236-518: The British National Party ( BNP ) is a far-right , fascist political party in the United Kingdom. It is headquartered in Wigton , Cumbria , and is led by Adam Walker . A minor party , it has no elected representatives at any level of UK government . The party was founded in 1982, and reached its greatest level of success in the 2000s, when it had over fifty seats in local government , one seat on
472-520: A racial nationalist belief in a distinct white "British race", arguing that this race was threatened by a Jewish conspiracy to encourage non-white migration into Britain. He called for the establishment of an authoritarian state which would deport all non-whites from the country, engage in a eugenics project, and re-establish the British Empire through the military conquest of parts of Africa. He never gained any mainstream political respectability in
708-401: A racial nationalist , and a British nationalist, as well as a fascist , neo-fascist , and a neo-Nazi. Tyndall adhered to neo-Nazism during the 1960s, although from the 1970s onward he increasingly concealed this behind the rhetoric of "British patriotism". According to Thurlow, this was because by this time Tyndall had realised that "open Nazism was counter-productive" to his cause. This
944-414: A "bloodless genocide". It presents the idea that white Britons are engaged in a battle against their own extinction as a racial group. It reiterated a sense of urgency about the situation, claiming that both high immigration rates and high birth rates among ethnic minorities were a threat to the white British. In 2010, it for instance was promoting the idea that at current levels, "indigenous Britons" would be
1180-620: A "moderate" result. At the school, his achievements had been sporting rather than academic, because he enjoyed playing cricket and association football and he also developed a passion for fitness. Tyndall completed his national service in West Germany from 1952 to 1954. A member of the Royal Horse Artillery , he achieved the rank of lance-bombardier . On completion, he returned to Britain and turned his attention to political issues. Initially interested in socialism , he attended
1416-558: A "race struggle" and an hygienist vision of the world. The purity of the bio-mystical and primordial nation theorized by the Völkischen then began to be seen as corrupted by foreign elements, Jewish in particular. Translated in Maurice Barrès ' concept of "the earth and the dead", these ideas influenced the pre-fascist "revolutionary right" across Europe. The latter had its origin in the fin de siècle intellectual crisis and it was, in
1652-434: A "we" excluding a "they". The far right tends to absolutize differences between nations, races, individuals or cultures since they disrupt their efforts towards the utopian dream of the "closed" and naturally organized society, perceived as the condition to ensure the rebirth of a community finally reconnected to its quasi-eternal nature and re-established on firm metaphysical foundations. As they view their community in
1888-536: A British movement belonging to an entirely different phase of history to model itself on the movement of Hitler". From open Hitler worship and barely disguised expression of such ideas in the National Socialist Movement, through the 'English' form of national socialism [i.e. Nazism] in the Greater British Movement, to the expression of such sentiments clothed in apparently respectable form in
2124-713: A bulletin to BNP branches declaring C18 to be a proscribed organisation, furthermore suggesting that it may have been established by agents of the state to discredit the party. To counter the group's influence among militant British nationalists, he secured the American white nationalist militant William Pierce as a guest speaker at the BNP's annual rally in November 1995. John Tyndall was both [the BNPs] greatest asset and its greatest drawback. His persistence, rock-like reliability and leadership had kept
2360-496: A change in principle. Griffin also sought to shed the BNP's image as a single-issue party , by embracing a diverse array of social and economic issues. Griffin renamed the party's monthly newspaper from British Nationalist to The Voice of Freedom , and established a new journal, Identity . The party developed community-based campaigns, through which it targeted local issues, particularly in those areas with large numbers of skilled white working-class people who were disaffected with
2596-662: A conference at the Charing Cross Hotel in London, at which 50 far-right activists agreed to the formation of the BNP. The BNP was formally launched on 7 April 1982 at a press conference in Victoria . Led by Tyndall, most of its early members came from the NNF, although others were defectors from the NF, British Movement , British Democratic Party , and Nationalist Party . Tyndall remarked that there
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#17328515446592832-460: A directorate which helped to guide the direction of the party and could replace the leader, Tyndall's new BNP gave full executive powers to the chairman. Tyndall ran the BNP from his home, "Seacroft", in Hove , East Sussex, and he rarely left the county. In 1986 Tyndall was convicted of inciting racial hatred and sentenced to a year's imprisonment; he served only four months before his release. In 1987,
3068-417: A form of " cultural genocide ", and stating that it promoted the interests of non-whites at the expense of the white British population. However, internal documents produced and circulated under Griffin's leadership demonstrated that—despite the shift in its public statements—it remained privately committed to biological racist ideas. The party emphasises what it sees as the need to protect the racial purity of
3304-623: A former police officer founded the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement), a South African neo-Nazi paramilitary organisation, often described as a white supremacist group. Since its founding in 1973 by Eugène Terre'Blanche and six other far-right Afrikaners, it has been dedicated to secessionist Afrikaner nationalism and the creation of an independent Boer -Afrikaner republic in part of South Africa. During negotiations to end apartheid in South Africa in
3540-543: A lesser extent neo-Fascism are now used exclusively for parties and groups that explicitly state a desire to restore the Third Reich or quote historical National Socialism as their ideological influence." One issue is whether parties should be labelled radical or extreme, a distinction that is made by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany when determining whether or not a party should be banned. Within
3776-711: A long history of service in the Royal Irish Constabulary . His grandfather had been a district inspector in the Constabulary and he had also fought against the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence . His father had moved to England, working as a Metropolitan Police officer, and then he worked as a warden at St George's House, a YMCA hostel in Southwark . Tyndall later stated that despite
4012-663: A lot to learn" and that "when one sees one's nation and people in danger there is less dishonour in acting and acting wrongly than in not acting at all." Now based in Battersea , Tyndall left Jordan and the NSM and formed his own rival, the Greater Britain Movement (GBM). According to Tyndall, "the Greater Britain Movement will uphold and preach pure National Socialism". According to the political scientist Stan Taylor,
4248-660: A loudspeaker. In 1965, the group staged a shooting incident at its Norwood headquarters, claiming that it had been an attack by anti-fascists. In another instance they distributed stickers emblazoned with a portrait of Hitler and the slogan "he was right". In 1966, several GBM members were arrested for carrying out arson attacks against synagogues. In the mid-1960s, there were five extreme-right groups operating in Britain and Tyndall believed that they could achieve more if they united. To that end, Spearhead abandoned its open affiliation with neo-Nazism in 1966. That year, Tyndall issued
4484-450: A major shift in political thought by challenging the established ideas supporting hierarchy with new ones about universal equality and freedom . The modern left–right political spectrum also emerged during this period. Democrats and proponents of universal suffrage were located on the left side of the elected French Assembly, while monarchists seated farthest to the right. The strongest opponents of liberalism and democracy during
4720-484: A massive programme of repatriation and resettlement overseas of those peoples of non-European origin already resident in this country. — The BNP's first policy on repatriation, 1982 Tyndall had observed the electoral success achieved by Jean-Marie Le Pen and the French National Front during the 1980s and hoped that by learning from their activities he could improve the BNP's electoral prospects. He saw
4956-399: A massive programme of repatriation and resettlement overseas of those peoples of non-European origin already resident in this country. — The BNP's first policy on repatriation, 1982 Opposition to immigration has been central to the BNP's political platform. It has engaged in xenophobic campaigns which emphasise the idea that immigrants and ethnic minorities are both different from, and
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#17328515446595192-505: A meeting of the NF directorate at which he urged them to call for Webster's resignation. At the meeting, Webster apologised for his conduct and the directorate stood by him against Tyndall. Angered, Tyndall then tried convincing the directorate to grant him greater powers in his position as chairman, but they refused. Tyndall resigned in January 1980, subsequently referring to the party as the "gay National Front". In June 1980, Tyndall founded
5428-493: A military comradeship that rejected Marxist class analysis , or what Oswald Spengler had called a "socialism of the blood", which is sometimes described by scholars as a form of " socialist revisionism ". They included Charles Maurras , Benito Mussolini , Arthur Moeller van den Bruck and Ernst Niekisch . Those thinkers eventually split along nationalist lines from the original communist movement , Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels contradicting nationalist theories with
5664-608: A minority within the UK by 2060. The immigrant communities in Britain are... colonies filled with colonists. They are alien islands inside our towns and cities with their own laws and cultures. They will never integrate as they did not come here to integrate, but to re-create their own cultures in our country. The fact is that the only solution to Multi-Culturalism is not some asinine and bogus attempt to impose British cultural values on immigrants, but simply to commence repatriating them. — Lee Barnes, senior BNP leader, 2005 The BNP calls for
5900-453: A national television platform with mainstream panellists. Griffin's performance was however widely regarded as poor. Despite its success, there was dissent in the party. In 2007 a group of senior members known as the "December rebels" challenged Griffin, calling for internal party democracy and financial transparency, but were expelled. In 2008, a group of BNP activists in Bradford split to form
6136-509: A new magazine which he titled Spearhead after his former paramilitary group. Spearhead initially labelled itself "an organ of National Socialist opinion in Britain" and described Nazi Germany as "one of the greatest social experiments of our century". According to the historian Alan Sykes , this magazine became "increasingly influential" in the British far-right. The magazine advertised portraits of Hitler and swastika badges for sale. Much of
6372-466: A number of other small extreme-right groups and together they established a Committee for Nationalist Unity (CNU) in January 1982. In March 1982 the CNU held a conference at Charing Cross Hotel in central London and while the NF officially refused to send a delegation, several NF members did attend. The fifty extreme-rightists in attendance agreed that they would establish a new political party, to be known as
6608-413: A pamphlet titled Six Principles of British Nationalism which made no mention of neo-Nazism or Jewish conspiracies. It also dropped the insistence on armed takeovers present in his earlier thought, acknowledging the possibility that extreme-right nationalists could gain power through the British electoral process. Chesterton read the pamphlet and was impressed, entering into talks with Tyndall's GBM about
6844-488: A period of change in the party. Influenced by Le Pen's National Front in France, Griffin sought to widen the BNP's appeal to individuals who were concerned about immigration but had not previously voted for the extreme-right. The BNP replaced Tyndall's policy of compulsory deportation of non-whites to a voluntary system whereby non-whites would be given financial incentives to emigrate. It downplayed biological racism and stressed
7080-478: A political chameleon, Griffin had once been considered a party hardliner before switching allegiance to the modernisers in the late 1990s. In his youth, he had been involved in the NF as well as Third Positionist groups like Political Soldier and the International Third Position . Criticising his predecessors for fuelling the image of the BNP as "thugs, losers and troublemakers", Griffin inaugurated
