Move by Itamar Ben-Gvir angers Palestinians after Hamas warned such a step was a ‘red line’
The extreme-right Israeli firebrand Itamar Ben-Gvir has visited Jerusalem’s sacred al-Aqsa mosque compound for the first time since becoming a minister, angering Palestinians who see the visit as a provocation.
“Our government will not surrender to the threats of Hamas,” Ben-Gvir said in a statement, after the Palestinian militant group had said such a move would be a “red line”.
Continue reading...Liliana Segre, 92, has been subjected to racist attacks, and fears the Holocaust will become a footnote in the history books
An Italian senator who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp and this year found herself witnessing a far-right government take power again in Rome has said her “personal nightmare” is that the Holocaust will all but vanish from history books.
Liliana Segre, 92, was the only one of her relatives to survive the Holocaust, which killed six million Jews as part of Nazi Germany’s second world war campaign to obliterate the Jewish population in Europe.
Continue reading...Elements of Netanyahu-led coalition have been openly hostile and rolling back of some gay laws is on agenda
The prospect of the far right joining government after Israel’s recent election has left the country’s LGBTQ+ community fearing for the future.
Elements of the incoming coalition led by the prime minister-elect Benjamin Netanyahu have not hidden the fact that they are hostile to Palestinians and LGBTQ+ people.
Continue reading...Weeks of negotiations conclude with what will be the most rightwing and anti-Arab government in country’s history
Benjamin Netanyahu has informed Israel’s president that he has succeeded in forming a coalition, paving the way for the swearing in of the most rightwing and anti-Arab government in the country’s history.
“I have managed [to form a government],” Netanyahu said on Twitter, minutes before a midnight deadline set by the Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog.
Continue reading...Number of suspects revised upwards to 52, 23 of whom are currently in custody, and more police raids are planned
Germany is trying to get the measure of how imminent a threat to the state was posed by the rightwing terror ring exposed on Wednesday, as police made further arrests in connection with the coup plot.
In their biggest ever raid targeting rightwing extremists, German authorities arrested 25 people suspected of plotting to overthrow the government, install a shadow regime led by a 71-year-old aristocrat, and seek talks with Russia to renegotiate its post-second world war settlement.
Continue reading...Despite description of alleged plotters by prosecutors as a ‘motley crew’, the threat was considered very real
At 6am on Wednesday, German special forces stormed a house in the Berlin lakeside villa quarter of Wannsee and arrested a former MP of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Birgit Malsack-Winkemann. Three minutes later, they entered the Waidmannsheil hunting lodge in Bad Lobenstein in Thuringia. Simultaneous raids took place in 30 other locations, including a car repair shop and a carpenters’ studio, as well as in the Austrian ski resort of Kitzbühel and the Italian city of Perugia.
Twenty-five people were arrested, and by lunchtime eight of them were in police custody, among them a serving soldier of the elite KSK unit, a lawyer, a pilot, a gourmet chef and a prince, the alleged ringleader who had led the plans to overthrow the German state and replace it with a “monarchistic order”.
Continue reading...Thousands of officers search 130 sites across country in operation against Reich Citizens plotters
Twenty-five people including a 71-year-old German aristocrat, a retired military commander and former MP for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) have been detained in Germany on suspicion of a terrorist plan to overthrow the state and renegotiate the country’s post-second world war settlement.
Thousands of police carried out a series of raids across Germany on Wednesday morning in connection with the far-right ring.
Continue reading...Mike Pence, Chris Christie and several Republican senators were also critical, to varying degrees, of former president
Several Republican lawmakers and prominent Jewish conservatives have condemned Donald Trump for meeting with white supremacist and antisemite Nick Fuentes, in a rare distancing from the ex-president.
Trump’s former vice-president Mike Pence, the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, and several Republican senators were critical, to varying degrees, of Trump, who has come under fire after dining with Fuentes last week.
Continue reading...Advisers wanted ex-president to distance himself from white supremacist with whom he dined but Trump feared alienating supporters – insiders
Donald Trump repeatedly refused to disavow the outspoken antisemite and white supremacist Nick Fuentes after they spoke over dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort, rejecting the advice from advisers over fears he might alienate a section of his base, two people familiar with the situation said.
The former US president was urged publicly and privately to denounce Fuentes in the aftermath of the dinner, which included the performer Ye, previously known as Kanye West, who has also recently been propagating antisemitic remarks.
Continue reading...Democrats, anti-racist groups and some Republicans criticize president for meeting Fuentes at dinner with Kanye West
Democrats, anti-racist groups and some Republicans have condemned Donald Trump for having a dinner with American white supremacist and anti-semite Nick Fuentes after details of their encounter at the former US president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida emerged.
The meeting is the latest in a long line of incidents involving the former US president and the far right, including once referencing the Proud Boys in a presidential debate and his comments that there were “very fine people on both sides” after 2017 clashes at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left one anti-fascist protester dead.
