Nick Griffin’s friends in Hungary, the far-right party Jobbik,  have relaunched their paramilitary wing in defiance of a court ban. At a rally in Budapest yesterday Jobbik supporters wore their banned black and white uniform, which their MEPs Krisztína Morvai and Csanád Szegedi have promised to wear to the opening of the European Parliament:

The Hungarian extreme right party Jobbik announced the relaunch of its paramilitary wing, the Magyar Gárda (Hungarian Guard), at a mass rally in central Budapest last Saturday at which Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and public figures were among those who put on the black and white uniform in defiance of a court ruling outlawing the organisation.

At the signal from the “commander” of the group, Róbert Kiss, many in the crowd of several thousand pulled out and donned their Gárda caps and tunics, bearing the red and white Árpad flag insignia that has become associated with the far right in Hungary.

Jobbik MEP Krisztína Morvai also put on the uniform before addressing the crowd. “The Guard is the force that will protect those who are scared and live in fear of crime,” she said. Her soon-to-be colleague at Brussels, MEP Csanád Szegedi, said he would wear his Hungarian Guard uniform at the opening of the European Parliament in Brussels, adding that the authorities should “buy their airline tickets now if they want to stop him.” He was referring to the breaking up by police of a Hungarian Guard demonstration in Budapest a week earlier, Szegedi said.

Jobbik’s insignia will be familiar to Nick Griffin when he gets to Brussels. At the very least he should recognise the red and white Arpad flag from their rally that he spoke at in Hungary last October.

And if the BNP leader feels left out wearing his boring old suit, he could always just dig out an old t-shirt.

On Wednesday Nick Griffin, BNP leader and newly-elected Member of the European Parliament, told the BBC that boats carrying illegal immigrants to Europe should be sunk as they cross the Mediterranean. In an attempt to show his humane side, he insisted that he did not want anyone to actually die: “they can throw them a life raft and they can go back to Libya”.

He has followed this up with an interview four Channel 4 News, in which he described Islam as a “cancer” that needed to be treated with “global chemotherapy”:

In an interview with Channel 4 News, Mr Griffin, who has just been elected to the European Parliament, said there was “no place in Europe for Islam”.

He added: “Western values, freedom of speech, democracy and rights for women are incompatible with Islam, which is a cancer eating away at our freedoms and our democracy and rights for our women and something needs to be done about it”.

The BNP leader said he agreed with a candidate for the Flemish far right party, Vlaams Belang, who had declared: “We urgently need global chemotherapy against Islam to save civilisation.”

This is the opposite of the ‘dog whistle’ politics that some mainstream politicians are accused of employing when they talk about immigration. Griffin is barking as loudly and as often as he can, in the knowledge that he will attract the attention of an outraged media every time he expresses a yet-more shocking opinion.

The BNP, for all its electoral success, is still a relatively small party. There are large parts of the country where they have few activists and the growth in their vote has been far from uniform across Britain. Griffin and the BNP now have a platform in Brussels from which they can circumvent any lack of local resources, or the no-platform policies deployed against them, and speak directly to their supporters via the media.

Griffin’s words also give an indication of who he is trying to speak to. He is unlikely to be ignorant of the numerous recent reports  of violent attacks on Muslims in Britain and abroad; the BNP tracks these news reports assiduously. Searchlight’s recent polling, while identifying the expected socio-economic reasons why people vote for the BNP, also gave a sobering insight into the racism of many of their voters. If not quite a return to the open incitement of Griffin’s days in the National Front, this new rhetorical assault shows clearly where the BNP’s priorities and prejudices lie, and what they think they need to be saying to satisfy their current supporters, and attract new ones.

The BBC website reports on the trial in France of Youssouf Fofana and 26 other gang members, accused of the murder of Ilan Halimi in 2006. The jurors are soon to give their verdicts on charges including kidnap, torture, premeditated murder and antisemitism.

Fofana’s behaviour during the investigation and trial has been bizarre, to say the least:

Prosecutors describe Mr Fofana as “a perverted, immature megalomaniac”.

After Mr Halimi’s death, he fled to Ivory Coast where he is reported to have made death threats by telephone to Mr Halimi’s family.
He was extradited to France in March 2006 and initially admitted murder. But since then he has repeatedly changed his plea, and his legal team.

He has also bombarded the magistrates investigating the case with letters full of anti-Semitic insults.

In court he tried repeatedly to justify his actions by citing “the suffering of the Palestinians and Africa”.

But lawyers claim Mr Fofana has a fuzzy knowledge of the Muslim faith. He was unable to explain the difference between a Sunni and Shia Muslim and could not recite verses from the Koran.

Expelled from court in June for throwing his shoes at lawyers, Mr Fofana has often refused to answer questions.

