Scottish justice or “due deference” to French-Zionist lobby? The Reynouard case hangs in the balance
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Death of an embarrassment
We are unlikely ever to find out for certain who was responsible for the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin and his right-hand man Dmitry Utkin on 23rd August after their plane crashed in unexplained circumstances.
Many observers will quite reasonably point to the long history of Kremlin dictators assassinating their rivals. The KGB and its predecessors and successors have frequently tracked down ‘traitors’ even in foreign countries, let alone those such as Prigozhin and Utkin who had the temerity to continue to challenge the Kremlin’s authority within Russia.
Yet even today we don’t know for sure whether (for example) the KGB murdered Walter Krivitsky in the Bellevue Hotel, Washington, in February 1941, or whether he killed himself in the despair and isolation of exile.
Even in death, Prigozhin and Utkin continue to be an embarrassment to the European cultural and political traditions whose symbolism they and their Wagner Group abused.
It seems unlikely that Prigozhin had the slightest interest in or knowledge of Wagner, beyond a vague idea that he was Adolf Hitler’s favourite composer, and that the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ from Die Walküre was used to accompany scenes of American helicopter gunships slaughtering Vietnamese civilians in the Hollywood film Apocalypse Now.
Neither did he or Utkin demonstrate any appreciation of national socialist ideas, nor of Adolf Hitler’s true political legacy.
What Prigozhin, Utkin and their fellow ‘Wagner Group’ thugs liked was the Hollywood image of ‘nazi brutality’. They revelled in slaughter and profited from selling their murderous services to sundry African dictators. In so doing, they acted as arm’s length instruments of their Kremlin sponsor Vladimir Putin, who of course naturally took his cut from their numerous criminal enterprises.
This cosy partnership fell apart for only one reason. The Wagner Group was in the forefront of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, given special license to scour Russia’s prisons for rapists and murderers who could be unleashed on Ukrainian civilians. As is so often the case with mercenary forces, their reward was to come largely from looting their victims, in what was expected to be a swift conquest.
Ukrainian resistance prevented that scenario, and left Prigozhin’s forces under fire and under paid.
The consequence was that Prigozhin and Utkin turned on their Kremlin master, and even after the swift evaporation of their attempted ‘coup’, Putin was left looking enfeebled. If he believed that killing Prigozhin and Utkin would be a form of political Viagra, Putin is sure to be disappointed.
For European nationalists, the embarrassment of the Wagner Group’s ‘nazi’ iconography continues. Not only are we faced by endless news bulletins describing the dead mercenaries as ‘neo-nazis’, but we also have the living embarrassment of some of their associates, such as another supposed ‘neo-nazi’ gang allied to the Kremlin, Rusich and its co-leader Yan Petrovsky.
Last month Petrovsky, who sadly (unlike Prigozhin) does have real connections to the fringe of European nationalism, was arrested while passing through Helsinki airport. He co-founded Rusich with a sadist and football hooligan from St Petersburg, Alexey Milchakov, and they have polluted various corners of the internet with a combination of crude, fake ‘neo-nazism’ and advocacy of anti-European genocide in Ukraine.
But like the Wagner Group, Petrovsky and Milchakov turned against Putin. Rusich is now complaining loudly that the Kremlin has done nothing to help Petrovsky after his arrest.
These gangsters (large and small) are fighting each other as their plan to loot Ukraine falls apart.
For Western European nationalists the broader lesson is clear. We must firmly dissociate ourselves from sadistic thugs and mindless scum who discredit our cause, not only in Russia but throughout the White world.
Iraq Invasion – Twenty Years On
The twentieth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq sees the discredited but still shameless Tony Blair continuing to regard himself as an international statesman.
But for British patriots and campaigners for historical truth worldwide, Blair’s criminal record is clear.
A positive aspect of the entire disgusting charade – whereby ‘evidence’ of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ was massaged to create a case for war – is that it added to public disenchantment with the political elite. Arguably the rise of UKIP, Brexit, and even the election of Donald Trump (for better and worse) could never have happened without this mass disillusionment caused by the WMD lie.
The fact that we failed to capitalise on that is partly because, here in the UK, the BNP leadership under Nick Griffin was fatally weak and confused in its response to Blair’s lies. Griffin was never able to decide whether he wanted to exploit the war (and 9/11) merely to attack Islam, or whether he was prepared to ask more serious questions.
