We are all “extremists” now

The ludicrous statement to Parliament this week by Michael Gove listed the British National Socialist Movement (better known as British Movement) and Patriotic Alternative as examples of “extremist” groups to be covered by his new official definition.

However, since the purpose of this new definition is for government to restrict its engagement with and funding of such “extremist” organisations, it seems most unlikely that including BM or PA will have any practical effect. Neither organisation is known for links to government!

The biggest danger is not from this week’s statement (which in itself is pretty meaningless so far as racial nationalism is concerned), but rather from its broader implications. It is just another sign of the direction in which official policy is moving, as governments around the “democratic” world panic at the self-evident failure of the post-1945 multiracial experiment.

Submissions to Parliament in 2021 identified H&D as the main example of a “harmful extrmist” publication that had stayed within UK law

(In 2021 during the earliest parliamentary discussions of a new legal definition of “harmful extremism”, the influential pressure group ‘Hacked Off’ highlighted H&D as the prime example of “online harm” that had managed to stay within the law. We reported these developments in this article more than two years ago: Gove’s announcement can be seen as a further move along the lines that were already discernible then.)

British Movement was founded by Colin Jordan in 1968 after his earlier party – the National Socialist Movement – was wound down due to legal problems. Today’s General Secretary of BM – Stephen Frost – was one of the leaders of a group of national socialists who kept the movement alive, in association with Colin Jordan, when it was in danger of being destroyed by Michael McLaughlin.

Today BM keeps the ideological flame of national socialism burning brightly, and is involved in a wide range of social and cultural activities. The movement is especially closely involved in the racial nationalist music scene.

BM’s General Secretary Steve Frost with Isabel Peralta at the 2023 H&D conference in Preston, where both Steve and Isabel were speakers

Patriotic Alternative was formed in 2019 and has held a series of high quality conferences, in addition to taking the lead in numerous demonstrations around the UK, especially in relation to the scandal of ‘asylum seekers’ / illegal immigrants being housed at vast expense in British hotels.

PA’s Yorkshire organiser Sam Melia was recently jailed for the ‘crime’ of distributing stickers that draw attention to the failings of the multiracial society. This outrageous conviction has become 2024’s most widely publicised case of political repression in the ‘democratic’ world.

PA leader Mark Collett has spoken at several H&D events

Gove’s announcement will remind historians of the “purge” procedure instituted by Attlee’s postwar Labour government and its “anti-subversion” cabinet committee GEN 183. This treated “fascists”, who by 1947 were a very marginal group in the UK, alongside communists.

Both sets of “extremists” were to be excluded from certain jobs, in government or sensitive industries. The “far right” then as now was used as a figleaf, so that the government couldn’t be accused of witch-hunting communists then, and Muslims now.

Michael Gove, a notorious Israel Firster, is seen here in Jerusalem meeting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in April 2021.

In a broader context, unaffected by Gove’s announcement which in itself changes nothing for nationalists, British patriots and their European allies remain targeted by an array of repressive measures, as Sam Melia, Vincent Reynouard and our own European correspondent Isabel Peralta have discovered.

We know – and we expect Michael Gove also knows (though he refuses to admit it) – who the real extremists and terrorists are. The terrorists’ best friend in Parliament – Jeremy Corbyn – has, not coincidentally, been among the most vocal advocates of persecuting “fascists”.

We are undaunted by repression. We will continue to fight back against all efforts to criminalise our ideas. We will continue to demonstrate that allegations of “inciting violence” are a travesty. We stand for civilisation against the barbarism and crookedness of Gove’s world.

“Extremism” in the defence of our race is not a crime. It is a duty.

H&D correspondent barred from entering London on family holiday

H&D correspondent Isabel Peralta was blocked from boarding a flight from Madrid to London early this morning, in the latest extraordinary abuse of official powers by the British government.

No reason was given, and airline staff were at a loss to explain why Isabel was refused permission to board the flight.

They merely stated that it was on the orders of the British government, and that if they disobeyed this order the airline itself would be held liable.

On this occasion Isabel’s journey to London was entirely personal, and she would not have been attending any political events whether private or public.

But it seems that those with the ‘wrong’ political views can be excluded even from family holidays, if it suits the spiteful whim of a government minister or the demands of certain ethnic lobbies.

Explanations have been sought from the Home Office, who on several grounds seem to be in breach of their own guidelines, as well as from the British Embassy in Madrid, and the Consular Section of the Spanish Embassy in London.

Further reports will follow later today, once the political and diplomatic authorities involved have replied.

Vincent Reynouard’s appeal heard in Edinburgh

The appeal hearing in the case of Vincent Reynouard was heard in Edinburgh on Thursday, 11th January 2024 before a panel of judges of the Court of Session.

Regular readers will remember that Vincent was arrested fourteen months ago and has been held in Edinburgh jail ever since, despite not being charged (let alone convicted) of any crime against UK laws. The French authorities are seeking his extradition under their notorious ‘Gayssot Law’ which forbids any questioning of historical orthodoxy regarding the ‘Holocaust’ and certain other alleged events of the Second World War.

Here is a translation of Vincent’s report which first appeared in French at Vincent’s website (the report also now appears in German and in Spanish at the Real History blog):

My lawyer was more incisive that in the trial of first instance.

After recalling that the videos that are the target of French prosecutors mainly dealt with the Holocaust, he emphasised that I challenge official history with rational arguments, without polemicising.

Then he came to the fourth video, which deals with the Jewish question.

“Mr. Reynouard,” he said, “declares himself in agreement with Hitler on the existence of a Jewish problem. This statement may shock, even alarm. However, when he claims to go further than Hitler, it is not to incite murder, quite the contrary. My client explains that going further in his reflections, he deduces that the Jewish problem arises from the faults from which our societies suffer (loss of spirituality, hedonism, etc.).

“The sentence which states this was omitted from the arrest warrant on which the trial judge relied. However, it is crucial, because it explains that my client does not advocate the genocide of the Jews or the eradication of Judaism. At first instance, the judge also recognised that Mr Reynouard was not calling for the extermination of the Jews.

“I add that, unlike Alison Chabloz, my client is neither satirical nor sarcastic: his speech is calm and thoughtful.”

The late Richard Edmonds presenting the Robert Faurisson International Prize to Vincent Reynouard

At this point, a judge intervenes to declare that the assertion that Hitler was right to denounce a Jewish problem was itself grossly offensive. My lawyer replied that the message should be judged not by extracting a few statements, but by considering its totality.

