Around 300 of Croatia’s Jewish population held a vigil outside the country’s most notorious concentration camp in protest at the government’s alleged failure to challenge rising neo-Nazi sentiment in the country.

Part of this failure concerns the downplaying of the crimes of Croatia’s pro-Nazi regime. The ultra-nationalist and antisemitic Ustaša regime took power on August 10, 1941, after Axis forces had invaded Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941.

Concentration camps were built nationwide to ‘purge’ Croatian society of ‘foreign elements’. This extended to Jews, Serbs, Roma and non-Catholic minorities.

Ustaša fascists exterminated over 500,000 Serbs. They forced 250,000 into exile and made 250,000 more Serbs convert to Catholicism under pain of death, according to Yad Vashem.

The fascist regime murdered  75 per cent of Croatia’s pre-war Jewish population of 40,000. Jews in Croatia now make up 1 per cent of the general population.

Between 15,000 and 20,000 Roma were also murdered by the Ustaša regime, as were between 5,000 and 12,000 ethnic Croats and Muslims.

Croatia’s largest concentration camp was the Jasenovac complex, a string of five camps along the Sava River, east of Zagreb. Close to 100,000 people were murdered in this camp between 1941 and 1945.

Prisoners at the Jasenovac camp received little food. Shelter and sanitary conditions were minimal at best. Guards tortured, assaulted and murdered prisoners with impunity.

The tools of murder included hammers, knives, bars and axes. They also used blowtorches and welding rods to torture prisoners.

Eduard Sajer, a survivor of the Jasenovac concentration camp, recalled how guards had segregated barracks for Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews and Serbs. When not working as an electrician in the camp, Sajer had to dig graves for individuals murdered by a blow to the head from a mallet. He bore witness to the murder of his brother and lost his parents and other siblings in the camp. He watched others being burnt alive.

Granik and Gradina also served as local killing fields.

Croatia’s surviving Jews were deported to Auschwitz between 1942 and 1943.

According to Marko Attila Hoare, an expert on genocides the region “the Ustasha  extermination  of  Serbs  provided  a  catalyst  for  Chetnik  massacres  of  Croat  and  Muslim  civilians“.

Dinko Sakic, commander of the Jasenovac camp, had fled to Argentina after the war and was eventually found guilty of crimes against humanity in 1999. Sakic was responsible for the murder of more than 2,000 Serbs, Jews and Roma. He ordered executions, refused to treat the sick, worked people to death and tortured some with a blowtorch. The courts found that Sakic had personally shot dead two prisoners for smiling.

Croatia’s independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, saw attempts to rehabilitate the image of the Ustaša. Fascists veterans received benefits from government officials. The  late president Franjo Tudjman, who died in 1999, was often accused of Holocaust revisionism.

The funeral of Dinko Sakic proved a lavish affair in 2008. According to local media, he  was buried in the Ustasha uniform and described by the priest at the funeral as “a person Croats must be proud of”. Israel’s former ambassador, Shmuel Meirom, condemned the funeral.

Now in 2016, there is a sense of a neo-Nazi revival. Ultra-nationalists shouted pro-Nazi slogans at a rally attended by thousands of people, including Deputy Parliamentary Speaker Ivan Tepes in January.

Similar chants were heard during a recent football match between Israel and Croatia.

The Croatian government is now taking steps to allay fears. President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic met representatives of Jews, Serbs, Gypsies and anti-fascists. Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic issued a statement condemning the Ustashe regime.a

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Slovakia’s ruling party lost its parliamentary majority, and neo-Nazis gained 8 per cent of the vote in Saturday’s election.

More than 200,000 Slovakians voted for the neo-Nazi People’s Party Our Slovakia (L’SNS). That figure includes 23 per cent of first-time voters. Some of the fourteen elected L’SNS MPs were once monitored by the state. But they are now free to express their views in the National Council.

Marian Kotleba, who leads the L’SNS, gained a parliamentary seat. He was elected governor of the Banská Bystrica Region (BBSK) in 2013. Kotleba’s brother, Martin, also gained a seat in parliament. Natália Grausová, another L’SNS MP has defended the Slovak regime which acted as a Nazi satellite in World War II. The Nazis murdered 75,000 Slovak Jews (around 83 per cent of the pre-war total). Deportations stopped after a Vatican representative intervened. But after the Slovak National Uprising in 1944, the SS took control of the fascist Hlinka Guard militia.

