The Great Betrayal

Mass immigration, and how Labour tried to destroy Britishness

By Simon Heffer

Last updated at 7:56 AM on 22nd February 2012

Comments (318)
Share

Throughout the tenure of the last Labour government this newspaper, and others — while praising the huge contribution immigrants had made to this country in the past — attacked the laxity of what were supposed to be our border controls.

It was clear the very nature of our society was being changed by a new kind of uncontrolled mass immigration — and without the British people ever having been asked whether they supported the policy.
Uncontrolled: Immigration surged under Labour

Uncontrolled: Immigration surged under Labour

Labour arrogantly accused its critics of racism — though most of the incomers were white — and of scaremongering.

It claimed it had no choice but to open our borders to the nationals of ten mainly ex-Soviet bloc countries which joined the EU in 2004.

The truth was that — as other EU countries which restricted immigration from these states proved — it did have a choice.
Action: Home Secretary Theresa May has announced that the UK Border Agency will be split

Action: Home Secretary Theresa May has announced that the UK Border Agency will be split
Useless

The cynicism did not end there. Such, Labour claimed, was its commitment to ensuring that only people with a right to be in Britain could come here that in 2008 it set up the UK Border Agency. The truth, unfortunately, was very different.

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, has announced that the agency is being wound up next month precisely because it is useless, and the officials who ran it — rather like the borders they supposedly policed — were out of control.

Despite the strong threat from international terrorism, the evidence of eastern European criminal gangs infiltrating Britain, and our overburdened public and social services, 500,000 unchecked people were let in to Britain via Eurostar between 2007 and last year, while countless so-called students were just nodded through.

Though Labour clearly left the system in a shambles, it should be noted that it has taken almost two years for this Government to admit the mess our immigration procedures are in, and to do something about it.

So Mrs May’s department — and notably the Immigration Minister Damian Green — also have a case to answer.

They seemed unaware that their officials, too, were ordering the relaxation of controls. Yet while the Coalition has been derelict, Labour was downright malign.

The game was given away in 2009 by Andrew Neather, a former Labour Home Office and Downing Street adviser, who revealed that mass immigration was a deliberate policy by the Left to change the social fabric of the country and to ‘rub the Right’s nose in diversity’.

This appalling policy was never discussed publicly because Labour strategists feared it would upset the party’s traditional white working-class support. For self-interested political reasons, the public could not possibly be consulted.

Mass immigration gratified the Left in two ways that have inflicted enormous damage on our country. It furthered the bogus notion of multiculturalism — undermining national identity and common values, and preventing the successful integration of immigrant communities into the British cultural mainstream.

More...

'We need community cohesion': Ministers' pledge to end era of multiculturalism by appealing to 'sense of national identity'
Britain's 'Mickey Mouse' border controls let 500,000 into the country without any checks for FIVE YEARS
RIP England: We are witnessing the systematic destruction of our beloved institutions

Moreover, at a time of growing economic crisis, it added an enormous number of people to Labour’s client state.

Recent immigrants were grateful for their admission to the country, and for the costly safety net of the welfare state that was provided for them: a gratitude that, Labour hoped, would help it garner more votes at elections.

That aside, it is generally accepted that new arrivals to a country — who are often relatively impoverished — are more likely to vote for Leftish governments.

So although present ministers have much explaining to do, this cocktail of ideology and blatant gerrymandering is of the Left’s making.

In the interests of creating a society with which Leftist ideologues felt comfortable, and which would help shore up Labour’s vote at elections, the wishes of the vast majority of the British people, and their security, were ridden roughshod over.

The idea of multiculturalism was advanced with varying degrees of stealth over several decades by politicians, civil servants and council officials. Its doctrine was spread in schools and in teacher-training colleges.
Self-hate: Former BBC Director General Greg Dyke slammed Britain's 'hideously white' mainstream culture

Self-hate: Former BBC Director General Greg Dyke slammed Britain's 'hideously white' mainstream culture

Weak as it so often is, the Church of England appeared to welcome it, even though it posed a mortal threat to that institution. The BBC, never to be found wanting when political correctness was required, suppressed any debate about mass immigration, took the tenets of multiculturalism as its gospel and preached it to the nation.

Internationalism is one of the core principles of the Left. It abhors the nation state, which it sees as a foundry of bigotry, racism and aggressive nationalism.

The Left has always understood this: that if you manage to wreck a national culture and a national identity, you shatter the ties of history and nationhood forged over centuries.

Although there used to be patriotic Leftists — and there still are one or two — many in the New Labour project in the Nineties and Noughties were, effectively, self-hating Britons.

They tortured themselves with post-imperial guilt, wanted the country to lose its independence and be ruled by Brussels, and sought to have what a BBC executive called the ‘hideously white’ mainstream culture diluted by ‘diversity’.
Threat

This was immensely dangerous. In a world where even Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Equality Commission, highlights the threat that multiculturalism poses to social cohesion, it is surprising it has taken ministers so long to become alert to this danger.

However one of them, at last, has. Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, has said that the culture of the majority will once more be given pre-eminence in society.

This is utterly sensible and, indeed, indispensable if we wish for a coherent and settled society of shared values.
Social cohesion: Trevor Phillips

Social cohesion: Trevor Phillips
Shared values: Eric Pickles

Shared values: Eric Pickles

To promote — as opposed to tolerate — the practices of other cultures is to drive people into ghettos. It prevents integration and assimilation and causes strife in society between religious and social groups who find themselves gazing at one another suspiciously across the social divides created by multiculturalism.

Mr Pickles has specified what this assault on multiculturalism will mean. He has said that public bodies’ obsession with translating leaflets into all known languages — and spending a fortune in public money on doing so — should end.

Learning English is one of the fundamentals of grasping the British way of life.

He has argued that tolerance of the beliefs of others should not extend to disowning those of the majority.

He deplored the disciplining of Christian workers who wear crucifixes, and the recent decision to ban prayers before the meetings of a town council in Devon. He has called all these issues ‘the politics of division’, and he is right.


More from Simon Heffer...

Things are dire, George. Just where's your strategy for growth? 17/02/12
For two decades the Mail has warned the euro would lead to rioting on the streets. Sadly, we were right 13/02/12
Mutiny, and why Dave's skating on thin ice with frustrated Tories 10/02/12
An everyday tale of adultery, greed, racism, foreign mercenaries and dodgy geezers 09/02/12
Undermined for 60 years by politicians, the Queen is still Britain's greatest asset 03/02/12
Mr Goodwin, and why honours must never again be scattered like confetti 01/02/12
Hysteria and the moral battle to end welfare dependency 27/01/12
Less cheap insults and more real courage are needed to implement a solution to our problems, Mr Clegg 26/01/12
VIEW FULL ARCHIVE

Ludicrous

In a society that remains more than 90 per cent indigenously British, it is ludicrous to be ashamed of national traditions, rooted in common values from a shared past.

And it is entirely right to expect those who come here to accept those values and traditions, and not be made — usually by mischievous, politically-motivated white liberals — to feel hostile towards them.

When even many atheists recognise the central importance of Christianity to the culture and institutions of our country — and I am one of them — it is offensive to the intellect as well as to the spiritual to seek to downgrade or marginalise that faith.

Our society needs an end to mass immigration.

This is not just because the parts of the country where immigrants most wish to settle are overcrowded, and the public services and infrastructure are cracking under the strain, or because we have 2.7  million unemployed.

It is principally because our national identity — founded on Christian values of tolerance and decency, and on a history of which we can be exceptionally proud — has been gravely injured by Britain’s Left-wing enemy within, and needs to recover from its wounds.

The best way to guarantee a harmonious future for all our people, of whatever racial background, is to make that culture strong again, and for us all to embrace it.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2104550/Mass-immigration-Labour-tried-destroy-Britishness.html#ixzz1nDCm96Gk

Two Race Cases Won In One Day

This is the future for white British kids ;



A teenage student was sacked from his first ever job as a waiter in an upmarket Chinese restaurant - for being white.

David O'Neill won a race discrimination battle against the Ocean Dragon in Birmingham's Chinese Quarter following a year-long fight for compensation.

The 19-year-old, from the Selly Oak, successfully sued the diner after his hours were drastically cut by a new Chinese manager who handed his shifts to workers from China.

Mr O'Neill, a first-year law student at Staffordshire University, won his lengthy battle after representing himself at a Birmingham employment tribunal.
Mr O'Neill was awarded total compensation of £5,322.89.

But he is yet to receive a penny from the restaurant owners - and a High Court appointed bailiff will now be sent in to recover compensation if the Ocean Dragon fails to comply.


Mr O'Neill started working at the Ocean Dragon, an upmarket Arcadian Centre restaurant, in May 2010 as a part-time waiter under a white manager, his first-ever job.

He said: 'From the end of October 2010, a new Chinese manager was appointed as general manager who cut my hours dramatically and those of other white staff, until I was given no hours whatsoever after November 2010.

'At first I was working around 25 hours a week, but soon it dropped to 15, then to 10, then to six, then eventually to nothing.

The Ocean Dragon, in Birmingham's Chinese quarter, drastically cut Mr O'Neill's hours and handed his shifts to workers from China

'Nothing really changed in how I was being treated, they were just really sneaky about how they went about it.

'Although I kept contacting the manager, she kept informing me that there were no hours available but she would be in touch.'

Mr O'Neill said he realised he was being discriminated against on ethnic grounds after new Chinese staff were recruited to take over his hours - despite assurances from the manager that he would be given more work.

Mr O'Neill, pictured here at his home in Selly Oak, Birmingham, said he was forced to sell his car after losing the job

He went down to the restaurant on several occasions to ask for more shifts but said he was constantly 'fobbed off' with excuses as to why he couldn't have more hours.
Mr O'Neill smelled a rat when he found out that one of the Chinese employees had racked up a 60-hour week, while the manager was telling Mr O'Neill she had no hours to give him.

