One law for them and one law for us?

A recent decision by the Crown Prosecution Service raises serious questions as to whether ‘anti-terrorist’ law in the UK is being enforced in a partisan manner, or whether there is one law for those perceived to be on the radical left, and another for those perceived to be on the radical right.

Press reports this week suggest that far leftists seem to have got away with defying the UK’s Terrorism Act, Schedule 7 – the same law that has been repeatedly used against H&D, most recently to detain our European correspondent Isabel Peralta and seize her phone and computer.

On Friday 23rd June, the CPS and the Counter Terrorism Command of the Metropolitan Police announced there would be no further action against Ernest Moret, a publisher who works as foreign rights manager for the Paris firm La Fabrique.

Moret was detained at St Pancras station under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, on the evening of 17th April 2023 after travelling by Eurostar from Paris (as reported in H&D two months ago). He was en route to the London Book Fair, where his firm was working in close collaboration with another far-left publisher, London-based Verso Books.

He allegedly refused to provide UK police with the pin code for his mobile phone, leading to his arrest and transfer to a London police station where he was held until the following day, “on suspicion of wilfully obstructing a Schedule 7 examination”.

Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 entitles UK police and border control officers to question anyone entering the country at any airport, seaport, or in this case rail terminal (classed as a “port of entry”). Those arriving (even if they are UK citizens) can be detained for up to six hours without any reason being given and without any evidence or specific suspicion against them.

Since this six-hour period begins when the interrogation starts, then in practice the detention period can be longer (as one can be kept for some time before questioning).  

Those detained are required to answer whatever questions are asked of them, and do not have the customary right to silence. They are obliged to hand over their possessions and provide any passwords, pin numbers etc needed for officers to be able to access electronic devices.

Any refusal to answer, or refusal to provide such access codes is regarded as an offence under the Terrorism Act.

Isabel Peralta addressing an H&D meeting in Preston last September, after her six-hour detention under Schedule 7 the previous night

Officers do not need to show any reasonable grounds for detaining and questioning someone under Schedule 7.  Although the rationale behind the law is to allow officers to obtain information relevant to anti-terrorist investigations, there is no implication that those detained are themselves terrorists or sympathetic to terrorism.

A joint statement by La Fabrique and Verso wilfully ignored this legal reality, claiming that Moret’s participation in leftwing protests in France against President Macron, had been cited “as a justification” for his detention and questioning. No such “justification” is necessary under Schedule 7, but Moret’s employers seem to believe that the far left is exempt from laws that apply to the rest of us, especially to the so-called ‘far right’.

H&D has always argued that nationalists should avoid unnecessary confrontations with the police. We have always maintained that (outside the specific context of Northern Ireland) paramilitary activity and anything resembling terrorism is unjustifiable and counter-productive to the cause of racial nationalism.

Accordingly, we have consistently argued that if detained under Schedule 7, then whatever we might think about the disproportionate and arbitrary powers conveyed by that law, nationalists should accept that this is (for now) UK law and we should cooperate with those enforcing it.

H&D’s editor Mark Cotterill has been detained twice at Manchester Airport under Schedule 7, once when returning from Cancun, Mexico, and once when returning from Adelaide, Australia. Assistant editor Peter Rushton was detained at London Stansted Airport in 2019 after returning from Düsseldorf. And most recently, in September last year our European correspondent Isabel Peralta was detained at Manchester Airport on arrival from Madrid. (click here to view an interview with Isabel about this Schedule 7 detention)

The latter case was especially serious, since not content with an interrogation lasting almost six hours, the authorities retained Isabel’s phone and computer for almost a week.

H&D is now writing to the Metropolitan Police and to the UK’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, seeking clarification of the Moret case. Naturally we know no more about the circumstances of his arrest (and his later release) than what has appeared in press reports and police statements, but these raise troubling questions which must be answered if nationalists are to retain confidence in the impartiality of the police, and if we are to continue to recommend compliance with police investigations.

Background note:

Verso was founded in 1970 as New Left Books, and throughout its history the firm has specialised in works by Marxist authors. It is especially associated with the so-called ‘Frankfurt School’ of Marxist theorists.

Ernest Moret’s employer La Fabrique was founded in 1998 by the left-wing French Jewish author Éric Hazan. It has published several controversial extreme leftist texts including The Coming Insurrection, written by a so-called “Invisible Committee” and calling for a revolutionary uprising. Moret’s employer Hazan was investigated by French anti-terrorist police seeking to confirm that the author of The Coming Insurrection was in fact Julien Coupat, who was arrested in 2008 for “direction of a terrorist organisation” in connection with the organised sabotage of French railway lines.

Information leading to Coupat’s arrest (and subsequent court cases that ended in legal chaos and acquittals) was supplied to French police by Mark Kennedy, an undercover English police officer who had infliltrated Coupat’s organisation. Kennedy’s actions as a police spy are themselves now among many such undercover operations being examined by an official enquiry.

In other words, whatever Ernest Moret has or hasn’t done, the UK authorities knew that his employer La Fabrique was closely connected to someone who was the focus of a very long-running investigation into politically-motivated criminal activity. And they knew that this anarchism (predating Moret’s involvement with La Fabrique) had also involved people in England.

Nothing published in H&D has ever been the subject of criminal charges, and we have never published any article that recommends criminal behaviour. Outside the specific context of Northern Ireland, we have never endorsed paramilitary activity. It is quite clear that the questioning of Mark Cotterill, Peter Rushton and Isabel Peralta under Schedule 7 was in each case a “fishing expedition” for political intelligence, conducted in the latter case as a favour for the German authorities, and had no connection to any actual or suspected terrorist activity or any other offences against UK law.

Leftists get a taste of their own ‘anti-terrorist’ medicine

Far left activists were outraged this week when a French Marxist publisher was arrested by London police under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act.

Ernest Moret was held for 24 hours after refusing to provide passwords for police to access his phone. He was released on bail yesterday evening.

Racial nationalists have known for many years that Schedule 7 gives UK police and border security officers extraordinary powers that would once have been seen as unconstitutional. Our own citizens as well as visitors can be detained on entering the country, and questioned for up to six hours.

Unlike any other arrest, those detained under Schedule 7 have no right to remain silent and are obliged to surrender their phones, computers and other devices, together with any relevant passwords. The authorities do not require any reason for detaining and questioning anyone under Schedule 7, and their questions can cover any subject.

