Written submission from Dr Nafeez Ahmed (HCL0032)

 

This submission is particularly relevant to the following terms of reference of the inquiry:

 

 

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The submission offers an in-depth analysis of the role of political parties in the UK, US and Europe in facilitating the expansion of Islamophobia through the transmission of far-right ideologies. The analysis demonstrates that the rise of Islamophobia has been increasingly mainstreamed by purportedly centrist political parties which have forged trans-Atlantic ties with anti-Muslim and far-right groups.

 

  1. I am an award-winning investigative journalist and academic specialising in international security, including the radicalisation processes that lead to mass violence. I am currently a columnist for VICE and Middle East Eye; Editor in Chief of the crowdfunded investigative journalism project INSURGE intelligence; and a former writer for The Guardian where I covered the geopolitics of interlinked global crises. I am a former Visiting Research Fellow at the Faculty of Science and Technology at Anglia Ruskin University where I conducted research on the systemic causes of state failure, civil unrest and violent conflict; am currently a Research Fellow at the Schumacher Institute; and am Director of Strategic Communications at Unitas Communications. I am the author of six books, and a body of peer-reviewed academic works on international security which are widely cited in the scholarly literature. My work on terrorism and counter-terrorism issues has been used by the 9/11 Commission, the 7/7 Coroner’s Inquiry. I have previously testified in US Congress about my work; and have advised the US State Department, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the UK Defence Academy, and the British Foreign Office. My evidence before the House Select Committee for Communities & Local Government was cited in the final report of a previous inquiry into HM Government’s Preventing Violent Extremism programme.

 

  1. In February 2016, I was commissioned by the leading national hate crime charity Tell MAMA to undertake a series of investigations into the network dynamics of the international far-right. The investigative series was published on Tell MAMA’s website directly, and was also published jointly in June by Tell MAMA and INSURGEintelligence as a digital report, Return of the Reich. I will be drawing on information from the report for the purpose of this written evidence.[1]

 

  1. It is no longer controversial to recognise that Thomas Mair, who has received a ‘whole life’ sentence for his brutal “terrorist” murder of Labour MP Joe Cox on 16 June, was radicalised by neo-Nazi ideology. However, my investigation commissioned by Tell MAMA reveals that this ideology has found succour with an astonishingly powerful trans-Atlantic network of far-right, anti-Muslim political parties and organisations. Some of these far-right parties and organisations have direct links to HM Government. Unless this is recognised by HM Government policymakers, efforts to address Islamophobia will be ineffective, dealing largely with symptoms. In short, it is imperative for any strategy to address Islamophobia to address the existing structures, institutions and policies which are providing far-right groups with increasing legitimacy, access to power, and the ability to proselytise and thus radicalise larger constituencies.

 

  1. My investigation confirms that the Islamophobic ideology which radicalised Thomas Mair is being incubated by a Trans-Atlantic far-right network that has alarming connections to mainstream political parties across the world, from the Republican Party in the US, to the Conservative Party in Britain, along with several ruling parties in key European countries. Despite its hatred of the European Union, ironically, the network has grown its reach by parasitically exploiting the EU system.

 

  1. The most important finding of my Tell MAMA investigation is that this Trans-Atlantic far-right network includes a range of well-known and increasingly popular far-right parties in Europe, which have direct heritage tracing back to local and national Nazi movements and political parties, many of whom were complicit in grave atrocities against Jews and other minorities during the Second World War. The successors to these parties and movements now go to pains to identify themselves anti-Nazi and pro-Jewish. However, my investigation for Tell MAMA uncovered alarming evidence that despite these efforts, they continue to harbour deeply anti-Semitic ideologies and remain connected to openly neo-Nazi groups and organisations. Therefore, we are facing a new phenomenon here in which historically anti-Semitic groups are using Islamophobia to expand their reach: the effort by neo-Nazi groups to rebrand themselves tactically as ‘anti-Nazi’ purely to influence and/or enter into mainstream policymaking institutions. To capture this phenomenon, I have coined the term ‘reconstructed-Nazism’.

 

  1. We know that Mair is specifically connected to two far-right organizations: the National Alliance (NA) in the United States and the Springbok Club, a white nationalist pro-apartheid South African group that functions in exile in the United Kingdom. Records obtained by the leading US civil rights law firm, the Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC), show that Mair was “a dedicated supporter” of the National Alliance, formerly the most powerful neo-Nazi organisation in the US. Mair had also been a regular subscriber to S. A. Patriot, published by Springbok, a South African pro-apartheid club describing itself as against “multi-cultural societies” and “expansionist Islam.” Mair’s name is mentioned in a bulletin uploaded to a January 2006 blog post attributed to Springbok, describing him as “one of the earliest subscribers and supporters of S. A. Patriot.”