Another employee told him: 'You've got no chance of getting any more hours - they're all going to the new staff.'

After the remaining non-Chinese staff were squeezed out, Mr O'Neill ended up being the only white member of staff in the restaurant, and was left feeling frustrated when some in-store signage was changed from English to Chinese.

Despite his efforts to tackle the company head-on, Mr O'Neill said they repeatedly ignored his concerns.

He added: 'I sent a letter of complaint to the company outlining my concerns and they denied all knowledge of me even working at the company.

'As the company seemed to completely disregard and push my grievances aside, I felt I had no option but to begin legal proceedings.'

Mr O'Neill was forced to sell his car after losing his job meant that he couldn't afford to pay his costly insurance premium.

He said: 'It was frustrating, really. I did everything with the car, and without a job I couldn't afford the £3,500 to keep it.'

Unable to afford a solicitor, the bright teen chose to represent himself during the lengthy tribunal service.

'I was improvising, really, I had no idea what I was doing, my family were helping me through it but I did keep thinking "is this really going to work?"
'I was almost ready to drop it, but they told me to just keep it up.'

But he is yet to receive a penny - and a High Court appointed bailiff will now be sent in to recover compensation if the Ocean Dragon - fails to comply.

If the restaurant fails to stump up the cash, bailiffs will seize property from the restaurant itself to cover the debt.

Mr O'Neill said: 'If it does get to that, I want to sit outside the restaurant and watch it happen.'

In legal proceedings which lasted from last May until December, David sued for discrimination, unfair dismissal, failure to issue a contract of employment, and unauthorised deductions.
No comment was available from the restaurant today.




Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2104269/Student-19-sacked-Chinese-restaurant-WHITE-wins-5-000-race-discrimination-case.html#ixzz1n2B1nif6




and


Chip shop worker Kimberley Burrell had spent a happy ten years working at her local chippy.

The 29-year-old had been a fixture at Joanna's Fish Bar in Hartlepool, meeting and serving customers for 16 hours every week.

But all that changed when new Turkish owners took over the shop - and promptly dismissed her and replaced her with 'cheap, foreign labour', which cost the bosses £2 less per hour.
Loyal chip shop worker Kimberley Burrell from Hartlepool was sacked from Joanna's Fish Bar within weeks of new owners taking over

Loyal chip shop worker Kimberley Burrell from Hartlepool was sacked from Joanna's Fish Bar within weeks of new owners taking over

Burrell has now been awarded £6,000 after an employment tribunal agreed she had been unfairly sacked.

The tribunal heard that within weeks of owner Zana Ahmed taking over, Kimberley was replaced by Turkish and Polish staff.


More...

International rugby referee who taught at an exclusive school throws his baby son off a bridge before jumping to his own death

Speaking to the Sun, Kimberley said: 'I got sacked for being British. It's a disgrace.'

However the situation is not necessarily resolved, as owner Ahmed, who told the Sun that Kimberley was 'a disappointing employee', said he would refuse to pay up.

Anyone who fails to pay tribunal compensation may be taken to county court.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2103869/Chip-shop-worker-receives-6-000-payout-sacked-British.html#ixzz1n2ByFFPP

Enoch Powell Was Right !

Ray Honeyford was vindicated. When will the same recognition be given to Enoch Powell?By Abhijit Pandya

Last updated at 8:14 PM on 19th February 2012

Comments (13) Share

Ray Honeyford, who died last week, warned us about the harm to national identity multiculturalism would cause, and the alienation of ethnic minorities that would result as a consequence of implementing this policy.

Make no mistake about it - 'multiculturalism' is the deft and subtle practice of racism.

It precludes immigrants and many of their children from integrating, and without integrating they cannot have the social skills, behavioural norms and subtle cultural characteristics, to achieve their full potential in our country. It also prevents them from fully understanding and enjoying the enormous British historical and cultural contribution in the creation of the modern world.

Ray Honeyford, left, died last week. He warned against multiculturalism in a similar way to Enoch Powell, right

Multiculturalism, or religious and cultural segregation, has resulted in literally hundreds of young Muslims rotting in jails around the country as a result of their exposure to Islamic extremism.

If only for them, and the tax-payer, an opposite policy of removing the barriers to integration in mainstream British society, that is based on Judeo-Christian values, had been pursued. They might have been able to make more of their lives, and possibly contributed in a meaningful way to our country.

The misjudgment by parts of the media, and the public, of Ray Honeyford echoes the treatment of one of the great British patriots of the 20th century, Brigadier and Professor John Enoch Powell.

Few people know or understand that Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech was about the treatment of aliens. The story underlying the quote in the speech 'Foaming with much blood' was about Aeneas, an immigrant who was assaulted in a foreign land.

Powell was simultaneously highlighting the plight of the unassimilated immigrant, raising an attack on immigration and, what is not grasped, protecting the immigrant from what he intuitively saw as a damning choice between either forced assimilation, or ostracisation.

For a man such as Powell, who loved the culture and history of different peoples across the world, both were morally unacceptable. His contemporaries chose mass-immigration without assimilation. As a consequence segregation became morally acceptable and, perversely, morally unacceptable to dissent from.


Unassimilated: A muslim woman wearing a traditional burqa walks through the streets of Birmingham

His speech hinting at the treatment of Aeneas echoed an important forewarning about the treatment of sub-continent Asians and Blacks by a growing National Front in the 1970s, a reaction to increasing immigration that could have been avoided. This growth of extremism was as a result of consecutive Governments allowing ghettoisation of immigrants. This was a result of allowing them to spread unevenly across the country in relation to their population as a minority.

This policy, of mass immigration coupled with segregation, was grossly unfair to locals in varied parts of the country who saw their neighbourhoods changed in a way that left them unrecognisable. This was as a result of the sheer numbers of immigrants and the fact that they could not assimilate due to multiculturalism encouraging them to ‘stay in their place’.

No one of sound mind could say that the uprooting and forced homelessness of Palestinians to create the state of Israel was morally sound. It is odd that it is unacceptable to voice similar sympathies for, amongst others, the peoples of

Bradford and Birmingham that saw their world turned upside down by mass immigration in the 1960s and 1970s. The lack of defence of Enoch Powell’s concerns on this front illustrates that we live in a time of deplorable moral cowardice.

No one was better placed than Powell, a Professor of Ancient Greek and a fervent admirer of the range of cultures on our planet, to understand the difficulty of assimilation that came with mass-immigration.

For example, Powell knew more about Indian culture than anyone in any Conservative government in which he had served. He spoke fluent Urdu and had deep understanding of Indian history. He was one of very few British senior officers who could say that when leaving India, the Indian’s serving with him actually wept because of the extraordinary lengths he undertook to appreciate their culture.

Powell saw and practised a post-colonial respect for the Indian culture remarkably both before Indian Independence, and before the United Nations and the global policy of self-determination of colonial peoples in the 1960s was in full flow.

Powell’s sentiments have been appreciated by some Ugandan Asians arriving into Britain in the 1970s. Some of them are aware of how their anglicanised colonial upbringing, in contrast to some of the deeper rooted religious fervour of their sub-continent ethic Indian and Pakistan counterparts, has led them to greater success in Britain.

They, as many others now, see that multiculturalism has resulted in losses of gainful opportunities that would have come with assimilation for their ethnic and foreign counterparts. More importantly multiculturalism has hindered for many a new arrival, regardless of ethnicity, the ability to understand and then contribute to traditional British culture.

Multiculturalism is also the most disgusting statement of contempt for British history and culture- it fosters the idea that British culture cannot be practised exclusively on British soil. This latter aspect weakens our national identity and, in turn, our country.

Multiculturalism is a blessing for any racist who believes that the ability to assimilate and understand British culture is racially restricted. This is a view that would have, absurdly, precluded Professor Powell’s study of the ancient world on the basis that he was not a Roman or a Greek.

With Cameron’s multicultural speech in mind it is time that we stop hounding men such as Honeyford and Powell. Men who understood the problems of mass-immigration without assimilation.

Only then will we be able to protect, and support, our national identity and the long rooted cultural traditions of our country. This is pressingly needed as a result of Labour’s thirteen year open-door immigration policy which has exacerbated the assimilation problem to no end.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2103450/Ray-Honeyford-vindicated-When-recognition-given-Enoch-Powell.html#ixzz1mui0WjlY

Pakistan to Support Iran

http://rt.com/news/pakistan-support-iran-us-attack-593/







Pakistan has pledged to support Iran if the US launches a military attack against the Islamic Republic. The Pakistani president assured the Iranian leader that his country’s territory will not be used as a launch pad for such an assault.

­Should the United Stated decide to attack Iran, Pakistan will not support the move and will not allow the US to use its local airbases for military operations, the Pakistani leader Asif Ali Zardari said on Friday.

His assurances of support came during a meeting of the leaders of Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan in Islamabad. The talks are seen as Pakistan’s way of sending a message of defiance to the US.

Meanwhile, Turkey has denied Israel the right to use intelligence from its NATO radar system. In the wake of a recent US-Israel joint missile test and the ongoing tensions between Ankara and Tel Aviv, Turkish FM Ahmet Davutoglu said on Friday that any intelligence gathered by the NATO facilities should not be shared with a third country, especially if the country is Israel.

Relations between Pakistan and the US are at an all-time low, after a November US air strike on a Pakistani border post killed 24 troops who were mistaken for Taliban militants. It took the Pentagon a month to reluctantly admit their part of the blame for the deadly mistake and offer apologies.

