)

2. “Yeslam and Osama are among 54 sons and daugh­ters of the late Sau­di con­struc­tion mag­nate Mohamed bin Laden, who had 22 wives. Yeslam said he believed his half broth­er, thought to be hid­ing in the rugged moun­tains along the Afghan-Pak­istan bor­der, was still alive. ‘I don’t think he’s dead,’ he said in the inter­view record­ed on May 28 that aired Sun­day on the Dubai-based Al-Ara­biya satel­lite tele­vi­sion sta­tion. When asked why U.S. forces had still not been able to track bin Laden down, Yeslam respond­ed: ‘I don’t know, ask them.’” (Idem.)

3. Next, the pro­gram high­lights the incen­di­ary com­ments of 9/11 hijack­er Mohamed Atta’s father. Atta’s father endorsed the Lon­don bomb­ings, and promised a 50-year war between Mus­lims and the West. Inter­est­ing­ly, and per­haps sig­nif­i­cant­ly, Atta’s father has the same name as the broth­er of Dr. Magdy el-Amir, a financier of al Qae­da who was rep­re­sent­ed in court by Michael Chertoff, now the direc­tor of the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty. Dr. el-Amir’s broth­er was a weapons pro­cur­er for al Qae­da, snared in Oper­a­tion Dia­mond­back. Are Atta’s father and Dr. el-Amir’s broth­er the same per­son? (For more about Dr. Magdy el-Amir, Chertoff and Oper­a­tion Dia­mond­back, see FTR#’s 495, 500.) “The father of one of the Sep­tem­ber 11 hijack­ers said today he had no sor­row for what had hap­pened in Lon­don and claimed more ter­ror­ist attacks would fol­low. Egypt­ian Mohamed el-Amir, whose son Mohamed Atta com­man­deered the first plane that crashed into the World Trade Cen­ter in New York, said there was a dou­ble stan­dard in the way the world viewed the vic­tims in Lon­don and vic­tims in the Islam­ic world.”
(“Father of 9/11 Hijack­er Warns of 50-Year War” [RSS World News]; Dai­ly Mail; 7/20/2005.)

4. “El-Amir said the attacks in the US and the July 7 attacks in Britain were the begin­ning of what would be a 50-year reli­gious war, in which there would be many more fight­ers like his son. Speak­ing to a CNN pro­duc­er in his apart­ment in the upper-mid­dle-class Cairo sub­urb of Giza, he declared that ter­ror cells around the world were a ‘nuclear bomb that has now been acti­vat­ed and is tick­ing.’ Curs­ing in Ara­bic, el-Amir also denounced Arab lead­ers and Mus­lims who con­demned the Lon­don attacks as being trai­tors and non-Mus­lims. He pas­sion­ate­ly vowed that he would do any­thing with­in his pow­er to encour­age more attacks.” (Idem.)

5. Pre­sent­ing a win­dow into the mind­set of con­tem­po­rary Islamists, the pro­gram presents excerpts of a dis­turb­ing inter­view with Dr. Ahmad Dewidar, imam of the Islam­ic Soci­ety of Mid Man­hat­tan and a lec­tur­er at Man­hat­tanville Col­lege. Viewed as ‘the face of the next gen­er­a­tion of Mus­lims in Amer­i­ca, Dewidar is
a tru­ly dis­gust­ing, hor­ri­fy­ing char­ac­ter. Espous­ing views that would make Hitler proud, Dewidar doesn’t think that Mus­lims were respon­si­ble for 9/11 and feels that Jews con­trol the U.S. gov­ern­ment and news media. Such extrem­ism exem­pli­fies why Mr. Emory’s uses the term “Islam­o­fas­cist” to describe peo­ple like Dewidar. Note that the inter­view here was post­ed on the web­site of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Note also that Dewidar express­es the view that Mus­lims were not behind the 9/11 attacks—a view echoed by many of the Inter­net con­spir­a­cy geeks and sig­nif­i­cant ele­ments of the so-called 9/11 truth move­ment. “ . . . QUESTION: ‘What steps did you take to fend off the accu­sa­tion that stuck to the Mus­lims – [i.e.] that they were behind 9/11?’ DEWIDAR: ‘Although a large part of Amer­i­can soci­ety believes that 9/11 was an oper­a­tion planned and fab­ri­cat­ed in order to forge a new real­i­ty of world rule under the so-called ‘New World Order,’ most of soci­ety got the mes­sage from the Mus­lims that they were in fact the ones behind [the attacks]. [Empha­sis added.] This mes­sage was reflect­ed in the [fact that] the Tal­iban and Osama bin Laden took respon­si­bil­i­ty for the event, as well as in the reac­tions of glee in the Arab and Mus­lim world to what hap­pened. As far as the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment is con­cerned these events –whether or not these events were planned, or pinned on the Mus­lims, or some­thing else—provided an oppor­tu­ni­ty for [the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment] to leg­is­late dubi­ous laws that restrict the growth and pres­ence of Islam in the U.S., such as the [anti-] ter­ror­ism law, and oth­er laws. But as far as Amer­i­can soci­ety is con­cerned, the sus­pi­cion towards any­thing Islamic—in the streets, in places of recre­ation and com­merce, and in workplaces—remains a heavy bur­den on the Mus­lim cit­i­zen in Amer­i­ca. The media—most of which is under Zion­ist con­trol—has helped to spread this per­cep­tion. [Empha­sis added.] When [the media] see a beard­ed Mus­lim sell­ing fast food on any street in any state, they put the cam­era lens in front of him and inter­view him as though he rep­re­sents Islam. At the same time, they ignore every mod­er­ate Islam­ic voice, every seri­ous, sci­en­tif­ic Islam­ic mod­el, and every expert reli­gious schol­ar. We are try­ing to deal [with this phe­nom­e­non] through con­stant con­tact with the media and by reg­is­ter­ing com­plaints with its direc­tors.’”
(“Head of Islam­ic Cen­ter in Man­hat­tan: Many Amer­i­cans Believe 9/11 Was Fab­ri­cat­ed to Enable the Forg­ing of a ‘New World Order” [Inter­view with Dr. Ahmad Dewidar]; MEMRI Spe­cial Dis­patch Series No. 928; 6/30/2005; [Excerpt­ed from an inter­view on the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s web­site www.ikhwaonline.com and MBC TV; pp. 1–2.)

6. “ ‘To con­clude, I would like to say that Amer­i­can society—without relat­ing to any giv­en gov­ern­ment position—is an active soci­ety that loves life and is quick to for­get. It will get over the events of 9/11 eas­i­ly, on con­di­tion that we offer them proof that we are inno­cent of this crime . . . .’ [Empha­sis added.]” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

7. “QUESTION: ‘What is the extent of the Mus­lim community’s influ­ence on Amer­i­can soci­ety?’ DEWIDAR: ‘The Zion­ist com­mu­ni­ty num­bers only three mil­lion, but they con­trol the gov­ern­ment, the pol­i­tics, the econ­o­my, and the media in the U.S. [Empha­sis added.] At the same time, the Islam­ic com­mu­ni­ty num­bers 11 mil­lion, but its influ­ence is weak. . . . QUESTION: ‘Are the only obsta­cles that pre­vent the orga­ni­za­tion and influ­ence of the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty obsta­cles relat­ed to its inter­nal affairs? DEWIDAR: ‘Of course not. Many are inter­est­ed in pre­vent­ing our influ­ence in society—first and fore­most the Zion­ist lob­by, which influ­ences the media at present, so that we can­not spread our ideas and spot­light our lead­ers and our suc­cess­ful mod­els. Even when a Mus­lim tries to work in the media, he has to con­tend with five mil­lion media employ­ees who are con­trolled by the Jews. [Empha­sis added.] If he is a genius, and they are forced to employ him, he works behind the cam­era, not in front of it. . . .” (Idem.)

8. In eval­u­at­ing and ana­lyz­ing the Lon­don tran­sit bomb­ings, it is impor­tant to take into con­sid­er­a­tion the fact that a num­ber of British neo-Nazis have embraced the Islamist cause. A for­mer “Nazi-Satanist” David Myatt has become a Mus­lim in order to fight against “the Jews.” Note that Myatt was received and laud­ed by Omar Bakri Mohamed, impli­cat­ed in the Lon­don bomb­ings and tak­en into cus­tody short­ly after­ward. (For more about the neo-Naz­i/Is­lam­o­fas­cist link, see—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#’s 352, 443, 456, 499.) “...the charis­mat­ic leader of the Eng­lish neo-Nazi move­ment, David Myatt, now become Abdul Aziz ibn Myatt, appeals to those nos­tal­gic Axis mem­bers and to all ene­mies of the Zion­ists, to embrace with him the Jihad, the ‘true mar­tial reli­gion’ , which will most effec­tive­ly fight against the Jews and the Amer­i­cans. Anoth­er sign of this rap­proche­ment: on April 3, 2003, the Salafist Lon­don­er Omar Bakri Mohamed, leader of the move­ment al Mouha­jiroun as well as being imam of the Fins­bury Park mosque and a recruiter of a num­ber of youths who went off to join al Qae­da, offi­cial­ly received Myatt and accord­ed him a ‘wel­come into Islam’, spec­i­fy­ing to jour­nal­ists that the neo-Nazi past of this neo­phyte had ‘no spe­cial impor­tance once their goals con­verged in com­mon’.”
(“The Reds, The Browns and the Greens” by Alexan­dre Del Valle; Occi­den­tal­is; 12/13/04; p. 2.)

9. More about the Euro­pean neo-Fas­cist/Is­lam­o­fas­cist link: “Proof of the Euro­pean and trans-nation­al dimen­sion of the new pro-Islamist dimen­sion of the extreme right is in Lon­don, where one of the prin­ci­pal cen­ters of Islamist pros­e­lytism, the Islam­ic Coun­cil of Defense of Europe, is based. This insti­tu­tion is ani­mat­ed by old neo-Nazi mil­i­tants. At its head, one finds Tahir de la Nive, a Fran­co-British con­vert to Islam who, imi­tat­ing David Myatt, extols the gen­er­al Islamiza­tion of Europe as the sole ‘rem­e­dy for deca­dence and Amer­i­can-Zion­ist impe­ri­al­ism’. Quite respect­ed among the ‘nation­al-rev­o­lu­tion­ary’ milieus, among skin­heads and in the heart of the New Right, Mr. de la Nive, an old mujahid who had gone off to fight the Sovi­et ‘infi­dels’ in the 1980s, advo­cates a kind of ‘Euro­pean Islam­ic nation­al­ism’ and pub­lish­es a bilin­gual French-Eng­lish review, Cen­tu­rio, which ‘treats of the mil­i­tary prob­lems in the frame­work of Islam­ic phi­los­o­phy and war’. In a recent work pref­aced by Omar Amin and Chris­t­ian Bouchet, Les Crois­es de I’On­cle Sam [The Cru­sades of Uncle Sam], this Brown-Green ide­o­logue calls on all neo-Nazi mil­i­tants to join rev­o­lu­tion­ary Islam and denounce every form of com­pro­mise with the ‘dia­bol­ic’ forces of Amer­i­can-Israeli impe­ri­al­ism. Oth­er cen­tral fig­ures of Eng­lish fas­cism, the direc­tors of the World Union of Socialists—Colin Jor­dan, the ‘Fuhrer’ of the Eng­lish Nation­al Social­ist Move­ment (NSM), and John Tyndall—have since 1988 been main­tain­ing

con­tacts with Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ist milieus as well as with the regime of Muam­mar Kad­hafy. On his side, the head of the Eng­lish Nation­al­ist Move­ment, Troy South­gate, has declared in the columns of the Fran­co-Eng­lish nation­al-rev­o­lu­tion­ary jour­nal W.O.T.A.N. (Will of the Aryan Nations); ‘In Pales­tine, the cru­el­ty of Zion­ism is evi­dent and we can­not but sym­pa­thize with the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple, who, just as our­selves, have seen their land soiled and despoiled by the igno­ble par­a­site which is ‘inter­na­tion­al Jew­ry.’ The ENM salutes Hamas and total­ly sup­ports the armed strug­gle against those who have vicious­ly attacked the ances­tral her­itage of an entire nation’.” (Ibid.; p. 4.)

10. Most of the pro­gram con­sists of a lengthy excerpt of an excel­lent arti­cle about the his­tor­i­cal devel­op­ment of the Islamist/Nazi link. It is very impor­tant to note the role of British impe­r­i­al strat­e­gy in cat­alyz­ing the begin­nings of the Nazi/Islamist con­nec­tion. “The end of World War I brought an end to the Ottoman col­o­niza­tion of Pales­tine. Towards the end of the war, Britain issued the Bal­four Dec­la­ra­tion sup­port­ing the ‘estab­lish­ment in Pales­tine of a nation­al home for the Jew­ish peo­ple ....’ The orig­i­nal reac­tion of the Arabs was mixed. While many Arabs opposed the Zion­ists, Emir Faisal — who was the son of for­mer Mec­ca ruler Sherif Hus­sein and lat­er King of Iraq — signed in 1919 a dec­la­ra­tion in sup­port of the Bal­four Dec­la­ra­tion, even sup­port­ing all nec­es­sary mea­sures ‘...to encour­age and stim­u­late immi­gra­tion of Jews into Pales­tine on a large scale, and as quick­ly as pos­si­ble to set­tle Jew­ish immi­grants upon the land through clos­er set­tle­ment and inten­sive cul­ti­va­tion of the soil.’ But peace between Arab and Jew would not last.”
(“Nazi Influ­ence on the Mid­dle East Dur­ing WWII” by David Storobin, Esq.; Glob­al Politi­cian; 1/6/05; p. 1.)

11. The bulk of the pro­gram con­sists of the read­ing of a long, infor­ma­tive arti­cle on the gen­e­sis of the Nazi/Islamist con­nec­tion. Of para­mount impor­tance in this analy­sis is the cyn­i­cal colo­nial­ist realpoli­tik prac­ticed by the British. After assum­ing con­trol of Pales­tine under a man­date from the League of Nations, they ille­gal­ly ele­vat­ed Haj Amin al-Hus­sei­ni to his posi­tion as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in order to court the pow­er­ful Hus­sei­ni clan as allies in the main­te­nance of this part of their empire. (The Hus­sei­ni fam­i­ly wield­ed con­sid­er­able influ­ence in both Jerusalem and Mec­ca, and were thus seen as piv­otal to British colo­nial ambi­tions in the Mid­dle East.) Note that Hus­sei­ni had been in the Turk­ish army dur­ing World War I dur­ing the peri­od in which the Turks per­pe­trat­ed geno­cide against the Chris­t­ian Arme­ni­ans. He was engag­ing in mas­sacres of Jews from 1920 on. Later—as an SS offi­cer and key ally of Nazi Germany—he exer­cised his polit­i­cal abil­i­ties against the British Empire. “On April 4,1920, Haj Amin al-Hus­sei­ni orga­nized thou­sands of Arabs to attack Jews in Jerusalem. Arab police either stayed away or joined the riot­ers. The pogrom con­tin­ued on April 5. By the time order was restored by a Ze’ev Jabotin­sky-led Jew­ish mili­tia, 5 Jews were killed and 211 injured. At least two Jew­ish girls were raped. Al-Hus­sei­ni was sen­tenced to 10 years impris­on­ment, but after a few months of hid­ing in Tran­sjor­dan (now Jor­dan) was par­doned by Her­bert Samuel, a British Jew who served as the High Com­mis­sion­er of Pales­tine.” (Idem.)