7316-508: A potential merger of their respective organisations. Independently, Chesterton had also been discussing the issue of a unification with Bean's BNP. This proved successful, as the LEL and BNP merged to form the National Front (NF) in 1967. According to Thurlow, the formation of the NF was "the most significant event on the radical right and fascist fringe of British politics" since the internment of
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7552-655: A range of ideologies that are typically marked by radical conservatism , authoritarianism , ultra-nationalism , and nativism . This political spectrum situates itself on the far end of the right, distinguished from more mainstream right-wing ideologies by its opposition to liberal democratic norms and emphasis on exclusivist views. Far-right ideologies have historically included fascism , Nazism , and Falangism , while contemporary manifestations also incorporate neo-fascism , neo-Nazism , white supremacism , and various other movements characterized by chauvinism , xenophobia , and theocratic or reactionary beliefs. Key to
7788-580: A secondary school teacher. Together the two groups embarked on a project of stirring up racial tensions among white Britons and black Caribbean immigrants in Notting Hill . Tyndall briefly left the NLP and in his absence Bean and Jordan merged their respective groups into the British National Party (BNP) in 1960. The BNP were racial nationalists, calling for the preservation of a " Nordic race "—of which
8024-407: A sort of anti-thesis against their own beliefs." While the existence of such a political position is widely accepted among scholars, figures associated with the far-right rarely accept this denomination, preferring terms like "national movement" or "national right". There is also debate about how appropriate the labels neo-fascist or neo-Nazi are. In the words of Mudde, "the labels Neo-Nazi and to
8260-468: A state of decay facilitated by the ruling elites, far-right members portray themselves as a natural, sane and alternative elite, with the redemptive mission of saving society from its promised doom. They reject both their national political system and the global geopolitical order (including their institutions and values, e.g. political liberalism and egalitarian humanism ) which are presented as needing to be abandoned or purged of their impurities, so that
8496-561: A state that "should impose its will on people", claiming that it was the anti-fascist group Unite Against Fascism —and not the BNP—who were the real fascists. More broadly, many on Britain's extreme-right sought to avoid the term "British fascism" because of its electorally unpalatable connotations, utilising "British nationalism" in its place. After Griffin took control of the party, it made increasing use of nativist themes in order to emphasise its "British" credentials. In its published material,
8732-417: A threat to, the white British and white Irish populations. In its campaign material it presented non-whites both as a source of crime in the UK, and as a socio-economic threat to the white British population by taking jobs, housing, and welfare away from them. It engaged in welfare chauvinism , calling for white Britons to be prioritised by the UK's welfare state. Party literature included such as claims as that
8968-409: A two-stage process that would take ten to twenty years, with some non-whites initially leaving willingly and the others then being forcibly deported. During the 1990s, party modernisers suggested that the BNP move away from a policy of compulsory repatriation and toward a voluntary system, whereby non-white persons would be offered financial incentives to leave the UK. This idea, adopted from Powellism ,
9204-465: A unified party family, despite the heterogeneity of the far right parties." Kopeček concludes that a comparison of Central European far-right parties with those of Western Europe shows that "these four elements are present in Central Europe as well, though in a somewhat modified form, despite differing political, economic, and social influences." In the American and more general Anglo-Saxon environment,
9440-718: A unique evolution of far-right movements that emphasize nativism and radical opposition to central government. Far-right politics have led to oppression , political violence , forced assimilation , ethnic cleansing , and genocide against groups of people based on their supposed inferiority or their perceived threat to the native ethnic group , nation , state , national religion , dominant culture , or conservative social institutions. Across these contexts, far-right politics has continued to influence discourse, occasionally achieving electoral success and prompting significant debate over its place in democratic societies . According to scholars Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg ,
9676-507: A vehicle to criticise rival factions with the NF. As a result, he was expelled from the party during a disciplinary tribunal in November 1975. Tyndall took the issue to the high court , who overturned the expulsion. The 'Populists' then left the party, splitting to form the National Party in January 1976, which for a short time proved more electorally successful than the NF. Back in the party and with his main rivals gone, Tyndall regained
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9912-525: A view akin to those of earlier fascists such as Hitler and Arnold Leese . The BNP adheres to an ideology of ethnic nationalism . It promotes the idea that not all citizens of the United Kingdom belong to the British nation. Instead, it states that the nation only belongs to "the English, Scots, Irish and Welsh along with the limited numbers of peoples of European descent, who have arrived centuries or decades ago and who have fully integrated into our society". This
10148-407: Is "Anglo-centric". The party employed militaristic rhetoric under both Tyndall and Griffin's leadership; under the latter for example its published material spoke of a "war without uniforms" and a "war for our survival as a people". Tyndall described the BNP as a revolutionary party, calling it a "guerrilla army operating in occupied territory". The British National Party exists to secure a future for
10384-630: Is a group that Griffin referred to as the "home people" or "the folk". According to Tyndall, "The BNP is a racial nationalist party which believes in Britain for the British, that is to say racial separatism." Richard Edmonds in 1993 told The Guardian ' s Duncan Campbell that "we [the BNP] are 100% racist". The BNP does not regard UK citizens who are not ethnic white Europeans as "British", and party literature calls on supporters to avoid referring to such individuals as "Black Britons" or "Asian Britons", instead describing them as "racial foreigners". Tyndall believed
10620-723: Is against "the Cathedral". Schmitt's friend–enemy distinction has inspired the French Nouvelle Droite idea of ethnopluralism . In a 1961 book deemed influential in the European far-right at large, French neo-fascist writer Maurice Bardèche introduced the idea that fascism could survive the 20th century under a new metapolitical guise adapted to the changes of the times. Rather than trying to revive doomed regimes with their single party , secret police or public display of Caesarism , Bardèche argued that its theorists should promote
10856-467: Is known as the reverse post-material thesis blames both left-wing and progressive parties for embracing a post-material agenda (including feminism and environmentalism ) that alienates traditional working class voters. Another study argues that individuals who join far-right parties determine whether those parties develop into major political players or whether they remain marginalized. Early academic studies adopted psychoanalytical explanations for
11092-479: Is no general agreement as to where the mainstream ends and the extreme starts, and if there ever had been agreement on this, the recent shift in the mainstream would challenge it." Proponents of the horseshoe theory interpretation of the left–right political spectrum identify the far left and the far right as having more in common with each other as extremists than each of them has with centrists or moderates . This theory has received criticism, including
11328-401: Is what it is. — Tyndall's views on electoral 'respectability' Encouraged by Webster and new confidante Richard Verrall , in the mid-1970s Tyndall returned to his openly hardline approach of promoting biological racist and antisemitic ideas. This did not help the NF's electoral prospects. In the 1979 general election , the NF mounted the largest challenge of any insurgent party since
11564-460: The 1973 Rwandan coup d'état , the far right National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND) was founded under president Juvénal Habyarimana . Between 1975 and 1991, the MRND was the only legal political party in the country. It was dominated by Hutus , particularly from Habyarimana's home region of Northern Rwanda. An elite group of MRND party members who were known to have influence on
11800-465: The 1994 local elections . Tyndall stood as the BNP candidate in the 1994 Dagenham by-election , in which he gained 9% of the vote and had his electoral deposit returned. This was the first time that an extreme right candidate had retained their deposit since Webster's 1973 showing for the NF in West Bromwich . In the 1997 general election , the party stood over fifty candidates. Tyndall stood in
12036-583: The 1997 general election , it contested 55 seats and gained an average 1.4% of the vote. In the early 1990s, the paramilitary group Combat 18 (C18) was formed to protect BNP events from anti-fascists. In 1992, C18 carried out attacks on left-wing targets like an anarchist bookshop and the headquarters of the Morning Star . Tyndall was angered by C18's growing influence on the BNP's street activities, and by August 1993, C18 activists were physically clashing with other BNP members. In December 1993, Tyndall issued
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#173285154465912272-568: The 2005 general election , the BNP expanded its number of candidates to 119 and targeted specific regions. Its average vote in the areas it contested rose to 4.3%. It gained significantly more support in three seats, achieving 10% in Burnley , 13% in Dewsbury , and 17% in Barking . In the 2006 local elections the party gained 220,000 votes, with 33 additional councillors, having averaged a vote share of 18% in
12508-488: The 2019 general election in Hornchurch and Upminster , where he came last. The BNP has been essentially inactive since 2019, and has not put forward a single candidate in any elections since 2019, with the only evidence of any activity being the occasional post on its website or Twitter account. Many academic historians and political scientists have described the BNP as a far-right party, or as an extreme-right party. As
12744-619: The 6th World Festival of Youth and Students which was held in Moscow , the capital city of the Soviet Union , in 1957. Nevertheless, he began to believe that left-wing politics was being infused with "anti-British attitudes", moving swiftly to the political right . He was devoted to the preservation of the British Empire and he was hostile to what he believed was the growing permissiveness of British society , stating that "the smell everywhere
12980-578: The Auschwitz II (Birkenau) concentration camp, who fled first to Argentina, then Paraguay, before finally settling in Brazil in 1960. Mengele eventually drowned in 1979 in Bertioga , on the coast of São Paulo state, without ever having been recognized in his 19 years in Brazil. The far right has continued to operate throughout Brazil and a number of far-right parties existed in the modern era including Patriota ,
13216-1070: The Bolsonaro family in Brazil , José Antonio Kast in Chile and Keiko Fujimori in Peru . Nationalists from Europe and the United States met at a Holiday Inn in St. Petersburg on March 22, 2015, for first convention of the International Russian Conservative Forum organized by pro-Putin Rodina -party. The event was attended by fringe right-wing extremists like Nordic Resistance Movement from Scandinavia but also by more mainstream MEPs from Golden Dawn and National Democratic Party of Germany . In addition to Rodina, Russian neo-Nazis from Russian Imperial Movement and Rusich Group were also in attendance. The event
13452-876: The Brazilian Labour Renewal Party , the Party of the Reconstruction of the National Order , the National Renewal Alliance and the Social Liberal Party as well as death squads such as the Command for Hunting Communists . Former President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro was a member of the Alliance for Brazil , a far-right nationalist political group that aimed to become a political party, until 2022, when
13688-511: The British National Party (BNP). According to Tyndall, "The BNP is a racial nationalist party which believes in Britain for the British, that is to say racial separatism." Under Tyndall's leadership, in 1982 the BNP issued its first policy on immigration as "immigration into Britain by non-Europeans ... should be terminated forthwith and we should organise a massive programme of repatriation and resettlement overseas of those peoples of non-European origin already resident in this country." Tyndall