Then, he recalled that the United Kingdom had refused to criminalise revisionism.

“Mr. Reynouard,” he concluded, “is a revisionist. He is being prosecuted for this reason. Ordering his extradition by invoking Section 127 of the Communications Act — a section that was originally intended to crack down on obscene telephone calls — would be an abuse of that law.”

Speaking in his turn, the prosecutor said: “Mr. Reynouard not only denies the Holocaust; he also disputes the massacre of Oradour by the SS, which left 643 victims.” With this allegation, the prosecutor wanted to present me as a madman who denies the deaths of civilians, which I never did. The aim of this dishonest manoeuvre was to undermine the defence contention that I rely on rational arguments.

The prosecutor continued by asserting that the trial judge had correctly analysed the grossly offensive nature of my videos, but he did not dare to claim that by declaring that I went further than Hitler, I was manifesting “terrible anti-Semitism”, because that would have been really too ridiculous.

Then, he considered the question of whether I’d had committed a breach of public order law. We remember that at first instance, the judge dismissed this accusation. The prosecutor maintained that this was an error: “There is a risk that the videos targeted by French prosecutors could be viewed by a certain section of the public who, after listening to Mr Reynouard, will be incited to perpetrate anti-Semitic acts.”  Here we recognise the main argument of the opponents of freedom of expression: “You can express yourself freely, provided that your words do not risk inciting hatred among certain people.”

Edinburgh’s Court of Session, where Vincent Reynouard’s appeal was heard on 11th January 2024

My lawyer replied that in my videos, I did not call on anyone to act, but that I encouraged viewers to think by providing them with food for thought, which is unrelated to the sort of violent messages, such as racist insults, satirical-sarcastic songs, shouting and unambiguous gestures, which are ordinarily judged as undermining public order.

The judges will make their decision on February 1st. At the end of this hearing, I will not hazard any predictions, for one simple reason: everything will happen in the heads of these three judges whose state of mind I do not know.

In reaching their judgment, they will have the choice. If, out of respect for freedom of expression, they wish to release me, then they will accept the Defence arguments. Otherwise, they will favour those of the Prosecution. They will not have to answer for their decisions, at least in this life.

However, I remain calm, because whatever the outcome, I will serve the revisionist cause. Some say that I would be more useful in freedom than in prison. I think that’s not necessarily the case. Suffering repression also allows us to bear witness to the truth. Future generations will note: “He put forward rational arguments and offered fair debate; they pursued him as far as a remote corner of Scotland and gagged him.” The facts will lead to inescapable conclusions.

Shortly before boarding the prison bus, a guard whispered to me: “You are a hero. Yes, a hero.” I don’t think I’m one; I consider myself a man who fulfils his duty to his people. However, this mark of respect coming from a simple civil servant touched me. I see it as a sign from Providence which indicates to me that, in the shadows, my work is spreading and revisionism is progressing.

I will never give in.

Thanks again to everyone who supports me.

Peter Rushton’s report on the initial trial of Vincent Reynouard is still on our website. Further discussion of the case and its implications for revisionism will appear both in H&D and at Peter’s Real History website.

Scottish justice or “due deference” to French-Zionist lobby? The Reynouard case hangs in the balance [report now translated into four languages!]

On 21st September, a Scottish Crown prosecutor asked an Edinburgh court to show “due deference to France” and extradite a man who is accused of no crime under Scottish law. H&D’s assistant editor Peter Rushton reports from the court. This article and related material also appears at Peter’s Real History blog and now also in Spanish by clicking on this link. Also now available in German translation at this link and in French translation at Vincent’s own blog. And Vincent’s open letter to President Macron is now also available in German translation for the first time.

The revisionist historian Vincent Reynouard was appearing at Edinburgh Sheriff Court for a full hearing of his extradition case. This was almost exactly ten months after his arrest in the Scottish fishing village of Anstruther, where Vincent had been working quietly as a private tutor and completing his most important historical revisionist work concerning the so-called “massacre” at Oradour.

He was arrested in a raid by Scottish police, working with Scotland Yard detectives, at the request of French prosecutors who wish to jail him for revisionist videos concerning both Oradour and the alleged homicidal ‘gas chambers’ at Auschwitz.

None of these revisionist works contravenes Scottish or English law, but the UK authorities were heavily lobbied by the Jewish charity ‘Campaign Against Antisemitism’ and by the ultra-Zionist peer Lord Austin (formerly Ian Austin MP).

The sheer absurdity of this situation – the criminalisation of a scholar – was brought home to me by two incidents (one trivial, one serious) at the Edinburgh Court while waiting for Vincent’s case to be heard.

A sticker for the Edinburgh branch of the St Pauli supporters’ club was displayed in the lavatory at the Court. Supporters of St Pauli (a football club based in Hamburg) are notorious worldwide for their violent ‘anti-fascism’ and Marxism. It is impossible to imagine that a sticker promoting any violent ‘racist’ or ‘fascist’ group (from, for example, supporters of a club such as Lazio, Chelsea, Millwall or Oldham) would have been allowed to remain on display at a court!

The other incident was more serious. Vincent’s case was being heard in a courtroom that specialises in extradition, which of course meant that more than two hours were taken up (before Vincent’s case began) by a long procession of procedural, pre-trial discussions of a range of unconnected defendants, including alleged gangsters from Eastern Europe.

Terrorist and assassin Antoin Duffy appeared at the same extradition court a few minutes before Vincent – illustrating the absurdity by which revisionist scholars and advocates of national socialism (none of whose conduct is criminal in the UK) have been put on a par with some of the world’s most dangerous murderers.

By far the most serious of these procedural discussions involved a defendant appearing by video link. This was the notorious ‘Real IRA’ terrorist and assassin Antoin Duffy (aka Anton Duffy), who in 2015 was jailed for 17 years for conspiracy to murder two ex-UDA members (Johnny Adair and Sam ‘Skelly’ McCrory) exiled in Scotland after their expulsion from the UDA.

Duffy is still serving this sentence in a top-security Scottish jail, but he is also now wanted by police and prosecutors in the Irish Republic, to face charges of murdering Denis Donaldson, an MI5 agent inside the IRA, who was killed in 2006. This is why Duffy was appearing on the same day as Vincent, in the Edinburgh extradition court.