H&D editor Mark Cotterill at the Saddleworth Hotel in the Australian Outback. This small town was built in the 1840s and named after the Saddleworth area in the Pennine hills of England, near Oldham. On returning from this trip, Mark was detained under Schedule 7 of the ‘Terrorism Act’.

Four of our H&D team have been detained under Schedule 7 in recent years. Editor Mark Cotterill has been stopped twice at Manchester Airport after returning from a non-political holiday to Mexico and a visit to H&D supporters in Australia. Assistant editor Peter Rushton was stopped at London Stansted Airport on returning from a visit to Germany. And last September our Spanish comrade and H&D writer Isabel Peralta was stopped at Manchester Airport, the night before speaking at our 2022 meeting in Preston.

Isabel’s case was especially outrageous because her computer and phone were retained for almost a week, without any justification, as part of a political ‘fishing expedition’ where UK authorities were liaising with political police and intelligence agencies in Germany and Spain.


Everyone at H&D understands that we have very limited rights under Schedule 7, but it seems that the far left is only now waking up to this reality.

In this week’s case, it seems likely that London police were cooperating with their Paris counterparts in an investigation of Ernest Moret’s involvement with protests against President Macron’s changes to French pensions.

Moret and a colleague were visiting fellow Marxists in London, associated with the well-known leftwing publishers Verso.

His fellow leftists at the Guardian and BBC, as well as the National Union of Journalists, were happy to publicise Moret’s case as some sort of outrage. Yet the same wokeists were perfectly happy when Mark, Peter and Isabel (who similarly have no connection to anything that could reasonably be called ‘terrorism’) were detained under the exact same law.

Why do Marxists assume that dictatorial laws will only be used against ‘racists’ and ‘fascists’, and that the far left is immune?

British patriots unite in anti-immigration protests

While Rishi Sunak’s fake ‘Conservative’ government attempts to repeat the traditional Tory con trick, British patriots have been increasingly active in taking to the streets for real anti-immigration campaigns. Yesterday in Cannock, Staffordshire, Patriotic Alternative held a protest march against the use of hotels and council facilities for illegal immigrants.

Members of other groups including the British Democrats, as well as unaffiliated locals, also attended.

In Cannock, following earlier protests across the UK, the protesters emphasised the difference between genuine refugees and economic migrants. Events have been held in very different parts of the country, ranging from Skegness to Liverpool, united in resistance to a policy that has been imposed on them by treacherous politicians and Whitehall bureaucrats.

As an earlier PA campaign stressed: “We were never asked!”

An especially positive aspect of recent campaigns has been the level of activism in Scotland: increasing numbers of Scots are rejecting the fake, ‘woke’ nationalism of Nicola Sturgeon’s declining SNP. One main focus of the current protests is Erskine, west of Glasgow, where the Home Office has dumped 200 young male asylum seekers in a local hotel. These migrants have no legal documentation and have yet to be vetted.

Understandably, locals are angry at having these illegal immigrants dumped in their midst. Especially in a council area where almost 400 indigenous Scots are registered as homeless.

Protests are taking place every Sunday at 12 noon near the Muthu Glasgow River Hotel, where the illegal migrants are being housed. Any H&D readers able to travel to Erskine are encouraged to attend.

UPDATE: H&D subscriber John Ings, who has been flying the flag for racial nationalism in Devon for many years, reports below on his long-distance trip to support the Cannock demonstration.

The Cannock protest on the 11th of March meant an early start, my alarm set for 0430 hours with a couple of pick-ups and a car change to allow for. 

Once there, the police had arranged with the PA organisers a safe rendezvous site and an en masse march to the protest. Which was welcome as it helped against the cold weather.

It was a combined Patriotic Alternative and concerned locals event to raise the awareness of so-called, asylum seekers being housed in hotels. The eye watering cost to the taxpayers is well known of course, yet the finances are but one piece of the problematic jigsaw open borders cause, and I’m pleased that both the PA and local speakers did address the cultural and numerical aspects as well as the financial burden.

It was to our advantage that the protest was so well organised, as the flag waving PA protesters were able to walk into a charged arena to great applause and cheers from the locals and boos from the mentally-ill, unwashed counter-demonstrators. Who, by the way, seemed confused as to why they were there. Calling for things like “trans rights” for some reason. I’m not so sure the hotel-dwellers would be on the same hymn sheet as them.

It also meant that we could present ourselves as decent, concerned (and clean) people. I believe there were a few local hot-heads, but they were limited to shouting through the police line and were not part of the PA group. It does make me wonder if the authorities will learn a lesson from this and in future deliberately engineer physical confrontation in order to get their MSM anti-white propaganda. They certainly have past form for this tactic.

I never attended past National Front marches when at their peak and although this was not on the same scale, it certainly gave an appreciation of how energising they must have been: it did generate an adrenaline charged atmosphere.

Refreshingly, the locals were not cowed by the name calling by our craven low testosterone antagonists, and even cheered when our speakers mentioned white people’s concerns about the invasion. There was even crowd participation when called upon to respond. 

There’s no doubt that the local support and a lively audience combined with the excellent PA speakers raised this protest to a more effective level.

I think we can gauge the measure of success by the cheers of the locals and that the MSM have ignored it. For me, I was pleased the usually apolitical public were excited and motivated by the protest, and this shows that old fashioned street activity is, as it always has been, the way to win. We just have to keep going and keep our optics positive.

It was a trek back home, but fuelled by pie and chips in the pub, well worth the effort.

Well done to Patriotic Alternative.
John Ings

Obituary – Professor Roger Pearson M.Sc. (Econ), Ph.D., (London): 1927 – 2023

Dr Roger Pearson (above right) has died aged 95: he is seen here with his good friend Dr Ed Fields in Washington DC, in 2000, during the time when H&D editor Mark Cotterill worked at Dr Pearson’s office.

All of us at H&D were saddened to hear of the recent death of Dr. Roger Pearson, who was a long-standing subscriber to Heritage and Destiny magazine – in fact he was our eldest subscriber, aged 95, when he died in Washington DC, in January.

