Exclusive – An Alliance of Groups that Should Worry Us in the UK

May 23, 2018 Article

Faith Matters has been at the vanguard of writing about entryism by far right groups from Poland, who are seeking to access members of settled Polish communities in the United Kingdom. The aim is pretty simple. With over 700,000 settled members of Polish communities in the country, they make an accessible and ready pool of potential volunteers, supporters and donours to the extreme causes of such groups. It really is as simple as that.

We have written extensively about groups like Ogniwo, Leszek Żebrowski, Grom Legion, Janus Korwin-Mikke (and his group – Liberty), and the neo-fascist ONR. The comments and actions of such groups and individuals run contrary to the pluralism and the tolerant values that are part and parcel of our country.

Today, we can exclusively reveal that in January 2017, many of these groups signed a letter of alliance or partnership which is chilling. It was signed in Hammersmith in London and includes neo-fascist groups, ONR (Oboz Narodowo-Radykalny) and Ogniwo.

The document reads:

“We, the undersigned, the representatives of patriotic and libertarian circles, bearing in mind the greater good of our Fatherland – Poland, and the next generations of Polish men and women, declare the will to cooperate and the will of mutual pursuit of our common goals.”

It is then followed by a quote by a Polish nationalist leader from the 1930s, Roman Dmowski:

“We are different, we come from different parts of Poland, we have different interests but we are united in a common goal. This goal is the Fatherland, for which we want to live and work.”

It is ironic that the agreement was signed in London, when the groups want to live and work for the ‘Fatherland’ – Poland. A picture of the signatories and list of groups is highlighted below. 

This is clearly a worrying development, given some of the groups involved and the ideology of them. It also further adds to our argument that resilience, or rather the lack of it within Polish communities, means that many of these groups can conduct entryism for influence, pretty easily.

List of Groups Who Signed

Ogniwo

Patriae Fidelis

Independent Poland

Fides Et Libertas

ONR

Liberty (Janusz Korwin-Mikke’s party)

Commitee for the Defense of Poland

Patriots of the Republic

Against the Tide

The Patriots

Polish Patriots Association

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Categories: Alliance, Grom Legion, Janus Korwin-Mikke, Leszek Żebrowski, nationalism, News, Oboz Narodowo-Radykalny, ONR, Polish, Polish groups

Janusz Korwin-Mikke – Speaking in London. The Worrying Trend of Entryism into Polish Communities

May 22, 2018 Article

This Sunday, Janusz Korwin-Mikke will be speaking in London in Hyde Park. Previously a member of the European Parliament, he is no stranger to controversy. Korwin-Mikke has previously stated that Hitler knew nothing about the Holocaust.

Korwin-Mikke will be returning to speak in London again on the 8th of July with one Stanislaw Michalkiewicz. Michalkiewicz has previously stated on Catholic Radio Marja that, “(Poland was) being outmanoeuvred by Judeans (Jews) who are trying to force our government to pay extortion money disguised as compensation”

This is another turn in the worrying trend of speakers from Poland who are entering into the UK with such views. Faith Matters has raised concerns before, since people with such comments are not assisting integration or supporting cohesive communities in the UK. Their past history and their comments simply cause divisions and there is a real attempt to inject these views into the UK context and sphere where there are between 700,000 to 800,000 people of Polish heritage in the UK.

Some of Korwin-Mikke’s statements are breath-taking. He states that the best way to deal with Muslims in Europe is to keep them out and ban them from building mosques and “if need be, oppose them militarily”. Commenting on the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in France, he said that the terrorists “exaggerated” (their response), as they should have only given the Charlie Hebdo ‘blasphemers’, a few lashes instead of killing them. Had they done that, “half of Europe would have applauded them”. In the same tweet he added, “It’s the same thing fighting against anti-Semitism. The Jews exaggerate and then they are surprised anti-Semitism is on the rise. And as usual, it will end with pogroms”.

His view of Muslims is also demonstrated in the following comment, where he stated that, “our enemy is not in Moscow. Our enemies are in mosques. In the mosques of Paris, in the mosques of Marseilles.” He has also gone onto say that, 

“I have no doubts that your daughters and grand-daughters will end up in harems. Muslims despise us, we are doormats to them. Why? Because in modern Europe, life is the highest value. I don’t understand it. To be honest, Muslim civilisation is closer to me than the European Union which is just savage. When the Muslims come, at least they will abolish the VAT tax. They might chop some heads off, but at least they won’t allow any gay parades”.