H&D cannot yet comment on the latest specific charges – but it is beyond dispute (based on earlier convictions and years of police and MI5 covert surveillance) that Duffy is one of the UK’s most dangerous terrorists. Extradition procedures are designed for those accused of actual crimes: yet this week in Edinburgh (and in fact for the past ten months) Vincent Reynouard – a scholar, not a criminal – has been subjected to these same procedures.

As we have also seen with persistent abuse of the Terrorism Act by the UK authorities, those who simply seek to tell the truth about European history are persecuted by UK authorities who choose to follow the instructions of shadowy international lobbyists rather than UK law.

Nevertheless, there are reasons to be optimistic about Vincent’s case. He was very ably represented by his solicitor Paul Dunne and advocate Fred Mackintosh KC (who also practices as a barrister in England). It should of course be emphasised that Vincent’s defence is (rightly and properly) based on legal arguments, not on his historical and political views per se. As in any other such case, it should not be inferred that either Mr Dunne or Mr Mackintosh is in any way sympathetic to Vincent’s opinions, or indeed that either of them have any views or expertise on historical or political matters. They are experts on extradition law, not on historical revisionism or national socialism.

Due to Vincent having already spent ten months in jail (for something that isn’t even a crime in the UK!) the initial French warrant has been discharged.

This initial warrant was based on his having already been convicted and sentenced (in his absence) by a Parisian court. But he is no longer extraditable on those grounds, because that sentence has (in effect) already been served in Scotland, while Vincent awaited this extradition hearing.

Having dealt with the discharge of the first warrant, Mr Mackintosh proceeded to address the second.

Since it involves new charges (rather than a prior conviction) the ‘ticklist’ of the old European Arrest Warrant (now operating in revised form post-Brexit) doesn’t apply. Mr Mackintosh therefore pointed out that the traditional extradition principle of “dual criminality” operates in this case.

In other words, the Edinburgh Court must be satisfied that the conduct of which Vincent is accused would potentially be criminal in Scotland as well as in France.

The judge should (Mr Mackintosh continued) draw inferences as to Vincent’s “intent”, by looking at his overall conduct, and by studying the entire transcripts of his videos, not merely accepting the prosecutors’ interpretation of certain phrases taken out of context.

He highlighted one video, on which the prosecutors had based a large part of their case, and emphasised that the judge should study the full translated transcript carefully. This was a video published on 22nd February 2020, whose title translates as “The Jewish Problem – what solution?”

Vincent’s counsel did not dispute that his videos contain what has been termed “Holocaust denial”, that some of them address the “Jewish problem”, and that one in particular “denies” the historicity of the “Oradour massacre”.

But Mr Mackintosh’s central argument as to why Vincent should not be extradited began with a judgment in 2015 by the European Court of Human Rights, in the case of Perinçek v. Switzerland.

The relevant aspect of this judgment (which involved a Turkish political activist accused of “denying” the Armenian genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire during the First World War), is that the European Court spelled out the very different laws among European states regarding “denial” of genocide.

Among those European countries that have signed up to the European Convention on Human Rights, the Court noted:
“there are now essentially four types of regimes in this domain, in terms of scope of the offence of genocide denial: (a) States, such as Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Romania, that only criminalise the denial of the Holocaust or more generally of Nazi crimes (Romania in addition criminalises the Nazi extermination of the Roma, and Greece criminalises, on top of the Holocaust and Nazi crimes, the denial of genocides recognised by an international court or its own Parliament); (b) States, such as the Czech Republic and Poland, that criminalise the denial of Nazi and communist crimes; (c) States, such as Andorra, Cyprus, Hungary, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Malta, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland, that criminalise the denial of any genocide (Lithuania in addition specifically criminalises denial of Soviet and Nazi crimes vis-à-vis the Lithuanians, but Cyprus only criminalises the denial of genocides recognised as such by a competent court); and (d) States, such as Finland, Italy, Spain (following the 2007 judgment of its Constitutional Court cited in paragraph 96 above), the United Kingdom and the Scandinavian States, that do not have special provisions criminalising such conduct.”

The European Court was clear, Mr Mackintosh said, that the UK had not chosen to make any form of “Holocaust denial” a specific criminal offence.

He added that in Vincent Reynouard’s case, the prosecution therefore had to satisfy the Scottish court that Vincent’s conduct (as alleged in the extradition warrant) met the test either for a S.127 Communications Act offence, or a breach of the peace (a common law offence).

The question of what behaviour can constitute a “breach of the peace” under Scottish law has been revised several times during recent decades – and is a matter on which Mr Mackintosh has special expertise, having for example written an article for Scottish Legal News on this very topic.

Such conduct must be serious enough to “cause alarm to ordinary people”, and it must “threaten serious disturbance to the community”. The relevant judgment was delivered in 2014 by Lady Clark of Calton, and Mr Mackintosh said that Lady Clark had reminded the lower courts that “for conduct to be likely to cause a reasonable person to suffer fear or alarm there has to be something further than annoyance and distress”.

Mr Mackintosh explained that the test of whether conduct “threatens serious disturbance in the community” necessarily involves considering the full context. He quoted several cases in Scottish courts involving racial and sectarian abuse at football matches, where a crucial element was that this abuse had been directed at (or delivered in close proximity to) rival supporters, in the incendiary context of a football match attended by supporters of opposing teams.

In a 1981 case against communist activist Mike Duffield, the Sheriff Court had ruled that shouting pro-IRA slogans while selling the Marxist newspaper Fight Racism Fight Imperialism and the pro-IRA newspaper Hands off Ireland was a breach of the peace, despite this being carried out at the stadium of Glasgow Celtic, where many fans hold similar views.

And on the other side of politics, there had been a breach of the peace case involving a National Front activist selling the Young NF paper Bulldog outside the Hearts stadium in Edinburgh.

But in all these cases – and especially bearing in mind recent clarifications of the law in Scotland – it was essential to assess the wider context of the words used – in Vincent’s case, words used in videos broadcast online.

There were eight such videos referred to by French prosecutors in the present warrant. The first related specifically to Oradour. The second, third and fourth presented detailed arguments as to why (in Vincent’s considered opinion) there had been no homicidal ‘gas chambers’ at Auschwitz, explaining that conventional ‘Holocaust’ history is based on specious evidence. The fifth and sixth discussed the “Jewish problem” or “what to do about the Jews”. And the seventh and eighth returned to the topic of Auschwitz, the ‘gas chambers’, and broader ‘Holocaust’ themes.

