Ulkomaan natsit uutisissa yleistopik

[overgrown reptilian]

https://www.scotsman.com/news/revealed- ... -1-4878251

Revealed: US race hate rioter’s visit to Scots extremist


White nationalists, including Cole White, in the striped top to the right, participate in the torch-lit march on the grounds of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Picture: 'Stephanie Keith/Reuters

A violent white supremacist convicted for his part in one of the deadliest rallies in modern US history travelled to Scotland to meet up with a far-right extremist group in the weeks leading up to the incident, according to prosecutors in the US.

Scotland on Sunday can reveal that Cole White, an associate of the militant and anti-Semitic Rise Above Movement, visited Edinburgh the month before the notorious Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on 11-12 August, 2017, which left one woman dead and dozens of people injured.

An investigation by the FBI and police in the eastern US state also uncovered a video White recorded and uploaded to social media, in which he boasted of meeting the leader of a white supremacist group in Scotland.

While investigators in the US have drawn links between the Rise Above Movement and extremist groups in Germany, White’s travel records are believed to provide the first direct connection between the California-based hate group and the UK.

Charlottesville was one of the largest gatherings of white supremacists in the US for decades.

Hundreds of neo-Nazis, and members of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups converged on the city to protest against plans to remove a statue of the Confederate General Robert E Lee.

After a torch-lit rally in which Nazi sympathisers chanted slogans such as “blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us”, the gathering erupted into a series of violent attacks.

White has been described by prosecutors as “among the most violent individuals present” during the unrest.

The evidence of his ties to Scotland is detailed in a filing to the US District Court for the Northern District of California, where prosecutors successfully argued White’s international travel meant he posed a flight risk. The motion, a copy of which has been obtained by Scotland on Sunday, was submitted as part of White’s detention hearing.

In it, prosecutors stated that the 24-year-old travelled throughout Europe between 19 July and 30 July, 2017, visiting not only Edinburgh, but Belfast, Liverpool, Manchester, and Dublin.

Prosecutors also cited a Facebook video made by White in which he admitted to travelling to Europe to meet the leaders of white supremacist groups, including one he referred to as the Scottish National Resistance. It is understood another was based in Northern Ireland.

The prosecutors argued that White used the internet to “orchestrate his interactions domestically” with the Rise Above Movement and “internationally with other white supremacist leaders”.

The court heard White, from Clayton, California, claimed he was joking when he told FBI agents he travelled to Europe to meet with the leaders of other hate groups, but the judge, Kandis Westmore, ruled he was a flight risk and a danger to the community before denying his release from detention.

It is unclear who White met in Scotland or whether the so-called Scottish National Resistance is an active group. It does not appear to have any online presence and it is understood the FBI did not seek the assistance of authorities in Scotland as part of their investigation.

White pleaded guilty last November at the US District Court in the Western District of Virginia to conspiracy to riot charges after admitting to travelling across the US to commit acts of violence at the event.

In a press release issued by the US justice department after White’s guilty plea, prosecutors detailed how during the torchlit march on 11 August, he swung his torch and struck several counter-protesters.

The next day, White and members of Rise Above Movement punched, kicked, choked, and head-butted several people, sparking a riot.

“As Mr White has acknowledged as part of his guilty plea, he and members of the Rise Above Movement travelled to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in order to engage in riotous conduct,” said US Attorney Thomas Cullen.

White is currently awaiting sentencing. He faces up to five years in prison and a fine of around £190,000.

[overgrown reptilian]

[Pasi Fist]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... tism-fears

Attack on Argentina’s chief rabbi raises fears of antisemitism

Several assailants entered the Buenos Aires home of Rabbi Gabriel Davidovich on Monday and beat him

An attack that badly injured Argentina’s chief rabbi has alarmed authorities in the South American nation and in Israel, raising concerns on Tuesday that it could have been prompted by antisemitism.

Several assailants entered the home of Rabbi Gabriel Davidovich in the traditionally Jewish Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Once on Monday and beat him after shouting, “We know you are the rabbi of the AMIA,” referring to the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association, one of the country’s most prominent Jewish groups, which reported details of the attack.

Davidovich, 62, has been the chief rabbi since 2013, working at the AMIA headquarters building that itself was the target of the country’s worst terrorist attack in 1994 – a bombing that killed 85 people and injured hundreds. Prosecutors have blamed the attack on officials of the Iranian government, which has denied involvement and refused to turn over suspects.

Argentina’s Jewish community – the fourth largest outside Israel and the United States – has good reason to be alarmed: successive Argentinian governments failed to resolve the AMIA bombing, and a number of former government officials – including former president Carlos Menem, a former judge and two former prosecutors are set to be sentenced on Thursday after being convicted of covering up leads and otherwise thwarting the investigation.

Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor who investigated the AMIA bombing after the original trial failed to produce results, was found dead from a gunshot wound in his bathroom in January 2015. Days earlier he had accused former president Cristina Kirchner of conspiring with Iran to deflect an investigation into the bombing.

Nisman’s allegations against Fernández remain unsubstantiated and his death remains equally unexplained, leaving it unclear whether he took his own life or fell victim to a political revenge killing.

Davidovich was in a hospital on Tuesday with several broken ribs and a punctured lung. The assailants also took money and some belongings, according to the AMIA.

Mauricio Macri sent a tweet repudiating the attack and vowing aid to find the attackers. The president’s human rights secretary, Claudio Avruj, said that Argentina needed to build a society “where there are no signs of antisemitism, and we cannot be indifferent”.

Reuven Rivlen phoned Davidovich “to find out how you are and to express my concern about the safety of the large Jewish community you lead”, according to a statement from the Israeli president’s office.

“The state of Israel will do everything necessary to protect Jews wherever they choose to live and will take any steps to protect us from danger. We will not allow those who seek our harm us to pursue us,” he added.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, also expressed wishes for the rabbi’s recovery, saying, “We must not let antisemitism rear its head. I strongly condemn the recent acts of antisemitism and call on the international community to take action against it.”

• This article was amended on 27 February 2019. Argentina’s Jewish community is the fourth largest, not the largest, outside of Israel and the United States.

