The U.K. extreme right is undecided on who to hate: Jews or Muslims?
A new report by the British National Party may recycle Fascist language and conspiracies, but the main item of interest is a new argument in the European far-right: Who’s the enemy, Jews or Muslims?
The battle for leadership of Britain’s far-right took a bizarre twist this month when the British National Party, long the most prominent racist group in British politics, issued a detailed report accusing their main rivals, the English Defense League, of being the ‘useful idiots’ of ‘neo-cons’ and ‘ultra-Zionists.’
The report authored by Nick Griffin, the leader of the BNP and member of the European Parliament, reflects the growing split in the far-right in Europe. A new generation of nationalists is trying to shed its neo-Nazi image. They are not anti-Semitic, they claim – and are focusing their campaigning against Muslim communities instead.
The report titled ‘Exposing EDL,’ which has been published on the BNP website along with a 48-minute video of Griffin presenting its findings, has caused a stir within the far-right. It accuses the English Defense League and its leaders of being in the pay of ‘ultra-Zionists”.
The report also claims that the EDL is being financed by Jewish millionaires, including right-wing supporters such as Irving Moskowitz but also liberal-left funders like financier George Soros.
Ironically, much of the ‘facts’ and the language in the detailed report seem to have been lifted from similar texts on radical left-wing publications and pro-Palestinian websites. That also applies to the rehashed accusation that U.S. corporate giant Halliburton has a global strategy to promote war for its own financial gain – this time by financing the EDL’s campaign against Muslim influence in Britain.
Griffin’s report is another addition to the ever-expanding conspiracy theory library on the warmongering cabal of Jews, neo-cons, homosexuals and international corporations. It would not normally warrant serious reading, but it intrigues due to the light it sheds on the metamorphosis in the European racist right. It shows how the far-right is arguing within itself whether the enemies are the Jews or the Muslims.