Dr. Pearson was a true English gentleman in every sense. He was born in London, in 1927, but spent much of his childhood in Yorkshire. In October 1944, towards the end of the Second World War, he joined the British Army, despite his entitlement to exemption from military service to attend University after completing his Higher School Certificate examinations.

He had volunteered for military service and was inducted into the British Army with a view to obtaining a commission in the (British) Indian Army. After completing basic infantry and corps training with the Queens Royal Regiment in Maidstone, Kent, Roger and his fellow cadets embarked for India to attend the British Indian Army Pre-Officer Training School (Pre-OTS) at Bangalore.

Dr Pearson as an officer in the (British) Indian Army in 1946.

In July 1946 he was commissioned from the British Indian Army OTS Kakul (which today is the Pakistan Military Academy) to serve as a 2nd Lieutenant with Indian troops in Meerut. However, with the approaching Independence of India and Pakistan, he was shortly transferred to service as a 1st Lieutenant with the British Indian Division in the occupation of Japan (Shikoku and Tokyo), from January 1947 to January 1948.

I remember him telling me of how shocked and saddened he was by the behaviour of the American GIs in occupied Japan, and their brutal treatment of the local people, including beatings, theft and numerous rapes of young Japanese women. I asked him about the conduct of our own squaddies over there and he said in general they were very well behaved, and he would have expected nothing less from them. Dr. Pearson always had a very low opinion of American soldiers, and hated their “hazing” tactics, which he described as “very unprofessional”.

His final military service was as a 1st Lieutenant with the British Army in Singapore and Malaya, from January to April 1948.

On leaving the army in 1948, Roger attended university in England. After obtaining a B.Sc.(honours) in economics and sociology, he returned to India in 1952 in a business capacity, first as an assistant accountant in Calcutta (now Kolkata), but eventually as the CEO of several companies in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), primarily in the tea industry – then Pakistan’s second largest export. During this period (1959-65) he served on the Board of the Pakistan Tea Association and was elected President, 1963-4. During that year he was ex officio a member of the Pakistan Tea Board, and the Managing Committee of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

During his service in India and East Pakistan, Roger retained a strong interest in cultural matters. While in Calcutta (1955-1959), he made numerous journalistic contributions to The Statesman and to The Hindustan Standard and a few short broadcast presentations on All-India Radio. He also wrote Eastern Interlude, a Social History of the European Community in Calcutta from 1649-1911, described by the Hindustan Times (India) as “a vivid picture of European social life in India free from prejudices and prepossessions”; by the Hindustan Standard (India) as “objective …brilliant”; by the Indian PEN “Exceptionally well-balanced”; and by The Times (London) as “most diverting and readable…amusing and vivid… it comes to life on every page”. While I was working for him at his DC office, he republished the book (the original was well out of print by then) around 1999 and sold a further couple of hundred copies.

He was invited to serve as a member of the Cultural Advisory Committee of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, but this honour was brief because he soon afterwards left India for Pakistan. Roger Pearson is also proud of having saved the historic and architecturally important South Park Street Cemetery (dating from 1765-1815 when Calcutta was the capital of British India) from demolition. On his offer to set up a restoration fund, the Christian Burial Board, which lacked the funds to restore the decaying monuments, agreed to halt demolition and allow him to establish a fund which, with the eventual support of the Calcutta architect Bernard Matthews, Aurelius David Khan, ICS, and Sir John Woodhead, former and last British Governor of Bengal, succeeded in restoring most of the monuments and having the cemetery declared a National Monument by the Government of India.

Having lost his only brother (a Battle of Britain pilot, killed in North Africa shortly after his 21st birthday), four cousins (three pilots/one aircrew) and two close school friends, all without offspring, to the Second World War, Roger was shocked by the massive dysgenic loss resulting from internecine war in Europe.

He was also saddened by the cultural destruction when he visited war-torn Europe as a student in 1950 and found inspiration at a student summer school in Aachen University in Germany, funded by several European governments with the goal of promoting healing across Europe. Roger instinctively perceived its value and four years later, when employed with a British bank in Calcutta, he founded Northern World, a cultural, non-political Journal of North European Friendship, with the particular goal of promoting reconciliation between the closely related nations of Northern Europe who had so recently been engaged in destroying each other in two “Brothers’ Wars”.

Northern World was favourably received in like-minded circles, including the famed author J.R.R. Tolkien (who also subscribed to AK Chesterton’s Candour journal) and the agrarian environmentalist, Rolf Gardiner, both of whom sent personal letters of congratulation. The success of this venture led Roger, now a rising business executive, to announce the formation of a society – along with Peter Huxley-Blythe, to promote North European friendship, called The Northern League for North European Friendship (more commonly known as The Northern League). Under Roger’s leadership the League remained mainly a cultural and essentially non-political organization. With his business responsibilities mounting rapidly, by 1961 he found it necessary to resign his membership and from all Northern League activities.

Following his withdrawal, the Northern League became more political and published a new journal called The Northlander. British members included Robert Gayre, Alistair Harper, Colin Jordan, and John Tyndall,

By 1965, the situation for old-established British firms operating in India and Pakistan was deteriorating. China had already fought a war with India over the borders of Assam, and India was shortly to invade Pakistan and convert East Pakistan into Bangladesh. Roger could see the tide was turning and sold his own commercial interests and moved to America. On his departure he received a farewell address from the Pakistani employees stating, “Your love, affection and sympathy for your staff are never to be forgotten and specially during the reorganization we have found that you have put yourself out to a great extent in finding the retrenched staff employment, which we feel, can only be equalled by a very few.”

Dr Roger Pearson

After leaving Asia East, Pearson returned to England for a few months before leaving to the United States, just before the infamous 1965 Immigration Act, which was aimed at stopping British and other Western Europeans from emigrating freely to America. Once, there he spent a year or so in California editing and writing articles and engaging in lecturing before embarking on a ten-month tour of the Caribbean and Southern Africa.

Returning to the United States, he joined the faculty of the Department of Sociology at the University of Southern Mississippi as an Assistant Professor (1968), wrote his Introduction to Anthropology (published in 1974 by what was then the largest Anthropology publishing house in the USA), accepted a position as Associate Professor and Department Head of the Sociology at Queen’s College, Charlotte (today Queens University of Charlotte), before returning to the University of Southern Mississippi (commonly known as ‘Ole Miss’) as Full Professor and Chairman of a new Department of Anthropology offering both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees.