12. “A year lat­er, on May 1, 1921, al-Hus­sei­ni orga­nized anoth­er round of pogroms. On that day, Zion­ists clashed with Com­mu­nists dur­ing the May Day parade. Com­mu­nists were quick­ly dis­persed, but Haj Amin al-Hus­sei­ni made sure not to miss the oppor­tu­ni­ty and quick­ly sum­moned his forces. When riot­ing end­ed on May 6, at least 13 Jews were mur­dered. While the British colo­nial pow­ers admit­ted that Arabs insti­gat­ed the vio­lence, they decid­ed not to press charges against al-Hus­sei­ni because they felt he was pro­voked by Zion­ists who demand­ed estab­lish­ment of the Jew­ish state.” (Idem.)

13. “The 1921 riots came short­ly after al-Hus­sei­ni was appoint­ed Mufti of Jerusalem by the British — in vio­la­tion of elec­tion results. The two pri­ma­ry Arab fam­i­lies in Jerusalem were the Hus­sei­nis and the Nashashibis. When Great Britain con­quered Jerusalem, a mem­ber of the al-Hus­sei­ni clan was may­or of Jerusalem, but was sub­se­quent­ly removed by the colo­nial gov­ern­ment with a mem­ber of the Nashashibi fam­i­ly appoint­ed in his place. In March 1921, the Mufti of Jerusalem — a Hus­sei­ni — died. The High Com­mis­sion­er of the colony con­sid­ered it desir­able to bal­ance the Nashashibi may­or with a Hus­sei­ni mufti, with Haj Amin al-Hus­sei­ni being his pre­ferred can­di­date for the posi­tion.” (Idem.)

14. Note that the Mufti’s ele­va­tion by the British was ille­gal. “The elec­toral col­lege nom­i­nat­ed three can­di­dates for the posi­tion of the Mufti. Under the long-estab­lished law, the colo­nial pow­er was to choose among the top three vote-get­ters. How­ev­er, the pre­ferred can­di­date of the Brits, Haj Amin al-Hus­sei­ni, placed fourth, receiv­ing only about 7% of the vote. To the local Islam­ic lead­ers (out­side the Hus­sei­ni clan), the young man’s lack of reli­gious prepa­ra­tion and knowl­edge made him an unac­cept­able can­di­date to be the top reli­gious leader in Jerusalem. All of the top three can­di­dates were Nashashibi-spon­sored, while the Hus­sei­ni clan focused its ener­gies on pro­mot­ing Haj Amin. The British inter­vened and forced the most pop­u­lar can­di­date, Sheikh Husam al-Din, to with­draw, thus push­ing al-Hus­sei­ni into third place. The young man with­out any reli­gious train­ing sud­den­ly became the most pow­er­ful Islam­ic cler­ic in Jerusalem.” (Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

15. “A few months lat­er, in Decem­ber of 1921, the British admin­is­tra­tion estab­lished a Supreme Mus­lim Coun­cil with full con­trol over the Waqf (reli­gious trusts) and the Shari­ah (Mus­lim reli­gious courts). Haj Amin al-Hus­sei­ni was appoint­ed Pres­i­dent of the body. With­in a year, the man who orga­nized mul­ti­ple mas­sacres, became the leader of all the most impor­tant bod­ies in the colony: reli­gious (as a Mufti), legal (Shari­ah) and finan­cial (Waqf). A 1937 Roy­al Com­mis­sion report not­ed al-Hus­sei­ni had ‘no legal lim­i­ta­tion to his pow­er.’” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

16. “Con­trol­ling a spec­tac­u­lar sum of mon­ey and the right to appoint Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic preach­ers, al-Hus­sei­ni built a ‘polit­i­cal machine’ that brought the reli­gious and polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment under his dom­i­na­tion. Through them, he was able to arouse reli­gious fanati­cism against Jews and the West. His preach­ers urged their flock to ‘go out and mur­der the Jew­ish infi­del in the name of the holy Koran,’ con­stant­ly declar­ing that ‘he who kills a Jew is assured of a place in the next world.’”’ (Idem.)

17. The Grand Mufti’s hatred of Jews (and sub­se­quent alliance with the Third Reich) was matched by that of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood founder Has­san al-Ban­na. (For more about the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, see—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#’s 343, 455, 456, 473, 513, 514, 518. Use the search func­tion linked at the top of this descrip­tion to find more infor­ma­tion about the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.) “Mufti hat­ed Jews for the same rea­sons as Hasan al-Ban­na in Egypt. Jews, espe­cial­ly the arriv­ing Zion­ist immi­grants, brought a modem, Western/European way of life, a direct oppo­site of what the fun­da­men­tal­ists want­ed. Just as Ban­na, Hus­sei­ni felt per­son­al­ly threat­ened by West­ern cul­ture. ‘The Jews have changed the life of Pales­tine in such a way that it must inevitably lead to the destruc­tion of our race .... The Jew­ish girls who run around in shorts demor­al­ize our youth by their mere pres­ence.??

?” (Idem.)

18. In the con­text of the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict, it is inter­est­ing to note that the Unit­ed Nations’ estab­lish­ment of Israel fol­lowed a prece­dent of inter­na­tion­al law estab­lished in 1922. “The year 1922 brought the worst pos­si­ble news to al-Hus­sei­ni. The League of Nations rec­og­nized the land west of the Jor­dan Riv­er as the ‘Jew­ish Nation­al Home.’ The British White Paper of 1922, divid­ed Pales­tine with 77% to the east of the Jor­dan riv­er giv­en to Arabs, while the 23% to the west left for the Jew­ish peo­ple. Short­ly there­after, the League of Nations con­firmed the divi­sion in its man­date sys­tem, urg­ing Great Britain, as the Manda­to­ry pow­er, to ‘facil­i­tate Jew­ish immi­gra­tion,’ as well as ‘close set­tle­ment of Jews on the land.’ The League of Nations even man­dat­ed that no ‘ter­ri­to­ry shall be ced­ed or leased to, or in any way placed under the con­trol of, the Gov­ern­ment of any for­eign Pow­er,’ thus reject­ing any Arab claims to what has since become known as Israel, West Bank and Gaza. Indeed, the Arab peo­ple are nev­er even men­tioned in the Man­date.” (Idem.)

19. “Sherif Hus­sein’s two sons were thus appoint­ed Kings. Faisal became the King of Iraq, while Abdul­lah the ruler of Tran­sjor­dan. The Hashe­mi clan orig­i­nal­ly fled from the Ara­bi­an Penin­su­la to Cyprus, but then set­tled in Tran­sjor­dan, lead­ing the fight against the British. Mak­ing Abdul­lah the King of Tran­sjor­dan sat­is­fied the Hashemites after the embar­rass­ing loss Mec­ca. But as far as al-Hus­sei­ni was con­cerned, it was­n’t bad enough that he did­n’t get a state, but his worst ene­mies in the Arab world — the Hashemites — were now rul­ing two coun­tries (Tran­sjor­dan and Iraq), while Zion­ists had their goal legit­imized by the League of Nations. The Kings of Iraq and Tran­sjor­dan ‑despite see­ing their father back­stabbed by the Eng­lish — were mod­er­ates, friend­ly to the West and accept­ing of the Jew­ish state in the Mid­dle East. As the world was split into fas­cist and demo­c­ra­t­ic camps in the 1930’s and 1940’s, al-Hus­sei­ni and Has­san al-Ban­na found them­selves on the oppo­site side of the Hashemites.” (Idem.)

20. More about the Grand Mufti’s manip­u­la­tion and exploita­tion of the geo-polit­i­cal and colo­nial dynam­ics of the Mid­dle East between the World Wars: “The Mufti, who sup­port­ed estab­lish­ment of Greater Syr­ia in what is now Israel, Syr­ia, Jor­dan, Lebanon, West Bank and Gaza, decid­ed to focus his efforts on tak­ing over Pales­tine and Tran­sjor­dan, while under­min­ing the British and the Hashemites in Iraq. Years lat­er, UK’s Colo­nial Sec­re­tary Orms­by-Gore would report to the House of Lords: ‘The Mufti ... is play­ing his own dynas­tic game, and that game undoubt­ed­ly is to become not mere­ly the sov­er­eign of Pales­tine, not mere­ly to be crowned or uncrowned King of Pales­tine, but first head of Pales­tine, then Pales­tine and Tran­sjor­dan com­bined, and then the whole of Syr­ia, and, of course, in that posi­tion to be regard­ed as the leader of the Sun­ni world. ... He is a man of quite unlim­it­ed polit­i­cal ambi­tion. He was a Turk­ish Staff Offi­cer (dur­ing World War I) — and inci­den­tal­ly a Turk who knew him thought he was the black­est-heart­ed man in the Mid­dle East.’” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

21. Turn­ing on his British bene­fac­tors, the Grand Mufti grav­i­tat­ed toward Hitler. As will be seen, al-Hus­sei­ni became one of Nazi Germany’s most impor­tant allies, and played a role in bring­ing about the Holo­caust. “With­in weeks of Adolf Hitler’s ascen­dance to pow­er. Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Hus­sei­ni con­tact­ed the Ger­man coun­sel-gen­er­al in Pales­tine. With excep­tion of fund­ing anti-Semit­ic riots, Ger­mans reject­ed the Arab’s over­tures until 1937, when Adolf Eich­mann and Her­bert Hagen were sent to Pales­tine to estab­lish a frame­work to pro­vide Hus­sei­ni with mil­i­tary and finan­cial aid by Nazi Ger­many and Fas­cist Italy.” (Idem.)

22. “By then, the Mufti had already proven his anti-Jew­ish cre­den­tials to the Ger­mans by orga­niz­ing a three-year long riots and mas­sacres. On April 19,1936, a crowd of Arabs stum­bled upon Jews in the town of Jaf­fa. Hav­ing been incit­ed by Mufti-spread rumors that Zion­ists were killing Mus­lims, the crowd decid­ed to kill three of the Jews they met. Six days lat­er, the Arab High­er Com­mit­tee was cre­at­ed, with al-Hus­sei­ni pre­sid­ing over the new body. The com­mit­tee open­ly endorsed past vio­lence and began orga­niz­ing future dis­obe­di­ence. On May 5, the British colo­nial author­i­ties warned al-Hus­sei­ni against com­mit­ting ille­gal acts, but did not appear par­tic­u­lar­ly deci­sive. With­in weeks, mas­sive vio­lence broke out. By Octo­ber 1936, near­ly 300 peo­ple were killed and anoth­er 1,100 wound­ed.” (Idem.)

23. Note that the British cod­dled the Grand Mufti and even­tu­al­ly reversed the Bal­four Dec­la­ra­tion (which rec­og­nized the Jews’ aspi­ra­tions for a home­land in the Mid­dle East.) “Colo­nial forces arrest­ed a few pawns and one major leader, but took no action against the Mufti. The New York Times report­ed on June 14,1936 that al-Hus­sei­ni had suc­ceed­ed ‘in con­vinc­ing expe­ri­enced high British civ­il ser­vants that he is work­ing for the gov­ern­men­t’s inter­ests [and that] it was in the inter­est of the gov­ern­ment that he should also be pres­i­dent of the new Arab High Com­mit­tee,’ so that ‘Haj Amin el-Hus­sei­ni enjoys the gov­ern­men­t’s com­plete con­fi­dence as its unof­fi­cial advis­er on the Arab side of the sit­u­a­tion .... The gov­ern­ment believes that he and only he is in a posi­tion to appease the Moslem mass­es; there­fore it gives him every sup­port while at the same time play­ing into his hands.’” (Idem.)

24. “Con­tin­u­ing its pol­i­cy of sid­ing with the Mufti, in June the Brits arrest­ed scores of mem­bers of the Defense Par­ty spon­sored by the rival Nashashibi clan, despite lack of any evi­dence that the Nashashibis were involved in the mas­sacres. Nine­ty per­cent of Arabs in the Sinai con­cen­tra­tion camp belonged to the Defense Par­ty, with anoth­er 10% com­ing from small­er polit­i­cal move­ments. None of the Hus­sei­ni-backed peo­ple were sent to the con­cen­tra­tion camp.” (Idem.)

25. The cyn­i­cism and anti-Semi­tism of the British toward the Jews was matched by the Sovi­et Union and the Com­mu­nist Par­ty: “The UK was not the only pow­er help­ing the Mufti in 1936. The USSR-spon­sored Com­mu­nist Par­ty of Pales­tine also did its part. After the 1929 mas­sacres (includ­ing the slaugh­ter of 68 Jews in Hebron), the Com­mu­nist Par­ty issued a state­ment that ‘rev­o­lu­tion­ary move­ment with­out pogroms [anti-Semit­ic riots] is impos­si­ble.’ The Com­mu­nists even con­sid­ered the Mufti ‘too mod­er­ate’ in his fight against Jews.” (Idem.)

26. A mem­ber of the Com­mu­nist Par­ty became the intel­li­gence chief for the Mufti’s mil­i­tary cadre dur­ing Husseini’s pogroms. “In the run-up to 1936–39, the Pales­tin­ian leader began coor­di­nat­ing orga­ni­za­tion of anti-Jew­ish vio­lence. In Novem­ber 1935, Com­mu­nists declared that Zion­ists were killing Arab fel­la­heen, as part of the Mufti’s pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign to spark Arab rage against the Jews. On the eve of the first riots, Com­mu­nists met al-Hus­sei­ni to work out the final terms of their roles in the upcom­ing vio­lence. Com­mu­nist Par­ty mem­ber Nimr Uda became the Intel­li­gence chief for Mufti’s mil­i­tary units. Anoth­er Com­mu­nist rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Fuad Nasir, was named deputy to Abdul Qadir Hus­sei­ni, com­man­der of Arab fight­ers in south­ern West Bank.” (Ibid.; p. 4.)