13924-580: The British far-right . In the pamphlet, he attacked democratic systems of government as part of a conspiracy orchestrated by Jews, quoting from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion . It called for the replacement of the United Kingdom's liberal democratic system with an authoritarian one in which a "Leader" is given absolute power. Within the BNP, Tyndall established an elite group known as Spearhead, members of which wore military-style uniforms inspired by those of
14160-554: The Combat 18 paramilitary—its name a coded reference to Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler —to protect its events from anti-fascist protesters. A growing 'moderniser' faction was frustrated by Tyndall's leadership, and ousted him in 1999. The new leader Nick Griffin sought to broaden the BNP's electoral base by presenting a more moderate image, targeting concerns about rising immigration rates, and emphasising localised community campaigns. This resulted in increased electoral growth throughout
14396-562: The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda continue to wage an insurgency against Rwanda from neighboring countries, where they are also involved in local conflicts and terrorism. The Interahamwe were the main perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide, during which an estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 Tutsi, Twa and moderate Hutus were killed from April to July 1994 and the term Interahamwe
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#173285154465914632-695: The Jobbik party in Hungary. During the rise of Nazi Germany, far-right international organizations began to emerge in the 1930s with the International Conference of Fascist Parties in 1932 and the Fascist International Congress in 1934. During the 1934 Fascist International Conference, the Comitati d'Azione per l'Universalità di Roma [ it ] (CAUR; English: Action Committees for
14868-668: The Labour Party in 1918 , with 303 candidates. Among them were Tyndall's wife, mother-in-law and father-in-law. Tyndall stood in Hackney South and Shoreditch , securing 7.6%; this was the Front's best result that election, but was down from the 9.4% they had gained in that constituency in October 1974. In the election, the NF "flopped dismally", securing only 1.3% of the total vote, down from 3.1% in October 1974. This decline may have been due to
15104-479: The Labour Party government. For instance, in Burnley it campaigned for lower speed limits on housing estates and against the closure of a local swimming bath, while in South Birmingham it targeted pensioners' concerns about youth gangs. In 2006, the party urged its activists to carry out local activities like cleaning up children's play areas and removing graffiti while wearing high-vis jackets emblazoned with
15340-502: The Ligue des Patriotes , with the common goal of a uniting the masses beyond social divisions. The Völkisch movement emerged in the late 19th century, drawing inspiration from German Romanticism and its fascination for a medieval Reich supposedly organized into a harmonious hierarchical order. Erected on the idea of " blood and soil ", it was a racialist , populist , agrarian , romantic nationalist and an antisemitic movement from
15576-444: The London Assembly , and two Members of the European Parliament . It has been largely inactive since 2019. Taking its name from that of a defunct 1960s far-right party , the BNP was created by John Tyndall and other former members of the fascist National Front (NF). During the 1980s and 1990s, the BNP placed little emphasis on contesting elections, in which it did poorly. Instead, it focused on street marches and rallies, creating
15812-407: The New National Front (NNF). The NNF claimed that a third of the NF's membership defected to join them. Tyndall stated that "I have one wish in this operation and one wish alone, to cleanse the National Front of the foul stench of perversion which has politically crippled it". As his choice of party name suggested, he remained hopeful that his breakaway group could eventually be re-merged back into
16048-536: The Republican Party and establishing strong ties with American contacts. In March 2019, Abascal tweeted an image of himself wearing a morion similar to a conquistador , with ABC writing in an article detailing the document that this event provided a narrative that "symbolizes in part the expansionist mood of Vox and its ideology far from Spain". The charter subsequently grew to include signers that had little to no relation to Latin America and Spanish-speaking areas. Vox has advised Javier Milei in Argentina ,
16284-423: The UK Independence Party for its decline, accusing the latter of stealing BNP policies and slogans. In July 2014, Griffin resigned and was succeeded by Adam Walker as acting chairman. In October, Griffin was expelled from the party for "trying to cause disunity [in the party] by deliberately fabricating a state of crisis". In January 2015, membership of the party numbered 500, down from 4,220 in December 2013. At
16520-498: The Union for the Republic . Throughout the reign of the Gnassingbé family, Togo has been extremely oppressive. According to a United States Department of State report based on conditions in 2010, human rights abuses are common and include "security force use of excessive force, including torture , which resulted in deaths and injuries; official impunity; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrests and detention; lengthy pretrial detention; executive influence over
16756-438: The anti-fascist activist Gerry Gable , Spearhead represented the first "terrorist group" founded by neo-Nazis in Britain. Both Bean and another senior BNP member, Andrew Fountaine , were concerned about the overt neo-Nazism embraced by Tyndall and Jordan, instead thinking that the BNP should articulate a more British-oriented form of racial nationalism. In 1962, Bean held a meeting at which Tyndall and Jordan were expelled from
16992-590: The extreme-right . In the mid-1950s, he joined the League of Empire Loyalists (LEL) and came under the influence of its leader, Arthur Chesterton . Finding the LEL too moderate, in 1957 he and John Bean founded the National Labour Party (NLP), an explicitly " National Socialist " (Nazi) group. In 1960, the NLP merged with Colin Jordan 's White Defence League to found the first British National Party (BNP). Within
17228-475: The general election in 2015 , the BNP fielded eight candidates, down from 338 in 2010. The party's vote share declined 99.7% from its 2010 result. In January 2016, the Electoral Commission de-registered the BNP for failing to pay its annual registration fee of £25. At this time, it was estimated that BNP assets totalled less than £50,000. According to the commission, "BNP candidates cannot, at present, use
17464-660: The génocidaires . Kabuga was arrested in France on 16 May 2020, and charged with crimes against humanity . The Interahamwe was formed around 1990 as the youth wing of the MRND and enjoyed the backing of the Hutu Power government. The Interahamwe were driven out of Rwanda after Tutsi -led Rwandan Patriotic Front victory in the Rwandan Civil War in July 1994 and are considered a terrorist organisation by many African and Western governments. The Interahamwe and splinter groups such as
17700-424: The political spectrum : "the left considers the key inequalities between people to be artificial and negative, which should be overcome by an active state, whereas the right believes that inequalities between people are natural and positive, and should be either defended or left alone by the state." Aspects of far-right ideology can be identified in the agenda of some contemporary right-wing parties: in particular,
17936-597: The "British race" was considered a branch—by removing both immigrants and Jewish influences from Britain. Tyndall soon joined this new BNP, and became a close confidante of Jordan, who helped Tyndall to further embrace neo-Nazism . Tyndall also developed a friendship with Martin Webster , who became a long-term comrade after watching Tyndall speak at a Trafalgar Square rally in 1962. In April 1961, Tyndall self-published his pamphlet, The Authoritarian State: Its Meaning and Function , which helped to cement his reputation within
18172-496: The "naïve chasing of moonbeams". In November 1979, Fountaine unsuccessfully tried to oust Tyndall as leader, subsequently establishing the National Front Constitutional Movement . Tyndall had grown distant from Webster over their differences and in the late 1970s began blaming him for the party's problems. Webster had for instance disagreed with Tyndall's support for Chesterton's leadership, while Tyndall
18408-467: The "redemptive community" can eventually leave the current phase of liminal crisis to usher in the new era. The community itself is idealized through great archetypal figures (the Golden Age , the savior, decadence and global conspiracy theories ) as they glorify non-rationalistic and non- materialistic values such as the youth or the cult of the dead. Political scientist Cas Mudde argues that
18644-451: The 1900s onward as a consequence of a growing exclusive and racial connotation. They idealized the myth of an "original nation", that still could be found at their times in the rural regions of Germany, a form of "primitive democracy freely subjected to their natural elites." Thinkers led by Arthur de Gobineau , Houston Stewart Chamberlain , Alexis Carrel and Georges Vacher de Lapouge distorted Darwin 's theory of evolution to advocate
18880-423: The 1920s and 1930s, a local brand of religious fascism appeared known as Brazilian Integralism , coalescing around the party known as Brazilian Integralist Action . It adopted many characteristics of European fascist movements, including a green-shirted paramilitary organization with uniformed ranks, highly regimented street demonstrations and rhetoric against Marxism and liberalism . Prior to World War II,
19116-537: The 1960s, Tyndall wrote that "if Britain were to become Jew-clean she would have no nigger neighbours to worry about... It is the Jews who are our misfortune: T-h-e J-e-w-s. Do you hear me? THE JEWS?" Tyndall added Holocaust denial to the anti-Semitic beliefs inherited from Chesterton, believing that The Holocaust was a hoax created by the Jews to gain sympathy for themselves and thus aid their plot for world domination. Among those to endorse such anti-Semitic conspiracy theories
19352-400: The 1980s, although electoral success eluded it. Tyndall's refusal to moderate the BNP's policies or image caused anger among a growing array of "modernisers" in the party, who ousted him in favour of Nick Griffin in 1999. In 2005, Tyndall was charged with incitement to racial hatred for comments made at a BNP meeting. He died two days before his trial was due to take place. Tyndall promoted
19588-528: The 1980s, far-right groups began to solidify themselves through official political avenues. With the founding of the European Union in 1993, far-right groups began to espouse Euroscepticism , nationalist and anti-migrant beliefs. By 2010, the Eurosceptic group European Alliance for Freedom emerged and saw some prominence during the 2014 European Parliament election . The majority of far-right groups in
19824-400: The 1983 general election—although far fewer of these enquirers became members. The party was stagnating, and Tyndall's "political career was now on borrowed time". After the BNP's poor performance at the 1997 general election, opposition to Tyndall's leadership grew. His position was damaged by a lack of financial transparency in the party, with concerns being raised that large donations to
20060-627: The 1990s, the "winning formula" was often to attract anti-immigrant blue collar workers and white collar workers who wanted less state intervention in the economy, but in the 2000s, this switched to welfare chauvinism . In comparing the Western European and post-Communist Central European far-right, Kopeček writes that "[t]he Central European far right was also typified by a strong anti-Communism, much more markedly than in Western Europe", allowing for "a basic ideological classification within
20296-474: The 19th century, such as Joseph de Maistre and Friedrich Nietzsche , were highly critical of the French Revolution. Those who advocated a return to the absolute monarchy during the 19th century called themselves "ultra-monarchists" and embraced a " mystic " and " providentialist " vision of the world where royal dynasties were seen as the "repositories of divine will". The opposition to liberal modernity
20532-567: The 2000s, to the extent that it became the most electorally successful far-right party in British history. Concerns regarding financial mismanagement resulted in Griffin being removed as leader in 2014. By this point, the BNP's membership and vote share had declined dramatically, groups like Britain First and National Action had splintered off, and the English Defence League had supplanted it as
20768-424: The 2010s began to establish international contacts with right-wing coalitions to develop a solidified platform. In 2017, Steve Bannon would create The Movement , an organization to create an international far-right group based on Aleksandr Dugin 's The Fourth Political Theory , for the 2019 European Parliament election . The European Alliance for Freedom would also reorganize into Identity and Democracy for
21004-641: The 2019 European Parliament election. The far-right Spanish party Vox initially introduced the Madrid Charter project, a planned group to denounce left-wing groups in Ibero-America , to the government of United States president Donald Trump while visiting the United States in February 2019, with Santiago Abascal and Rafael Bardají using their good relations with the administration to build support within