At ‘Ole Miss’ Dr. Pearson launched the the Journal of Indo-European Studies and the JIES Monograph series (1972) in collaboration with and under the guidance of the distinguished UCLA archaeologist Marija Gimbutas and University of Texas linguist and mythologist Edgar Polome. He continued to publish JIES via The Institute for the Study of Man until well into his late 80s. It is now edited by Emily Blanchard West (St. Catherine).

In the mid-1960s Dr. Pearson teamed up with Willis Carto (who would later go on to run Liberty Lobby and publish the Spotlight newspaper) for a while and they published a magazine called Western Destiny (1965-66), which was probably the first high quality journal the “American Right” had published since the end of WWII. They stayed friends up until the late 1990s when Willis Carto fell out with Dr. Pearson for not being extreme enough! From 1966 to 1967 under the pen-name “Stephan Langton”, Dr. Pearson published (via Noontide Press) The New Patriot, a magazine devoted to “a responsible but penetrating inquiry into every aspect of the Jewish Question”.

However, not content with standing still, in 1974, Dr. Pearson accepted a position as Dean of Academic Affairs and Director of Research at Montana Tech of the University of Montana in Butte, Montana, a mile high in the beautiful Rocky Mountains, in the course of which he also became ex-officio Secretary of the Montana Energy and Magnetohydrodynamic Research and Development Institute.

During his time in Montana he joined the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). Further adventures now called, and after one year Dr. Pearson again moved, this time to Washington, D.C. (1975) where he founded the Council on American Affairs as the new U.S. chapter. He went on to become Director of the North American Chapter of WACL and publisher and editor of a new journal entitled The Journal of American Affairs (founded 1975), which later changed its name to The Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies). In the early years the journal published articles by both scholars, and senators and congressmen. Dr. Pearson continued to publish JSPS via Scott-Townsend until well into his late 80s.

Traveling widely to attend WACL conferences throughout the Far East, South and Central America, and Europe, Dr. Pearson conferenced face to face with several Heads of State, including King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. In 1978 he was elected World Chairman of the World Anti-Communist League in 1978 and hosted the 1979 World Conference of the League in Washington DC. The five-day proceedings were attended by upwards of a thousand WACL members and guests from free countries around the globe (including Lady Jane Birdwood from the UK). The Opening Ceremony was conducted with the aid of The U.S. Joint Armed Services Honour Guard and the Marine Corps Band and addressed by two U.S. Senators!

Delegates (including Lady Jane Birdwood from the UK) at a World Anti-Communist League conference in the 1970s, chaired by Dr Roger Pearson.

While Pravda in Moscow was ready to condemn the Conference out of hand, the left-wing Washington Post (WP), which had had a reporter at the Conference, totally ignored it for some thirty days while preparing a virtually full-page attack on both the WACL and its president, Dr. Pearson. Writing fancifully about “fascists” and South American “death squads”, the author of the Post article also levelled charges against Dr. Pearson’s alleged efforts to enrol “extremists” into WACL – surely not!

Indeed, it is a fact that, unlike the delegates from Taiwan, Korea, Japan and Central and Southern America, Pearson found the WACL European and Asian chapters replete with delegates who were almost soft on Communism (not including Lady Birdwood of course!). One Indian delegate constantly attacked “neo-colonialism”, but seemed never to mention the very real Communist threat to freedom in the 1960s and ’70s.

Dr Pearson chairing the WACL Conference

Dr. Pearson consequently promoted the recruitment of more genuine anti-Communists, such as the Italian Social Movement (MSI), at that time the fourth largest political party in Italy, whose successors – the Fratelli d’Italia (‘Brothers of Italy’) won Italy’s parliamentary elections in September 2022: their leader Giorgia Meloni became her country’s first female prime minister. I’m sure that brought a smile to his face!

After the WACL Dr. Pearson continued to work with the American Security Council, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the Journal of International Relations. But efforts by the liberal-left to frustrate his work continued. His scientific comprehension of Darwinian reality, and the importance of genetic, cultural, and environmental concerns for the survival of humanity, made him a target for those who care only about the present generation, and not those numberless generations hopefully still to come. His sociological and anthropological training meant that he never stressed the biological at the expense of the environmental, because biological organisms are dependent on the ecosphere – and also on a culture that supports both the biological and the environmental heritage. This the liberal-left hated, and they carried on a campaign against him and his work well into the 2000s.

Concerned about the future of the human race, Dr. Pearson became a Member of the British Eugenics Society, now known as the Galton Institute, as early as 1963, and was elected a Fellow in 1977. In 1979 he also assumed publication of Professor Robert Gayre’s Mankind Quarterly, which the latter had founded in 1960 with the aid of distinguished scholars such as Henry Vallois, S.D. Porteus, and Sir Charles B. Darwin. As the earlier generation of contributors passed on, he was able to recruit distinguished scholars to replace them, such as Joseph Campbell, Raymond B. Cattell, Hans Eysenck and William Shockley. Dr. Pearson continued to publish MQ via Scott-Townsend until well into his late 80s, and around 2010 passed it over to Prof. Richard Lynn, who publishes it via the Ulster Institute for Social Research.

Dr Pearson welcomed many delegates from around the world to anti-communist conferences

In 1990 Pearson founded the bi-monthly Conservative Review, an American version of Right NOW!, and published it via the Council for Social and Economic Studies. The magazine lasted almost seven years, but folded in 1997, due to lack of support from the “right-wing” of the GOP.

Not forgetting the importance of Universities to the rising generation, and concerned by the premeditated campus disruptions during the 1960s and 70s, Dr. Pearson joined the University Professors for Academic Order (UPAO), and served as its President 1980-84. Combining his credentials in the social sciences with his practical experience in the commercial world, his bank training in accounting, and his professional status as a former Fellow of the British Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators and member of the British Institute of Directors, he also served as a Trustee of the Benjamin Franklin University in Washington D.C. for a number of years before that respected institution, noted for the quality of its alumni, was absorbed into Georgetown University.