[Pasi Fist]

Well done Stern.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... nazi-group

How ‘race whisperer’ seized control of a US neo-Nazi group

In a story to rival the plot of BlacKkKlansman, James Hart Stern takes leadership of America’s National Socialist Movement


James Hart Stern’s previous coup, gaining power of attorney from KKK leader Edgar Ray Killen.

They call him the “race whisperer”, a black civil rights activist able to manipulate some of the most noxious far-right figureheads in the US. Now James Hart Stern has triumphed again – and it is possibly his most extraordinary accomplishment to date. Stern, 54, has emerged as the new leader of one of the largest and oldest neo-Nazi groups in the US – the National Socialist Movement.

Stern said he had gradually wooed the group’s longstanding leader before eventually seizing control. “As a black man, I took over a neo-Nazi group and outsmarted them,” he said.

Having assumed control of an organisation whose members wear SS-like uniforms that resemble those worn in Nazi Germany, Stern now intends to undermine it.

His opening move as NSM president has been to address a lawsuit against the neo-Nazi group by asking a Virginia judge to find it guilty of conspiring to commit violence at a notorious white nationalist rally in Charlottesville in 2017.


Neo-Nazi leader Jeff Schoep (centre)

His next step will be to replace the far-right group’s website with Holocaust history lessons.

Not surprisingly, Stern’s intervention has invited comparisons to last year’s Spike Lee movie BlacKkKlansman, in which an African-American cop infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan during the early 1970s. (Lee’s movie was itself based on a true story.)

Stern, too, has form with the KKK, having taken down a major white supremacist organisation after befriending former “grand wizard” Edgar Ray Killen while they shared a prison cell.

The KKK leader, convicted in the Mississippi Burning killings of three civil rights workers, grew to trust Stern, who had been imprisoned for mail fraud, to the extent he gave the black activist power of attorney over his estate. In 2016 Stern was then able to use his legal discretion to dissolve the infamous Klan organisation that Killen once led.

It was Stern’s relationship with the KKK leader that caught the attention of the former president of the National Socialist Movement, Jeff Schoep. In 2014 Schoep approached Stern to discuss his relationship with the KKK leader, the first black man his organisation had reached out to since it had contacted the civil rights activist Malcolm X.

The two stayed in contact and Stern said that he frequently confronted Schoep over his views on Adolf Hitler, the Holocaust and white supremacism.

“From day one, I always told him: ‘I don’t agree with you; I don’t like you,’” Stern said. “I talked to him because I wanted to hope to change him,” he told the Washington Post.

Earlier this year Schoep came to Stern for legal advice on a lawsuit filed by a Charlottesville counter-protester against his group, following the 2017 Unite the Right rally in which a young woman was killed.

Stern described the man who had led the Detroit-based group for 24 years as being desperate for a way out, partly because of the repercussions of the Charlottesville lawsuit but also because he felt a lack of appreciation from his followers. When Stern offered to solve the problem by taking control of the Detroit-based organisation Schoep, he said, readily agreed.

Court documents dated 15 February confirm that Stern is both director and president of the NSM, although he insists that he does not plan to dissolve the corporation because he doesn’t want neo-Nazi followers to reinvent the group associated with Hitler acolytes.


The National Socialist Movement’s former leader Jeff Schoep speaking during a white nationalist rally in Georgia last year.

“Everything is out in the open. My plans and intentions are not to let this group prosper. It’s my goal to set some hard records right,” said Stern.

The unlikely takeover comes as traditional US neo-Nazi groups are being eclipsed by the more nuanced efforts of new alt-right leaders such as Richard Spencer or sidelined by the mainstream white-nationalist movement that has boomed in the wake of the 2016 presidential election. Reports had suggested that, before Stern’s power grab, tension was mounting within the organisation with a faction advocating a move towards a less violent, less explicit brand of neo-Nazism. Critics inside the party had complained it wanted to remain “a politically impotent white supremacist gang” and aired concerns over Schoep.

As Stern prepares for a fresh wave of controversy over his takeover, he said: “Say what you want about me. But I’ve done this twice now.”

[Pasi Fist]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... -hate-wave

Rise in UK use of far-right online forums as anti-Muslim hate increases

Security services and anti-fascist groups warn that today’s extremists are organised and recruiting

Thousands of Britons regularly use online forums that espouse rightwing extremism, it has emerged amid fresh warnings that the UK is facing a “new wave” of anti-Muslim hatred.

An indicator of the evolving challenge is the recent move by MI5 to wrest control from the police of investigations into far-right plots that “cross the statutory threshold to be considered terrorism”. The security services are currently investigating potential contact between the Christchurch gunman and rightwing extremists in the UK.

Analysis by anti-fascist charity Hope not Hate indicates that huge numbers of Britons are among the global audience for far-right forums – such as Stormfront, the white supremacist website – that spread extremist ideolology.

Sara Khan, the UK’s lead anti-extremism commissioner, has pointed to a fresh surge of UK-based far-right activists who are, she says, “organised, professional and actively attempting to recruit”.

Khan, who has visited 14 UK towns and cities as she prepares a report on extremism for the home secretary, told the Observer: “I have heard deep concern about the far right and its devastating impact on individuals, communities and our democracy.” A “frightening amount of legal extremist content online” was fuelling far-right activism, she added.

The security services, having placed the threat from rightwing extremist ideology on a par with Islamist and Northern Ireland-related terrorism, have said they are investigating “very sharp high-end cases” in relation to the far right.

So far, though, they have not revealed how many of the 700 or so live terror plots and 20,000 individuals classified as “closed subjects of concern” – people who have previously been investigated and may pose a future threat – are related to rightwing extremism.

However, MI5 said the volume of rightwing cases was “absolutely dwarfed by the number of Islamist cases”.

The government’s latest counter-terrorism assessment does, however, shed interesting light on the evolving far-right threat. Before 2014, it says, extreme rightwing activity in the UK was confined to “small, established groups with an older membership, which promoted anti-immigration and white supremacist views, but presented a very low risk to national security.”

Four extreme rightwing terror plots were foiled in the year to June 2018, fuelling disquiet over online forums and their ability to disseminate extremist ideology.

Joe Mulhall, a researcher for Hope not Hate, said the global audience for chatrooms and messaging sites that effectively and quickly spread hate speech ran into the hundreds of thousands. “We know that because we can look at the forums through which these people engage and see that they have hundreds of thousands of people on them,” he said.