27. The British Peel Com­mis­sion vio­lat­ed the League of Nations Man­date regard­ing the Jew­ish home­land. Even­tu­al­ly, the British reneged com­plete­ly on the Bal­four Dec­la­ra­tion. “By 1937, Britain real­ized that the Mufti was spon­sor­ing the vio­lence not just against Jews, but against the Eng­lish as well. Al-Hus­sei­ni fled Jerusalem and set­tled in Lebanon. So glad were the British to see the Mufti leave that they did not even both­er to ask the French pow­ers gov­ern­ing Lebanon to extra­dite al-Hus­sei­ni. Mean­while, in an attempt to please the Arabs, UK’s Peel Com­mis­sion vio­lat­ed the League of Nations Man­date and offered a pro­pos­al to divide the land des­ig­nat­ed as the ‘Jew­ish Nation­al Home’ by the

League of Nations Man­date of 1922 despite a spe­cif­ic man­date pro­hi­bi­tion against such divi­sion. Instead, under the Peel Com­mis­sion pro­pos­al of 1937, only a small part of the land would become the Jew­ish state. A year lat­er, the Peel Com­mis­sion issued anoth­er pro­pos­al, with even less land offered to Jews. Some time lat­er, the British issued the White Paper of 1939 reject­ing the idea of a Jew­ish Nation­al Home and severe­ly restrict­ing Jew­ish immi­gra­tion. It was hoped for in Lon­don that such con­ces­sions to Arab nation­al­ists would appease al-Hus­sei­ni and his sup­port­ers. Yet, only two years after the White Paper, the Mufti would come back to strike the British again.” (Idem.)

28. The Grand Mufti’s alliance with Hitler per­mit­ted his forces to attempt to seize Iraq on behalf of the Axis: “In 1940, it looked as if Hitler’s arma­da was unstop­pable. Hav­ing already con­quered France, Aus­tria, Czecho­slo­va­kia, Poland, Nor­way, Den­mark, Hol­land, Bel­gium and Lux­em­bourg, Hitler and his friends in Italy, Spain and occu­pied coun­tries were clear­ly the rulers of con­ti­nen­tal Europe. Hitler had also allied him­self with the USSR under the Molo­tov-Ribben­trop Pact of 1939 which divid­ed East­ern Europe by giv­ing the Baltic States and parts of Poland and Roma­nia (as well as Fin­land, which Joseph Stal­in could­n’t occu­py) to the USSR, while let­ting the Ger­mans take over west­ern Poland, Roma­nia and oth­er Euro­pean nations. Mean­while, the Japan­ese were the dom­i­nant force of Asia, seem­ing­ly set to impose their con­trol on that con­ti­nent. Britain’s Win­ston Churchill stood vir­tu­al­ly alone against the Fas­cist onslaught, with the Unit­ed States mired in rad­i­cal iso­la­tion­ism, refus­ing to take part in what many Amer­i­cans saw as a Euro­pean war.” (Idem.)

29. The one region where the British still had sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence was the Mid­dle East. Hitler set out to change that. Hus­sei­ni want­ed to get rid of the Hashemites. Both men want­ed to get rid of the Jews and the Brits. It was a mar­riage made in heav­en.” (Idem.)

30. “Despite a pow­er­ful Navy, the Unit­ed King­dom and its army was mod­est in size and spread thin through­out the Empire. Mid­dle East and espe­cial­ly Iraq seemed like the next pawn to fall to the Third Reich.” (Idem.)

31. “Britain respond­ed with severe eco­nom­ic sanc­tions which, cou­pled with UK’s defeat of Ger­man forces in North Africa and pres­sure from the Iraqi roy­al fam­i­ly, brought down the pro-Ger­man gov­ern­ment on Jan­u­ary 31,1941. Kay­lani and oth­er pro-Axis Iraqi, under the influ­ence from al-Hus­sei­ni, con­spired to mur­der the Abdul-Illah. Two months after the Kay­lani left gov­ern­ment, the regent of Iraq fled the coun­try and the old Prime Min­is­ter was back in pow­er.” (Idem.)

32. “In 1940, King Ghazi (son of King Faisal I) died, leav­ing only his four-year-old son to gov­ern. Emir Abdul-Illah, the regent for the young Iraqi King, felt the need to bring Rashid Ali al-Kay­lani into the gov­ern­ment as the Prime Min­is­ter, despite the lat­ter’s sup­port for Nazi Ger­many and links with al-Hus­sei­ni. The new head of state imme­di­ate­ly shift­ed the poli­cies of Iraq in favor of Nazi Ger­many, guar­an­tee­ing sup­ply of nat­ur­al resources to Hitler, as well as refus­ing to cut its tied with Italy. The for­mer Mufti of Jerusalem and his sur­ro­gates fre­quent­ly act­ed as the gov­ern­men­t’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives with for­eign­ers. Kay­lani also asked from Hitler the right to ‘deal with Jews’ in Arab states — a request that was grant­ed.” (Idem.)

33. “Britain respond­ed with severe eco­nom­ic sanc­tions which, cou­pled with UK’s defeat of Ger­man forces in North Africa and pres­sure from the Iraqi roy­al fam­i­ly, brought down the pro-Ger­man gov­ern­ment on Jan­u­ary 31,1941. Kay­lani and oth­er pro-Axis Iraqi, under the influ­ence from al-Hus­sei­ni, con­spired to mur­der the Abdul-Illah. Two months after the Kay­lani left gov­ern­ment, the regent of Iraq fled the coun­try and the old Prime Min­is­ter was back in pow­er.” (Ibid.; pp. 4–5.)

34. Note that the Grand Mufti’s pro­tégé Kay­lani fled to the alleged­ly neu­tral Sau­di Ara­bia. (For more about the role of fas­cists in found­ing the mod­ern state of Sau­di Ara­bia, see—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#361.) “As one of its first acts, the new admin­is­tra­tion sent its artillery to attack UK’s Roy­al Air Force in Habaniyya, caus­ing the Brits to respond by invad­ing Bas­ra. The hoped-for sup­port from Nazi Ger­many nev­er came and Kay­lani fled to Sau­di Ara­bia. [Empha­sis added.]” (Ibid.; p. 5)

35. “Haj Amin al-Hus­sei­ni, who issued a fat­wa (Islam­ic reli­gious rul­ing) call­ing on all Mus­lims to help pro-Axis gov­ern­ment in Iraq, became one of Eng­land’s most want­ed men. In May 1941, a group of Jew­ish fight­ers, includ­ing David Raziel, the leader of the right-wing Irgun (pre­de­ces­sor of today’s Likud Par­ty in Israel), set out for Iraq to assas­si­nate the for­mer Mufti on a mis­sion spon­sored by the Churchill admin­is­tra­tion. The mis­sion, how­ev­er, end­ed pre­ma­ture­ly when Raziel was killed by a Ger­man plane. Real­iz­ing the threat to his life, al-Hus­sei­ni fled to Europe dressed as a woman.” (Idem.)

36. “He was offi­cial­ly received by Adolf Hitler on Novem­ber 28,1941, who agreed to estab­lish a bureau for al-Hus­sei­ni which was used to spread pro­pa­gan­da on behalf of Nazi Ger­many, orga­nize spy rings in Europe and the Mid­dle East, and most impor­tant­ly, estab­lish Mus­lim Nazi SS divi­sions and Wehrma­cht units in Bosnia, the Balka­ns, North Africa and Nazi-occu­pied parts of the Sovi­et Union. After the meet­ing, the Mufti was also named SS Grup­pen­fuehrer by Hein­rich Himm­ler and referred to as the ‘Fuhrer of the Arab World’ by Adolf Hitler him­self.” (Idem.)

37. “The largest Mus­lim Nazi SS unit was the 13th divi­sion known as ‘Han­jar.’ Hus­sei­ni also orga­nized small­er, less effi­cient units, includ­ing the 21st Waf­fen SS divi­sion known Skan­der­beg . . . and the 23rd Waf­fen SS divi­sion known as Kama and made up most­ly of Alban­ian Mus­lims. Thus, the Hitler’s Mufti orga­nized or helped to orga­nize three out of 27 Waf­fen SS divi­sions formed before 1945 (eleven oth­er SS divi­sions were formed in 1945, but most of these were of ques­tion­able cal­iber and accept­ed sol­diers of ques­tion­able skill). Accord­ing to the Ency­clo­pe­dia of Holo­caust, Hus­sei­ni ‘orga­nized in record time’ Croa­t­ian units that went on to mas­sacre hun­dreds of thou­sands of Ser­bian Ortho­dox Chris­tians. Jacen­o­vac, the third largest death camp where over 200,000 peo­ple met their death, was run by Croa­t­ian Ante Pavel­ic with the aid of al-Hus­sei­ni. In all, at least 800,000 Yugosla­vian civil­ians were mur­dered by pro-Axis regimes ofU­tasche and Pavel­ic, with sig­nif­i­cant aid from the units estab­lished by the ‘Fuhrer of the Arab World.’ Tens of thou­sands of Jew­ish peo­ple out­side Yugoslavia also per­ished when the Mufti per­suad­ed not to trade them for Ger­man POW’s held by the Allies.” (Idem.)

38. “Al-Hus­sei­ni opened a North African Bureau in Ger­many, whose goal was to recruit 500,000 Arab sol­diers from Moroc­co, Tunisia and Alge­ria. The plan failed when the Ger­man forces were forced to with­draw from much of North Africa after a suc­cess­ful British oper­a­tion.” (Idem.)

39. “How­ev­er, an Arab Legion was found­ed and fought under the Ger­man flag. The Arab sol­diers had hoped to fight in the Mid­dle East, but were instead sent to the Russ­ian front, where they were com­plete­ly wiped out while fight­ing in the Cau­ca­sus region. Some time lat­er, in response to the British deci­sion to cre­ate a Jew­ish Brigade made up of some of the 26,000 Pales­tin­ian Jews who had fought under the Unit­ed King­dom’s flag, the Mufti con­vinced the Ger­mans to cre­ate an Arab Brigade. The unit, how­ev­er, either did not fight or was not very effi­cient because very lit­tle is known about it.” (Idem.)

40. The Mufti recruit­ed from among Sovi­et Mus­lims. For more about this con­nec­tion, see—among oth­er questions—FTR#’s 414, 51

8.) “The Mufti also made a par­tic­u­lar­ly strong effort to recruit Sovi­et Mus­lims. ‘It was large­ly due to Haj Amin’s pro­pa­gan­da that on the arrival of Ger­man armies in the north­ern Cau­ca­sus in 1942, five indige­nous tribes — the Chechens, the Ingush­es, the Balkars, the Karachais, and the Kabar­dines ‑wel­comed them with bread and salt,’ wrote Joseph Schecht­man in The Mufti and the Fuhrer. Stal­in’s response was dead­ly. Cau­casian Mus­lims, includ­ing near­ly all Chechens and Ingush, were exiled from their land, with up to a third dying as a result of inhu­mane treat­ment by Sovi­et author­i­ties.” (Idem.)

41. “The Mufti was sim­i­lar­ly instru­men­tal in the recruit­ment of the Azer­bai­jani bat­tal­ion, which ‘proved their val­or, were includ­ed in Ger­man Storm Troops and dec­o­rat­ed by the Ger­man Army,’ accord­ing to a Novem­ber 1943 broad­cast by DNB. The Mufti’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Cen­tral Asia recruit­ed some Mus­lim fight­ers for Nazi Ger­many there as well, despite the wide­spread sup­port of the major­i­ty of Cen­tral Asian Mus­lims for the plight of the Jews dur­ing the Holo­caust.” (Ibid.; pp. 5–6.)

42. The pro­gram high­lights the Grand Mufti’s role in pre­cip­i­tat­ing the Holo­caust: “The Mufti’s hatred of the West was matched only by his hate of the Jews. It is not a coin­ci­dence that Ger­many sud­den­ly aban­doned the pol­i­cy of expelling Jews and adopt­ed far harsh­er meth­ods a short time after the Mufti arrived in Ger­many. When Haj Amin came to Ger­many again, the Nazis decid­ed to exe­cute the Final Solu­tion to the Jew­ish Prob­lem — the Holo­caust. ‘The Mufti was one of the ini­tia­tors of the sys­tem­at­ic exter­mi­na­tion of Euro­pean Jew­ry,’ report­ed Eich­man­n’s deputy. Dieter Wis­li­ce­ny. ‘[He had] played a role in the deci­sion to exter­mi­nate the Euro­pean Jews. The impor­tance of this role must not be dis­re­gard­ed.... The Mufti was one of the ini­tia­tors of the sys­tem­at­ic exter­mi­na­tion of Euro­pean Jew­ry.’ We do not know if al-Hus­sei­ni played a major role in shap­ing the Final Solu­tion. ‘There is, how­ev­er, abun­dant first-hand evi­dence of the part the Mufti played in mak­ing fool­proof the ban on emi­gra­tion (of Jews out of Ger­many),’ wrote Joseph Schecht­man.” (Ibid.; p. 6.)

43. Al-Hus­sei­ni escaped from Ger­many to Pales­tine at the end of the war, and was received as a hero. Note that his escape was aid­ed by Abwehr agent Youssef Nada, a Nazi intel­li­gence agent and the head of Bank Al Taqwa. (For more about this see FTR#’s 416, 456. In FTR#513, we saw that Nada is a cousin of Yass­er Arafat, who is al-Husseini’s nephew.) Note also that the Grand Mufti was the first leader of the Pales­tin­ian nation­al move­ment. This is impor­tant to remem­ber when assess­ing Israeli atti­tudes toward the Pales­tini­ans. “When the war end­ed, al-Hus­sei­ni returned to the Mid­dle East as a hero. On Octo­ber 1, 1948, he was pro­claimed the Pres­i­dent of the gov­ern­ment of All-Pales­tine. The gov­ern­ment was, how­ev­er, fic­tion­al because it did not con­trol any land and was rec­og­nized by only a hand­ful of Arab nations. In 1959, the ‘gov­ern­ment’ was dis­band­ed by its spon­sor, Egypt.” (Idem.)