In 1984 Pearson received a Certificate of Appreciation signed by General Daniel O. Graham, Director of the Defence Intelligence Agency under President Reagan, and later of High Frontier, expressing “grateful appreciation for the important work you have done to prepare the way for a more secure world.” Also, a 1985 written accolade from the US Department of Education for “outstanding service to U.S. Education, and Education Reform Efforts”. But perhaps the most significant tribute, and one that annoyed Pearson’s critics most strongly, was a signed letter from President Ronald Reagan commending Pearson for “promoting and upholding those ideals and principles that we value at home and abroad …bringing to a wide audience the work of leading scholars who are supportive of a free enterprise economy, a firm and consistent foreign policy and a strong national defence.”
Later an embarrassed White House official asked Dr. Pearson not to use the letter for publicity purposes, after they had come under attack from the Washington Post!

Dr Pearson introduced genuine committed activists to strengthen anti-communist campaigns during the 1970s.

Dr. Pearson wrote over a dozen books including:

Eastern Interlude. Thacker Spink, Calcutta; Luzac and Co., London (1953) – republished by Scott-Townsend 1999.

Eugenics and Race. London: Clair Press; Los Angeles: Noontide Press (1958).

Blood Groups and Race. 2nd ed. London: Clair Press; Los Angeles: Noontide Press (1966).

Race & Civilisation. 2nd Ed. London: Clair Press; Los Angeles: Noontide Press (1966).

Early Civilizations of the Nordic Peoples. London: Northern World (1958); Los Angeles: Noontide Press (1965).

Introduction to Anthropology: An Ecological/Evolutionary Approach. New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston (1974)

Sino-Soviet Intervention in Africa. Council on American Affairs (1977)

Korea in the World Today. Washington, D.C.: Council on American Affairs (1978)

Ecology and Evolution. Washington, D.C.: Mankind Quarterly Monograph (1981)

Essays in Medical Anthropology. Washington, D.C.: Scott-Townsend Publishers (1981)

Anthropological Glossary. Marla at, FL: Krieger Publishing (1985)

Evolution, Creative Intelligence, and Intergroup Competition. Cliveden Press (1986)

William Shockley: Shockley on Eugenics and Race: The Application of Science to the Solution of Human Problems. Preface by Arthur Jensen. Washington, D.C.: Scott-Townsend Publishers (1992).

Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe. Introduction by Hans Eysenck.[47] Scott-Townsend Publishers, Washington, D.C., 1991. (2nd. Ed. 1994).

Heredity and Humanity: Race, Eugenics and Modern Science. Washington, D.C.: Scott-Townsend Publishers (1991) [2nd ed. 1998].

Dr Pearson in 1975 with distinguished Saudi, Yemeni and Taiwanese government ministers, ambassadors and university leaders

I first met Dr. Pearson in 1996 a year or so after I had moved from Devon in England to live the States. A mutual friend Carl Knittle, who was working for him at his down-town DC office at the time introduced us. Carl had just handed in his notice, and they were looking for his replacement, which turned out to be me!

I ended up working there for over six years, and only left when the US Government issued me with a ten-year exclusion order towards the end of 2002, so I had no choice but to leave and return to dear old Blighty.

From his DC office – which was only six or seven blocks from the White House – and only one block away from a black (now Hispanic) ghetto! – Dr. Pearson edited and published three journals, the Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies (JSPS), the Journal of Indo-European Studies (JIES) and his pride and joy the Mankind Quarterly (MQ). He also published numerous books and monographs, many sold through his mail order (and later online) book shop – Scott Townsend Books.

Dr Pearson’s home and office at 1133 13th Street NW, Washington DC. His office was on the ground floor, while he and his wife had a flat on the fourth floor.

Both Dr. Pearson and his wife Marion – who died around ten years before him – were very kind to me. In fact, if it had not been for them, I don’t think I would have survived so long Stateside. They had four children, two boys and two girls. The girls both married Europeans (a Frenchman and a German) and they were very proud to have a true pan-European family. Their eldest son Edwin was born (in India) on exactly the same day as me (in Worcester) on October 3rd, 1960, which they both found amusing. Sadly, Edwin died very young in his forties.

During those six years working at his office at 1133 on 13th Street, NW, I met so many interesting people, including to name but a few Dr. Philippe Rushton, Prof. Glayde Whitney, Attorney Sam Dickson, Paul Fromm, and the men with the deep pockets – Harry Weyher and Bill Regnery.

American Renaissance, which is run by Jared Taylor, used to hold their annual conference near to their office in Northern Virginia, not too far away from down-town Washington DC, so many conference attendees use to pop into the our office to say hello, and sometimes taking Dr. Pearson out for lunch, en route to the conference. It was always nice to meet new and old friends.

Two other “doctors” from time to time used to visit the office, when passing through DC – Dr. William L. Pierce and Dr. Edward R. Fields – they would normally go out with Dr. Pearson for either lunch or dinner depending on the time of the visit. I later found out that during Dr. Pierce’s last visit the FBI had staked out the building! They tailed them both to a local restaurant, sat inside at a table close to theirs while they ate and talked, then tailed them back to the office. It seems that every time Dr. Pierce left the National Alliance compound in West Virginia, to go out of town, the Feds went with him! Anyway, it was good to see American taxes were put to good use!

President Reagan’s controversial letter to Dr Pearson

And then there was “9-11”. On September 11th 2001, I got into the office on time, which was a couple of minutes before 9am and started to drink my coffee (I would do the typically American thing of eating my bagel while walking to work!). Up until then – as they say – it was just a normal day at the office!

Dr. Pearson was already in his office (which was the room next door to mine) hard at work. He normally got there before me, around 8.45am most mornings. However, he did not have very far to travel – as he lived in an apartment (flat) just above the office, on the 4th or 5th floor (I think). We said our usual pleasantries, and I then got on with going through the mail from the previous day (I did not normally work on a Monday) and from the weekend.

Looking back on it, around the time I was getting my breakfast, around 8.46am, New York was turning into a scene of devastation after the first of the two planes smashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. And around the time I was sitting down at my desk and starting to open the mail, around 9.03am the second plane was smashing into the South Tower.

Both 110 storey towers collapsed within an hour and forty-two minutes, leading to the collapse of the other World Trade Center structures including the 7 World Trade Center, and significantly damaging all the surrounding buildings.

Of course, Dr. Pearson and I were oblivious to all this, as we did not have a radio or TV on in either office, and it was just before the days of smart phones.

