Athens – the ruins of Europe

For millennia Athens has been seen as the birthplace of Western civilisation. Yet on her visit to the Greek capital this week, H&D‘s European correspondent Isabel Peralta found a stark contrast between this classical archetype and the Greece of today.

In the shadow of the Acropolis, today’s Athens is the capital of a state completely stripped of its identity – national, cultural and racial.

In this video (now available with English subtitles) Isabel visits both the glories of the Parthenon and the sadly contrasting disgrace of multiracial Athens.

10 years on: remember Golden Dawn’s martyrs – Giorgos Fountoulis and Manolis Kapelonis

Ten years ago today – on 1st November 2013 – the Athens headquarters of the Greek racial nationalist party Golden Dawn was attacked by ‘anti-fascist’ terrorists. At least a dozen bullets were fired and two Golden Dawn activists – Giorgos Fountoulis (27) and Manolis Kapelonis (22) – were killed.

No-one has ever been charged with these murders.

Five weeks earlier, many Golden Dawn members including their leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos had been arrested. Following years of pre-trial detention and house arrest, 68 party officials were convicted. In effect the party was banned.

The enemies of Greek nationalism – in fact the enemies of Europe – operate with their left hand via Marxist and anarchist terrorism, and with their right hand via the courts.

In 2013, eight days after the murders of Giorgos and Manolis, H&D‘s assistant editor spoke at a rally outside the Greek Embassy in London. This week racial nationalists from across Europe gathered in Athens. Even today, the treacherous rulers of Greece fear the legacy of Golden Dawn – and they especially fear those who are inspired by the memory of Giorgos Fountoulis and Manolis Kapelonis.

A ban on all public gatherings has been imposed and several rail and metro stations have been closed. Twenty–one activists from the Italian organisation CasaPound were detained at Athens airport as they arrived to pay tribute to the Golden Dawn martyrs.

H&D readers join our European comrades in remembering Giorgos and Manolis. Their heroic sacrifice will continue to inspire resistance to the betrayal of Europe. And on the day when the true Europe is fully liberated, we shall continue to pay tribute to their memory.

Democracy dies in the nation that invented it

A Greek court has proscribed the nationalist party Golden Dawn as a ‘criminal organisation’. Six years ago Golden Dawn won more than half a million votes – 9.4% – and three MEPs in the European Parliamentary elections, but now it’s leader and founder Nikos Michaloliakos has been convicted of heading a criminal organisation, a felony that carries a maximum prison sentence of ten years.

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Greek Jews celebrated the court’s verdict and seem to think that ‘holocaust denial’ by Mr Michaloliakos and some other leading members of the party is akin to terrorism.

Golden Dawn’s electoral breakthrough was in 2012 when it gained 21 MPs in the Greek Parliament. After years of relentless pressure both from prosecutors and from ‘antifascist’ violence – including several bomb attacks on party offices and the murder of two Golden Dawn activists in November 2013, shot dead by leftwing terrorists near party offices in northern Athens – the last eighteen MPs were defeated in 2019.

However in the 2019 European elections last summer Golden Dawn still polled 4.9% and elected two MEPs. The now-banned party also still has many elected local councillors.

It remains unclear whether Greek ‘democracy’ can survive this assault by the courts.

Winners and losers as Europe’s populist tide ebbs and flows

While Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party celebrated big victories in this week’s European elections, the much-advertised populist breakthrough proved to be at best a patchy affair.

Predictably the big populist winners included Italy‘s deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, whose anti-immigration Lega party topped the polls with 34.3% and 29 seats – a huge increase on their 6.2% and five seats in 2014, when the party was known as Lega Nord (Northern League).

Also continuing to advance were the nationalist-conservative governing parties in Poland and Hungary.

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party are suspended from the European conservative group EPP, but Orban had the last laugh this week. While most European conservative parties are in crisis, Fidesz increased their support to 52.3%, up from 51.5% in 2014.

A very radical nationalist party polled exceptionally well in Slovakia. Marian Kotleba’s People’s Party Our Slovakia – a party that stands staunchly in the tradition of Slovakia’s wartime leader Monsignor Jozef Tiso – gained two MEPs after polling 12.1% (up from 1.8% in 2014).

By contrast some previously successful populist and anti-Islam parties suffered poor results. The once-influential Dutch Freedom Party led by Geert Wilders was wiped out, losing all four of their MEPs and polling 3.5% (down from 13.2% in 2014).

Also badly beaten was the Danish People’s Party who lost three of their four MEPs after their vote fell from 26.6% to 10.7%. Voters in Denmark showed the strongest evidence of a trend also witnessed in some other European countries: an anti-populist backlash with increased turnouts among previously apathetic voters.

Marine Le Pen, once Europe’s most successful anti-immigration politician, has been to some extent eclipsed by her Italian ally Salvini, but Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) – previously the National Front (FN) – again topped the poll in France with 23.3% (slightly down from the FN’s 24.9% in 2014). The more ‘moderate’ French eurosceptic party France Arise (DLF) led by Farage’s main French ally Nicolas Dupont-Aignan fell below the 5% threshold to obtain MEPs. DLF polled 3.5% (down from 3.8% under an earlier party name in 2014).

Le Pen’s former FN vice-president Florian Philippot broke away in September 2017 to form a splinter party called The Patriots, mainly on the European issue: unlike Le Pen he wants France to leave the European Union. Philippot’s party polled only 0.7% despite seeking to appropriate the name of the anti-establishment “yellow vest” street protestors.