 

  1. Both the National Alliance and Springbok have wide-ranging connections to a trans-Atlantic network of far-right, anti-Muslim groups with neo-Nazi heritage. My investigation for Tell MAMA confirms that this network continues to coordinate entryism into mainstream political parties, with a significant degree of success that has permitted their core neo-fascist ideology to find innovative ways to gain public appeal, under the cover of seemingly legitimate political campaigning on mainstream issues such as immigration.

 

The National Alliance and the extreme right of the Republican Party

 

  1. A 1999 report by the SLPC identifies the National Alliance, of which Thomas Mair was a longtime supporter, as part of a network of white supremacist organisations in the US – including the Klu Klux Klan, the National Association for the Advancement of White People, and the America First Party – involved in the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a successor umbrella organisation to the racist Citizens Council of America (CCA). The CCA had originally been set-up in the 1950s to campaign against the civil rights movements’ demand to end racial segregation between white and black communities in schools.

 

  1. In its newer incarnation post-1985, the CCC’s members included leading Republican Party politicians. Reporting in the Washington Post, Thomas Edsall had identified many of these CCC supporters, including Congressman Bob Barr, Senator Trent Lott, Governor of Mississippi Kirk Fordice, Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, and numerous state legislatures. These and other CCC members were senior Republican politicians holding leadership positions across the US Congress and Senate. Yet the CCC repeatedly extolled the supremacy of the “white race” and the risk of its destruction at the hands of “black blood” in its publication, The Citizen Informer.

 

  1. In just the last few years, leading Republican Party politicians have taken CCC donations – though some decided to give the cash back after it emerged that the CCC’s racist ideology inspired white supremacist terrorist Dylann Roof. CCC President Earl Holt III, for instance, has donated some $65,000 to Republican candidates, including those who entered the Republican presidential race, namely Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Rick Santorum. According to The Atlantic: “Holt’s contribution records read as a who’s who of conservative candidates in recent years—including Mark Sanford, who represents Charleston in the House.”

 

  1. The National Alliance also has direct little-known ties to the libertarian wing of the Republican Party. Will Williams, a leader at the NA for two decades as an aide to its racist founder, William Pierce, left the group in July 2003 as its membership base began to collapse after Pierce’s demise. He quickly became a campaigner for Republican Congressman Ron Paul’s presidential campaign, which eventually placed him on the Tennessee Republican Party primary ballot.

 

  1. The NA also has ties to the British National Party in the UK. Its founder, Pierce, had a longstanding friendship and alliance with former BNP leader John Tyndall. In November 1995, Pierce spoke at a BNP conference in London, where at one point participants began chanting “Free the Order!” – a reference to The Order, a violent white nationalist group in the US.

 

  1. After his return to the US, the British government banned Pierce from the UK – unlike the BNP, which continued to carry the vision of his NA. It is well known that Batley and Spen, Joe Cox’s constituency, was once a stronghold for the BNP, a position dramatically weakened by the increasing local popularity of the Labour Party. Batley had 19 BNP members in the district back in 2008.

 

Springbok – from UKIP to Pegida and beyond

 

  1. The other organisation linked to Mair, Springbok, is connected with other far-right groups in Britain. Neil Hamilton of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) has ties to Springbok.

 

  1. Springbok also has ties to Pegida, an European anti-Muslim campaign network linked to neo-Nazi groups. A political split in Springbok resulted in the creation of Springbok-offshoot, the Swinton Circle, whose campaigning focus is anti-Europe. The Swinton Circle is actively involved in Pegida, attends its demonstrations, and has meetings with associated far-right groups. Swinton supporters recently participated in a ‘silent walk’ protest in Birmingham organised by Pegida UK. Swinton was specifically requested to join the protest against the ‘Islamisation’ of Europe by Pegida UK in February 2016. Swinton Circle members are still connected to Springbok despite the apparent split. In November 2015, the Circle supported a special Springbok Club event to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the white supremacist and pro-apartheid Rhodesian Unilateral Declaration of Independence.

 

UKIP, Pegida and the Vienna school of fascism

 

  1. Pegida UK’s leadership includes former English Defence League (EDL) leader ‘Tommy Robinson’ and UKIP parliamentary candidate Anne Marie Waters.

