Category Archives: The far right

Brazil’s failed coup is the poison flower of the Trump-Bolsonaro symbiosis

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The striking similarities between events at the Capitol and Brasília stem from links fostered by the former presidents and their families

In the days following the 6 January 2021 storming of the US Capitol, a Brazilian professor and expert on disinformation, David Nemer, gave an interview predicting the same thing would happen in Brazil two years later.

Sunday’s insurrection in Brasília came just two days after the second anniversary of the Capitol attack. Nemer said his prediction was not the work of a seer, but was based on analysis of the close and growing symbiosis of the hard right in the US and Brazil – a bond that was built up around the Trump and Bolsonaro families and their entourages.

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Pro-Bolsonaro violence: experts highlight role of social media platforms

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Sunday’s insurrection by supporters of far-right ex-president was organised first on private messaging networks, experts say

The role of social media platforms and messaging apps in Sunday’s political violence in Brasília is under the spotlight after experts highlighted their use by Jair Bolsonaro supporters to question the presidential election result and organise the protests.

Facebook and Instagram’s owner, Meta, has said it will take down content that praises the storming of government buildings in Brazil’s capital, amid claims that tech firms had not done enough to head off the attacks or quell disinformation.

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Jair Bolsonaro wrecked Brazil’s presidential palace, TV report suggests

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Journalist touring residence with new first lady is shown torn sofas, broken windows and art damaged by the sun

Jair Bolsonaro’s wrecking of the Amazon made him a global outcast – but his acts of desecration were not limited to the rainforest.

A report by the Brazilian broadcaster GloboNews suggests that even the official presidential residence – a 1950s masterpiece by the architect Oscar Niemeyer – was defiled by the far-right politician during his four years in power.

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Outcry over footage of men smashing cross at Jerusalem cemetery

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Vandals’ clothing leads to claims they are Jewish extremists who have desecrated over 30 Christian graves

Security camera footage of men wearing Jewish religious clothing smashing a stone cross in a historic Jerusalem cemetery has prompted claims that Israeli extremists are responsible for the desecration of more than 30 Christian graves.

The vandalism at the Protestant cemetery on Mount Zion, conducted in broad daylight on Sunday afternoon, has shocked church leaders and led to calls for Israel to crack down on racist far-right settlers.

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Extreme-right Israeli minister visits al-Aqsa mosque compound

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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”.

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‘It is a war’: senator and Auschwitz survivor Liliana Segre on fighting Italy’s far right

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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.

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Israel’s LGBTQ+ community fear for future under far-right government

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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.

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Israel moves sharply to right as Netanyahu forms new coalition

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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.

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Germany assesses credibility of rightwing coup plot amid further arrests

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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.

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Reichsbürger: the German conspiracy theorists at heart of alleged coup plot

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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”.

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German police raids target far-right extremists ‘seeking to overthrow state’

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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.

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Jewish conservatives condemn Trump for meeting antisemite Nick Fuentes

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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.

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Donald Trump ‘shied away from criticising Nick Fuentes’

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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.

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Trump condemned for dining with white supremacist Nick Fuentes

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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.

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Far-right extremist gets Israeli security job as coalition deals struck

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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.

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Jury deliberations begin in January 6 sedition trial of Oath Keepers founder

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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.”

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Hungary: portrait of pro-fascist wartime judge rehung in supreme court

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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”.

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Israel: leader of far-right Jewish Power party pays tribute to late racist rabbi

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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.

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Italy stops dozens of asylum seekers on NGO ship from coming ashore

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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.

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FBI arrests two alleged far-right Boogaloo Boys group members

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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.

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