Some of those important questions are asked in the video below by the barrister and anti-war campaigner Dr Abdul-Haq Al-Ani, speaking late last year at a meeting of the Four Virtues Club, hosted by Lady Michèle Renouf and Dr James Thring.
Forthright condemnation of the way intelligence was used to justify the war is no longer restricted to political dissidents. For example, to mark the anniversary the CBS News podcast Intelligence Matters has produced a special edition on the Iraq War which pointed out the way that conclusions were distorted to fit a political agenda:
“Instead of asking, ‘Is it possible that we’re not seeing more because we are wrong?’ the analysts explained the lack of information by saying Saddam was practicing ‘vigorous denial and deception efforts.'”
Michael Morell, former acting Director of the CIA, states on the podcast:
“We were wrong on the chemical weapons judgment, we were wrong on the biological weapons judgment, and we were wrong on the nuclear weapons judgment. Saddam no longer had these programs. He had stopped them. He had disarmed.”
Yet Tony Blair and his apologists are still unable to face these facts.
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 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.
Europeans mark two contrasting anniversaries
H&D‘s friends and comrades in Europe have marked two contrasting anniversaries in recent days.
In Dresden commemorations were held for the greatest crime of the Second World War – the terror bombing that destroyed this ancient city in February 1945. As discussed in a new article by our assistant editor Peter Rushton at the Real History blog, no one knows the true death toll at Dresden, partly because the city was packed with refugees who had fled from Stalin’s Red Army as it advanced into eastern Germany. Based on his detailed archival research, the British historian David Irving has estimated 135,000 deaths.
Dresden was the culmination of a deliberate policy of terror bombing – a deliberate decision to flout pre-war agreements (and to abandon the policies of the British government at the start of the war, maintained until Churchill took office).
The most famous British military historian, J.F.C. Fuller wrote in 1948:
“It may seem a little strange, nevertheless it is a fact, that this reversion to wars of primitive savagery was made by Britain and the United States, the two great democracies… With the disappearance of the gentleman as the back-bone of the ruling class in England, political power rapidly passed into the hands of demagogues who, by playing upon the emotions and ignorance of the masses, created a permanent war-psychosis.”
Fuller went on to acknowledge that as a consequence of the seizure of power in Britain by such “demagogues”, notably Churchill, “the obliteration of cities by bombing was probably the most devastating blow ever struck at civilisation”. Fuller wrote of “the moral decline which characterised the war.”
The Spanish nationalist group Devenir Europeo carried out a campaign of leaflets and posters targeting universities and military academies in an effort to raise awareness of the events of the Second World War and how they shaped our world. Our correspondent Isabel Peralta was very much involved in this campaign: she also marked this week’s other important historic anniversary.
In February 1943, 4,000 Spanish anti-communist volunteers – the División Azul (‘Blue Division’) – successfully fought off a vastly greater force of Stalin’s Red Army at the Battle of Krasny Bor, near Leningrad, allowing their German allies to regroup and maintain the Leningrad front.
Speaking beside the División Azul memorial at the Almudena cemetery, Madrid, this week, Isabel pointed out that her compatriots won at Krasny Bor not because they had greater numbers or greater weapons, but because they had greater faith in their cause – the noble ideals of the true Europe.
Spain is now at the front line of the struggle to maintain freedom of research and freedom of speech on historical and political questions. Under their new ‘democratic memory law’ some forms of historical revisionism are now illegal, although in other respects Spanish laws on ‘incitement of racial hatred’ are less restrictive than in the UK.
Isabel herself is presently facing trial in Madrid for a speech at an anti-immigration rally outside the Spanish Embassy last year.
How Rudolf Hess tried to stop war – and why others wanted to kill him
Thirty-five years ago today, the 93-year-old Rudolf Hess died at Spandau, where he had been the sole prisoner for more than twenty years. He had been incarcerated for almost half a century, since his crash landing in Scotland in May 1941.
Hess flew to Britain hoping that Germany and Britain could end their mutually-destructive war. He proposed that Britain should develop her Empire which was in no way threatened by Germany, who only required the return of her relatively modest colonies from the Kaiser’s era.
Under Hess’s proposals, Germany would be given a free hand in Europe, including dealing with Stalin’s Soviet Union.
After war had intensified during 1940, Hess perceived that Britain would not now easily agree a peace settlement without losing prestige, so he decided to take the risk of flying to Britain himself, “so that by his own presence in England, England would be enabled to consider an approach.” Hess hoped that he could provide some foundation on which peace talks could proceed.