Having lost one of her main European parliamentary allies with the demise of Geert Wilders’ Dutch Freedom Party, Le Pen will have been greatly cheered by the landslide gains for the Flemish nationalists Vlaams Belang. In simultaneous Belgian regional, parliamentary and European elections, VB’s young leader Tom Van Grieken (elected in 2014 as a 28-year-old) succeeded in turning round the party’s fortunes.

VB now have 18 seats in the Belgian Parliament (up from 3 in 2014) and three MEPs (up from one in 2014).

The other important Le Pen ally is the Austrian Freedom Party, who managed to hold on 18.1% (down from 19.7% in 2014) despite a financial scandal that has destroyed the career of party leader and former Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache. In fact these European elections pale into insignificance against the background of Austria’s political crisis, which has now brought down the government and provoked a general election to be held in September.

Rather than consistent populist/nationalist success, the main event of this year’s European elections in most of the continent was a dramatic increase in turnout: up from 42.2% to 50.1% in France; from 48.1% to 61.4% in Germany; and from 43.8% to 64.3% in Spain.

The new Spanish anti-immigration party Vox elected three MEPs for the first time after polling 6.2% (up from 1.6% in 2014 but down from 10.3% at this year’s general election).

In Germany the civic nationalist and anti-immigration party AfD (Alternative for Germany) polled 4.1m votes (11.0%), up from 2.1m votes (7.1%) in 2014, increasing their tally of MEPs from seven to eleven.

One side-effect of AfD’s success was the defeat of the long-established German nationalist party NPD, who polled 101,000 votes (0.3%), down from 301,000 votes (1.0%) in 2014. The NPD’s sole MEP Udo Voigt consequently lost his seat. Two smaller German nationalist parties also contested the Euro-election. Die Rechte polled 25,000 votes for a slate headed by 90-year-old author and historical justice campaigner Ursula Haverbeck, who is presently serving a prison sentence for “holocaust denial”. The III Path (Dritte Weg) polled 13,000 votes.

Greek national socialist party Golden Dawn lost one of their three MEPs after polling 4.8%, down from 9.4% in 2014 (though in contrast to some populist parties Golden Dawn is disproportionately strong among young voters). Their Maltese counterparts Imperium Europa, a national socialist party led by Norman Lowell, polled 3.2%, up from 2.8% in 2014.

European nationalists demonstrate for Golden Dawn in London

European nationalists from across the factional and party spectrum demonstrated outside the Greek Embassy in London last weekend, in solidarity with the imprisoned leaders and activists of the Greek nationalist party Golden Dawn.

A noisy group of militant anti-fascists, led by Searchlight editor Gerry Gable, failed to prevent the demonstration, which was attended by a group of Polish nationalists from NOP Division England as well as members of Western Spring, the NF, British Movement, BNP, National Action, British Voice and New Dawn.

Heritage and Destiny assistant editor Peter Rushton was among the speakers at the rally: he pointed out that the Greek authorities had moved beyond Ken Livingstone’s dictum “if voting changed anything they’d abolish it” – in the new Greek version “if voting changes anything they’ll lock up your leaders and shoot your activists.”

It is not Golden Dawn or radical nationalism that is truly on trial in Greece today: it is the sham system of democracy itself, the system that has dominated Europe since 1945 but now would be better described by another Greek-derived word – kleptocracy, the rule of thieves.

For a video of the event, see below.

http://youtu.be/4DTXdFjcRkg

Solidarity with Golden Dawn – 29th November 2014

Heritage and Destiny‘s assistant editor Peter Rushton will be one of the speakers at a demonstration in solidarity with Golden Dawn, outside the Greek Embassy in London on 29th November.

The organisers have issued the following advice:

Just turn up at 12 noon at the embassy, situated literally a 2 minute walk from Holland Park underground station which is on the Central line. Demo goes on till around 2pm and is jointly being organised by New Dawn & the English division of Polish organisation NOP. Four (maybe five speakers): Polish language speaker from NOP, Kevin Layzell (Ex BNP), Max Musson of Western Springs and Peter Rushton, assistant editor H&D.

The event will be filmed, so those not wishing for their faces to be seen publicly, please wear a disguise of some sort. Also, anyone wishing to attend are advised to travel to and from the demo in small groups and not to wear anything distinguishing themselves as a nationalist.

Afterwards there will be an informal social in another part of London

For further information about this event, see the article by Max Musson at Western Spring.

Nationalist victories in Europe, but catastrophe for BNP

Results are being declared across the continent in elections to the European Parliament, and H&D confidently expects to report nationalist victories in Hungary, France, Austria, Belgium and Greece – perhaps even elsewhere.

Marine Le Pen’s National Front won the elections in France, with around 25% of the vote.  In Hungary the nationalist Jobbik party has polled around 15%.  The national socialist Golden Dawn party in Greece triumphed over far left terrorism and state repression, polling 9.4% to take third place nationwide and gain three MEPs.

Some of the best nationalist results were in Austria, where the Austrian Freedom Party has polled around 20% and should double its number of MEPs from 2 to 4.

In Germany the hardline nationalist NPD seems likely to have won a European seat for the first time, despite polling only 1%.  The German constitutional court had ruled that the previous “threshold” system, under which parties needed to achieve at least 5% to win any seats at all, was unconstitutional – and the court later ruled against even a modified 3% threshold.  Given that Germany presently elects 96 MEPs, this gave the NPD a strong chance.  To be truthful, if German nationalists had got their act together they would easily have won several seats under the new system.  But the movement in Germany is so chaotic that even minimal competence could not be guaranteed….

In Denmark the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party polled 26% and won most seats, but this is not really a nationalist party and would prefer to ally with David Cameron’s Conservatives – not even with UKIP, and certainly not with real nationalists.  Similarly in Germany the new anti-Euro ‘Alternative for Germany’ party has made strong gains, winning around 7%, but their new MEPs would again prefer an alliance with Britain’s Conservatives.  Another party of this ilk is in Finland: the anti-Islam but essentially conservative True Finns party who polled 12.9% (up from 9.8% last time).

