A speaker at a far-right “freedom picnic” in the Bury area of Greater Manchester on September 15 had previously said that Poles were “being outmanoeuvred by Judeans who are trying to force our government to pay extortion money disguised as compensation”.

Stanisław Michalkiewicz, hosts a radio show on the Polish-Catholic owned Radio Maryja, which, according to the Anti Defamation League, has spread antisemitic messaging to its listeners for at least 25 years.

Aleksander Gancarz, the president of the Australian Institute of Polish Affairs, condemned Michalkiewicz’s presence in the country last February.

Michalkiewicz is facing legal issues in Poland after suggesting that a 13-year-old sexual abuse survivor was, in fact, a “whore” after the Catholic Church agreed to award her 1 million zloty in compensation.

He also referred to gay people as “sodomites” during a Polish-language radio interview last month where the discussion included a reference to an apparent “LGBT ideology”.

The event, hosted by a new far-right coalition called Konfederacja, was first exposed by Faith Matters in July, following their success among some Polish diaspora communities during the European Elections.

Another speak at Sunday’s event is Sławomir Mentzen, who is credited with inventing Konfederacja’s caustic slogan, “We don’t want Jews, gays, abortion, taxes and the EU”.

Sebastian Ross, another speaker, wrote on his Facebook page in April that some Jewish people were using “guilt” to weaponise antisemitism to generate funds for individuals and organisations to monitor it. Ross attached a cropped photo of a Jewish man with their finger in their nose to emphasise his point.

This image, however, continues to appear in neo-Nazis and white nationalist memes. ImgFlip, a popular website for creating memes, has become awash with antisemitic and Nazi imagery when using the simple search term “Jew”. The top image choice for memes includes the infamous “antisemitic meme of the Jew” which appeared on White Aryan Resistance hate site in 2004.

Janusz Korwin-Mikke, the disgraced former MEP, is another confirmed speaker.

Faith Matters continues to raise concerns about Korwin-Mikke and his repellent views.

Faith Matters will be forwarding its investigation to the relevant authorities in the Greater Manchester area.

We are proud to launch the following report, which highlights the trajectory of the Democratic Football Lads alliance, offshoot groups and the ongoing engagement with anti-Muslim and radical far right movements in the United Kingdom.

The report has been authored for Faith Matters by two leading lights in this area of work, Dr Matthew Feldman and Dr William Allchorn.

This report appears a decade after the emergence of the English Defence League (EDL), a street movement that has changed the face of radical right politics in Britain.

DOWNLOAD THE REPORT

Key points from this report include:

  *   A number of key supporters of the D/FLA, such as ‘Tommy Robinson’, rose to national prominence through these new street movements, which include not only the ‘defence leagues’ but the ‘Infidels’, Pegida UK and now the D/FLA.

  *   The D/FLA is on the way to becoming a fully-fledged radical right movement through its overwhelming focus Islam and consistent engagement with anti-Muslim prejudice. Yet the other issues in which it is engaged (such as combating homelessness) have staved off the ‘Far Right’ label to date, but 2019 will be a pivotal year for the group.

  *   The immediate stimulus for the formation of the Football Lads Alliance clearly emerged in reaction to several UK-based ISIS-inspired terror attacks that occurred from March to June 2017.

  *   Organisationally separate from the established UK Radical Right, the D/FLA can be more fruitfully aligned with the nationalistic and anti-establishment concerns of working-class football casuals in the UK.

  *   Since the FLA-DFLA splinter in April 2018, however, the rhetoric and group of actors within this new protest movement have seen the group move onto anti-Islam and anti-Muslim issues more customarily associated with the UK Far Right.

  *   At the start of 2019, the direction of the DFLA looked unclear – it is however certain that the DFLA may yet prove to be another incubator group for the Far Right, like the defence leagues and other anti-Muslim groups before it.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives faced accusations on Thursday of ignoring the rise of far-right groups in the eastern German state of Saxony after an incident there involving an off-duty police employee at an anti-Islam rally.

Saxony’s interior ministry confirmed late on Wednesday that the police employee had attended a march by anti-Islam group PEGIDA last Saturday and had reported TV journalists covering the rally to police who detained them for 45 minutes.

Video footage showed a well-built man in sunglasses and a hat in the colours of the German flag confronting the crew, waving his hands at the camera, telling them not to film and reporting them to the police.

State premier Michael Kretschmer, a senior member of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), then appeared to defend the police action, tweeting: “The only people who come across seriously in this video are policemen.”