­But even without military facilities on Pakistani soil, Washington and its allies already have more than enough military force accumulated in the region to unleash full-scale war on Iran.

The American aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, joining another US battle group already positioned in the region headed by the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson. Yet another aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise, is expected to join the strike force in March.

The buildup of the US and its allies’ military presence has “turned the Gulf into a weapons depot,” Iran's Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi said on Tuesday.

The West considers Iran’s controversial nuclear program – which Washington and others claim without evidence to be at least partly military – to be a threat to be dealt with by any means necessary. But so far neither extensive economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic nor the assassinations of top Iranian nuclear scientists has stopped Iran from working on developing nuclear power, which Tehran maintains is solely civilian.

A military operation against Iran is considered by many to be the most likely outcome of Iran’s refusal to stop its nuclear research. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, however, has rejected the possibility of a military strike on Iranian nuclear sites as an alternative to diplomacy. “There is no alternative to a peaceful resolution on this issue,” Ban said Friday.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak believes that a “nuclear Iran will be more complicated to deal with, more dangerous and more costly in blood than if it is stopped today.”

“Whoever says 'later,' might find that it will be too late,” Barak said.

Earlier in February, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta noted the “strong possibility” of an Israeli strike on Iran in either April, May or June, before Iran enters a so-called "immunity zone," when its nuclear facilities will be too heavily fortified for an attack to succeed, the Washington Post reported.

The attack on Iran, however, would be like committing a suicide, said Iranian Ambassador to Russia Seyed Mahmoud-Reza Sajjadi last week.

"The issue of a military attack from America on the Islamic Republic of Iran has been on the agenda for several years," said Sajjadi. “If it attacks, we have a list of counter actions.”

Despite such self-confidence, it is highly unlikely that Iran will initiate an attack unless provoked by the US or Israel, says US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Ronald Burgess.

"Iran can close the Strait of Hormuz at least temporarily, and may launch missiles against United States forces and our allies in the region if it is attacked," Burgess said.

Tehran has repeatedly threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, which connects Gulf oil exporters with the Arabian Sea, if any sort of a military attack is carried out against the republic.

Syria and Mossad

http://www.todayszaman.com/news-271843-israeli-report-dozens-of-turkish-intelligence-officers-captured-in-syria.html



More than 40 Turkish intelligence officers have been captured by the Syrian army, an Israeli news report said this weekend.

The report, published on Saturday in the daily Haaretz, said Turkey has been conducting intensive negotiations with Syria in order to secure the intelligence officers' release. Syria, on the other hand, says the Turks' release is conditioned on the extradition of officers and soldiers that defected from the Syrian army to join the opposition, who are currently in Turkey.

Syria also conditioned the continuation of the negotiations on Turkey's blockade of weapon transfers and passage of soldiers from the rebels' Free Syrian Army through its territory, Haaretz said. It also demanded that Iran sponsor the negotiations to release the Turkish officers.

According to the report, Turkey rejected the Syrian demands, something, which the report says, is a sign that Ankara could further harden its stance on Syria.

Syria, on the other hand, has recently published "confessions" that it allegedly gathered from the Turkish officers that they were trained by Israel's Mossad and given instructions to carry out bombings to undermine the country's security. According to the Syrians, one of the Turkish officers said that Mossad also trains soldiers from the Free Syrian Army and that Mossad agents came to Jordan to train al-Qaeda officials to send to Syria to carry out attacks.

According to Haaretz, Turkey also mediated several weeks ago between the Free Syrian Army and Iran to secure the release of several Iranian citizens who were captured by Syrian rebels.

The Israeli report comes days after it was revealed in Turkey that at least one National Intelligence Organization (MİT) agent was involved in the abduction of two Syrian defectors, Mustafa Kassum and Col. Hussein Harmush and their transfer to Syrian authorities.

The state prosecutor in the southern province of Adana has formally charged the MİT member and four other individuals for their supposed role in the handing over of Harmush and Kassum to Syrian security forces.

Harmush defected and fled to Turkey last June but returned to Syria under unclear circumstances in September. In late September, the colonel “confessed” to crimes against the Syrian government in a tape aired on Syrian national television. Earlier reports said the MİT officer and four other suspects had accepted a bribe of $100,000 from Syrian intelligence services to repatriate Harmush, while subsequent reports suggested that the local MİT chief and even MİT Chairman Hakan Fidan knew about the case.

On Jan 30, the Syrian League for Human Rights reported that the regime's security forces had executed Harmush.

WW3 DEFINED

WW3 = US / Israel/ America / UK / Turkey / EU versus Iran / Russia / Syria and China.

Its Sunni Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Turkish government versus Shi'ite Iran and Assad Syria.

Hopefully the Turkish generals will deal with the Sunni Islamist government of Turkey.



http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/report-u-s-drones-flying-over-syria-to-monitor-crackdown-1.413348




The United States is flying unmanned reconnaissance planes over Syria to monitor the regime's escalating crackdown on dissent, U.S. defense officials told NBC television on Saturday.

Want to follow Haaretz.com on your mobile device? Download our new iPhone or Android applications

The drones are being used to gather evidence on the Syrian security forces' violence against pro-democracy protesters that can be used to "make a case for a widespread international response," the U.S.-based broadcaster quoted the unnamed officials as saying.

What do you think about the crisis in Syria? Follow Haaretz.com on Facebook and share your views.

The Pentagon officials stressed that the U.S. is not preparing the ground for a military intervention, but is simply collecting evidence of President Bashar Assad's crackdown on protesters.

There was no official comment from Syria on the report.

The West has ruled out a Libya-style military intervention in Syria to stop 11 months of bloodshed.

Meanwhile, there have been disagreements regarding what action must be taken against Syria. Turkey refuses to set up buffer zones for civilians on its border with Syria, and demands that the transfer of equipment and medicine be done via the sea and not through its territory.

France, on the other hand, maintains that such buffer zones must be on land and will anyhow spill over the Turkish border.

While the Syrian army continued to attack Daraa and Homs with tanks and heavy artillery, large protests also took place in Damascus, as well as Aleppo, a city which hasn't taken part in anti-regime protests regularly thus far.

The resolution passed by the United Nations General Assembly condemning Syria, supported by 137 countries, has not impressed the Syrian regime which is only escalating its war against the opposition and widening its war zones. Russia continues to come to aid of the Assad regime with weapon shipments, and on Friday two Iranian warships passed through the Suez Canal on the way to Tartus port in Syria.

Western officials fear that Iranian military presence along with Russian aid could turn Syria into a center of international friction much worse than the struggle inside Syria. They fear that the control over actions in Syria will be taken over by a Russian-Iranian "partnership" which would exclude the European Union and Turkey and that U.S. involvement could be too late and inefficient.

Turkey fears this development after a diplomatic crisis erupted with Syria when more than 40 Turkish intelligence officers were captured by the Syrian army. Over the past week, Turkey has been conducting intensive negotiations with Syria in order to secure their freedom, and Syria insists that their release will be conditioned on the extradition of Syrian officers and soldiers that defected and are currently in Turkey.

Syria also conditioned the continuation of the negotiations on Turkey's blockade of weapon transfers and passage of soldiers from the rebels' Free Syria Army through its territory. It also demanded that Iran sponsor the negotiations of releasing the Turkish officers.

Turkey, who mediated several weeks ago between the Free Syria Army and Iran to secure the release of several Iranian citizens who were captured by the rebels, rejects Syria's demands, and for this reason Turkish sources believe that Turkey will soon decide on hardening its stance on Syria.

Syria, on the other hand, has recently published "confessions" that it allegedly gathered from the Turkish officers that they were trained by Israel's Mossad, and were given instructions to carry out bombings to undermine the country's security. According to the Syrians, one of the Turkish officers said that the Mossad also trains soldiers from the Free Syria Army, and that Mossad agents came to Jordan in order to train al-Qaida officials to send to Syria to carry out attacks.

NPD and Liberal Fascism

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,815242,00.html


Holger Apfel meets with SPIEGEL in his office in the eastern German city of Dresden, with a view of the Semper Opera House. For this meeting to discuss his right-wing extremist views, he is wearing a gray, midrange suit by Mishumo and socks by Tommy Hilfiger. He appears to have a comfortable body mass index in the region of 30, and his stomach is pressing against the buttons of his blue business shirt. He is soft-spoken and has a slight lisp.

Apfel, who has been the new chairman of the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) since November, says that his party finally wants to appeal to ordinary citizens and to address their concerns, fears and hardships. The NPD, he says, is a party that comes from the center of the population and is for the center of the population.

But, in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a very different face of the party is on display -- one that reveals Apfel's rhetoric for the charade it is.

The NPD's office there is on an arterial road in the town of Grevesmühlen. The local branch of the party has its headquarters on a commercial strip occupied by the likes of the local construction yard, a carpet store and a Mercedes dealership. The black, white and red flag of the German Reich flying above the property identifies the NPD office, which is surrounded by a 2-meter (6.5-foot) fence topped with barbed wire. Behind the fence is a watchtower, complete with floodlights, next to a building with bars on the windows.

The Germanic Elhaz rune, the symbol of the Third Reich's "Lebensborn" program, which supported the production of racially pure Aryan children, hangs above the entrance.

Welcome to a building called the "Thinghaus" in Grevesmühlen, the local headquarters of the NPD. (The name is inspired by the old Germanic word for a governing assembly, "thing.") Instead of being located in the midst of the populace, the building is in fact where the National Democrats are still to be found today: on the periphery -- on the periphery of the town, the periphery of society and the periphery of public beliefs.

Most of all, the NPD is also on the periphery of legality.