But 24 days into his trial, he was asked about the fatal blows that Mr Halimi suffered and he yelled: “Yes, it’s me that did it! You know very well that I did it!”

At the start of proceedings, Mr Fofana was required by the court to give his birth date.

He declared that he was born on 13 February 2006 in Sainte Genevieve des Bois – the date and place of Mr Halimi’s death.

This was an appalling crime, whether motivated by antisemitism, criminality or a combination of the two. There has been plenty of discussion on this point, but Fofana’s behaviour suggests that it is too difficult, and perhaps a little futile, to try to reach a neat conclusion what can only be a matter of emphasis, or even mood; and whatever the answer, it does not change the horror of the ordeal to which Ilan Halimi, and his family, were subjected.

The Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Monitor reports on the trial of six people in Azerbaijan, accused of plotting terrorist attacks in the country on behalf of Iran and Hizbollah. The six are accused of planning to attack, amongst other targets, the Israeli embassy and a Jewish Cultural Centre in Baku:

A trial of six people accused of terrorism and other serious crimes began on June 24 in Baku, Azerbaijan. Two Lebanese citizens, Karaki Ali Muhammad and Najmaddin Ali Hussein, were charged with treason, revealing secret information abroad, espionage, preparation of acts of terrorism, drug trafficking and arms smuggling. Four Azerbaijani citizens, Javid Mamadov, Vidadi Rasulov, Mushfig Amanov and Afgan Balashev all face similar charges. The alleged terrorist cell planned to bomb the Israeli Embassy in Baku as well as blow up the Russian-operated Qabala radar station. According to investigation records, the group was receiving orders from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Both Lebanese “had been trained and sent to Azerbaijan by terrorist organizations Hezbollah and al-Qaeda.” (Trend News [Baku], June 10). The suspects allegedly planned to attract local people to cooperate with them in carrying out terrorist attacks in densely populated areas. After getting their instructions from Hezbollah, the two Lebanese arrived in Iran, where agents of the Revolutionary Guards helped them to cross the border into Azerbaijan. Once there, they are alleged to have established a group consisting of local citizens, convincing them to bomb the Qabala radar station (Dayaz, May 27).

The investigation revealed that members of the group visited the Qabala region in August 2007 and took photos of the radar station.  Meanwhile, group leader Karaki Ali Muhammad visited Baku several times since 2007 to collect information about Israel’s embassy. During the trial the leader of the ring admitted that he had represented Hezbollah in Iran since 2003 and his monthly wage from this organization was $900. He was ordered to collect information on the Jewish Cultural Center in Baku as well investigate a number of Iranians who “help Israel” (Turan Information Agency [Baku], June 19). Karaki Ali Muhammad was born in 1967 in the Lebanese city of Nabatia but lived for a long time in Tehran. Officially, Muhammad did not have a job while in Tehran, but he accompanied tourists to the holy places of Iran. He assembled tourist groups near Tehran’s al-Nabi Mosque and was hired there by an employee of the Iranian Ministry of Security and Intelligence (Vezarat-e Ettela’at va Anmiat-e Keshvar – VEVAK).

The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism, which is a terrific resource for information about antisemitism around the world, has published its report on the United Kingdom for 2008/9.

The UK report, authored by CST’s Michael Whine, can be read here, alongside entries for many other countries. It covers the activities of extremist parties and organisations, antisemitic incidents, Holocaust Denial and Holocaust commemoration, legal approaches to antisemitism, relevant court cases and the work of government and other official bodies.

All democracies have grappled at some point with the difficult balance between protecting free speech and restricting hate speech. The United States is known for its First Amendment, which protects as free speech the most extreme, noxious expressions that would be rendered illegal in many European states. In Europe, by contrast, several countries have criminalised Holocaust Denial and most have laws limiting speech that is capable of inciting hatred of minorities.

This balance is often in flux and can sometimes be rendered obsolete by the changing political times. Despite successful prosecutions of far right anti-Jewish propagandists during the 1990s, the same period was marked by a strong reluctance to prosecute extreme Islamist agitators for material that was, on the surface at least, no less inciteful. This disparity has largely disappeared, but new developments, such as the use of the internet to disseminate hate propaganda, have thrown up new challenges for prosecutors.

In Britain, the threshold for securing convictions for hate speech is set very high to ensure that free speech is not limited unnecessarily. This means that a lot of material that is offensive or hateful is not actually illegal, and is allowed to stand unrestricted by the law. The failed prosecutions of the BNP’s Nick Griffin and Mark Collett are obvious examples of this: evidence of Griffin calling Islam a “wicked, vicious faith” and claiming that Muslims were turning Britain into a “multi-racial hell hole” were not enough to secure a conviction. The reaction of the Crown Prosecution Service  to their acquittal illustrates the blurry and subjective boundaries of the law:

Mrs Allen said: “This prosecution sends out a very strong signal that where the CPS believes someone has tried to incite racial hatred, we will treat it with the utmost seriousness and will not hesitate to prosecute robustly.