The first we knew that something was wrong, was when Dr. Pearson’s wife Marion rang him from their upstairs flat, where I guess she was watching the events unfold on TV. He told me what she had told him, but to honest it did not really sink in there and then what was going on. So, we just carried on working as normal.

I guess five minutes later, just before 9.20am we got another phone call which I answered this time. It was BNP leader Nick Griffin! He told us basically what Mrs. Pearson had just told us, that two hijacked planes had crashed into the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center, but then added that two more planes were now on their way to DC to blow up the White House and Capital Buildings, and that we needed to get out quickly!

Of course, even we wanted to get out – which we didn’t – where were we meant to get out to? However, Nick meant well, and I appreciate him warning us anyway, even though there was nothing we could do about it. I thanked him and told him we would not be moving from the building at this time, but if he could ring back with any updates, that would be very useful.

I talked over the situation with Dr. Pearson, and he said he did not think the planes would even reach DC, and even if they did, their targets were so far away from us that we would “probably be ok”! So, we sat back down at our desks and carried on working.

Dr Roger Pearson at his Washington office in 2013

However, we had only been back at our desks for a couple of minutes, when we heard a hell of a commotion going on outside our building. At 9:37am, the third of the hijacked planes crashed into the west side of the Pentagon (the headquarters of the American military, as well as a large underground shopping mall), which was just over the Potomac River in NW Arlington, Virginia, causing a partial collapse of the building’s west side.

To give you an idea of distance, The Pentagon is about three and miles south east of our office, maybe a ten-minute drive away. It’s just south of Arlington National Cemetery, and just north of Alexandria.

I can remember hearing an explosion, and then the noise of hundreds of other office workers, and locals outside our office on the streets. I said to Dr. Pearson that I was going outside to see what the heck was happening, because we had no windows in the office so I could not peer out. Once outside I could see all the smoke in the distance, and word got round that the Pentagon had been hit.

I can’t remember there being a panic, but a lot of my fellow DC workers were very concerned as word had got around that the 4th plane was on its way to DC!

However, the 4th plane – United 93 – never reached DC. And US authorities even to this day, don’t know for sure if the target was to have been the White House or the Capitol.

The story put about by President Bush’s spin-doctors that the passengers aboard United 93 decided to act once they realized all was lost – i.e. storm the flight deck, attack the terrorists and bring the plane down before it reached Washington DC – sadly did not happen. But why would it have done, it never happened on the other three hijacked flights, and they had many more passengers.

What did really happen, was that Bush ordered United 93 to be shot down before it got anywhere near DC. This flight was the only plane not to hit its intended target, instead after being shot down it crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, about 170 miles from DC at 10:03 am.

Once the news spread around DC that plane number four had crashed and that there were probably no more hijacked planes up in the skies, most of the workers either returned to their offices – as I did – or they left and started to make their way back home.

Dr Pearson’s institute received funds from important American donors including the Pioneer Fund

I asked Dr. Pearson what we should do, and he said, “just carry on working Mark”! Which is what I did until around noon when I went for an early lunch. All public transport in DC was in the process of being stopped, but most of the bars and restaurants seemed to be open, with customers glued to the TVs. I found a Subway close by and got a meal and a soda (pop to you Brits!) and tried to check my cell phone, only to find it not working. The internet had also gone down, but landlines were still working.

I made my way back to the office, where Dr. Pearson was still working. He informed me he was then going up upstairs to his flat for his lunch. So, I just went back to work. Strange when you look back on it.

My girlfriend of the time (Jackie) was calling the office every half an hour or so, asking when I was going to get out of DC and come home. I told her the same thing each time: as soon as I can.

Dr. Pearson came back down to the office around 2pm I guess, and told me to pack up for the day, since it would take me ages to get home as there was no public transport. Even most of the ‘enriched’ taxi drivers had gone home by then. So, I called Jackie back from the office landline and said I was going to start to make my way back to Falls Church, but be prepared for a long wait as it may take a while!

A full report of the events from “9-11” can be found on the H&D website – click here for details.

There are so many incredible stories I could tell you about Dr. Roger Pearson and the goings on at the office and around DC, including our trips to the Martin Luther King Jr. Post Office, which used to run out of stamps!; our trip with Zach (who use to work part time at the office himself in the early days) to Burger King, where Dr. P. ordered off the cuff not from the set menu, which completely baffled the young black counter assistant!; the day Dr. Pearson telephoned Zach’s home and his brother Corey answered the phone and thought it was, and I quote “the King of England calling”! The day Dr. P. went for a lunch time drink with Zach and I in a bar near McPherson Square, and a lefty looking bloke with very long hair stood by us waiting to be served. Zach said to Dr. P. “what do you make of him”, to which Dr. P. replied “he’s probably a homosexual”! The day after Princess Diana died (I was at work even though it was a Sunday): Dr. P. and I went out for lunch near the White House and Yanks were coming up to us in the restaurant giving us their condolences, as if we knew her!

Of course, we had our ups and downs, but overall, I had six very enjoyable years working for Dr. Pearson, where I learnt not only how to run an efficient office (a well-oiled machine – you should see the H&D office now!), but so much more about race, eugenics, anthropology, history and American politics.

The last time I spoke to him was shortly before Christmas. I think my phone call had woken him up from an afternoon nap, and it took a couple of minutes for him to realise who I was. But after that he was fine, and we had a good old natter, chatting about old times in DC and the political situation in the UK. He was still very sharp even at 95.

I will sorely miss Dr. Roger Pearson, he was one of a kind. And if there is a Valhalla, he will surely have a place there.

From chapter 8 of Fagrskinna, one of the kings’ sagas, written around 1220. The composition is by an anonymous author from the 10th century and is referred to as Eiríksmál, and describes Eric Bloodaxe and five other kings arriving in Valhalla after their death. The poem begins with comments by Odin (as Old Norse Óðinn):

“What kind of a dream is it,” said Óðinn,
“in which just before daybreak,
I thought I cleared Valhǫll,
for coming of slain men?
I waked the Einherjar,
bade valkyries rise up,
to strew the bench,
and scour the beakers,

Wine to carry,
as for a king’s coming,
here to me I expect
heroes’ coming from the world,
certain great ones,
so glad is my heart
.”

There will also be an obituary in a future issue of Heritage and Destiny magazine.

