Far-right activists banned from entering Britain

xenophobia, open racism and extreme rightwing authoritarianism.

Harmful myths and lies about Muslims are now believed by a large section of the UK's population, contributing to discrimination across employment, housing, the criminal justice system and other areas of public life, a new report by MPs has found.

The All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims found that “prevalent” Islamophobia was driving division, hate crime and even terror attacks.

“British society at large, by virtue of normalised prejudice against Muslim beliefs and practice, have come to imbibe a panoply of falsehoods or misrepresentations and discriminatory outlooks,” its report said.

"Academic research has consistently shown that British Muslims face considerably high levels of economic disadvantage than other groups in Britain."

While a report by market research company Ipsos Mori found that the majority of Muslims believe Islam is compatible with the British way of life, a separate survey of the wider population by polling firm YouGov, found that 46 per cent thought there was a “fundamental clash between Islam and the values of British society”.

A separate study recently found almost a third of British people believe the myth of “no-go zones” where non-Muslims cannot enter, while the MPs took aim at false and misleading news stories.

They include the “Winterval” myth that claimed Christmas celebrations were being suppressed and a story that wrongly interpreted research to say one fifth of British Muslims had “sympathy for jihadis”.

MPs said that corrections published by newspapers “pale in comparison to the damage done to perceptions of Muslims in British society”.
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Another senior Ukip member has left the party over the leader Gerard Batten’s decision to appoint the anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson as an adviser and take the party in a hard-right direction.

Ukip’s former economics spokesman Patrick O’Flynn is the third MEP to leave in two months over Batten’s anti-Islam views and policies. Flynn said he would join the remnants of the Social Democratic party (SDP), which is now pro-Brexit.

Batten, who became Ukip leader in February after the disastrous tenure of Henry Bolton, has described Islam as “a death cult” and proposed policies including screening of immigrants from Islamic countries, and Muslim-only prisons.

Such views prompted two other MEPs, William Dartmouth and Bill Etheridge, to quit in protest. In a statement on his website, O’Flynn said the final straw for him had been Batten’s “apparent and growing fixation with Tommy Robinson”.
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O’Flynn said he would instead join the SDP, the successor party to the rump of activists who remained when the original SDP, founded by breakaway Labour centrists in 1981, merged with the Liberals in 1988 to form the Liberal Democrats.

While the original SDP was pro-European, the current incarnation, which won 469 votes in the 2017 general election, supports Brexit.

O’Flynn’s departure piles more pressure on Batten after Nigel Farage, Ukip’s most successful leader, said he would seek to oust him over the appointment of Robinson.

Henry Bolton, has described Islam as “a death cult”

A video appearing to show the sister of a Syrian refugee being attacked at the same school where her brother was allegedly assaulted has emerged.

Footage circulated online shows the boy, 15, being pushed to the ground at Almondbury Community School in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.

A 16-year-old is to be charged with assault.

Further video of a separate incident allegedly shows the boy's sister being attacked by other pupils.

The footage shows the girl being shoved from behind, and then being pushed towards a grass verge.

At the end of the clip, she can be seen to fall to the ground.

In a statement, West Yorkshire Police said: "We have been made aware of a video showing a girl being assaulted at Almondbury Community School.

"The incident had not previously been reported to the police but we are now liaising with the girl's family who we are continuing to support."

The first video, showing the boy being dragged to the ground before water is poured into his face, was filmed during a lunch break on 25 October, West Yorkshire Police said.

His father, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the BBC the attack had left his son "very tired psychologically".

"Because of what happened in the video my son is shattered," he said.

"He is not concentrating on his studies. When he is asleep he wakes up saying they want to beat me up."

In an interview with ITV News, the boy said he had been left "feeling like I couldn't study or do my homework".

In a letter sent to parents, headteacher Trevor Bowen said: "The safety and welfare of students is our number one priority and I can assure you that this situation is being taken extremely seriously."

An online fundraising page set up to help the 15-year-old boy and his family has so far raised more than £100,000.

The recruitment tactics of a far right group have been exposed after it was infiltrated by an undercover reporter.

System Resistance Network (SRN) preaches zero tolerance to non-whites and that homosexuality is a disease.

BBC Wales Investigates found the group has been targeting Welsh communities to recruit members.

There are now calls for membership of SRN, which wants expulsion of minorities and a white revolution, to be made illegal.

The group is believed to have been inspired by the now-banned far right group National Action and has inspired its followers to carry out arson and vandalism in Welsh cities.

'Told to read Hitler's Mein Kampf'
After creating a fake online profile, Wales Investigates' undercover reporter gained first-hand experience of how SRN operates.

He communicated with the group for months and gained their trust enough to be asked to carry out acts on their behalf - putting up SRN posters at night and taking pictures of them to prove he had done it.

He was also told to read Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf and other extremist literature.

"They talk about smashing the establishment," he said.

"They want me to break the law - to get their name in the headlines - they don't care who gets hurt."

One of National Action's founders, Swansea-based Alex Davies, has been giving his support for the group on Neo-Nazi radio station, Radio Aryan.

He was a student when he first created National Action in 2013. His media man, Ben Raymond moved from Bognor Regis to live in Swansea as the group's numbers and infamy grew.

National Action was considered the most dangerous far right organisation in Britain and was outlawed in December 2016 after glorifying the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox.

December 2016 after glorifying the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox.

Yiannopoulos and the promoters made successive failed attempts to organise speaking tours to Australia in 2018.

The British-born former Breitbart writer was to be accompanied by various guests, including the rightwing US commentator Ann Coulter, the English Defence League founder Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson, the Australian senator Fraser Anning, who once called for a “final solution to immigration in Australia”; and the Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes, who was himself refused a visa to enter Australia late last week.

