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

For The Record  

FTR #709 Update on Euro Fascism

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MP3 Side 1 | Side 2

Intro­duc­tion: The broad­cast begins by high­light­ing the change in atti­tude expe­ri­enced by young “Euro-Nazis” toward their polit­i­cal belief sys­tem. Viewed as losers a few years ago, they are now gain­ing accep­tance by their peers. Suc­cess­ful­ly using Nazi rock out­lets, the inter­net and oth­er “new media,” the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of Nazi youth are suc­cess­ful­ly mar­ket­ing their ide­ol­o­gy to con­tem­po­raries in the cur­rent socio-eco­nom­ic cli­mate.

Facil­i­tat­ing this skill­ful use of “new media” by Euro-fas­cists is a court deci­sion that will allow the NPD–Ger­many’s largest “neo-” Nazi par­ty to dis­trib­ute CD’s to school chil­dren.

In Hun­gary, the far-right Job­bik Par­ty has estab­lished itself as a fix­ture on the Hun­gar­i­an elec­toral land­scape, reca­pit­u­lat­ing that nation’s fas­cist past under the Arrow Cross orga­ni­za­tion (allied with the Third Reich). [Job­bik mem­bers are pic­tured at right. The par­ty’s logo is dis­played at low­er right.] Severe eco­nom­ic down­turn and resul­tant, com­men­su­rate social dis­lo­ca­tion are dri­ving Hun­gar­i­an polit­i­cal sen­ti­ment in a dis­turbing­ly famil­iar direc­tion. The Hun­gar­i­an Job­bik Par­ty suc­cess­ful­ly reca­pit­u­lates much of the ide­ol­o­gy, sym­bol­o­gy and para-polit­i­cal street method­ol­o­gy of the Hun­gar­i­an Arrow Cross Par­ty, mas­ters of Hun­gary for part of World War II. Job­bik gained sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the Hun­gar­i­an elec­tions. Arrow cross vet­er­ans played an impor­tant role in the syn­the­sis of the Nazi/fascist Repub­li­can eth­nic out­reach mech­a­nism.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The Nazi past of Carl Lund­strom, the Swedish patron of a pop­u­lar music down­load site; the reopen­ing of the inves­ti­ga­tion of the appar­ent mur­der of a young Briton by ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with the LaRouche orga­ni­za­tion in Ger­many (that was orig­i­nal­ly cov­ered up by the Ger­man author­i­ties); revival of Nazi ide­ol­o­gy in Bosnia; review of the ele­va­tion of Nazi and SS col­lab­o­ra­tor Stephan Ban­dera to the sta­tus of “Hero” of the Ukraine; review of the Ger­man gov­ern­men­t’s ini­tial deci­sion to with­hold release of its intel­li­gence file on Adolph Eich­mann.

1. The first sto­ry high­lights the change in atti­tude expe­ri­enced by young “Euro-Nazis” toward their polit­i­cal belief sys­tem. Viewed as losers a few years ago, they are now gain­ing accep­tance by their peers. Suc­cess­ful­ly using Nazi rock out­lets, the inter­net and oth­er “new media,” the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of Nazi youth are suc­cess­ful­ly mar­ket­ing their ide­ol­o­gy to con­tem­po­raries in the cur­rent socio-eco­nom­ic cli­mate.

They sell CDs of lit­tle girls who sing soft­ly about white pride to a pub­lic of pre-ado­les­cents, video games where it is essen­tial to shoot all those who are dark-skinned, and t‑shirts with cryp­tic slo­gans. They are British, Roma­ni­ans, French and Swedes. They mis­trust the var­i­ous media and, instead, cre­ate their own press agen­cies to pro­duce and broad­cast their infor­ma­tion. Gabriele Adi­nolfi, the co-founder of terza posizione (‘third posi­tion’, Italy) con­firms that: ‘Today, the only way of being fas­cist is by being prag­mat­ic.’

The ‘right to cen­tre right’ par­ties are in the process of change hav­ing been unre­spectable for a long time. The EU has been look­ing to fight against acts of racism and xeno­phobes, and to bring leg­is­la­tion into line in mem­ber states on the mat­ter of strength­en­ing police co-oper­a­tion. The extreme right has had a resur­gence over the years in France, Aus­tria and Italy and has had to face up to reac­tions from pub­lic opin­ion. The extreme right has there­fore moved with the times.

They are now made up of a myr­i­ad of small groups, and when the dots are all joined up they form a ‘show­case’ polit­i­cal par­ty. The extreme right have placed them­selves into the mass media (via music, cloth­ing and mer­chan­dis­ing), and are now impos­ing them­selves on the media-relat­ed net­works across the EU. This strat­e­gy is pay­ing off; the extreme right is the lead­ing polit­i­cal par­ty amongst 15–30 year olds in Hol­land, Aus­tria and Czech Repub­lic. Their influ­ence is grow­ing every­where.

His strat­e­gy is called ‘metapol­i­tics’; it’s the art of doing pol­i­tics with­out it hav­ing the look of pol­i­tics. In line with those who think like Guil­laume Faye (nou­velle droite or ‘new right’ par­ty in France), the extreme right is ‘surf­ing’ on being anti-polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect, the loss of impe­tus by gov­ern­ment par­ties in putting for­ward new venues on the out­side of offi­cial cir­cuits. Métapé­dia was cre­at­ed in 2007 by young Swedes based on the mod­el of a well-known mass ency­clopae­dia; the Wikipedia mod­er­a­tors then gath­ered up the pages and exclud­ed them.

The extreme right is now in nine coun­tries in the EU and their ambi­tion is to ‘have an influ­ence on polit­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal debates and they way in which art and cul­ture are pre­sent­ed’. Alter­me­dia offers a plat­form for 17 dif­fer­ent EU coun­tries to dif­fer­ent cir­cles of influ­ence with a right wing iden­ti­ty (from rad­i­cal chris­tians to anti-cap­i­tal­ist pagans), who want to chal­lenge the chal­lenge the tra­di­tion­al left wing suprema­cy in the domains of ideas and cul­ture. It’s Denis Diderot who wel­comes the vis­i­tor to Meta­pe­dia France, and the author and poet Mihai Emi­nes­cu who wrote Emper­or and Pro­le­tar­i­an, on Meta­pe­dia Roma­nia.

Jacques Vassieux is the Rhône-Alpes region­al advi­sor to the French FN Par­ty (‘nation­al front’). He has tak­en charge of the nation­al asso­ci­a­tion obser­va­toire et riposte inter­net (‘inter­net obser­va­to­ry and riposte’) from French far-right politi­cian Jean Marie Le Pen, and cre­at­ed Nations Presse in 2008. The site gets 350, 000 hits a month and has 25 con­trib­u­tors; two of which are pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ists. ‘It is more than evi­dent that we are treat­ed bad­ly on the inter­net, and on a dai­ly basis too,‘explains Vassieux. ‘This is one of the rea­sons, essen­tial­ly, why pro­ceed­ed to cre­ate our site and this asso­ci­a­tion. We can admin­is­ter the anti­dote on a dai­ly basis too.’

Clau­dio Laz­zaro is the author of the doc­u­men­tary Nazirock. ‘The extreme right has made itself more straight­for­ward,’ he says. ‘It takes what it needs and changes it in order to com­mu­ni­cate with­out mak­ing it sub­tle.’ Laz­zaro advo­cates dia­logue with the extreme right as long as this dia­logue ‘does not seek to jus­ti­fy their fas­cist ideas.’ He also finds it alarm­ing that ‘fas­cism and neo-fas­cism are devel­op­ing in par­al­lel on two fronts, as if it’s about choos­ing ‘a pri­ori’ (with­out pri­or knowl­edge) more than ratio­nal thought and reflec­tion.’