In Sweden a more radical (though still mainly anti-Islamic) party, the Sweden Democrats scored one of the best results continent-wide, polling 9.7%, up from 3.3% in 2009 and electing MEPs for the first time.  They will be part of a projected alliance with Marine Le Pen’s forces.

In the Netherlands, Europe’s best known Islamophobic politician, Geert Wilders of the Dutch Freedom Party, had a difficult start to the campaign when several of his own party officials objected to his apparent efforts to shift the party’s agenda onto a broader anti-immigrant stance.  This internal party crisis over “racism” has led to Wilders’ party falling from 17% to 13%: they won 4 MEPs last time, but will drop to 3.  Though they will presumably ally with the French National Front in the European Parliament, there remain big questions over whether they are nationalists or merely anti-Islam.

In Bulgaria the nationalist ‘Ataka’ party was crushed, losing both their MEPs after their vote fell from 12% to 3%.  Bulgaria’s infant democracy – plagued by endemic corruption and economic crises – has seen several brief bursts of support for protest parties.  It seems that Ataka’s moment has passed, with most of the vote shifting to a new party – ‘Bulgaria Without Censorship’, who have taken 10.4% in their first campaign.

Similarly in Romania the nationalist Greater Romania Party, which in 2009 elected 3 MEPs including its leader Vadim Tudor, slipped this year from 8.7% to 2.9% and will lose all three seats, having again lost support to various independent populists and protest parties.

The political and economic crisis which has damaged establishment parties across Europe has also had an effect in Spain, which until recently had a predominant two party system.  Both the mainstream conservatives and the mainstream socialists suffered, but despite a lot of publicity the UKIP-style ‘Vox’ party has failed, polling only 1.6%.  The big winners in Spain have not been nationalists or right-wing Eurosceptics, but rather the far left.

In Italy the big winners were the ‘Five Star Movement’, a populist protest party founded by television comedian Beppe Grillo.  They took 25.5% in their first European election campaign, finishing runners-up behind the mainstream left Democratic Party.  The big losers were the mainstream conservative ‘Forza Italia’, led by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose vote fell from 35.3% to 17.0%.  The regionalist ‘Northern League’ fell from 10.2% to 6.0%.  Italian nationalists have paid the price for years of splits, and have fallen behind the extreme left.  The strongest nationalist party, running a joint slate labelled ‘Brothers of Italy – National Alliance’, polled 3.5%.

Here in the UK the BNP were heavily defeated, with further progress for UKIP and an unexpectedly good night for the Greens. Every single result declared was a lost deposit for the BNP.

In the Yorkshire & Humber region the BNP lost the seat which was won by Andrew Brons in 2009. The BNP vote fell from 9.8% to 1.6%, a lost deposit and utter humiliation for a once proud nationalist party.

In the East Midlands region, which contains some traditional nationalist strongholds, the BNP vote fell from 8.7% to 1.6%.

In North East England the BNP vote has collapsed from 8.9% to 1.7%, which means a lost deposit for the party in that region. UKIP and Labour each gained a seat here, with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats each losing a seat.

Another lost deposit for the BNP was in Eastern England, where the vote for Nick Griffin’s party fell from 6.1% to 0.8%. UKIP topped the poll in this region, and gained a seat at the expense of the Liberal Democrats (who were again wiped out and this time finished behind the Greens).

In South West England the BNP vote fell from 3.9% to 0.7%, and the party finished bottom of the poll behind the English Democrats. Needless to say this was another lost deposit.

In South East England the BNP vote again collapsed from 4.4% to 0.7%: this was another region where the BNP finished behind even the English Democrats.

In Nick Griffin’s home region of Wales, his party’s vote fell from 5.4% to 1.0%: only a fraction ahead of the tiny Britain First party run by Griffin’s former associates Jim Dowson and Paul Golding, who polled 0.9%.

At 1.30 a.m. (UK time) we were still awaiting results from the London region, because Third World style chaos affected the counting of votes in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.  This was no surprise to those of us who know the area…  Eventually at 3 a.m. London’s results were declared, bucking the national trend by delivering a landslide victory to Labour and only modest gains for UKIP, who retained just one seat in the capital.  But in one respect London was in line with the nationwide results: the BNP vote slumped from 4.9% to 0.9%.

Finally in Scotland the BNP vote fell from 2.5% to 0.8%, beaten by Britain First on 1.0%.

We will update this page tomorrow as final results across Europe become known, and the next issue of Heritage and Destiny will reflect on the future for post-Griffin British nationalism, as well as the prospects for some form of meaningful alliance between the wide variety of more successful European nationalist parties.

 

Nationalism in 2014 – a Who’s Who of who (not) to vote for!

Elections to the European Parliament will be held across the 28 nations of the European Union between 22-25 May 2014. The big losers will be conservative and liberal parties. The big winners will be assorted socialist and centre-left parties, but also various groups that could be termed the dissident right, which can be broken down into three types of nationalist:

A) parties that are essentially conservative or neo-conservative in their social and economic policies, but which defy the mainstream post-1945 conservative project of European federalism;
B) parties that are radical nationalist rather than conservative, but which seek to dissociate themselves from mid-20th century nationalist traditions by avoiding anything that offends Jews, and often by explicitly endorsing Zionism and obsessively focusing on Muslims;
C) radical nationalist parties who choose not to go down the Islamo-obsessive route, and in some cases explicitly align themselves with mid-20th century fascist or national socialist traditions.