Mr Mackintosh emphasised that in the case of six of these eight videos, Vincent Reynouard had not been calling for any form of action. None of the content potentially qualified as personal abuse, and none of it could be seen as “threatening”. The videos amounted to a historical critique – which might well be controversial, but not illegal in Scotland.

In the case of videos 5 and 6, Vincent was responding to a correspondent. The prosecution had chosen to isolate certain phrases out of context, but Mr Mackintosh said that once seen in context it was clear that Vincent was stating his opposition to any policy of “exterminating” the Jews.

The test that the court had to apply was not whether “reasonable people” would reject Vincent’s views, but whether these views threatened “serious disturbance to society”. Were the court to accept the prosecution’s argument, it would amount to ruling that discussion of controversial arguments regarding the ‘Holocaust’ had become a crime in the UK. Mr Mackintosh said it was open to Parliaments in London and Edinburgh to make ‘Holocaust denial’ a crime, but they had (so far) chosen not to do so.

Therefore to be criminal, Vincent’s words would have to cross a further line, a further evidential test, in order to be regarded as a “breach of the peace”.

Mr Mackintosh then turned to the alternative test, S.127 of the Communications Act. For Vincent’s videos to be considered criminal in this context, they would have to be not merely offensive, but “grossly offensive”.

Prosecutors had rested much of their argument on the precedent of the Chabloz case, as tried in the London courts during recent years – not a binding precedent, but, they argued, very much a “persuasive” precedent in this case. [Chabloz has in recent years been excluded from British revisionist circles, due to her treacherous and malicious conduct in betraying Robert Faurisson’s final meeting to the ‘anti-fascist’ publication ‘Hope not Hate’. But her earlier actions have, as we predicted at the time, served as a precedent to threaten the liberty of Vincent Reynouard.]

On appeal, Chabloz’s conduct had been found to go beyond satire, having crossed the legal line into deliberate, malicious abuse. By contrast, Mr Mackintosh argued, the judge in the present case would find (if he examined the full transcripts of Vincent’s videos) that his arguments – even when highly controversial – were delivered as a calm, academic analysis, not as crude anti-semitic abuse in the Chabloz style.

Mr Mackintosh referred to the leading S.127 case in relation to interpretation of what is “grossly offensive”, namely the Collins case, and the judgment of Lord Bingham.

This had made clear that what is “grossly offensive” has to be assessed in the context of the standards of an “open, just, multiracial society” – a contemporary context that is “reasonably enlightened, but not perfectionist”.

In other words, Mr Mackintosh emphasised, the words complained of had to cause gross offence, not simply “to people who care about the Holocaust” and who, for whatever reasons, hold different views to Vincent, but to broader society.

Were ‘Holocaust denial’ or disputing the historicity of Oradour to be deemed criminal per se, the question would necessarily arise – what about the Amritsar massacre, what about the Armenian genocide, and many other controversial historical subjects?

Mr Mackintosh concluded his argument by addressing the question of proportionality. An extradition court is required to consider whether the alleged offence is sufficiently severe to attract a custodial sentence. For example, recent instructions to the lower courts had emphasised that defendants should not be extradited for minor public order offences.

He noted that even in the Chabloz case – where the defendant had been convicted for gross offensiveness which was of a very different character to Vincent’s videos – this had not led to custodial sentences.

It would therefore, Mr Mackintosh argued, be both wrong in law and disproportionate for the Edinburgh Court to extradite Vincent Reynouard to France.

In his argument, the prosecutor (Advocate depute Paul Harvey) insisted that Vincent’s videos did pass the evidential test for the Court to regard his conduct as either (or both) a breach of the peace, and/or “grossly offensive” under S.127.

He invited the judge to consider Vincent’s words in one of the video transcripts, where he had stated that “there is a Jewish problem”, and that in his analysis of this problem he would “go further” than Adolf Hitler. “Naturally, the Jews exploit the situation: to dominate, even to subjugate us.”

Mr Harvey described these words as “the most appalling anti-semitism”, and asked the judge to view all of the videos complained of in the French warrant, in the light of this “anti-semitism”.

Questioned by the judge on this point, Mr Harvey said that (in the prosecutors’ submission) each video should be looked at as a separate breach of the peace offence, but should also be interpreted overall as a “course of conduct” by Vincent.

The mere fact that the UK had no special provision criminalising “Holocaust denial” did not in itself absolve the defendant. When expressed in the terms used by Vincent, Mr Harvey insisted that “Holocaust denial” could be interpreted as criminal under UK as well as French law.

Quoting the case of Rangers fan William Kilpatrick, who had posted on Facebook endorsing the sending of “bombs and bombs” to Celtic manager Neil Lennon, Mr Harvey argued that under Scottish law, intending or inciting a specific action was not necessarily relevant to whether certain words were a “breach of the peace”.

Mr Harvey maintained that some of Vincent’s words in the video could reasonably have led to his being charged with a breach of the peace under Scottish law, because they were calculated to provoke a disturbance of public order.

In fact, he argued that Vincent’s words were potentially a more serious crime than breach of the peace in a football stadium: because they could be viewed online at any time, anywhere in Scotland. Incitement to specific criminal action did not, the prosecution argued, have to be proven.

Mr Harvey added that Vincent’s “crimes” had to be looked at in the context of the very different cultural context in France, and the more serious risk of “anti-semitism being incited”. While the words Vincent used could, Mr Harvey argued, be prosecutable even in Scotland, the Court should take account of the fact that in a French context, they were even more serious.

Unsurprisingly, the prosecutor rejected the defence argument that Vincent’s words were calm, academic discourse. He said they were comparable to the Chabloz case, where it had been established that once a clearly anti-semitic motive had been established, espousal of “Holocaust denial” was ipso facto grossly offensive.

Mr Harvey accepted that (under UK law) not every instance of “Holocaust denial” was criminal, but he maintained that in the cases of both Chabloz and Vincent Reynouard, denying the “Holocaust” did amount to “gross offensiveness”, and therefore contravened S.127.

The prosecutor said the judge would need to apply the proportionality test very carefully. Unlike, for example, a drugs or theft case, Vincent’s criminal conduct was highly context-specific, where the appropriate sentence might differ enormously between Scotland and France. The judge should therefore “respect and give due weight” to French circumstances involving their history, and even present day “racial relations”, which meant that a French court “is justified in taking a severe approach to this”.