 

  1. In July 2015, an extensive investigation by the anti-fascist charity Hope Not Hate found that Pegida UK was behind a far-right plot to “incite a violent backlash from British Muslims, leading to serious disorder between Muslim and non-Muslim communities”, by hosting a cartoon exhibit featuring the prophet of Islam, Muhammad.

 

  1. The scheduled keynote speaker for the proposed exhibition was Dutch Freedom Party (PVV) leader and MP, Geert Wilders.

 

  1. Hope Not Hate’s investigation pinpointed the role of an obscure blog, the Gates of Vienna, in inspiring the Pegida UK cartoon plot.

 

  1. Among the Gates of Vienna’s inflammatory posts are detailed prescriptions for anti-Muslim paramilitary operations during an internal race war with European Muslims, and even ‘A guide to amateur bomb-making.’

 

  1. My investigation for Tell Mama shows that the Gates of Vienna blog can be consistently found at the heart of an international mosaic of anti-Muslim groups, coalescing under the ideological umbrella of what convicted Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik dubbed the ‘Vienna school of thought’ in his manifesto.

 

  1. Breivik’s violent paramilitary ‘Vienna school’ has coopted senior members of a range of mainstream political parties in the US, UK and Europe.

 

  1. Breivik, who massacred 77 students in July 2011 as part of his professed crusade against Islam, is a self-confessed neo-Nazi. It is well known that he cited the Gates of Vienna blog 86 times in his manifesto, referring to it as one of a handful of sources forming the basis of his so-called ‘Vienna school.’ One of Gate of Vienna’s most prominent contributors is ‘Fjordman’, the pseudonym for Peder Are Nøstvold Jensen, whose online writings were linked to 114 times by Breivik.

 

  1. Fjordman strongly distanced himself from Breivik in his public writings after the 2011 Norway terrorist attack, but on the Gates of Vienna blog just one month before that attack, he complained that Western politicians were complicit in “a policy of state-sponsored ethnic cleansing targeting the white majority population” and added: “Yes, the Islamic creed by itself is inherently violent. No, it cannot be reformed, and Islam in any way, shape or form does not belong in the West. Islam, and all those who practice it, must be totally and physically removed from the entire Western world.”

 

  1. The name of the Gates of Vienna blog comes from the Muslim Ottoman empire’s siege of Vienna in 1683, which the site believes continues today through “Islam’s” efforts to “overrun Christian Europe.” It puts forward the idea that due to this onslaught, an apocalyptic race war with Europe’s Muslims is inevitable over coming decades, and therefore citizens must prepare themselves now to fight back – the blog does this while ostensibly opposing Nazism and terrorism.

 

  1. Yet it is precisely through this tactical opposition to Nazism that the Vienna school of fascism has spread its tentacles.

 

The Danish People’s Party and the extreme right of the British Conservatives

 

  1. My analysis of the Gates of Vienna blog and its plethora of international networks confirms that its neo-fascist ideology has been adopted by key leaders and influencers in major political parties in Europe. Among them is the Danish People’s Party (DPP), which is intimately connected to the Conservative Party in the UK through an European Parliamentary group, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR).

 

  1. In 2009, DPP MEP Morten Messerschmidt, who is Vice Chair of the ECR led by the UK Conservative Party, conducted a video interview with regular Gates of Vienna contributor, psychologist Nicolai Sennels. Sennels is also a DPP parliamentary political candidate, and a founder of the Danish branch of Pediga, which has ties to Pegida UK.

 

  1. In the interview Messerschmidt told Sennels that in 20 years, the EU would be overrun by a civil war with Muslims, exactly as articulated by Gates of Vienna: “Europe will be increasingly marred by autonomous Islamised areas. The riots we are observing today—in Nørrebro, Vollsmose in Denmark as well as in no-go zones of other EU countries—will no longer be mere riots, but will evolve into genuine insurgencies with demands for independence, complete implementation of Sharia etc. Europe will—perhaps not as soon as 20 years—see a development similar to that in the Balkans, where in Kosovo, for example, the Muslims have succeeded in driving out the Christians and declare an independent republic… I believe the European citizens will come to their senses and throw off the tyranny.”