In this survey, and in our report on the European election results which will appear in H&D 61, we will attempt to indicate which European parties belong to which of the above categories, though as will be seen this is sometimes impossible, with several parties blurring the boundaries.

Austria – Category B
The political mould in Austria is influenced by centuries of religious and dynastic wars. The country’s very name derives from the notion of an eastern Germanic kingdom or empire (Österreich), and in modern times this was reunited in a single Reich for seven years from 1938 to 1945. It might surprise some readers to learn that of the three competing strands in Austrian democratic politics – conservative, socialist and liberal – it is the liberal strand which has traditionally been most in favour of pan-German unity, since conservatives were more strongly Catholic and hostile to northern German Protestantism.
Consequently after 1945, surviving Austrian national socialists and their sympathisers regrouped in the liberal Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), which became one of Europe’s most successful nationalist parties under the leadership of Jörg Haider after 1986. Haider broke away from the party in 2005 and was killed in a car accident three years later, but the FPÖ has revived and refocused on an anti-Islamic strategy.
Alongside the Flemish separatist Vlaams Belang, the FPÖ is a formerly radical nationalist party which has sought to reinvent itself by genuflecting to international Zionism. Though its ideological contortions might cause internal problems in the future, for the moment the FPÖ is again enjoying electoral success, winning 20.5% of last year’s general election vote. They are confidently expected to repeat this success at the Euro-election, returning to their mid-1990s peak support.
The FPÖ’s MEPs will be allied to the French FN and Flemish VB in the strongest nationalist bloc ever seen in the European Parliament. The rival BZÖ, which was formed by former FPÖ leader Haider in 2005 but has since adopted a more “moderate” strategy, will field a slate headed by MEP Angelika Werthmann who defected to the BZÖ from a now-defunct anti-corruption group and has been promoted to replace Jörg Haider’s daughter as number one on the party’s list. However the BZÖ has declined drastically since Haider’s death and is likely to poll only around 2%.

Belgium – Category B
Of all the 28 countries in the European Union, Belgium is the most artificial state: French-speaking “Walloon” areas include the capital Brussels, an isolated enclave, entirely surrounded by Dutch-speaking Flemish. Flemish nationalists were once repressed by the Belgian state, and turned to the paramilitary and national socialist VMO. To some extent the Flemish nationalist Vlaams Blok grew out of the VMO, and was effectively banned by the Belgian courts for “racism” in 2004. The VB was reformed as the Vlaams Belang, and is now one of Europe’s strongest nationalist parties – allied to the French FN despite traditional cultural divisions.
Like the FPÖ, the VB has tried to shun its national socialist antecedents, and rebranded itself as an Islamo-obsessive, pro-Zionist party. Due to the peculiarities of Belgian politics their MEPs are elected in separate electoral colleges, and the VB only competes in the Flemish section, which elects 12 of the 21 Belgian MEPs.
After the elections, one would expect the VB to ally with the French FN and the Austrian FPÖ.
In the French-speaking half of Belgium, there are racial nationalists in a Belgian version of the FN (a Walloon dominated unitarist party), but these are not electorally significant and for legal reasons might not even be able to contest this year’s elections.

Bulgaria – Category C
The Ataka (Attack) party was founded by radical Bulgarian nationalist journalist Volen Siderov in 2005 and quickly achieved an electoral breakthrough. Siderov took 21.5% of first preference votes in the 2006 Bulgarian election, and although his party has failed to match this result in subsequent contests, Ataka still has two MEPs and is established as the country’s fourth largest party.
Siderov’s anti-NATO, pro-nationalisation stance – with his uncompromising criticisms of Zionism, international Freemasonry and his own country’s gypsies – will make it difficult for Ataka to cooperate in the European Parliament with more squeamish and self-consciously “moderate” nationalist parties, although Ataka was part of the short-lived “Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty” group which briefly united European Parliamentary nationalists in 2007.

Croatia – Category B/C
Having joined the European Union in July 2013, Croatia will be taking part in Euro-elections for the first time this year. The main nationalist party is the Croatian Party of Rights, which has cordial relations with mainstream European nationalist groups such as the FN but (partly due to a history of splits) has declined in support and currently has no MPs in the Croatian Parliament. It is most unlikely to win any European seats this year.

Cyprus – Category C
An EU member since 2004, politics in Cyprus is still dominated by divisions between Turkish and Greek sections of the island. The National Popular Front (ELAM) is a Greek Cypriot nationalist party which has links to the controversial and increasingly successful Greek national socialist party Golden Dawn. ELAM polled around 1% at the most recent Cypriot parliamentary and presidential elections, and is most unlikely to be winning seats in the European Parliament, unless Cypriot politics undergoes the type of seismic transformation that boosted their sister party in Athens.

Czech Republic – Category A
Racial nationalism in the Czech Republic is confined to extra-parliamentary and sometimes illegal groups: no radical nationalist party will contest this year’s Czech elections. A UKIP-style populist, anti-EU party – Dawn of Direct Democracy, often known simply as Dawn – was founded last year by a half-Japanese businessman who broke away from the main Czech conservative party. Dawn took almost 7% of the vote at last year’s Czech general election and might hope to win one or two European seats this year, in which case they would logically ally with UKIP.

Denmark – Category A/B
The anti-immigration Danish People’s Party (DPP) won two European seats in 2009 with 15.3% of the vote – their best result since the party’s foundation in 1995. The DPP is a virulently anti-Islamic party, but not racial nationalist: effectively a more hardline version of UKIP, similar to Geert Wilders’ party in Holland.
Denmark also has a Eurosceptic party with roots in leftist and green movements: the People’s Movement Against the EU, which has one MEP.