Given Vincent’s long and repeated record of “criminal conduct”, Mr Harvey concluded that a custodial sentence in France was not only possible but highly likely: “I urge you to show due deference to France and their different traditions.”

In a brief reply concluding the hearing, Vincent’s counsel Fred Mackintosh said that if the judge accepted the prosecution’s argument, it would amount to saying that any “racist” statement on Facebook or YouTube, regardless of context, would be a breach of the peace. He urged the judge to reject this argument and to recognise that “Holocaust denial” when expressed in Vincent’s terms, is not a crime in Scotland – neither a breach of the peace, nor grossly offensive.

The judge said that he aimed to have read all relevant material and considered the arguments fully, in time to pass judgment on 12th October.

Clearly, the Vincent Reynouard case has become a vitally important test of whether historical revisionism will be criminalised in the UK via a ‘back door’ route, without any honest and open discussion in Parliament.

We shall make a further assessment of the broader context soon. But it should be recognised by all concerned that there will be no surrender of the basic principles involved. In the UK, Spain and Canada, European traditions of free historical inquiry are under attack. We shall defend those traditions, by any and every method that proves necessary.

[UPDATE: On 12th October the Edinburgh judge Sheriff Dickson ruled that Vincent should be extradited to France. For a report on this extraordinary judgement, click here. Vincent remains in Edinburgh Prison, pending an appeal in January 2024.]

Criminalising history – Edinburgh Court orders Vincent Reynouard’s extradition

[Now also available in French translation at Vincent Reynouard’s blog]

[This article is also available in Spanish – Este artículo también está disponible en español.]

[Earlier trial report from September now available in German translation]

Today an Edinburgh judge took a step towards criminalising historical revisionism in the UK, when he ordered the extradition of the French scholar Vincent Reynouard, whose ‘crime’ is to have made videos and written books questioning aspects of Second World War history. The detailed judgment by Sheriff Chris Dickson (against which an appeal is likely to be made) amounts to a shocking assault on academic freedom.

[American readers might be confused by the judge’s title: in Scotland a “Sheriff” is a judge in the lower courts, not a police official.]

As regular H&D readers will know, Vincent has been imprisoned in Edinburgh for the past eleven months, despite there being no UK law against historical revisionism. He has repeatedly been dragged into court for extradition hearings, in a courtroom normally used for terrorist murderers and gangsters.

In most of Europe, there are laws of various kinds that imprison scholars for questioning the alleged homicidal ‘gas chambers’ or other aspects of ‘Holocaust’ history. In some countries – such as France – ‘nazi crimes’ completely separate from the ‘Holocaust’ are also protected from historical investigation.

But in the UK, Parliament has chosen not to introduce any such law.

Zionist lobbyists have therefore used other laws to criminalise historical revisionism indirectly (including the racial incitement provisions of the Public Order Act, plus a section of the Communications Act that was originally drafted to deal with people who use the telephone for harassment and indecency).

Vincent Reynouard (above left) consulting his lawyer during an earlier trial in France. In the background (left) is Jerôme Bourbon, editor of Rivarol.

In the present case, French prosecutors had at first obtained Vincent’s arrest so that he could be extradited to serve a 12 month prison sentence that had been upheld by a French appeal court in 2015. This sentence was imposed under the ‘Gayssot Law’, originally introduced to criminalise the eminent revisionist Professor Robert Faurisson. Communist politician Jean-Claude Gayssot and millionaire Jewish socialist Laurent Fabius joined forces to bring in a law that makes it illegal in France to question the decisions of the Nuremberg war crimes trials.

No other area of history is protected in this fashion by French law.

The 2015 sentence condemned Vincent for two online videos in which he raised questions about the alleged homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau and described the ‘Holocaust’ as a myth.

As we reported last month, due to the length of time that Vincent has already served in Edinburgh jail while awaiting extradition, this initial arrest warrant was dropped.

So today’s judgment was on a second warrant which French prosecutors issued in December 2022 and which was certified by ever-compliant UK authorities (the National Crime Agency) in March 2023. Again each of the offences detailed in this warrant would attract a prison sentence of up to 12 months, and though in theory Vincent would face a trial in France (rather than serving a sentence that has already been imposed), few observers have confidence that justice would be served in the French courts.

This second warrant related to seven separate videos posted online. Some of these videos again questioned the feasibility and historical veracity of ‘gas chamber’ allegations. Others involved the so-called “massacre” in the French village of Oradour in June 1944. Vincent Reynouard has made a particular study of Oradour, and his updated and detailed book on this topic was recently published.

In today’s judgment, Sheriff Chris Dickson ruled that Vincent’s alleged crimes committed in these videos would also be offences in Scotland under the Communications Act, due to being “grossly offensive”. In this sense he accepted the prosecution argument advanced last month (see my earlier trial report). On the other legal point at issue he sided with Vincent’s defence barrister, Fred Mackintosh KC, in rejecting the notion that the videos could amount to a “breach of the peace” by threatening “serious disturbance to the community” and causing “alarm to ordinary people”.

Sheriff Dickson’s ruling that the videos were “grossly offensive” and therefore criminal in Scotland (and grounds for extradition) amounts to the most serious assault on academic freedom that any UK court has yet attempted. It was a truly shameful judgment: an infamous day in the UK’s legal history.

In paragraph 38 of his judgment, Sheriff Dickson accepted that “there is no crime of Holocaust denial in Scotland and that a ‘message or other matter’ which consists of or includes Holocaust denial can only be contrary to section 127(1)(a) if it is grossly offence [sic].”

Very oddly, in a blatant dereliction of duty, Sheriff Dickson seems to concede in his next paragraph that he did not study the full content of each video. He does not claim to have any expertise in the relevant historical topics, nor indeed any expertise in historical method generally.

Yet Sheriff Dickson believed himself competent to decide, apparently on the basis of reading only certain extracts from the transcripts rather than weighing their full context, that the videos were “(i) beyond the pale of what is tolerable in our society; and (ii) grossly offensive and that any reasonable person in an open and just multiracial society would find them to be so.”

Sheriff Chris Dickson, the judge responsible for today’s assault on academic freedom

The Sheriff’s reasoning was (in part) that the videos were “derogatory towards the Jewish people”, though he accepted that Vincent had at no time called for violence against Jews, still less for their extermination.