Noua Dreap­ta (‘new right’) is spear­head­ing the Roman­ian extreme right; they’re not reg­is­tered as a par­ty but present them­selves as a ‘move­ment’, hav­ing been in exis­tence since 2000. It’s a way of declin­ing elec­toral con­fronta­tion in order to bet­ter place their sym­pa­this­ers into the train­ing which is being read­ied for them. The British nation­al par­ty (BNP) have swapped their Doc Martens for suits and ties, they dis­trib­ute guides amongst their fol­low­ers on how to speak prop­er­ly, made space for women (in the par­ty) in order tone down their image and have estab­lished the birth rate as one of their ‘call to arms’.

This new gen­er­a­tion of young edu­cat­ed lead­ers have a per­fect com­mand of 21st cen­tu­ry com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and know their pub­lic well. Rock con­certs have replaced grand­dad meets. Project School­yard is a series of com­pi­la­tions pro­duced by the neo-nazi music label Panz­er­faust Records; their elo­quent slo­gan is ‘we don’t just enter­tain racist kids, we cre­ate them’.

The EU is strug­gling to keep up with the dec­la­ra­tions of ‘good inten­tions’ and a real lack of involve­ment from the mem­ber states; the major­i­ty are ‘con­tin­u­ing to escape from con­trol of their indi­vid­ual poli­cies and prac­tis­es at EU lev­el’. The 2009 report on the sit­u­a­tion of fun­da­men­tal rights in the EU was panned. It has to be said that the extreme right’s elec­toral plat­form great­ly inter­ests the right wing of the gov­ern­ment. When the right fail to vis­i­bly woo their vot­ers, they don’t hes­i­tate in tak­ing the extreme right’s cam­paign themes. A few ‘iden­ti­ty’ rock con­certs have closed nation­al front and casa delle lib­ertà (CDl, ‘house of freee­dom’) cam­paign meet­ings. As for the left, they seem hin­dered by their own con­tra­dic­tions. From now on they cham­pi­on the upper and mid­dle class­es but haven’t been known to lis­ten to their tra­di­tion­al vot­ers when grap­pling eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ties, and the ten­sions stir­ring up amongst com­mu­ni­ties in work­ing class areas.

The epi­cen­tre of this ‘renew­al of nation­al­i­ty’ is now cen­tral and east­ern Europe. ‘Ten years ago we were ‘losers’ to be nazis, now it’s ok to be a nazi. Who knows where we’ll be in ten years time?’ con­cludes Peter, a cam­paign­er for the nation­al demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty (NPD) in Bavaria, Ger­many.

“Europe’s Far-Right Youth: ’10 Years Ago, We Were ‘Nazi Losers.’ Now It’s OK to be a Nazi.’ ” by Cleo Schwey­er; cafebabel.com; 7/15/2009.

2. NPD–Germany’s largest “neo”- Nazi par­ty has been giv­en the OK to dis­trib­ute CD’s to school chil­dren. The savvy media tech­niques for dis­sem­i­nat­ing fas­cist ide­ol­o­gy allud­ed to in the pre­ced­ing arti­cle can be seen at work here.

The neo-Nazi Nation­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty will be allowed to dis­trib­ute CDs out­side schools with inter­views and music by par­ty mem­bers because author­i­ties have no legal grounds to stop them, a report said Sat­ur­day.

The Fed­er­al Depart­ment for Media Harm­ful to Young Per­sons said the disc mere­ly con­tained polit­i­cal opin­ions, dai­ly Süd­deutsche Zeitung report­ed.

The depart­ment there­fore found no basis on which to ban the disc, the report quot­ed direc­tor Elke Mon­sen-Eng­berd­ing as say­ing.

The NPD is Ger­many’s lead­ing far-right par­ty. It pro­motes an anti-immi­grant agen­da and is con­sid­ered by the coun­try’s domes­tic intel­li­gence agency to be a threat to the con­sti­tu­tion.

On its web­site, the NPD wel­comed the deci­sion. . . .

“Neo-Nazi Par­ty Giv­en Green Light to Tar­get School Chil­dren”; thelocal.de; 2/6/2010.

3a. The patron of Pirate Bay–a pop­u­lar music down­load site–has Nazi affil­i­a­tions.

But as Andrew Brown, author of the auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Fish­ing in Utopia, points out, no Eng­lish lan­guage cov­er­age of the tri­al has men­tioned this. Thanks to Brown’s blog, we know a lit­tle more about Lund­ström.

For exam­ple, Lund­ström was linked to a gang of skin­heads that attacked Latin Amer­i­can tourists in Stock­holm in the mid-1980s. [Expo.se report (Swe) — 2005]. Over the years, Lund­ström has switched his sup­port from Keep Swe­den Swedish to the far-right head­bangers par­ty New Democ­ra­cy — but was thrown out for being too right wing. He’s cur­rent­ly bankrolling 100 can­di­dates for the Swedish equiv­a­lent of the BNP.

Lund­ström is alleged to own 40 per cent of The Pirate Bay — the largest share — and gave it servers and band­width to get going. As one of the four defen­dants, been a reg­u­lar attendee in court. But the pres­ence of this sig­nif­i­cant nation­al polit­i­cal play­er has­n’t been wor­thy of a WiReD men­tion since the tri­al kicked off. Or a men­tion any­where else. Why would that be?

For me, there are two inter­est­ing aspects to this pecu­liar, and very selec­tive silence. . . .

One is that anti-copy­right activists like to think of them­selves as thor­ough­ly decent, for­ward-think­ing pro­gres­sive peo­ple — because the inter­net is a new democ­ra­cy, they’re reflect­ing a fair­er world. They like to con­trast the hygenic effi­cien­cy of the tech­nol­o­gy with the old (and implic­it­ly cor­rupt) copy­right busi­ness­es. It’s almost a badge of moral supe­ri­or­i­ty.

But like the Futur­ists a hun­dred years ago — the orig­i­nal Free­tards — they don’t mind jump­ing into bed with neo-Nazis when it suits them. In this case, that’s so long as the free music and movies keep flow­ing. . . .

“Pirate Bay’s neo-Nazi Sug­ar Dad­dy” by Andrew Orlows­ki; The Reg­is­ter [UK]; 2/26/2009.

3b. Of inter­est, also, is the asser­tion by “Wikipedia” that Lund­strom made a for­tune sell­ing his fam­i­ly busi­ness to the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny Sandoz–one of the com­pa­nies in the I.G. Far­ben car­tel com­plex. As we have seen in Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile, the var­i­ous ten­ta­cles of the I.G. Far­ben octo­pus con­tin­ue to oper­ate on behalf of the Under­ground Reich and the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work.

NB: Although “Wikipedia” is mas­sive and can be use­ful, it must be cross-checked, as it has been demon­strat­ed to con­tain errors, some­times delib­er­ate­ly insert­ed by peo­ple inter­est­ed in obscur­ing, not reveal­ing, the truth.

. . . Carl Lund­ström is the son of Ulf Lund­ström and the grand­son of Karl Edvard Lund­ström, founder of the world’s largest crisp bread pro­duc­er Wasabröd. When his father Ulf Lund­ström died in 1973, Carl Lund­ström was one of five heirs to Wasabröd and its sub­sidiary OLW. In 1982 Wasabröd was sold to the Swiss phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny San­doz, mak­ing Lund­ström a for­tune. . . .

“Carl Lund­strom”; Wikipedia.