Guarantee of Tolerance

The interior ministers of Germany's federal and state governments are in the process of re-examining whether they can -- and should -- ban the NPD. Since authorities uncovered the Zwickau terrorist cell and its supporters, who were apparently organized in a group calling itself the "National Socialist Underground" (NSU), the ministers have been asking themselves the kinds of questions that are critical to a possible attempt to ban the party. How much potential for violence does the NPD hold? Does it intend to violently abolish the democratic system? Can it be proved to be similar in nature to National Socialism? And, perhaps most importantly, would the party be more dangerous if it were banned?

The answers to these questions depends on the statements made by the NPD and how they are interpreted, as well as the actions of the NPD and how much weight they are given. In other words, the answers ultimately depend on the details.

First, however, a fundamental principle needs to be considered, namely, that a party should not be banned merely because it is deeply critical of the prevailing form of government. This is the historic lesson Germany learned from the years of the Nazi reign of terror, when Hitler united society under the swastika and had parties like the Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party banned.

The German constitution's response to this despotism is a guaranteed tolerance, which also applies in the political combat zone. Bans should be democracy's last line of defense, nothing less and nothing more. In the case of a political party, another determining factor in considering a ban is whether the party can be accused of having an "actively combative, aggressive posture against the prevailing system." These are the words of the Federal Constitutional Court in the southwestern city of Karlsruhe, the only body in Germany that can impose a ban, and that only with a two-thirds majority.

Paradoxically, the NPD's neo-Nazis are now the main beneficiaries of this anti-Nazi clause in the German constitution. That's why the process of examining a possible ban raises questions that extend beyond the current discussion, such as: How much freedom against the enemies of freedom can a democracy afford, and how much does it want to afford? And, 67 years after the end of World War II, is it an expression of the weakness or strength of German democracy if it takes the case to the Federal Constitutional Court, at the risk of failing there and thus making the right-wing extremists even stronger?

The Ugly Face of the NPD

These questions will accompany the interior ministers when they present their summary of the facts, presumably in March. They are searching for evidence that the NPD wants to overthrow the government, using violence, if necessary, or that it is too closely tied to neo-Nazis who will stop at nothing. There are many indications that those seeking to protect the constitution will not find the information they need at the Dresden offices of NPD members of the state parliament, where the party shows its tame face but, rather, in places like the Thinghaus in Grevesmühlen.

In the spring of 2010, shortly after the building had opened its doors, a party member enthusiastically referred to it as a "national free space" (a phrase used by neo-Nazis to describe what they see as their territory) on a website registered to the Thinghaus address. The domain owner is David Petereit, an NPD member of the state parliament and a former member of a neo-Nazi group called the Mecklenburgische Aktionsfront, which was banned in 2009.

Neo-Nazi rock bands like Stahlgewitter, known to the authorities for its album "Auftrag Deutsches Reich" (German Reich Mission), perform at the Thinghaus on weekends. An appearance by a former Ku Klux Klan leader was only cancelled because German authorities put the American agitator on a plane back to the United States the day before.

The Nazi fortress in Grevesmühlen belongs to Sven Krüger, a right-wing extremist who is currently serving a four-year prison term for dealing in stolen goods and possession of a weapon without a permit. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany's domestic intelligence agency, believes that Krüger is the local head of the "Hammerskin Nation" in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, an American extremist group that is prepared to use violence and believes in the ultimate victory of the Nordic master race.

And one of the tenants here, in this bunker-like building surrounded by a tall fence, is Udo Pastörs, the second-in-command in the NPD national leadership and the party's leader in the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania state parliament. The "citizens' office" that Pastörs shares with Stefan Köster, the NPD regional chairman for northeastern Germany, is located in the Thinghaus. Neither of the two politicians seems troubled by the links to the neo-Nazi and skinhead scene.

And why should they be? It is precisely their ties to neo-Nazis and other far-right groups that make the NPD as strong as it is.

Associated with Skinheads

It is arguably true that the ultra-extremists of the so-called Freie Kameradschaften ("free comradeships") -- small, loose-knit groups of right-wing extremists who are not officially organized as associations or political parties -- are more uninhibited in their expressions of hate and more prepared to use violence than the NPD. But, without the NPD, they would be nothing but local splinter groups. Only the NPD brings together the right-wing extremists, guaranteeing them nationwide notoriety and, at least in eastern Germany, a significant role as a regional party.

Conversely, the NPD wants to be associated with the street skinheads and with their visceral strength, which repeatedly manifests itself as raw violence. No one, least of all the leaders of the NPD, should be surprised that some of the presumed helpers of the Zwickau terrorist cell were, or still are, members of the party. After all, a hatred of the democratic German state is not just a characteristic of autonomous neo-Nazi groups, but also of the NPD. The desire to combat the state is the party's raison d'être. And the NPD's tactics involve pushing the boundaries of the legal as far as they can go -- even if the party has expressly distanced itself from the murders allegedly commited by the NSU.

So how far does the NPD actually go, and how deeply does it venture into the forbidden zone? Today, sources within the party portray it as a group that:

agitates against foreigners and Jews;

idolizes Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich;

flirts with the idea -- even at the highest levels of its national leadership -- of carrying out political change in the country, using violence if necessary;

uses its activities in regional parliaments as an opportunity to combat the state;

conceals its worldview behind the image of a party that is concerned about the needs of voters, which has enabled it to penetrate deeply into middle-class society in eastern Germany.

In the end, there is only one goal for the NPD: to overthrow the system, democracy and pluralism. This conclusion supports the notion that the NPD could in fact be banned. But whether such a ban would be a good idea is another question altogether.






At the moment, the NPD seems to be its own worst enemy. The party's membership is down from 7,200 four years ago to just 5,900 today. According to party leader Apfel, however, that number should also include another 200 to 300 nominal members, people who haven't been paying their €12 ($16) in monthly dues. One in 10 NPD members is unemployed, a higher number than with any other party.

"Their social milieu seems fully exploited," concludes a new study by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which is associated with the conservative Christian Democratic Union. Even Apfel estimates that the hard core -- activists who take to the streets for the NPD, get involved in election campaigns and run for office in city councils, local administrative councils and state parliaments -- consists of no more than 3,000 members.

One would think that Germany, a country with a population of 82 million, could tolerate a right-wing extremist group with no more than 3,000 core members, especially when this party has a tendency to expose itself to ridicule. Take, for example, Apfel's campaign to rescue the German language from Anglicisms and his habit of referring to what 82 million other Germans know as the Internet as the "Weltnetz" ("world net"). In fact, this party comes across as a bad joke, and it might be enough to simply avoid repeating that joke.

Political Force

On the other hand, it is the most important melting pot for xenophobes, anti-Semites and America-haters, and for the revisionists and revanchists who deny the Holocaust and admire Hitler. It is the only political arm of the ultra right, now that the German Republican Party and the German People's Union (DVU) have lost all significance.

And there are parts of Germany where the NPD is indeed a political force. They are not, however, in the west, where the NPD has less than 500 members in a state like Baden-Württemberg in the southwest, with its population of 11 million. Neither does it have any seats in the national parliament, the Bundestag, having consistently failed to overcome the 5 percent hurdle in general elections.

But, in the east, the NPD holds seats in the parliaments of two states, Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and it only narrowly failed to secure seats in the state parliaments of Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt. In the east, the NPD appeals largely to young men. The average age of party members is lower than that of any other party in the Bundestag. In a survey taken during the 2011 Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania state election, one in five respondents said that the NPD is a "party like any other."

Seen in this light, 3,000 can also be an intolerable number for a country of 82 million -- especially when the NPD shows its evil face, its intolerable side.

The Party of the Swastika

Technically speaking, Holger Apfel is now the head of two parties. One is the middle-class NPD, archconservative but socially acceptable -- or at least that's the way it wants to see itself. The second is the NPD that embodies the bogey of the middle classes, with its skinhead neo-Nazis and black-clad street fighters -- the outlaw faction. These are the two wings of the NPD, and this is the party's constant contradiction.

They are actually so far apart that they ought to be incompatible, but what unites them is their contempt for the German state. At the same time, neither wing could be effective without the other. A split would cut the party in half.

This means that Apfel has to be careful about what he says, at the risk of being seen as too soft by some and too extreme by others. "Leave your tape recorder switched off," he says. He doesn't want there to be any evidence that he said something in the interview that might be construed as too soft or too extreme. Hence, a discussion with Apfel about the Nazi period goes something like this:

Question: What is your assessment of the Holocaust?

Apfel: A crime.

Question: A person who orders a crime is a criminal. Do you see Adolf Hitler as a criminal?

Apfel: You won't get me to respond to that.

Question: Why not?

Apfel: Because.

Apfel's "because" reflects one of the party's behavioral guidelines, which directs members to be evasive when asked about the Nazi era. "I won't get into any further historical debates," Apfel adds.

Venerating the Third Reich

Last June, Apfel's deputy, Karl Richter, wrote in an internal research paper that, if necessary, the party ought to "part ways with the incorrigible symbol and remembrance fanatics." According to Richter, these people simply no longer fit into a "contemporary sales strategy."

Richter also wrote that all the "commemorative and memorial events," be it for Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess or the bombing of German cities in World War II, are also counterproductive, and that a memorial march held once a year ought to be enough.

And, according to Richter, anyone who has other "ideological roots and role models" should stick to the motto: "Think about it, but never show it."

Udo Voigt, the party's leading candidate in the Berlin parliamentary election, once pontificated that Hitler was "unquestionably" a "great German statesman," the July 20 plot to assassinate Hitler was "insidious" and that "a unique European lifestyle was subjugated and condemned" in the postwar Nuremberg trials. Pastörs, the NPD leader in the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania state parliament, also has a propensity to publicly venerate his Nazi idols. The dashing politician, who is in his late 50s and cultivates an imperious and pseudo-heroic style of speaking, as if he has watched Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" one too many times, called Hitler's deputy Hess an "absolute idealist, comparable with Gandhi." It's an unsual comparison, to say the least.