In fact Sheriff Dickson took the view that “all of the offences specified in the extradition warrant” amounted to gross offensiveness under the Communications Act.

It’s important to look at the precedents on which interpretation of this law rests. The standard precedent, known as the Collins case, involved repeated phone calls made to a Member of Parliament’s office, in which Collins had “ranted and shouted and made reference to ‘wogs’, ‘Pakis’, ‘black bastards’ and ‘niggers’.”

It is in the context of this Collins case that Sheriff Dickson was assessing Vincent Reynouard’s videos, which could not have been more different in content and style. Rather than vulgar and thoughtless abuse, Vincent employed calm and rational analysis. Yet Sheriff Dickson ruled that the following content was “grossly offensive” in the same sense as the Collins telephone calls.

Video 1: suggesting that the deaths at Oradour occurred as the result of an explosion rather than a ‘massacre’ by the SS.

Video 1 (second offence): making a reasoned case as to why alleged ‘homicidal gas chambers’ at Auschwitz-Birkenau did not exist, and describing orthodox historical accounts of this topic as “the official thesis”.

Video 2: arguing that a particular room in an Auschwitz crematorium was not in fact a homicidal gas chamber, as it has been portrayed by other historians; using an on-screen symbol denoting ‘fake’; summarising part of his argument analysing the roof of this structure, with the words “no holes, no Holocaust”.

Professor Robert Faurisson, the French scholar against whom the anti-revisionist Gayssot Law was originally promulgated, with then Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Video 3: analysing orthodox ‘Holocaust history’ as being, in the words of the warrant, “a belief made up of multiple lies, errors or half-truths that build on each other”; denying that inmates were massacred, and arguing that deaths at the camp partly “attest to the death of hundreds of cripples who could not withstand the transport”; describing the display of hair as though it were evidence of mass killings, as the “most blatant deception”; stating that two buildings referred to by other historias as homicidal gas chambers were actually intended for hygienic purposes; again using the words “no holes, no Holocaust”.

Video 4: with reference to a correspondent’s questions, arguing that “there is a Jewish problem. A problem that Hitler saw clearly”; stating that Jews have exploited society’s flaws and that “it is true that the Jews exploit the situation to dominate us, even enslave us”, but that “to remove them [the Jews] would be pointless”.

Video 5: stating that “revisionism exposes the great lie from which [the Jews] profit”; arguing that the Holocaust myth “imposes a deadly anti-racism for White Europe” and that “this is why Hitler is the most slandered man”.

Video 6: describing stories of Nazi atrocities as being “crude slanders”; suggesting that the Allied victors of the Second World War did not themselves believe in the tales of German homicidal gas chambers.

Video 7: again stating that the Allied victors themselves knew that the tales of mass homicidal gassing were lies circulated as propaganda; suggesting that the confession of Auschwitz-Birkenau commandant Rudolf Höss, used at the Nuremberg trial, was forced from him; “in short, poor Rudolf Höss was treated so that he would say what the victors expected”.

Polish authorities themselves have drastically lowered the official death toll at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp complex – but attempts to dispute the old orthodoxy are viewed by French law (and now by the Edinburgh Sheriff Chris Dickson) as illegal and “grossly offensive”.

I have quoted these extracts from the judgment at length to emphasise that this was the worst that the prosecutors could say about Vincent. Readers might find this difficult to believe, but it was on the basis of the above extracts that Sheriff Dickson found Vincent’s videos to have been “grossly offensive” communications, and therefore to have been of the same illegal character as the ranting criminalised in the Collins case, the standard test for a Section 127(1)(a) offence. The Sheriff believes that Vincent’s reasoned historical arguments are closely comparable to a man telephoning his MP and emitting repeated abuse about “‘wogs’, ‘Pakis’, ‘black bastards’ and ‘niggers’.”

Adding to this extraordinary judgment, Sheriff Dickson goes out of his way to state that “there would, given the nature of the conduct set out in the accusation warrant, be public interest in prosecuting the respondent [Vincent Reynouard] for that conduct.”

Let us be clear about what Sheriff Dickson is saying here.

He accepts that Parliament has chosen not to bring in any law even vaguely comparable to the French Gayssot Law, or the numerous other European laws criminalising ‘Holocaust denial’.

Yet he has opted to stretch the meaning of ‘grossly offensive’ digital communications, so that serious historical debate (whether or not one agrees with the historical arguments being put forward) can be deemed ‘grossly offensive’.

Sheriff Dickson has ruled in effect that if Jews (or rather the majority faction among Jews) are offended by a historical or scientific argument, Scottish law is obliged to regard expression of that argument as grossly offensive and therefore warranting a prison sentence.

It is difficult to imagine a more outrageous abuse of judicial power, encroaching on an academic topic well outside the competence of the judge concerned.

The Edinburgh court had accepted early on in the case that it was not a matter for the court to debate whether or not the ‘Holocaust’ occurred. Yet what Sheriff Dickson has now done is to assert that it is the business of the court to impose a historical orthodoxy which must be obeyed by all Scottish citizens (and by extension all UK citizens) on pain of imprisonment.

Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, wartime intelligence supremo and ‘Holocaust’ sceptic, photographed in 1947. Would he be criminalised in 2023 for expressing “grossly offensive” doubts about homicidal gas chambers?

One wonders how Sheriff Dickson would deal (for example) with the wartime chairman of London’s Joint Intelligence Committee, Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, who is 1943 dismissed the earliest Holocaustian tales of mass gassings as propaganda. Cavendish-Bentinck criticised Allied propagandists for “publicly giving credence to atrocity stories for which we have no evidence. … I feel certain that we are making a mistake in publicly giving credence to this gas chambers story.”

Today’s particular case involved a Frenchman, Vincent Reynouard. Yet its implications are chilling for all Britons, indeed all Europeans, who value traditional standards of academic enquiry.

Vincent Reynouard is almost certain to file an appeal against this judgment, and H&D will report on further developments in the case soon. He stands at the frontline in defence of civilised European values against the tyranny of a privileged lobby. True Europeans will be hoping for his eventual victory.

[A two part interview with Vincent Reynouard appears in issues 115 and 116 of H&D.]

Politicised policing in the UK

Home Secretary Suella Braverman – who was being applauded by some racial nationalists only a week ago after a speech about immigration – has wasted no time in seeking to politicise the response of UK police officers to the developing war in Palestine.