4. In Hun­gary, the far-right Job­bik Par­ty has estab­lished itself as a fix­ture on the Hun­gar­i­an elec­toral land­scape, reca­pit­u­lat­ing that nation’s fas­cist past under the Arrow Cross orga­ni­za­tion (allied with the Third Reich).

The ral­ly in a school hall in the nor­mal­ly sleepy town of Dunakeszi was packed with hun­dreds of sup­port­ers. They cheered as Mr Vona promised to rid Hun­gary of cor­rup­tion and crack down on for­eign inter­ests.
He spoke about stop­ping Roma, the coun­try’s biggest eth­nic minor­i­ty, from spong­ing off the state — forc­ing any­one claim­ing ben­e­fits to per­form pub­lic ser­vice in return. He promised to “give back Hun­gary’s nation­al pride and iden­ti­ty”.
The enthu­si­asm showed that Mr Vona has come a long way since Job­bik launched sev­en years ago. Its fierce nation­al­is­tic agen­da and far-right rhetoric were sound­ly reject­ed by the elec­torate then. In nation­al elec­tions in 2006 it polled a mis­er­able 2.2 per cent, fail­ing to get a sin­gle mem­ber of par­lia­ment elect­ed.
But now as Hun­gary pre­pares for cru­cial new elec­tions the tide has turned, and it is flow­ing strong­ly Job­bik’s way. To the hor­ror of democ­rats who thought Hun­gary had shak­en itself free of polit­i­cal extrem­ism in 1989 with the fall of com­mu­nism, Job­bik is on course to become the sec­ond biggest par­ty in par­lia­ment.
With one week to go before the coun­try goes to the polls for the first of two rounds of vot­ing, Job­bik has reaped the ben­e­fit of the spec­tac­u­lar demise of Hun­gary’s left-wing MSZP gov­ern­ment. Accused of ram­pant cor­rup­tion and cas­ti­gat­ed from all sides for mis­man­age­ment of the worst reces­sion since 1989, the gov­ern­ment faces a humil­i­at­ing defeat at the hands of the Right.
Most polls sug­gest that the cen­tre-right Fidesz par­ty, head­ed by for­mer prime min­is­ter Vik­tor Orban, will wipe out the MSZP, and per­haps even scoop up more than half the vote. The belea­guered social­ists are also in dire dan­ger of being pushed into third place by Job­bik. Polls pre­dict Mr Von­a’s par­ty could win as many as one vote in five.
Yet while the fail­ings of the Left have helped, Job­bik has also gained from dis­il­lu­sion­ment with the econ­o­my. Hun­gar­i­ans expect­ed more growth, and bet­ter gov­ern­ment, after the fall of com­mu­nism.
Heavy indus­try has col­lapsed, the pri­vati­sa­tion bonan­za that brought both rev­enue and for­eign investors has run its course, and the glob­al reces­sion has hit hard. Unem­ploy­ment has soared to a 16-year high of 11.2 per cent, and in late 2008 the coun­try was forced to go cap in hand to the IMF for $25 bil­lion in emer­gency fund­ing.
The old polit­i­cal class is blamed for eco­nom­ic fail­ures, and for endem­ic cor­rup­tion. Job­bik’s mes­sages of oppos­ing cor­rup­tion and stand­ing up for the lit­tle man have struck a chord.
“The oth­er par­ties serve for­eign inter­ests and fos­ter cor­rup­tion. They are anti-Hun­gar­i­an,” said Las­z­lo Soos, who runs a small home-secu­ri­ty busi­ness. Last time he vot­ed Fidesz but on April 11 he will back Job­bik. “This is the only par­ty that is pre­pared to stand up for Hun­gar­i­an inter­ests and not for for­eign ones.”
But Job­bik’s grow­ing sup­port has revived dis­turb­ing mem­o­ries of the bloody wartime past, when Hun­gar­i­an fas­cists grabbed pow­er and enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly shipped off Jews and gyp­sies — as Roma are com­mon­ly known — to Hitler’s death camps.
The new par­ty is eager to solve what it calls the “Roma prob­lem”, though it empha­sis­es that this should be through social mea­sures and it does not espouse vio­lence. Some mem­bers have made com­ments por­trayed as anti-Jew­ish, despite the par­ty lead­er­ship’s efforts to look mod­ern and Euro­pean as well as tough.
Its accept­able face is Kriszti­na Mor­vai, a blonde work­ing moth­er of three and for­mer lawyer who was last year elect­ed as an Mem­ber of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment. She has com­plained bit­ter­ly that the rest of Europe sees her as a Nazi.
That is in part because of the Hun­gar­i­an Guard who are allies of the par­ty, and also Job­bik’s red and white-striped ban­ner. This bears an unnerv­ing sim­i­lar­i­ty to the emblem of the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Par­ty, which seized pow­er for a bru­tal few months in 1944.
For those old enough to remem­ber the suf­fer­ing of the war, the rise of Job­bik feels like a fright­en­ing case of deja vu. “Though I was only six years old in 1944 when the Arrow Cross came to pow­er, I remem­ber the reign of ter­ror that fol­lowed,” said Maria Juhasz, a Budapest pen­sion­er. “I remem­ber when they took away the Jews, includ­ing our vil­lage doc­tor, and the young men they hanged at the side of the road with plac­ards round their necks say­ing ‘This is the fate of desert­ers’. The Hun­gar­i­an Guard and Job­bik, the uni­forms, the lan­guage and rhetoric all remind me of the Arrow Cross and that era.”
Accu­sa­tions of racism or anti-Semi­tism are dis­missed by Job­bik’s lead­ers, who argue that rad­i­cal poli­cies are need­ed to lift Hun­gary’s 500,000 Roma out of pover­ty.
Mr Vona, a sur­pris­ing­ly bland and mod­est-look­ing leader for such an extreme par­ty, was a found­ing mem­ber of Job­bik in 2003. His youth appeals to Hun­gar­i­an vot­ers who are sick of the old polit­i­cal class. His qui­et­ly spo­ken per­son­al­i­ty seems to reas­sure vot­ers, although in July last year he was arrest­ed at a demon­stra­tion in cen­tral Budapest. . . .

“Rise of Hun­gary’s Far-Right Job­bik par­ty Stirs Dis­turb­ing Echoes of the 1940s” by Matthew Day; Telegraph.co.uk; 4/3/2010.

5. Rel­a­tive­ly suc­cess­ful in the recent Hun­gar­i­an elec­tions, Job­bik has elicit­ed more than one com­par­i­son with the fas­cist move­ments of the 1930’s and 1940’s.

Severe eco­nom­ic down­turn and resul­tant, com­men­su­rate social dis­lo­ca­tion are dri­ving Hun­gar­i­an polit­i­cal sen­ti­ment in a dis­turbing­ly famil­iar direc­tion. The Hun­gar­i­an Job­bik Par­ty suc­cess­ful­ly reca­pit­u­lates much of the ide­ol­o­gy, sym­bol­o­gy and para-polit­i­cal street method­ol­o­gy of the Hun­gar­i­an Arrow Cross Par­ty, allies of Nazi Ger­many and mas­ters of Hun­gary for part of that con­flict. Job­bik gained sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the Hun­gar­i­an elec­tions. Arrow cross vet­er­ans played an impor­tant role in the syn­the­sis of the Nazi/fascist Repub­li­can eth­nic out­reach mech­a­nism.