44. Note that the Islam­o­fas­cist allies of the Nazis such as the Grand Mufti and the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s Has­san al-Ban­na trav­eled in the com­pa­ny of sec­u­lar Arab fas­cist groups. The Baath par­ties of both Syr­ia and Iraq were pro­found­ly influ­enced by the sec­u­lar Arab fas­cists. In the pas­sage that fol­lows, it is inter­est­ing (and per­haps sig­nif­i­cant) that Sami al-Joun­di was one of the founders of the Baath par­ty in Syr­ia. The fam­i­ly of Jamal Daniel was among the Baath founders in both Syr­ia and Iraq. Daniel is a busi­ness part­ner of Neil Bush. (For more about the Bush/Daniel con­nec­tion, see FTR#’s 438 and 508.) “Sup­port for Nazism was not lim­it­ed to the for­mer Mufti. ‘We admired the Nazis. We were immersed in read­ing Nazi lit­er­a­ture and books.... We were the first who thought of a trans­la­tion of Mein Kampf. Any­one who lived in Dam­as­cus at that time was wit­ness to the Arab incli­na­tion toward Nazism,’ recalled Sami al-Joun­di, one of the founders of Syr­i­a’s rul­ing Ba’ath Par­ty. Indeed, a pop­u­lar WWII song was heard in the Mid­dle East fea­tur­ing words: ‘Bis­sama Allah, oria alard Hitler’ – ‘In heav­en Allah, on earth Hitler.’ Pick­ing up the theme of the book, posters were put up in Arab mar­kets and else­where pro­claim­ing, ‘In heav­en Allah is thy ruler; on earth Adolph Hitler.’ John Gun­ther of Inside Asia report­ed: ‘The great­est con­tem­po­rary Arab hero is prob­a­bly Hitler’ . . . .” (Idem.)

45. For a visu­al per­spec­tive on the fascist/Islamist con­nec­tion, check out the pho­to­graph above. It is a pic­ture of a Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad ral­ly on 4/15/2005. PIJ is an off­shoot of the Mus­lim Brotherhood—a link dis­cussed in, among oth­er pro­grams, FTR#’s 473, 514. Do the par­tic­i­pants in this ral­ly appear to be mak­ing an Islam­ic ges­ture?!

Discussion

3 comments for “FTR #519 More on the History of the Islamic Fascist Axis”

  1. Here’s a sto­ry involv­ing neo-Nazi ter­ror­ism that’s dis­turb­ing even by the stan­dards of neo-Nazi ter­ror­ism sto­ries: a US Army pri­vate was just charged with try­ing to assist al Qae­da in get­ting his his army unit attacked over­seas. It appears that the pri­vate, Ethan Melz­er, also con­sumed ISIS pro­pa­gan­da and is a mem­ber of the “Order of 9 Angels” (O9A), a satan­ic neo-Nazi group formed by David Myatt which makes coor­di­na­tion between a Satan­ic neo-Nazi and jihadists some­thing to be expect­ed.

    It’s unclear where exact­ly Melz­er’s unit was sta­tioned but it appears to involve either Turkey or a coun­try close to Turkey. An alleged co-con­spir­a­tor asked Melz­er in a chat room whether Melz­er had deployed to Turkey yet, because “we are lit­er­al­ly orga­niz­ing a jiha­di attack.” “[Y]es prob­a­bly,” Melz­er alleged­ly replied. “As long as I get the info I need to give you all.” So Turkey or per­haps Syr­ia sound like the like­li­est loca­tions for the planned attack.

    Melz­er went on to explain dur­ing this chat that he was fine tak­ing the risk of get­ting shot when his unit got attacked because, “The after effects of a con­voy get­ting attacked would cov­er it…It would be anoth­er war…I would’ve died successfully…Cause if anoth­er 10 year war in the Mid­dle East would def­i­nite­ly leave a mark.” So it sounds like the planned attack would be high­ly provoca­tive. So provoca­tive it could start anoth­er war in the Mid­dle East. And on the same day of this con­ver­sa­tion, May 17, Melz­er “passed infor­ma­tion regard­ing the deploy­ment to a pur­port­ed mem­ber of al Qae­da,” accord­ing to the indict­ment. Since it’s very unclear how an attack by US sol­diers by al Qae­da would start a new war in the Mid­dle East it rais­es the ques­tion about whether or not the planned attack was some sort of false flag. Per­haps the attack­ers would pre­tend to be Iran­ian?

    We’ll see if the pros­e­cu­tors reveal more details about what exact­ly Melz­er was involved with plan­ning but as we’ll see in the arti­cles below, it turns out O9A has been infil­trat­ing Atom­waf­fen in recent years. It’s actu­al­ly become a point of con­tention with­in Atom­waf­fen in recent because O9A open­ly encour­ages its mem­bers to infil­trate oth­er far right extrem­ist groups to pro­mote its form of satanism. This was appar­ent­ly a bad look in the minds of some Atom­waf­fen mem­bers. And that’s also part of the con­text of this spoiled ter­ror attack: it was being planned by a mem­ber of group that’s so extreme it infil­trates the most extreme extrem­ist groups out there like Atom­waf­fen to make them more extreme:

    Talk­ing Points Memo
    News

    Army Pri­vate Accused Of Plan­ning Ambush On His Unit With Occult Neo-Nazi Group

    By Matt Shuham
    June 22, 2020 6:24 p.m.

    An Army pri­vate was charged Mon­day with help­ing an occult neo-Nazi group to plan an attack on his unit.

    The pri­vate alleged­ly shared infor­ma­tion with the occult group about his unit’s weapon­ry, move­ments and loca­tion, in hopes that mem­bers of the group would facil­i­tate an attack on his fel­low troops, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the South­ern Dis­trict of New York said Mon­day. And when con­front­ed with the evi­dence against him in late May, author­i­ties alleged, the pri­vate con­fessed and declared him­self a trai­tor against the Unit­ed States.

    ...

    “As alleged, Ethan Melz­er, a pri­vate in the U.S. Army, was the ene­my with­in,” the act­ing U.S. attor­ney in the dis­trict, Audrey Strauss, said in a state­ment.

    Accord­ing to the grand jury indict­ment against him, Melz­er joined the Satan­ic neo-Nazi group “Order of the Nine Angles,” or “O9A,” in 2019, while he was an Army pri­vate. The group was found­ed in the UK, and has been linked to mod­ern “accel­er­a­tionist” neo-Nazi groups like Atom­waf­fen, which seek to has­ten soci­etal con­flict through vio­lence.

    Melz­er con­sumed pro­pa­gan­da from O9A and the Islam­ic State, accord­ing to the indict­ment, includ­ing an Islam­ic State doc­u­ment called “Har­vest of the Sol­diers.” Accord­ing to the com­plaint against Melz­er, author­i­ties found an image of the doc­u­ment in his iCloud account after obtain­ing a war­rant to search it. Anoth­er pho­to in the account includ­ed a book on “The Sin­is­ter Tra­di­tion: Order of Nine Angles.” (Seen above.)

    [see “Har­vest of the Sol­diers” graph­ic detail­ing the mil­i­tary suc­cess­es of ISIS dur­ing peri­od]

    After learn­ing in April that his unit would be deployed to guard an over­seas mil­i­tary instal­la­tion, Melz­er alleged­ly shared the assign­ment with O9A asso­ciates as well as a group called “Rape­Waf­fen Divi­sion” for the pur­pose of “facil­i­tat­ing an attack on the unit,” accord­ing to the indict­ment.

    Author­i­ties say that in May, an alleged co-con­spir­a­tor asked Melz­er in a chat room asso­ci­at­ed with the group whether Melz­er had deployed to Turkey yet, because “we are lit­er­al­ly orga­niz­ing a jiha­di attack.”

    “[Y]es prob­a­bly,” Melz­er alleged­ly replied. “As long as I get the info I need to give you all.”

    In the exchange, Melz­er appeared to accept the pos­si­bil­i­ty that he would be shot in the attack, accord­ing to the com­plaint against him.

    “Who gives a fu ck,” he alleged­ly said. “The after effects of a con­voy get­ting attacked would cov­er it…It would be anoth­er war…I would’ve died successfully…Cause if anoth­er 10 year war in the Mid­dle East would def­i­nite­ly leave a mark.”

    On the same day as this exchange, May 17, Melz­er “passed infor­ma­tion regard­ing the deploy­ment to a pur­port­ed mem­ber of al Qae­da,” accord­ing to the indict­ment.

    Of course, things aren’t always so sim­ple in (alleged) inter­na­tion­al occult neo-Nazi plots. At one point, accord­ing to the con­ver­sa­tion quot­ed in the com­plaint, Melz­er appeared to lose his tem­per.

    “Okay let me direct as pos­si­ble,” he alleged­ly wrote on May 23. “IF YOU KNOW ANYONE IN TURKEY TELL THEM THIS INFO there.” He lat­er clar­i­fied yet again that he was refer­ring to infor­ma­tion about “a con­voy com­ing through Turkey soon and date and time will be giv­en soon. God­damn.”

    Accord­ing to the con­ver­sa­tions list­ed in the com­plaint, Melz­er was thor­ough, repeat­ed­ly list­ing the fire­pow­er and defen­sive capa­bil­i­ties of his unit and gam­ing out pos­si­ble attacks. All the while, a con­fi­den­tial source fed infor­ma­tion to law enforce­ment.

    “[A] well hid­den plt [pla­toon] size ele­ment or even some mor­tar team could absolute­ly reek hav­oc,” Melz­er wrote at one point, after describ­ing the lay of the land.

    When con­front­ed on May 30 about his plans, Melz­er alleged­ly fessed up to shar­ing the infor­ma­tion and admit­ted his role in plot­ting the attack. In the same inter­view, per the indict­ment, he “declared him­self to be a trai­tor against the Unit­ed States whose con­duct was tan­ta­mount to trea­son.”

    “We agree” with that assess­ment, FBI Assis­tant Direc­tor William F. Sweeney Jr. said in a state­ment Mon­day.

    Ulti­mate­ly, a fed­er­al grand jury approved six counts against Melz­er: Con­spir­a­cy to mur­der U.S. nation­als, attempt­ed mur­der of U.S. nation­als, con­spir­a­cy to Mur­der U.S. ser­vice mem­bers, attempt­ed mur­der of U.S. ser­vice mem­bers, pro­vi­sion and attempt­ed pro­vi­sion of mate­r­i­al sup­port to ter­ror­ists, and con­spir­a­cy to mur­der and main in a for­eign coun­try. Com­bined, the charges could mean life in prison.

    ———–

    “Army Pri­vate Accused Of Plan­ning Ambush On His Unit With Occult Neo-Nazi Group” by Matt Shuham; Talk­ing Points Memo; 06/22/2020

    “Accord­ing to the grand jury indict­ment against him, Melz­er joined the Satan­ic neo-Nazi group “Order of the Nine Angles,” or “O9A,” in 2019, while he was an Army pri­vate. The group was found­ed in the UK, and has been linked to mod­ern “accel­er­a­tionist” neo-Nazi groups like Atom­waf­fen, which seek to has­ten soci­etal con­flict through vio­lence.”

    Yep, he joined O9A while a pri­vate in the army. You have to won­der if he was exclu­sive­ly recruit­ed online or if oth­er sol­diers he met in the mil­i­tary were also involved.
    A satan­ic neo-Nazi fan of ISIS. That’s def­i­nite­ly a per­son­nel prob­lem. And while we don’t yet know where exact­ly this jihadist attack was sup­posed to take place on his unit, we know the con­voy was pass­ing through Turkey so it the attack was­n’t intend­ed to take place it Turkey that makes Syr­ia the next like­li­est loca­tion. There’s unfor­tu­nate­ly no short­age of al Qae­da mem­bers in either coun­try:

    ...
    Melz­er con­sumed pro­pa­gan­da from O9A and the Islam­ic State, accord­ing to the indict­ment, includ­ing an Islam­ic State doc­u­ment called “Har­vest of the Sol­diers.” Accord­ing to the com­plaint against Melz­er, author­i­ties found an image of the doc­u­ment in his iCloud account after obtain­ing a war­rant to search it. Anoth­er pho­to in the account includ­ed a book on “The Sin­is­ter Tra­di­tion: Order of Nine Angles.” (Seen above.)

    ...

    After learn­ing in April that his unit would be deployed to guard an over­seas mil­i­tary instal­la­tion, Melz­er alleged­ly shared the assign­ment with O9A asso­ciates as well as a group called “Rape­Waf­fen Divi­sion” for the pur­pose of “facil­i­tat­ing an attack on the unit,” accord­ing to the indict­ment.

    Author­i­ties say that in May, an alleged co-con­spir­a­tor asked Melz­er in a chat room asso­ci­at­ed with the group whether Melz­er had deployed to Turkey yet, because “we are lit­er­al­ly orga­niz­ing a jiha­di attack.”

    “[Y]es prob­a­bly,” Melz­er alleged­ly replied. “As long as I get the info I need to give you all.”

    In the exchange, Melz­er appeared to accept the pos­si­bil­i­ty that he would be shot in the attack, accord­ing to the com­plaint against him.

    “Who gives a fu ck,” he alleged­ly said. “The after effects of a con­voy get­ting attacked would cov­er it…It would be anoth­er war…I would’ve died successfully…Cause if anoth­er 10 year war in the Mid­dle East would def­i­nite­ly leave a mark.”

    On the same day as this exchange, May 17, Melz­er “passed infor­ma­tion regard­ing the deploy­ment to a pur­port­ed mem­ber of al Qae­da,” accord­ing to the indict­ment.

    Of course, things aren’t always so sim­ple in (alleged) inter­na­tion­al occult neo-Nazi plots. At one point, accord­ing to the con­ver­sa­tion quot­ed in the com­plaint, Melz­er appeared to lose his tem­per.

    “Okay let me direct as pos­si­ble,” he alleged­ly wrote on May 23. “IF YOU KNOW ANYONE IN TURKEY TELL THEM THIS INFO there.” He lat­er clar­i­fied yet again that he was refer­ring to infor­ma­tion about “a con­voy com­ing through Turkey soon and date and time will be giv­en soon. God­damn.”
    ...

    So that’s what we know about this ini­tial report on the pros­e­cu­tion. Now here’s a report from back in March about the lat­est updates from Hope not Hate, a UK-based anti-extrem­ist group, that has been track­ing the activ­i­ties of the O9A and been call­ing for the UK gov­ern­ment to ban the group. And as Hope not Hate’s report points out, it’s not even real­ly a dis­tinct group so much as a move­ment. A move­ment ded­i­cat­ed to mak­ing vio­lent extrem­ists even more vio­lent and extreme. And the per­son who cre­at­ed the philo­soph­i­cal foun­da­tion for this move­ment is David Myatt:

    New States­man

    A Nazi-satanist cult is fuelling far-right groups – over­looked by the UK author­i­ties

    The Order of Nine Angles, which encour­ages extreme vio­lence among fol­low­ers, has infil­trat­ed extrem­ist cir­cles in Britain.