 

  1. Messerschmidt’s interviewer, Sennels, has himself promoted racist theories on Muslim genetic inferiority bearing startling resemblance to Nazi eugenics. Among his racist theories is the idea that nearly half of all Muslims in the world are inbred, and therefore genetically inferior: “Massive inbreeding within the Muslim culture during the last 1,400 years may have done catastrophic damage to their gene pool. The consequences of intermarriage between first cousins often have serious impact on the offspring’s intelligence, sanity, health and on their surroundings.”

 

  1. My investigation found that these abhorrent views represent just a fragment of the entrenched racism that can be found across the DPP, stretching all the way to its top leadership. Yet the DPP is now a powerful political force. Its former leader and now values spokesperson, Pia Kjærsgaard, is the Speaker in the Danish Parliament – despite having once said at an annual party meeting that: “In the Danish People’s Party we do not hide the fact we are against having Denmark turned into a multi-ethnic society.”

 

  1. The DPP is formally allied with the UK Conservative Party. The party is a key member of the Tory Party’s European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR) in the European Parliament. DPP MEP Morten Messerschmidt, who has openly sympathized with the Vienna school, is Vice Chair of the Tory-led ECR.

 

The Vienna school and the extreme right of the Republican Party

 

  1. When Messerschmidt was interviewed for the Gates of Vienna blog in 2009, he had attended a conference in Washington DC jointly organised by the International Free Press Society (IFPS) and Center for Security Policy (CSP). The SPLC describes IFPS as “an anti-Muslim coalition” run by a “European racist”; and classifies the CSP as an “anti-Muslim hate” group.

 

  1. The 2009 IFPS-CSP conference included key figures in the self-styled ‘counter-jihad’ movement including several luminaries frequently cited in Anders Breivik’s manifesto, such as Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and Pamella Geller of Atlas Shrugs (both banned from Britain by Home Secretary Theresa May in 2013). The ‘counter-jihad’ movement is widely recognised as a far-right anti-Muslim movement which uses ‘counter-terrorism’ as a reason to promote anti-Muslim and anti-migrant bigotry.

 

  1. In particular, the key organiser of the 2009 conference was Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan defence official who heads up the CSP. Gaffney rose to notoriety when the Republican Party’s then presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump – now President-elect – quoted fraudulent statistics produced by Gaffney’s CSP, to justify the idea of banning all Muslim immigration to the US. Gaffney also has two colleagues on Trump’s national security advisory team: Walid Phares, a long-time CSP contributor, and Joseph Schmitz, a CSP senior fellow and former Pentagon official. Gaffney himself had also been appointed as top natural security advisor to failed Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz. He therefore had considerable ideological influence on the two frontrunners of the Republican presidential campaign, and thus on strategy and policymaking in the Republican Party.

 

  1. Gaffney has repeatedly organised similar events, providing far right figures from Europe extraordinary access to the extreme right of the Republican Party. Politicians that have benefited from this access include Dutch PVV leader Geert Wilders and UKIP’s Lord Malcolm Pearson.

 

  1. Thus, through Frank Gaffney’s disturbing European connections, the two leading Republican presidential candidates were, in fact, tied to neo-Nazi parties in Europe. The neo-Nazi dimensions of these parties will be further explained below.

 

  1. The powerful influence of Gaffney’s thinking on President-elect Trump is particularly evident in his proposed appointment of Senator Jeff Sessions to the position of Attorney-General – despite the fact that Sessions has previously expressed sympathies for the Klu Klux Klan. Sessions is deeply embedded in the neo-Nazi white supremacist movement.  He has closely associated with far-right anti-immigrant organizations founded by John Tanton, a driving force in America’s white nationalist movements and a major player in the CCC. In 1993, Tanton declared: “… for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.” Yet Sessions is very close to Frank Gaffney. In 2015, he received the “Keeper of the Flame” award from Gaffney’s CSP.

 

Reconstructed-Nazism: ‘Anti-Nazi’ neo-Nazis in the UK, Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands, and France

 

  1. The Gaffney connection ties Trump and the political wing of the Republicans supporting him directly with increasingly popular neo-Nazi parties in Europe. Gaffney’s partner organisation, the IFPS, where he sits on the board, is directly tied to Belgium’s neo-Nazi party, Vlaams Belang (VB). In 2007, the IFPS organised a ‘counter-jihad’ summit in Brussels with direct assistance from the VB party on “logistics” and “security” for the conference.

 

  1. VB Party leader Filip Dewinter himself appeared as a speaker at the event, along with IFPS board members Robert Spencer, Pam Geller and Sam Solomon.