“In this case, the CPS was satisfied there was sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction and that it was in the public interest to proceed. Therefore it was right and proper that the prosecution was brought.

“The jury however had to make their decision on a higher level of proof – they had to be convinced beyond reasonable doubt that an offence had been committed in respect of each speech. In the event, they were not convinced of that and I fully accept and respect their decision.”

Nick Griffin and Mark Collett had been accused of stirring up racial hatred in three speeches to British National Party members in the West Yorkshire area. Part of the case for the defence was that freedom of expression should allow for a measure of criticism of racial groups. But Helen Allen says that argument does not always stand up.

Mrs Allen said: “There is a huge difference between debate and stirring up hate. The limitations to free speech made by the law are that it should not be misused to insult, abuse or threaten other people in such a way that racial hatred is stirred up. The jury were not convinced that had happened so the defendants were acquitted.

The contested nature of this law means that, periodically, the suggestion is made to amend the current law to make such prosecutions easier and more likely to result in convictions. While the sentiments behind these suggestions are clear and admirable, they do not bring any greater clarity to the question of precisely where speech stops being merely offensive, and starts to carry the genuine danger of inciting hatred in the minds of real people.

A new book may help to do just that. Extreme Speech and Democracy (eds. Ivan Hare & James Weinstein; Oxford University Press) is the outcome of a conference held at Cambridge University’s Centre for Public Law in April 2007. CST’s Director of Government and International Affairs, Michael Whine, presented a paper which is included in the book, on the subject of Expanding Holocaust Denial and Legislation Against It. A version of the chapter was previously published by the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs and can be read here. Other contributors include some of the world’s leading legal scholars as well as internationally recognised philosophers, historians and writers.

Holocaust Denial, and states’ responses to it, perhaps sheds more light than anything else on these important questions of, on the one hand, the limits of free speech, and on the other, whether it should be permissible to distort or deny facts in order to incite hatred against minorities. The USA, basing itself on the First Amendment to the Constitution allows Holocaust denial, whereas Germany, France and over half the member states of the European Union, do not. The government of Iran now promotes Holocaust Denial as an instrument of state policy, which takes strategies to combat it beyond national laws and into the realm of international diplomacy. The Iranian initiative has reinvigorated European deniers who had been suffering from the convictions imposed on them by the criminal courts in their own countries.

Michael Whine’s paper examines the changing nature of Holocaust denial, and lists all the national legislation which criminalises it, for the first time. He also discusses recent criminal cases against deniers and intergovernmental agreements to commemorate the Holocaust, and to ban denial. He concludes that while European states at least, because of their history, are required to provide legal parameters for free speech, it is the education of young people that is more likely to confound Holocaust Denial in the long run.

The growing threat of terrorism from the far right is worrying the police, and attracting the attention of the media. According to the Sunday Times:

A network of suspected far-right extremists with access to 300 weapons and 80 bombs has been uncovered by counter-terrorism detectives.

Thirty-two people have been questioned in a police operation that raises the prospect of a right-wing bombing campaign against mosques. Police are said to have recovered a British National party membership card and other right-wing literature during a raid on the home of one suspect charged under the Terrorism Act.

In England’s largest seizure of a suspected terrorist arsenal since the IRA mainland bombings of the early 1990s, rocket launchers, grenades, pipe bombs and dozens of firearms have been recovered in the past six weeks during raids on more than 20 properties. Several people have been charged and more arrests are imminent. Current police activity is linked to arrests in Europe, New Zealand and Australia.

The Guardian also reports, from seemingly different sources:

Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command fears the extreme right will stage a deadly terrorist attack in Britain to try to stoke racial tensions, the Guardian has learned.

Senior officers fear the attack will be a “spectacular” that is designed to kill people. The counter-terrorism unit has moved officers to beef up its monitoring of the extreme right’s potential to stage attacks.

Commander Shaun Sawyer told a meeting of British Muslims concerned about the danger posed to their communities that police were responding to the growing threat.

Sawyer said of the far right: “I fear that they will have a spectacular … They will carry out an attack that will lead to a loss of life or injury to a community somewhere. They’re not choosy about which community.”

This is something we posted on after the shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. last month. The number of people on the far right arrested for terrorism-related activity is still small – in double figures rather than in the hundreds or thousands – but it is certainly growing. While none of the people arrested so far have shown the capability to build anything other than a rudimentary, home-made device, David Copeland demonstrated just how devastating and murderous even that kind of basic bomb can be.