    By Nick Lowles
    4 March 2020

    I have been an anti-fas­cist cam­paign­er for over 30 years, and thought I had seen it all. I fought against the Nation­al Front in the late Eight­ies, Com­bat 18 in the Nineties, the BNP in the noughties and then the Eng­lish Defence League (EDL) in the 2010s. But as we enter a new decade, the threat from the far right has become more dan­ger­ous than ever.

    As anti-extrem­ism cam­paign­ers, we’ve been inves­ti­gat­ing the most extreme ide­o­log­i­cal group I’ve ever seen and have released our find­ings in our lat­est report. It is called the Order of Nine Angles (O9A), a British neo-Nazi satanist group that encour­ages extreme vio­lence among its fol­low­ers to desta­bilise soci­ety, and over­throw what it sees as Jew­ish con­trol of glob­al cul­ture and eco­nom­ics.

    As the BBC reports, we are call­ing for it to be banned by the Home Office, and the Home Affairs select com­mit­tee chair Yvette Coop­er MP has urged the Home Sec­re­tary to “imme­di­ate­ly” refer it to the gov­ern­men­t’s pro­scrip­tion review group, com­ment­ing:

    “The evi­dence they have uncov­ered about the far-right ter­ror group Order of Nine Angles is deeply dis­turb­ing and the Home Sec­re­tary should imme­di­ate­ly refer it to the Government’s Pro­scrip­tion Review Group. The com­bi­na­tion of Nazi-Satanism, extreme vio­lence and sex­u­al abuse makes it par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bling and action needs to be tak­en to pre­vent them groom­ing and rad­i­cal­is­ing oth­er peo­ple.”

    The Jew­ish Labour Move­ment, and mul­ti­ple MPs – includ­ing shad­ow Cab­i­net Office min­is­ter Stephanie Pea­cock and shad­ow polic­ing min­is­ter Louise Haigh – have also called on the group to be out­lawed.

    Although we are see­ing a peri­od of decline in the tra­di­tion­al organ­ised far right in this coun­try, glob­al­ly the far right is on the ascen­den­cy. Across Europe, far-right polit­i­cal par­ties have made head­way, and even so far as into gov­ern­ment.

    Vio­lent groups like C18 have had to be banned in sev­er­al coun­tries, and as the chil­dren born in the dig­i­tal era hit adult­hood, the world of far-right activism has splin­tered into many dif­fer­ent scenes from the alt right to the misog­y­nis­tic manos­phere to anti-Semit­ic con­spir­a­cy cir­cles.

    As the bat­tle has shift­ed online, explic­it white suprema­cist ide­ol­o­gy has been sub­sumed by a wider but more neb­u­lous war – over iden­ti­ty and cul­ture. As a result, the bound­aries between far-right ideas and the main­stream debate have become increas­ing­ly blurred.

    Yet at the same time as the dig­i­tal sphere has replaced an old­er threat, it has cre­at­ed a new one: extreme far-right ter­ror. Across the world, far-right ter­ror has surged – from Hanau, to Halle to Christchurch – as a dig­i­tal cul­ture of peer-to-peer rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion has cre­at­ed a self-direct­ed inter­na­tion­al “com­mu­ni­ty” ded­i­cat­ed to the plan­ning, prepar­ing and pro­mot­ing of white suprema­cist inspired mur­der.

    O9A is the most extreme satanist group in the world, so much so that some of the mate­r­i­al put out by the group is so dis­turb­ing it is held in a secure sec­tion at the British Library and can only be accessed under super­vi­sion. It encour­ages fol­low­ers to engage in for­bid­den and ille­gal acts of extreme vio­lence.

    The founder of the move­ment, David Myatt, has been explic­it in his nihilis­tic aims, say­ing that he has tried to “cre­ate some things which can dis­rupt our soci­eties and which can lead to the cre­ation of strong, real­ly dan­ger­ous, ruth­less indi­vid­u­als”.

    In his ter­ror­ist hand­book, A Prac­ti­cal Guide to The Strat­e­gy and Tac­tics of Rev­o­lu­tion, he states clear­ly that “the whole fab­ric of this deca­dent mate­ri­al­is­tic soci­ety must be bro­ken down and destroyed by what­ev­er means are nec­es­sary and prac­ti­cal, and how­ev­er ruth­less we have to be, for such ruth­less­ness is now nec­es­sary to save our peo­ple and our land…”

    O9A’s phi­los­o­phy of ulti­mate trans­gres­sion and deprav­i­ty explic­it­ly aims to fos­ter such a cul­ture among cer­tain sec­tions of the far right. We have found from our research that it oper­ates by not just dis­sem­i­nat­ing its pro­pa­gan­da but by seek­ing to infil­trate oth­er extreme groups and covert­ly spread­ing its phi­los­o­phy.

    Encrypt­ed dig­i­tal plat­forms, such as the mes­sag­ing ser­vice Telegram, are where O9A mate­r­i­al is shared. Our research found sev­er­al Telegram chan­nels ded­i­cat­ed to O9A, on which pro­pa­gan­da, texts and music are shared. One of the largest chan­nels is called “Rape­Waf­fen”, which states its “offi­cial beliefs are O9A satanism and Eso­teric Rapis­tism”.

    Though trace­able back to the Sev­en­ties, the movement’s mod­ern incar­na­tion is clan­des­tine and decen­tralised, which means it is hard to esti­mate its true size and reach. Though world­wide mem­ber­ship esti­mates vary between a hand­ful to almost 2,000, it is clear that it has had a resur­gence in both the US’s and UK’s most extreme Nazi groups.

    Over the last 12 months, four Nazis who were con­vict­ed of ter­ror­ist offences were linked to O9A and there are two fur­ther cas­es pend­ing. Most dis­turb­ing of all is the age of the per­pe­tra­tors of these crimes – almost all are teenagers and the youngest is only 16, as report­ed by the Inde­pen­dent.

    Wor­ry­ing­ly, the role of the O9A and its satan­ic and cultish beliefs have been over­looked by the author­i­ties. From our in-depth inves­ti­ga­tions, I have been made aware of at least three exam­ples of when O9A mate­r­i­al was over­looked dur­ing anti-ter­ror­ist raids in recent times, because offi­cers had no idea of the sig­nif­i­cance of the mate­r­i­al they were look­ing at.

    The Home Office recent­ly banned the Nazi Son­nenkrieg Divi­sion (SKD) – one of the O9A-influ­enced groups these peo­ple belonged to – though now large­ly defunct fol­low­ing the jail­ing of its mem­bers.

    Our anti-extrem­ism cam­paign group, Hope Not Hate, believes that there are sev­er­al more O9A-influ­enced Nazis linked to SKD, with some key indi­vid­u­als still at large. More wor­ry­ing­ly, past expe­ri­ence has told us that O9A will now sim­ply move on to influ­ence and infil­trate oth­er groups.

    ...

    Nick Lowles is chief exec­u­tive of HOPE not hate. Read HOPE not hate’s lat­est report into extrem­ist groups here.

    ———–

    “A Nazi-satanist cult is fuelling far-right groups – over­looked by the UK author­i­ties” by Nick Lowles; New States­man; 03/04/2020

    “O9A is the most extreme satanist group in the world, so much so that some of the mate­r­i­al put out by the group is so dis­turb­ing it is held in a secure sec­tion at the British Library and can only be accessed under super­vi­sion. It encour­ages fol­low­ers to engage in for­bid­den and ille­gal acts of extreme vio­lence.”

    The wor­ship of extreme vio­lence as some sort of divine act. That’s the nature of this group, hence the infat­u­a­tion with ISIS. It’s one of the more unset­tling aspects of the mod­ern world: neo-Nazism and Islam­ic extrem­ism — the two dom­i­nant extrem­ist ide­olo­gies of our time — have quite a bit of over­lap with the vio­lent forms of Satanism because it’s all philo­soph­i­cal nihilism com­bined with a vio­lence fetish in the end when you go down these paths. And that’s what makes O9A poten­tial­ly effec­tive at infil­trat­ing and influ­enc­ing these extrem­ist move­ments:

    ...
    The founder of the move­ment, David Myatt, has been explic­it in his nihilis­tic aims, say­ing that he has tried to “cre­ate some things which can dis­rupt our soci­eties and which can lead to the cre­ation of strong, real­ly dan­ger­ous, ruth­less indi­vid­u­als”.

    In his ter­ror­ist hand­book, A Prac­ti­cal Guide to The Strat­e­gy and Tac­tics of Rev­o­lu­tion, he states clear­ly that “the whole fab­ric of this deca­dent mate­ri­al­is­tic soci­ety must be bro­ken down and destroyed by what­ev­er means are nec­es­sary and prac­ti­cal, and how­ev­er ruth­less we have to be, for such ruth­less­ness is now nec­es­sary to save our peo­ple and our land…”

    O9A’s phi­los­o­phy of ulti­mate trans­gres­sion and deprav­i­ty explic­it­ly aims to fos­ter such a cul­ture among cer­tain sec­tions of the far right. We have found from our research that it oper­ates by not just dis­sem­i­nat­ing its pro­pa­gan­da but by seek­ing to infil­trate oth­er extreme groups and covert­ly spread­ing its phi­los­o­phy.
    ...

    It’s that exal­ta­tion of “ulti­mate trans­gres­sion and deprav­i­ty” — where doing things that most oth­er would view as extreme­ly awful is por­trayed as some sort of act of courage and bold­ness — that has cre­at­ed the kind of sub­cul­ture where “Eso­teric Rap­tis­tism” is cel­e­brate on the “Rape­Waf­fen” encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing board, which is one of the places where Melz­er shared infor­ma­tion about his army unit:

    ...
    Encrypt­ed dig­i­tal plat­forms, such as the mes­sag­ing ser­vice Telegram, are where O9A mate­r­i­al is shared. Our research found sev­er­al Telegram chan­nels ded­i­cat­ed to O9A, on which pro­pa­gan­da, texts and music are shared. One of the largest chan­nels is called “Rape­Waf­fen”, which states its “offi­cial beliefs are O9A satanism and Eso­teric Rapis­tism”.

    Though trace­able back to the Sev­en­ties, the movement’s mod­ern incar­na­tion is clan­des­tine and decen­tralised, which means it is hard to esti­mate its true size and reach. Though world­wide mem­ber­ship esti­mates vary between a hand­ful to almost 2,000, it is clear that it has had a resur­gence in both the US’s and UK’s most extreme Nazi groups.

    Over the last 12 months, four Nazis who were con­vict­ed of ter­ror­ist offences were linked to O9A and there are two fur­ther cas­es pend­ing. Most dis­turb­ing of all is the age of the per­pe­tra­tors of these crimes – almost all are teenagers and the youngest is only 16, as report­ed by the Inde­pen­dent.
    ...

    And it’s that exal­ta­tion of Satanism and the most extreme forms of vio­lence and cru­el­ty that had even some mem­bers of Atom­waf­fen choos­ing to dis­as­so­ci­ate them­selves with the group after it was noticed that cer­tain Atom­waf­fen lead­ers had a his­to­ry of pro­mot­ing O9A. In par­tic­u­lar, John Cameron Den­ton — the de fac­to leader of Atom­waf­fen who goes by the online han­dle “Rape” — has been post­ing O9A sym­bols years online for years. So it’s not just some ran­dom Atom­waf­fen mem­bers who have an inter­est in O9A. It’s the leader:

    The Dai­ly Beast

    Satanism Dra­ma Is Tear­ing Apart the Mur­der­ous Neo-Nazi Group Atom­waf­fen
    HOTTER THAN HEIL

    ‘How do you allow [in] peo­ple who explic­it­ly say they are satan­ic dooms­day cultists who infil­trate right-wing groups in order to press their agen­da?’ one frus­trat­ed neo-Nazi asked.

    Kel­ly Weill
    Reporter
    Pub­lished Mar. 21, 2018 5:06AM ET

    White nation­al­ists are dis­avow­ing the mur­der­ous neo-Nazi group Atom­waf­fen Division—not because of the mur­der, but because the group can’t shake per­sis­tent rumors that it’s a gate­way orga­ni­za­tion for a satan­ic cult.

    Atom­waf­fen is an extrem­ist group that received nation­al atten­tion after being impli­cat­ed in five mur­ders from May 2017 to Jan­u­ary 2018. But even before the most recent slay­ing, Atom­waf­fen was under fire from oth­ers on the far right who claimed the group was actu­al­ly a mouth­piece for the Order of Nine Angles, a satan­ic group that encour­ages mem­bers to infil­trate extrem­ist polit­i­cal move­ments, whose mem­bers might be sus­cep­ti­ble to con­ver­sion.

    It doesn’t help that, until recent­ly, Atom­waf­fen pushed the satan­ic group’s lit­er­a­ture on one of its web­sites.

    Atom­waf­fen claims to have been found­ed in 2013, although its mem­ber­ship surged after a dead­ly white nation­al­ist demon­stra­tion in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, in August, ProP­ub­li­ca pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed. The group now has approx­i­mate­ly 20 cells across the U.S., accord­ing to ProP­ub­li­ca.

    The Order of Nine Angles is British-based, but steeped in Nazism. A fringe occultist group whose lit­er­a­ture encour­ages human sac­ri­fices, the ONA cham­pi­ons Nazi Ger­many and push­es Holo­caust denial­ism. One of the group’s longest-run­ning lead­ers, Anton Long, is rumored to have been a pseu­do­nym for the known neo-Nazi David Myatt.

    The ONA requires mem­bers (called Noc­tu­lians) to spend six months either hitch­hik­ing, work­ing as a bur­glar, work­ing as a police offi­cer, or infil­trat­ing an extrem­ist polit­i­cal group.

    “Under­take the role of extreme polit­i­cal activist and so cham­pi­on hereti­cal views (by, e.g. becom­ing involved in extreme Right-Wing activism),” the group demands in one of its intro­duc­to­ry books. “The aim is to express fanati­cism in action and be seen by all ‘right-think­ing peo­ple’ as an extrem­ist, and a dan­ger­ous one.”

    That book is also rec­om­mend­ed read­ing for Atom­waf­fen mem­bers. On a recent­ly defunct web­site, Atom­waf­fen uploaded the book in full in the “spir­i­tu­al­i­ty” sec­tion of its “library.” The library also encour­aged Atom­waf­fen mem­bers to read Iron Gates, a grue­some sci-fi nov­el penned by the occult group Tem­pel of Blood, which is open­ly affil­i­at­ed with the ONA.

    ...

    Iron Gates is list­ed as required read­ing on Atomwaffen’s cur­rent web­site.

    Atomwaffen’s satanism-heavy read­ing list has appar­ent­ly dri­ven away some for­mer mem­bers who were only in the group for the Nazism. In Jan­u­ary, a pur­port­ed for­mer Atom­waf­fen mem­ber quit the group dra­mat­i­cal­ly, pub­lish­ing a 27-page Google doc­u­ment claim­ing to doc­u­ment the group’s grow­ing satan­ic ties.

