Dominique Venner – a hero of the True Europe
Ten years ago – on 21st May 2013 – a great French racial nationalist, Dominique Venner, committed suicide in dramatic circumstances at the Cathedral of Notre Dame.
Venner’s father had been part of Jacques Doriot’s pre-war nationalist party. He was himself politically active from the mid-1950s until his death, as one of the leading figures in an intellectual movement known as the Nouvelle Droite, together with Alain de Benoist, Pierre Krebs, and the late Guillaume Faye. The ND’s leaders later came to disagree with each other on some fundamental issues, but for the past sixty years their work has been among the highest quality contributions to European resistance.
Usually, racial nationalists should disapprove of pessimism, and especially suicide, since our racial nationalist ideology is a celebration of life and optimism.
Of course, some leading European nationalists have killed themselves in exceptional situations, but in today’s world we should not usually accept that suicide is a positive political option.
But Venner was 78 and very seriously ill. He wanted to make a final political gesture while he was able to do so.
Dominique Venner died as he had lived – as a hero of the True Europe.
Italy on the front line of African migrant ‘invasion’
Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has warned EU leaders of an ever-worsening immigration crisis amid an ‘invasion’ from North Africa.
Meloni (who entered politics as a young activist in the neo-fascist party MSI and now heads a coalition of conservative and semi-nationalist parties) is derided by the liberal left as Europe’s most ‘far right’ leader since the Second World War. Her election victory last September was partly due to her promise to deal with Italy’s immigration crisis, but for reasons mainly beyond her control these problems have worsened rather than improved during her premiership.
Part of the crisis is due to dysfunctional governments in Tunisia and Libya. The collapse of Colonel Gadafy’s dictatorship in 2011 has led to a decade of chaos in Libya, where various warlords and factions battle for influence but have no interest in blocking the flow of illegal migrants (often crossing Libya from other parts of Africa). Meanwhile Tunisia’s own dictatorship is on the brink of collapse, and despite Meloni’s urging, the European Union and IMF are reluctant to send aid or loans that might encourage the Tunisians to cooperate in effective anti-immigration measures.
The numbers involved in this Mediterranean migrant trade dwarf the problems of ‘small boats’ crossing the English Channel. Many H&D readers have justifiable doubts about Meloni, but she is surely correct to argue that the problem can only be addressed by concerted European action, not by any individual government.
As Sir Oswald Mosley suggested decades ago, and as Meloni is now arguing, the most credible approach would have to combine resolute action against ‘people traffickers’ (whom Meloni proposes to jail for up to 16 years) with aid to African governments that will be strictly conditional on these governments turning off the immigration tap.
The problem is that African governments might seek to take advantage of the situation by blackmailing Europe: an example of shameless surrender to such blackmail is the Spanish government’s deal with Morocco, which inter alia led to the prosecution of H&D correspondent Isabel Peralta.
Fundamentally the answer to this migrant crisis is for Europeans to rediscover their confidence, get off their knees, and cease apologising for the ruthless methods necessary to secure our borders.
H&D writer Isabel Peralta banned from Germany for life
UPDATE: Isabel is now back on Twitter, even though banned from visiting Germany. The German government cannot suppress the truth forever, whether online or in person.
Germany is already known for its laws banning free political debate and historical research – most notoriously for the recent decision to imprison 94-year-old Ursula Haverbeck. It has become almost routine for Germany to deny basic human rights to its own citizens, while welcoming alien immigrants from every corner of the world.
Now the German authorities have again breached their basic obligations under the Schengen treaty, by which fellow Europeans are supposed to be allowed freedom to travel across its borders.
They are attempting to impose a life ban on Spanish nationalist activist and H&D writer Isabel Peralta – despite the fact she has never even been charged with, let alone convicted of, any criminal offence in Germany.
As we reported in Issue 111 of H&D (but has only yesterday been picked up by the mainstream press in Spain), German police detained Isabel on 6th October while she was minding her own business in the central German university town of Marburg. She was served with official papers ordering her to leave the country.