Korwin Mikke’s has also suggested that Germany should introduce religious apartheid as a solution to problems caused by Muslims.

Racism

It is not just Muslims or Jews who are at the brunt end of Korwin Mikke’s statements. He has stated that, 

“The world is collapsing. 150 years ago, we white people, ruled the world. Today, we are being colonised…….We colonised Africa, it wasn’t the Negroes who colonised Europe. It’s something to be proud of. I am proud of my civilisation”.

During a debate on youth unemployment in the EU Parliament, Korwin-Mikke referred to black people on several occasions as “niggers”, stating that the “minimum wage should be destroyed as we would be treating 20 million young Europeans like niggers”.

Talking about racial segregation, he stated, 

“It’s just like when women can’t enter a male toilet. What’s wrong with black people not being allowed to enter a toilet for whites?”

These are just the array of comments associated with the former EU Parliamentarian. Yet it brings to light again how such people are being invited to speak in the UK and to possibly normalise these views into settled communities of Polish heritage.

Faith Matters has highlighted the issue of entryism into settled communities of Polish heritage in the UK. What we are seeing is a co-ordinated effort by groups and speakers to enter into the UK and poison the minds of people. This is not just unacceptable, it is time that the Her Majesty’s Government seriously look at this issue and the various groups and speakers we have highlighted.

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Categories: anti-Muslim hate, Communities of Polish heritage, Entyrism, Hyde Park, Janusz Korwin-Mikke, News

Neo-Fascist ONR, Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny, Offshoot in Manchester

April 17, 2018 Article

Oboz Narodowo-Radykalny, (ONR), is also known as the National Radical Camp. It is a fascist and far right organisation which considers itself to be a legacy of the antisemitic movement of the same name which existed during the Second World War.

Three days ago, members of the ONR celebrated an anniversary of the organisation in Gdansk, the heartland of the ‘Solidarnosc’ or Solidarity movement. It was the 84th anniversary of the movement and hosting the march with uniform clad individuals in the heart of Gdansk was a chilling message sent out to others in the nation. Gdansk holds a special place in the heart of many Poles as it was the start of the liberation movement from Communism. By marching in Gdansk, the message was clear, that far right groups were part of Poland. 

Speaking at the event held in a historic hall in Gdansk, the former ONR chairman Artur Zienkiewicz said,

“Poland must remain uniformly culturally and homogeneously ethnic. We will defend our frontiers against immigrants.”

According to Gazeta Wyborcza, a march took place in the streets of Gdansk with several hundred uniformed marchers shouting slogans which included, “we will fight for the Homeland” and “Great Poland, we will defend our holy faith”.

This is a menacing video of ONR members walking through the streets of Gdansk.

In response to this march, the legendary Solidarnosc leader and former President of Poland, Lech Walesa, waded in with the following tweets:

Walesa’s Twitter comment highlighted the threat that he saw coming from the ONR

“Are these the “values” Poles fought in December 1970 and August 1980 in Gdańsk? I ask when PiS delegalise them? What do we all wait until they occupy (the) authorities?”

Tentacles to Manchester

 

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Categories: Lech Walesa, neo-fascism, News, ONR, PiS, Solidarnosc

‘Grom Legion’ – Military Enthusiasts With Views and Links That are Concerning

April 1, 2018 Article

We have previously highlighted the group Ogniwo, and their links to far right activities. Associated with Ogniwo at certain events has been a military enthusiast group called the ‘Grom Legion’. 

We have received the following information about this group which has a penchant for military weaponry.

Here is a picture from their Facebook page dated early 2016. It shows a picture of a man in military regalia suggesting this is how they deal with the ‘Islamisation of Europe’.

Grom Legion Posting

Additionally, here are Grom Legion individuals meeting with well know far right extremist, Marian Kowalski. We have highlighted his activities and statements before and the posting was also made on their ‘official’ Facebook page. 

 

We were also notified of members of Grom Legion wearing Ogniwo tops. For those who are not aware of Ogniwo, here is information that we posted previously on the group. They are active in the United Kingdom and are of particular concern, given their activities that we have highlighted before. 

 

Lastly, we are aware of the fact that some members of the British police service have posed with individuals from Grom Legion who host stands at community events and who pose in military regalia. Here is an example of this. We therefore urge police forces and those in statutory authorities to reflect carefully on such engagement and to conduct due diligence activities before engaging with groups.