At a time when Germany is struggling to integrate more than a million migrants, the incident has raised concern both about entrenched right-wing sympathies among the police, especially in the former Communist East, and about press freedom.

A deputy leader of the Social Democrats (SPD), who share power with the CDU in the federal German government, accused Merkel’s party of complacency about the growth of the far-right.

“The CDU in Saxony has for decades denied or trivialised right-wing radical movements and violence,” Ralf Stegner told Handelsblatt daily.

It has “allowed right-wing thinking in Saxony not only to go unchallenged but also to be acceptable”, he said.

PRESS FREEDOM

German Justice Minister Katarina Barley, also from the SPD, said the events were “very worrying” and had to be quickly and comprehensively cleared up.

“Press freedom is an important part of our society and our constitution,” she said.

Kretschmer has since said he is a convinced defender of a free press and Die Welt newspaper quoted him on Thursday as saying: “I am intent on assessing the situation calmly and in a factual manner.”

Merkel’s decision in 2015 to let in about a million migrants, many fleeing wars in the Middle East, has fuelled support for far-right groups such as PEGIDA and the Alternative for Germany (AfD), now the main opposition party in parliament.

Saxony, the cradle of the PEGIDA movement, is a stronghold for far-right sentiment. In last year’s federal election, the AfD was the strongest party in the state, pushing Merkel’s CDU into an embarrassing second place.

Kretschmer, who has criticised Merkel’s migration policy, faces a tough challenge in next year’s state election to hold Saxony for the CDU.

Neo-Nazis have a strong tradition in Saxony, especially in the capital, Dresden, where they gather every year on Feb. 13 to mark the Allied firebombing of the city in World War Two which killed 25,000 people and destroyed its baroque architecture.

Asked by broadcaster NDR about the off-duty police employee taking part in a PEGIDA rally, a Saxony police spokesman did not deny there might be supporters of the group in police ranks.

“The police is a cross-section of society. We have all political views,” he said.

A senior German government official accused the opposition far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party of helping make anti-Semitism “presentable” again in Germany by challenging a longtime consensus about how to deal with its Nazi past.

Felix Klein, who holds a newly created government post tasked with fighting anti-Semitism, said in remarks to online news site watson.de on Thursday that the AfD tolerated party members calling for a new “culture of remembrance”.

“I don’t want to say the AfD is anti-Semitic, per se, but it tolerates representatives who are demanding a new policy of remembrance,” he said. “They initiated this discussion about drawing a line (under the Holocaust) and that is very dangerous because it helps make anti-Semitism presentable again.”

The AfD had no immediate comment on Klein’s comments. The party has denied being anti-Semitic or racist but has drawn sharp criticism for not sanctioning a key party figure after he called for a “180 degree turnaround” in the way Germany seeks to atone for Nazi crimes.

The AfD swept into the lower house of parliament for the first time after September elections, tapping into widespread frustration about Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2015 decision to open the borders to over 1 million mostly Muslim migrants.

Klein’s post was created by Merkel’s conservatives and the centre-left Social Democrats as part of their coalition pact amid reports from Germany’s small Jewish community about what they see as rising levels of prejudice and hatred.

Anti-Semitism is a highly sensitive issue in Germany, whose 1933-45 Nazi regime murdered 6 million Jews in the Holocaust.

Klein said last month anti-Semitism was still rooted largely in extreme right-wing ideology and was not only being driven by Germany’s growing Muslim population.

German schools have long taught about the Holocaust, but rights groups say the rise of the AfD and other far-right parties has frayed taboos against anti-Semitic utterances and other hate speech.

Klein has also called for a national database to record anti-Semitic incidents, including by Muslims, that are not included in crime statistics.

He told watson.de that he would raise the issue with the German Conference on Islam, and encourage Muslim groups across Germany to take on the fight against anti-Semitism.

“This would not only send an important signal, but would allow Muslim groups to ask for solidarity when a mosque or a woman wearing a head covering are attacked,” he said.

]]> 7317 https://www.faith-matters.org/french-muslims-want-to-be-like-anyone-else-just-not-victims/ Sat, 07 Apr 2018 21:57:15 +0000 https://www.faith-matters.org/?p=7227

We have spent a week in France meeting with key organisations and with people who understand how poisonous the tentacles of Islamist extremism have been and how they have also given rise to greater feelings of anti-Muslim hatred, which have been fuelled by a number of factors. We have spoken to Muslims who see the victim narrative pumped into French Muslims who have suffered anti-Muslim hate incidents and to those who have had their fears expanded because of the perpetual victim narrative that Islamist groups in the country have been promoting. 