Estonia – Category A/B
The newly formed Conservative People’s Party of Estonia (EKRE), a merger of two earlier conservative parties, is a UKIP-style eurosceptic party, with an anti-immigration stance, but which also adopts some radical economic policies – including cooperative banks and even currency reform – which would be anathema to UKIP’s neo-Thatcherites. As with many nationalist movements in countries which were formerly part of the Soviet Union, the EKRE’s platform is influenced by hostility to Russian influence.
Given recent events in Ukraine, any EKRE success in this year’s election could have dramatic consequences, though for now the very best they could expect would be to win one of the six Estonian MEPs.
Martin Helme, son of the EKRE leader, recently told a television interviewer that the party’s immigration policy was: “If you’re black, go back. As simple as that. We shouldn’t allow this problem to emerge in the first place.”

Finland – Category A
The Finns Party (previously known as the True Finns) – led by populist eurosceptic, Catholic convert and Millwall fan Timo Soini – has one MEP and might hope to win a second seat this year. They are allied to UKIP in the European Parliament, though Soini addressed the Conservative Party conference in 2011.

France – Category B/C
Marine Le Pen’s National Front (FN) will provide the big story of this year’s elections, and hopes to be the core of the largest nationalist group ever in the European Parliament. 2009 was one of the FN’s weaker results, when they won only three seats after polling 6.3%. This year they should gain at least an extra ten seats, and opinion polls suggest that they could become the largest French party, overtaking both conservatives and socialists. Marine Le Pen then hopes to negotiate a broad agreement between many diverse European nationalist and eurosceptic groups, though disappointingly she seems to be focusing on an unachievable deal to unite the most moderate and Islamo-obsessive parties, while shunning traditional nationalists such as Hungary’s Jobbik and the Greek Golden Dawn. Her big problem is that the FN itself (partly for reasons deeply rooted in French history and political culture) has aspects which the likes of UKIP or the Danish People’s Party will forever regard as too “extreme”.
France also has a UKIP-style, non-racial eurosceptic party – Arise the Republic (DLR) – but having achieved less than 2% last time, and only 2-3% in recent polls, the DLR is almost certain to win zero MEPs.

Germany – Category A
Since the decline of the Republican Party – which elected six MEPs in 1989, including party leader and Waffen-SS veteran Franz Schönhuber – no radical German nationalist party has come close to winning a European seat.
Last year the German political mould was shaken, though not quite broken, by a new eurosceptic party – Alternative for Germany (AfD) – polling 4.7% at their first general election outing and only just missing out on the threshold for election to the German Parliament.
Current polls suggest that AfD could poll around 8% this year, gaining perhaps seven MEPs, but for them even UKIP is too radical an ally.
The main radical German nationalist party – the NPD – is facing renewed state persecution, and will have no serious chance of winning seats, even if it hasn’t been formally banned. Similarly the Republikaner Party no longer has any realistic chance of winning MEPs, and neither does the Islam-obsessed PRO movement.

Greece – Category C
The Greek national socialist party Golden Dawn provided Europe’s most surprising political headlines during the past two years, rising from the furthest margins of Greek politics to poll almost 7% in two general elections in May and June 2012, as the Greek economic crisis threatened to descend into civil war, destabilising the entire European Union project.
Last year the Greek establishment moved to proscribe Golden Dawn, arresting leaders, while in a parallel move to extinguish the national socialist challenge, far left terrorists murdered two Golden Dawn activists in a drive-by shooting at the party headquarters in Athens.
Against this background of legal and terroristic repression, it will be very surprising if Golden Dawn can match their 2012 election campaigns this year, but opinion polls suggest the party could achieve between 9% and 12%, which would give them perhaps four MEPs. In previous European elections the party had never achieved more than 0.5%.
Golden Dawn MEPs would find logical allies in Hungary’s Jobbik, but sadly will probably be shunned by other mainstream nationalists such as Marine Le Pen, pursuing more “moderate” allies.
Greece also has a UKIP-style party – the Independent Greeks, created as a breakaway from the ruling conservatives. They will probably win one or two European seats, but having finished slightly ahead of Golden Dawn in the 2012 general elections, they have since been overtaken by their more radical nationalist rivals. (Similarly the Greek far left have overtaken the moderate socialists.)

Hungary – Category C
Alongside Greece, Hungary has Europe’s most successful radical nationalist party. Jobbik polled 14.7% at the 2009 European election, rising to 16.7% at the Hungarian general election the following year. For reasons deeply rooted in the history of Hungarian nationalist resistance to Bolshevism during the 20th century, Jobbik is unembarrassed by open criticism of Zionist Jewry (and earlier Jewish involvement with Communist parties). This has led some other European nationalists to shy away from alliances with Jobbik. There is also a potentially intractable problem of border disputes between Hungary and her neighbours, resulting from the injustices of the Treaty of Trianon after the First World War.
Jobbik looks likely to poll well at the Hungarian general election in April, and gain an extra European seat the following month, but will there be enough radical nationalist colleagues from other countries to form a viable parliamentary bloc?

Ireland – none
The Republic of Ireland has no electorally credible racial nationalist, or even eurosceptic nationalist party. The big question in Irish politics will be whether Sinn Féin – political arm of the terrorist IRA – will recapture the seat they lost in 2009, and perhaps even gain a second. In the European Parliament, Sinn Féin MEPs ally with various far left groups, many of which (for example in France and Greece) will also increase their support this year.