Oppo­si­tion leader Vik­tor Orban, who spurred the pop­ulist pol­i­tics that have led to the rise of the far-right in Hun­gary, believes his par­ty is set to win a two-thirds major­i­ty after Sun­day’s par­lia­men­tary elec­tions. But it is the right-wing extrem­ist Job­bik par­ty that is set­ting the hate­ful tone of the cam­paign.

The state author­i­ties have their backs up against the wall in front of St. Stephen’s Basil­i­ca in Budapest. Three police offi­cers, posi­tioned in the shad­ow of an Art Nou­veau palace, watch motion­less­ly as Hun­gary’s Nation­al Front march­es before their eyes.

Mem­bers of cit­i­zens’ mili­tias and neo-Nazi groups have tak­en over patrolling the streets on this day. In com­bat boots, cam­ou­flage or black mil­i­tary uni­forms, they form human chains and divide the crowd.

Fifty thou­sand peo­ple have gath­ered in front of a speak­er’s plat­form. An east­er­ly wind rat­tles the flags — red and white striped, much like the arm­bands worn by mem­bers of Hun­gary’s fas­cist Arrow Cross Par­ty dur­ing World War II. The sound of speak­ers preach­ing nation­al­ist beliefs rever­ber­ates from the loud­speak­ers.

“Hun­gary belongs to the Hun­gar­i­ans,” the crowd hears. One speak­er claims that Israeli investors and their local agents are in the process of buy­ing up the coun­try with its 10 mil­lion inhab­i­tants. The speak­er argues that the gov­ern­ment does­n’t care where the mon­ey comes from and that they’re let­ting these peo­ple “buy Hun­gary up.” The cur­rent­ly gov­ern­ing Social­ists, anoth­er speak­er warns, will be “oblit­er­at­ed from the face of the Earth” and Roma will be encour­aged to emi­grate.

“They should leave,” the crowd chants in uni­son. “They should leave.” . . .

“Hun­gary Pre­pares for Shift in Pow­er” by Wal­ter Mayr; Spiegel Online; 4/9/2010.

6. Next, the pro­gram updates the re-open­ing of an inves­ti­ga­tion into the appar­ent mur­der of a young British man, cov­ered-up with the col­lab­o­ra­tion of the Ger­man author­i­ties. Of sig­nif­i­cance here is the fact that Jere­mi­ah Dug­gan had trav­eled to Ger­many to work with the LaRouche orga­ni­za­tion, a fas­cist net­work based in Ger­many that has made sig­nif­i­cant inroads into the so-called pro­gres­sive com­mu­ni­ty in the Unit­ed States.

 

It was the kind of phone call every moth­er dreads. At 4.24am on 27 March 2003, Eri­ca Dug­gan was wok­en by her son Jere­mi­ah, a nor­mal­ly ebul­lient 22-year-old. “Mum, I’m in trou­ble,” he said. In hushed tones, he told her he was in Ger­many and began spelling the let­ters of the place he was stay­ing, “W, i, e, s ...”. Then the line went dead.

The next call came from the police. Ger­man offi­cers had found Jer­ry’s body three hours lat­er on the side of the B455, a busy dual car­riage­way run­ning south-east out of the city of Wies­baden towards the Rhine. Wit­ness­es said a man had scram­bled into the cen­tre of the road and was hit by a brown Peu­geot 406, and then a blue Volk­swa­gen. By the time para­medics and police arrived, Jer­ry was dead of head injuries.

The sub­se­quent police inves­ti­ga­tion was per­func­to­ry, clas­si­fy­ing his death as a sui­cide. Wit­ness­es were allowed to leave the scene, cars were moved before being pho­tographed and an exter­nal post-mortem was con­duct­ed at a near­by mor­tu­ary with­out any detailed foren­sic checks.

Few par­ents would find it easy to accept that their child has com­mit­ted sui­cide but for Mrs Dug­gan, a retired teacher from north Lon­don whose Jew­ish fam­i­ly fled the Nazis in the late 1930s, the idea that her son took his life did not make sense.

“He had so many plans for the future and nev­er showed even the slight­est inkling of depres­sion,” she told The Inde­pen­dent, in her moth­er’s home in Gold­ers Green. “But it’s more than just that. The call I got from him just before he died, that was from some­one who des­per­ate­ly want­ed to live, who was try­ing to sur­vive. It was­n’t from some­one intent on killing him­self.”

Mrs Dug­gan, in deep doubt of the Ger­man police belief that her son’s death was sui­cide, hired pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tors and foren­sic experts to look at the evi­dence again, even­tu­al­ly sell­ing her house to pay the costs and mov­ing in with her age­ing moth­er. Their reports have cast seri­ous ques­tion marks over the offi­cial por­tray­al of Jer­ry as sui­ci­dal, sug­gest­ing instead a man who was either des­per­ate­ly try­ing to escape unknown assailants when he stum­bled out on the dual car­riage­way, or who had been attacked before he got there.

Yes­ter­day, armed with this new evi­dence, the Dug­gan fam­i­ly’s lawyers went to the High Court after the Attor­ney Gen­er­al, Baroness Scot­land, took the high­ly unusu­al step of grant­i­ng them per­mis­sion to seek a sec­ond inquest into Jer­ry’s death.

The first inquest, in 2004, reject­ed the Ger­man police sui­cide sug­ges­tion, and returned an open ver­dict, find­ing instead that he had died in a “state of ter­ror”. But inves­ti­ga­tors failed to look wider. Sup­port­ers hope a fresh inquest will final­ly force Ger­man police to rein­ves­ti­gate why a British Jew died in mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances after spend­ing five days with a far-right polit­i­cal cult led by a con­vict­ed fraud­ster who is known for his vir­u­lent anti-Semit­ic views.

Jer­ry had been a stu­dent at the British Insti­tute in Paris but he had trav­elled to Wies­baden to attend what he thought would be an anti-Iraq war con­fer­ence. “He was an ide­al­is­tic boy who want­ed to change the world,” his moth­er said. “He was angry about the upcom­ing war and want­ed to do some­thing about it. But he was also excit­ed because he was begin­ning to learn about pol­i­tics.”

The con­fer­ence was organ­ised by the Schiller Insti­tute, an extrem­ist polit­i­cal think-tank linked to a right-wing con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist, Lyn­don LaRouche. He is an 87-year-old con­vict­ed fraud­ster who has made eight unsuc­cess­ful attempts to run as an inde­pen­dent can­di­date in the US pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. Some of LaRouche’s more unusu­al claims include that the British monar­chy and MI6 are behind the glob­al drugs trade.

In the States, he is large­ly regard­ed as an amus­ing sideshow whose apoc­a­lyp­tic writ­ings attract vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple look­ing for answers. But under­ly­ing much of his work is a deep anti-Semi­tism that describes the world as being con­trolled by a mass Zion­ist con­spir­a­cy of bankers, lob­by­ists and politi­cians.

The Schiller Insti­tute, run by his Ger­man-born wife, spreads that mes­sage around Europe; on the night Jer­ry died, LaRouche addressed the con­fer­ence in Wies­baden. In Jer­ry’s notes on the five days he spent there, Mrs Dug­gan dis­cov­ered that her son had become aware of the anti-Semit­ic agen­da of many LaRouche fol­low­ers and had spo­ken out against them. “There were a lot of com­ments blam­ing the Jews for Iraq and he got up to say that he was Jew­ish and he did­n’t sup­port the war,” she said. “What­ev­er hap­pened it’s clear he fell out with these peo­ple very quick­ly.”

La Rouche blames the CIA, MI6 and the KGB for any polit­i­cal or media crit­i­cism aimed in his direc­tion. He described the Dug­gan case as a hoax con­trived by “admir­ers of [for­mer US Vice-Pres­i­dent] Dick Cheney and Tony Blair”. Mrs Dug­gan’s efforts to inves­ti­gate her son’s death is, he says, a “smear”.