In December, messages left on an online gaming server illustrated the issue: on it, neo-Nazis from Europe and the US, using pseudonyms, exchanged racist views and messages glorifying violence. Some of the chat logs involved members of the Atomwaffen Division, a US group that encourages terrorism, and there was also correspondence about the creation of a new far-right British group called the Sonnenkrieg Division.

Latest figures documenting cases referred to the UK government’s counter-extremism programme corroborating the increased activity of the far right with a 36% rise in tip-offs over rightwing radicalisation.

In the year to March 2018, 1,312 individuals were referred to Prevent, an increase of 36% on the previous year, and accounting for almost a fifth of all referrals. For the first time, a similar percentage of individuals received support from the Channel scheme, which helps people at risk of being drawn into terrorism, over concerns related to Islamist and rightwing extremism.

[ontuva hollantilainen]

Stanwell stabbing: Terror investigation in Surrey

Counter terror police are investigating a suspected far-right inspired attack in which a 19-year-old man was stabbed.

The victim suffered non-fatal injuries after being struck by a man armed with a baseball bat and knife and shouting racist abuse in Stanwell, Surrey.

The man, 50, was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and a racially-aggravated public order offence.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid called on society to "reject the terrorists and extremists who seek to divide us".

He added: "Now's the moment for us all to challenge the hatred, ignorance and violence they peddle and stand up for the kind of country we are and want to be.
'We are with you'

"A welcoming, tolerant, proudly diverse country that draws strength and prosperity from that diversity."

He added: "To any communities who are feeling vulnerable and under threat I say we are with you.

"You benefit our country, you are part of our country, part of us."

The incident occurred on Saturday night. The victim was taken to hospital for treatment; the extent of his injuries has not been confirmed.

Prime Minister Theresa May thanked the emergency services and said her thoughts were with the injured man and his family and friends.

She added: "Vile, hateful far-right extremism has no place in our society."
'Hallmarks of terror'

Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, head of Counter Terrorism Policing, said: "Whilst this investigation is still in its infancy, it has hallmarks of a terror event, inspired by the far right, and therefore it has been declared a terrorism incident."

The man had been seen brandishing weapons and shouting abuse on Viola Road. When police, including armed officers, arrived they found several vehicles damaged.

Nemer Salem, who lives on Viola Road, said he heard a man shouting racist abuse out of a window.

Mr Salem, who came to London six years ago from Syria, said he had moved to the area two weeks ago.

The 24-year-old said: "He started saying some crazy things about Muslims and just shut the window and went inside.

"I'm a Muslim and I got a little bit worried."
'Heard banging'

He added: "He wasn't showing himself, he was opening the window but the curtain was closed. I felt worried and I just speeded up."

Vincent Sutherland, who lives on the road, said he heard shouting at about 20:00 GMT on Saturday.

He said: "He was shouting 'kill a Muslim' and 'white supremacy', and then I went inside and I heard a load of banging.

"I don't think he's capable of what they are taking into consideration," he added.

"He's polite, he always says hello to me."

The investigation is being led by Counter Terrorism South East in collaboration with Surrey Police.

Local officers have been deployed to provide reassurance and protective security advice to communities, places of worship and businesses.

Anyone with information regarding the incident has been urged to contact Surrey Police.

[Pasi Fist]

Toivottavasti ei jäisi pelkästään poliitikkojen tyhjiksi puheiksi.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... -supremacy

Home Affairs says it is targeting 'extremist theology of white supremacy'

Mike Pezzullo says agency to investigate claim author of Fraser Anning’s infamous ‘final solution’ speech, was on unpaid leave from his department

The Department of Home Affairs head, Mike Pezzullo, has said his staff are zeroing in on white supremacists and their sympathisers in the week following the Christchurch terror attack, including, if necessary, those within his own department.

Pezzullo’s comments on white supremacy come just a week after he delivered a speech to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute where he listed “seven gathering storms” for national security, where “radical extremist Islamist terrorism” was mentioned, but white supremacy was not.

But speaking to a Senate estimates hearing on Friday, Pezzullo said the department had “rededicated itself to standing resolutely against the extremist theology of white supremacy and its followers.

“To whom I say, you are on our radar and you will not be able to incite the racial strife that you seek,” he said. “The scrutiny and pressure that you are under will only intensify.”

Responding to reports in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age that one of Fraser Anning’s staffers, accused by Pauline Hanson in parliament of having written the infamous “final solution” speech, was on unpaid leave from his department, Pezzullo said he would investigate.

Hanson used parliamentary privilege to name Richard Howard as the author of Anning’s maiden speech, a claim Howard has denied. Howard has also rejected allegations he holds extremist views.

“Richard Howard actually did work in Senator Malcolm Roberts’s office and was sacked out of that office,” Hanson told the Senate the day after Anning’s speech.

“He did ask me for a position in my office, after Senator Roberts lost his position in this parliament, and I refused to take him on.”

Howard told the Nine newspapers he had “no position” on Anning’s views and his job was to deal with constituent inquiries.

But Pezzullo said he would examine all claims, telling the hearing his department “will not tolerate extremists of any description – any form of extremism is repugnant”.

“Any association with groups that vilify minorities that either normalise or incentivised violence is completely abhorrent,” he said.

“You will not be working in my department if you hold those views.”

While political staffers can claim privilege, Pezzullo said that was extended both ways.

“If it is the case that I can’t look into a matter that is being undertaken in a privilege fashion, that is to say a member of staff working for a senator, I will do everything within my power to look at ancillary associations that I can look into,” he said.

“Privilege cuts both ways, it has to be said, and if it comes to be the case whether in this, or any other matter, I am not going to speculate, but I will set the standard – no one will work in my department, who holds those views, I can assure you.”

[Pasi Fist]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... ch-shooter

Austrian authorities raid far-right group over alleged links to Christchurch shooter

Home of far-right ‘Identitarian’ raided after he received a large donation from a person sharing the same surname as Christchurch suspect

Austria’s chancellor called Tuesday for authorities to “ruthlessly” investigate possible ties between an Austrian nationalist group and the alleged Christchurch mosque gunman, after it emerged that a prominent far-right activist had received a donation in the suspected shooter’s name.