    “A plague has befall­en the move­ment yet again,” the for­mer Atom­waf­fen mem­ber wrote about satanism (not about mur­der). “We WILL purge the Noc­tu­lian scum from our ranks, and nev­er again will this hap­pen.”

    Imme­di­ate­ly after the document’s pub­li­ca­tion, oth­er self-pro­claimed Atom­waf­fen mem­bers attacked its author on the noto­ri­ous online bul­letin board 4chan, call­ing the group’s endorse­ment of Iron Gates and the ONA a “meme” and a “joke.” But the alleged Atom­waf­fen mem­bers also inad­ver­tent­ly con­firmed that the document’s author had been affil­i­at­ed with the group, post­ing screen­shots of his mes­sages from Atomwaffen’s group chat.

    Atomwaffen’s de fac­to leader, John Cameron Den­ton, appears to have post­ed ONA sym­bols years before Atom­waf­fen was accused of asso­ci­at­ing with the satanist group. Den­ton, 24, goes by “Rape” online and some­times uses the pseu­do­nym Vin­cent Sny­der on social media and in inter­views. An Insta­gram account under the name Vin­cent Sny­der has been upload­ing Nazi pro­pa­gan­da since 2016, in Atomwaffen’s dis­tinc­tive black and white aes­thet­ic. In a Novem­ber 2016 post fea­tur­ing neo-Nazi para­pher­na­lia, a stick­er with the ONA logo is par­tial­ly vis­i­ble.

    In a 2015 post on the now-defunct neo-Nazi forum Iron March, a per­son wrote a favor­able com­ment about the ONA, under the same user­name Sny­der uses on Insta­gram. And in 2014, a pro-Nazi Google Plus account pur­port­ed to be Denton’s uploaded two ONA logos.

    Mul­ti­ple Atom­waf­fen mem­bers appear to have quit over the group’s satanist ties, accord­ing to screen­shots from Atomwaffen’s group chat.

    “I’m prob­a­bly going to leave AW,” one for­mer mem­ber wrote, accord­ing to the leaked chat logs. “I’ve been doing a lot of think­ing. AW still has full poten­tial but the way Rape is tak­ing AW as far as the whole satan­ic sh it… is going to hold things back.”

    The document’s pub­li­ca­tion came days after an Atom­waf­fen mem­ber alleged­ly mur­dered Blaze Bern­stein, a gay, Jew­ish teenag­er. But Atom­waf­fen mem­bers who had defend­ed the mur­der were soon split­ting from the group over the satanism alle­ga­tions.

    On Gab, a social media site favored by the right, peo­ple who had long claimed to be Atom­waf­fen mem­bers began dis­tanc­ing them­selves from the group.

    “This sh it is all news to me, what a dis­ap­point­ment,” one alleged for­mer mem­ber wrote, claim­ing he’d nev­er seen any satanism under Atomwaffen’s pre­vi­ous lead­er­ship.

    Anoth­er Atom­waf­fen-affil­i­at­ed per­son cre­at­ed a Gab account aimed at “expos­ing” the group’s satan­ic ties, and start­ed leak­ing Atom­waf­fen chat logs, along­side Har­ry Pot­ter memes. That per­son linked to audio of a call, pur­port­ed­ly between Atom­waf­fen mem­bers argu­ing about satanism.

    “In your opin­ion, Satanism con­tra­dicts the ideals of nation­al social­ism, right?” one Atom­waf­fen mem­ber asked anoth­er dur­ing the debate.“Yeah,” the sec­ond man answered.

    “Okay, I’m not gonna try to get mad and say you’re a fu ckin idiot,” the first said. “Like, I want to know legit­i­mate­ly what part of it con­tra­dicts the ideals of nation­al social­ism.”

    “Uh, every part. I’ve lit­er­al­ly read both those books. Noth­ing in it stood out to me as—”

    “Have you read the Satan­ic Prin­ci­ples?” the first Atom­waf­fen mem­ber inter­rupt­ed. “The fu cking base­line ideas of what Satanism stands for? You can­not hon­est­ly read that and tell me it reflects none of what nation­al social­ism teach­es.”

    High­er-pro­file neo-Nazis start­ed post­ing about the satanism alle­ga­tions, dri­ving a larg­er rift between Atom­waf­fen and oth­ers on the extreme right.

    “How do you allow [in] peo­ple who explic­it­ly say that they are satan­ic dooms­day cultists who infil­trate and take over right-wing groups in order to press their agen­da,” Andrew Anglin, the fugi­tive founder of the Dai­ly Stormer neo-Nazi pub­li­ca­tion, demand­ed of a self-iden­ti­fied Atom­waf­fen mem­ber.

    “I knew noth­ing about this Satan­ic sh it until I saw the post you just made with the links,” the now-for­mer Atom­waf­fen mem­ber replied. “When Bran­don [a for­mer mem­ber cur­rent­ly doing prison time for hoard­ing explo­sives] was lead­ing the group there was nev­er any talk of this horse sh it and now that I know I’m done with them.”

    The dis­pute is still ongo­ing on social media, with Gab users accus­ing Anglin of push­ing a hoax and “slan­der­ing” Atom­waf­fen mem­bers by accus­ing them of flirt­ing with satanism.

    But peo­ple who pre­vi­ous­ly aligned them­selves with Atom­waf­fen said the group’s romance with the satan­ic cult was real.

    “We have audio record­ings of mem­bers admit­ting to being Satanists, among oth­er evi­dence,” one per­son who has long post­ed about being in Atom­waf­fen wrote Sat­ur­day. He list­ed him­self as “Ex-AWD.”

    Yet some mem­bers said they are stick­ing with the neo-Nazi group through mur­der and satan­ic scan­dal.

    “You guys can get all moral­is­tic if you want about satanism,” one Atom­waf­fen mem­ber said in the leaked audio, “but at the end of the day when the fu ckin’ race war comes, morals aren’t going to do any­thing but get you fu ckin’ killed.”

    ———-

    “Satanism Dra­ma Is Tear­ing Apart the Mur­der­ous Neo-Nazi Group Atom­waf­fen” by Kel­ly Weill; The Dai­ly Beast; 03/21/2018

    Atomwaffen’s satanism-heavy read­ing list has appar­ent­ly dri­ven away some for­mer mem­bers who were only in the group for the Nazism. In Jan­u­ary, a pur­port­ed for­mer Atom­waf­fen mem­ber quit the group dra­mat­i­cal­ly, pub­lish­ing a 27-page Google doc­u­ment claim­ing to doc­u­ment the group’s grow­ing satan­ic ties.”

    Too much satanism for these Nazis. That’s the com­plaint that was com­ing from at least some cur­rent and for­mer Atom­waf­fen mem­bers in 2018. And part of what makes the sit­u­a­tion so twist­ed is that it does­n’t sound like Atom­waf­fen mem­bers are opposed to the seem­ing­ly reli­gious wor­ship of vio­lence espoused by the O9A move­ment. On the con­trary, that seems like some­thing Atom­waf­fen would love. Instead, there’s an under­stand­able para­noia about a move­ment that is explic­it­ly open about infil­trat­ing oth­er far right extrem­ist move­ments in order to push their dooms­day Satan­ic cult agen­da. As Dai­ly Stormer founder Andrew Anglin put it to one Atom­waf­fen mem­ber, “How do you allow [in] peo­ple who explic­it­ly say that they are satan­ic dooms­day cultists who infil­trate and take over right-wing groups in order to press their agen­da.” It’s a pret­ty remark­able area of con­tention com­ing from neo-Nazis. After all, the Satan­ic dooms­day cult goals are more or less the same as your stan­dard neo-Nazi:

    ...
    The ONA requires mem­bers (called Noc­tu­lians) to spend six months either hitch­hik­ing, work­ing as a bur­glar, work­ing as a police offi­cer, or infil­trat­ing an extrem­ist polit­i­cal group.

    “Under­take the role of extreme polit­i­cal activist and so cham­pi­on hereti­cal views (by, e.g. becom­ing involved in extreme Right-Wing activism),” the group demands in one of its intro­duc­to­ry books. “The aim is to express fanati­cism in action and be seen by all ‘right-think­ing peo­ple’ as an extrem­ist, and a dan­ger­ous one.”

    That book is also rec­om­mend­ed read­ing for Atom­waf­fen mem­bers. On a recent­ly defunct web­site, Atom­waf­fen uploaded the book in full in the “spir­i­tu­al­i­ty” sec­tion of its “library.” The library also encour­aged Atom­waf­fen mem­bers to read Iron Gates, a grue­some sci-fi nov­el penned by the occult group Tem­pel of Blood, which is open­ly affil­i­at­ed with the ONA.

    ...

    Iron Gates is list­ed as required read­ing on Atomwaffen’s cur­rent web­site.

    ...

    Imme­di­ate­ly after the document’s pub­li­ca­tion, oth­er self-pro­claimed Atom­waf­fen mem­bers attacked its author on the noto­ri­ous online bul­letin board 4chan, call­ing the group’s endorse­ment of Iron Gates and the ONA a “meme” and a “joke.” But the alleged Atom­waf­fen mem­bers also inad­ver­tent­ly con­firmed that the document’s author had been affil­i­at­ed with the group, post­ing screen­shots of his mes­sages from Atomwaffen’s group chat.

    ...

    “How do you allow [in] peo­ple who explic­it­ly say that they are satan­ic dooms­day cultists who infil­trate and take over right-wing groups in order to press their agen­da,” Andrew Anglin, the fugi­tive founder of the Dai­ly Stormer neo-Nazi pub­li­ca­tion, demand­ed of a self-iden­ti­fied Atom­waf­fen mem­ber.
    ...

    But despite these O9A mis­giv­ings, there was still clear­ly plen­ty of sup­port for the Satan­ic dooms­day cult agen­da with­in Atom­waf­fen’s mem­ber­ship too. And that includes its de fac­to leader John Cameron Den­ton:

    ...
    Atomwaffen’s de fac­to leader, John Cameron Den­ton, appears to have post­ed ONA sym­bols years before Atom­waf­fen was accused of asso­ci­at­ing with the satanist group. Den­ton, 24, goes by “Rape” online and some­times uses the pseu­do­nym Vin­cent Sny­der on social media and in inter­views. An Insta­gram account under the name Vin­cent Sny­der has been upload­ing Nazi pro­pa­gan­da since 2016, in Atomwaffen’s dis­tinc­tive black and white aes­thet­ic. In a Novem­ber 2016 post fea­tur­ing neo-Nazi para­pher­na­lia, a stick­er with the ONA logo is par­tial­ly vis­i­ble.

    In a 2015 post on the now-defunct neo-Nazi forum Iron March, a per­son wrote a favor­able com­ment about the ONA, under the same user­name Sny­der uses on Insta­gram. And in 2014, a pro-Nazi Google Plus account pur­port­ed to be Denton’s uploaded two ONA logos.

    ...

    “We have audio record­ings of mem­bers admit­ting to being Satanists, among oth­er evi­dence,” one per­son who has long post­ed about being in Atom­waf­fen wrote Sat­ur­day. He list­ed him­self as “Ex-AWD.”

    Yet some mem­bers said they are stick­ing with the neo-Nazi group through mur­der and satan­ic scan­dal.

    “You guys can get all moral­is­tic if you want about satanism,” one Atom­waf­fen mem­ber said in the leaked audio, “but at the end of the day when the fu ckin’ race war comes, morals aren’t going to do any­thing but get you fu ckin’ killed.”
    ...

    So that’s all part of the con­text of the new pros­e­cu­tion charges against Ethan Melz­er: it’s a neo-Nazi Satan­ic ter­ror plot involv­ing al Qae­da and with the intent of spark­ing a region­al war car­ried out by the mem­ber of a group that has as its goal the uni­fi­ca­tion of all sorts of far right vio­lent extrem­ist groups under the umbrel­la phi­los­o­phy of divine vio­lent nihilism. It’s ter­ror­ism designed to lit­er­al­ly pro­mote the idea of ter­ror­ism. A ter­ror plot and a meta-ter­ror plot all in one.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | June 23, 2020, 2:47 pm
  2. Here’s a sto­ry that’s a reminder that the fac­tion of the “Booga­loo” move­ment that claims to be inter­est­ed in ally­ing with and pro­tect­ing the police bru­tal­i­ty pro­tes­tors isn’t actu­al­ly the ‘nice’ fac­tion of ‘Booga­loo’. Instead it’s the fac­tion of ‘Booga­loo’ that is extra inter­est­ed in killing police and foment­ing vio­lence between author­i­ties and pro­tes­tors with the hope of pre­cip­i­tat­ing a far right over­throw of the US gov­ern­ment:

    Two self-pro­claimed “Booga­loo bois” who have been attend­ing protests over the sum­mer osten­si­bly to pro­tect pro­test­ers from the police — Michael Robert Solomon, 30, of North Car­oli­na, and Ben­jamin Ryan Teeter, 22, of Min­neso­ta — were just arrest­ed for try­ing sell weapons to Hamas. Their sales includ­ed a July 30 sale to an under­cov­er FBI agent of five sup­pres­sors for $1,800 and a “drop in auto sear” to make auto­mat­ic weapons. Their goals includ­ed mak­ing enough mon­ey to buy land to train more ‘Booga­loo bois’ on.

    They were report­ed­ly inter­est­ed in ally­ing with Hamas because of Hamas’s oppo­si­tion to the US gov­ern­ment and were hop­ing the weapons they sold to Hamas would be used to kill Israeli and US sol­diers. So in that sense it’s rem­i­nis­cent of the “Order of 9 Angles” (O9A) Satan­ic fas­cist group that was recent­ly found to be coor­di­nat­ing with jihadist in the Mid­dle East with the goal of pro­vok­ing attacks against US troops and pro­vok­ing a broad­er region­al war. The two arrest­ed ‘Booga­loo’ mem­bers planned a whole domes­tic ter­ror cam­paign that includ­ed destroy gov­ern­ment mon­u­ments, assas­si­nat­ing politi­cians and mem­bers of the media, and raid­ing the head­quar­ters of a white suprema­cist orga­ni­za­tion in North Car­oli­na. They did­n’t name the tar­get­ed white suprema­cist orga­ni­za­tion so the motive for that remains entire­ly ambigu­ous. The two were report­ed­ly so inter­est in US gov­ern­ment over­throw and attack­ing the police that they had a spe­cial name for their fac­tion of the ‘Booga­loo’ move­ment: the “Bojahideen”:

    Buz­zfeed News

    Two “Booga­loo Boys” Alleged­ly Tried To Sup­ply Weapons To Hamas And Join As Mer­ce­nar­ies

    The men also told an infor­mant they were part of a sub­group called “Boo­jahideen” that want­ed to become mer­ce­nar­ies for the ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion, pros­e­cu­tors say.