This followed earlier harassment at Manchester Airport, when Isabel was detained for more than six hours on 24th September, the night before her speech at the H&D meeting in Preston, which can be viewed online here.
It’s now apparent that UK authorities abused Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, so as to do a favour for their German colleagues. The UK authorities knew perfectly well that they had no valid reason to detain Isabel, but they used Schedule 7 as a ‘fishing expedition’ to collect political intelligence from her phone and computer, and pass it to the German authorities.
This has nothing to do with terrorism and nothing to do with UK law: British police and border security have become accomplices in the German authorities’ campaign of political persecution against nationalists.
Unlike post-Brexit UK citizens, Isabel is of course (as a Spanish citizen) entitled under European law (in fact under the European constitution) to enter Germany free of harassment, and for that matter to work or study in Germany.
Such rights can only be withdrawn in very exceptional circumstances: even convicted criminals are normally entitled to these rights.
In order to expel Isabel, and now to argue that she should be excluded from Germany for life, the authorities have had to argue not that she is a criminal (because they know that she has broken no German laws) but that she is a serious threat to “national security”, because she supposedly has such high-level connections with dangerous subversives in leadership positions among the “far right”, including people who aim to overthrow the German government!
This extraordinary paranoia reflects the fact that despite the evident short-term weakness of German nationalist movements, those who govern the occupied Federal Republic are aware of their lack of legitimacy. They know that their rule since the end of blatant Allied military occupation in the early 1950s has been based on lies, and they fear (correctly) that Isabel Peralta, as a brave and intelligent advocate of truth, is capable of inspiring a movement among new generations of Europeans that will eventually win.
That’s why they had to invent a quite ludicrous case against her, which now aims to exclude her from Germany for life. This legal and constitutional outrage will of course be appealed, if necessary as far as the European courts.
H&D and our colleagues in several European countries have been working for the last two months on a major investigation of the extreme measures that have been adopted by the enemies of nationalism to subvert our movement and deny legal and constitutional rights. Next week we shall publish the results of this investigation.
Our brave comrade Isabel is still facing legal proceedings in Spain under their version of the race laws (though this case is unrelated to her exclusion from Germany and does not provide any valid reason for the German authorities’ behaviour). She is also bringing a civil action against the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Jerusalem Post, a case which has already begun in the Madrid courts.
French scholar arrested in Scotland by ‘anti-terrorist’ police
French revisionist scholar Vincent Reynouard was arrested in Scotland on Thursday 10th November. He is presently in an Edinburgh prison cell, where he will remain at least until 23rd February next year, when a court will determine whether he should be extradited to France, where he would be jailed under that country’s laws restricting historical and scientific enquiry. (There will be a further hearing in Edinburgh on 8th December this year, but the main case will not be heard until February.)
Vincent Reynouard built his scholarly reputation with a detailed re-examination of what had been termed the ‘Massacre of Oradour’, and went on to become one of the world’s leading sceptical investigators of the ‘Holocaust’. Francophone readers should visit his excellent website.
British and American readers might be shocked that a specialist squad of police from SO15 – the Counter-Terrorism Command, directed from London – swooped on a small Scottish village to arrest this 53-year-old scholar, who is not accused of anything that would be a crime in the UK.
Yet in fact this is simply the latest example – though an especially important example – of an increasing trend across Europe, where politicised courts and prosecutors, aided by politicised police forces and intelligence agencies, are seeking to crush any dissent and enforce a quasi-religious obedience to one particular view of 20th century history.
We shall report on the case as it develops. Scottish readers able to assist Vincent should contact H&D as soon as possible.
15th November update: As a sequel to my article about Vincent Reynouard’s arrest, this morning I expose the background of the veteran politician who acted as intermediary, lobbying the British authorities to spend time and money pursuing this law-abiding French scholar.