Paul Can­ning, a for­mer Scot­land Yard foren­sic offi­cer, has stud­ied the 79 pho­tographs tak­en by Ger­man inves­ti­ga­tors of the crash site and Jer­ry’s body. Ger­man police said he was hit by the Peu­geot, then run over by the Volk­swa­gen. But Mr Can­ning could not find evi­dence of tyre marks on the body. Nor was there any blood, flesh or hair on either car.

Mr Can­ning, who has inves­ti­gat­ed hun­dreds of road fatal­i­ties, believes this is “incon­ceiv­able”, report­ing that he had nev­er come across a high-speed col­li­sion of a car and pedes­tri­an where no traces of blood are found. “I do not believe the images depict how Jer­ry came to meet his pre­ma­ture death,” he added. “It is pos­si­ble that Jer­ry lost his life else­where, pri­or to being placed at the scene.”

Ter­ence Mer­ston, anoth­er for­mer Met Police inves­ti­ga­tor who has stud­ied the pho­tographs, backs Mr Can­ning. “Based on my years of expe­ri­ence in attend­ing thou­sands of crime scenes as a foren­sic scene exam­in­er, it is my opin­ion that the evi­dence at the scene points towards Jere­mi­ah’s death being extreme­ly sus­pi­cious and not a road traf­fic acci­dent,” he said. “It is also my view that the dam­age to the Peu­geot car has been delib­er­ate­ly caused.”

But how did Jer­ry sus­tain the head injuries that killed him? A post-mortem by a British pathol­o­gist, Dr David Shove, dis­cov­ered defence wounds on Jer­ry’s arms as well as blood in his lungs and stom­ach. At the speed that wit­ness­es say he was struck, he would have been killed instant­ly, but the blood in his lungs and stom­ach (caused by breath­ing in and swal­low­ing after a major haem­or­rhage) sug­gest he was alive for some time, after intense trau­ma.

Mrs Dug­gan said: “What we real­ly need is for Ger­many to look again at my son’s death.” But the Ger­man author­i­ties are reluc­tant to act. A bid by Ger­man lawyers claim­ing police breached human rights laws by fail­ing to inves­ti­gate prop­er­ly has floun­dered for four years in the coun­try’s high­est court, the Fed­er­al Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court. Police in Wies­baden have refused to rein­ves­ti­gate, or reopen their files.

Now, a British inquest is the best oppor­tu­ni­ty the Dug­gan fam­i­ly has for find­ing out what real­ly hap­pened to Jer­ry. “It’s been a long and dif­fi­cult jour­ney but I’m begin­ning to think we may be near­ing the end,” a vis­i­bly exhaust­ed Mrs Dug­gan added. “From the moment I got that call it’s been a sev­en-year fight for jus­tice. I can’t stop now.”

“Mys­tery of the Dead Briton and the Right-Wing Cult” by Jerome Tay­lor; The Inde­pen­dent [UK]; 2/27/2010.

7. The rest of the pro­gram reca­pit­u­lat­ed sto­ries pre­sent­ed in the sec­ond half of FTR #707.

Discussion

4 comments for “FTR #709 Update on Euro Fascism”

  1. With the 2nd round of the French elec­tion approach­ing, the court­ing of Le Pen’s Nation­al Front vot­ing block has begun. Sarkozy looks like­ly to lose on the May 6 sec­ond round of vot­ing BUT he could win if he can secure 80% of the far-right vote. With two-thirds of Sarkozy’s vot­ers appear­ing to sup­port such an alliance, that’s not an incon­ceiv­able out­come. But with only 60% of Le Pen’s vot­ers indi­cat­ing that they plan on vot­ing for Sarkozy it looks like some fas­cist pan­der­ing is on the menu. Le Pen, her­self, seems open to back­ing Sarkozy but with the con­di­tion that Sarkozy pub­licly say he would sup­port a far-right can­di­date over the Social­ists in the sec­ond round of leg­isla­tive elec­tions where Sarkozy’ par­ty isn’t field­ing a can­di­date. His par­ty has ruled out a deal with the Nation­al Front for cab­i­net posi­tions, but they have yet to answer Le Pen’s ques­tion about back­ing the Nation­al Front in leg­isla­tive races. This should be a reveal­ing cou­ple of weeks com­ing up in France:

    French far right leaves door ajar for Sarkozy

    Thu Apr 26, 2012 4:43am EDT

    * Le Pen says wait­ing for Sarkozy’s answers before endors­ing

    * Sarkozy courts Nation­al Front vot­ers but refus­es for­mal pact

    * Cen­trist can­di­date crit­i­cis­es vio­lence in pol­i­tics

    * Hol­lande says Sarkozy has bro­ken the rules

    By John Irish

    PARIS, April 26 (Reuters) — Far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who stunned France by seiz­ing almost a fifth of pres­i­den­tial first round votes, said she was wait­ing for answers from Pres­i­dent Nico­las Sarkozy before telling her sup­port­ers how to vote in a runoff.

    After Le Pen took third place in Sun­day’s bal­lot with the Nation­al Fron­t’s top score in a nation­al elec­tion, cen­tre-right Sarkozy and Social­ist fron­trun­ner Fran­cois Hol­lande have court­ed her vot­ers, who may decide the May 6 sec­ond round result.

    Sarkozy’s over­tures have been more direct, say­ing that he respects Nation­al Front vot­ers and would not crit­i­cise a vote for a par­ty which has long been stig­ma­tised. Hol­lande has said he under­stood vot­ers who want­ed to express their frus­tra­tion at a stag­nant econ­o­my and unem­ploy­ment run­ning at a 12-year high.

    The pres­i­dent on Wednes­day ruled out any deal with Le Pen which would give the far-right posi­tions in the cab­i­net or help them win par­lia­men­tary seats in June’s leg­isla­tive elec­tions.

    But Sarkozy has yet to say whether he would advise sup­port­ers of his UMP par­ty to vote Social­ist rather than for the Nation­al Front in the sec­ond round of the June leg­isla­tive elec­tions to keep the far-right out of par­lia­ment.

    “In case of a runoff between the Nation­al Front and a Social­ist, will the UMP par­ty and the pres­i­dent pre­fer to have one of my deputies or a Social­ist deputy elect­ed?” Le Pen said on RTL radio.

    “I still don’t have an answer to those ques­tions, I am wait­ing. That’s a ques­tion my vot­ers want to know about,” she said. “How I express myself will depend on the response.”

    SARKOZY VOTERS WANT A PACT

    Le Pen has said she would give her view on the pres­i­den­tial sec­ond round choice at the Nation­al Fron­t’s tra­di­tion­al “Joan of Arc” May Day ral­ly, but senior aides have sug­gest­ed she was high­ly unlike­ly to endorse either can­di­date explic­it­ly.

    Le Pen, who took over the par­ty found­ed by her ex-para­troop­er father Jean-Marie in Jan­u­ary last year, has said she hopes to prof­it from an implo­sion of the main­stream right.

    The prospect of Hol­lande win­ning pow­er has sent jit­ters through finan­cial mar­kets as the 57-year-old has pledged to rene­go­ti­ate a Ger­man-inspired bud­get dis­ci­pline pact for Europe, putting him on a col­li­sion course with Berlin.

    An opin­ion poll showed two-thirds of Sarkozy sup­port­ers want him to break with past pol­i­cy and strike an alliance with the Nation­al Front after Le Pen’s 17.9 per­cent score on Sun­day made her 6.4 mil­lion back­ers key to the pres­i­den­tial runoff.