Martin Sellner, head of the Identitarian Movement of Austria, said on social media that police searched his apartment Monday and seized electronic devices after he received a “disproportionately high donation” from a person named Tarrant the same surname as the suspected Christchurch shooter.

Christoph Poelzl, spokesman for Austria’s Interior Ministry, confirmed the country’s BVT domestic intelligence agency searched Sellner‘s apartment in Vienna at the request of prosecutors in the city of Graz.

“Any connection between the Christchurch attacker and members of the Identitarians in Austria needs to be comprehensively and ruthlessly investigated,” Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz tweeted, adding that he had spoken to justice minister Josef Moser about the issue.

“It is important that the independent justice system can use all necessary means and resources to conduct its investigation together with the security services and expose these networks,” he said. “There needs to be total clarity about all extremist activities.”

Hansjoerg Bacher, a spokesman for Graz prosecutors, said prosecutors had stumbled across the donation as part of an existing investigation against Sellner into possible financial offences.

“The purpose of the investigation is to examine links between Mr Sellner and the Christchurch attacker,” Bacher said.

He declined to confirm when the donation took place, but said it was much higher than other contributions made to Sellner or his Identitarian Movement.

“Most donations were in the area of two-to-three figures, whereas this donation was in the low four-figure area,” Bacher said. “This made it stand out, and the events in New Zealand put a face to this donation.”

He said the investigation against Sellner is based on Austrian anti-terror laws.
“We need to determine whether there is a connection and if so, whether it’s criminally significant,” said Bacher.

Sellner denied having anything to do with the 15 March massacre, in which 50 Muslims were killed in the southern New Zealand city.

Australian Brenton Tarrant was arrested within an hour of the mosque shootings and has been charged with murder.

“I had nothing to do with the attack,” Sellner said in a video statement posted on YouTube, adding that he would donate the money to a charitable organisation.
He suggested the reason for the donation might have been to provoke repressive measures against “patriots”.

Austrian authorities said last week that the Christchurch shooter visited Austria, but declined to confirm when or whether he met with any far-right activists during his trip.

Some of Tarrant’s anti-Muslim views are echoed by the Identitarian Movement. The group is close to sections of the nationalist Freedom Party, which is part of the country’s coalition government.

Austria’s vice chancellor, who leads the Freedom Party, echoed Kurz’s call for a comprehensive investigation into possible ties to the Christchurch gunman.

“All suspicions of extremism are acted upon, whether they are right, left or religiously motivated,” Heinz-Christian Strache said on Twitter. “Fanaticism has no place in our society.”

[Nahkanuijan nuupauttaja]

[Ajattelija]

Ei oo uutinen vaan kysymys. Kun näitä ihan oikeita uusnatsipuolueita on edustettuina parlamenteissa niin onko niitä mainittu Suomen medioissa? Ulkolinjan dokumentin Kultaisesta aamunkoitosta tiedän, mutta Saksan NPD:tä tai Slovakian Kotlebaa ei oo taidettu juurikaan mainita? Sakeus samaa tasoa kuin ensimmäisellä. Tosin NPD on romahtanut ja Kotleban ehdokas sai 10% Slovakian presidentinvaalin äänistä.

[Isotooppijalostamo]

Laitetaan tänne kun en jaksa mennä rogeen myllyttämään. NSBM bändi Absurdin nokkamies ja yleinen pulla-/nsbmtouhottaja Hendrik Möbus hakattu ihan huolella köpiksessä Nørrebrossa bläkyfestareilla. Ilmeisesti Möbus yrittänyt eka jakaa jotain nsbm flaikkuja, jonka jälkeen sitä käsketty lopettaa ja painumaan vittuun ja lopulta 20 tyyppiä maskeissa on hakannut sen ja sen kaverit. Ko. festarit diy bläkyä sellasessa vasemmistolaisessa kulttuurirakennuskompleksissa (mm. Cop15 aikana majottivat turistit sinne).

https://devilution.dk/jreviews/tag/spillested/mayhem

[Pasi Fist]

Osa 1:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... ill-my-boy

The murder of Raymond Buys: 'I think they knew they were going to kill my boy'

The South African teenager was 15 when he was enrolled in a training camp that claimed to ‘make men out of boys’. Was the resurgence of the far right to blame for his death?


Raymond Buys, aged 15, with his mother Wilna, on the day he went to Echo Wild Game Rangers camp.

In their final family photograph, Raymond Buys looks as awkward as any 15-year-old boy standing next to his mother. He’s nearly 6ft tall and the harsh South African sun glints off his newly cropped blond hair. Despite the heat, he wears teen regulation black. Soon he’ll be in khaki.

Wilna Buys pulls her son close, knowing there are only minutes before she must send him through the gates behind them into Echo Wild Game Rangers camp. An electric fence almost seems to buzz in the background. Giant fake tusks guard the gates, giving the impression of a mouth. Raymond narrows his eyes, maybe at the sun, maybe at the man taking the picture – Gys Nezar, his mother’s boyfriend. Nobody smiles for the camera.

It is 12 January 2011. This place is supposed to be a fresh start. Raymond, who was diagnosed with learning difficulties, aged nine, has been removed from yet another school. Wilna can’t cope, the family is fracturing. Gys found the camp, run by Alex de Koker, a former soldier known as “the General” who promises to “make men out of boys”. Gys trusts him. Wilna just wants everyone to get along. Raymond has no choice.

Three months later, on 20 April, Raymond will be pronounced dead by doctors so traumatised by his injuries they require counselling. When he is admitted to hospital, Wilna does not recognise her son: he is skeletal and has more than 60 separate injuries including a broken arm, broken ribs and chemical and electrical burns. The tips of his ears are missing and his hair has been scoured off. His kidneys are failing and his brain is damaged. He never regains consciousness. During the subsequent trial, which runs from 2012 to 2015, Wilna is vilified on social media and forced to relocate.

This is the story of how Raymond ended up at those gates and what happened inside Echo Wild Game Rangers camp. Of the General, and a network of secret training camps linked to the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) – a white, neo-Nazi paramilitary group arming itself for war in South Africa. And of how Britain’s actions in South Africa over a century ago – sparking the Boer wars, then “concentrating” a whole nation into hellish camps – sowed the seeds of hate greedily harvested by far-right groups today. These are the camps Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Conservative MP, recently defended on BBC Question Time, trumpeting: “You’ve got to understand the history.” Indeed, you have. Especially if you want to stop it repeating itself.