21240-527: The BNP and C18 were physically fighting each other. In December 1993, Tyndall issued a bulletin to BNP branches declaring C18 to be a proscribed organisation, furthermore suggesting that it may have been established by agents of the state to discredit the party. To counter C18's influence, he secured the American white nationalist militant William Pierce as a guest speaker at the BNP's annual rally in November 1995. Immigration into Britain by non-Europeans ... should be terminated forthwith and we should organise
21476-467: The BNP as a "Nazi organisation", while the Anti-Nazi League published leaflets describing the BNP as the "British Nazi Party". Copsey suggested that while the BNP under Tyndall could be described as neo-Nazi, it was not "crudely mimetic" of the original German Nazism. Davey characterised the BNP as a "populist ethno-nationalist" party. The [BNP's] smart modernized veneer... is superficial; the core of
21712-443: The BNP as being fascist in ideology. Others have instead described it as neo-fascist , a term which the historian Nigel Copsey argued was more exact. Academic observers—including the historians Copsey, Graham Macklin, and Roger Griffin , and the political theologian Andrew P. Davey—have argued that Nick Griffin's reforms were little more than a cosmetic process to obfuscate the party's fascist roots. According to Copsey, under Griffin
21948-449: The BNP become the most prominent force on the British far-right as the NF collapsed amid internal arguments and schisms. In the early 1990s, a paramilitary group known as Combat 18 (C18) was formed to protect BNP events from anti-fascist protesters. Tyndall was displeased that by 1992, C18 was having an increased influence over the BNP's street activities. Relations between the groups deteriorated such that by August 1993, activists from
22184-498: The BNP built links with far-right parties across Europe and created various sub-groups, including a record label and trade union. The BNP attracted most support from within White British working-class communities in northern and eastern England, particularly among middle-aged and elderly men. A poll in the 2000s suggested that most Britons favoured a ban on the party. It faced much opposition from anti-fascists, religious organisations,
22420-454: The BNP gained one council seat—won by Derek Beackon in the East London district of Millwall —after a campaign that played to local whites who were angry at the perceived preferential treatment received by Bangladeshi migrants in social housing . Following an anti-BNP campaign launched by local religious groups and the Anti-Nazi League , it lost this seat during the 1994 local elections . In
22656-543: The BNP opened discussions with an NF faction, the National Front Support Group (NFSG), to discuss the possibility of a merger, but the NFSG decided against it, remaining cautious about Tyndall's total domination of the BNP. By 1988, Searchlight reported that the party's membership had declined to around 1,000. Tyndall responded by trying to raise finances, calling for greater sales of their newspaper and increasing
22892-511: The BNP stated that "family size is a private matter" but still called for white Britons who are "of intelligent, healthy and industrious stock" to have large families and thus raise the white British birth-rate. The encouragement of high birth rates among white British families continued under Griffin's leadership. Under Tyndall's leadership, the BNP promoted eugenics , calling for the forced sterilisation of those with genetically transmittable disabilities. In party literature, it talked of improving
23128-403: The BNP to a clear growth in electoral support. Tyndall nevertheless believed that the BNP's electoral success had less to do with Griffin's reforms and more to do with external factors such as the 2001 Oldham riots . In turn, Griffin criticised Tyndall in the pages of Identity , claiming that the latter was committed to "the sub-Mosleyite wackiness of Arnold Leese's Imperial Fascist League and
23364-618: The BNP was "fascism recalibrated — a form of neo-fascism — to suit contemporary sensibilities". Macklin noted that despite Griffin's 'modernisation' project, the BNP retained its ideological continuity with earlier fascist groups and thus had not transformed itself into a genuinely "post-fascist" party. In this it was distinct from parties like the Italian National Alliance of Gianfranco Fini , which has been credited with successfully shedding its fascist past and becoming post-fascist. The anti-fascist activist Gerry Gable referred to
23600-607: The BNP was the only party which could "do anything effective about the swamping of Britain by the Third World" or "lead the native peoples of Britain in our version of the New Crusade that must be organised if Europe is not to sink under the Islamic yoke". Much of its published material made claims about a forthcoming race war and promoted the conspiracy theory about white genocide . In a 2009 radio interview, Griffin referred to this as
23836-485: The BNP's association with political violence and older fascist groups in the public eye. As a result, BNP organisers began to favour indoor rallies, although street marches continued to be held throughout the mid-to-late 1980s. Through the streets now we are marching. Like an army as to war. For the cause of race and nation. With our banners to the fore. Into battle, into battle, into battle BNP! Into battle BNP! — BNP marching song, 1982 In its early years,
24072-465: The BNP's involvement in elections was "irregular and intermittent", and for its first two decades it faced consistent electoral failure. It suffered from low finances and few personnel, and its leadership was aware that its electoral viability was weakened by the anti-immigration rhetoric of Conservative Party Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher . In the 1983 general election the BNP stood 54 candidates, although it only campaigned in five seats. Although it
24308-620: The BNP, Tyndall and Jordan established a paramilitary wing called Spearhead, which angered Bean and other party members. They expelled Tyndall and Jordan, who went on to establish the National Socialist Movement and then the international World Union of National Socialists . In 1962, they were convicted and briefly imprisoned for their paramilitary activities. After a split with Jordan, Tyndall formed his Greater Britain Movement (GBM) in 1964. Although never changing his basic beliefs, by
24544-568: The BNP, he still kept a range of Holocaust deniers and convicted criminals close to him. He expressed the view that "we should not be looking for ways of applying ideological cosmetic surgery to ourselves in order to make our features more appealing to our public". Conversely, in the early 1990s a 'moderniser' faction emerged in the party that favoured a more electorally palatable strategy and an emphasis on building grassroots support to win local elections. They were impressed by Le Pen's move to disassociate his party from biological racism and focus on
24780-734: The Big Government mania of the 1930s". Griffin expelled Tyndall from the party in August 2003, but had to allow his return following an out-of-court settlement shortly after. Tyndall gave a speech at a BNP event in which he claimed that Asians and Africans had only produced "black magic, witchcraft, voodoo, cannibalism and Aids", also attacking the Jewish leader of the Conservative Party, Michael Howard , as an "interloper, this immigrant or son of immigrants, who has no roots at all in Britain". The speech
25016-652: The British 'racial stock' by removing "inferior strains within the indigenous races of the British Isles". Tyndall argued that medical professionals should be responsible for determining whom to sterilise, while a lowering of welfare benefits would discourage breeding among those he deemed to be genetic inferiors. In his magazine Spearhead , Tyndall also stated that "the gas chamber system" should be used to eliminate "sub-human elements", "perverts", and "asocials" from British society. Immigration into Britain by non-Europeans... should be terminated forthwith, and we should organise
25252-471: The British Empire". Jordan himself accused Tyndall of being "an extreme Tory imperialist, a John Bull , unable to recognise the call of race beyond Britain's frontiers". Tyndall later described his membership of these openly neo-Nazi groups as a "youthful indiscretion". He expressed the view that while he regretted his involvement in them, he was not ashamed of having done so: "though some of my former beliefs were mistaken, I will never acknowledge that there
25488-474: The British authorities had prohibited the American neo-Nazi George Lincoln Rockwell from entering the UK, the NSM managed to smuggle him in via Ireland to attend a summer camp in August 1962. There, the NSM took part in the formation of the World Union of National Socialists (WUNS), at which Jordan was elected 'world führer' and Rockwell as his heir. Among those in attendance were the neo-Nazi Savitri Devi and
25724-469: The Democratic Nationalists. In November 2008, the BNP membership list was posted to WikiLeaks, after appearing briefly on a weblog. A year later, in October 2009, another list of BNP members was leaked. Eddy Butler then led a challenge to Griffin's leadership, alleging financial corruption, but he had insufficient support. The rebels who supported him split into two groups: one section remained as
25960-468: The East London constituency of Poplar and Canning Town , where he received 7.26% of the vote. Tyndall was attacked and badly beaten by anti-fascists at an election meeting in Stratford, East London. He was also photographed with the London nail bomber, David Copeland . Tyndall claimed that following the election, the party received between 2,500 and 3,000 enquiries—roughly the same as they had received after
26196-455: The East London neighbourhood of Millwall —after a campaign that targeted the anger of local whites over the perceived preferential treatment received by Bangladeshi migrants in social housing . At the time Tyndall described this as the BNP's "moment in history", deeming it a sign that the party was entering the political mainstream. Following an anti-BNP campaign launched by anti-fascist and local religious groups it lost its Millwall seat during
26432-414: The Elders of Zion as genuine evidence for this. He believed that Jews were responsible for both communism and international finance capitalism and that they were responsible for undermining the British Empire and the British race. He believed that both democratic government and immigration into Europe were parts of the Jewish conspiracy to weaken other races. In an early edition of Spearhead published in
26668-573: The European Parliament for North West England and Yorkshire and the Humber respectively. That election also saw extreme-right parties winning seats for various other EU member-states. This victory marked a major watershed for the party. Amid significant public controversy , Griffin was invited to appear on the BBC show Question Time in October 2009, the first time that the BNP had been invited to share
26904-507: The European Union cut off aid in reaction to the regime's human-rights offenses. After's Eyadema's death in 2005, his son Faure Gnassingbe took over, then stood down and was re-elected in elections that were widely described as fraudulent and occasioned violence that resulted in as many as 600 deaths and the flight from Togo of 40,000 refugees. In 2012, Faure Gnassingbe dissolved the RTP and created
27140-477: The European soul is to be recovered in our country and throughout Europe, it can only be by the elimination of this cankerous microbe in our midst. — Tyndall's views on Jews, published in the NLP journal In April 1958, Tyndall and Bean founded their own extreme-right group, the National Labour Party (NLP). The group was based at Thornton Heath , Croydon and attracted its early membership from former LEL members living in south and east London. According to
27376-526: The GBM reflected Tyndall's desire for "a specifically British variant of National Socialism". It called for the criminalisation of sexual relations and marriages between white Britons and non-whites and called for the sterilisation of those it deemed unfit to reproduce. The group established its base in a run-down building in Notting Hill, with swastikas being sprayed onto the exterior and an image of Hitler decorating
27612-518: The LEL's attempts to exert pressure on the mainstream Conservative Party . They wanted to be involved in a more radical party, one that would combine "nationalism" with "popular socialism" and which would reach out to the white working class through appeals against immigration from the Caribbean . By his systematic attack on all European culture the Jew is polluting and destroying the European soul ... If
27848-627: The NF he had still "preserve[d] and defend[ed]" "those traits which were the hallmark" of earlier neo-Nazi groups. Walker noted that in October 1975 Tyndall wrote articles for Spearhead which had clearly "returned to the language and ideology of the Nazi days", and that another article printed the previous month was "pure Nazism in that it reflects exactly the mood and spirit of Mein Kampf ." The historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke stated that Tyndall simply "cloaked his former extremism in British nationalism", while