Continue reading...Appointment of Itamar Ben-Gvir raises fears of further escalation in Israeli-Palestinian tensions
The far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir will be Israel’s national security minister under a coalition deal with Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, in what is likely to be the most rightwing government in the country’s history.
The agreement comes after the prime minister-designate’s alliance won a comfortable victory in this month’s parliamentary election, Israel’s fifth in less than four years.
Continue reading...Jurors will decide if his actions amount to seditious conspiracy, which carries significant jail time
As angry supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol, ready to smash through windows and beat police officers, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes extolled them as patriots and harked back to the battle that kicked off the American revolutionary war.
“Next comes our Lexington,” Rhodes told his fellow far-right extremists in a message on 6 January 2021. “It’s coming.”
Continue reading...Return of Jenő Szemák’s portrait seen as ‘strong symbolic message regarding the current political climate in Hungary’
A portrait of a far-right judge who served Hungary’s fascist wartime government has quietly been returned to the walls of the country’s highest court.
One senior judge told the Guardian he was appalled by the decision to hang a portrait of fascist sympathiser Jenő Szemák in the supreme court, saying that it sent “a strong symbolic message regarding the current political climate in Hungary”.
Continue reading...Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose party helped prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu back to power, praises Meir Kahane at memorial
A far-right Israeli lawmaker, whose surging popularity helped propel former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu back to power in last week’s general election, has delivered a glowing tribute at a memorial event for an extremist rabbi assassinated in 1990.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose ultra-nationalist Jewish Power party emerged as the second biggest group in Netanyahu’s bloc and the third largest in the country, praised the late racist rabbi Meir Kahane in a speech at the memorial in Jerusalem on Thursday.
Continue reading...Children and the sick were allowed off when boat run by German organisation SOS Humanity docked in Sicily
In the first test of its immigration policy, Italy’s new far-right government has prevented 35 asylum seekers from disembarking from their boat, claiming they did not qualify for asylum.
On Saturday night, Rome allowed the ship Humanity 1, run by the German search-and-rescue organisation SOS Humanity and carrying 179 people, to enter the port of Catania, in Sicily, and begin disembarking only children and sick or “vulnerable” people.
Continue reading...The arrests come amid concerns about the potential for violence around next week’s US midterm elections
The FBI has arrested two alleged members of the far-right anti-government group the Boogaloo Boys, as authorities express increasing concern about the potential for violence around next week’s US midterm elections.
Timothy Teagan was expected to appear on Wednesday in federal court in Detroit, where charges against him would be unsealed, an FBI spokesperson said.
Continue reading...Ben-Gvir, a defender of Jewish extremists, poised to become powerful mainstream force
Whenever the far-right politician Meir Kahane got up to speak in the Knesset after winning his Kach party’s only ever seat, in 1984, the rest of the plenum would walk out. Even the hardline prime minister at the time, Yitzhak Shamir, called the rabbi’s anti-Arab movement “negative, dangerous and damaging”. Kach was banned from politics a few years later for inciting racism.
Four decades on, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is still raging, and Israel’s political sphere is more rightwing than ever before. The country will hold its fifth election in less than four years next week. Kahane’s disciple Itamar Ben-Gvir is on course to become a powerful mainstream force.
Continue reading...Picture of dictator along with text exalting in his seizure of power 100 years ago reportedly placed by far-right militants
Neofascist militants have hung a banner from a bridge near the Colosseum in the Italian capital to celebrate Friday’s 100th anniversary of Benito Mussolini’s march on Rome.
The banner, which features a large picture of the fascist dictator wearing military uniform alongside the words “100 years after, the march continues”, appeared on the Ponte degli Annibaldi, a small elevated bridge close to Italy’s most visited cultural monument, on Thursday night.
Continue reading...Bolsonaro ally Roberto Jefferson said he was resisting arrest ‘in the name of freedom, democracy and family values’
Brazil’s toxic presidential election has taken a surreal and violent turn after a radical ally of the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, used hand grenades and a rifle to attack federal police officers as they attempted to arrest him.
Roberto Jefferson, a former congressman who has called Bolsonaro a “personal friend”, launched the attack on Sunday after police arrived at his home in the mountains north of Rio de Janeiro. Two officers reportedly sustained non-fatal shrapnel wounds, while photographs showed a federal police vehicle riddled with bullet holes.
Continue reading...Country’s first female prime minister leads the most rightwing government since the second world war
Pope Francis offered prayers for “unity and peace in Italy” as Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s first female prime minister, took the helm of the country’s most rightwing government since the second world war.
Meloni, the leader of Brothers of Italy, a party with neofascist origins, met the outgoing prime minister, Mario Draghi, for a formal handover ceremony on Sunday. “I did not expect this welcome,” Meloni, 45, said as she was greeted by Draghi, referring to the ceremonial guard. “It’s an emotionally impacting thing.”
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