Braverman is the daughter of Indian immigrants who moved to Britain during the 1960s. She is married to a Jewish businessman, Rael Braverman.

And she has obvious ambitions to succeed her fellow Indian Rishi Sunak as the UK’s Prime Minister.

Today Braverman abandoned any pretence that her party is interested in a just and lasting Middle East peace settlement.

Writing to Chief Constables across England and Wales, Braverman reminded them that support for Hamas is a criminal offence under the Terrorism Act, which means that even wearing certain symbols can lead to a jail sentence in the UK. (See Saturday’s H&D article written within hours of Hamas breaching Israeli security.)

The Israeli flag flying alongside the Union flag outside the Home Office in London today.

But she went further. In a blatant attempt to silence political debate, Braverman now seeks to criminalise one of the slogans most widely heard on pro-Palestinian demonstrations. She told Chief Constables:
“It is not just explicit pro-Hamas symbols and chants that are cause for concern. I would encourage police to consider whether chants such as ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ should be understood as an expression of a violent desire to see Israel erased from the world, and whether its use in certain contexts may amount to a racially aggravated section 5 public order offence.”

Braverman even suggests that displaying a Palestinian flag at a demonstration should in some circumstances be regarded as a criminal offence.

Perhaps most significantly, the Home Secretary used this letter to suggest to Chief Constables that (for the first time in the UK) possession of a swastika symbol should be treated as a criminal offence, in the context of a pro-Palestinian demonstration.

In most cases, H&D readers would probably deprecate the use of swastikas at such events, as they are almost always used by leftwing anti-Zionists in the context of suggesting an equivalence between National Socialism and Zionism. Nevertheless, the Home Secretary’s suggestion – that simple possession of a swastika symbol should be a criminal offence – is a dangerous development and one which should be resisted by all legal means.

Our readers will not be surprised to see that Braverman highlighted the “close collaboration” between English and Welsh police forces and the ultra-Zionist lobby group Community Security Trust (CST).

A photo circulated by Braverman’s office shows the Home Secretary (above right) visiting the hardline Zionist lobby group Community Security Trust, alongside CST’s founder Gerald Ronson (above centre) who has criminal convictions for fraud and a politically motivated assault.

CST grew out of the violent anti-fascist 62 Group which specialised in physical attacks on British nationalists during the 1960s. CST’s founder Gerald Ronson was in charge of finances for the 62 Group, working alongside its “field commander” Cyril Paskin and its intelligence chief Gerry Gable, who is now the editor and publisher of Searchlight. Gable and two other 62 Group operatives were convicted for an illegal entry into the home of historian David Irving, where they aimed to steal documents.

Paskin, Ronson, and Gable planned many acts of political thuggery. One of the last 62 Group operations was in November 1971, when the 62 Group attacked a conference in a Brighton Hotel organised by the Northern League, an academic racial nationalist group. Paskin and others received suspended prison sentences for affray.

Some years earlier, Gerald Ronson was convicted of a politically motivated assault on a member of Sir Oswald Mosley’s Union Movement.

During the mid-1960s, the 62 Group evolved into a more politically focused group called JACOB, which in turn evolved into CST. The development of JACOB was advised by Monica Medicks, an Israeli intelligence officer who had previously been a member of the anti-British terrorist group Irgun.

Unlike Suella Braverman and the Conservative Party, Heritage and Destiny supports the interests of Britons and Europeans rather than Israelis.

Cyril Paskin, “field commander” of the violent anti-fascist 62 Group and closest street-fighting ally of CST founder Gerald Ronson

European nationalists have different views on the Middle East. But our movements – and future nationalist governments in Europe – will act in the interests of Europeans and will never prostrate ourselves as the uncritical tools of international Zionist lobbies. Especially not lobbies with a long record of anti-European, anti-nationalist violence.

Both Braverman and her political opponent Jeremy Corbyn are playing games with the issues of “racism” and “anti-semitism”. Corbyn persistently lies about the historical events of Cable Street in 1936 (where Jews and Communists fought London police in an effort to obstruct a march by Mosley’s supporters), and as we recently reported, he took the extraordinary step of writing to Braverman to pressure the Home Secretary into banning our European correspondent Isabel Peralta from entering the UK.

And now we see Braverman herself seeking to criminalise anti-Zionism and extend the UK’s criminal law into other areas of previously legitimate political debate.

H&D will of course try to stay within the law at all times. But Braverman is playing a dangerous game: her present trajectory is likely to force a confrontation in which not only British nationalists, but people of various political persuasions critical of Israel are dragged into court. If this happens, she can expect to be fought at every level, from the streets of Britain to the European Courts.

Vincent Reynouard reports from his Edinburgh jail on the eve of his extradition trial

Scottish justice will soon decide whether to extradite me to France or release me. Knowing that, if I am extradited, I will probably spend years in prison, we can say that my fate will be decided on September 21st.

My lawyers are optimistic. Indeed, having served the entire prison sentence which earned me the first arrest warrant, only the second remains. Paris is asking me to judge me for several videos. However, to be extradited, these videos must constitute crimes in both France and Scotland. My lawyers’ argument is clear: my comments do not transgress UK laws.

My opponents invoke the precedent set by the conviction of singer A. Chabloz in 2018. However, A. Chabloz was convicted for having composed, performed and broadcast “grossly offensive” songs. In question here were the vocabulary chosen, the tone adopted and the criticisms formulated against the Jewish people in general. My videos are totally different. Although they may shock and offend, they are never grossly offensive and, therefore, remain within the bounds of freedom of expression as conceived in the United Kingdom.

Many of my relatives are therefore optimistic about the outcome of this hearing. For my part, I am neither pessimistic nor optimistic, because I have learned not to hope for anything and not to fear anything. The reason is always the same: I trust in Providence. So far, she has protected me in my mission. I am therefore convinced that the decision of September 21 will be the most likely to serve the revisionist cause. Certainly, for me, it will undoubtedly be the occasion for new trials, but the trials are there so that we improve by overcoming them.

I will therefore accept the final truth, whatever it may be, and will continue to place the revisionist cause above my personal destiny, because revisionism serves the Common Good and, as a National Socialist, I have always advocated the primacy of the common good over particular interests. Therefore, I will not back down now. My personal destiny is of no importance.