Italy – Category A (?)
After the collapse of the postwar Italian political system in the early 1990s, some formerly radical nationalists allied with the corrupt tycoon and populist conservative Silvio Berlusconi in a cross-party alliance against the Left. This resulted in Gianfranco Fini, leader of the former neo-fascist party MSI, rebranding his party as the National Alliance (AN), and then merging with Berlusconi’s forces as the People of Freedom (PdL). Fini served for five years as Italy’s Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister under Berlusconi, and then for another five years as Speaker of the Italian Parliament.
In recent years Fini broke away from Berlusconi over the latter’s financial crimes, but has if anything become even more politically liberal, and is now unrecognisable as the young neo-fascist protegé of MSI founder Giorgio Almirante back in the 1970s.
Fini’s ex-fascists split from Berlusconi’s coalition in 2010 to create a new “Future and Freedom” party, but this has suffered further splits over how far to embrace either (or both) social and economic liberalism, and has now been deserted by most of its founders.
In advance of this year’s elections, the most credible Italian nationalist party seems to be Brothers of Italy, founded at the end of 2012 and led by a former youth activist in the AN, Giorgia Meloni, and another ex-fascist, Ignazio La Russa, who was Defence Minister alongside Fini in Berlusconi’s government. They will hope to reach the 4% threshold to elect an MEP, a hurdle that is certainly too high for any of the more radical nationalist parties, such as Roberto Fiore’s Forza Nuova.
Despite its leaders’ fascist pedigree, Brothers of Italy is really a conservative party, as is its smaller rival The Right (La Destra), led by another former MSI activist Francesco Storace, who was President of the Lazio region around Rome from 2000 to 2005 and then had a year as Health Minister in a Berlusconi government.
The most radical challenge to the Italian establishment is from the populist comedian Beppe Grillo, whose Five Star Movement is polling around 25% and is in some ways comparable to the U.S. Tea Party. While he reflects widespread disillusionment, Grillo himself has no substantial nationalist programme.
The regionalist Northern League, which was a major force in Italian politics after 1993 and had some racial nationalist aspects (though alienating southern Italian neo-fascists) now seems in decline and could even fall below the 4% threshold, having lost many anti-system protest voters to Grillo.

Latvia – Category A
As with several nations that emerged from the former Soviet bloc, Latvia’s politics is complicated by the symbolism of 20th century anti-communism, with nationalists paying homage to political ancestors who were allied to national socialism seventy years ago, but whose modern politics have little or no radical edge.
The National Alliance is the fourth-largest party in Latvia, and has an anti-immigration and anti-Russian platform. It was formed as a coalition of For Fatherland and Freedom (which despite its radical sounding name was actually a free-market conservative party allied to Britain’s Conservatives), with the more hardline nationalist All for Latvia. They have one MEP, but are unlikely to join even the most moderate efforts to create a European Parliamentary nationalist bloc.

Lithuania – Category A
Order and Justice – the third-largest party in Lithuania – is allied to UKIP and has two MEPs. A potential wild card in Lithuanian politics is an anti-corruption party founded in 2012 – The Way of Courage – who gained 8% at the 2012 general election, and has some potential to rally populist nationalist voters. The national socialist Lithuanian National Union has no legal status and will be unable to contest the elections.

Luxembourg – Category A
In the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg – one of the original pioneers of the European unity project – there are no serious nationalist parties, and the only significant eurosceptic party is the Alternative Democratic Reform Party, which polled 7.4% in the 2009 elections but would need more than double that support to win a European seat.

Malta – Category C
Norman Lowell’s Imperium Europa is (alongside Golden Dawn) the most radical nationalist party contesting the European Parliamentary elections. Founded in 2000, Imperium Europa has frequently been subjected to legal repression, and would need a Greek-style political revolution to win a European seat. The eurosceptic Libertas Malta, which contested the 2009 elections, is no longer active.

Netherlands – Category A/B
Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom (PVV) is Europe’s most prominent anti-Islamic party. Though most of his party’s programme would be compatible with the likes of UKIP, his extreme Islamophobic rhetoric makes Nigel Farage nervous. The PVV’s closest allies are the Flemish VB and the Austrian FPÖ, and Marine Le Pen hopes that these three parties will ally with her FN after the May elections to form the most credible nationalist bloc in the history of the European Union. But will the policies of such a bloc amount to anything beyond Islamophobia?
The PVV currently has four MEPs, and might hope possibly to gain one more this year. Wilders will then have a difficult choice as to how far to pursue an alliance with Le Pen which would alienate some of his existing friends such as the Danish People’s Party.

Poland – Category A
The main Polish opposition party Law and Justice (which in the European Parliament has been allied to British and Latvian conservatives) will be fighting this year’s elections on a joint ticket agreed with “Right Wing of the Republic”, a socially conservative party focused on maintaining Poland’s Catholic traditions and opposition to abortion. If the British Conservative Party were to move away from euroscepticism, these parties would probably ally with UKIP but have little in common with radical nationalists.

Portugal – Category C
The main Portuguese nationalist movement is the National Renovator Party (PNR), which has forged links with other European nationalist parties including Golden Dawn and the German NPD. The PNR is unlikely to mount a substantial electoral challenge this year. As in Spain, surviving supporters of the pre-1970s dictatorship tend to support the main conservative party, and there is no UKIP-style challenge to this establishment.