The number "88," code for "Heil Hitler" ("H" being the eighth letter of the alphabet), with which the prominent NPD politician Thomas Wulff is said to have occasionally signed his emails, strikes closer to home. So does the T-shirt that Stephan Jandzinsky-Joecke, a candidate for the state parliament, was wearing when reporters with the anti-fascist newspaper Blick nach Rechts visited the Thinghaus in August. Not only was the T-shirt brown, the symbolic color of neo-Nazis, but it also had a signature printed on it -- that of Adolf Hitler.

And all of this is supposed to change under Apfel's leadership? On Fridays from 1 to 6 p.m., anyone can go to the Thinghaus to find out just how radically true to Nazi tradition the new, supposedly respectable NPD still is today. That's when members of parliament Köster and Pastörs hold their office hours for citizens.

To reach their offices, one passes by a bulletin board with two posters in the middle. One reads "Freedom for Erich Priebke," and the other reads "Herbert Schweiger -- Unforgotten." Priebke, a former member of the SS, is serving a life sentence in Italy as a war criminal. Schweiger, who died in 2011, was part of Hitler's personal bodyguard unit, the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler. Finally, in front of the politicians' office, there is a war painting that portrays the power and glory of German wars of aggression. The World War II work is called "Panzer im Sturm" ("Tanks Attacking").

The Party of Anti-Semitism and Xenophobia

When Barbara Dabrowska, a journalist from Germany's Vice magazine, recently discovered a barbecue grill in front of the Thinghaus that had the words "Happy Holocaust" stamped into it in Gothic script, Köster had the presumption to say that perhaps someone was "poking a little fun at political repression in this country." It's the sort of remark only the NPD would find amusing.

In truth, anti-Semitism is one element of the enduring veneration of the Nazi era in NPD circles. Not even this legacy of the Third Reich's years of dictatorship and murder is off-limits to NPD politicians. In the Berlin state election campaign, for example, leading candidate Udo Voigt used a campaign poster that showed him on a motorcycle, next to the slogan: "Step on the Gas." Mainstream politicians denounced the poster, which was also displayed in front of the Jewish Museum in the Kreuzberg neighborhood, as an open allusion to the Nazi death chambers.

"The poster was unnecessary," says Apfel, to his credit. Nevertheless, he is still proud of the fact that, speaking in the state parliament, he once referred to the Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945 as a "bomb Holocaust."

Even one of the seemingly moderate members of Apfel's camp, national press spokesman Frank Franz, betrayed his true sentiments when, in 2006, in a notorious attack on the Central Council of Jews in Germany and its then president Charlotte Knobloch, he said: "Ms. Knobloch and her friends are guests in Germany." In other words, he was saying that, in the eyes of the NPD, Judaism is not a religion but a nationality -- and a foreign one, at that. And the NPD, from Apfel to Pastörs, is largely of the same opinion when it comes to dealing with foreigners, namely, that they should be thrown out of Germany.

'Arrogant Welfare Negroes'

Xenophobia is seen as a trademark of the NPD, and on this issue the party is in complete agreement with its voters. This sentiment was all too obvious in the traditional Ash Wednesday address Pastörs gave in the southwestern city of Saarbrücken in 2009, when he rambled on about the "extremely dangerous sperm cannons" that the "Mussulman" man always carries with him and with which he threatens the pure German people. One should resist that threat, he said, "if necessary with the hand." Although a court convicted Pastörs of inciting racism, the verdict is not yet legally binding.

For the racist NPD, foreigners are "social freeloaders," according to the NPD's website. Apfel talks about "arrogant welfare negroes," "marauding bands of gypsies" and, just to make sure all groups are covered, "job stealers." The NPD wants to send them all home. But because young Germans apparently no longer know how to force people into trains and send them out of the country, the NPD placed an online computer game called "Faust räumt auf" ("Faust Cleans Up") on its website during the state election campaign in the city-state of Bremen. The main character in the game is Bremen NPD candidate Matthias Faust, and the objective is to help him send criminal foreigners "back home" on the train as skillfully as possible -- the train being a presumably deliberate reference to the deportation of the Jews by rail during the Holocaust.

This is where the lines become blurred between a computer game and young men, with or without party membership cards, hunting down, accosting and beating up foreigners, sometimes not stopping until their victims are dead. Even if the NPD doesn't go so far as to call for acts of violence against foreigners, in promoting its ideology, it identifies targets for violent right-wing extremists. And it does so with so little inhibition that physical attacks by neo-Nazi thugs come across as a natural extension of the party's verbal attacks. For the NPD, the most important thing is that the right people are targeted, the people known in party jargon as "Kanaken," a derogatory term for foreigners.

For the NPD, it is out of the question that immigrants and their families could ever become part of Germany, and every attempt at integration is nothing but "genocide." Only a "minimal proportion" should be allowed to stay, to be determined on the basis of a very precise, case-by-case examination process, says Apfel. Would that include, say, the Green Party's intelligent and eloquent co-chair, Cem Özdemir, who is of Turkish descent? After all, he was born in Germany and undoubtedly speaks better German than an estimated 98 percent of NPD members. After hemming and hawing for a while, Apfel finally admits: "No one is saying we would put someone like that on a plane." But it clearly takes him some effort to say it.

Nationalism Rises - Liberals Embrace Fascism

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,815787,00.html




n the past, Germany's far-right NPD party was associated with skinheads and violent thugs. In recent years, however, the party has been trying to appeal to mainstream voters by cultivating a respectable image and campaigning on populist issues. But the party needs its links to the neo-Nazi scene to maintain its political power. By SPIEGEL Staff
Info

This is part two of SPIEGEL's cover story on the NPD. You can read the first part here.

The NPD, anxious to ensure that no one says the wrong things, is putting a great deal of emphasis on self-control at the moment. Because of the NSU's alleged killing spree uncovered in November and the public debate over what should be done about the NPD, the party is faced, once again, with the prospect of a possible ban. This makes it all the more important for the NPD to project an image of itself as a well-behaved and rational mainstream conservative party. Hence its self-portrayal as a "party that cares" about people in Germany -- provided they are ethnic Germans, of course.

In the past, the NPD used the term "National Socialism" as a provocation. But Apfel doesn't like the term anymore, characterizing it as being "burned by history." Instead, the party now prefers the slogan "respectable radicalism." It describes the attempt to camouflage (but not necessarily dispense with) the party's unpleasant associations, so that ordinary citizens can identify with it more closely. The party is putting on its mainstream façade for ordinary people by engaging in social grassroots activities, but always in the hope that the national awakening of its fellow Germans will eventually follow.

"Tutoring, children's sports, providing advice on Hartz IV (welfare benefits) -- wherever we see an area where the government isn't doing enough, we move in," says Peter Marx. He speaks with the soft, singsong-like inflection of people native to the western state of Rhineland-Palatine, an accent he took with him when he moved to Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania a few years ago. Marx, the manager of the NPD's parliamentary group in the state, exploits the fact that the famous "blooming landscapes" that former Chancellor Helmut Kohl promised for eastern Germany never materialized in many places. If there were functioning civil-society structures in Western Pomeranian towns like Anklam or Ueckermünde, the right-wing extremists would be little more than an annoyance in the region. The fact that these structures are absent is what makes the party so dangerous.

The Right Clothing

Some 300 kilometers (190 miles) to the south, the Wartburgkreis Bote, a local newspaper, is on display in the pubs of Eisenach in the state of Thuringia. The paper deals with such hot-button topics as a wind-turbine project potentially spoiling the view from nearby Wartburg Castle, school closings, donations to the local animal shelter, the euro crisis and efforts to ban minarets. "This enables us to reach conservative groups we wouldn't have been able to reach in the past," says publisher Patrick Wieschke, a member of the NPD's national executive committee. The right-wing extremists captured 5 percent of the vote in elections to the Eisenach city council, putting Wieschke in one of the roughly 350 local political offices the party holds nationwide.

This attempt by the NPD to appeal to a broader public by painting itself as a normal conservative party even extends to the way party supporters dress. A document drafted by the party's national leaders, which addresses the appearance of members, is now making the rounds of the state organizations. "It's important to me that we don't come across as a fringe group," says Apfel. "Attending protests dressed in black tends to scare people away," he adds, pointing out that he would prefer to see "friendlier colors."

In an internal memo, Bernd Kümmel, an adviser to the NPD in Bremen, writes that casual outdoor clothing, of the sort that "hikers" might wear, is appropriate, because, after all, "clothing is a marketing instrument." And not just clothing, he adds. "We make ourselves vulnerable to attack and compromise our credibility if some of us show obesity or poor posture," Kümmel writes. "If possible, there should be no overweight or unathletic-looking elected representatives. Those who are, should make it a priority to work on their appearance." This doesn't bode well for party leader Apfel.

The Parliamentary Party

The most important stages on which the NPD performs its "respectable radicalism" show open once a month in Dresden and Schwerin, the respective capitals of the eastern states of Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. This is where the party holds seats in the state parliaments and exploits the respectability of the parliaments -- even though Apfel once derided the Dresden assembly as a " gleichgeschalteten Schwatzbude" (loosely translatable as "conformist talking shop"), deliberately choosing words that were also used by leading Nazis to attack the democratically elected parliament during the Weimar Republic.

At first glance, the NPD doesn't seem to have achieved very much in its work in the state parliaments. All it requires is a look at the bookshelves in Apfel's office. There are five shelves, of which two are completely empty and two are half-empty. Apfel doesn't seem to have a high opinion of the kind of specialized literature that normally fills parliamentarians' offices.