Some will call me a fanatic. However, when we see how the anti-revisionists treat us, we understand that only diehards can endure the fight on the front line. If I wasn’t one, I would have given up a long time ago. Providence raises up the right people where they are needed. Our adversaries being fanatics, She opposes fanatics to them. It’s in the natural order of things.

So I calmly wait for September 21st. In the calm of my cell, I continue my activities of reading, writing, meditation and drawing. After ten months, a daily routine was established. I hardly notice that I am in prison anymore. I’m like on a ship where life unfolds peacefully. For the past few weeks, I have been the oldest on my wing. I know the staff and the inmates know me, because I am a somewhat unusual prisoner.

I should have been released on August 10th, once my prison sentence was fully served. However, the Scottish justice system decided to keep me in prison on the grounds that I could take advantage of my release to escape again. Knowing what I have done since October 2021, this fear is understandable. I would add that, even if this extension of my detention were illegal, I would not claim any compensation, because I did not suffer – far from it – in Edinburgh prison.

Besides, in Edinburgh prison, the deprivation of liberty as it affects me is entirely relative. Certainly, my body is held in a penitentiary establishment, but my mind remains free. Here, I read a lot: I discovered authors like Denis Marquet (on spirituality) and Jacques Ellul (on technique). I corresponded freely with wonderful people. I was able to exercise every day, including three times a week in a well-equipped gym. I enjoyed an excellent diet that many people would envy. Finally, I improved my drawing techniques, especially watercolour.

In my eyes, I am much freer than the citizen forced to get up every morning to do an uninteresting job. My freedom is a thousand times greater than that of people without an inner life, glued to their screen and slaves to social networks.

As for the prison guards, they were very kind to me, probably because they think that there is no legitimate reason for me to be in prison. Not long ago, in fact, a guard told me: “You have been in prison for almost a year, because France does not respect the right to freedom of expression!” I think she was expressing the thoughts of the guards in general…

It is true that, from this vantage point in Scotland, we observe, incredulously, the climate of hysteria which reigns in France around real or imagined anti-Semitism. The causes of this frenzy are undoubtedly multiple.

Revisionist pioneer Robert Faurisson addressing his final conference in Shepperton, England, attended by Vincent Reynouard and organised by H&D’s Peter Rushton

First of all, I think a lot of Jews are worried. In this changing and crisis-ridden world, they fear a new persecution, even a new “Holocaust”, on the grounds that they would always have been the scapegoats. The associations which represent them therefore act to eradicate anti-Judaism from society. However, knowing that, in our part of the world, “racism” has become the capital sin, the government – whoever it may be – is obliged to support this action.

To this is probably added another fact: at a time when the Rassemblement National (RN – National Rally) is considered, rightly or wrongly, as a force capable of influencing politics, attacking the ultra-right induces Marine Le Pen increasingly to dissociate herself from the ideals of the national right. And as we always end up becoming what we say, whether by conviction or by strategy, then the more the government attacks the ultra-right, the more the RN becomes normalised .

Finally, I think that for some, hitting the ultra-right is another way of attacking the RN, with a view to preventing a possible electoral victory for Marine Le Pen. Indeed, when a government has no positive record to its credit, its only political strategy consists of presenting itself as the ultimate bulwark against the foul Beast. He can then say: “See, the foul beast is not dead. Don’t be fooled; the de-demonisation of the RN is only apparent. If Marine Le Pen comes to power or even comes close, the ultra-right will take the opportunity to resurface.” In my eyes therefore, these various causes contribute to the ambient hysteria.

As for me, I represent an intellectual danger for the government, because I demonstrate that the crimes attributed to the Foul Beast are propaganda lies. My action appears all the more dangerous to him because I denounced a particularly fragile myth: the alleged massacre of women and children in the church of Oradour by the ‘barbaric’ Waffen SS. Without denying the deaths of these people, I demonstrate that the circumstances of this tragedy were very different.

However, if the myth of Oradour falls, some might wonder about Auschwitz. The link will be all the more natural since, since 2017, the challenge to the official History of Oradour has also been repressed by the anti-revisionist law. People will then say: “The myth of Oradour was protected by the same law which prohibits contesting the existence of the gas chambers of Auschwitz; therefore, are these gas chambers also a myth?”

The guardians of Memory cannot therefore retreat: they must defend tooth and nail the myth of Oradour. Hence their interest in silencing me. This doesn’t bode well for me. However, here again, my personal destiny is unimportant. I don’t expect anything down here. The reward will come after this earthly life. This is my conviction (which I do not impose on anyone). Therefore, I am calm.

H&D will report further on Vincent Reynouard’s case and additional reports will appear in English at the Real History blog and in French at Vincent’s own blog Sans Concession.

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?

Vincent Reynouard case latest: new warrant, delayed extradition hearing

French revisionist scholar Vincent Reynouard – who has been jailed in Edinburgh for almost four months despite not being accused of any crime under Scottish or English law – was handed further charges today while in the dock at Edinburgh Sheriff Court.

As with the previous charges, these have been issued by French prosecutors who are seeking Vincent’s extradition to be tried under the ‘Gayssot Law’, introduced in 1990 by a French Communist MP.

This bans the expression of sceptical historical views about the ‘crimes against humanity’ defined at the Nuremberg Trial and in the 1945 ‘London Charter’ that established that trial.

Most obviously, the Gayssot Law prohibits sceptical research into ‘Holocaust’ history, which is banned in several European countries, though perfectly legal in the UK.

Vincent Reynouard (above right) in 2020,with the late Richard Edmonds, being presented with the Robert Faurisson International Prize.

Vincent Reynouard has previously been convicted several times of such ‘crimes’, and is best known for his investigation into the ‘Oradour massacre’ of June 1944. His published work about Oradour dates back to the 1990s, and he recently wrote a comprehensive investigation of this topic, now available (in French) from his website.

The latest warrant seems to reflect an admission by French prosecutors that they made an error in their initial warrant, under which Vincent Reynouard was arrested in Anstruther, Scotland, on 10th November last year. He has been held in Edinburgh Prison ever since his arrest.

An interview with Vincent Reynouard, by H&D‘s assistant editor Peter Rushton, will appear in the May-June edition of Heritage and Destiny. Vincent will next appear in court for a pre-trial hearing on 20th April, and the full extradition trial is presently scheduled for 8th June, again in Edinburgh.

Updates on the Vincent Reynouard case will appear here soon.

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