CoViD and race – leaked files reveal how nationalists missed the epidemic’s true story

This morning’s edition of the Daily Telegraph, continuing its publication of leaked WhatsApp messages exchanged by senior ministers and officials during the CoViD pandemic – thoroughly vindicates H&D‘s stance published as early as the summer of 2020.

It was clear to us that these early stages of the pandemic proved the failure of our multiracial, multicultural society. Certain minority groups showed no respect for our laws and no respect for the interests of Britain’s wider community. Instead they either selfishly pursued their own profit (while risking public health) or became obsessed by primitive voodoo superstitions.

As a consequence, the government was seeking to enforce lockdown within law-abiding indigenous British communities, while unable to act against blatant flouting of pandemic regulations among minority communities.

On the basis of leaked WhatsApp messages, today’s Telegraph alleges: “Ministers feared that Covid was spreading more rapidly among non-compliant communities but were worried they would be
labelled ‘racist’ if they highlighted the issue.”

One of many weekly analyses of the spread of CoViD during summer 2020, showing extreme concentration in the Asian ghetto of Alexandra Park.

H&D first exposed this issue on 20th July 2020, adding further details on 12th August and 18th August, followed by an analysis of the broader pandemic issues by one of the very few leading British nationalists with serious scientific qualifications – our correspondent Ian Freeman – on 3rd October 2020.

Meanwhile, we now know (thanks to the Telegraph‘s revelations this morning) that the Health Secretary Matt Hancock and junior health minister Nadine Dorries were privately discussing some of the very same issues.

On 20th August (two days after H&D‘s publication of its third article on this topic) Dorries wrote to her boss Hancock that the government could not credibly “put whole towns and villages with extremely low R rates in lockdown (our voters) and deprive those people of work and family, because of the behaviour of non-compliant communities.”

Hancock expressed disbelief that local council leaders had failed to act, and Dorries emphasised that this was a matter of racial politics. Andy Burnham (Labour Mayor of the Greater Manchester region that includes Oldham) “will not agree”, wrote Dorries, “nor will any of the MPs or any of Oldham leaders. They [would] be locking down their voters and setting ours free.”

In other words, exactly as H&D wrote at the time, pandemic rates were rocketing in Asian areas of Oldham (packed with Labour voters) but much lower and in some cases negligible in White areas in and around Oldham (more likely to vote Conservative in 2019-2020 but where nationalists achieved very high votes in the early 2000s).

Ministers feared a repeat of the Oldham and Burnley race riots of 2001 which helped produce electoral breakthroughs for racial nationalists.

Dorries reminded Hancock about the 2001 race riots, before her days as an MP but when she had been working as special adviser to a Tory frontbench spokesman. She warned that such towns remained a tinderbox, and gave the Pendle area of Lancashire as an example. “The town ward of Colne, 18 pubs, white working class, would be like a tinder box if its pubs closed because of non-compliance and infection rates in Nelson, 2 pubs, Pakistani community next door.”

Dorries was correctly echoing H&D‘s arguments, but while ministers understood the facts, they ignored one important aspect. Twenty years ago nationalists in Lancashire had high quality leadership, before Nick Griffin chose to wreck his own party. Yet in the 2020s nationalist leaders totally failed to observe those political aspects of the pandemic expertly laid out for them by H&D. Once again, British nationalists were lions led by donkeys. A political open goal was missed, and many nationalist activists continued to pursue ridiculous voodoo obsessions rather than serious analysis.

The May-June edition of H&D will examine these leaked WhatsApp messages: we hope it is not too late for our movement to relearn some of the basics of political and racial reality.

MET RECRUITS ILLITERATE COPS TO BOOST “DIVERSITY”

The cartoon above first appeared in the May 1982 issue of the Police Federation magazine Police. If nationalists had published a similar cartoon themselves, they would have been prosecuted.

London’s Metropolitan Police are recruiting applicants who are “functionally illiterate in English” to meet “diversity targets”, Matt Parr, one of His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, has revealed.  

This is in response to trying to meet a demand from the then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, the lesbian Cressida Dick, to make London’s police force 40% Black and other non-White by 2023. In fact they have not yet reached even 17% ethnic minority, and they are clearly getting desperate.  

The result is, as Mr Parr found, sticking people who cannot read or write in English in Police uniforms, purely on the basis of their race. This is a practice loudly decried as “racism” unless, as in this case, native White Britons are the victims.    

Cressida Dick, former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, is seen here speaking to the private Jewish security/intelligence organisation, Community Security Trust. Before being forced to resign, Ms Dick set her police force the target of becoming 40% Black and other non-White by 2023.

Despite discovering this unfortunate issue in practice, the Inspector of Constabulary was nevertheless all in favour of this anti-White racist policy in principle: “we completely support the idea that London – which will likely be a minority White city in the next decade or so – should not be policed by an overwhelmingly White police force”, he said.  

Or apparently necessarily even an overwhelmingly law-abiding one – he went on to observe, as has long been known and just as long hushed up, that “young Black men tended to have a greater involvement with the criminal justice system in London than any other group. But,” he went on, “that does not mean they should be barred from the Police”.  

Meanwhile native British constables, clearly regarded as surplus to requirements, are being purged from the Metropolitan Police purely for expressing Politically Incorrect opinions, such as remarking in texts sent to colleagues on the total ethnic transformation of large areas of Britain’s capital city. Thus patriotic White policemen are, it seems, being cleared out to make way in the policing of London’s streets for illiterate Black criminals…  

Rishi Sunak plans new law to build £100 million ‘Holocaust Memorial’

This afternoon Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that his government will bring in legislation to force through the construction of an enormous ‘Holocaust Memorial’ next to the Houses of Parliament, obliterating a public park, Victoria Tower Gardens, and costing more than £100 million.

Readers might wonder why such a vast sum is to be spent at a time of economic crisis? They might also wonder why scarce public park land in London is to be given over to commemoration of alleged events that are not part of British history, and to implied apology for alleged events for which Britain bore no responsibility.

H&D has previously reported in detail about this saga, and our assistant editor Peter Rushton submitted a fully documented objection during Westminster City Council’s consideration of the earlier application, which ended in victory for those opposed to the ‘Memorial’. Eventually the High Court prevented the government’s attempts to overrule the council: Sunak’s new law is necessary to frustrate this court judgment and ensure that the ‘Memorial’ will after all be built.