There is no “anti-nazi law”: the French authorities are seeking Vincent Reynouard’s extradition under a law banning critical enquiry into ‘Holocaust’ history. No such law exists in the UK and it is shameful that Police Scotland collaborated in this arrest.
British Expat Says: “No Matter Bad the U.S. Immigration Disaster, the U.K. Is Worse”
We just got numbers for illegal aliens apprehended on our southern border last month: a tad short of 240,000 . That’s the highest number of migrant encounters recorded in one month ever. It brings total encounters in Fiscal Year 2022 to more than one and a half million.
That’s “encounter,” mind. The actual encounter being tallied there is one between an invader and a Border Patrol officer. Either the invader presents himself to Border Patrol with some plausible claim for entry, or he tried to sneak in avoiding the Patrol but got caught by chance. Some large but unknown number of sneak-ins did not get caught.
The good news is that 42 percent of these encounters were deported—or at any rate, “processed for deportation”—under Title 42, the Trump-era protocol allowing deportation on health grounds that Joe Biden tried to end until he was thwarted by a judge.
The other 58 percent are being processed under Title 8 of current immigration law. That will result in some number of them being deported. How many: fifty percent? a hundred percent? ten percent? I don’t know.
For a clue I have this from Washington Examiner:
“More than 2 million migrants were stopped while attempting to enter the U.S. from Mexico illegally in the calendar year 2021 [not to be confused with fiscal year] … Of the 2 million, roughly 1.1 million were immediately expelled back to Mexico or flown to other countries. Some attempted crossing multiple times, inflating the numbers. But nearly 800,000 were released into the U.S.”
(‘Two million stopped while illegally entering US from Mexico in 2021’, by Anna Giaritelli, January 24, 2022)
As dumb and treasonous as our current immigration policies are, they fairly glow with integrity, efficiency, and patriotism by comparison with Britain’s. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say—and I say it in all earnestness—that Britain’s clueless, brainless, worthless government is currently perpetrating the greatest immigration fiasco since Chinese General Wu Sangui opened the gates of China to the Manchus in 1644.
I’ve been reporting to you, most recently on June 3rd, about the swelling numbers of illegal aliens crossing the English Channel from France—more than ten thousand so far this year.
This is the fourth year it’s been happening. The numbers for these four years, to the nearest thousand: 2019—two, 2020—eight, 2021—twenty-nine. Estimates for this year’s total start at fifty; and once again, these are thousands, so that’s fifty thousand.
Essentially none of these invaders get expelled. They plead asylum or refugee status, although that is a priori preposterous: they’re coming most recently from France, where they could also have claimed asylum. They destroy their identity documents so they can’t be deported. The British authorities conscientiously process their bogus asylum claims anyway, putting them up in good hotels while the processing is under way.
For three of those four years the invasion went on with the British government doing nothing at all about it. This, incredible to report, is a government of the Conservative Party; but these are metropolitan progressives led by a Prime Minister who has, all through his political career, been well-known as an enthusiast for multiculturalism.
Then, earlier this year, pressure from voters became too strong to ignore. The government grudgingly agreed to do something about the invasion.
What did they do? They cut an agreement with the black African country of Rwanda to take in some of the illegals while their obviously-fake asylum applications were processed. We first heard that 700 illegals would be shipped to Rwanda, to be accommodated in that country’s hotels.
Britain, however, is choc-a-bloc with well-funded groups who favor mass illegal immigration. They got busy lawyering. That 700 was quickly whittled down to 130—which is still a good plane-load.
By the time the first flight to Rwanda was scheduled for Tuesday last week, the 130 had been further whittled down to seven. The pro-illegal activists swung into action on Tuesday, blocking exit routes from the airport detention center and lawyering up a frenzy. By late Tuesday it seemed there was just one illegal left on the plane.
Then some outfit called the European Court of Human Rights issued an injunction to prevent that one illegal being deported. So the flight was cancelled. Number of illegals deported: zero.