28084-470: The NF in 1980. In June 1980 Tyndall established a rival, the New National Front (NNF). At the recommendation of Ray Hill —who was secretly an anti-fascist spy seeking to sow disharmony among Britain's far-right—Tyndall decided to unite an array of extreme-right groups as a single party. To this end, Tyndall established a Committee for Nationalist Unity (CNU) in January 1982. In March 1982, the CNU held
28320-507: The NF. A poor showing in the February 1974 general election resulted in Tyndall being challenged by two groups within the party, the ' Strasserites ' and the ' Populists ', the latter of whom were largely Powellite ex-members of the Conservative Party. The Populist challenge was successful and in October 1974 Tyndall was replaced as chairman by John Kingsley Read . Tyndall then used Spearhead as
28556-554: The NF. There developed a great rivalry between the two groups, and as the NF's new leadership moved it away from the Tyndallite approach, Tyndall realised that he may never have the opportunity to regain his position within it. John Tyndall was both [the BNPs] greatest asset and its greatest drawback. His persistence, rock-like reliability and leadership had kept the movement going, but with almost imperceptible growth since its 1982 foundation. — John Bean In January 1981, Tyndall
28792-541: The National Front, Tyndall was to retain the basic extremist views which had always characterised his thought. — Historian Richard Thurlow, 1987 Following this shift away from overt allegiance to Nazism, Tyndall's supporters and detractors continued to dispute whether he remained a convinced Nazi. Academic commentators consider that his basic ideological world-view did not change. In 1981, Nigel Fielding stated that while Tyndall's views had "moderated remarkably", in
29028-554: The Nazi Party had been making and distributing propaganda among ethnic Germans in Brazil. The Nazi regime built close ties with Brazil through the estimated 100 thousand native Germans and 1 million German descendants living in Brazil at the time. In 1928, the Brazilian section of the Nazi Party was founded in Timbó, Santa Catarina. This section reached 2,822 members and was the largest section of
29264-532: The Nazi Party outside Germany. About 100 thousand born Germans and about one million descendants lived in Brazil at that time. After Germany's defeat in World War II, many Nazi war criminals fled to Brazil and hid among the German-Brazilian communities. The most notable example of this was Josef Mengele , a Nazi SS officer and physician known as the "Angel of Death" for his deadly experiments on prisoners at
29500-573: The Nazis and underwent paramilitary and ideological training. Tyndall had a great liking for wearing jackboots - Jordan related that on the way to a far-right meeting in Germany, Tyndall made his entourage look for a shoe shop so that he could purchase a pair of genuine German jackboots. It is likely that there were no more than 60 members of Spearhead. The group campaigned on behalf of imprisoned Nazi war criminals Rudolf Hess and Adolf Eichmann . According to
29736-678: The Party remains ideologically fascist, and this was nowhere more apparent than in the BNP manifesto for the 2010 General Election, which returned to a clutch of traditional fascist themes including the bond of blood, homeland, the decadence of contemporary culture, a nostalgia for folk traditions and heritage, and an emphasis on stricter discipline in education and society. During the election campaign anti-Semitism, racism and neo-Nazi sympathies were identified on candidates' social network sites. — Political theologian Andrew P. Davey, 2011 In his writings, Griffin acknowledged that much of his 'modernisation'
29972-573: The President and his wife Agathe Habyarimana are known as the akazu , an informal organization of Hutu extremists whose members planned and lead the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Prominent Hutu businessman and member of the akazu, Félicien Kabuga was one of the genocides main financiers, providing thousands of machetes which were used to commit the genocide. Kabuga also founded Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines , used to broadcast propaganda and direct
30208-549: The Rwandan genocide. The far right in South Africa emerged as the Herstigte Nasionale Party (HNP) in 1969, formed by Albert Hertzog as breakaway from the predominant right-wing South African National Party , an Afrikaner ethno-nationalist party that implemented the racist, segregationist program of apartheid , the legal system of political, economic and social separation of the races intended to maintain and extend political and economic control of South Africa by
30444-687: The Speaker of the Syrian People's Assembly, Mohammad Jihad al-Laham , and the Prime Minister Wael Nader al-Halqi . Griffin claims he was influential in the speaker of Syria's Parliament writing an open letter to British MPs urging them to "turn Great Britain from the warpath" by not intervening in the Syrian conflict . Griffin lost his European Parliament seat in the May 2014 European election . The party blamed
30680-459: The UK's foremost far-right group. Ideologically positioned on the extreme-right or far-right of British politics, the BNP has been characterised as fascist or neo-fascist by political scientists . Under Tyndall's leadership, it was more specifically regarded as neo-Nazi . The party is ethnic nationalist , and it once espoused the view that only white people should be citizens of the United Kingdom. It calls for an end to non-white migration into
30916-445: The UK. It called initially for the compulsory expulsion of non-whites but, since 1999, it has advocated voluntary removals with financial incentives. It promotes biological racism and the white genocide conspiracy theory , calling for global racial separatism and condemning interracial relationships . Under Tyndall, the BNP emphasised anti-semitism and Holocaust denial , promoting the conspiracy theory that Jews seek to dominate
31152-618: The United Kingdom although he proved popular among sectors of the British far-right. John Tyndall was born in Stork Nest, Topsham Road in Exeter , Devon, on 14 July 1934, the son of Nellie Tyndall, née Parker and George Francis Tyndall. Through the Tyndall family line, he was related to the early English translator of the Bible , William Tyndale and the physicist John Tyndall . His paternal family were Irish Unionists from County Waterford , who had
31388-659: The Universality of Rome), created by Benito Mussolini 's Fascist Regime to create a network for a "Fascist International", representatives from far-right groups gathered in Montreux , Switzerland , including Romania 's Iron Guard , Norway 's Nasjonal Samling , the Greek National Socialist Party , Spain 's Falange movement, Ireland's Blueshirts , France 's Mouvement Franciste and Portugal 's União Nacional , among others. However, no international group
31624-521: The White minority. The HNP was formed after the South African National Party re-established diplomatic relations with Malawi and legislated to allow Māori players and spectators to enter the country during the 1970 New Zealand rugby union team tour in South Africa. The HNP advocated for a Calvinist , racially segregated and Afrikaans -speaking nation. In 1973, Eugène Terre'Blanche ,
31860-569: The area's locals voting for the BNP. At the 2010 general election , the BNP had hoped to make a breakthrough by gaining a seat in the House of Commons , although it failed to achieve this. It nevertheless gained the fifth largest national vote share, with 1.9% of the vote, representing the most successful electoral performance for an extreme-right party in UK history. In the 2010 local elections , it lost all of its councillors in Barking and Dagenham. Nationally,
32096-403: The areas it contested. In Barking and Dagenham, it saw 12 of its 13 candidates elected to the council. At the 2008 London Assembly election , the BNP gained 130,000 votes, reaching the 5% mark and thus gaining an Assembly seat. At the 2009 European Parliament election , the party gained almost 1 million votes, with two of its candidates, Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons , being elected as Members of
32332-422: The argument that it has been centrists who have supported far-right and fascist regimes over socialist ones. Jens Rydgren describes a number of theories as to why individuals support far-right political parties and the academic literature on this topic distinguishes between demand-side theories that have changed the "interests, emotions, attitudes and preferences of voters" and supply-side theories which focus on
32568-492: The arrival of Ugandan Asian migrants in the country in 1972, Tyndall oversaw the NF during the period of its largest growth. Membership of the party doubled between October 1972 and June 1973, possibly reaching as high as 17,500. Relations had apparently warmed between Tyndall and Jordan, for they met up after the latter was released from prison in 1968, and Tyndall again met with Jordan in Coventry in 1972 and invited him to join
32804-411: The attention of the media as well as Special Branch . In July 1962, Tyndall was arrested for breaching the peace at a Trafalgar Square rally in which he had been attacked by Jewish military veterans and other anti-fascists after calling the Jewish community a "poisonous maggot feeding on a body in an advanced state of decay". His comments resulted in him being convicted of inciting racial hatred and he
33040-414: The broader family of the far right, the extreme right is revolutionary, opposing popular sovereignty and majority rule, and sometimes supporting violence, whereas the radical right is reformist, accepting free elections, but opposing fundamental elements of liberal democracy such as minority rights, rule of law, or separation of powers. After a survey of the academic literature, Mudde concluded in 2002 that
33276-503: The concept of "the masses" was introduced into the political debate through industrialization and the universal suffrage , a new right-wing founded on national and social ideas began to emerge, what Zeev Sternhell has called the "revolutionary right" and a foreshadowing of fascism . The rift between the left and nationalists was furthermore accentuated by the emergence of anti-militarist and anti-patriotic movements like anarchism or syndicalism , which shared even fewer similarities with
33512-414: The core of the far right's worldview is organicism , the idea that society functions as a complete, organized and homogeneous living being. Adapted to the community they wish to constitute or reconstitute (whether based on ethnicity, nationality, religion or race), the concept leads them to reject every form of universalism in favor of autophilia and alterophobia , or in other words the idealization of
33748-605: The core philosophical idea of fascism regardless of its framework, i.e. the concept that only a minority, "the physically saner, the morally purer, the most conscious of national interest", can represent best the community and serve the less gifted in what Bardèche calls a new " feudal contract". Another influence on contemporary far-right thought has been the Traditionalist School , which included Julius Evola , and has influenced Steve Bannon and Aleksandr Dugin , advisors to Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin as well as
33984-513: The country's fascists during the Second World War . The new NF initially excluded Tyndall and his GBM from joining, concerned that he might seek to mould it in a specifically neo-Nazi direction, although they soon agreed to allow both him and other GBM members to join on probation. On entering, the former GBM soon became the most influential faction within the NF, with many of its members rapidly rising to positions of influence. Tyndall became
34220-484: The cultural incompatibility of different racial groups. This emphasis on culture allowed it to foreground Islamophobia ; following the September 11 attacks in 2001, it launched a "Campaign Against Islam". It stressed the claim that the BNP was " not a racist party" but an "organised response to anti-white racism". At the same time Griffin sought to reassure the party's base that these reforms were based on pragmatism and not
34456-429: The deportation of any migrants illegally in the country. Speaking on the BBC 's Andrew Marr Show in 2009, Griffin declared that, unlike Tyndall, he "does not want all-white UK" because "nobody out there wants it or would pay for it". My experience as a campaigner against the multi-racial idea in Britain and in favour of our country's centuries-old tradition of racial homogeneity has brought home to me beyond any doubt
34692-411: The disappearance of historic frames of reference (e.g. law and order , the family, the ethnic, linguistic and religious community and nation as well as the natural environment ) and a socioeconomic program associating corporatism , state control of certain sectors, agrarianism , and a varying degree of belief in the free play of socially Darwinistic market forces. Mudde then proposes a subdivision of
34928-544: The disproportionately high levels of funding being directed to the Asian-dominated Daneshouse ward. This breakthrough generated public anxieties about the party, with a poll finding that six in ten supported a ban on it. In the 2003 local elections , the BNP gained 13 additional councillors, including seven more in Burnley; the party received over 100,000 votes in this election. Concerned that much of its potential vote