    Most polls show Hol­lande com­fort­ably win­ning on May 6 by around 10 per­cent­age points. He is expect­ed to win the vast major­i­ty of far-left votes and much of the cen­trist sup­port.

    Sarkozy needs about 80 per­cent of Le Pen vot­ers behind him to avoid defeat, accord­ing to ana­lyst esti­mates and a Reuters cal­cu­la­tor. But sur­veys con­duct­ed dur­ing or after Sun­day’s first-round pres­i­den­tial vote found that between only 44 per­cent and 60 per­cent of Le Pen vot­ers plan to switch to Sarkozy in round two, down from about 70 per­cent in 2007.

    ...

    Sev­er­al of Sarkozy’s top cab­i­net mem­bers and advis­ers have ruled out any alliance with the Nation­al Front, although they do not rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the UMP let­ting the par­ty fight sole­ly against the Social­ist par­ty in cer­tain con­stituen­cies.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | April 26, 2012, 7:33 pm
  2. http://www.newstatesman.com/austerity-and-its-discontents/2013/04/hungary-no-longer-democracy

    Hun­gary is no longer a democ­ra­cy

    Europe has been slow to act, but it is not too late.
    By Ben­jamin Abtan Pub­lished 02 April 2013

    It is now a fact: Hun­gary is no longer a democ­ra­cy.

    Pres­i­dent János Áder has just signed the imple­men­ta­tion decrees for new con­sti­tu­tion­al reforms that wipe out what was left of oppo­si­tion forces against the gov­ern­ment.

    More par­tic­u­lar­ly, the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court is no longer allowed to give its opin­ion about the con­tent of laws and to refer to its own case-law – which results in the loss of almost all mon­i­tor­ing pow­er on the leg­is­la­ture and the exec­u­tive.

    This metic­u­lous destruc­tion of democ­ra­cy and its val­ues – whose start­ing point was the land­slide elec­tion of Fidesz in 2010 – has tak­en place over months and months, under every­body’s eyes.

    The attack was clear and con­tin­u­ous: crip­pling restric­tion of the free­dom of the press, polit­i­cal direc­tion of the Cen­tral Bank, inclu­sion in the Con­sti­tu­tion of Chris­t­ian reli­gious ref­er­ences and of the “social util­i­ty” of indi­vid­u­als as a nec­es­sary con­di­tion for the enforce­ment of social rights, dele­tion of the word “Repub­lic” in the same Con­sti­tu­tion to define the coun­try’s polit­i­cal sys­tem, con­dem­na­tion of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of the home­less, attacks against wom­en’s rights, impuni­ty afford­ed to per­pe­tra­tors of racist mur­ders, the strength­en­ing of a vir­u­lent anti-Semi­tism . . .

    Only a few days ago, prime min­is­ter Vik­tor Orban offi­cial­ly dec­o­rat­ed three extreme right-wing lead­ing fig­ures: jour­nal­ist Fer­enc Szanis­z­lo, known for his dia­tribes against the Jews and the Roma peo­ple, who he com­pares to “mon­keys”; anti-Semit­ic archae­ol­o­gist Kor­nel Bakav, who blames the Jews for hav­ing orga­nized the slave trade in the Mid­dle-Age; final­ly, “artist” Petras Janos, who proud­ly claims his prox­im­i­ty to the Job­bik and its para­mil­i­tary mili­tia, respon­si­ble for sev­er­al racist mur­ders of Romani peo­ple and heiress of the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Par­ty, that organ­ised the exter­mi­na­tion of Jews and Gyp­sies dur­ing the Sec­ond World War.

    This polit­i­cal degra­da­tion gives us a grue­some his­tor­i­cal and polit­i­cal les­son. Through­out the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­ra­cy suf­fered the attacks of the two major total­i­tar­i­an sys­tems of the cen­tu­ry – Nazism and Com­mu­nism. Nowa­days, in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, it is under the blows of an anti-Euro­pean, nation­al­ist, racist and anti-Semit­ic pop­ulism that democ­ra­cy has fall­en, at the heart of Europe, amidst the indif­fer­ence of the Euro­pean Union and of too many of its cit­i­zens and lead­ers.

    Obsessed by eco­nom­ic and finan­cial issues, too indif­fer­ent to its fun­da­men­tal val­ues ​​of free­dom, equal­i­ty, peace and jus­tice, the EU has aban­doned the fight to pro­mote or even main­tain democ­ra­cy as the polit­i­cal sys­tem of its mem­ber states.

    Unlike Putin’s Rus­sia, for exam­ple, Hun­gary is not a world pow­er, and realpoli­tik can­not be invoked as a rea­son for this deser­tion. Since Hun­gary is strong­ly depen­dent on Euro­pean sub­si­dies and assis­tance, and since the EU has omi­nous­ly shown in Greece how its finan­cial sup­port can be politi­cised to the extreme, its sup­posed lack of room for manoeu­vre can­not be invoked either.

    The fun­da­men­tal rea­son is unfor­tu­nate­ly as sim­ple as it is wor­ry­ing: it is a lack of com­mit­ment of the cit­i­zens and Euro­pean lead­ers towards rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­ra­cy as a polit­i­cal sys­tem.

    This is why, since his re-elec­tion in 2010, Orban has received the unfail­ing sup­port of many Euro­pean lead­ers, notably from his own polit­i­cal fam­i­ly; this is also why the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion does not use any of the instru­ments avail­able – though it does have many – to enforce the EU’s fun­da­men­tal val­ues.

    For exam­ple, the Com­mis­sion, the Par­lia­ment and the Euro­pean Coun­cil, where the states are rep­re­sent­ed, can act in con­cert to pur­sue actions under Arti­cle 7 of the EU Treaty, intro­duced by the Ams­ter­dam Treaty in 1997 in order to avoid any back­ward step on democ­ra­cy for any EU mem­ber state. Arti­cle 7 intends to sus­pend the vot­ing rights of a coun­try with­in the Coun­cil in case of a “poten­tial vio­la­tion of com­mon values​”.

    In Hun­gary, how­ev­er, the stage of risk was over­stepped a long time ago. Actions under Arti­cle 7 should there­fore be urgent­ly tak­en, as a first step towards a strong EU com­mit­ment to defend democ­ra­cy and its val­ues.

    Sim­i­lar­ly, Euro­pean civ­il soci­ety must con­tin­ue to com­mit itself strong­ly to sup­port Hun­gar­i­an democ­rats who brave­ly fight with­in the coun­try itself.

    If the EU and civ­il soci­ety were not to com­mit them­selves with the deter­mi­na­tion required by the grav­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion, we would be doomed to wit­ness its rapid decay, in Hun­gary and soon else­where, if the Euro­pean com­mit­ment turned out to be insuf­fi­cient.

    Let there be no mis­take: what is at stake here is the nature of the Euro­pean project and the abil­i­ty of Europe to pre­serve our com­mon and most pre­cious com­mod­i­ty: democ­ra­cy. For sev­er­al decades, the choice between bar­barism and democ­ra­cy has nev­er been so obvi­ous.

    Res­olute­ly, we have to choose Europe and democ­ra­cy.

    »»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21740743

    11 March 2013

    Hun­gary defies crit­ics over change to con­sti­tu­tion

    Hun­gary’s par­lia­ment has adopt­ed a pack­age of con­sti­tu­tion­al changes pro­posed by the rul­ing Fidesz par­ty which crit­ics say under­mine democ­ra­cy.