Wait: Didn’t the Brits unshackle themselves from Europe? How come they have to obey this ruling by a bunch of Frogs, Krauts, Dagos, and Wops? I have no idea. Nobody in Britain seems to have any idea, either.
While all this was going on, of course several hundred new scofflaws landed in Britain and were escorted to nice hotels.
Did I say “fiasco”? This makes our own Border Tsar—or “Tsarina,” I guess—this makes Kamala Harris look like a strategic mastermind.
As an ex-Brit, in a spirit of nostalgic affection for the old place, I hereby offer my advice to the British government free of charge.
- Arrest everyone who lands in your country illegally. Confine them in special secure camps, with the right to self-deport at any time. (What, you don’t have those kinds of facilities? Then build them, dammit. When COVID came up the ChiComs built a 1,500-room hospital in five days.)
- Children should be placed in care facilities with adequate nutrition and basic education. If I remember my Charles Dickens correctly, Britain used to excel at this.
- You are welcome to my suggestion that you restore the excellent former system of hulks: surplus ships fitted out with secure cells, like those used to handle the overflow from Britain’s prisons in the 18th and 19th centuries. Hulks have the advantage that they can be moored well offshore, so they don’t cause offense to the pleasant British landscape the way on-shore camps would. They also spare the hassle of getting land rights and so on. Hulks: what’s not to like?
- The tens of thousands of illegal aliens already in Britain as a result of these past four years of inaction need to be rounded up and incarcerated as above.
The easy way to do this is to rescind any rights they have been given to work in your country. To avoid them working illegally, establish an E-verify system based on National Insurance Number (that’s the British equivalent of a Social Security Number), with brutal penalties for employers who hire without checking.
That should take care of the problem.
No, no, no need to thank me. You’re welcome!
—–
John Derbyshire writes an incredible amount on all sorts of subjects for all kinds of outlets. (This no longer includes National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and fired him.) He is the author of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism and several other books. He has had two books published by VDARE.com com: FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT (also available in Kindle) and FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT II: ESSAYS 2013.
For years he’s been podcasting at Radio Derb, now available at VDARE.com for no charge. His writings are archived at JohnDerbyshire.com.
Full acknowledgements to VDARE and John Derbyshire for letting us reprint the article:
VDARE.com news – America’s Immigration Voice.
The VDARE Foundation, PO Box 211, Litchfield, CT 06759, USA
Editor’s note:
John Derbyshire was born in Northampton, in the south Midlands, in June 1945. He attended the Northampton School for Boys and graduated from University College London, where he studied mathematics. He emigrated to the USA in the 1960s. Before turning to writing full-time, he worked on Wall Street as a computer programmer. John worked as a writer at National Review until he was terminated in 2012 because of an alleged “racist” article published in Taki’s Magazine.
He then moved on to work for Vdare, where he could write more freely.
In 1996 he wrote the novel Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream which was a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year”. His 2004 non-fiction book Prime Obsession won the Mathematical Association of America’s inaugural Euler Book Prize. A political book, We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism, was released in September 2009.
I met John over 25 years ago at an American Renaissance Conference in Northern Virginia, and recently sent sent him a copy of Heritage and Destiny magazine.
Madrid government surrenders to immigration blackmail
The Spanish government has been humiliated, conceding to Moroccan blackmail over illegal immigration. Simultaneously, by a strange non-coincidence, politically motivated prosecutors in Madrid have leaked news that they are preparing a criminal case for ‘racial incitement’ against H&D’s Spanish comrade Isabel Peralta, over an anti-immigration speech that she gave outside the Moroccan Embassy in May last year.
Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has surrendered control over Madrid’s diplomacy, because he has proved unable or unwilling to exercise control over immigration.
And the consequences could be severe for Spain’s access to natural gas, and the prices paid for energy by long-suffering Spanish consumers.
This all concerns Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, where control has since 1976 been disputed between Morocco and an independence movement called Polisario Front, which is backed by Algeria.