35164-573: The early 1990s, the organization terrorized and killed black South Africans. Togo has been ruled by members of the Gnassingbé family and the far-right military dictatorship formerly known as the Rally of the Togolese People since 1969. Despite the legalisation of political parties in 1991 and the ratification of a democratic constitution in 1992, the regime continues to be regarded as oppressive. In 1993,
35400-611: The established mainstream parties. In turn, the BNP gained rapidly growing levels of support over the coming years. In July 2000, it came second in the council elections for the North End of the London Borough of Bexley , its best result since 1993. At the 2001 general election it gained 16% of the vote in one constituency and over 10% in two others. In the 2002 local elections the BNP gained four councillors, three of whom were in Burnley, where it had capitalised on white anger surrounding
35636-466: The establishment of the party's Ethnic Liaison Committee – which had one half-Turkish member (Lawrence Rustem) – as a move towards admitting non-whites into the party. He was also critical of Griffin's abandonment of the party's idea of compulsory removal of migrants and non-whites from the country, believing that if they stayed in a segregated system then Britain would resemble apartheid -era South Africa, which he did not think
35872-504: The fact that Jews are to be found at the forefront of opposition to British racial self-preservation. — Tyndall's belief that a Jewish conspiracy was behind multiracial Britain Under Tyndall's leadership, the BNP was openly anti-Semitic . From A. K. Chesterton , Tyndall had inherited a belief that there was a global conspiracy of Jews bent on world domination, viewing the Protocols of
36108-485: The fact that his father had been raised in a Unionist family, he eventually adopted internationalist views. He claimed that his mother exhibited "a kind of basic British patriotism" and he also claimed that it was she who shaped his early political views. His upbringing was emotionally stable and materially secure. Tyndall studied at the Beckenham and Penge Grammar School in west Kent , where he attained three O-levels ,
36344-421: The far right can be viewed as a combination of four broadly defined concepts, namely exclusivism (e.g. racism , xenophobia , ethnocentrism , ethnopluralism , chauvinism , including welfare chauvinism ), anti-democratic and non-individualist traits (e.g. cult of personality , hierarchism , monism , populism , anti-particracy , an organicist view of the state), a traditionalist value system lamenting
36580-430: The far right's support. The 1933 publication The Mass Psychology of Fascism by Wilhelm Reich argued the theory that fascists came to power in Germany as a result of sexual repression . For some far-right parties in Western Europe, the issue of immigration has become the dominant issue among them, so much so that some scholars refer to these parties as "anti-immigrant" parties. The French Revolution in 1789 created
36816-409: The far right, as they have historically favored a social Darwinistic or elitist hierarchy based on the belief in the legitimacy of the rule of a supposed superior minority over the inferior masses. Regarding the socio-cultural dimension of nationality, culture and migration, one far-right position is the view that certain ethnic, racial or religious groups should stay separate, based on the belief that
37052-475: The far right. The latter began to develop a "nationalist mysticism" entirely different from that on the left, and antisemitism turned into a credo of the far right, marking a break from the traditional economic "anti-Judaism" defended by parts of the far left, in favour of a racial and pseudo-scientific notion of alterity . Various nationalist leagues began to form across Europe like the Pan-German League or
37288-480: The far-right appeals to those who believe in maintaining strict cultural and ethnic divisions and a return to traditional social hierarchies and values. In practice, far-right movements differ widely by region and historical context. In Western Europe, they have often focused on anti-immigration and anti-globalism , while in Eastern Europe, strong anti-communist rhetoric is more common. The United States has seen
37524-474: The far-right nebula into moderate and radical leanings, according to their degree of exclusionism and essentialism . The Encyclopedia of Politics: The Left and the Right states that far-right politics include "persons or groups who hold extreme nationalist, xenophobic, homophobic, racist, religious fundamentalist, or other reactionary views." While the term far right is typically applied to fascists and neo-Nazis , it has also been used to refer to those to
37760-558: The far-right worldview is the notion of societal purity, often invoking ideas of a homogeneous "national" or "ethnic" community. This view generally promotes organicism , which perceives society as a unified, natural entity under threat from diversity or modern pluralism . Far-right movements frequently target perceived threats to their idealized community, whether ethnic, religious, or cultural, leading to anti-immigrant sentiments , welfare chauvinism , and, in extreme cases, political violence or oppression. According to political theorists,
37996-451: The former SS officer Fred Borth. Jordan had been courting the French socialite Françoise Dior , but while he had been imprisoned, she entered a relationship with Tyndall and they were engaged to be married. On Jordan's release, Dior left Tyndall and instead married Jordan in October 1963. This contributed to a growing personal feud between the two men, with Jordan accusing Tyndall and Webster of making obscene phone calls to Dior. Tyndall
38232-439: The historian Richard Thurlow, the NLP promoted an "English" variant of Nazism and was more pronounced in its "explicit racism" than the LEL had been, focusing less on bemoaning the decline of the British Empire and more on criticising the arrival of non-white immigrants from former British colonies. The NLP began co-operating with another extreme-right group, the White Defence League , which had been established by Colin Jordan ,
38468-433: The idea of metapolitics . The apocalyptic strain of thought begins in Oswald Spengler 's The Decline of the West and is shared by Julius Evola and Alain de Benoist . It continues in The Death of the West by Pat Buchanan as well as in fears over Islamization of Europe . Ernst Jünger was concerned about rootless cosmopolitan elites while de Benoist and Buchanan oppose the managerial state and Curtis Yarvin
38704-406: The idea that "the working men [had] no country." The main reason for that ideological confusion can be found in the consequences of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, which according to Swiss historian Philippe Burrin had completely redesigned the political landscape in Europe by diffusing the idea of an anti-individualistic concept of "national unity" rising above the right and left division. As
38940-587: The idea that superior persons should dominate society while undesirable elements should be purged, which in extreme cases has resulted in genocides . Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform in London, distinguishes between fascism and right-wing nationalist parties which are often described as far right such as the National Front in France. Mudde notes that the most successful European far-right parties in 2019 were "former mainstream right-wing parties that have turned into populist radical right ones." According to historian Mark Sedgwick , "[t]here
39176-436: The increased anti-fascist campaigning of the previous few years, or because the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher had adopted an increasingly tough stance on immigration which attracted many of the votes that had previously gone to the NF. NF membership had also declined and by 1979 had fallen to approximately 5,000. Tyndall nevertheless refused to dilute or moderate his party's policies, stating that to do so would be
39412-399: The indigenous peoples of these islands in the North Atlantic which have been our homeland for a millennia. — The BNP, 2005 The BNP adheres to biological racist ideas, displaying an obsession with the perceived differences of racial groups. Both Tyndall and Griffin believed that there was a biologically distinct white-skinned "British race" which was one branch of a wider Nordic race ,
39648-532: The interests of one's own group should be prioritized. In western Europe, far right parties have been associated with anti-immigrant policies, as well as opposition to globalism and European integration . They often make nationalist and xenophobic appeals which make allusions to ethnic nationalism rather than civic nationalism (or liberal nationalism). Some have at their core illiberal policies such as removing checks on executive authority , and protections for minorities from majority ( multipluralism ). In
39884-422: The interior. Tyndall tried to convince the WUNS to accept his GBM as its British representative, but Rockwell—concerned not to encourage schismatic dissenters in his own American Nazi Party —sided with Jordan and the NSM. Tyndall then established contact with Rockwell's main rival in the American neo-Nazi scene, the National States' Rights Party . Tyndall formed a publishing company, Albion Press, and launched
40120-441: The internal Reform Group, the other left the BNP to form the British Freedom Party . By 2010, there was discontent among the party's grassroots, a result of the change to its white-only membership policy and rumours of financial corruption among its leadership. Some defected to the National Front or left to form parties like the Britannica Party . Anti-fascist groups like Hope not Hate had campaigned extensively in Barking to stop
40356-411: The issue as being one of credibility among the electorate, declaring that "we should be looking for ways to overcome our present image of weakness and smallness". He ignored the significant impact that had been achieved by the French NF through moderating its policies and thereby gaining greater respectability among the electorate. While Tyndall had sought to keep skinheads and football hooligans out of
40592-595: The judiciary; infringement of citizens' privacy rights; restrictions on freedoms of press , assembly , and movement; official corruption; discrimination and violence against women; child abuse, including female genital mutilation (FGM), and sexual exploitation of children; regional and ethnic discrimination; trafficking in persons, especially women and children; societal discrimination against persons with disabilities; official and societal discrimination against homosexual persons; societal discrimination against persons with HIV ; and forced labor, including by children." During
40828-418: The labels "fascist" and "Nazi", stating that it is neither. In its 1992 electoral manifesto, it said that "Fascism was Italian. Nazism was German. We are British. We will do things our own way; we will not copy foreigners". In 2009, Griffin that the term "fascism" was simply "a smear that comes from the far left"; he added that the term should be reserved for groups that engaged in "political violence" and desired
41064-400: The latter part of the 1970s saw the party's prospects decline. Following an argument with long-term comrade Martin Webster , Tyndall resigned from the party in 1980 and formed his short-lived New National Front (NNF). In 1982, he merged the NNF into his own newly formed British National Party (BNP). Under Tyndall, the BNP established itself as the UK's most prominent extreme-right group during
41300-431: The mainstream media, and most politicians, and BNP members were banned from various professions. The British National Party (BNP) was founded by the extreme-right political activist John Tyndall . Tyndall had been involved in neo-Nazi groups since the late 1950s before leading the far-right National Front (NF) throughout most of the 1970s. Following an argument with senior party member Martin Webster , he resigned from
41536-399: The material that Tyndall wrote for the journal was less openly neo-Nazi and extreme than his previous writings, something which may have resulted from caution surrounding the Race Relations Act 1965 . The GBM engaged in several stunts to raise publicity; in 1964 for instance Webster assaulted the Kenyan leader Jomo Kenyatta outside his London hotel while Tyndall hurled insults at him through
41772-441: The mid-1960s, Tyndall was replacing his overt references to Nazism with appeals to British nationalism . In 1967, Tyndall joined Chesterton's newly founded National Front (NF) and became its leader in 1972, overseeing growing membership and electoral growth. His leadership was threatened by various factions within the party which eventually led to his losing his position as leader in 1974. He resumed this position in 1975, although
42008-466: The modern ambiguities in the definition of far-right politics lie in the fact that the concept is generally used by political adversaries to "disqualify and stigmatize all forms of partisan nationalism by reducing them to the historical experiments of Italian Fascism [and] German National Socialism ." Mudde agrees and notes that "the term is not only used for scientific purposes but also for political purposes. Several authors define right-wing extremism as