    The con­ser­v­a­tive par­ty has two-thirds of the seats in par­lia­ment, but the mea­sures were approved over­whelm­ing­ly as oppo­si­tion MPs boy­cotted the vote.

    The amend­ment tight­ens up the laws on high­er edu­ca­tion, home­less­ness, elec­tion cam­paigns and fam­i­ly rights.

    The EU expressed con­cern about the bill, which defies some court rul­ings.

    “These amend­ments raise con­cerns with respect to the prin­ci­ple of the rule of law, EU law and Coun­cil of Europe stan­dards,” a state­ment by Euro­pean Com­mis­sion Pres­i­dent Jose Manuel Bar­roso and Coun­cil of Europe Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Thor­b­jorn Jagland said.

    Pro­test­ers gath­ered out­side the build­ing and were plan­ning a march to the pres­i­den­t’s palace.

    Before the vote, Hun­gar­i­an Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orban accused the EU of inter­fer­ing in Budapest’s domes­tic affairs.

    The lengthy amend­ment over­turns ear­li­er con­sti­tu­tion­al court rul­ings and lim­its the court’s right to chal­lenge laws passed by par­lia­ment in future. It also includes:

    Restric­tions on polit­i­cal adver­tise­ments in the pub­licly run media dur­ing elec­tion cam­paigns
    A rule that uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents can only get state grants if they pledge to work in Hun­gary after grad­u­a­tion
    Fines or prison terms for home­less peo­ple who sleep on the streets.

    It is the fourth amend­ment to Hun­gary’s new basic law since it came into force just 14 months ago — a fact which helps under­pin crit­i­cism that the new con­sti­tu­tion was both hur­ried and flawed, the BBC’s Nick Thor­pe in Budapest reports.

    Crit­ics at home and abroad say the amend­ment dis­man­tles the archi­tec­ture of democ­ra­cy estab­lished since the fall of com­mu­nism, and allows Fidesz to cement its own ide­ol­o­gy at the heart of the state.
    ‘Scan­dalous’ rul­ing

    The mea­sure was passed by 265 votes to 11, with 33 absten­tions.

    Fidesz and its allies the Chris­t­ian Democ­rats vot­ed for, along with three inde­pen­dents.

    The oppo­si­tion Social­ists boy­cotted the vote, walk­ing out of par­lia­ment and hang­ing black flags from their win­dows to sym­bol­ise a black day for Hun­gar­i­an democ­ra­cy.

    Leader Atti­la Mester­hazy said Mr Orban’s aim was to “take revenge on the con­sti­tu­tion­al court, stu­dents, oppo­si­tion par­ties, and all those who do not do as the gov­ern­ment wish­es”.

    Posted by R. Wilson | April 2, 2013, 7:25 pm
  3. http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=334699

    Roman­ian state TV airs Christ­mas car­ol about burn­ing Jews, cel­e­brat­ing Holo­caust
    By JTA
    11/12/2013
    Song includes lyric: “This is what the kike is good for, to make kike smoke through the chim­ney on the street.”

    A Roman­ian pub­lic broad­cast­er dis­tanced itself from a Christ­mas car­ol cel­e­brat­ing the Holo­caust that aired on the new chan­nel.

    TVR3 Verde, a tele­vi­sion chan­nel for rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, pre­sent­ed the car­ol on Decem­ber 5 dur­ing its maid­en trans­mis­sion.

    Sung by the Dor Tran­sil­van ensem­ble, it fea­tured the lyrics: “The kikes, damn kikes, Holy God would not leave the kike alive, nei­ther in heav­en nor on earth, only in the chim­ney as smoke, this is what the kike is good for, to make kike smoke through the chim­ney on the street.”

    In a state­ment Tues­day, TVR3 said it did not select the car­ol but only broad­cast songs that were cho­sen and com­piled by the Cen­ter for Preser­va­tion and Pro­mo­tion of Tra­di­tion­al Cul­ture, which belongs to the east­ern coun­ty of Cluj.

    TVR con­sid­ers the selec­tion “an unin­spired choice and there­fore noti­fied the Cluj Coun­ty Coun­cil of this,” the broadcaster’s state­ment read.

    MCA Roma­nia, a local watch­dog on anti-Semi­tism, has writ­ten to Roman­ian Pres­i­dent Tra­ian Base­cu and to Prime Min­is­ter Vic­tor Viorel Pon­ta, to com­plain about the broad­cast.

    “We are shocked to see that the Roman­ian Pub­lic Tele­vi­sion Chan­nel 3 broad­cast an anti-Semit­ic Christ­mas car­ol,” Max­imil­lian Mar­co Katz and Mar­ius Draghi­ci of MCA Roma­nia wrote in the let­ter. “It is out­ra­geous that none in the audi­ence took a stance against the anti-Semit­ic Chris­t­ian car­ol that incites to burn the Jews.”

    They added it was “absolute­ly unac­cept­able that TVR 3 tried to deny respon­si­bil­i­ty” by claim­ing it was the respon­si­bil­i­ty of Cluj Coun­ty.

    Posted by Vanfield | December 11, 2013, 4:12 pm
  4. Here’s a use­ful tip for any Euro­pean and Amer­i­can White Suprema­cists look­ing to engage in some cross-con­ti­nen­tal net­work­ing: Budapest will let you hold your pan-con­ti­nen­tal White Suprema­cists con­fer­ence although some of you might be arrest­ed:

    Slate
    White Flight

    America’s white suprema­cists are ignored at home. So they are look­ing to start over with a lit­tle help from Europe’s far right.
    By Mar­tin Gelin
    Nov. 13 2014 11:54 AM

    BUDAPEST, Hungary—In the Unit­ed States, nobody lis­tens to Jared Tay­lor. Despite his Ivy League edu­ca­tion and polite man­ners, few peo­ple work­ing in pol­i­tics take him seri­ous­ly. That’s because he is a white suprema­cist, although he would pre­fer to be called a “racial real­ist.” When he tries to orga­nize a meet­ing for his pub­li­ca­tion, Amer­i­can Renais­sance, it is typ­i­cal­ly banned from hotels and con­fer­ence rooms as soon as the pro­pri­etors find out about its racist mis­sion. His ideas obvi­ous­ly hold lit­tle sway with estab­lished polit­i­cal par­ties or insti­tu­tions. Which explains why Tay­lor trav­eled to Hun­gary last month to orga­nize an inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence of white suprema­cists and anti-immi­grant nation­al­ists from more than 10 coun­tries with the express pur­pose of mak­ing com­mon cause with Europe’s own bur­geon­ing far-right polit­i­cal move­ments. The con­fer­ence was bland­ly dubbed “The Future of Europe.”
    ...

    Note that the state­ment that Jared Tay­lor’s ideas “obvi­ous­ly hold lit­tle sway with estab­lished polit­i­cal par­ties or insti­tu­tions” is real­ly only accu­rate if you assume the GOP isn’t an estab­lished polit­i­cal par­ty.

    Con­tin­u­ing...