Instead this martyr for peace found himself in one prison or another for the rest of his life.
To begin with Hess used cautious language about the Soviet Union, not wishing to give away too much in advance of what he hoped would be serious negotiations with the British. But by July 1941 when he wrote a memorandum titled “Germany – England from the viewpoint of war against the Soviet Union”, eventually handed to government minister and Daily Express owner Lord Beaverbrook, Hess was open (and prescient) about the overriding threat from Moscow that he believed an Anglo-German alliance should combat.
He believed that Germany was strong enough to defeat Russia, correctly pointing out that German morale was far higher in this war than it had been during the First World War:
“It will hardly be doubted that the spirit of the troops is magnificent. The elements which in the [first] world war eventually weakened the spirit of the German troops – the disruptive influences from home infected with Marxist communism, and hunger at home – are missing today.
“Thanks to the effects of national-socialism, the German armed forces are not only immune from Bolshevik propaganda, but fantastically anti-Bolshevik.”
Nevertheless, Hess asked influential Britons such as Beaverbrook to consider the consequences for the British Empire of a German defeat.
“Consequent on the Anglo-Bolshevik alliance, a victory for England would be a victory for the Bolsheviks.
“…Should England’s hopes of a German weakening be realised, the Soviet state, after the expansion of its armament capacity, would be the strongest military power in the world.
“Only a strong Germany as counter-balance, supported by all Europe, and in trustful relationship with England, could hinder this.
“I believe that Germany, destined by fate, was compelled at a given moment to draw aside the curtain covering the secret of the Bolshevik army, so that revelation of the danger might even yet make possible the defence of the civilised world.
“…England should further bear in mind the danger that would face certain parts of her Empire when the Bolshevik giant – which today is hardly conquerable by the biggest army in the world – has reached the military strength to be anticipated in the future.
“The danger will be still further increased by the attraction of Bolshevik ideas with the native-born populations with a low standard of living.
“…I am convinced that world domination awaits the Soviet Union in the future – if her power is not broken at the last minute – with the loss to Great Britain of her position as an Imperial power.”
Which of us in 2022 could say he was wrong?
The current issue of H&D includes an article by our assistant editor Peter Rushton giving the most likely explanation of Hess’s murder in 1987.
And way back in 1941, soon after Hess’s arrival in Britain, there was an abortive plot to kill him, involving exiled Polish troops and an officer of the Special Operations Executive – the ‘dirty tricks’ wing of the British war effort.
Tony Blair’s favourite oligarch hit by sanctions: ex-PM and ‘Holocaust’ lobby under scrutiny
As far back as 27th February H&D raised questions about former Prime Minister Tony Blair and his favourite oligarch Moshe Kantor, a close friend of both the ex-Labour leader and the Kremlin godfather Vladimir Putin.
We pointed out that since 2015 Blair has been chairman of Kantor’s ‘European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation’, which campaigns for ‘tougher laws against extremism’.
Naturally the extremism Blair and Kantor wish to criminalise involves such things as publishing a magazine or running a bookshop. For this type of extremism the likes of Blair and Kantor endorse the approach of Spanish prosecutors, who wish to jail Pedro Varela for twelve years, or German prosecutors who wish again to jail the 93-year-old Ursula Haverbeck, or German border guards who defy their own laws and their country’s obligations under the European constitution to deport the 19-year-old student Isabel Peralta.
Invading a neighbouring country is, by contrast, not ‘extreme’: not if the invader is Moshe Kantor’s close friend Vladimir Putin.
Kantor’s many leading positions in international Jewry and Zionism include President of the European Jewish Council; Vice President of the UK’s Jewish Leadership Council (a registered charity); Chairman of the Policy Council of the World Jewish Congress; and President of the World Holocaust Forum Foundation.
In many of these roles he has worked closely with Tony Blair, who was one of the most pro-Israel Prime Ministers in UK history.
In 2015 Kantor organised a conference in the Czech Republic where he called on European governments including the UK to adopted standardised laws criminalising ‘Holocaust denial’. Defying the views of scholars and legal experts who wish to repeal these ‘historical memory laws’ that jail people for their opinions, Kantor wanted to make the laws stricter and the punishments harsher.
Tony Blair joined Kantor in promoting these arguments and demands for legal crackdowns on opinion-crime, via a major article in The Times newspaper.