***
I first read about Raymond in a British newspaper article; other coverage suggested he was gay and that Echo was a conversion therapy camp. In the picture at the gates he looks just like a long-lost pal of mine, a boy who came to my primary school in Scotland in 1985 from South Africa. My pal went back after a year and we lost touch. It wasn’t him in the picture, of course. But I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened to this boy who looked so much like him.

As I followed the case, it threw up more questions than answers. Was Raymond a normal teenager or a lawless reprobate, as some claimed? Was Echo a conversion therapy camp, a paramilitary training facility or a legitimate business? Who was the General? And what mother sends her son to a place like that? Most coverage was in Afrikaans, and in a country besieged by violence even a case as appalling as Raymond’s soon stopped being reported. The search for answers would eventually take me to South Africa, to Wilna, and to those gates.


Raymond Buys was born in the mining town of Boksburg.

Raymond Buys was born in the mining town of Boksburg, not far from Johannesburg, on 2 June 1995 – the year after Mandela was elected president. “Ray was always a good boy,” says Wilna, unable to look up from the baby picture she holds. “His father wasn’t around. But we did OK. I know I wasn’t always a good mother but I did my best. I should never have sent him there. I have to live with that.”

Her thoughts tumble out with her tears. Now 43, she has a soft, almost girlish voice. I spent three days talking to her and Gys, mainly at their home, a modest bungalow in a gated development in Johannesburg. Wilna is an administrator in a steelworks. She never really knew her father and her mother married four times. “I wanted a more stable life for me and my boy,” she says. “For the first nine years, it was just us.” Then she met Gys, 49, a car salesman who, like all Afrikaner men his age, had done national service. Afrikaans is the couple’s first language. They chatter back and forth in it but answer me in English. Yes is always “ja”.

“It was hard for Ray at first,” says Wilna, tears getting the better of her mascara. “But eventually they got along.” The arrival of a brother, Little Gys, helped. “Gys spoiled us. We used to struggle but he got Ray cricket stuff, rugby kit, all these expensive things. But Ray always lost interest.”

“We couldn’t keep him in school,” says Gys. “He kept running away or not turning up. We tried everything.”

At one stage Raymond was given Ritalin, but Wilna says he woudn’t take the pills. Just before secondary school, they sent him for private treatment. “Doctors attached electrodes to his brain and it worked for a while,” says Wilna.

Raymond attended at least three different schools and was often bullied. “One time someone held a knife to him. He soiled himself when he was stressed,” says Wilna. Just before his last school could expel him, Wilna took him out. “Then he was disruptive at home,” says Gys. “Disrespectful to me and his mother – smoking, swearing, always on his phone. We had to do something. It’s not like it used to be here [in South Africa], you can’t just walk into a job. It’s tough. Then I heard about this place, a buddy said it fixed his cousin’s boy. It was 22,000R (£1,200) for three months, so we had to get a loan, but at the end he gets a job.”

Gys passes me the contract from Echo Wild Game Rangers camp. “X Military Leaders” is emblazoned on the front and beneath a set of cross-hairs: “STRENG VERTROULIK – HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL”. It claims: “We instil: faith, discipline, rules and regulations, respect, hard work, hard education, tough physical exercise, bearing, literacy, numeracy, efficiency, reliability, team work, animal care and conservation and community defence.” After three months, the idea was that Raymond would go off to a safari job and start his new life.


Raymond with Alex de Koker in 2011.

Gys and Wilna visited the camp. It’s barely an hour from Johannesburg in Mooilande, which means Beautiful Land. It was beautiful once. Now it’s struggling smallholdings and former farms. “In the General’s study he had all these photos of himself,” says Wilna. “He was a big man, handsome, same age as Gys. He said he had trained over 300 boys and they had all got jobs, out in the country.” What jobs? “Like safari guides,” says Wilna, hopefully. “Now, I think maybe they were to be guards, for the farms,” admits Gys. “You know, all the farmers are being murdered.”

The “large-scale killing of farmers” in South Africa was highlighted by Donald Trump in an August 2018 tweet – his first since taking office to mention Africa at all. The contrarian former reality TV contestant, Katie Hopkins, hurried to South Africa later the same year to report on “anti-white racism” and was temporarily detained by police for “spreading racial hatred”. In 2017, Pieter Groenewald, leader of the Afrikaner party Freedom Front Plus, claimed the murder rate on white farms was 133 per 100,000 (the national average is 34.1). Africa Check, a non-profit that scrutinises such figures, disputes this. Their calculation, including all family members and smallholdings like the General’s, is 0.4 per 100,000. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes, identifies the claim of a “genocide” of white farmers as “a lodestar for white supremacist groups at home and abroad”. De Koker sought to profit from these fears by turning vulnerable boys into armed guards employed by alarmed farmers.

Born in 1964, De Koker had done at least his two years’ compulsory national service in the apartheid-era South African Defence Force, but there is no record of him attaining a rank anywhere near general; afterwards he continued to wear the SADF uniform. Wilna says she did not recognise the black, white and red flag of the AWB in his study but Gys did. The AWB was founded by Eugène Terre’Blanche in 1973, to resurrect the lost Boer Republics as a whites-only homeland. Its logo resembles the swastika. The group, once disbanded, is resurfacing as part of a wider revival of the South African right. Gys also identified the man smiling in photos with the General as Terre’Blanche. “It didn’t trigger any alarms as such,” says Gys. “So what? He knew the man. It was well set up. I knew it would be tough but the army made a man out of me. That’s what I wanted for Raymond.”

More visible and vocal than the AWB, but avowedly “non-aggressive”, are the Suidlanders. Their spokesman, Simon Roche, says the group is now more than 130,000 strong and represents “the white people of South Africa who are presently being told that they can expect to see a genocide against them”. He portrays Afrikaners as victims-in-waiting and their trump card is a chapter of colonial history many in Britain remain ashamed to acknowledge.