Tours planned in April, September and December all fell through. The Spillers say that the earlier cancellations were largely due to scheduling conflicts with other touring far right speakers, such as the Lauren Southern tour.

Like McInnes, Yiannopoulos publicly quit his Proud Boys membership in the days after the Guardian revealed that the FBI had categorised it as an extremist group in talks with local law enforcement.

Last Friday, Yiannopoulos announced that he was joining the “Deplorable” tour organised by the Penthouse Australia publisher Damien Costas. In a YouTube video he poured scorn on the Spillers, calling them “fraudulent”, “insane” and “incompetent”, and published their email addresses in various social media posts.

Ukip is being turned into an “anti-Islamic party” that could soon have Tommy Robinson as one of its leaders, according to alarmed defectors.

Three MEPs have resigned in little over two months, amid infighting over leader Gerard Batten’s shift towards the far-right.

Robinson is currently banned from becoming a member by party rules, but has been inciting his supporters to join Ukip so they can influence its policies.
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Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, founded the EDL in 2009 but left four years later.

The anti-Islam activist now styles himself as an “independent reporter” and has capitalised on a surge of publicity over his imprisonment earlier this year to forge political ties across Europe, the US and Australia.

Mr Batten has appeared at several “Free Tommy” protests – including one where Batten labelled the prophet Muhammed a “paedophile” – and has repeatedly called Islam a “death cult”.

He has been pushing for Robinson to be allowed to join Ukip but its rules currently exclude former members of the BNP and EDL.

Mr Batten said Robinson did not need to be a member to become his adviser, amid outrage last month, and the pair will both be speaking at a “Brexit betrayal” march in London on Sunday.

Robinson has been calling on more than one million people who follow his Facebook page to join Ukip and directing them to its registration page.

One post from 27 November was commented on by hundreds of supporters who claimed they had joined because of Robinson.

“By joining we can influence the party,” Robinson told them. “Members that join with similar views shape the direction.”

Ukip being turned into 'anti-Islamic party' that could soon have Tommy Robinson as leader, defectors say

Weren't they always considered anti-Islam?

If you had read what I quoted, you would know the answer.

Nigel Farage has quit Ukip after 25 years, saying the party he led to its greatest election successes was now unrecognisable because of the “fixation” with the anti-Muslim policies of its leader, Gerard Batten.

Farage, who took Ukip to third place by number of votes in the 2015 election and significantly shaped the ground for the Brexit referendum, said he was dismayed by Batten’s policies and his decision to appoint the far-right campaigner Tommy Robinson as an adviser.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Farage condemned Batten’s decision to throw Ukip’s support behind an anti-Brexit demonstration in London on Sunday organised by Robinson and his associates, saying it was likely to “inspire violence and thuggish behaviour”.
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Nigel Farage quits Ukip over its 'fixation' on anti-Muslim policies

A photograph published at the weekend by The Sunday Telegraph showed a planning meeting for a march and rally scheduled to take place this Sunday, just two days before MPs vote on Theresa May’s Brexit deal - the most important parliamentary vote of modern times.

In the photo, Tommy Robinson can be seen seated beside Gerard Batten. Next to Robinson is a man called Daniel Thompson, a convicted armed kidnapper. There are other pretty unsavoury-looking characters dotted around the room. These are the people organising the ‘Brexit’ march that is now advertised on the Ukip website. My heart sinks as I reflect on the idea that they may be seen by some as representative of the cause for which I have campaigned for so much of my adult life.

Not that I like Farage now.

Far-right political terrorism is on the rise in western Europe and north America, a report on global terror has cautioned.

Right-wing groups and individuals killed 66 people between 2013 and 2017, with 17 deaths and 47 of those attacks occurring last year, according to the 2018 Global Terrorism Index.
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The UK suffered 12 far-right terror attacks last year, including the attack outside Finsbury Park mosque, where 47-year-old Darren Osborne drove a van into Muslim worshippers, killing one person and injured at least nine others. Sweden saw six attacks and Greece and France had two each.

The majority of those attacks were carried out by “lone actors with far-right, white nationalist or anti-Muslim beliefs”, the report concluded.
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It comes after statistics revealed the number of far-right terrorists imprisoned in Britain has more than tripled in a year, rising from nine to 29 in custody by the end of March.
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Number of far-right terror attacks increases as overall deaths from terrorism fall, report finds

A university student from Bath and a London teenager are among those involved with a UK version of a violent American neo-Nazi group linked to five murders, a BBC investigation has found.

A propaganda image placed online by the British group suggests Prince Harry is a "race traitor" and should be shot.

Private messages between members show the leader stating that police officers should be raped and killed.

Evidence suggests the leader is Andrew Dymock, 21. He denies wrongdoing.

The BBC has seen evidence he set up the new British group known as the Sonnenkrieg Division.

Mr Dymock, who is originally from Bath and whose father is a dentistry professor, has been studying at university in Wales.

A key propagandist - responsible for designing extremist material - is said to be Oskar Koczorowski from west London, who is only 17 years old.

He did not respond to a request for comment.

A BBC researcher has been able to obtain hundreds of messages sent by several extremists over several months on an online gaming server.

The messages show neo-Nazis from Europe and the US - hiding behind pseudonyms - engaging in racism and misogyny, glorifying violence and cruelty, and discussing the production of propaganda.

The chat logs include senior members of the Atomwaffen Division, a nihilistic American organisation that encourages terrorism and says civilisation needs to be smashed in order to build a national socialist state.