The main vehicle for demanding these new debate-denial laws was the ironically named European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation, with Kantor as President and paymaster, and Tony Blair as chairman.
Now Kantor himself is facing legal sanctions – not for opinions, but for his documented ties to the Kremlin’s war machine and lie machine.
It is now beyond dispute that for the past twenty years or more, Vladimir Putin has used Holocaust propaganda as an instrument of Russian diplomacy and as a justification for Russian military aggression.
Now is the time to ask the forbidden questions. Whatever European courts might say, it’s time to demand historical truth.
Back in 2007 – in a letter prominently published in a national newspaper – H&D‘s Peter Rushton discussed the way that Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir had used Holocaust propaganda to pressure US governments into allowing Israel to get away with nuclear proliferation. His letter ended: “Should a self-interested version of 1940s history be allowed to dictate the nuclear power politics of the 21st century, with potentially disastrous consequences?”
In 2022 the same question becomes more urgent, and we can no longer allow the risk of prosecution in many European countries to silence that question.
Therefore this week H&D will launch a new website section – Real History and the True Europe – in which over the coming months we shall ask the important questions about Europe’s history and culture, including the ‘Holocaust’.
On this website, in our magazine, and in a book to be published later this year – The Dogs That Didn’t Bark: British Intelligence, International Jewry and the Holocaust (the first of a series examining aspects of Britain’s secret history with the aid of new archival discoveries) – we will examine whether, just as Moshe Kantor and Vladimir Putin have exploited ‘Holocaust’ stories for propagandist purposes, other official and unofficial propaganda agencies were behind parts of the original ‘Holocaust’ narrative in the 1940s.
We shall re-examine the work of revisionist scholars including the late Professor Robert Faurisson, including work newly available in English translation.
We shall have interviews and court reports from across Europe, as politically biased judges seek to jail nonagenarians for ‘criminal’ opinions.
And we shall reveal other political abuses of the judicial system, where a new generation of European political activist is threatened with prosecution to distract from government treachery and failure to enforce immigration laws.
This online project and publishing venture will look at many other topics besides the ‘Holocaust’, but we shall not be afraid to challenge the establishment consensus. Europe is again at war. Historical and political truth is too important for us to tolerate its restriction by the courts.
Spot the criminal – Germany seeks to jail 93-year-old publisher while ‘Holocaust’ museums hang on to billionaire gangster’s donations
Ursula Haverbeck – the extraordinarily courageous German patriot and educator now aged 93 – was back in court earlier today in Berlin, appealing against convictions for ‘Holocaust denial’ and a 12-month prison sentence.
This is a combined appeal against two convictions and sentences for similar ‘crimes’, one in 2017 involving a speech to an audience of 80 people in Berlin; the other in 2020 relating to a YouTube interview conducted by Nikolai Nehrling, known in German nationalist circles as the Volkslehrer.
Mainstream German press reports see nothing wrong in dragging a 93-year-old lady through the courts for the ‘crime’ of doubting and asking questions about the alleged murder of six million Jews by a mysterious unique mass murder weapon – the alleged homicidal gas chambers.
H&D’s assistant editor has met Ursula several times, and she could not be further from the stereotype of an ‘inciter of hate’. She is a polite, very well-educated lady who expresses her views in reasonable terms. And it should be noted that she is one of the last generation of Germans who experienced the horrors of fleeing with her family from the invading barbarians of Stalin’s Red Army in 1945.
Ursula Haverbeck knows what it means to be a genuine refugee.
A very different type of human being is Roman Abramovich, chief financial fixer for the bloodstained tyrant Vladimir Putin.
BBC’s Panorama broadcast a detailed investigation of Abramovich’s criminal career on Monday evening. It is crystal clear that – aided and abetted by both Boris Yeltsin and in particular Putin – Abramovich built his fortune on defrauding the Russian people of literally billions of pounds worth of their national assets.
The beneficiaries of Abramovich’s loot include two of the world’s leading ‘Holocaust’ museums. A few days ago we discussed his links to Yad Vashem in Israel. Now it has become clear that the Imperial War Museum in London has no intention of returning the money given by Abramovich for its vastly expensive new ‘Holocaust’ gallery.