Until this week, the Madrid government backed the Polisario – i.e. backed Western Sahara’s independence from Morocco – partly in order to remain on good terms with Algeria, which supplies Spain with natural gas.
For a year or more, Morocco has sought to blackmail Spain into changing its position on Western Sahara. Morocco’s main weapon is control over illegal immigration into Spanish territory. They have indicated that they are prepared to turn the immigration tap on or off. And Spain’s socialist government is naturally unable or unwilling to take firm action against the consequent flood.
Essentially this was the background to a demonstration addressed by Isabel Peralta in Madrid in May last year. The demonstration targeted both the Moroccan government’s blackmail, and the Spanish authorities’ weakness.
Now the argument of Isabel and her colleagues in the Spanish nationalist youth movement Bastión Frontal has proved correct, but the response has been to threaten criminal charges against Isabel!
Having for decades argued that Western Sahara’s future should be settled by a referendum of its inhabitants, the Madrid government has this week carried out a U-turn and adopted a pro-Moroccan position.
Consequently the Moroccan Ambassador to Madrid has been reinstated, but the Algerian Ambassador has been recalled, threatening vital trade deals including the supply of natural gas.
The entire situation is a shambles, rooted in the inability of Spain’s socialist government to stand up for Spanish interests.
And as so often across the West, when the arguments of nationalists are vindicated, the authorities’ response is to persecute us. And as so often, weakness in the face of an invader or a blackmailer merely invites further invasion and further blackmail.
H&D readers will hear more from Isabel Peralta, beginning with our next edition in May.
Dublin, Sinn Fein and Biden attempt conquest of Ulster by stealth
Last night’s resignation of Edwin Poots after just three weeks as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has led to much sniggering among the liberal media establishment in London.
Yet this is far more than an internal party crisis for the DUP – it reflects a fundamental crisis over the meaning of democracy, and national/cultural identity.
Sinn Fein – political wing of the terrorist IRA – is trying to force through an ‘Irish Language Act’ as part of its invented ‘national culture’. Absurdly this would give the ‘Irish language’ equal status to English as an official language throughout Northern Ireland, even though it is a language that hardly anyone in the province speaks. Literally no-one in Northern Ireland speaks ‘Irish’ as their first language: even south of the border, only 1% claim to do so. Sinn Fein leaders regularly embarrass themselves when forced to stumble through a sentence or two in ‘Irish’.
As has been shown in several countries during the last century, imposing a language is part of a cultural struggle to achieve or compromise national sovereignty, which is clearly the case here.
The Dublin government and Joe Biden’s White House are part of a coordinated campaign to conquer Ulster. They are assisted by the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement, requiring that any devolved government in Stormont must involve a coalition of the largest Unionist party and the largest Republican party (in effect insisting on a DUP – Sinn Fein coalition).
Would President Biden be happy if the constitution forced him to share power with Donald Trump, regardless of the election result? Would President Macron of France, who had the cheek to imply that Northern Ireland was not part of “the same country” as the rest of the UK, be happy if he were forced to share power with Marine Le Pen and enact sections of her party’s agenda?
Yet that is what the Agreement imposes on Ulster.
Sinn Fein’s chutzpah knows no bounds. In response to Mr Poots’s resignation, Sinn Fein MP Chris Hazzard said that the DUP was “struggling to come to terms” with a “modern, progressive society”.
This from Sinn Fein – whose progressive modernism includes wishing to impose a language long dead (if indeed it ever existed in this form); a party rooted in barbaric terrorism, whose leaders (including the then Deputy First Minister!) openly scoffed at the law last year when holding a mass funeral for IRA godfather Bobby Storey.
The ultimate progressive modernism of Sinn Fein / IRA and their allies in Dublin and Washington is to force through the abandonment of Ulster identity and the imposition of Dublin rule against the democratic will of Ulster’s citizens.