42244-502: The most common term is " radical right ", which has a broader meaning than the European radical right . Mudde defines the American radical right as an "old school of nativism, populism, and hostility to central government [which] was said to have developed into the post-World War II combination of ultranationalism and anti-communism, Christian fundamentalism, militaristic orientation, and anti-alien sentiment." Jodi Dean argues that "the rise of far-right anti-communism in many parts of
42480-585: The movement going, but with almost imperceptible growth since its 1982 foundation. — Senior BNP member John Bean In the early 1990s, a "moderniser" faction emerged within the party, favouring a more electorally palatable strategy and an emphasis on building grassroots support to win local elections. It was impressed by the electoral gains made by a number of extreme-right parties in continental Europe — such as Jörg Haider 's Austrian Freedom Party and Jean-Marie Le Pen 's National Front — which had been achieved by both switching focus from biological racism to
42716-410: The non-white population of Britain to either be reduced in size or removed from the country altogether. Under Tyndall's leadership, it promoted the compulsory removal of non-whites from the UK, stating that under a BNP government they would be "repatriated" to their countries of origin. In the early 1990s it produced stickers with the slogan "Our Final Solution: Repatriation". Tyndall understood this to be
42952-492: The party described it as the "party of organized violence". The new government promptly reversed the democratic reforms initiated during the Guatemalan Revolution and the agrarian reform program ( Decree 900 ) that was the main project of president Jacobo Arbenz Guzman and which directly impacted the interests of both the United Fruit Company and the Guatemalan landowners. John Tyndall (politician) John Hutchyns Tyndall (14 July 1934 – 19 July 2005)
43188-452: The party had been used instead by Tyndall for personal expenses. The modernisers challenged his control of the party, resulting in its first ever leadership election, held in October 1999. Tyndall was challenged by Nick Griffin , who offered an improved administration, financial transparency and greater support for local branches. 80% of party members voted, with two-thirds backing Griffin; Tyndall had secured only 411 votes, representing 30% of
43424-406: The party logo. Griffin believed that Peak Oil and a growth in Third World migrants arriving in Britain would result in a BNP government coming to power by 2040. The close of the twentieth century produced more favourable conditions for the extreme-right in Britain as a result of increased public concerns about immigration and established Muslim communities coupled with growing dissatisfaction with
43660-414: The party made appeals to the idea of Britain and Britishness in a manner not dissimilar to mainstream political parties. In this material it has also made prominent use of the Union flag and the colours red, white, and blue. Roger Griffin noted that the terms "Britain" and "England" appear "confusingly interchangeable" in BNP literature, while Copsey has pointed out that the BNP's form of British nationalism
43896-477: The party was disbanded. Since 2022, he is a member of the Liberal Party . Bolsonaro has been widely described by numerous media organizations as far right. In Guatemala, the far-right government of Carlos Castillo Armas utilized death squads after coming to power in the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état . Along with other far-right extremists, Castillo Armas started the National Liberation Movement ( Movimiento de Liberación Nacional , or MLN). The founders of
44132-467: The party's directorate resigned in protest at Tyndall's links to neo-Nazi groups in Germany. This allowed Tyndall to take control as party chairman in 1972. According to Thurlow, under Tyndall the NF represented "an attempt to portray the essentials of Nazi ideology in more rational language and seemingly reasonable arguments", functioning as an attempt to "convert racial populists" angry about immigration "into fascists". Capitalising on anger surrounding
44368-445: The party's name, descriptions or emblems on the ballot paper at elections." A month later, the party was re-registered. There were ten BNP candidates at the general election in 2017 . At the 2018 local elections , the party's last remaining councillor— Brian Parker of Pendle —decided not to stand for re-election, leaving the party without representation at any level of UK government. The BNP fielded only one candidate, David Furness, at
44604-518: The party's number of councillors dropped from over fifty to 28. Griffin described the results as "disastrous". In a 2011 leadership election , Griffin secured a narrow victory, beating Brons by nine votes of a total of 2,316 votes cast. In October 2012, Brons left the party, leaving Griffin as its sole MEP. In the 2012 local elections , the party lost all of its seats and saw its vote share fall dramatically; whereas it gained over 240,000 votes in 2008, this had fallen to under 26,000 by 2012. Commenting on
44840-461: The party's vice chairman and remained loyal to Chesterton, who was the party's first chairman, for instance by supporting him when several members of the party directorate rebelled against his leadership in 1970. Although remaining Tyndall's private property, Spearhead became the de facto monthly magazine of the NF. Chesterton resigned as chairman in 1970 and was replaced by the Powellite John O'Brien . In 1972, O'Brien and eight other members of
45076-406: The party, curtailing the distribution of Spearhead among BNP members and instead emphasising his own magazine, Identity , which was established in January 2000. To combat the influence of declining sales, Tyndall established the group 'Friends of Spearhead' , whose members were asked to contribute £ 10 a month. By 2000, Tyndall was beginning to agitate against Griffin's leadership, criticising
45312-523: The party. Tyndall and Jordan then regrouped around twenty members of Spearhead and formed the National Socialist Movement (NSM) on 20 April 1962, a date symbolically chosen as Hitler's birthday. They celebrated the event with a cake decorated with a Nazi swastika . According to the historian Richard Thurlow, the NSM was "the most blatant Nazi" group active in Britain during the mid-20th century. The NSM gained few members; an estimate in August 1962 suggested that it had only thirty to fifty. The NSM gained
45548-572: The perceived cultural incompatibility of different racial groups and by replacing anti-democratic platforms with populist ones. The modernisers called for community campaigns among the white working-class populations of London's East End , and Northern England. While the modernisers gained some concessions from the party's hard-liners, Tyndall opposed many of their ideas and sought to stem their growing influence. In his view, "we should not be looking for ways of applying ideological cosmetic surgery to ourselves in order to make our features more appealing to
45784-400: The perceived cultural incompatibility of different racial groups. Tyndall opposed many of the modernisers' ideas and sought to stem their growing influence in the party, In the 1992 general election , the party stood 13 candidates. Tyndall stood in Bow and Poplar , gaining 3% of the vote. In a council by-election in September 1993, the BNP gained one council seat—won by Derek Beackon in
46020-503: The political scientist Matthew Goodwin used it, the term referred to "a particular form of political ideology that is defined by two anti-constitutional and anti-democratic elements: first, right-wing extremists are extremist because they reject or undermine the values, procedures and institutions of the democratic constitutional state; and second they are right-wing because they reject the principle of fundamental human equality". Various political scientists and historians have described
46256-414: The position of chairman. I do not believe that the survival of the white man will be found through the crest of political respectability because I believe that respectability today means one thing, it means your preparedness to be a lackey of the establishment ... I don't want respectability if that is what respectability means, preparedness to surrender my own race, to hell with respectability if that
46492-405: The price of membership by 50%. He also promised that he would make the BNP the largest extreme-right group in the UK and that he would establish a professional headquarters for the party. This was achieved in 1989, as a party headquarters was opened in Welling , Southeast London , an area chosen because it was a recipient of significant ' white flight ' from inner London. That year also witnessed
46728-436: The programmes of parties, their organization and the opportunity structures within individual political systems. The most common demand-side theories are the social breakdown thesis , the relative deprivation thesis , the modernization losers thesis and the ethnic competition thesis . The rise of far-right parties has also been viewed as a rejection of post-materialist values on the part of some voters. This theory which
46964-401: The public". After the BNP's poor performance at the 1997 general election, opposition to Tyndall's leadership grew. The modernisers called the party's first leadership election, and in October 1999 Tyndall was ousted when two-thirds of those voting backed Nick Griffin , who offered an improved administration, financial transparency, and greater support for local branches. Often characterised as
47200-401: The recent growth of the centrist Social Democratic Party . The historian Nigel Copsey has noted that while the BNP under Tyndall could be described as "Neo-Nazi", it was not "crudely mimetic" of the original German Nazism. Its stated policy objectives were identical to those that the NF had had under Tyndall's leadership in the 1970s. But its constitution was very different. Whereas the NF had
47436-612: The result, the political scientist Matthew Goodwin noted: "Put simply, the BNP's electoral challenge is over." In the 2012 London mayoral election , the BNP candidate came seventh, with 1.3% of first-preference votes, its poorest showing in the London mayoral contest. The 2012 election results established that the BNP's steady growth had ended. In the 2013 local elections , the BNP fielded 99 candidates but failed to win any council seats, leaving it with only two. In June 2013, Griffin visited Syria along with members of Hungarian far-right party Jobbik to meet with government officials, including
47672-569: The right of mainstream right-wing politics . According to political scientist Lubomír Kopeček, "[t]he best working definition of the contemporary far right may be the four-element combination of nationalism, xenophobia, law and order, and welfare chauvinism proposed for the Western European environment by Cas Mudde." Relying on those concepts, far-right politics includes yet is not limited to aspects of authoritarianism , anti-communism and nativism . Claims that superior people should have greater rights than inferior people are often associated with
47908-506: The sake of their expediency." In Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right , Cynthia Miller-Idriss examines the far-right as a global movement and representing a cluster of overlapping " antidemocratic , antiegalitarian, white supremacist " beliefs that are "embedded in solutions like authoritarianism , ethnic cleansing or ethnic migration, and the establishment of separate ethno-states or enclaves along racial and ethnic lines". According to Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg ,
48144-459: The terms "right-wing extremism", " right-wing populism ", "national populism", or "neo-populism" were often used as synonyms by scholars (or, nonetheless, terms with "striking similarities"), except notably among a few authors studying the extremist-theoretical tradition. Italian philosopher and political scientist Norberto Bobbio argues that attitudes towards equality are primarily what distinguish left-wing politics from right-wing politics on
48380-412: The total membership. Tyndall accepted his defeat with equanimity and stood down as chairman. He stated that he would become "an ordinary member", telling his supporters that "we have all got to pull together in the greater cause of race and nation". Tyndall remained a member of the BNP and continued to support it in the pages of Spearhead . But Griffin sought to restrain Tyndall's ongoing influence in
48616-561: The white British and the broader Nordic race to be superior to other races; under his leadership, the BNP promoted pseudoscientific claims in support of white supremacy . Following Griffin's ascendency to power in the party, it officially repudiated racial supremacism and insisted that no racial group was superior or inferior to another. Instead it foregrounded an " ethno-pluralist " racial separatism, claiming that different racial groups had to be kept separate and distinct for their own preservation, maintaining that global ethno-cultural diversity
48852-470: The white British. It condemns miscegenation and "race mixing", stating that this is a threat to the British race. Tyndall said that he "felt deeply sorry for the child of a mixed marriage" but had "no sympathy whatsoever for the parents". Griffin similarly stated that mixed-race children were "the most tragic victims of enforced multi-racism", and that the party would not "accept miscegenation as moral or normal ... we never will". In its 1983 election manifesto,