The museum has not disclosed quite how much Abramovich donated, but the total budget for the exhibition is at least £30.5 million. In addition to his personal contribution (or should we say the contribution of the long-suffering Russian people, since Abramovich’s wealth comes from assets stolen from them) Abramovich also staged a fundraising event for the project at Stamford Bridge, the home of Chelsea Football Club, which he owned until his London assets were frozen this week.
At the time of the donation in October 2018, the Imperial War Museum’s director gushed that: “This donation will enable IWM to reinterpret these galleries, which will present critical insights into the Holocaust as well as integrate the devastating events of the Holocaust into the broader history of the Second World War, revealing why this often overlooked dimension is so important.”
Quite shamelessly – given that it is one of the world’s leading military museums so ought to be taking a close interest in the world-changing events currently under way in Ukraine – the IWM says it will be “retaining the funds from Roman Abramovich”, and in the sly tradition of the barrack room lawyer insists: “This is compliant with all government regulations regarding sanctions”.
Meanwhile Yad Vashem has said only that it is “suspending its strategic partnership” with Abramovich and has yet to confirm whether it will hand back any of the stolen money.
While the Kremlin dictator Putin attempts a real genocide, valiantly resisted by Ukrainian patriots, his gangster henchman Abramovich has funded several prominent examples of a one-sided view of history – exploited for the benefit of yesterday’s Soviet butchers, today’s Russian imperialists, and the shameless Zionist pirates of both yesterday and today.
Those like Ursula Haverbeck who face trials across Europe for the ‘crime’ of ‘denying the Holocaust’ doubtless appreciate the irony that official ‘Holocaust history’ is funded by one of the world’s worst fraudsters, whose career of theft and brutality has been protected by a genuine war criminal.
On Monday Ursula Haverbeck’s latest court ordeal continues in Berlin. H&D will carry further updates throughout the case, both here and in forthcoming issues of our magazine.
Abramovich disgraced – a nation mourns
Vladimir Putin’s favourite oligarch – Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich – is now in disgrace. He faces a range of sanctions by the British government and today was disqualified by the Premier League as a Chelsea director. The billionaire Abramovich is no longer regarded as a fit and proper person to be involved in the running of a football club. His assets at the club and elsewhere in the UK have been frozen.
One of the most recent causes to benefit from Abramovich’s largesse was Yad Vashem, the most prestigious international museum of ‘the Holocaust’. On February 22nd – just two days before his close friend and ally Vladimir Putin began his brutal invasion of Ukraine – Abramovich and Yad Vashem announced a “strategic partnership” in which the tycoon would donate tens of millions of dollars.
The Abramovich donations, it was said, would be “significantly enriching Yad Vashem’s world-renowned International Institute for Holocaust Research … at the center of ground-breaking research initiatives in the field of Holocaust studies, which serves as the basis for both commemorative and educational activities related to the atrocities committed by the Nazis and their collaborators before, during and after the Holocaust. This new strategic partnership will expand and bolster Yad Vashem’s research activities, at a time when Holocaust distortion, denial and politicization are rising alarmingly worldwide. The partnership will provide support over a period of five years, to further expand and develop the Institute’s activities on a global scale.”
At first Yad Vashem was lobbying governments not to sanction Abramovich. But less than three weeks later, the deal is off, in the face of real atrocities committed across Ukraine by the generous donor’s closest political ally.
Abramovich is not the only big donor to Israeli causes who is now under international sanctions, though it remains to be seen whether these wily operators will be able to evade the world’s financial regulators in time-honoured fashion.
Some of his closest associates include Eugene Shvidler, partner in many Abramovich businesses and once a fellow director at Chelsea FC. A private jet linked to Shvidler was impounded at a UK airport earlier this week.
Another is David Davidovich, Abramovich’s righthand man in his earliest days in business, who made more than $1 billion from his sale of Russian oil interests. Davidovich also owns Russia’s second largest meat and meat-processing business. He gives his nationality as “Israeli”.
Abramovich is not the first unusual ‘businessman’ to be a major donor and facilitator of Zionist operations.
During the Jewish terrorist war against Britain from 1945-48, prominent figures in the US Mafia helped smuggle weapons to Palestine from New York docks. These included the notorious killers Mayer Lansky, Albert Anastasia and Joe Adonis whose daily business was known as “Murder Incorporated”.
Other important allies of the Zionist terror gangs included Sam Kay, a leading Jewish gangster in Miami; Bugsy Siegel, pioneer of Mafia interests in the Las Vegas casino and entertainment business; and Mickey Cohen, then the leading mafioso in California.