    Sal­vador Her­nan­dez Buz­zFeed News Reporter
    Post­ed on Sep­tem­ber 4, 2020, at 6:56 p.m. ET

    Two self-pro­claimed “Booga­loo Boys” have been charged with try­ing to sell weapons and parts to some­one they thought was a mem­ber of Hamas.

    Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors also allege the two men con­sid­ered becom­ing “mer­ce­nar­ies” for the ter­ror­ist group in order to boost and fund the Booga­loo move­ment, which is loose­ly made up of right-wing extrem­ists who want to over­throw the gov­ern­ment.

    Michael Robert Solomon, 30, of North Car­oli­na, and Ben­jamin Ryan Teeter, 22, of Min­neso­ta sought the odd alliance not because of a sim­i­lar ide­ol­o­gy, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors said, but instead tried to make Hamas con­nec­tions because they believed the ter­ror­ist group’s anti-US stance fit with their own anti-gov­ern­ment con­vic­tion.

    ...

    Solomon and Teeter were arrest­ed Thurs­day and charged with con­spir­ing to pro­vide mate­r­i­al sup­port to a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion.

    Solomon and Teeter are accused of being mem­bers of the “Booga­loo” move­ment, in which decen­tral­ized anti-gov­ern­ment groups have called for a sec­ond Civ­il War and, at times, the over­throw of the gov­ern­ment.

    Often seen don­ning Hawai­ian shirts under­neath body armor and car­ry­ing firearms at protests across the US, the “move­ment” is believed to have evolved from online memes and is fre­quent­ly linked to racism. Pros­e­cu­tors say Solomon and Teeter referred to them­selves as mem­bers of a sub­group called “Bojahideen,” and often appeared at protests in Min­neapo­lis against police vio­lence.

    Dur­ing that time, pros­e­cu­tors allege, the two open­ly car­ried firearms and talked about “com­mit­ting acts of vio­lence against police offi­cers and oth­er tar­gets in fur­ther­ance of the Boo­jahideen’s stat­ed goal of over­throw­ing the gov­ern­ment and replac­ing its police forces.”

    Dur­ing one record­ed con­ver­sa­tion, Solomon alleged­ly talked about shoot­ing at police until he ran out of ammo if he got into a con­fronta­tion.

    “I’m going to take out who­ev­er ini­ti­at­ed the vio­lence, and then I’m going to hang out in the area, you know, move and set up in a bet­ter loca­tion that’s as close to the area as I can, and then I’m going to take out the next thing that shows up,” he said. “Like if I get into a fire­fight, I’m get­ting into a fire­fight until i can’t fight any­more. If I run out of ammo, I’ll go to court.

    On a Twit­ter account that appears to be belong to Teeter, the 22-year-old is seen in a video inside a car where he says police used force against a group of pro­test­ers after some crossed a police line.

    “Appar­ent­ly that means they get to start spray­ing and using not-lethal rounds on teh ground, includ­ing the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple who did absolute­ly noth­ing,” he says in a video. “We need to get the word out and make sure that every Boo­jahideen in the area knows what’s going on so they can respond appro­pri­ate­ly to the sit­u­a­tion.”

    In May, reporter Mukhtar Ibrahim spoke with an armed masked man who also described him­self as being part of the “Boo­jahideen” group. The man appears to have a sim­i­lar tat­too as Teeter on his right arm just below the wrist.

    “We have peo­ple going out, we have peo­ple get­ting gassed, we have peo­ple get­ting tear-gassed and beat­en,” he said. “We’re going to stand on the front lines and every­thing they throw at you we’re get­ting ready to throw right back at them to pro­tect the peo­ple going out and defend­ing their rights.”

    He claimed the group had six mem­bers.

    But pros­e­cu­tors allege that in ear­ly June, the FBI was told by a con­fi­den­tial source who posed as a mem­ber of Hamas that Teeter and Solomon talked about becom­ing mer­ce­nar­ies for a ter­ror­ist group with the hopes of using that mon­ey to recruit more mem­bers and buy land to train them on.

    The men also talked about “destroy­ing gov­ern­ment mon­u­ments, raid­ing the head­quar­ters of a white suprema­cist orga­ni­za­tion in North Car­oli­na, and tar­get­ing politi­cians and mem­bers of the media,” accord­ing to the US Attor­ney’s Office.

    In anoth­er record­ed con­ver­sa­tion, Teeter alleged­ly talked about tar­get­ing a his­tor­i­cal coun­ty cour­t­house in Min­neso­ta because it was a “sym­bol of the unjust laws that Amer­i­ca holds.”

    Teeter told the con­fi­den­tial infor­mant that he want­ed to hit the tar­get at night to avoid hurt­ing bystanders.

    “I’d be fine with going after the media after that,” Solomon said in anoth­er con­ver­sa­tion, accord­ing to the crim­i­nal com­plaint. “I’m not nec­es­sar­i­ly talk­ing about the jour­nal­ists on the street. Yeah, they lie. I’m more talk­ing, I just want to take out the top 20% peo­ple at each com­pa­ny.”

    In July 30, the two men also gave an under­cov­er mem­ber of the FBI, whom they believed to be a mem­ber of Hamas, five sup­pres­sors for $1,800, and a “drop in auto sear” to make auto­mat­ic weapons. The two also talked about get­ting the des­ig­nat­ed ter­ror­ist group more parts and weapons to attack Israeli and US sol­diers over­seas.

    Accord­ing to the com­plaint, the two men were also repeat­ed­ly record­ed mak­ing threats against gov­ern­ment fig­ures and, at one point, talked about hang­ing politi­cians in front of the US Capi­tol.

    “I want to like take down 20 sen­a­tors while they’re play­ing fuc king base­ball, right?” Solo­man is record­ed say­ing, accord­ing to the com­plaint. “I don’t want to blow up a cour­t­house. I want to mur­der a bunch of US politi­cians. That’s the state­ment I want to make.”

    ————

    “Two “Booga­loo Boys” Alleged­ly Tried To Sup­ply Weapons To Hamas And Join As Mer­ce­nar­ies” by Sal­vador Her­nan­dez; Buz­zfeed News; 09/04/2020

    “Often seen don­ning Hawai­ian shirts under­neath body armor and car­ry­ing firearms at protests across the US, the “move­ment” is believed to have evolved from online memes and is fre­quent­ly linked to racism. Pros­e­cu­tors say Solomon and Teeter referred to them­selves as mem­bers of a sub­group called “Bojahideen,” and often appeared at protests in Min­neapo­lis against police vio­lence.

    The self-described “Bojahideen” were reg­u­lar pres­ences at the protests in Min­neapo­lis. But as this sto­ry makes clear, they weren’t inter­est­ed in protest­ing police bru­tal­i­ty. They were inter­est­ed in using the protests as a means of foment­ing broad­er civ­il con­flict while they plot­ted the include killing politi­cians, the police and even­tu­al­ly the far right over­throw of the gov­ern­ment:

    ...
    But pros­e­cu­tors allege that in ear­ly June, the FBI was told by a con­fi­den­tial source who posed as a mem­ber of Hamas that Teeter and Solomon talked about becom­ing mer­ce­nar­ies for a ter­ror­ist group with the hopes of using that mon­ey to recruit more mem­bers and buy land to train them on.

    The men also talked about “destroy­ing gov­ern­ment mon­u­ments, raid­ing the head­quar­ters of a white suprema­cist orga­ni­za­tion in North Car­oli­na, and tar­get­ing politi­cians and mem­bers of the media,” accord­ing to the US Attor­ney’s Office.

    In anoth­er record­ed con­ver­sa­tion, Teeter alleged­ly talked about tar­get­ing a his­tor­i­cal coun­ty cour­t­house in Min­neso­ta because it was a “sym­bol of the unjust laws that Amer­i­ca holds.”

    ...

    In July 30, the two men also gave an under­cov­er mem­ber of the FBI, whom they believed to be a mem­ber of Hamas, five sup­pres­sors for $1,800, and a “drop in auto sear” to make auto­mat­ic weapons. The two also talked about get­ting the des­ig­nat­ed ter­ror­ist group more parts and weapons to attack Israeli and US sol­diers over­seas.

    ...

    “I want to like take down 20 sen­a­tors while they’re play­ing fuc king base­ball, right?” Solo­man is record­ed say­ing, accord­ing to the com­plaint. “I don’t want to blow up a cour­t­house. I want to mur­der a bunch of US politi­cians. That’s the state­ment I want to make.”
    ...

    Yes, work­ing with Hamas was just a means to an end. An end of over­throw­ing the US gov­ern­ment and replac­ing it with some some sort of far right regime. Just as play­ing nice with the pro­test­ers and pre­tend­ing to pro­tect them was a means to the same ends.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 8, 2020, 1:24 pm
  3. With the 20 year anniver­sary of 9/11 upon us, here’s an arti­cle from last month that in a weird way encap­su­lates much of what’s changed, and what has­n’t, in the US domes­tic polit­i­cal land­scape over last two decades:

    It appears ISIS has found a new social media home, thanks to Don­ald Trump. Or at least thanks to the pro-Trump net­work of indi­vid­u­als in the orbit of Guo Wen­gui and Trump’s for­mer cam­paign man­ag­er Jason Miller. As we’ve seen, Miller was recent­ly detained at an air­port in Brazil and ques­tioned for sev­er­al hours fol­low­ing his atten­dance as the CPAC Brasil con­fer­ence ear­li­er this month. And while we nev­er got an indi­ca­tion of what Miller was ques­tioned about, it’s hard to ignore the fact that Miller is the CEO of GETTR, the new social media app financed by Guo. It was the kind of sto­ry that raised ques­tioned of whether or not those Brazil­ian author­i­ties could have con­cerns about how GETTR might be used to orga­nized a cam­paign of far right ter­ror. Now, we have no spe­cif­ic indi­ca­tion that GET­TR’s util­i­ty as a far right pro­pa­gan­da and orga­ni­za­tion­al tool was the actu­al rea­son Miller was inter­viewed at the air­port. But we also can’t ignore the fact that GETTR is one of those social media sites that tries to dis­tin­guish itself by pledg­ing to nev­er cen­sor con­tent. And that means it’s inevitably a site awash in what amounts to ter­ror pro­pa­gan­da. ISIS pro­pa­gan­da, as the fol­low­ing Politi­co arti­cle describes.

    Yes, from the first days of the launch of GETTR back in July, there has been an Islam­ic State pres­ence on the plat­form. Not just a pres­ence. Like behead­ing videos and the worst kind of pro­pa­gan­da. A pres­ence that remained days after Politi­co informed GETTR about the find­ings in its inves­ti­ga­tion. And an entire­ly pre­dictable online pres­ence. After all, if you’re tout­ing how your social media plat­form is cen­sor-proof, that’s basi­cal­ly an invi­ta­tion for ter­ror­ists of all stripes, from ISIS to Atom­waf­fen.

    Also keep in mind the net­work work Guo Wen­gui is the same net­work of fig­ures deeply invest­ed in the ‘stolen elec­tion’ Big Lie nar­ra­tive that is being not only embraced by the GOP at large but lay­ing the foun­da­tions for a pos­si­ble sec­ond civ­il war. The agen­da of this net­work real­ly is that odi­ous.

    Final­ly, we can’t for­get the very real his­to­ry of jihadist alliances with the far right, going back to WWII and the Nazis. Jihadists co-habi­tat­ing with neo-Nazis real­ly does have his­tor­i­cal res­o­nance. It’s why we got reports about neo-Nazis draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from the Tal­iban’s vic­to­ry in Afghanistan. There’s immense ide­o­log­i­cal over­lap.

    So we have a sto­ry about a new social media plat­form released by a net­work of fig­ures cur­rent­ly invest­ed in pro­mot­ing a democ­ra­cy-desta­bi­liz­ing Big Lie that is infest­ed with jihadist pro­pa­gan­da. And sad­ly, if we were to try to find a sto­ry that cap­tures the gross decline of the US domes­tic polit­i­cal dia­logue post‑9/11, it would be dif­fi­cult to find a sto­ry that more suc­cinct­ly cap­tures that decline. The right-wing US domes­tic polit­i­cal scene real­ly is a train­wreck increas­ing­ly filled with ter­ror­is­tic fan­tasies about end­ing democ­ra­cy, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with a grow­ing inter­na­tion­al fas­cist move­ment, often under the guise of some sort of nation­al theo­crat­ic renew­al. Or to put it anoth­er way, when it comes to the bat­tle for hearts and minds over the last two decades in the West, it’s get­ting increas­ing­ly hard to argue against the notion that ‘the ter­ror­ists won’. Not that al Qaea­da won. It has­n’t been a jihadist vic­to­ry in the West. It’s been a much more gen­er­al vic­to­ry of far right extrem­ism. So the jihadists can cer­tain­ly cel­e­brate a vic­to­ry of sorts, but they’ll have to share the vic­to­ry with the rest of their fel­low extrem­ists. It’s been a group effort:

    Politi­co

    Jihadists flood pro-Trump social net­work with pro­pa­gan­da

    GETTR, the new plat­form start­ed by mem­bers of the for­mer president’s inner cir­cle, is awash with behead­ing videos and extrem­ist con­tent.

    By MARK SCOTT and TINA NGUYEN

    08/02/2021 04:30 AM EDT
    Updat­ed: 08/02/2021 04:42 PM EDT

    Just weeks after its launch, the pro-Trump social net­work GETTR is inun­dat­ed with ter­ror­ist pro­pa­gan­da spread by sup­port­ers of Islam­ic State, accord­ing to a POLITICO review of online activ­i­ty on the fledg­ling plat­form.

    The social net­work — start­ed a month ago by mem­bers of for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s inner cir­cle — fea­tures reams of jiha­di-relat­ed mate­r­i­al, includ­ing graph­ic videos of behead­ings, viral memes that pro­mote vio­lence against the West and even memes of a mil­i­tant exe­cut­ing Trump in an orange jump­suit sim­i­lar to those used in Guan­tanamo Bay.

    The rapid pro­lif­er­a­tion of such mate­r­i­al is plac­ing GETTR in the awk­ward posi­tion of pro­vid­ing a safe haven for jiha­di extrem­ists online as it attempts to estab­lish itself as a free speech MAGA-alter­na­tive to sites like Face­book and Twit­ter.

    ...