49088-666: The words of Fritz Stern , the deep "cultural despair" of thinkers feeling uprooted within the rationalism and scientism of the modern world. It was characterized by a rejection of the established social order, with revolutionary tendencies and anti-capitalist stances, a populist and plebiscitary dimension, the advocacy of violence as a means of action and a call for individual and collective palingenesis ("regeneration, rebirth"). The key thinkers of contemporary far-right politics are claimed by Mark Sedgwick to share four key elements, namely apocalyptism , fear of global elites , belief in Carl Schmitt 's friend–enemy distinction and
49324-441: The world through both communism and international capitalism . Under Griffin, the party's focus switched from anti-semitism towards Islamophobia . It promotes economic protectionism , Euroscepticism , and a transformation away from liberal democracy , while its social policies oppose feminism , LGBT rights , and societal permissiveness . Operating around a highly centralised structure that gave its chair near total control,
49560-480: The world" should be interpreted "as a politics of fear, which utilizes the disaffection and anger generated by capitalism. [...] Partisans of far right-wing organizations, in turn, use anti-communism to challenge every political current which is not embedded in a clearly exposed nationalist and racist agenda. For them, both the USSR and the European Union, leftist liberals, ecologists, and supranational corporations – all of these may be called 'communist' for
49796-607: Was "scarcely any difference [between the BNP and NF] in ideology or policy save in the minutest detail", and most of the BNP's leading activists had formerly been senior NF figures. Under Tyndall's leadership the party was neo-Nazi in orientation and engaged in nostalgia for Nazi Germany . It adopted the NF's tactic of holding street marches and rallies, believing that these boosted morale and attracted new recruits. Their first march took place in London on St. George's Day 1982. These marches often involved clashes with anti-fascist protesters and resulted in multiple arrests, helping to cement
50032-413: Was Griffin, who promoted them in his 1997 pamphlet, Who are the Mind Benders? Griffin also engaged in Holocaust denial, publishing articles promoting such ideas in The Rune , a magazine produced by the Croydon BNP. In 1998, these articles resulted in Griffin being convicted of inciting racial hatred . Far-right politics Far-right politics , often termed right-wing extremism , encompasses
50268-508: Was a British neo-fascist political activist. A leading member of various small neo-Nazi groups during the late 1950s and 1960s, he was chairman of the National Front (NF) from 1972 to 1974 and again from 1975 to 1980, and then chairman of the British National Party (BNP) from 1982 to 1999. He unsuccessfully stood for election to the House of Commons and European Parliament on several occasions. Born in Devon and educated in Kent , Tyndall undertook national service prior to embracing
50504-409: Was able to air its first party political broadcast , it averaged a vote share of 0.06% in the seats it contested. After the Representation of the People Act 1985 raised the electoral deposit to £500, the BNP adopted a policy of "very limited involvement" in elections. It abstained in the 1987 general election , and stood only 13 candidates in the 1992 general election . In a 1993 local by-election
50740-447: Was also angry at what he perceived as Jordan's deviation from orthodox Nazi thought and by the fact that Jordan's relationship with Dior had been attracting negative sensationalist press attention for the NSM. In the spring of 1964 Tyndall and Webster tried to oust Jordan as the head of the NSM but failed. In later years Tyndall expressed the view that his involvement in the NSM had been a "profound mistake", arguing that then he "still had
50976-486: Was an attempt to hide the BNP's core ideology behind more electorally palatable policies. Like the National Front, the BNP's private discourse differed from its public one, with Griffin stating that "Of course we must teach the truth to the hardcore... [but] when it comes to influencing the public, forget about racial differences, genetics, Zionism, historical revisionism and so on... we must at all times present them with an image of moderate reasonableness". The BNP has eschewed
51212-410: Was anything dishonourable about holding them." As leader of the NF he continued to openly approve of Hitler's social and economic programme and well as his policies of German territorial expansion. In his 1988 autobiography The Eleventh Hour , he stated that while he thought that "many of [Hitler's] intentions were good ones and many of his achievements admirable", he did not think "that it is right for
51448-481: Was attended by several notable American white supremacists including Jared Taylor and Brandon Russell . Morocco saw a spread of ultranationalism , antifeminism , and opposition to immigration themes in digital spaces. A number of far-right extremist and paramilitary groups carried out the Rwandan genocide under the racial supremacist ideology of Hutu Power , developed by journalist and Hutu supremacist Hassan Ngeze . On 5 July 1975, exactly two years after
51684-504: Was based on the belief that hierarchy and rootedness are more important than equality and liberty, with the latter two being dehumanizing. In the French public debate following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, far right was used to describe the strongest opponents of the far left , those who supported the events occurring in Russia. A number of thinkers on the far right nonetheless claimed an influence from an anti-Marxist and anti-egalitarian interpretation of socialism , based on
51920-444: Was contacted by far-right activist Ray Hill , who had become an informant for the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight . Hill suggested that Tyndall establish a new political party through which he could unite many smaller extreme-right groups. While Hill's real intention had been to cause a further schism among the British far-right and thus weaken it, Tyndall deemed his suggestion to be a good idea. Tyndall made suggestions of unity to
52156-558: Was deemed more electorally palatable. When Griffin took control of the party, the policy of voluntary repatriation was officially adopted, with the party suggesting that this could be financed through the use of the UK's pre-existing foreign aid budget . It stated that any non-whites who refused to leave would be stripped of their British citizenship and categorised as "permanent guests", while continuing to be offered incentives to emigrate. Griffin's BNP also stressed its support for an immediate halt to non-white immigration into Britain and for
52392-567: Was filmed by undercover investigator Jason Gwynne and included in a 2004 BBC documentary, The Secret Agent . On 12 December 2004, these comments resulted in Tyndall being arrested on suspicion of incitement to racial hatred. That month, Tyndall was again expelled from the BNP, this time permanently. The police then charged him, although he was granted unconditional bail in April 2005. Tyndall died of heart failure at his flat—52 Westbourne Villas in Hove—on 19 July 2005. He had been due to stand trial at Leeds Magistrates' Court two days later. He
52628-403: Was fully established before the outbreak of World War II . Following World War II, other far-right organizations attempted to establish themselves, such as the European organizations of Nouvel Ordre Européen , European Social Movement and Circulo Español de Amigos de Europa or the further-reaching World Union of National Socialists and the League for Pan-Nordic Friendship . Beginning in
52864-462: Was given some of their literature. He enjoyed Chesterton's writings and concurred with his conspiracy theory that Jewish people had been plotting to bring down the British Empire. Tyndall began associating with other young men who had joined the LEL. At a February 1957 by-election in Lewisham North , Tyndall aided the LEL campaign, during which he met another party member, John Bean , an industrial chemist. Both Tyndall and Bean were frustrated by
53100-446: Was going to the UK Independence Party (UKIP), in 2003 the BNP offered UKIP an electoral pact but was rebuffed. Griffin then accused UKIP of being a Labour Party scheme to steal the BNP's votes. It invested much in the campaign for the 2004 European Parliament election , at which it received 800,000 votes but failed to secure a parliamentary seat. In the 2004 local elections , it secured four more seats, including three in Epping . For
53336-413: Was in accordance with a wider trend among Britain's far-right to avoid the term "British fascism", with its electorally unpalatable connotations and instead refer to "British nationalism" in its public appeals. Sykes stated that Tyndall split with Jordan because—in contrast to the latter's neo-Nazi focus on pan-'Aryan' unity—he "thought more traditionally in terms of British nationalism, the British race and
53572-431: Was led by the prominent British fascist Oswald Mosley , disagreeing with its promotion of the political union of Britain with continental Europe . Instead, he was attracted to the League of Empire Loyalists (LEL) – a right-wing group founded by Arthur Chesterton – after seeing coverage of one of their demonstrations on television. He visited their basement office in Westminster , where he
53808-488: Was one of decadence". During that decade he read Mein Kampf , the autobiography and political manifesto of the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler , growing sympathetic to Hitler's political beliefs and Nazism . In particular, Tyndall approved of "the descriptions of the workings of certain Jewish forces in Germany, which seemed uncannily similar to what I had observed of the same kinds of forces in Britain." He concluded that Britain's decision to go to war against Nazi Germany
54044-434: Was preferable. His main criticisms were focused not on the party's changing direction, but on Griffin's character itself, portraying him as unscrupulous and self-centred. Tyndall was determined to retake control of the party, and in this was supported by a group of party hardliners. During a proposed leadership challenge, Tyndall put forward his name, although withdrew it following the 2001 general election when Griffin led
54280-425: Was sentenced to six weeks imprisonment, reduced to a fine on appeal. The police then raided the group's London headquarters, after which its leading members were brought to trial at the Old Bailey , where they were found guilty of establishing a paramilitary group in contravention of Section Two of the Public Order Act 1936 . Tyndall received a six-month prison sentence, while Jordan received nine months. Although
54516-450: Was something to be protected. This switch in focus owed much to the discourse of the French Nouvelle Droite movement which had emerged within France's extreme-right during the 1960s. At the same time the BNP switched focus from openly promoting biological racism to stressing what it perceived as the cultural incompatibility of racial groups . It placed great focus on opposing what it referred to as " multiculturalism ", characterising this as
54752-451: Was survived by his wife and his daughter, Marina. Deep fascist roots, including indigenous [i.e. British] ones, had nourished Tyndall's political psyche. His political career, spanning over 40 years, saw him pass through a labyrinthine array of right-extreme organisations. Moreover, regardless of some cosmetic changes, his ideology had remained the same from start to finish. — Historian Nigel Copsey, 2008 Tyndall has been described as
54988-407: Was to be the leader of this new party, with the majority of its members coming from the NNF, although others were defectors from the NF, British Movement , British Democratic Party and Nationalist Party . The party was formally launched at a press conference held in a Victoria hotel on 7 April 1982. At the conference, Tyndall described the BNP as the "SDP of the far right ", thereby referencing
55224-423: Was ultimately the result of a conspiracy which was primarily headed by Jews , a conspiracy which he thought had also masterminded non-white immigration to Britain after the war. Around 1957–58, Tyndall decided to commit himself to his political cause full-time, which he was able to do because his job as a salesman allowed him to keep flexible working hours. He decided against joining the Union Movement which
55460-399: Was upset with Webster's attempts to encourage more skinheads and football hooligans to join the party. Tyndall in particular began criticizing the fact that Webster was a homosexual, emphasising allegations that Webster had been making sexual advances toward young men in the party. More widely, he complained about a "homosexual network" among leading NF members. In October 1979, he called
55696-409: Was widened to mean any civilian bands killing Tutsi. Other far-right groups and paramilitaries involved included the anti-democratic segregationist Coalition for the Defence of the Republic (CDR), which called for complete segregation of Hutus from Tutsis. The CDR had a paramilitary wing known as the Impuzamugambi . Together with the Interahamwe militia, the Impuzamugambi played a central role in
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