 

 

 

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Categories: Grom Legion, Marian Kowalski, News, Ogniwo

Facing far-right challenge, minister says Islam doesn’t belong to Germany

March 16, 2018 Article

New Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said Islam does not belong to Germany and set out hardline immigration policies in an interview published on Friday, as he sought to see off rising far-right challengers.

Seehofer told Bild newspaper he would push through a “master plan for quicker deportations”, in his first major interview since he was sworn into office on Wednesday.

The minister – a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CSU Bavarian allies who are further to the right than her own Christian Democrats (CDU) – said he would also classify more states as ‘safe’ countries of origin, which would make it easier to deport failed asylum seekers.

The statements come after Merkel’s conservatives, and their coalition allies – the Social Democrats – lost ground to the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in elections last year.

Seehofer is particularly keen to show his party is tackling immigration ahead of Bavaria’s October regional election, when the AfD is expected to enter that state assembly.

“Islam does not belong to Germany,” Seehofer said, contradicting former German president Christian Wulff who fuelled a debate over immigration in 2010 by saying Islam was part of Germany.

In 2015 Merkel echoed Wulff’s words at a time when anti-immigration campaign group PEGIDA – or Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West – was holding marches.

“LIVE WITH US”

“Of course the Muslims living here do belong to Germany,” Seehofer said before going on to say Germany should not give up its own traditions or customs, which had Christianity at their heart.

“My message is: Muslims need to live with us, not next to us or against us,” he said.

The government estimates between 4.4 and 4.7 million Muslims are living in Germany. Many of them have a Turkish background and many of the more than a million migrants who have arrived in the country from the Middle East and elsewhere after Merkel adopted an open-door policy in mid-2015 are also Muslims.

Andre Poggenburg, head of the AfD in the eastern state of Saxony, said Seehofer was copying his party with a view to Bavaria’s October regional election: “Horst Seehofer has taken this message from our manifesto word for word,” he said.

The far-left Linke and Greens condemned Seehofer’s message, and the Social Democrats’ Natascha Kohnen told broadcaster n-tv: “Saying that incites people against each other at a time when we really don’t need that. What we really need is politicians who bring people together.”

In a coalition agreement, Merkel’s CDU/CSU conservative bloc and the Social Democrats agreed they would manage and limit migration to Germany and Europe to avoid a re-run of the 2015 refugee crisis.

They also said they did not expect migration (excluding labour migration) to rise above the range of 180,000 to 220,000 per year.

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Categories: Bavaria, Germany, News

Britain First leader and deputy leader guilty of anti-Muslim hate crimes

March 7, 2018 Article

The leadership of the far-right group Britain First have been found guilty of religiously aggravated harassment.

Paul Golding, 36, the leader of Britain First, was convicted of one count of religiously aggravated harassment, as Jayda Fransen, 32, the deputy leader, was convicted of three counts of religiously aggravated harassment.

The verdicts were handed down today (March 7) at Folkestone Magistrates’ Court.

Tell MAMA now calls on Facebook to remove the account of Britain First which boasts more than 2 million ‘likes’ following this verdict.

The court heard how Mr Golding and Ms Fransen confronted people they believed were the defendants in an ongoing rape trial last May. All the people harassed were innocent members of the public.

They filmed the abuse and placed the video footage on the Britain First website and through their social media channels.

One such video featured Ms Fransen confronting one of the rapists, Tamin Rahmani, but misidentified his brother, Faiz, as Shershah Muslimyar, who was later convicted in September 2017 alongside three others.

Faiz Rahmani spoke of his fear in court after wrongly being labelled a ‘Muslim rapist’. According to Mr Rahmani, Ms Fransen said that ‘Muslims rape British kids’.

Mr Rahmani’s partner, Kelli Best, gave evidence in court, attributing the loss of her daughter, who was born stillborn, to the racial abuse Ms Fransen directed at her in her home.

In evidence, Best said that Fransen’s racist remarks included: ‘Dirty Muslim rapist, come out, we’re not going to leave until you’re gone, come out. Dirty scumbags.’

Mr Rahmani told the court that he lost his job as a result of the campaign, having also been shunned by his peers.

Another witness, Elena Viraq, who was in the pizza shop when Fransen and Golding arrived, claimed the incident ruined her family’s life.

The judge said: “This was a campaign not to highlight a terrible rape but a campaign to draw attention to the race, religion and immigrant background of the defendants.”