Romania – Category C
There are two nationalist parties in Romania, which have been strong enough to elect MEPs, but have adopted maverick policies which put them at odds with potential allies in the European Parliament. Some of these problems are chronic, given the border disputes between Hungary and Romania, and the potential for Romanians to take offence at Western European anti-gypsy policies, which could be interpreted as anti-Romanian.
However part of the problem is related to the personalities of the two Romanian nationalist leaders. Vadim Tudor, founder of the Greater Romania Party (which elected three MEPs in 2009), built his political career as an ostentatious anti-semite, but then shifted towards a more pro-Zionist policy, hiring Jewish public relations adviser Nati Meir. A couple of years later Tudor sacked Meir and reverted to an anti-Jewish policy.
The rival nationalist New Generation Party (Christian Democratic) is led by the owner of well known football club Steaua Bucharest, Gigi Becali. Briefly allied with Tudor’s party in 2009, Becali’s organisation is regarded as even more anti-Jewish, and following in the tradition of the Iron Guard (whose leader Corneliu Codreanu was venerated by Nick Griffin’s NF faction during the 1980s). In May 2013 Becali was given a three year prison sentence for a fraud involving 1990s land deals, and though he has conducted football business from his prison cell, his party is unlikely to campaign substantially this year.

Slovakia – Category A/B
The Slovak National Party (SNS – founded out of the break-up of the Soviet bloc in 1989) is a eurosceptic party whose politics are complicated by hostility to their Hungarian neighbours. The party is often accused of neo-fascist tendencies due to their support for the historic legacy of Slovak leader Jozef Tiso, who was allied to national socialist Germany, but realistically its 21st century politics are not very radical. The SNS has one MEP, who is allied to UKIP.

Slovenia – Category C
The Slovenian National Party (SNS) is an example of the post-Cold War tendency for nationalist parties in Eastern Europe to challenge the New World Order while adopting some semi-nostalgic policies of sympathy with the old communist bloc. For reasons linked to Balkan history, the party is strongly anti-Catholic. The SNS polled 2.9% at the 2009 European elections, and would need to treble this vote to gain an MEP.

Spain – Category A/C
After Gen. Franco’s death in 1975, almost all those who had supported his nationalist forces during and after the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 aligned themselves with the conservative People’s Party (PP). There are various nationalist parties – such as the national socialist National Alliance (AN), led by veteran lawyer Pedro Pablo Peña – but none (either of the radical or UKIP style) have had any chance of winning European Parliamentary seats.
At the start of 2014 dissident right-wingers broke away from the governing PP to form Vox, a new party that seems more eurosceptic and more hardline in its opposition to ETA terrorism and might manage the 2% required to elect a Spanish MEP. This is the third eurosceptic party in recent years to take its name from a Latin noun, after Robert Kilroy-Silk’s UKIP breakaway Veritas and the Irish businessman Declan Ganley’s Libertas. Each of these earlier parties sank without trace!
As in many other European countries, the only form of nationalist or traditionalist sentiment that is deemed acceptable is in a form which opposes the existing state: i.e. regionalist and separatist parties in Catalonia, the Basque country, Valencia, etc. Some of these join forces for electoral purposes and elect a couple of MEPs. In November 2014 the Catalan regional government plans to stage a referendum on whether to break away from Spain and create an independent Catalonia, but the government in Madrid has so far ruled this is unconstitutional.
Within Catalan nationalism, there is a growing anti-immigration and anti-Islamic party – Platform for Catalonia. Later this year H&D will publish a special feature on the relationship between ethnic nationalism and regionalism/separatism.

Sweden – Category A/B
The Sweden Democrats – like the Flemish VB and the Austrian FPÖ – have trimmed their nationalist and immigration policies in the direction of Islamo-obsession, and have many Christian immigrants among their candidates. Having won no European representation in 2009 (falling just short of the 4% threshold), they made a breakthrough the following year to gain 20 seats in the Swedish Parliament. They are sure to gain one or two MEPs this year, and will be part of any negotiations to create a new European nationalist bloc, with or without Marine Le Pen’s FN.
The far more radical National Democrats, who have had ties to the BNP, sadly have no chance of winning a European seat.

United Kingdom – Category A
There will be no radical nationalists elected from the UK this year, with the BNP certain to lose its two MEPs (one of whom – Andrew Brons – has already left the BNP to join the new British Democratic Party but will be retiring from the Parliament this year, as he always pledged to do). No post-BNP party has yet established firm electoral foundations.
UKIP is certain to increase its support, and has a 50-50 chance of emerging as the largest single party – though it is highly questionable where its eurosceptic but multiracialist agenda can go from there.
In Northern Ireland (where three MEPs are elected under a different voting system) UKIP is standing for the first time, but in any case will be irrelevant. Sinn Féin will top the poll: the majority Protestant community remaining divided and without effective representation.

The European Parliamentary system allows MEPs to form transnational groups reflecting a shared ideology: these groups gain an officially recognised status, extra funding, staff etc., if they can attract a minimum of 25 MEPs from seven different states.
UKIP-style parties (i.e. Category A above) currently form a group called Europe of Freedom and Democracy, while several more moderate eurosceptic parties choose to ally with the British Conservative Party as “European Conservatives and Reformists”.
At present nationalist parties (whether Category B or C above) have not managed to secure sufficient numbers to form a group. In the next H&D we will report on Marine Le Pen’s post-election efforts to do so.

 
UK Nationalist Line-Up

Just before this edition of H&D went to press, candidates’ lists for the 2014 European elections were confirmed. Nick Griffin will of course head the BNP list in North West England. The desperate state of the BNP in 2014 is reflected in Simon Darby’s inclusion on the North West slate – Darby is a former West Midlands councillor who now lives in Wales and has no North West connection.

Cathy Duffy – soon to be the last remaining BNP councillor – heads the slate in the East Midlands, where she is joined by the Rev. Robert West and Geoff Dickens, whose backing was crucial in Griffin’s narrow leadership victory three years ago.

In Yorkshire the BNP’s Rotherham organiser Marlene Guest – one of the region’s few remaining Griffin loyalists – will head the slate in a doomed effort to retain the European parliamentary seat won by Andrew Brons five years ago. Number two on the slate is former teacher Adam Walker, imported from the North East region due to the shortage of credible Yorkshire BNP candidates.