    ...
    Tay­lor and his fel­low orga­niz­ers, the Mon­tana-based white nation­al­ist think tank Nation­al Pol­i­cy Insti­tute, chose Hun­gary because of the rise of far-right nation­al­ists in that coun­try; they thought it might offer a hos­pitable envi­ron­ment for their assem­bly. In fact, it was the oppo­site. The Hun­gar­i­an Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orbán—a mem­ber of the lead­ing con­ser­v­a­tive par­ty who has been crit­i­cized for his increas­ing­ly author­i­tar­i­an pol­i­tics—banned the con­fer­ence. While Orbán has sup­port from Hungary’s far-right par­ties, he like­ly saw this move as an easy way to help posi­tion him­self as a mod­er­ate con­ser­v­a­tive in the runup to local elec­tions last month. Orbán even ordered police to arrest any­one try­ing to orga­nize the event. William Reg­n­ery, the founder of the Nation­al Pol­i­cy Insti­tute (and heir to the con­ser­v­a­tive pub­lish­ing pow­er­house Reg­n­ery, home to best-sell­ers from Ann Coul­ter, Dinesh D’Souza, and Edward Klein, among oth­ers) was imme­di­ate­ly sent back to the Unit­ed States when he arrived at Budapest’s air­port. Richard Spencer, the direc­tor of NPI, was arrest­ed in a Budapest pub when he tried to orga­nize a casu­al gath­er­ing of the conference’s atten­dees. The con­fer­ence-goers already had been evict­ed from the hotel where their meet­ing was sched­uled to take place.

    Spencer spent the next three days in a Budapest jail, which he didn’t seem to mind. He kept email­ing fel­low atten­dees and jour­nal­ists from his prison cell. When I met Tay­lor in Budapest, he com­pared Spencer’s Budapest emails to Mar­tin Luther King’s “Let­ter From a Birm­ing­ham jail.”

    Most of the media cov­er­age of the con­fer­ence cen­tered on Spencer’s arrest. But, even if it was foiled and ill con­ceived, the entire episode rep­re­sent­ed some­thing else: It was the first attempt by NPI and Amer­i­can Renais­sance to estab­lish a pres­ence in Europe, in an effort to estab­lish a kind of Euro-Amer­i­can part­ner­ship for white nation­al­ism, or “Euro­cen­trism.”

    Tay­lor, Spencer, and the oth­er Amer­i­cans vis­it­ing Budapest see their cause as an uphill bat­tle. The race-indus­tri­al com­plex in Amer­i­ca just isn’t what it used to be. By cross­ing the Atlantic and try­ing to orga­nize Europe’s dis­parate far-right groups into a uni­fied move­ment, they are try­ing to breathe new life into their own cause. It is an ambi­tious under­tak­ing com­ing from two tiny, fringe orga­ni­za­tions. The Nation­al Pol­i­cy Insti­tute is based in White­fish, Mon­tana, and has four employ­ees. Taylor’s Amer­i­can Renais­sance, based in the D.C. sub­urb of Oak­ton, Vir­ginia, is real­ly just a one-man show.

    With Spencer in jail, Tay­lor became the host of the con­fer­ence. Despite the fact that the gov­ern­ment had for­bid­den the gath­er­ing and informed all atten­dees that they might be arrest­ed if they went ahead with their plans, 70 of the 135 reg­is­tered atten­dees showed up in Budapest, includ­ing a Mex­i­can man who claimed to have trav­eled “10,000 miles.” Oth­ers trav­eled from Britain, Nor­way, Ger­many, Aus­tria, Swe­den, Spain, Hun­gary, and Japan, as well as a dozen from the Unit­ed States. What did they all have in com­mon? “The con­vic­tion that Europe is in a life-or-death strug­gle. Europe can’t remain Europe with­out Euro­peans. When we are being replaced by non-Euro­peans, it threat­ens our core way of life,” Tay­lor said.

    We were stand­ing in a hotel lob­by close to the Buda part of the city, on the west­ern side of the Danube Riv­er. Tay­lor was look­ing around the lob­by anx­ious­ly, aware that he might be arrest­ed at any moment. Every man walk­ing by could, in his mind, be a plain­clothes Hun­gar­i­an police offi­cer. But over­all Tay­lor was upbeat. He was hap­py to be in Europe, where he said things are going in the right direc­tion, refer­ring to the recent vot­er back­lash against immi­grants and mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism. “Euro­peans, like Amer­i­cans, see their world chang­ing. They nev­er asked for this change. Their neigh­bor­hoods are becom­ing dif­fer­ent, and they don’t rec­og­nize it any­more. So they are react­ing against this,” Tay­lor said.

    In the May elec­tions for the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment, Europe’s far-right par­ties made extra­or­di­nary gains. France’s Nation­al Front and Britain’s U.K. Inde­pen­dence Par­ty won 24 seats each in the EU Par­lia­ment. UKIP’s win marked the first time in a cen­tu­ry that the Labour or Con­ser­v­a­tive par­ty didn’t become the biggest par­ty in a nation­al elec­tion. In Hun­gary, the extreme-right par­ty Jobbik—best known for its calls for Hungary’s gov­ern­ment to reg­is­ter and mon­i­tor all Jew­ish residents—won a third of the country’s youth vote, and near­ly 15 per­cent of the total vote. Over­all, the elec­tions showed an incred­i­ble rise in sup­port for par­ties defined by their tough stance on immi­gra­tion and a gen­er­al “Euroskepticism”—a scorn­ful pes­simism for the entire EU project.
    Nev­er­the­less, nation­al­ist groups don’t rep­re­sent a plu­ral­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion in any Euro­pean coun­try. Rather, they are an out­spo­ken white minor­i­ty who are anx­ious about their increas­ing mar­gin­al­iza­tion, which gives them a rea­son to orga­nize. Their alien­ation from main­stream soci­ety also makes them feel more close­ly allied to each oth­er. As xeno­pho­bic ideas are increas­ing­ly frowned upon, Europe’s far right feels as though they are the ones being dis­crim­i­nat­ed against. They see them­selves as rebels fight­ing a cor­rupt sys­tem that has turned against them. Spencer’s arrest, of course, only con­firmed this belief. On the web­sites and Inter­net chat rooms of Europe’s nation­al­ist groups, Spencer instant­ly became a mar­tyr and a hero. His arrest may have inad­ver­tent­ly done more to help the Amer­i­can white suprema­cists con­nect with Europe’s far-right groups than any­thing else.

    Far-right par­ties like Job­bik in Hun­gary, the Nation­al Front in France, and the neo-Nazi Gold­en Dawn in Greece can no longer be brushed off as irrel­e­vant. They have become a gen­uine polit­i­cal force in Europe, with vot­ing pow­er in a string of gov­ern­ments. And now the Amer­i­can nation­al­ists want to know how they can join the par­ty. “It’s very dif­fi­cult to run as a can­di­date, and not be either a Repub­li­can or a Demo­c­rat. So in that respect, I think, democ­ra­cy is far more restrict­ed in the U.S. than in many Euro­pean coun­tries. I’m con­vinced that if peo­ple who hold my views were part of a pro­por­tion­al­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive sys­tem, that we would have 15 per­cent, 20 per­cent, maybe 30 per­cent of the vote,” says Tay­lor.

    So how does Tay­lor plan to change this? “That’s a good ques­tion. I think it might be pos­si­ble to run as a Repub­li­can under cer­tain cir­cum­stances, but we are real­ly very far behind our Euro­pean com­rades on this. They’ve been much more suc­cess­ful at express­ing them­selves polit­i­cal­ly.” Tay­lor point­ed to sev­er­al con­gres­sion­al Republicans—Reps. Joe Wil­son, Steve King, Louie Gohmert, and Dana Rohrabach­er, among them—whose anti-immi­grant rhetoric has at times mir­rored that of far-right par­ties in Europe.

    ...

    “That’s a good ques­tion. I think it might be pos­si­ble to run as a Repub­li­can under cer­tain cir­cum­stances, but we are real­ly very far behind our Euro­pean com­rades on this. They’ve been much more suc­cess­ful at express­ing them­selves polit­i­cal­ly.” Baby steps, Jared, baby steps.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 13, 2014, 11:29 pm

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