The Boer wars (there were two) are no longer on the school curriculum. The second Boer war (1899-1902) was the last fought on horseback, and made household names of Arthur Conan Doyle and Rudyard Kipling. Britain deployed nearly 500,000 soldiers against 50,000 fighters from the two Boer states, almost all farmers (“Boer” means farmer in Dutch). But Britain was losing, outwitted by new “commando” tactics. Faced with defeat, Lord Kitchener enforced “scorched earth”, torching 30,000 farms, ostensibly to cut off supplies. Salt was ploughed into the soil. Britain created a nation of refugees, mostly women and children, and then “concentrated” them into camps.

Bloemfontein was the first, and is now home to the Anglo-Boer War Museum. A wall inlaid with black marble slabs greets visitors. It’s inscribed with the 26,370 women and children who died in the 42 official white camps – there were at least as many official black camps, about which we know pitifully little. Nearly 80% of victims were children, so British propaganda portrayed Boer women as bad mothers. In an attempt to besmirch them, Conan Doyle published a photograph of a seven-year-old girl called Lizzie van Zyl. Even now it hurts to look at her. She appears ancient, her eyes sunk grave-deep in her skull. She holds her doll close. Lizzie died of typhoid on 9 May 1901, shortly after her picture was taken. She has no headstone; most bodies were buried in mass graves. Yet her face still stares out from Afrikaner nationalist sites, her suffering hijacked in a bid to portray Afrikaners as noble victims. The last Boers to surrender, the bittereinders, helped to form the government of the new Union of South Africa in 1910; they were the bedrock of the National Party on which apartheid was built. This bitterness has only grown in the post-apartheid era as stability and growth have collapsed. The Suidlanders say civil war is inevitable; men like the General believe they must prevent another Boer genocide. Raymond was to be an unwitting soldier in this war.

***

[Pasi Fist]

Osa 2:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... ill-my-boy

Wilna says Raymond was excited about attending the camp: “He loved animals and was going to learn scuba.” Bass Lake is less than an hour from the camp. On 12 January 2011, they dropped him at the gates. “They took our money and I think they already knew they were going to kill my boy.”

Warrant officer Cornell Fitzell, the detective who later built the case against the General, says the plot covered five acres and was built around a single-storey family home. “De Koker lived there with his wife and several children, including his oldest son, Anthony, who sometimes helped in the camp,” says Fitzell. “There were usually around six boys. No electricity, running water or toilets.”

The General did not tell Wilna and Gys about the two boys who had already died under his care at another camp in Swartruggens, a two-and-a-half hour drive north-west of Johannesburg. In 2007, 25-year-old Erich Calitz suffered brain injuries; Vereeniging regional court heard that he was “hit, burned and wounded”. Months later, 19-year-old Nicholas van der Walt collapsed there. According to Fitzell, De Koker reportedly told Calitz he wasn’t a “moffie – a faggot” and promised to “make a man out of him”. De Koker got a suspended sentence for Calitz but escaped charges for Van der Walt, whose death was attributed to a heart attack. He continued to raise his own children and was not banned from working with minors. Yet police concluded “the paramilitary-style training on this course was not normal ranger training”.

We can never know if Raymond or either of the other dead boys were gay, but they were clearly victims of homophobic violence. De Koker didn’t make men out of boys; he made corpses. “Raymond was the weakest in the pack,” says Fitzell. “He was shy and vulnerable. The other boys picked on him and De Koker encouraged them and joined in – he was arrogant, a psychopath, but not stupid. He could be charming.”

Days after dropping Raymond off, Wilna rang his mobile. There was no reply. No one answered at the camp either. “After a week I drove out there but the place was empty,” says Gys. “I thought they were on field exercises.”


The former Echo Wild Game Rangers camp. ‘We closed that down,’ says the detective who built the case against De Koker, ‘but there are others’

Around this time, Raymond escaped. One of De Koker’s neighbours returned him. On Valentine’s Day, the General appeared at Wilna’s home unannounced and told her Raymond was causing trouble and not eating. “I asked if we could stop the programme but he told me not to worry – he said he would ‘win’ Raymond,” she says. On 4 March, the General emailed Wilna pictures of Raymond in a wetsuit. “He looked so thin but I thought it was just the training,” says Wilna.

“Training is hard,” says Gys. “You lose weight and put on muscle. It’s not supposed to be easy.” Did Wilna know what she was sending her son to? “No,” she cries. “I love my son. I didn’t know what they would do to him. I have to live with this pain every day.”

After Wilna threatened to call the police, the General finally agreed to a conference call on 12 March. Wilna says: “De Koker told me Ray was hurting himself and Ray said, ‘Mum, I’m not.’” De Koker hung up. That was the last time Wilna heard her son’s voice.

***

Every general has his soldiers. Michael Casper Erasmus, born in 1993, was the General’s sergeant. Erasmus left school at 13 and ran away before being enrolled at Echo in 2010 by his parents at the age of 17. Vereeniging regional court heard that he escaped several times after De Koker physically assaulted him. Each time his parents brought him back. Erasmus lived rough for a month, becoming so desperate that he returned to the camp, where he was given food, shelter and a uniform. He said he was only following orders because he had nowhere else to go.

The court heard from other boys that Erasmus routinely beat Raymond for neglecting his duties. He reportedly forced Raymond to eat his own faeces, followed by soap powder. Three weeks in, Raymond tried to hang himself. After that, Erasmus chained him to his camp bed every night, supposedly to stop him trying again. On the morning of 24 March, Erasmus stripped Raymond then plunged him into a plastic barrel of water. The barrel’s edges were sharp and it’s likely these broke Raymond’s ribs. After this, he placed a pillowcase over Raymond’s head and the General, who had been standing by, kicked and Tasered him repeatedly. Erasmus then chained Raymond, unconscious, to the flagpole. When Erasmus couldn’t revive him, they drove him 20 minutes to the Mediclinic in Vereeniging. De Koker phoned Wilna telling her Raymond had been admitted “for tests and she shouldn’t worry”. She immediately drove to the hospital: “At first they wouldn’t let me see my son because De Koker told them I hurt him.”


Raymond Buys near the end of his life in the Mediclinic in Vereeniging, April 2011.