But it isn't quite that straightforward. In fact, the right-wing extremists are busy in the parliaments, exploiting speeches, motions, minor and major inquiries -- in other words, anything that attracts public attention. It doesn't really matter that the other factions are notorious for rejecting the NPD's motions, mainly out of principle. For the party, pushing the limits in a calculated fashion is the name of the game.

In Schwerin, the six NPD representatives accumulated 483 calls to order in a single legislative period, while the remaining 65 members received only 72 rebukes. Pastörs alone was ejected from the chamber 27 times. But being ordered off the floor also presents the party with an opportunity to request a review of the parliament's decision to do so, and there is nothing more gratifying to the right-wing extremists than to witness the state constitutional court ruling in their favor.

The NPD has established itself within the parliamentary system, at least in eastern Germany. In states of the former West Germany, like Schleswig-Holstein and Hesse, the party failed to even pass the 1 percent threshold in recent elections. Apfel has already written off 2012 and 2013, because the only elections scheduled for those years are in western states. Instead, he is pinning his hopes on successes in 2014 elections in the eastern states of Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg, as well as in the European election, in which the 5 percent threshold no longer applies.

In the 2009 election campaign, Apfel focused on such issues as the rural exodus in the east, the shortage of doctors and crime in the border region. This strategy helped the NPD get itself elected into state parliaments once again -- and to escape bankruptcy in the process.

Subsidisies from the Enemy

The NPD may consider the current political system to be rotten, but it clearly doesn't mind taking its money. From 1998 to 2009, the party collected about €10 million in government subsidies, which translates into 70 euro cents for each vote in a state parliamentary election where it captured more than 1 percent of the vote. It has also collected another 38 cents in subsidies for each euro in donations and membership dues. It is only possible for the party to wage its fight against foreigners and Jews, against democracy and pluralism, and against the German state because that very same state subsidizes its efforts.

Since 2005, about 40 percent of what Pastörs calls the "war chest" has come from government funds (see graphic). The subsidies to the party's parliamentary groups represent another source of funding: €1.2 million in Saxony this year and €600,000 in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, plus the members' expenses. This is a lot of money for a party that calls itself radical. The NPD, incidentally, has been involved in more contribution scandals than any other party. The administration of the Bundestag is currently demanding that the NPD repay €2.5 million it collected on the basis of false accounting statements.

One of the biggest recent political donations came from a retiree named Robert Weber, who tried to pay €140,500 in cash into an ATM in Thuringia in August 2009. Despite allegations of money laundering, the 84-year-old insisted that he wanted to donate his savings to the NPD. Soon afterwards, the money was deposited into the party's account.

In the past, the party often had a tendency to bend the truth when it came to its finances. In Thuringia, for example, the head of the state chapter, who for legal reasons can only be identified as Frank G., wrote receipts for nonexistent donations for years. The supposed donors were able to use the fake receipts to cheat on their taxes, while the NPD used the fake donations to fleece the government for even more money. It was an "exception," claimed the national party treasurer at the time, Erwin Kemna. The only problem was that Kemna himself turned out to be the next perpetrator.

Hole in the War Chest

On Feb. 7, 2008, the authorities arrested Kemna, the owner of a kitchen store in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia. After combing through his records, they discovered that Kemna had inflated party revenues by €870,154.15, and that he had also moved more than €700,000 in party funds into his personal and business accounts. Kemna was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison. However, investigators are convinced that then-NPD leader Udo Voigt must have noticed something, which is why the Berlin public prosecutor's office is still investigating the case. Voigt calls the allegations "ridiculous."

Kemna was replaced by Stefan Köster, the NPD official with an office in the Thinghaus. Köster's appointment would turn out to be painful, both for him and, to an even greater extent, for the party. The party's 2007 financial statement was completed in a great hurry, and not until the early morning hours of Jan. 1, 2008. As a result of what an NPD memo called an "almost superhuman performance," Köster ended up with "bursitis in the right elbow." The party, for its part, would soon find itself facing its next disciplinary proceedings.

Because of an accounting error, Köster was unable to account for almost €900,000. As a result, the Bundestag administration suspended all payments to the NPD for a period of time. Just how severely this affected the party was revealed in a maudlin letter from its attorney, who had filed a complaint against the suspension of payments in a Berlin administrative court. Without the government funds, the attorney wrote, the NPD's "political existence would be threatened."

The hole in the party's assets is currently bigger than ever. According to the most recent 2010 financial statement, there is a shortfall of €1.068 million. Meanwhile, the government, that hated, despised and demonized entity, is supposed to fork over the cash -- and quickly, if possible.

Part 2: Violence in Its Genes

But where exactly do the government's payments go? They go to a party that merely pretends to be upstanding and respectable. In fact, it's a party whose leadership is peppered with convicted thugs and bomb makers, and that aligns itself with hardcore fighters from the loose-knit, autonomous neo-Nazi groups known as Freie Kameradschaften ("free comradeships"). And although it claims to strictly renounce all violence, the darkly violent fantasies of top officials speak a different language.

Ever since its beginnings in the 1960s and 70s, the NPD has exhibited the "tactical relationship to violence" that, according to Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, remains one of its trademarks to this day. With a worldview shaped by conspiracy theories and doom-and-gloom scenarios, the NPD has violence in its genes. The party constantly sees the German people being threatened, embattled and embroiled in a defensive struggle to survive. In their view, there is an ongoing struggle against the pollution of its blood, contamination of its cultural heritage and enslavement by foreign powers. The NPD's self-image is shaped by the belief that its role is to lead the people in this alleged battle.

The NPD has sometimes sought to align itself with nationalists prepared to use violence, only to abruptly cut off ties to these groups and eventually return to embracing them. In the mid-1990s, after a number of these policy shifts, the party began sucking up everything it could along its right-hand fringe -- whether or not these people were prepared to use violence. The NPD's ranks had been depleted and it needed new members. Its new chairman, Udo Voigt, wasn't overly picky.

The NPD today describes the activities of the Zwickau terror cell, which is suspected of murdering at least 10 people in a 2000-2007 killing spree, as "despicable murders." But its claims to be appalled by these acts of violence are undermined by the party's track record. In the past, it showed a complete lack of inhibition over associating with the worst of the neo-Nazis, and of allowing anyone, even the most brutal street thugs, into the party. Take, for example, Peter Naumann, who had worked for the party in Dresden for a period of time before being sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison in 1988 for his involvement in a bomb attack. Or Thomas Sattelberg, one of the co-founders of the notorious Saxon Switzerland Skinheads (SSS), named after a hilly region in Saxony, which engaged in paramilitary exercises to train for hunting down foreigners. He too now works for the NPD legislators in the Saxony state parliament.

Hijacking the Party

And then there is Patrick Wieschke, who now publishes the Wartburgkreis Bote newspaper and has advanced into the NPD's national executive committee. He began his career with a group called the Thüringer Heimatschutz (THS), loosely translated as "Thuringian Homeland Protection," the same neo-Nazi network that once counted Uwe Böhnhardt, Uwe Mundlos and Beate Zschäpe, the trio of suspected NSU terrorists, as members. And like them, Wieschke also once had plans to commit acts of violence against foreigners. In August 2000, he hatched a plot to blow up a döner kebab stand in Eisenach, for which a court sentenced him to two years and nine months in prison.

Anyone who welcomes such people with open arms shouldn't be surprised to hear that presumed supporters of the NSU terrorists were or still are, NPD members. German prosecutors are now interested in André K., an NPD member and neo-Nazi from the eastern city of Jena. He is allegedly one of the people who helped the trio go underground in 1998, an accusation which K. denies. Carsten S., a former NPD district chairman in Jena and former deputy chairman of the party's youth organization, the Young National Democrats, in Thuringia, is in custody today. He was arrested two weeks ago on charges of having obtained a weapon for the right-wing terrorists. And then there is Ralf Wohlleben, a former NPD deputy chairman in Thuringia, who has been in custody since the end of November, because of his connections to the NSU.

For a long time, the NPD was too tame, well-behaved and self-important for such militants. But just as the party needed the Kameradschaften groups to organize election campaigns and at least send a few hundred supporters into the streets for protests, the militants could also benefit from the NPD. It had structures, a known name and money from public funds -- all good reasons to hijack the party.

In January 2009, for example, Maik Scheffler, the leader of a Kameradschaft from the town of Delitzsch in Saxony, told his group that the NPD had approached him and said that because it had a shortage of candidates, it wanted to open up its lists to activists from the neo-Nazi scene. "Decide for yourselves whether you want to take advantage of the NPD's manpower problems," he said. They did, as it turned out. The skinhead Scheffler, who had previous convictions for aggravated battery and illegal possession of a weapon, joined the NPD. Soon he became the district chairman for northern Saxony, and then the state deputy chairman and a close associate of Apfel.

In 2007, Scheffler formed the Free Network (Freies Netz), the most dangerous and best-networked force within the eastern Kameradschaften.

Wohlleben, the presumed NSU helper, turned up in Free Network chat rooms. In February 2009, when the militants had plans to attack a police station in Dresden, he wrote: "Attacking the police station will certainly meet with broad support in our community." Scheffler responded: "Without stabbing one of them to death? That's boring." Now that Scheffler has admitted that he did actually write these two sentences, NPD leader Apfel claims that Scheffler must have meant them "ironically."

Reaping the Whirlwind

And even though senior party officials officially renounce violence, they also regularly indulge in dark insinuations that things could also be completely different, if need be.