The English Democrat slate opposing Mrs Guest is headed by Chris Beverley, who works in the Andrew Brons European office and was a BNP councillor on Leeds City Council from 2006 to 2010. Two fellow ex-BNP candidates – Tom Redmond from Leeds and Ian Sutton from Barnsley – are also on the EDs’ Yorkshire slate.
Elsewhere former BNP and NF activist Gary Butler is an ED candidate for South East England. The lead ED candidate in the West Midlands is Kevin Sills, veteran of several nationalist parties including Ian Anderson’s NF faction, later renamed National Democrats.

In North West England the ED slate includes two BNP defectors from Merseyside – Paul Rimmer and Steve McEllenborough – as well as Anthony Backhouse, a former candidate for the UKIP splinter group Veritas.

Whereas there would once have been keen competition to become a BNP parliamentary candidate, by the start of March 2014 the party’s national elections officer Alwyn Deacon was reduced to advertising on the party’s website for any members willing to stand. In a desperate effort to cobble together full slates in every region, farcical nominations ensued such as the Preston based Tony Bamber standing at the opposite corner of England in the South East region.

At least two smaller eurosceptic parties will be fielding candidates this year. Nikki Sinclaire will be defending the West Midlands seat that she won in 2009, but having quit UKIP in 2010 in protest at the party’s alleged “far right” tendencies, she will stand this year for her new “We Demand a Referendum Now” party, whose activities will confined to the West Midlands despite unfulfilled boasts that Sun columnist Katie Hopkins would be standing for Ms Sinclaire’s party in the South West England region.

In a crowded West Midlands field another UKIP defector, Mike Nattrass MEP, is set to defend his seat under the label “An Independence From Europe”. Mr Nattrass’s party is also contesting the other English regions: bizarrely their lead candidate in the South East is the Dutch MEP Laurence Stassen, who had been leader of Geert Wilders’ Dutch Freedom Party group in the European Parliament but quit last month in a row over Wilders’ apparent move towards a “racist” immigration policy. Ms Stassen represents the liberal, non-racist faction who wanted Wilders’ party merely to oppose Islamist extremism and the EU.

The dying BNP – once a powerful force in the West Midlands region, which came close to electing an MEP in 2009 – has published a slate headed by former Stoke BNP councillor Michael Coleman, who was convicted of “racially aggravated harassment” in 2012 and given an eight-month suspended prison sentence. Second on the West Midlands BNP slate is Nick Griffin’s daughter Jennifer Matthys.

Meanwhile ex-UKIP activist Paul Weston is heading his own Liberty GB slate in South East England. Weston made a name for himself a couple of years ago when he briefly led the British Freedom Party, an attempt to create a political wing of the English Defence League. As H&D revealed at the time, Weston travelled to Canada for meetings with a notorious terrorist group, the Jewish Defence League. Also on Weston’s slate is former BNP student activist Jack Buckby and Enza Ferreri, the party’s Italian-born press officer.

Contrary to earlier promises the BNP will not be standing candidates in Northern Ireland at this year’s election, no doubt fearing humiliation at the hands of UKIP, who have been recruiting significant activists in the Orange Order including defectors from both the Democratic Unionist Party and the “official” Ulster Unionist Party. UKIP will compete for loyalist votes with Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV), the party led by former DUP MEP Jim Allister.

Although claiming to be the political heirs of Sir Oswald Mosley’s pro-European Union Movement, the New British Union decided not to contest this year’s election. Neither the National Front nor the relatively new British Democratic Party will field European candidates, so the only European Parliamentary choices for most English nationalist voters will be between the BNP and the English Democrats, apart from in South East England, where they have the additional option of Paul Weston’s Liberty GB.

Jim Dowson’s Britain First party had been expected to run a spoiler campaign against Nick Griffin in North West England, but have instead taken the pragmatic option of spending their deposit money on slates in Scotland and Wales, which buys them television broadcast time (only viewable of course by Scottish and Welsh voters). Though now based in Northern Ireland, Jim Dowson was active in Scottish anti-abortion politics some years ago, so his decision to head the BFP’s Scottish slate makes some sense. Paul Golding’s candidature in Wales is less explicable: his only connection with the principality dates back to his years working for Nick Griffin. The BFP seems to be putting most of its efforts into street activities in a bid to seize the political ground once held by the EDL.

The uncertain nationalist scene in Europe is matched in the UK, though at a significantly lower level of electoral ambition. The BNP is likely to respond to electoral rejection by drifting further towards “extremist” fringe politics, but unlike in Greece and Eastern Europe this radical posturing will be essentially hollow, without any ideological core commitment at the top of the party.

Peter Rushton, Manchester, England

This article was first published in Heritage and Destiny magazine, issue #60 (May/June 2014). If you require a free sample copy, email us at – heritageanddestiny@yahoo.com

Solidarity with Golden Dawn: H&D Assistant Editor Speaks at Greek Embassy Demo

A group of British patriots, joined by several European comrades, assemble outside the Greek Embassy on November 9th to demonstrate in solidarity with Golden Dawn, the brave Greek nationalist party who enjoyed unprecedented electoral success earlier this year, but then faced a brutal crackdown by the supposed forces of democracy and legality.

The oppressive measures of the Greek government culminated in the murder of two Golden Dawn activists just eight days earlier.

Manolis Kapelonis and Giorgos Fountoulis were shot dead outside the Golden Dawn offices in Athens.  British and European patriots pay tribute to their martyrdom in the cause of our continent’s renaissance.

A video of part of the demonstration can be viewed below.