Hospital social workers contacted police, who raided the camp. De Koker went on the run for a week before turning himself in. The trial of De Koker and Erasmus started in 2012 and their case was heard by magistrate Retha Willemse. De Koker did all he could to delay proceedings, repeatedly changing lawyers and even, bizarrely, marrying his second wife in the courtroom. He denied hurting Raymond or ordering Erasmus to do so. He claimed Raymond burned himself with boiling water, cut himself with wires and refused food. He said Erasmus was a bully and that Raymond was mentally ill.


Alex de Koker in Vereeniging regional court, Johannesburg, 16 April 2015. He was sentenced to 20 years for murder and five for child abuse.

After his arrest, De Koker released a statement on stormfront.org, one of the far-right forums highlighted by the charity Hope not Hate in the aftermath of the recent attack in New Zealand. De Koker claimed he provided “crucial services to protect the farmers’ community”. He claimed Raymond had been “cast away due to his rebellious nature, by his mother and her boyfriend, they dropped him off at the gate… They were willing to pay thousands of rand just to be rid of him. The young man’s behavioural deviations were noticed immediately.” What these “deviations” were was never made clear. At one point in the trial, De Koker even blamed his eldest son, Anthony, for Raymond’s death. Perhaps it was this that convinced Anthony, who along with his mother and sisters never faced any action by the court, to change his testimony and ultimately help to convict his father. On 16 April 2015, Willemse sentenced De Koker to 20 years for murder and five years for child abuse. Erasmus received a 12-year suspended sentence for murder. “He’s out now,” says Wilna. “That boy is walking about and my son is ashes.” De Koker maintains his innocence and continues to appeal, insisting his only crime was trusting Erasmus. “We maintain it’s in the public interest for De Koker to serve his full sentence,” says Fitzell.

***

I was determined to visit the place where Raymond was murdered. In October 2015, I set out with an experienced local media producer called Thula “Zee” Cube. Zee was nervous about driving me to such a deeply Afrikaner area. We got lost. None of the white people we stopped to ask for directions would speak to Zee because he is black. Everyone sent us the wrong way. By the time we got there, they knew we were coming.


The gates of Echo Wild Game Rangers camp in 2015.

The gates looked the same as they do in the picture: the giant fake tusks and the electric fence. Eventually a truck appeared, surrounded by barking dogs. Two boys of about Raymond’s age got out, dressed in regular clothes. At first, they denied knowing De Koker; then they said he wasn’t there any more. Zee called me and I turned to see white trucks hurrying from either end of the dirt road. Clouds of red dust billowed round their tyres.

Each truck contained a man and a boy. All were white and wore khaki. They all carried guns – handguns and semi-automatics. I asked them the same questions: is this Alex de Koker’s house? What do you know about the boys who died here? “Alex is in a cell,” the oldest man said, his voice as flat as the veldt stretching to the horizon. “He’s painting the walls to look like this view. We’re keeping his place safe till he gets back.”

All the while, they tried to get between Zee and me. I kept moving so they couldn’t separate us. We got into our car, Zee’s hands shaking as he steered us back to the highway. We were followed all the way.

“We closed that camp down,” says Fitzell. “But there are others. De Koker has plenty of friends.”

On 8 May, South Africa goes to the polls and the ultra-left Economic Freedom Fighters look set to make gains. Land expropriation is their key policy. This perceived additional threat to white farmers and their land drives official parties like Freedom Front Plus, as well as groups like the Suidlanders and the AWB, who remain determined to take South Africa back to the time before the Boer wars were lost.

Wilna and Gys are no longer together. “We were getting married,” says Wilna. “It was going to be a surprise for Ray – he was going to give me away. Instead of a wedding we had a funeral. I don’t blame Gys for any of it. None of us knew.”

On 5 June, Raymond Buys would have been 24. “I’m going to scatter his ashes,” says Wilna. “It’s time. I want my boy to be free.”

[Digimarxisti]

Intelligence report appeared to endorse view leftwing protesters were 'terrorists'
Experts say the report produced before the Charlottesville rally mischaracterizes the dynamics of the street violence

An intelligence report produced for law enforcement agencies in the months before the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, in which a neo-Nazi killed one protester by driving a car into a crowd, appeared to endorse a view that leftist demonstrators were “terrorists” and at least equally as responsible for street violence as white nationalists, the Guardian can reveal.

The report, Antifa/Anti-antifa: Violence in the Streets, was produced by the Regional Organized Crime Information Center (ROCIC) in May 2017. It was obtained with a Foia request from the not-for-profit transparency group Property of the People. Antifa is the name given to groups of leftwing protests who confront white nationalists, often violently.

Experts say the report mischaracterizes the dynamics of the street violence that was emerging at that time, and is mistaken in characterizing white nationalist groups as “anti-antifa”, suggesting they act in opposition to leftwing groups or out of a sense of anarchism rather than having their own political and violent agenda.

ROCIC is one of six Regional Intelligence Sharing System (RISS) Centers throughout the country. RISS is a federally funded program designed to share intelligence between federal, state and local agencies. ROCIC serves 14 southern states, including Virginia, the site of the 2017 Unite the Right rally.

Documents accompanying the Foia request indicate that the US Secret Service was among the agencies that the report was provided to.

The report frames political street violence in America as an evenly-poised battle between “antifa’s”, described as “an alliance between anarchists and communists to confront and defeat fascists and white supremacists by whatever means necessary”, and “anti-antifa, a loose collection of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, white nationalists, Ku Klux Klanners, white identity groups and a group called the alt-right”.

The report blames the two sides equally for the violence, continuing: “So it’s the anarchists versus the nationalists, the communists versus the Nazis, the leftwing extremists versus the rightwing extremists and the confrontations are becoming more violent and destructive.”

Michael German, a former FBI agent who infiltrated far right groups in the 1990s, and a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, said the report’s framing was wrong.

“Somehow they have this set up almost like antifa is the antagonist, and anti-antifa has developed to resist it,” he said “What it seems to do is completely whitewash the history of white supremacist violence in this country.”

German said that framing it this way belies the way in which “far-right groups use these public spectacles as the method to incite violence. And they come knowing that it will attract protest groups from the community.”

Such groups “intentionally go to places to provoke protesters to come out, and they go armed for a real street fight”, German said.