Before taking office, Marian Kotleba fashioned himself in the image of the Hlinka Guard. Mr Kotleba established his first political party Slovenska Pospolitost (Slovak Brotherhood) in 2003. The interior ministry banned it in 2006 for its incitement to racial, national and religious hatred.

To mainstream his image required ditching overt fascism. He replaced it with the mainstream dislike of Slovakia’s isolated Roma minority. Police have arrested Kotleba for inciting racial hatred, but he’s escaped conviction.

The anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric of the ruling Smer-SD party helped Kotleba’s party. As did their hostility towards the Roma – securing votes in deprived areas with large Roma communities.

An English-language manifesto rejects EU membership and NATO. The L’SNS wants to form domestic militia groups and allow citizens to own guns. Their populist electoral rhetoric spoke of ‘banishing thieves’ from parliament and supporting ‘white’ families. A focus on Christian identity helps the party externalise Muslims as a threat.

At times, the personality cult around Marian Kotleba overrides that of other party members. Kotleba’s own rhetoric makes clear that the L’SNS seeks to ‘protect our homeland from thieves’. Externalising threats allows them to romanticise the fascism of Jozef Tiso’s Nazi satellite state.

The shift towards neo-Nazi, extremist and nationalist parties is a growing trend in parts of Europe. Poland’s Law and Justice Party (PiS) mirrors the creeping illiberal attitudes of Orban’s Hungary. In Denmark, the People’s Party are the second-largest party in parliament. Polling data put the Sweden Democrats at their highest projected share of the electoral vote at 19.9 per cent. A Median poll put the antisemitic and Islamophobic Jobbik as Hungary’s second-strongest political party at 21 per cent.

Austria’s Freedom Party and Italy’s Lega Nord continue to gain support in opinion polls. In spite of its failures in the final rounds of local elections, the Front National made historic gains in the first-round. This surge owes to their ability to exploit societal anxieties and anger directed at the EU, Muslims and refugees.

The fracturing of Slovakia’s political scene presents a challenge for Mr Fico to form a ruling majority. The surge in support for neo-Nazis caught many pundits off-guard. Other politicians condemned Kotleba’s party. But this only serves to foster their sense of self-victimisation and racist populism.

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A far-right chapter of the anti-Islam group Soldiers of Odin has called for volunteers to join its street patrols.

The Facebook page Soldiers of Odin UK South Division wants to extend patrols this weekend. Cities earmarked for patrols include Bristol, Plymouth and South London.

Online posts promote community and loyalty. The group denies holding racist or white supremacist views. But these statements erode under scrutiny. Photos from the violent neo-Nazi protest in Dover appeared in their mobile uploads folder on January 30. One photo featured the flag of the national socialist group British Movement. They shared Channel 4’s coverage of the violence and the page admins had ‘liked‘ some of the violent comments.

On February 13 the group promoted the homophobic and racist propaganda of YouTube user whiteMedia4. In 2012, whiteMedia4 uploaded a video that attempted to expunge Hitler’s deep-rooted antisemitism. The idea that Hitler’s antisemitism was a response to ‘Jewish-led’ revolutions in 1919 is a dangerous falsehood. Hitler recalled buying his first antisemitic pamphlets in Vienna – a city he lived in until 1913. He credited Vienna’s mayor and leader of the Christian Social Party Karl Lueger with helping him develop his antisemitic views.  Viewpoints popular among middle-class German nationalists.

A photo of a crude banner that read ‘Islam is the cancer. Patriotism is the answer’ appeared on their timeline on January 29. Their caption “Soldiers of odin active members doing what we do best. More to come very soon ns” invokes the language of the English Defence League and their mantra of ‘no surrender’.

Away from rhetoric and ideology, there is a heavy focus on body image and exercise. Vetted members have free access to a gym.

Other national socialist movements like National Action promote a similar message. National Action asks members to dress in a professional manner as ‘personal image is group image’. Nietzche’s Übermensch, the Superman underpins this drive for perfectibility and will to power. Members must improve their social skills, body confidence, and fitness or defence skills. National Action offers MMA classes and have sent members to Legion MMA camps.

The UK chapters of the Soldiers of Odin are less than forthcoming with their identities. Photos of street activities are stage-managed to promote group identity and protect individual identity.

pic.twitter.com/J0jmuJqJa8

— S.O.O. UK SOUTH (@SOOSDUK1) February 21, 2016

An online echo chamber promotes group identity as the solution to existential threats. Examples of this rhetoric include “Get back the British bulldog spirit and contact us to join up now!”

