Here’s some background info on Nick Griffin of the BNP, since he’s been elected to a seat in the European Parliament:

Griffin was in his mid- to late-30s when he made some of his most incendiary remarks. In 1998, he was convicted of distributing material likely to incite racial violence, for which he received a two-year suspended sentence. He wrote in his own publication, The Rune: ‘I am well aware that orthodox opinion is that 6m Jews were gassed and cremated or turned into soup and lampshades… I have reached the conclusion that the “extermination” tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie, and latter witch-hysteria.’

He is unabashed about this statement when I remind him of it. ‘I’d still say those three,’ he says, ‘but I’d add “and fact” if I was being polite and reasonable about it. The reason people like me aren’t polite and reasonable sometimes about the Holocaust is nothing to do with anti-Semitism or wanting to give offence. It is to do with frustration with how it is used to prevent any genuine debate on questions to do with immigration, ethnicity and the cultural survival of the western nations.’

Pushed further on the Holocaust - what he has in the past called the ‘Holohoax’ - he becomes more animated and more intransigent. His face reddens and his voice grows uncomfortably loud. The lunchtime murmur of hushed conversation and hesitant cutlery is drowned out by a full-bloodied reappraisal of Nazi atrocities. ‘The only reason the Nazis were so fanatically anti-Jewish was the very close correlation between some Jews and communism,’ he continues. He insists the number of deaths at Auschwitz has been inflated, and is emphatic that no more than 3.5m Jews had perished under Nazi rule.

(Hat tip: Øyvind Strømmen.)