The report also reproduces an opinion piece by Republican National Committee member Shawn Steel, on clashes at UC Berkeley in February 2017, first published in the conservative Washington Times. The excerpted text reads “the mob of antifa terrorists that violently attacked the [student union] … were as much declaring war on the ideology of the man for whom the building is named (Martin Luther King) and its citizens. America’s left was sending a message: Violence is the answer.”

The report takes the description of anti-fascists as “terrorists” at face value, something many experts disagree with.

Mark Bray, a lecturer at Dartmouth College and author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, said the “anti-antifa” designation for American far-right groups is also potentially misleading.

“I don’t get the sense that that is the main source of their self-identification,” he said.

The report makes further assertions about the relationship between the groups that experts say are unsupported by facts. At one point, the report says: “The antifa can be considered leftwing anarchism and the anti-antifa can be considered rightwing anarchism.”

Bray said: “That’s ludicrous … most of these rightwing groups are not opposed to the state as a form of social organization. Many of them are fascists of some sort or another and believe in a strong state.”

Shane Burley, the author of Fascism Today: What it is and how to fight it, agreed, saying that “this idea that it’s rightwing anarchists, that’s not a phenomenon, that’s not a thing that actually exists”.

The report is heavily redacted, but spends much of its unredacted length discussing alleged antifascist violence, and sometimes implicitly blames those groups for violence visited upon them.

At one point, it focuses in particular on an event in Sacramento in June 2016, which led the FBI to open a controversial investigation on a leftwing group.

At that time, groups including By Any Means Necessary (Bamn) organized a counter-protest against a white supremacist rally which included members of the Traditionalist Workers party and the Golden State Skinheads, some of whom were wielding knives. Several people were stabbed at the event, including at least seven counter-protesters.

Following this event, California law enforcement cooperated with neo-Nazis to identify counter-protesters, pursued charges against counter-protesters, including stabbing victims and did not prosecute neo-Nazis over the stabbings.

In February, the Guardian revealed that the FBI had responded to the event by surveilling and investigating Bamn.

In the ROCIC report there is also no discussion of the specific groups actively organizing the Unite the Right rally not long after the report’s publication date. Neo-confederate groups such as the League of the South; neo-Nazi and Identitarian groups such as Vanguard America, the National Socialist Movement, the Rise Above Movement and Identity Evropa; and street-fighting groups such as the Fraternal Order of Alt Knights and the Proud Boys are not mentioned.

All of these groups were involved in the demonstration in Charlottesville, which culminated in the killing of Heather Heyer by James Alex Fields, who marched with Vanguard America.

The report also extensively sources information from conservative media and rightwing advocacy groups. It quotes a report from Glenn Beck’s the Blaze, which cites the Washington Times, and Laura Ingraham’s conservative lifestyle website LifeZette alongside more reputable sources, including the Guardian.

Bray criticized the thinness of the report’s sourcing. “There’s a wealth of literature out there about the nature of far-right politics in Europe and the United States. It just sounds like someone got tasked with Googling this,” he added.

Ryan Shapiro, the executive director of Property of the People, which sourced the documents, said: “US intelligence agencies have a long, sad history of targeting progressive movements as threats to American security”

Neither ROCIC nor RISS replied to repeated requests for comment on the report.

[Pasi Fist]

https://www.hs.fi/ulkomaat/art-2000006058380.html

Christchurchin moskeijaiskuista epäilty mies määrättiin mielentilatutkimukseen, syytetään 50 murhasta

Uuden-Seelannin poliisin mukaan myös muita syytteitä harkitaan vielä.

Kahteen moskeijaan Uudessa-Seelannissa maaliskuussa tehdyistä iskuista epäilty australialaismies määrättiin perjantaina mielentilatutkimuksiin. Tuomarin mukaan tarkoituksena on selvittää, onko mies henkisesti kykenevä oikeudenkäyntiin vai onko hän mielenvikainen, kertoi uutistoimisto AFP.

Australialainen Brenton Tarrant, 28, on saanut syytteet 50 murhasta ja 39 murhanyrityksestä.

Perjantaina mies osallistui oikeuden istuntoon videoyhteyden välityksellä korkean turvallisuustason vankilasta Aucklandista.

Paikan päällä oikeussalissa istuntoa oli seuraamassa useita uhrien omaisia. Monet näkivät ensimmäistä kertaa rakkaidensa murhista syytetyn henkilön kasvot.

”Halusin vain nähdä hänen kasvonsa. Se ei tuo rakkaita takaisin. Minusta hän on pelkuri”, sanoi Yama Nabi oikeustalon ulkopuolella toimittajille AFP:n mukaan.

Nabin 71-vuotias isä kuoli moskeijaiskussa.

”Halusin nähdä hänet, koska hän tappoi niin monia ystäviäni. Hän näyttää hullulta, ja se oli erittäin järkyttävää”, sanoi istuntoa seuraamassa ollut Tofazzal Alam.

Hän oli iskun aikaan Linwoodin moskeijassa ja makasi maassa välttääkseen luotien osumisen. Hän ei koskaan nähnyt hyökkääjää läheltä.

”Olen erittäin järkyttynyt hänen näkemisestään. Hän tappoi 50 ihmistä, eikä näytä siltä, että asia vaivaa häntä. En nähnyt minkäänlaisia tunteita hänen kasvoillaan”, Alam sanoi.

Iskuista epäiltyä miestä vastaan voidaan mahdollisesti nostaa vielä lisää syytteitä.

”Muut syytteet ovat vielä harkinnan alla”, Uuden-Seelannin poliisi kommentoi tiedotteessaan sen jälkeen, kun Tarrantia vastaan oli nostettu uusia murhasyytteitä.

Tarrant oli aiemmin syytettynä vain yhdestä murhasta. Hän sai ensimmäisen syytteen pian iskujen jälkeen. Tarkoituksena oli mahdollistaa miehen vangitseminen, kertoi AFP.

Tarrantia on pidetty erityisen tarkkaan vartioidussa vankilassa Aucklandissa Uudessa-Seelannissa. Seuraavan kerran hänen on tarkoitus olla oikeudessa 14. kesäkuuta.

Maaliskuun 15.päivä tapahtunut isku on pahin yhden henkilön tekemä joukkoampuminen Uuden-Seelannin historiassa.

Pääministeri Jacinda Ardern on kutsunut tekoja hyvin suunnitelluksi ”terrori-iskuksi”.