He added that their words and actions “demonstrated hostility” towards Muslims.

Jaswant Narwal, from the CPS, said: “The prosecution case demonstrated these defendants were not merely exercising their right to free speech but were instead aiming religiously-aggravated abuse at innocent members of the public. The victims suffered the distress of the abuse followed by additional stress when the footage was uploaded to the internet.”

Fransen, who gained added infamy after being retweeted by Donald Trump on November 29,2017, was previously convicted of religiously aggravated harassment in November 2016 after abusing a Muslim woman in Luton during a self-styled ‘Christian Patrol’ in January 2016. She was slated to appear Belfast Magistrates’ Court on April 6 over comments allegedly made during a Britain First rally last summer.

Paul Golding was jailed in December for six weeks after breaching a High Court order preventing him from entering any mosque in England and Wales. Following his release from prison, Golding threatened ‘traitor’ politicians and journalists in a video uploaded to the Britain First website and social media channels.

The group, which has never discarded its ‘street defence’ image, took its members on an ‘activist training camp’ in the Welsh mountains in June 2016. Members were said to have learned self-defence, martial arts, knife defence, and basic survival skills. The group held a similar training camp for self-defence combat sports in April 2014.

 

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Categories: Britain First, Far Right groups, hate crime, Jayda Fransen, News, Paul Golding

Historian Tomasz Panfil Breaks With Far Right Group – Ogniwo

March 6, 2018 Article

A few days ago we highlighted the background to the Ogniwo group which has been active in the United Kingdom. The actions of some members of the group have been chilling and the far right symbolism so on show demonstrated how the group simply flouted their views quite openly.

It now seems that Tomasz Panfil, the historian at the Lublin Institute of National Remembrance has broken any ties and links with Ogniwo. ‘Gazeta Wyborcza’, the largest and longest-running Polish newspaper, (with its roots in the ‘Solidarity’ movement), printed the following.

Panfil’s break-up is a result as such individuals are usually used to legitimise such groups in the eyes of the public.

Faith Matters will continue to report on groups like Ogniwo in the future. The values that we hold so dear in our country, of being able to be who you want to be without fear or favour, are values that need to be defended against groups like Ogniwo.

 

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Categories: Far Right groups, Gazeta Wyborcza, News, Ogniwo, Polish communities, Solidarity

Britain is facing serious far-right terrorism threat, top UK officer

February 27, 2018 Article

Britain faces a new and significant threat from organised far-right terrorism, the UK’s most senior counter-terrorism officer said on Monday as he revealed police had foiled four plots by right-wing extremists in the last year.

“The right-wing terrorist threat is more significant and more challenging than perhaps public debate gives it credit for,” Mark Rowley, London’s Assistant Commissioner, told reporters.

Britain has been a prime target for homegrown and foreign Islamist militants since the 2001 attacks on the United States. But Rowley said until the last two years, far-right activity was limited to unpleasant protests and hate crimes, with serious incidents limited to the actions of isolated individuals.

The full transcript of the speech made by AC Mark Rowley can be read HERE

The MI5 domestic spy agency are now involved in investigating the far-right and he warned that British groups were seeking links with international extremists.

“It’s a significant part of the terrorist threat. Right-wing terrorism wasn’t previously organised here,” Rowley said.

“There are many Western countries that have extreme right-wing challenges and in quite a number of those the groups we are worried about here are making connections with them and networking,” he said, declining to give further details because it was a new, live intelligence phenomenon.

Last year, there were five deadly militants attacks in Britain including one carried out by a man who drove a van into worshippers leaving a London mosque after developing a hatred of Muslims by reading extreme right-wing material online.

The previous year, a Nazi-obsessed loner murdered lawmaker Jo Cox in a frenzied street attack a week before the referendum on the European Union. Since then, Britain has banned National Action and two other spin-off groups, the first extremist right-wing organisations to be outlawed since the 1940s.

“COMMITTED TO VIOLENCE”

“For the best part of 18 months in the UK we have a homegrown, white supremacist, neo-Nazi terrorist organisation that is pursuing all the ambitions of any other terrorist organisation committed to violence,” Rowley said.

“That should be a matter of great concern for all of us.”

Since the first of the 2017 deadly attacks last March, Rowley said police had foiled 10 Islamist conspiracies and four far-right plots, although he said he could not provide details of these as they were subject to ongoing court cases.

To show the overall scale of the threat Britain faced, he said there were 600 terrorism investigations currently ongoing involving more than 3,000 suspects.