Many still remember the speech Pastörs gave in 2009, when he told his audience that the party would "oppose the Muslim threat," if necessary. He also said: "Work, fight and bleed if you have to. The slogan is attack." And then there was the threat he made, saying that when the NPD is in power, it will "impose a just punishment" on all those who are "now grinning at us so insolently." He continued: "Well then, dear ruling class, watch yourselves, because those who sow the wind reap the whirlwind. Let us be the whirlwind."

Apfel, the supposed NPD pacifist, is more careful, but this could merely be evidence of his tactical skills. And what about the fact that he plans to open his citizens' affairs office in a building owned by Yves Rahmel, a neo-Nazi in the eastern city of Chemnitz? Rahmel's record label, PC Records, which produced the album "Adolf Hitler lebt" ("Adolf Hitler Is Alive"), also published the song "Dönerkiller" in 2010, long before the Zwickau terrorist cell was discovered. (The series of killings of Turkish and Greek immigrants used to be referred to in the German press as the "döner murders," because some of the victims worked in döner kebab stands.) A sampling from the song's lyrics is telling: "He has killed brutally nine times already, but his thirst for killing hasn't been quenched yet." Apfel claims that Rahmel is nothing more than his landlord. "We just say hello and goodbye."

It's quite possible that this is true -- at least at the moment, in the aftermath of the NSU revelations, and ahead of a possible new attempt to ban the party. Now the National Democrats have to be careful what they say and, more importantly, do. That's why Martin Wiese, a Kameradschaft leader from Bavaria, hasn't been welcome at NPD events lately.

Balancing Act

But the party wasn't that squeamish last October, at the regional convention of the NPD in the Upper Palatinate region of Bavaria, where Wiese made a speech praising the national struggle for freedom taking place there. In 2005, a court concluded that Wiese had been the leader of a terrorist group that had planned to bring about a "bloody overthrow" of the system through "murder and manslaughter." He was sentenced to seven years in prison, and he served the entire term, because parole boards were not convinced that he was contrite about his involvement in the plot. In a letter written while he was in pre-trial detention, he wrote: "I will not rest until the final victory has been achieved. Heil Hitler."

Today Apfel characterizes Wiese's guest appearance with the NPD as "unfortunate." He distances himself from people like Wiese, as part of the image makeover under his leadership. "The most important thing is protecting the party, not the fate of individuals," Apfel pontificates.

At the same time, the new course forces the NPD to perform a balancing act that is already difficult enough. While the party has been shrinking for several years now, the independent neo-Nazi organizations, which refuse to allow anyone to tell them what to do, are growing. The more the party moves toward the center under Apfel, the more disappointed militants it loses to the independent groups. But without its street fighters, the party is hardly capable of holding up the flag and organizing its struggle anymore. For this reason alone, the NPD leadership must fear any effort to ban the party, because it forces it more than ever to keep a low profile and deny its own nature.

The Perplexed Republic

Should the NPD be banned? Can it be banned? The revelations about the NSU terror cell, which is believed to be responsible for killing nine immigrants and a police officer, have reignited the debate in Germany over banning the NPD. In the end, the government will have to do something, even if it only means taking a stand. But because it was triggered by the revelations of NSU acts of terror, the debate over banning the party is also a debate over the extent to which the NPD is prepared to use violence -- and as far as can be foreseen, that debate will have few consequences.

It is certainly true that the NPD, from its ideology to its aesthetic, is all about its tough-guy image. But actively supporting the NSU group? "For reasons of self-preservation alone, our activists wouldn't be so stupid as to seriously consider something like that," says Apfel. In other words, the party wouldn't provide the government with that kind of ammunition, quite apart from the fact that the NPD claims to oppose violence anyway.

Of course, there are the well-known connections to earlier and current party officials. There is no question that some eastern German neo-Nazis who would go on to join the NPD, and thereby achieve a veneer of respectability, came from the same scene as others who joined militant groups or went underground. Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich, a member of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), isn't the only one who talks about "ideological sludge."

But this still doesn't mean that the party and its leadership knew about or even supported the murderous plans of the neo-Nazis. So far the results of the NSU investigation have produced little evidence that this was the case. There were no money transfers from the NPD to help support the NSU killers while they were in hiding, and there are no emails, memos or even meeting minutes from the NPD that could incriminate the party. When André K. traveled to Berlin in 1998, shortly before the trio went into hiding, to ask Frank Schwerdt, the NPD's deputy national chairman, to help the three NSU militants, he was actually clearly rebuffed. "I didn't want to do it and I couldn't do it," says Schwerdt. Perhaps this is merely a self-serving declaration, but even Interior Minister Friedrich concedes: "I am not aware of a direct connection between the NSU and the NPD."

Part 3: 'The System Is the Mistake'

So what else can be done? At this point, only the painstaking work of putting together the pieces of a puzzle, from bits of conversation to fragments of chat room remarks by overly outspoken NPD members -- in other words, finding evidence that the party as a whole doesn't take its renunciation of violence that seriously. Friedrich calls this "making progress through individual pieces of evidence." But despite all the contacts to violence-prone Kameradschaften and the occasional darkly whispered threats coming from NPD officials, it remains questionable whether the subject of violence will provide the right approach for banning the party.

The attempt to prove that the party promotes an aggressive and combative stance toward democracy, with the overthrow of the system as its ultimate goal, is more promising. It is certainly noticeable how Apfel, sounding like a model citizen, has recently emphasized that the NPD derives its legitimacy from the liberal democratic constitutional order.

A statement Apfel made in 1998 is probably closer to the truth. It played a role in the first attempt to ban the party, in 2001, and today Apfel describes it as a muddled attempt that was "ambiguous" and "rash." "We are proud of the fact that we are mentioned every year in reports by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution," he said, referring to the domestic intelligence agency, "and that we are described in those reports as hostile, anti-constitutional and against this system. Indeed, we are anti-constitutional."

People on the Inside

Is that really an ambiguous statement? The same applies to words spoken by Apfel in the state parliament in 2008, when he said: "The system has no mistakes; the system is the mistake." He now claims that these words were merely directed against the "system in this form of degeneracy," and that he wasn't talking about the constitution.

During NPD protests, party supporters routinely chanted: "The system is called the BRD (ed's note: the postwar Federal Republic of Germany ), and it's going to go under tomorrow." The message is unmistakable. And even now, in early 2012, a member of the NPD's national executive committee, Patrick Wieschke, says: "My goals are the same as they were 10 years ago: I want to overcome representative democracy. But I've understood that street fighting isn't the right tool for that."

A combination of all of these pieces of evidence would probably be enough to persuade the Federal Constitutional Court -- the only body that can ban a political party -- that the NPD is an anti-constitutional party. But the more important question is a different one, the same question that was asked nine years ago, when the Karlsruhe-based court rejected the first attempt to ban the party. At the time, the court's crucial argument was that it was not possible to distinguish between what had really been done by the party and what might have been instigated by informants working for the intelligence agency.

When Interior Minister Friedrich discusses a second attempt, it is as a doubting politician who knows exactly what this means. About 130 informants provide internal information from within the party, and more than a dozen of them are positioned within the party leadership. The federal and state governments would have to withdraw the majority of these informants (who work for both the federal-level Office for the Protection of the Constitution and its state-level counterparts), especially all party officials and leading activists. In internal discussions, Friedrich has made it clear that he would be willing to withdraw the informants in high-placed positions, but not all informants.

Danger of Stumbling

But that wouldn't be all. It's possible that the intelligence agencies could be forced to release the names of their informants, both to the judges on the Constitutional Court and to the NPD. This, in turn, is seen as impossible, because every informant is given a guarantee that he will not be exposed under any circumstances.

And as if this weren't difficult enough, because evidence cannot come from or be significantly influenced by informants, the evidence-gathering process could probably begin only after all key sources had been deactivated. But if that happened, who would smuggle the incriminating material out of the party? In its fight against the NPD, the state has become so tangled up that it is very likely that it would stumble during any proceedings to ban the party.

This explains the political drama that is unfolding. There is hardly an interior minister who is arguing publicly against an NPD ban. In truth, however, there is considerable skepticism. The wording on which the federal and state interior ministers agreed in December was notable for its subtext. The ministers stated that they supported a "successful proceeding to ban the party." In plain language, however, this meant that, unless it could be guaranteed that the attempt would be "successful," it would be best to leave well enough alone. Since then, the officials have become even more reluctant to move against the NPD. "We cannot and will not take any risks in petitioning for a ban," Friedrich warns.

In Saxony-Anhalt and Berlin, a task force is now developing a list of criteria on what needs to be clarified before a petition is submitted. In the document's half a dozen pages, the authors ask: What happens to the informants? Would their names be revealed? What kinds of evidence can be obtained? "These jointly developed criteria for a successful petition to ban the party must be adhered to," says Friedrich.

Risks of Failure

A meeting of state governors is scheduled for the end of March. It is quite possible that the meeting will result in a top-down directive, with the governors agreeing to support a petition to ban the NPD, even though a majority of their interior ministers are opposed. "We should all act in concert and take the necessary steps to launch a successful proceeding to ban the NPD as quickly as possible," says Bavarian Governor Horst Seehofer, leader of the conservative Christian Social Union. Kurt Beck, the Social Democratic governor of the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate, agrees: "As democrats, we must all stick together and act in concert." His fellow Social Democrat, Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit, is calling upon the doubters to "show more courage across party lines. If there are legal hurdles because of informants at the leadership level of the NPD, these hurdles will simply have to be eliminated."

Behind the scenes, Ronald Pofalla, Merkel's chief of staff at the German Chancellery, is expediting the effort to ban the NPD. In internal meetings, he requests new evidence and campaigns for cross-party unity. Interior Minister Friedrich says that he would support the chancellor, but he also warns: "Everyone must also be aware of the risks of failure, and that we will then have to deal with the consequences of failure together."