Merchandise remains a key component of group image. The broad appeal of this movement has resulted in chapters appearing in Canada, Ireland and Portugal. Social media allows members to remain interconnected and motivated beyond traditional borders. Pegida and the Misanthropic Division are other far-right groups which have inspired chapters abroad.

The Irish chapter of Soldiers of Odin also promotes white supremacist materials. Supporters of the far-right Ulster Awake have expressed support, according to the Irish Times.

The post Soldiers of Odin UK seek new recruits for its street patrols appeared first on TELL MAMA.

The man who admitted killing three people at two suburban Kansas City Jewish sites told jurors he hoped to “die a martyr” for the shootings.

It took the jury little over two hours to find Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., 74, guilty of capital murder, three counts of attempted murder and assault and weapons charges.

As jurors left court, Miller raised his right arm in a Nazi salute and told them: “You probably won’t sleep tonight.”

None of his victims were Jewish. Their names are William Corporon, 69, a physician; his 14-year-old grandson, Reat Underwood; and Terri LaManno, 53. A fact Miller did not learn until six days after the shootings.

Frazier Glenn Miller, also known as Frazier Glenn Cross, wrote on a courtroom poster board “Diversity is a code word for white genocide”.

Miller’s virulent antisemitism and white supremacist ideology has never been in doubt. His website, with its rudimentary design, mixes the iconographies of the Ku Klux Klan and the Confederate flag. He recommends visitors check out ex-KKK grand wizard David Duke and get ‘jew-wise’.

Miller published his own book, titled ‘A White Man Speaks Out,’ written between 1987-1990 (when in prison), and completed in 1999. He joined the U.S. Army in 1959. Miller’s website claims he served two tours of Vietnam and was a Green Beret for over a decade. But within this rambling antisemitic text, he reveals how he discovered his ‘true calling’.

In 1978, his father gave him a copy of the racist, antisemitic newspaper, The Thunderbolt. According to Miller, within ‘two minutes’ he was ‘ecstatic’ to find his place within the ‘American White Movement’.

In short, the newspaper articulated his political and racial views. He confessed that before reading, he considered himself an antisemite and racist.

Miller blamed Jewish communities for defeat in the Vietnam war; for black emancipation. A problem he attributed to ‘heavy Jewish influence’ in the media. An ardent Holocaust denier, he also read Hitler’s Mein Kampf and  William Pierce’s white nationalist text “National Vanguard”.

In 1979, he joined the neo-Nazi National Socialist Party of America, after quitting the National States’ Rights Party. Members of the National Socialist Party of America had murdered Communist Workers Party members at a rally. It contributed to his decision to move to Chicago.

Miller’s white supremacist activities signalled retirement from army life. During the 1980s, he created the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. He sought to emulate Hitler, in his autobiography he wrote “My racist and anti-Semitic thoughts consumed me every day of my life. And, I was therefore, compelled to do everything possible to awaken White people, to organize them, and to try to save the White Race and Western civilization from those whom I believed were working to destroy both”.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) noted how Miller’s Carolina Knights marked a departure from KKK norms: gone were the clan robes, replaced with army-inspired fatigues and military training. Inspired again by Hitler, the organisation held rallies and marches on a near-weekly basis. In 1985, he founded another white supremacist group, The White Patriots Party. SPLC also linked Miller to a white supremacist terrorist group named The Order.

They used the legal system to break up Miller’s racist paramilitary. In spite of his conviction (pending appeal) for criminal contempt, he later became subject to a nationwide manhunt after declaring ‘war’ on Blacks and Jews. Miller appealed to his thousands of followers to overthrow the government in a ‘race war’.

“Let the blood of our enemies flood the streets, rivers and fields of the nation,” Miller wrote: “Rise up and throw off the chains which bind us to the satanic, Jewish controlled and ruled federal government. Let the battle axes swing smoothly and the bullets wiss [sic] true”.

By 1987, more than a dozen federal agents and state law enforcement agents captured Miller at a mobile home in Missouri. Once the tear gas cleared, officers found a hull of weapons: hand grenades, automatic rifles, pistols, about twenty pipe bombs, and flack jackets.

Miller had also posted thousands of copies of his “Declaration of War” to fellow white supremacists and media outlets.