Over the last three years, terrorism arrests had doubled while in the same period some 2,000 people have been referred to the government’s counter-radicalisation Prevent programme, with a third of these over far-right concerns, he said.

Rowley, who next month steps down from the role he took on in 2014, said Islamist and far-right extremists were a toxic combination, feeding off each other and pursuing the same agenda of division, fear and hatred.

He reiterated British concern about extremists’ use of the internet and said he expected technology and internet firms would react to a mixture of persuasion and regulation as the banking sector had done.

He also said it was important that an agreement struck with the European Union for when Britain leaves the bloc in 2019 did not damage relations with their European colleagues.

“Whatever the arrangements, we need something that provides at least a good a platform for cooperation as we have today,” he said.

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Categories: Assistant Commissioner, CAGE, counter-extremism, Far Right groups, Met, Neo-Nazi, News, Prevent, threats

“France first”, far right’s Marechal-Le Pen says in comeback speech

February 24, 2018 Article

France should follow U.S. President Donald Trump’s lead and fight for “France first”, Marion Marechal-Le Pen, seen as a potential leader of France’s far right, told U.S conservatives on Thursday in her first public appearance in months.

The 28-year-old former lawmaker, granddaughter of National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen and niece of party leader Marine Le Pen, temporarily withdrew from politics after her aunt’s presidential election defeat last May.

But she has long been viewed in France as a possible future leader of the National Front, and the fact that she was a keynote speaker at a conference that both Trump and U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence were addressing was widely commented on in French media as posing a challenge for Marine Le Pen.

“I’m not offended when I hear President Donald Trump say ‘America first’. In fact, I want America first for the American people, I want Britain first for the British people and I want France first for the French people,” she said.

“I came here today to tell you there is a youth ready for this fight in Europe today,” she told thousands of activists at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland.

Marechal-Le Pen, who is more socially conservative and economically liberal than her aunt, did not say if or when she was planning to return to an active role in French politics, instead mentioning her plans to open a management and political science school, which she said should train tomorrow’s leaders.

But the reception for Marechal-Le Pen, who has been praised by right-wing U.S. media such as Breitbart, was in contrast to her aunt’s visit to Trump Tower in New York in January last year, during the French presidential campaign.

Marine Le Pen, who has long aimed to burnish her credentials with foreign appearances, did not meet either Trump or anyone from his team during that visit and was photographed having coffee in a public area of the building.

While Le Pen has over the past months softened her anti-EU, anti-euro comments, Marechal-Le Pen lambasted the bloc, which she said was “slowly killing” ancient nations.

Blaming immigration and political correctness, she said in a speech delivered in English: “France is in the process of passing the eldest daughter of the Catholic church to the little niece of Islam.”

Marine Le Pen is hoping that a National Front congress mid-March will help her reassert her authority.

But in the complicated Le Pen family, whose rows have made French headlines for years, another possible problem for her is her father, who she expelled from the party but who said he would gate-crash the congress.

Meanwhile her niece told the activists: “Let us build on what you have achieved here so that on both sides of the Atlantic, conservatism may prevail.”

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Categories: Breitbart, Donald Trump, France, France First, News

No Twitter – After the Darren Osborne Terrorist Attack, It is not business as usual

February 2, 2018 Article

Terrorist Darren Osborne has been found guilty of the murder and attempted murder of people outside the Muslim Welfare House in Finsbury Park in June 2017. Sentencing Osborne to a minimum term of 43 years, Mrs Justice Cheema Grubb said:

“This was a terrorist attack. You intended to kill.

“Mr Ali’s family said they could not imagine the trauma he felt as he died.”

The Judge also said that Osborne had “planned a suicide mission” and that he believed that he would have been shot and killed in his attempts to kill as many Muslims as possible in a terrorist attack. The Judge went onto add that:

“(Osborne) had been rapidly radicalised over the internet by those determined to spread hatred of Muslims”. 

This though is telling. Justice Grubb said:

“Your use of Twitter exposed you to racists and anti-Islamic ideology,” she added.

“In short, you allowed your mind to be poisoned by those who claimed to be leaders.”

In short, if Twitter thinks it is business as usual after this case, it better think again. Tommy Robinson’s account need shutting and if not, Twitter will have crossed a line from no return and opened itself up to potential legal claims.

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Categories: Darren Osborne, Finsbury Park, online, Opinions, terrorism