Category Archives: The far right

After murder, defections and poll defeat: the sun sets on Greece’s Golden Dawn

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The neo-Nazi party’s Athens offices have downsized and it has closed offices across the country. Greeks embrace the end of an era of rage

For years the five-storey building at 131 Mesogeion Avenue embodied the success of Golden Dawn, the neo-Nazi party that took Greece, and Europe, by storm. Today, its tattered flag, broken signage and shuttered doors have come to tell another story: of Golden Dawn’s rise and fall on the back of rage and economic crisis, hate-mongering, murder and criminal charges. “The people put them in, the people threw them out,” quips Giorgos Mavroeidis, the manager of a health-appliance shop two stores down. “We got used to the rallies in the end but they were extremists to be sure,” he says of the black-clad staff and supporters who would frequent the building, the party’s national headquarters. “It’s strange to think of us being so close to them now.”

Related: 'Their ideas had no place here': how Crete kicked out Golden Dawn

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AfD politician threatens journalist after Hitler comparison

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Björn Höcke halts interview after German state broadcaster draws parallel to Nazi rhetoric

An Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) politician has walked out of an interview and threatened a journalist after he was confronted with parallels between his rhetoric and that of Adolf Hitler.

An interview with Björn Höcke by the state broadcaster ZDF, recorded last week but screened on Sunday, shows the AfD politician threatening “massive consequences” to a journalist who refused to restart an interview after a series of difficult questions.

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Racism is spreading beyond the football stands. It’s time to kick it out for good

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Taunts against black players are symptomatic of a rising tide of prejudice in society, fostered across Europe by the far right

Romelu Lukaku is a football star and goal-scoring machine. He has hit the net 113 times in 252 Premier League appearances and is the Belgian national team’s all-time top striker. Last month, he transferred to Inter Milan from Manchester United for a reported £74m. On 26 August, he scored on his debut in Serie A – Italy’s first division. For many football fans across Europe, Lukaku is both a legend and role model.

There is a “but” coming … and it concerns Lukaku’s skin colour. In many respects, Lukaku is a marvel. But he is a black marvel and, for a minority of fans, club officials – and even some players – this overshadows everything else. Whether out of bigotry or ignorance, Lukaku’s ethnicity – he is of Congolese descent – shapes and distorts their perception of an exceptional man and athlete.

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Norway issues rightwing terror warning for year ahead

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Heightened assessment based on extremists expressing backing for recent attacks

Norway’s domestic security agency has warned about the possibility of a terror attack from rightwing extremists “in the coming year”.

In a statement, the PST said its heightened assessment stemmed from the fact that several Norwegian rightwing extremists had recently expressed support for the perpetrators behind attacks in New Zealand, the US and the failed attack in the Norwegian capital Oslo last month.

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Viktor Orbán trumpets Hungary’s ‘procreation, not immigration’ policy

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Hungarian PM invokes far-right ‘great replacement’ theory at Budapest demography summit

Procreate or face extinction: that’s the message from central European leaders to their shrinking populations, as across the region rightwing governments implement so-called “family first” policies to incentivise childbearing.

Hungary’s government is holding an international summit on demography in Budapest this week, being attended by several regional leaders and delegations from dozens of countries in an attempt to trumpet their investment in family policies.

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Far-right AfD makes big gains but fails to topple mainstream parties

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Exit polls put party second in German state elections in Saxony and Brandenburg

The anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland party made strong gains in two crucial state elections in Germany on Sunday, increasing its support significantly but failing to oust the mainstream parties.

But the sharp shift to the right in Saxony and Brandenburg – AfD came second in both states – is a blow to the ruling coalition of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD), both parties having lost thousands of voters to AfD.

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Boston ‘straight pride’ parade dwarfed by large counter-protest

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A controversial “straight pride” parade in Boston on Saturday drew more than 1,000 counter-protesters and a few hundred supporters.

The rightwing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos was “grand marshal” of the event, for which a group calling itself Super Happy Fun America (SHFA) acquired a permit in June.

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Lessons of the second world war are at risk of being forgotten, or even rewritten | Sadiq Khan

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As we mark the 80th anniversary of the start of the second world war, with liberal democracies again under siege, Britain should be leading the fight against extremism

Eighty years ago, the start of the second world war saw Nazi Germany invading Poland. Six years later, up to 85 million people were dead. I’m in Poland this weekend to commemorate the start of the bloodiest war in human history.

An entire generation of brave men and women around the globe sacrificed everything to defeat the singular evil of Nazism and fascism.

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AfD candidate was at 2007 Greek neo-Nazi rally, says leaked report

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Andreas Kalbitz is vying to become rightwing German party’s first state premier

A German olitician vying to become the first state premier for the rightwing populist Alternative für Deutschland in elections this Sunday took part in a neo-Nazi rally in Athens in 2007, documents leaked to the media show.

Andreas Kalbitz, 46, is the AfD’s lead candidate for Brandenburg, where polls suggest the party is competing with the centre-left Social Democratic party (SPD) in the race to become the state’s strongest political force.

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Salvini urges far-right supporters to march on Rome after bid to force election backfires

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Interior minister calls for ‘day of mobilisation’ in protest at moves to sideline League

Matteo Salvini has called on his supporters to descend on Rome as Italy moves towards ousting his far-right League from power after his attempt to collapse the Italian government and force snap elections.