Of course the NPD should be banned. It is intolerable and, for a country with Germany's past, unacceptable. But in the end, as Apfel says triumphantly, "our NPD could emerge from a possible ban attempt even stronger."

Strengthening the NPD? Now that is something that should deserves to be banned.

The BNP and the EU

I have been wondering how the BNP could still function when it is nearly a million pounds in debt.

Then I realised how.

The EU is bankrolling the BNP.

The various employees, expenses, income from the EU is how the BNP funds itself.

How ironic.

Or suspicious.

911 was an Inside Job

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/september-11-attacks/9089896/London-based-oil-executive-linked-to-911-hijackers.html




Abdulaziz al-Hijji and his wife Anoud left three cars at their luxurious home in a gated community in Sarasota, Florida — one of them new — and flew to Saudi Arabia in August 2001. The refrigerator was full of food; furniture and clothing were left behind; and the swimming pool water was still circulating.

Security records of cars passing through a checkpoint at the Prestancia gated community indicated that Mr al-Hijji’s home, 4224 Escondito Circle, had been visited a number of times by Mohamed Atta, the leader of the

19-strong hijack team, who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre in 2001.

The logs also indicated that Marwan Al-Shehhi, who crashed United Airlines Flight 175 into the South Tower, and Ziad Jarrah, who was at the controls of United Airlines Flight 93 when it crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, had visited the house.

All three men had trained to fly at Venice Airport, which is 19 miles from Sarasota.
Related Articles

9/11: a lasting legacy for the Ground Zero victims
11 Sep 2011

Cancer rates triple among 9/11 police officers
06 Feb 2012

Karzai: we failed to provide security
07 Oct 2011

A US counter-terrorist agent told The Daily Telegraph: “The registration numbers of vehicles that had passed through the Prestancia community’s north gate in the months before 9/11, coupled with the identification documents shown by incoming drivers on request, showed that Mohamed Atta and several of his fellow hijackers, and another Saudi suspect still at large, had visited 4224 Escondito Circle.”

The suspect was Adnan Shukrijumah, an al-Qaeda operative who is on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, with a $5 million bounty on his head.A decade after the world’s worst terrorist attack, which claimed the lives of 3,000 people, Mr al-Hijji is resident in London, working for the European subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state oil company. Described as a career counsellor, he is based in the offices of Aramco Overseas Company UK Limited and lives in an expensive flat in central London.

In email correspondence with the Telegraph, Mr al-Hijji strongly denied any involvement in the plot, writing: “I have neither relation nor association with any of those bad people/criminals and the awful crime they did. 9/11 is a crime against the USA and all humankind and I’m very saddened and oppressed by these false allegations.

“I love the USA. My kids were born there, I went to college and university there, I spent a good portion of my life there and I love it.”

Mr al-Hijji’s account is supported by the FBI, which has stated: “At no time did the FBI develop evidence that connected the family members to any of the 9/11 hijackers … and there was no connection found to the 9/11 plot.’’

Bob Graham, a former US senator who, in addition to co-chairing the congressional inquiry into 9/11, was chairman of the US senate intelligence committee at the time, disputes the FBI denials. He has long believed that there was Saudi support for the 19 terrorists, 15 of whom were subjects of the kingdom. He cites two secret documents to which he has recently had access.

The first document, Graham says, is “not consistent with the public statements of the FBI that there was no connection between the 9/11 hijackers and the Saudis at the Sarasota home. Both documents indicate that the investigation was not the robust inquiry claimed by the FBI.”

Mr al-Hijji, 38, moved with his family to Britain in 2003, setting up home in a rented four-bedroom detached house in the Southampton suburb of Totton. His stay there appears to have been uneventful.

The al-Hijjis’ abrupt departure from Sarasota aroused the suspicion of their next-door neighbour, Patrick Gallagher. He emailed the FBI within two days of 9/11 to report the disappearance of the couple and their young children.

Reports released recently by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement refer to the “suspicious manner and timing” of the family’s departure.

One document states: “In mid-August 2001 the above subjects purchased a new vehicle and renewed the registration on several other vehicles. On Aug 27 2001 a moving truck appeared and moved the subjects out of the house. Left behind were the vehicles and numerous personal belongings, including food, medicine, bills, baby clothing etc.”

The document goes on to state that Mr al-Hijji and Esam Ghazzawi, his father-in-law and the owner of the Escondito Circle house, had been “on the FBI watch list” prior to 9/11.

Mr al-Hijji described the allegations against him as “just cheap talk” and denied having abandoned his home in undue haste, explaining: “No, no, no. Absolutely not true. We were trying to secure the [Aramco] job. It was a good opportunity.”

He said his wife and children followed him out to Saudi Arabia a few weeks after he left. She and his American-born mother-in-law had been questioned by the FBI when they returned to the United States to settle the family’s affairs.

But he was not questioned when he returned to America for a two-month period in 2005.

Media Censor Pat Buchanan

http://www.thepoliticalcesspool.org/jamesedwards/2012/02/17/pat-buchanan-the-new-blacklist/


Pat Buchanan was officially fired from MSNBC yesterday.

NEW YORK (AP) — MSNBC dropped conservative commentator Pat Buchanan on Thursday, four months after suspending him following the publication of his latest book.

The book “Suicide of a Superpower” contained chapters titled “The End of White America” and “The Death of Christian America.” Critics called the book racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic, charges Buchanan denied.

MSNBC President Phil Griffin said last month that he didn’t think Buchanan’s book “should be part of the national dialogue, much less part of the dialogue on MSNBC.”

The network said on Thursday that “after 10 years, we have decided to part ways with Pat Buchanan. We wish him well.”

Pat has responded with this column.

My days as a political analyst at MSNBC have come to an end.

After 10 enjoyable years, I am departing, after an incessant clamor from the left that to permit me continued access to the microphones of MSNBC would be an outrage against decency, and dangerous.

The calls for my firing began almost immediately with the Oct. 18 publication of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?”

A group called Color of Change, whose mission statement says that it “exists to strengthen Black America’s political voice,” claimed that my book espouses a “white supremacist ideology.” Color of Change took particular umbrage at the title of Chapter 4, “The End of White America.”

Media Matters parroted the party line: He has blasphemed!

A Human Rights Campaign that bills itself as America’s leading voice for lesbians, bisexuals, gays and transgendered people said that Buchanan’s “extremist ideas are incredibly harmful to millions of LBGT people around the world.”

Their rage was triggered by a remark to NPR’s Diane Rehm — that I believe homosexual acts to be “unnatural and immoral.”

On Nov. 2, Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, who has sought to have me censored for 22 years, piled on.

“Buchanan has shown himself, time and again, to be a racist and an anti-Semite,” said Foxman. Buchanan “bemoans the destruction of white Christian America” and says America’s shrinking Jewish population is due to the “collective decision of Jews themselves.”

Well, yes, I do bemoan what Newsweek’s 2009 cover called “The Decline and Fall of Christian America” and editor Jon Meacham described as “The End of Christian America.” After all, I am a Christian.

And what else explains the shrinkage of the U.S. Jewish population by 6 percent in the 1990s and its projected decline by another 50 percent by 2050, if not the “collective decision of Jews themselves”?

Let error be tolerated, said Thomas Jefferson, “so long as reason is left free to combat it.” What Foxman and ADL are about in demanding that my voice be silenced is, in the Jeffersonian sense, intrinsically un-American.

Consider what it is these people are saying.

They are saying that a respected publisher, St. Martin’s, colluded with me to produce a racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic book, and CNN, Fox News, C-SPAN, Fox Business News and the 150 radio shows on which I appeared failed to detect its evil and helped to promote a moral atrocity.

If my book is racist and anti-Semitic, how did Sean Hannity, Erin Burnett, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Megyn Kelly, Lou Dobbs and Ralph Nader miss that? How did Charles Payne, African-American host on Fox radio, who has interviewed me three times, fail to detect its racism?

How did Michael Medved miss its anti-Semitism?

In a 2009 cover story in the Atlantic, “The End of White America?” from which my chapter title was taken, professor Hua Hsu revels in the passing of America’s white majority. At Portland State, President Clinton got a huge ovation when he told students that white Americans will be a minority in 2050.

Is this writer alone forbidden to broach the subject?

That homosexual acts are unnatural and immoral has been doctrine in the Catholic Church for 2,000 years.

Is it now hate speech to restate traditional Catholic beliefs?

Documented in the 488 pages and 1,500 footnotes of “Suicide of a Superpower” is my thesis that America is Balkanizing, breaking down along the lines of religion, race, ethnicity, culture and ideology, and that Western peoples are facing demographic death by century’s end.

Are such subjects taboo? Are they unfit for national debate?

So it would seem. MSNBC President Phil Griffin told reporters, “I don’t think the ideas that (Buchanan) put forth (in his book) are appropriate for the national dialogue, much less on MSNBC.”

In the 10 years I have been at MSNBC, the network has taken heat for what I have written, and faithfully honored our contract.

Yet my four-months’ absence from MSNBC and now my departure represent an undeniable victory for the blacklisters.

The modus operandi of these thought police at Color of Change and ADL is to brand as racists and anti-Semites any writer who dares to venture outside the narrow corral in which they seek to confine debate.

All the while prattling about their love of dissent and devotion to the First Amendment, they seek systematically to silence and censor dissent.

Without a hearing, they smear and stigmatize as racist, homophobic or anti-Semitic any who contradict what George Orwell once called their “smelly little orthodoxies.” They then demand that the heretic recant, grovel, apologize, and pledge to go forth and sin no more.

I know these blacklisters. They operate behind closed doors, with phone calls, mailed threats and off-the-record meetings. They work in the dark because, as Al Smith said, nothing un-American can live in the sunlight.