Peter reports on the new Real History blog about the latest developments.

H&D writer Isabel Peralta banned from Germany for life

Isabel Peralta has been banned from Germany as a “threat to national security”.

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.

Putinist oligarch arrested in London

NCA officers raiding oligarch Fridman’s London home two days ago.

Mikhail Fridman – one of London’s leading Russian oligarchs – was arrested at one of his two London homes on Thursday by officers from the National Crime Agency’s Combatting Kleptocracy Cell. British press reports have avoided naming Fridman.

According to an NCA statement, Fridman – a close ally of Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin – was arrested “on suspicion of offences including money laundering, conspiracy to defraud the Home Office and conspiracy to commit perjury”. A 35-year-old man was arrested in the vicinity after being observed leaving Fridman’s home with a bag containing a large amount of cash.

Later on Thursday, the former boyfriend of Fridman’s current partner was arrested at his home in Pimlico, “for offences including money laundering and conspiracy to defraud”.

(above left to right) Sir Len Blavatnik, Tony Blair’s favourite oligarch; Mikhail Fridman, arrested two days ago in London by the NCA’s Combatting Kleptocracy Cell; Lord Browne, then chairman of BP; and Viktor Vekselberg, Blavatnik’s business partner, whose yacht was seized in April this year by Spain’s Guardia Civil and US federal agents.

The NCA’s Director-General Graeme Biggar said: “The NCA’s Combatting Kleptocracy Cell, only established this year, is having significant success investigating potential criminal activity by oligarchs, the professional service providers that support and enable them and those linked to the Russian regime.
“We will continue to use all the powers and tactics available to us to disrupt this threat.”

Mikhail Fridman was born in Lviv but now holds joint Russian and Israeli citizenship. He began to build his Alfa business empire in his early 20s, in partnership with two fellow Jews – German Khan and Petr Aven – and is best known for his co-ownership of the controversial Alfa Bank and associated companies.

Since 2017 Fridman and his partners have been involved in several legal actions against the former MI6 officer Chris Steele, whose dossier alleged that they had corrupt dealings with Putin and Donald Trump.

Mikhail Fridman (third from right) standing between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli politician Natan Sharansky at a presentation of the Genesis Prize, which Fridman sponsors. Also in photo (second left) is Fridman’s business partner Petr Aven.

Fridman co-founded the Russian Jewish Congress and has been a major donor to Zionist causes including the European Jewish Fund and ‘Holocaust’ education projects. His Genesis Philanthropy Group sponsors an annual prize for “Jewish contributions to humanity”.

Fridman’s two London homes are 25 Cavendish Close, St John’s Wood (close to Lord’s cricket ground), and Athlone House, a mansion in Highgate, North London, that was used as an RAF Intelligence base during the Second World War. For many years pre-war it was owned by Sir Robert Waley Cohen, one of the leaders of the Anglo-Jewish community.

In 2018 Fridman addressed a Chabad “Living Torah” event in London’s exclusive Belgravia district, where he described the Torah as the “backbone” of key concepts pioneered by Judaism, including “the precedence of good over evil and the power to choose between them using free will’. No doubt following his arrest he will be given plenty of time to explain these concepts to the Combatting Kleptocracy Cell of London’s National Crime Agency.

Mikhail Fridman (above centre) addressing a Chabad event in Belgravia, London, alongside American Jewish tycoon Matthew Bronfman

Ethics and Oligarchs in Tel Aviv

Roman Abramovich (above left) with his close ally Vladimir Putin

One of Israel’s leading academics has admitted lobbying in defence of sanctioned oligarch Roman Abramovich, saying: “When someone offers you $50m, you sign their letter.”

Abramovich – former owner of Chelsea Football Club – was hit by UK and later US sanctions soon after his close ally Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine.

The tycoon was already controversial for reported links to organised crime as well as his role as Putin’s international financial fixer, but had been welcomed as a big donor to Israeli institutions as well as to international campaigns against ‘racism’ and ‘anti-semitism’.

Just two days before the invasion of Ukraine, Abramovich and the Israeli ‘holocaust’ memorial Yad Vashem announced a “strategic partnership” in which the oligarch would donate tens of millions of dollars. He had acquired Israeli citizenship in 2018.

Professor Ariel Porat (above left) with Nadhim Zahawi, Secretary of State for Education in Boris Johnson’s ‘British’ government. Porat has defended lobbying Western governments on behalf of $50m donor Abramovich.

Perhaps it was unsurprising therefore that soon after the invasion Yad Vashem’s chairman Danny Dayan was among signatories to a letter from influential Israelis to the US Ambassador in Jerusalem, calling on the American authorities to refrain from sanctioning Abramovich.

These distinguished Jews, including Israel’s Chief Rabbi, wrote:
“We are examples of institutions that have benefited from Roman Abramovich, and have long-standing ties with him. We implore you warmly to consider Roman Abramovich’s position and importance to the community and to Israel. We warn that any action against him will not only be unfair, but will also negatively impact the Jewish world and Israel.”

Roman Abramovich with Rabbi Alexander Boroda, President of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, at the opening of Moscow’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, which Abramovich co-founded

After the appeal failed and Western governments proceeded with sanctions, a few of these institutions belatedly distanced themselves from the disgraced oligarch. Yad Vashem suspended their receipt of his largesse, but has not handed back his earlier gifts.

One of the senior Israelis who co-wrote the letter and remains unabashed is Professor Ariel Porat, president of Tel Aviv University, which had received $50 million from Abramovich.

Last week in a secret meeting with senior academics, Porat – one of Israel’s leading legal scholars – defended the university’s links with Abramovich. He admitted: “Unfortunately there is a legal impediment to taking money from [Abramovich]. After the war is over, I imagine the sanctions will be lifted.”

And he told his colleagues: “When someone offers you $50m, you sign their letter.”

One of Porat’s critics pointed out: “No one is disputing the necessity of donations — but not at all costs and at any condition. It is embarrassing that an academic institution is willing to sell its prestige and social standing for money.”

Embarrassing, but in the case of Tel Aviv University and Roman Abramovich not surprising.

« Previous PageNext Page »

  • Find By Category

  • Latest News

  • Follow us on Twitter

  • Follow us on Instagram

  • Exactitude – free our history from debate deniers