That’s what lies behind the Irish Language Act and the EU’s trade protocols, and that’s why British patriots should stand with Loyal Ulstermen – whatever it takes – against this betrayal and in support of the United Kingdom’s integrity.
Ulster’s uncertain future as Northern Ireland marks centenary
One hundred years ago today Ireland was partitioned with six of Ulster’s nine counties becoming the new province of Northern Ireland.
While the terms “Ulster” and “Northern Ireland” are often loosely treated as synonymous, the sad truth is of course that three Ulster counties – Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan – were consigned to rule from Dublin a century ago.
Ulstermen in these three counties who remained loyal to the United Kingdom – as well as their fellow loyalists in the three other Irish provinces of Connaught, Leinster and Munster – were abandoned by the London government for whom they had fought in the Flanders mud just a few years earlier.
Nor was this a straightforward religious divide. Many Catholics across Ireland remained loyal to the Crown, a topic that will be discussed in a forthcoming H&D book review. While today’s anniversary partly represents the successful resistance by generations of Ulstermen to malign plots by 20th and 21st century liberals and trans-Atlantic “new world order” advocates, it also reminds us of that original betrayal of loyalists abandoned (often to a bloody fate) south of the border.
Ironically the centenary of Northern Ireland coincides with a political crisis in Ulster’s largest political party – the Democratic Unionist Party. Whoever becomes DUP leader will have to negotiate treacherous political waters during the Brexit transition process.
Though Boris Johnson is technically leader of the “Conservative & Unionist Party”, the latter half of his party’s name seems to have been forgotten in Westminster and Whitehall.
It will be the job of loyal Ulstermen and their friends on the mainland to remind Johnson (and if necessary his successor) that the “sovereignty” supposedly regained by Brexit is meaningless if accompanied by the betrayal of almost two million of our compatriots, and the surrender of sovereignty over more than 5,000 square miles of Northern Ireland.
We look forward to the day when the British Isles are again reunited in some form of federal structure, when England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland (north and south) stand together in the common struggle for racial and cultural survival.
Northern Ireland (at the 2011 census) was 98.2% White – by far the Whitest component of the British Isles. For all its founders’ pretence of ‘nationalism’, the Irish Republic is by contrast only 92% White and getting darker every day, especially in Dublin; Wales and Scotland are roughly 96% White; and England is of course the most multi-ethnic part of the UK – roughly 85% White.
European populism reshuffled as Orbán’s party quits ‘centre-right’ alliance
The Fidesz party led by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán – seen as a leading force in the European populist right – has resigned from the main centre-right group in the European Parliament. This move will lead to a rebalancing of populist and anti-immigration forces, dependent on Orbán’s next move.
As regular H&D readers will know, international groups broadly representing ideological tendencies are an important feature of the European Parliament. Forming such a group is the key to unlocking substantial extra funds and representation on Parliamentary committees. (There is also a complicated difference between groups within the Parliament and extra-parliamentary political alliances that can also receive European funds and tend to cover much the same ground as the Parliamentary groups, but are technically separate.)
For many years ‘far right’ parties struggled to qualify for group status, partly because the rules were changed by Eurocrats, and partly because of internal divisions between populists and racial nationalists, or over sundry ‘petty nationalist’ or ‘national chauvinist’ issues that loom large especially in Eastern and South Eastern Europe.
The present situation is that (reading from ‘centre’ to ‘far’ right) the following Parliamentary groups exist covering a wide spectrum of right of centre views:
European People’s Party (EPP) – the largest group, covering the mainstream of Europe’s Christian Democratic and centre-right tradition who were the core of the European federalist project from its inception. The largest parties in the EPP are Angela Merkel’s ruling CDU-CSU from Germany, and the Spanish conservative Partido Popular (PP).
European Conservatives & Reformists (ECR) – comprises conservatives who are more ‘right wing’ on economics (i.e. anti-state, pro-market), and/or more sceptical about European federalism than their EPP colleagues, but who would wish to avoid being tainted by radical anti-immigration politics or by association with parties that have even faint historic associations with European fascism. Until Britain left the EU, the Conservative Party was the largest force in ECR alongside the Polish governing party Law & Justice.