To reduce his impending and lengthy prison sentence, Miller struck a plea bargain: he faced five years in prison in exchange for his cooperation and testimony against his former compatriots. He went on to claim in his autobiography that “I got myself out of prison without putting anyone else in”.

In the end, Miller served less than three years of that sentence. Upon release in 1990, the federal government issued Miller a new social security number under the name Frazier Glenn Cross. In Iowa, he pursued a new career in truck driving.

There is scant record of Miller’s formative years in Iowa and Nebraska; but he never recanted his beliefs. The internet provided Miller a wider outlet and white nationalist network. Outside his own website, Miller contributed over 12,000 posts to the Vanguard News Network (under the username “Rounder“). Miller asked Alex Linder, the Vanguard News Network’s admin, to post his online confession on 23 October 2014. He contributed and published Linder’s propaganda newspaper ‘The Ayran Alternative‘.

Miller confessed that his “conscious compelled me to kill Jews. That’s why I feel perfectly justified. My biggest fear was that I’d die without killing any Jews”. A paranoid Miller convinced himself that police monitored his online activities and offline movements. To ‘throw them off,’ he Googled Islamic community centers, Hispanic community centers, Baptist community centers.

He admitted making various trips to Jewish Community Center in the week leading up to the shootings. On the day of the murders, Miller visited the center three times. His target number was “maybe six or eight”victims. By 1pm, he returned to the Jewish Community Center. He claimed that he had a pistol in the front seat and two shotguns and a .30-caliber carbine in the trunk.

His documented health problems, chronic emphysema, meant that Miller sought a quick trial. Yet, he treated it as a spectacle: he fired his attorney and used the public platform to justify his race hate. He argued that: “According to the Declaration of Independence, it says that when a government conspires to destroy a people, it is not only the duty of the people, it is their right to rebel and replace that government”.

Jurors found him guilty of aggravated assault for pointing a shotgun at a woman and asking if she was Jewish. When she replied ‘No,’ he put his gun away and allowed her to live.

On Christianity, Miller wrote “Christianity is the second biggest trick the Jews ever played on us. The biggest was legalized abortion!” But it still represented the best hope for ‘white survival’. He preached a return to Odinism.

Miller also had a history of failed political campaigns: his most recent, in 2010, earned him a platform with Howard Stern; but he only managed seven votes.

A life of hate may soon end via a death sentence; if his chronic health problems do not catch up with him first. If Miller’s goal sought to divide Jewish communities, it failed, and for the victims, a measure of justice.

Sentencing takes place in late October.

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The following far right Twitter and social media account was brought to our attention  a few days ago. The account know as @whitebriton (the Aryan Brotherhood) has the following tag-line which is deeply worrying:

“Open forum for debate about all issues of white advancement – and supporting direct action on behalf of our Aryan kin near you and in prisons locally across the UK”.

The ‘Aryan Brotherhood’ account has also tweeted out and named prisons on its social media accounts and tweets have also suggested ‘direct action’ within prisons. The following material has been sent to the police and to sources in the Ministry of Justice. It specifically highlights HMP Coldingley.

The post Aryan Brotherhood Social Media Site Proposing Action Against Prisons appeared first on TELL MAMA.

The English Defence League: Challenging Our Country and Our Values of Social Inclusion, Fairness and Equality. A detailed report on key leaders within the English Defence League, their funders and those that formulate its strategy. This report is a damning insight into a group that promotes a non-racist image, yet those aligned and linked to it hold views that are openly discriminatory against all Muslims and some speak the same language of the British National Party – the language of exclusionism, of non-equal human rights and of the need to ‘send people back.’ These values go contrary to what our country stands for and what we as a nation are about. We are about Fairness, Freedom, Hard Work, Equality and Social Inclusion. We are a modern Britain and a modern nation born from hard work and fairness!

Please Note:
We would like to clarify that Mark Israel, described in paragraph 4.9. of our report on the English Defence League as “a former volunteer with the Board of Deputies’ Community Security Trust (CST)”, has not been a CST volunteer for many years; and that CST (a separate organisation from the Board of Deputies) has repeatedly condemned the EDL, for example in the following posts on the CST Blog:

• https://thecst.org.uk/blog/?p=555
• https://thecst.org.uk/blog/?p=686
• https://thecst.org.uk/blog/?p=963
• https://thecst.org.uk/blog/?p=1602
• https://thecst.org.uk/blog/?p=1956