What is happening in France is troubling. It is troubling since the State is grappling with extremism, disaffection within parts of its population, anti-migrant attitudes and a hardening of political stances to groups who talk about discrimination. Yet, there is another issue that is layered on top of this and it includes Islamist groups who talk about Islamophobia as if there is a perpetual battle between Muslims and the State. They take a ‘them and us’ approach which is constantly filtered into discussions and talks at a local level and the impression that Muslims come away with after listening to such groups is that they are being targeted for persecution by the State. This thinking and the re-enforcement of the belief that Muslims are being persecuted by the State, does the following. It re-enforces just the Muslim identity within those who accept this toxic message and it further alienates and marginalises them mentally to their surroundings and to those who are non-Muslim.

This is not to take away from the state of emergency laws that were enacted in France after the massive terrorist attacks in Paris and which went on for two years, finally to be lifted in late 2017. There were real issues of infringements on civil liberties and life for some French Muslims is further complicated by abuse and racism. However, instead of raising the morale of French Muslims with hope, French Muslims are fed a diet of ‘raging Islamophobia’, a French State that does not care for them and a sense of being embattled that all plays into the hands of radicalisers. What women can and can’t wear is naturally a campaigning point for these groups, as is Islamophobia, something that we would term, anti-Muslim hate. Yet, the very defence of freedoms that these groups cite, they will not be willing to defend if, for example, a gay Muslim wanted to join them and speak about Islam openly. Or, if an Ahmadi Muslim wanted their open support, or if an ex-Muslim called for solidarity with them. Then these freedoms become a ‘pick and mix’ approach, something that shows how such groups discard democracy as soon as it does not suit them. 

France is in a complex and difficult place, though President Macron has made some really bold moves. The first of these is to reach out into the banlieues of France to try and reverse some of the deep unemployment and disaffection that is felt in these areas. He also has spoken of tackling the ‘slow burn of Islamist extremism’

France’s democratic values should not be at odds with Muslims. But with Islamists in the ascendance in Muslim communities in France, there is a risk that the very values that France defends, may become the ones that are attacked in the future.

A few days ago we highlighted the background to the Ogniwo group which has been active in the United Kingdom. The actions of some members of the group have been chilling and the far right symbolism so on show demonstrated how the group simply flouted their views quite openly.

It now seems that Tomasz Panfil, the historian at the Lublin Institute of National Remembrance has broken any ties and links with Ogniwo. ‘Gazeta Wyborcza’, the largest and longest-running Polish newspaper, (with its roots in the ‘Solidarity’ movement), printed the following.

Panfil’s break-up is a result as such individuals are usually used to legitimise such groups in the eyes of the public.

Faith Matters will continue to report on groups like Ogniwo in the future. The values that we hold so dear in our country, of being able to be who you want to be without fear or favour, are values that need to be defended against groups like Ogniwo.

A judge placed France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen under formal investigation on Thursday on suspicion of disseminating violent images over tweets she posted of Islamic State executions, a move she indicated was politically motivated.

The investigation relates to three graphic images of Islamic State executions she posted on Twitter in December 2015, including the beheading of American journalist James Foley.

“If they are trying to silence me, they will not succeed,” Le Pen told news channel LCI. She had denounced an earlier stage of the investigation as “political interference”.

Under France’s legal system, being formally placed under investigation often – but not always – leads to a person being sent to trial.

The judge’s decision to step up the investigation comes a little over a week ahead of the National Front’s annual congress, where she is expected to lay out how she plans to rebuild the battered party after her thumping defeat at the hands of President Emmanuel Macron in last year’s election.

It is, though, unlikely to affect her popularity with party loyalists.

Other ongoing investigations, including one into allegations her party misused European Union funds to pay parliamentary assistants and another into the financing of past election campaigns, have not dented her appeal among the National Front faithful. She has denied any wrongdoing in both cases.

Party stalwarts rallied around Le Pen on social media.

“@MLP_officiel placed under formal investigation for spreading photos of Islamic State executions. No, it’s no good telling the truth,” tweeted Bryan Masson, a National Front official from the southern Alpes-Maritimes region.

If the investigation proceeds to a trial, Le Pen could face a maximum sentence of several years in jail and a 75,000 euro fine if convicted.

Ogniwo – ‘the Link’, is an organisation that describes itself as a ‘Patriotic Association’ and is active mainly in London but also has chapters in Cambridgeshire and the South of England. Some of their members and sympathisers are known to come from football hooligan circles and can be seen on social media photographs making fascist salutes and with far-right symbolism.