 

  1. Solomon, who is an IFPS board member alongside Gaffney, has a direct connection to UKIP’s leadership. The previous year, Solomon published a pamphlet called A Proposed Charter of Muslim Understanding - commissioned by Gerard Batten, an MEP for UKIP on the party’s national executive committee. Batten also wrote a foreword for the ‘charter’, which he expects British Muslims to sign as proof they are not jihadists. Solomon’s pamphlet was launched by UKIP in the European Parliament and House of Lords, and a press release about it was published on UKIP’s website.

 

  1. Yet Solomon’s board membership of the IFPS simultaneously puts him, and other IFPS members of course, in direct connection with the neo-Nazi VB party in Belgium. IFPS’ vice president is Belgian journalist Paul Belien, who is married to Alexandra Colen—a longtime MP for Vlaams Belang from 1995 to 2013, when she stepped out of the party. Colen’s father, Alex Colen, was a Nazi collaborator during the Second World War, who served in the Nazi German Waffen-SS division. When Colen was first elected to the Belgian parliament, she did so as an MP for VB’s predecessor party, Vlaams Blok, a party of Flemish Nazi collaborators who actively participated in the deportation of Jews.

 

  1. In June 1992, Filip Dewinter, who is now the leader of the party’s successor, Vlaams Belang, published a 70-point programme calling for the forced repatriation of the majority of ethnic Belgians, including millions of Belgian citizens. The party was banned in 2004 by a Belgian court under the 1981 anti-racism law, in the wake of revelations that former Nazi SS veterans met regularly at the VB’s Antwerp office.

 

  1. The subsequent launch of the rebranded ‘Vlaams Belang’ party saw it adopt a strong pro-Jewish stance. However, in De Standaard, Dewinter admitted his strategy: “The changes in the name of the party, the modernisation of the statutes and the structure of the party, the remodelling of the style and use of language… and the updating of a twenty-five year old declaration of principle have nothing to do with content but everything to do with tactic.” Dewinter thus openly admitted that his party was a reconstructed-Nazi party: tactically adopting anti-Nazism in public while retaining the substantive “content” of the party’s neo-Nazi ideology, now remobilising under the legitimacy of campaigning against Muslims and immigration.

 

  1. In 2010, IFPS co-chief Paul Belien, despite his direct neo-Nazi affiliation to the VB party, became personal assistant to another professed anti-Nazi, Geert Wilders – who has frequently shared speaking platforms with VB leader Filip Dewinter.

 

  1. In June 2014, Wilders joined a new coalition in the European Parliament, the Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) Group, alongside Marine Le Pen’s French National Front, and the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO). Both Wilders and Le Pen make much of their opposition to anti-Semitism, but their alliance with the FPO proves this to be a mere tactical position to conceal their ongoing pro-Nazi sympathies: the FPO not only retains direct Nazi heritage, it continues to maintain direct neo-Nazi connections, and is officially recognized by the Israeli Foreign Ministry to be a pro-Nazi party.

 

  1. Similarly to the Belgian VB, the FPO began its life as an openly pro-Nazi party, founded by a former Nazi SS officer, Anton Reinthaller, who had served as a Nazi Minister of Agriculture. Despite its efforts to rebrand itself as an anti-Nazi, pro-Jewish party under the leadership of Heinz Christian Strache, the Israeli Foreign Ministry categorises the FPO “as a racist faction with neo-Nazi elements within it.”

 

  1. In fact, the Nazi connections have not died, but strengthened. According to the Jewish magazine Forward, today a third of the FPO’s parliamentarians “are associated with controversial right-wing fraternities, some of which hold connections to neo-Nazi or German nationalist groups.”

 

  1. According to Dr. Heribert Schiedel of the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance (DÖW), Strache relied heavily on Austria’s pro-Nazi fraternities, Burschenschaften, to re-build the party: “Without [their] help, the FPÖ probably would not have survived.” In the 1930s, the Burschenscaften had functioned as cover organisations for the National Socialist Party. Now, they continue to harbour neo-Nazis, yet have extensive influence on the FPO. This evidence puts paid to the mythology that the FPO, and the parties allied with it, have truly renounced their Nazi heritage. As Dr. Heribert Schiedel observes: “The strategy is clearly that of normalising itself, of becoming socially acceptable. We presume that anti-Semitism remains a fundamental part of the party’s ideology.”

 

  1. Geert Wilders’s PVV and Marine Le Pen’s NF, both of whom parade themselves as staunchly pro-Israel, are now formally partnered with the neo-Nazi FPO in the European Parliament through the ENF. By formally sharing a platform with the FPO, they have proven their pro-Nazi sympathies.