    Islam­ic State “has been very quick to exploit GETTR,” said Moustafa Ayad, exec­u­tive direc­tor for Africa, the Mid­dle East and Asia at the Insti­tute for Strate­gic Dia­logue, a think tank that tracks online extrem­ism, who first dis­cov­ered the jiha­di accounts and shared his find­ings with POLITICO.

    “On Face­book, there was on one of these accounts that I fol­low that is known to be Islam­ic State, which said ‘Oh, Trump announced his new plat­form. Inshal­lah, all the mujahideen will exploit that plat­form,’” he added. “The next day, there were at least 15 accounts on GETTR that were Islam­ic State.”

    While GETTR does not pro­vide access to its data to track the spread, or viral­i­ty, of such extrem­ist mate­r­i­al on its plat­form, POLITICO found at least 250 accounts that had post­ed reg­u­lar­ly on the plat­form since ear­ly July. Many fol­lowed each oth­er, and used hash­tags to pro­mote the jiha­di mate­r­i­al to this bur­geon­ing online com­mu­ni­ty.

    In the months since he was kicked off Twit­ter and sus­pend­ed from Face­book, Trump has sought alter­na­tive ways to engage with his base online. While his sup­port­ers decamped to oth­er online venues — includ­ing the social net­work Par­ler, where they could express them­selves with­out fac­ing increased scruti­ny — Trump’s own effort to cre­ate an inter­net bull­horn has stalled.

    In May, he launched a blog — titled “From the Desk of Don­ald J. Trump” — but it was tak­en down just weeks lat­er amid wide­spread ridicule and poor read­er­ship.

    So far, GETTR has been the high­est-pro­file pro-Trump plat­form launch, giv­en the names behind it: Jason Miller, for­mer Trump spokesper­son, is its chief exec­u­tive, and the site is par­tial­ly fund­ed by Miles Guo, the busi­ness part­ner of for­mer Trump advi­sor Steve Ban­non. Trump, him­self, is not direct­ly involved in the oper­a­tion, nor has he offi­cial­ly signed up to the plat­form. The social net­work has tout­ed a “free speech” pol­i­cy that, pur­port­ed­ly, would allow users to ful­ly express them­selves with­out the cen­sor­ship of tech giants.

    Yet this MAGA exo­dus to fringe social net­works that cham­pi­on unfet­tered speech has also caught the atten­tion of sup­port­ers of Islam­ic State and oth­er jihadist groups, accord­ing to extrem­ism experts.

    In response to ques­tions about jiha­di mate­r­i­al being shared on GETTR, Miller told POLITICO that ISIS was attack­ing the MAGA move­ment because Trump had destroyed the group mil­i­tar­i­ly. “The only ISIS mem­bers still alive are key­board war­riors hid­ing in caves and eat­ing dirt cook­ies,” he said in a text mes­sage.

    These ter­ror­ist com­mu­ni­ties have sim­i­lar­ly faced wide­spread removals from the largest social net­works, which have often pro­mot­ed their clam­p­down on Islam­ic extrem­ists as an exam­ple of how the tech com­pa­nies are polic­ing their glob­al plat­forms for harm­ful con­tent.

    In response, Islam­ic State sup­port­ers have quick­ly shift­ed gears, look­ing for new spaces online where they can spread their hate­ful mate­r­i­al, as well as pig­gy­back­ing on tac­tics and plat­forms first used in the Unit­ed States.

    “Is Daesh here?” asked an account whose pro­file pho­to was of the Islam­ic State flag account, using the Ara­bic acronym for jiha­di move­ment. The replies were in the affir­ma­tive, with some prais­ing the social net­work for its will­ing­ness to host such con­tent.

    Days after GETTR was launched on July 1, Islam­ic State sup­port­ers began urg­ing their fol­low­ers on oth­er social net­works to sign up to the pro-Trump net­work, in part to take the jiha­di fight direct­ly to MAGA nation.

    “If this app reach­es the expect­ed suc­cess, which is most­ly prob­a­ble, it should be adopt­ed by fol­low­ers and occu­pied in order to regain the glo­ry of Twit­ter, may God pre­vail,” one Islam­ic State account on Face­book wrote on July 6.

    Some of the jiha­di posts on GETTR from ear­ly July were even­tu­al­ly tak­en down, high­light­ing that the pro-Trump plat­form had tak­en at least some steps to remove the harm­ful mate­r­i­al.

    Larg­er plat­forms like Face­book and Twit­ter now work via the Glob­al Inter­net Forum to Counter Ter­ror­ism, an indus­try-fund­ed non­prof­it which shares ter­ror­ist con­tent between com­pa­nies — via a data­base of extrem­ist mate­r­i­al acces­si­ble to its mem­bers — so that the mate­r­i­al can be tak­en down as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

    GETTR has yet to sign up.

    In the platform’s terms of ser­vice, it out­lines how offen­sive or ille­gal con­tent, includ­ing that relat­ed to ter­ror­ism, may be removed from GETTR. “This may include con­tent iden­ti­fied as per­son­al bul­ly­ing, sex­u­al abuse of a child, attack­ing any reli­gion or race, or con­tent con­tain­ing video or depic­tions of behead­ing,” a clause reads.

    Though the site has had noto­ri­ous­ly spot­ty luck in mod­er­at­ing users on the plat­form — in its ear­ly days, it was flood­ed with a wide spec­trum of pornog­ra­phy — Miller has drawn the line at doxxing, or shar­ing oth­er people’s address­es, or advo­cat­ing phys­i­cal harm.

    In inter­views, GETTR’s chief exec­u­tive has tout­ed the site’s con­tent mod­er­a­tion pol­i­cy, pri­mar­i­ly based on a com­bi­na­tion of human mon­i­tor­ing and algo­rithms.

    Four days after POLITICO sub­mit­ted sev­er­al requests for com­ment to GETTR, many of these accounts and videos are still up.

    The over­all amount of ter­ror­ist pro­pa­gan­da that POLITICO found on GETTR rep­re­sent­ed a mere frac­tion of the most­ly right-wing con­tent — which also includes the pro­mo­tion of the Proud Boys white suprema­cist move­ment. More main­stream con­ser­v­a­tive influ­encers and pol­i­cy­mak­ers like Sean Han­ni­ty and Mike Pom­peo also reg­u­lar­ly post on the plat­form.

    Still, the fact that such jiha­di mate­r­i­al was read­i­ly avail­able on the social net­work, and GETTR’s fail­ure to clamp down on such extrem­ism, under­lined the dif­fi­cul­ties that the com­pa­ny faces in bal­anc­ing its free speech ethos with grow­ing demands to stop ter­ror­ist-relat­ed mate­r­i­al from find­ing an audi­ence online.

    “The con­tent we’re com­ing across on small plat­forms is basi­cal­ly sim­i­lar to the con­tent that is being auto­mat­i­cal­ly removed from Face­book and Twit­ter,” said Adam Hadley, direc­tor of Tech Against Ter­ror­ism, a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that works with small­er social net­works, but not GETTR, in com­bat­ing the rise of extrem­ist con­tent online.
    -
    “Many of the small­er plat­forms do not have the resources to auto­mat­i­cal­ly remove this type of con­tent,” he added. His organization’s mem­ber­ship includes Tum­blr and Word­Press, the blog­ging plat­form.

    Extrem­ism ana­lysts who reviewed POLITICO’s find­ings said that Islam­ic State sup­port­ers’ use of GETTR appeared to be an ini­tial test to see if their con­tent would escape detec­tion or be sub­ject to con­tent mod­er­a­tion.

    In their ongo­ing cat-and-mouse fight with West­ern nation­al secu­ri­ty agen­cies and Sil­i­con Val­ley plat­forms, jiha­di groups are quick­ly evolv­ing their tac­tics to stay one step ahead of online removals.

    “The ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions are always exper­i­ment­ing, because they’re fight­ing a real bat­tle to con­tin­ue to have access to pub­lic spaces to spread their pro­pa­gan­da,” said Emer­son Brook­ing, a senior fel­low at the Dig­i­tal Foren­sic Research Lab and the author of “Like­War: The Weaponiza­tion of Social Media.”

    So far, Islam­ic State sup­port­ers are enjoy­ing their incur­sion into GETTR and the pos­si­ble new audi­ence they could reach. “We will come at you with slay­ing and explo­sions you wor­ship­pers of the cross,” wrote an account whose name ref­er­enced the extrem­ist group, adding: “How great is free­dom of expres­sion.”

    ———-

    “Jihadists flood pro-Trump social net­work with pro­pa­gan­da” by MARK SCOTT and TINA NGUYEN; Politi­co; 08/02/2021

    The social net­work — start­ed a month ago by mem­bers of for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s inner cir­cle — fea­tures reams of jiha­di-relat­ed mate­r­i­al, includ­ing graph­ic videos of behead­ings, viral memes that pro­mote vio­lence against the West and even memes of a mil­i­tant exe­cut­ing Trump in an orange jump­suit sim­i­lar to those used in Guan­tanamo Bay.”

    Wel­come to GETTR: come for the Trump memes. Stay for the behead­ing videos pro­mot­ing vio­lence against the West. Videos that, the­mat­i­cal­ly, sure have a lot in com­mon with your stan­dard neo-Nazi con­tent. Birds of a feath­er flock­ing togeth­er. On a plat­form built by the net­work cur­rent­ly foment­ing a civ­il war over a stolen elec­tion Big Lie:

    ...
    While GETTR does not pro­vide access to its data to track the spread, or viral­i­ty, of such extrem­ist mate­r­i­al on its plat­form, POLITICO found at least 250 accounts that had post­ed reg­u­lar­ly on the plat­form since ear­ly July. Many fol­lowed each oth­er, and used hash­tags to pro­mote the jiha­di mate­r­i­al to this bur­geon­ing online com­mu­ni­ty.

    ...

    Days after GETTR was launched on July 1, Islam­ic State sup­port­ers began urg­ing their fol­low­ers on oth­er social net­works to sign up to the pro-Trump net­work, in part to take the jiha­di fight direct­ly to MAGA nation.

    “If this app reach­es the expect­ed suc­cess, which is most­ly prob­a­ble, it should be adopt­ed by fol­low­ers and occu­pied in order to regain the glo­ry of Twit­ter, may God pre­vail,” one Islam­ic State account on Face­book wrote on July 6.

    ...

    So far, Islam­ic State sup­port­ers are enjoy­ing their incur­sion into GETTR and the pos­si­ble new audi­ence they could reach. “We will come at you with slay­ing and explo­sions you wor­ship­pers of the cross,” wrote an account whose name ref­er­enced the extrem­ist group, adding: “How great is free­dom of expres­sion.”
    ...

    And that fact that GETTR has been oper­at­ing as a kind of ter­ror­ist haven since launch­ing in July, again rais­es the ques­tion: was Jason Miller’s inter­view by Brazil­ian author­i­ties relat­ed to GET­TR’s util­i­ty as a ter­ror­ist orga­niz­ing tool? The ques­tion has to be asked. And when asked, Miller replied that ISIS was infil­trat­ing GETTR as revenge against Trump destroy­ing the group while pres­i­dent. It’s the kind of trolling non-response response that points towards and inten­tion of not actu­al­ly address­ing the jihadist pres­ence on the plat­form:

    ...
    So far, GETTR has been the high­est-pro­file pro-Trump plat­form launch, giv­en the names behind it: Jason Miller, for­mer Trump spokesper­son, is its chief exec­u­tive, and the site is par­tial­ly fund­ed by Miles Guo, the busi­ness part­ner of for­mer Trump advi­sor Steve Ban­non. Trump, him­self, is not direct­ly involved in the oper­a­tion, nor has he offi­cial­ly signed up to the plat­form. The social net­work has tout­ed a “free speech” pol­i­cy that, pur­port­ed­ly, would allow users to ful­ly express them­selves with­out the cen­sor­ship of tech giants.

    Yet this MAGA exo­dus to fringe social net­works that cham­pi­on unfet­tered speech has also caught the atten­tion of sup­port­ers of Islam­ic State and oth­er jihadist groups, accord­ing to extrem­ism experts.

    In response to ques­tions about jiha­di mate­r­i­al being shared on GETTR, Miller told POLITICO that ISIS was attack­ing the MAGA move­ment because Trump had destroyed the group mil­i­tar­i­ly. “The only ISIS mem­bers still alive are key­board war­riors hid­ing in caves and eat­ing dirt cook­ies,” he said in a text mes­sage.

    ...

    In inter­views, GETTR’s chief exec­u­tive has tout­ed the site’s con­tent mod­er­a­tion pol­i­cy, pri­mar­i­ly based on a com­bi­na­tion of human mon­i­tor­ing and algo­rithms.

    Four days after POLITICO sub­mit­ted sev­er­al requests for com­ment to GETTR, many of these accounts and videos are still up.
    ...

    Sure, the plat­form tech­ni­cal­ly has rules against calls for vio­lence and oth­er types of abu­sive behav­ior. But they clear­ly aren’t being enforced. And there real­ly isn’t any­thing GETTR can real­is­ti­cal­ly do to mean­ing­ful­ly police the jihadist activ­i­ty on its plat­form while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly main­tain­ing its sta­tus as a safe haven for neo-Nazi extrem­ists. If GETTR is going to con­tin­ue exist­ing, it’s going to remain neo-Naz­i/ji­hadist fusion plat­form. That’s the nature of this beast. A beast that did­n’t real­ly exist on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001. Yes, the exten­sive his­to­ry of Nazi/jihadist col­lab­o­ra­tion cer­tain­ly exist­ed in 2001, but we did­n’t have this kind of warped domes­tic polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in the US where the Repub­li­can Par­ty was effec­tive­ly cap­tured by a mod­ern­ized ver­sion of Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion. But this is 2021. A year when the for­mer US Pres­i­dent foment­ed an insur­rec­tion based on a Big Lie and the Repub­li­can Par­ty respond­ed by embrac­ing that for­mer Pres­i­dent and the Big Lie even more tight­ly. Over the last two decades we’ve seen the world­views of the Repub­li­can Par­ty and al Qae­da almost merge when it comes to their com­mon ene­my: the shared belief of some dia­bol­i­cal glob­al con­spir­a­cy by Satan­ic elites to impose lib­er­al­ism on human­i­ty. Or at least a shared nar­ra­tive. When we’re talk­ing about Big Lies, the only belief that real­ly comes to mat­ter is the shared sense of nihilism. And that might be the best way to sum­ma­rize the long-term impact of 9/11: the nihilists have unit­ed like nev­er before. Unit­ed philo­soph­i­cal­ly. And in the case of GETTR, logis­ti­cal­ly.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 11, 2021, 4:14 pm

Post a comment