One of the real concerns that we have raised previously within Faith Matters has been that language barrier has created difficulties for UK based statutory agencies in understanding the risks and threats that there are to settled communities of Polish heritage in the United Kingdom and more so, to communities who arrived in the UK after the Accession of States like Poland into the European Union.

Whilst the vast and overwhelming majority of settled communities of Polish heritage in the UK get on with their lives with a view to building themselves a better life, a small number carry with them views and ideologies that directly clash with the pluralism that we take for granted in the UK. This pluralism needs to be defended by knowing and understanding the risks that such groups pose.

An example of this clash in values can be demonstrated through social media posts associated with such groups. For example, the banner on this photo, posted on Ogniwo’s Facebook page and deleted since, states that Europe must remain white. The exact translation reads as, “Europe will either be white or uninhabited”.

Ogniwo is linked to a Polish-based right-wing historian, Tomasz Panfil, who is their honorary member and visited them in the UK on several occasions. His next visit to the UK has just been announced, he is due to speak in Stafford and Southampton on the 10th and 11th of March. Panfil is a historian from the Lublin Institute of National Remembrance.

He is known in Poland for his attempts to destigmatise far right symbolism. For example, as an ‘expert’ witness, he claimed in a Polish court during the trial of a Polish neo-Nazi charged with using banned Nazi symbols, that the Swastika can have many different meanings and is not necessarily a Nazi symbol, depending on its orientation. The perpetrator in question was subsequently released.

Panfil also claimed a symbol of Celtic cross with the words ‘White Power’ had “patriotic intentions” behind it. He also claims the German Nazi party was in fact a left-wing party and that the situation of Polish Jews under Nazi occupation “did not look very bad”.

Association with Violent Football Hooliganism

Ogniwo is also associated with Polish neo-Nazis who were convicted of violent disorder at an anti-fascist rally in Liverpool. The leader of Ogniwo is one Mariusz Zawadski and individuals associated with Ogniwo include Lukasz Pietraszek who was recently jailed for violent disorder in Liverpool. The Judge stated the following around the violence in Liverpool, where a woman was scarred for life, a man suffered a broken nose and a police officer was knocked unconscious.

Judge Andrew Menary QC, in sentencing the perpetrators said that the “self-styled Polish hooligans” wore “deliberately intimidating face masks” and tops that showed violent imagery. He went onto add:

“There was nothing benign about the hooded tops that those men were wearing. It was planned mob violence.”

The leader of Ogniwo’s views are pretty easy to ascertain when this photo of him came to light on social media. The top he is wearing states:

“Death to the enemies of the fatherland”

Zawadski’s views about Muslims are also evident through these Facebook postings. Interestingly, the use of a pig in the picture moves the post into one which is anti-Muslim, even though the person on the floor seems to be symbolised as an ISIS supporter. Instead of targeting IS supporters and sympathisers, Zawadski makes clear his disdain for Muslims.

Association with Marian Kowalski

Ogniwo have also hosted Marian Kowalski, who has been extensively written about by Faith Matters in the report entitled, ‘The Changing Face of Hate in Poland: From Anti-Semitism to Anti-Muslim Hate in Poland’. Kowalski’s anti-LGBTQ and anti-Muslim comments, allied to his provocative stunts which include support for white supremacist, Janusz Walus, highlight the nature of the associations that Ogniwo keep.

Kowalski was recently meant to speak at a Polish restaurant in Ealing and failed to attend after his views were publicly highlighted. 

In line with sympathies that Marian Kowalski has around Janusz Walus, Ogniwo have praised Walus and run online campaigns for him. For example, they highlight campaigns outside the South African Embassy in London where they call for the release of the white supremacist.

Ogniwo and Firearms Training Sessions

Worryingly, the group recently was the co-organiser of a training session in the use of firearms and military tactics in September 2017. The instructor, an ex-soldier from Polish special forces, is not known to have any far right sympathies and we would like to stress that his involvement in training members of Ogniwo, should not imply that he believes in far right ideology or groups. The firearms training session was marketed mainly in far-right circles.

These are some of the photographs that were passed to us around the military training. 

A follow up training session with the same instructor is due to take place in Evesham, West Midlands on the 9th-11th of March. ‘Ogniwo’ is not listed as an organiser this time but the organiser, a group of military enthusiasts calling themselves ‘Grom Legion JR 2305’ lists ‘Ogniwo’ as their “partners” on their website.

A second Austrian student fraternity has a songbook containing anti-Semitic lyrics making fun of the Holocaust and insulting Jews, a newspaper said on Tuesday, three weeks after it exposed a similar case that forced a far-right politician to quit.