Identity & Democracy (ID) – the greatly expanded populist rightwing / anti-immigration group launched after the 2019 European elections. The largest parties in this group are Lega, led by Italy’s former deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini; Rassemblement National, formerly Front National, led by Marine Le Pen, a leading contender for next year’s French presidential election; Germany’s anti-immigration party AfD; and Marine Le Pen’s original allies – the Austrian Freedom Party and the Flemish separatists Vlaams Belang.
Another group that was significantly more Eurosceptic than ECR but frightened of even mildly racial nationalist associations was Europe of Freedom & Direct Democracy, formed by UKIP / Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage and his allies. This dissolved after Brexit as it no longer had sufficient members.
And to the right of ID are an assortment of more hardline racial nationalists who are unacceptable to Mme Le Pen and Salvini because they are explicitly national socialist or otherwise deemed ‘extremist’. These have included Golden Dawn from Greece; the Slovak national socialist party led by Marian Kotleba – People’s Party Our Slovakia; and the Hungarian nationalist party Jobbik.
There have been several unexpected alignments, some the result of political calculation rather than ideological purity. Though a committed social liberal, UK Prime Minister David Cameron took his Conservative Party out of EPP and into alliance with far more right-wing parties in ECR. This was a cynical gesture designed both to secure Cameron’s election as party leader and to prevent voters (and even MPs) defecting to UKIP – it was part of Cameron’s political gamble that ended in his political ruin at the Brexit referendum in 2016.
Meanwhile Viktor Orbán (though far to the right of Cameron on all social issues) was in the more ‘moderate’ EPP. The surprise is that it has taken so long for this odd marriage to end in divorce. After liberal elements in the EPP forced through a rule change that would have allowed them to expel Fidesz, Orbán today chose to pull his party out of the group before he was pushed.
The big question now is whether he will bite the bullet and sign up with the Le Pen / Salvini group, or whether (like the Spanish ‘far right’ anti-immigration party Vox) he is too frightened of ‘fascist’ associations and opts instead for the ECR, which would then be dominated by a Polish-Hungarian axis, though curiously it also includes the ‘post-fascist’ Italian party Fratelli d’Italia.
IRA supporter becomes Baroness
It’s not often that H&D readers would be likely to agree with the Labour Party leadership, but many will fully support the latest advert from Sir Keir Starmer’s HQ.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has awarded a peerage to Claire Fox, elected last year as an MEP for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, but better known as a notorious IRA supporter during her years of activism for the Revolutionary Communist Party.
H&D documented Ms Fox’s terrorist sympathies in an online article on May 1st 2019. The following day a Brexit Party candidate resigned because she felt unable to remain on the same slate as Ms Fox.
Oldham-born Munira Mirza, daughter of a Pakistani immigrants, was also a Revolutionary Communist Party activist, and is now head of the Downing Street policy unit. However Ms Mirza was too young to have been in the RCP at the time of its support for the IRA.
Ms Fox on the other hand was one of the leading RCP officials throughout the period when it was defending some of the most brutal terrorist acts ever committed in the British Isles, including the murder of 3-year-old Johnathan Ball and 12-year-old Tim Parry in the IRA bombing of Warrington.
Her ennoblement proves that the Conservative Party has abandoned any pretence of traditional principles and his become little more than a Brexit cult. It remains to be seen whether these antics will cost the Tories votes in the so-called ‘red wall’ areas of northern England – constituencies which they won from Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party in last year’s general election, in part because of Corbyn’s own record as an IRA apologist.
(A BBC investigation for which H&D provided some background research suggested that the Warrington bombing was probably carried out by far left IRA sympathisers based in England – not Claire Fox’s RCP but their rivals in Red Action, a group that split off from an opposing SWP faction.)