Salvini earmarked 19 October for a “peaceful day of Italian pride” against a potential government made up of his former ally, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S), and the centre-left Democratic party (PD).

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Syrian man jailed for killing that sparked far-right riots in Germany

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Asylum seeker Alaa Sheikhi guilty of manslaughter of Daniel Hillig in Chemnitz

A Syrian asylum seeker accused of a killing that sparked a week of far-right street violence in the eastern German city of Chemnitz in 2018 has been found guilty of manslaughter.

Alaa Sheikhi, 24, was sentenced to nine and a half years in prison by the Chemnitz higher regional court on Thursday.

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Leaked emails show Ukip leader comparing Muslims to Nazis

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Richard Braine accused of stoking tensions after also saying there are no ‘moderate Muslims’

Richard Braine, the new Ukip leader, has been accused of whipping up religious tensions and anti-Muslim prejudice after leaked emails showed he argued that people should no more want Muslims to settle in their country than Nazis.

Braine, who won the leadership after a campaign in which he expressed anti-Islam views, also suggested that non-Muslims needed to help Muslims to “cast out their demon” and argued there was no such thing as “moderate Muslims”.

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Italy’s Democratic party leader warms to idea of M5S alliance

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Ex-PM Matteo Renzi’s plan may stave off elections that could lead to fully far-right government

The leader of Italy’s centre-left Democratic party (PD) has warmed to a potential alliance with its long-time rival, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S), in an attempt to stave off snap elections that threaten to create western Europe’s first fully far-right government since the second world war.

Nicola Zingaretti, who was elected PD party leader in March, relented to the prospect of forming a government with M5S on condition it lasts until the end of the legislature in 2023. “A possible new government must be a turning point, lasting the term, or it is better to go to the polls,” he said after a meeting with PD members on Wednesday morning.

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Italian PM resigns with attack on ‘opportunist’ Salvini

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Giuseppe Conte tells Italian Senate that far-right leader has triggered political crisis to serve his own interests

Giuseppe Conte has resigned as Italy’s prime minister after blasting Matteo Salvini, the leader of the far-right League, as an “opportunist” for triggering a government crisis that could have “serious consequences” for Italy.

Conte said he would formally resign his mandate to the president, Sergio Mattarella, after the close of the debate in the Senate on Tuesday.

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Has the far right become mainstream in the UK?

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The heads of counter-terrorism policing and MI5 have warned far-right criminality is growing

In his paper on how the far right became part of the mainstream, the academic Joe Mulhall said far-right demonstrations had grown to sizes not seen since the 1930s.

The “Free Tommy [Robinson]” event in August, the “Day of freedom” march in May and the “Brexit betrayal” demonstration in December all attracted large numbers of people.

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Austrian People’s party promises to ban far-right Identitarians

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Centre-right MPs say the policy must be part of any coalition agreement after September’s elections

Austria’s centre-right People’s party has said it will insist on the banning of the far-right Identitarian Movement as a condition of any coalition after parliamentary elections next month.

Such a ban “must be in the next coalition agreement,” the People’s party (OeVP) parliamentary group leader August Woeginger said in a statement released to Austrian media.

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Portland sees far-right and counter-protesters take to streets – video

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Oregon city saw its largest far-right demonstration of the Trump era on Saturday, as 500 rightwingers travelled from around the country to march back and forth across the city’s bridges, and briefly occupy a patch of its waterfront. City authorities succeeded in preventing head-on confrontations between the demonstration and a much larger counter-protest. Police said they made 13 arrests, and seized weapons throughout the day

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Owen Jones attacked outside London pub

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Guardian columnist claims attack was ‘premeditated assault’

The Guardian columnist and activist Owen Jones has been physically assaulted in London while celebrating his 35th birthday with friends.

In an attack he called “a blatant premeditated assault”, Jones said he was kicked, punched and thrown to the ground by a group of men in the early hours of Saturday morning.

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Back me to stop Salvini: Renzi casts himself as Italy’s saviour

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As political turmoil grips Rome, the former prime minister tells the Observer of his mission to thwart a far-right takeover

His energetic stint at the helm of Italy’s government was brought to a juddering halt when, in 2016, he was effectively sacked by voters after suffering an embarrassing defeat in a constitutional referendum. Now Matteo Renzi is back, casting himself as the man to save Italy from the potential grip of a far-right government led by the League’s Matteo Salvini and calling on all “responsible politicians” to back him to thwart the extremist threat. He is re-entering the fray, he insists, for the sake of the country’s future – and not to reignite his own career.

“For my personal rating and consensus it would be better to stay silent,” Renzi told the Observer in an exclusive interview last week. “But Salvini must be stopped, and it’s important to give a strong message – there is an alternative.”

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Portland rally: Proud Boys vow to march each month after biggest protest of Trump era

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Oregon city sees sporadic violence and a dozen arrests as Donald Trump and Proud Boys chairman denounce anti-fascists

Portland saw its largest far-right demonstration of the Trump era on Saturday, as 500 rightwingers traveled from around the country to march back and forth across the city’s bridges, and briefly occupy a patch of its waterfront.

By making extensive accommodations for the unpermitted rightwing protest, including close police escorts, concrete barriers, and reopening a bridge to allow them to leave the downtown area, Portland authorities succeeded in preventing head-on confrontations between it and a much larger counter-protest.

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