The earlier case reported by Falter prompted the resignation of a prominent member of the anti-Islam Freedom Party (FPO), which became the junior partner in conservative Chancellor Christian Kurz’s government in December following elections.

Austria is the only western European country to have a far-right party in government.

Last month, left-wing weekly Falter reported on anti-Semitic lyrics in a songbook published by a student fraternity in Lower Austria, the province surrounding Vienna. That fraternity’s deputy leader was the FPO’s top candidate in an election for the regional parliament there, Udo Landbauer.

Landbauer eventually stepped down over the affair. After initially refusing to sack him, the party later said it was setting up a committee of historians that would examine its past and that of right-wing fraternities like Landbauer’s, which are often close to the FPO but not formally part of it.

On Tuesday, Falter reported that another fraternity, Bruna Sudetia based in Vienna, had a similar songbook, and that the head of that group is on the staff of FPO Infrastructure Minister Norbert Hofer.

The staffer, Herwig Goetschober, who works on social media, was not immediately available for comment. A spokesman for Hofer said Goetschober was sick but denied knowing of the lyrics published by Falter, adding that his songbook had a different content and layout.

“He has no knowledge of this other songbook. He also does not know who produced it,” the spokesman said.

The FPO says it has abandoned its neo-Nazi past and rejects anti-Semitism. It now focuses its criticism on Islam and even openly courts Jewish voters.

But the main group representing Austria’s tiny Jewish community, the IKG, says the FPO has done too little to address the long-standing anti-Semitism within its ranks. It sees fraternities as a breeding ground for the problem.

The IKG has also questioned whether the FPO’s historical commission will get to the bottom of anti-Semitism within fraternities. Many senior political party figures belong to a fraternity but the FPO has said it cannot force those organisations to cooperate with the commission.

“If it is true that the FPO cannot control the fraternities, then that probably confirms that fraternity members control the FPO,” IKG chief Oskar Deutsch told ORF radio at the weekend.

A man who drove a van into Muslim worshippers outside a mosque last June was motivated by deadly Islamist attacks in Britain and an obsession with a television account of Muslim men who targeted white girls, a London court heard on Monday.

Darren Osborne, 48, also lambasted politicians, calling London Mayor Sadiq Khan a disgrace and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn a “terrorist sympathiser”, prosecutor Jonathan Rees said, quoting from a note he said Osborne left in the van.

The note described Muslim men as rapists, “feral” and “in-bred” and when he was detained after the attack, Osborne said: “At least I had a go”, Rees told Woolwich Crown Court.

Osborne is accused of murdering Makram Ali, 51, a father of six who came to Britain from Bangladesh aged 10, and the attempted murder of other worshippers as they left a mosque in Finsbury Park in north London after late-night Ramadan prayers.

Osborne has denied the accusations.

“The evidence establishes that the defendant was trying to kill as many of the group as possible,” Rees told jurors. “The prosecution say that the note and the comments he made after his detention establish that this act of extreme violence was, indeed, an act of terrorism, designed to influence government and intimidate the Muslim community.”

The incident occurred just weeks after three Islamists drove a van into pedestrians on London Bridge before going on a knife rampage, killing eight.

That attack came the month after a suicide bombing at a pop concert in Manchester killed 22 people. In March another Islamic State-inspired attacker killed five people by driving a car into passers-by on London’s Westminster Bridge and then stabbing to death a police officer in the grounds of parliament.

Rees said Osborne hired a van and drove to London from his home in Cardiff. After a plan to attack an anti-Israel march failed, Osborne drove around seeking alternative targets.

He is accused of ramming the crowd at Finsbury Park as worshippers helped Ali who he had earlier become unwell.

The court was told Osborne, who had never previously openly expressed racist opinions, had become obsessed with Muslims in the weeks before the attack after watching a BBC television drama “Three Girls”, based on true stories of victims of child sex gangs comprised mainly of British Pakistani men.

Rees said Osborne searched online for material related to the show, some of which was connected to far-right groups and Jayda Fransen, deputy leader of Britain First.

One of Fransen’s messages was re-tweeted by U.S. President Donald Trump in November.

Two days before the attack, Osborne told a serving soldier in a pub in Cardiff: “I’m going to kill all the Muslims”, the jurors were told.

Rees said Osborne’s former partner Sarah Andrews described the father of four as a loner and a functioning alcoholic with an unpredictable temperament who took medication for depression.

“With the benefit of hindsight, she describes him as a ticking time-bomb,” the prosecutor said.

The trial, which is expected to last two weeks, continues.