 

Poised for victory?

 

  1. My full investigation commissioned by Tell Mama documents the vast extent of the political reach of this trans-Atlantic neo-Nazi network, which has been significantly enabled by centrist political parties. Despite very real divisions amongst these groups, there is an increasing willingness to coordinate and collaborate across national divides, and to do so using existing political structures, including the political structures of the European Parliament. That very process of coordination, much of which has taken place by exploiting the structures (and most critically the finances) of the European Parliament, has enabled these parties to pursue surprising relationships with mainstream political parties in the US, UK and Europe.

 

  1. To a significant degree, this has involved campaigning on seemingly more benign issues such as nationalism, opposition to Islam, and the threat from migration. Yet whatever the legitimacy of those issues, they have offered convenient tactical cover by which a network of pro-Nazi parties have dramatically expanded their global reach. By going out of their way to denounce Nazism, racism and anti-Semitism, these groups have been able to mislead legitimate political parties and governments into forging temporary and long-term alliances, enabling their unprecedented expansion, including the greater capacity to transmit anti-Muslim hatred under the guise of other issues such as migration and national security. 

 

  1. My analysis of voting trend data in the European Parliament shows that neo-Nazi parties in Europe could well be on the verge of a tipping point in their electoral success. Since 1999, their popularity in the European Parliament has increased exponentially. If this trend of exponential growth continues, these parties are poised to win 37% of the vote in the next European elections, potentially making them the most powerful voting bloc.

 

  1. My investigation for Tell MAMA thus suggests that the rising Islamophobia must be viewed as the direct result of the growing reach of a trans-Atlantic neo-fascist political network with roots in traditional Nazi ideology. This ideology has transformed and rebranded itself under the rubric of the so-called ‘Vienna school’ of fascism, a white supremacist ideology that conceals its racist heritage by focusing on the threat from Muslims, migrants, and the Western liberal institutions that supposedly capitulate to them. It is impossible to do justice to the complexity of these issues in this short briefing. I would therefore humbly urge members of the Select Committee to please review the full text of my Tell MAMA report available online for the purpose of the inquiry, which also contains detailed references and documentation.[2]

 

Recommendations

 

  1. Unless the mainstream political parties take appropriate action to shut down the proponents of this despicable ideology in their own midst, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that incidents like the Islamophobic incidents will become more common as these groups become more powerful, thanks to the legitimising cover provided to them by centrist parties and mainstream institutions.

 

  1. Robust legislation is required at both UK and EU levels to debar neo-Nazi political parties from entering the legitimacy of the political sphere. This includes clear legislation preventing British political parties from collaborating or working with neo-Nazi political parties and/or individuals in those parties with a history or record of association with racism and/or neo-fascism.

 

  1. Law enforcement and other government agencies, as well as volunteers and frontline organisations along with community representatives, must be provided bespoke training on the history and emergence of far right extremism ideology and the rise of ‘reconstructed-Nazism’ as a distinctive phenomenon, whereby racist groups and movements tactically use legitimate campaigning issues to provide cover for their racist views and expand their public reach.

 

  1. Under HM Government’s counter-extremism and/or cohesion strategies, more focus must be given to the role of the far-right as a ‘reconstructed-Nazi’ movement. Unfortunately, currently government policymaking is significantly impaired due to a lack of high quality policy-relevant research on this issue. Therefore, this must begin with the government commissioning this research with a view to form the basis of refining and refocusing counter-extremism strategy.

 

  1. It must be recognised that there are significant national security risks at stake here. All the neo-Nazi parties in Europe discussed in this briefing have been courted, financially and/or diplomatically, by Vladimir Putin and/or the Russian Kremlin—Russia has a geopolitical interest in undermining the integrity of NATO and intra-European cooperation, and sees the resurgence of neo-Nazi movements in Europe as potentially a step toward weakening Europe and expanding Russia’s regional influence. British national security agencies must urgently assess the national security risk posed by the rise of ‘reconstructed-Nazism’ as a Trans-Atlantic movement.

 

January 2019

 

[1] Nafeez Ahmed, Return of the Reich: Mapping the Global Resurgence of Far Right Power (London: Tell MAMA and INSURGEintelligence, June 2016) https://medium.com/return-of-the-reich

[2] Ahmed, Return of the Reich, https://medium.com/return-of-the-reich