Latest news with #Neo-Nazis
Scottish Sun
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Scottish Sun
Calls for new Labour mayor to be sacked after photo of him dressed as Adolf Hitler at charity event resurfaces
NAZI BLUNDER Calls for new Labour mayor to be sacked after photo of him dressed as Adolf Hitler at charity event resurfaces Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) A NEW Labour mayor who dressed as Adolf Hitler in a shocking resurfaced picture is facing calls to be sacked after being labelled a 'bully' and 'not fit for public office'. Seve Gomez-Aspron MBE was installed into the ambassadorial role at St Helens Borough Council in Merseyside this month - with multiple fellow councillors reportedly storming out in protest. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 5 Seve Gomez-Aspron dressed as Adolf Hitler during a 2009 charity event 5 Gomez-Aspron was sworn in as mayor of St Helens this month Credit: St Platt 5 Calls have been made for him to be removed from the ambassadorial role A string of controversies have marred his time as an elected official, including a photo of him dressed up as the Nazi leader surfacing in 2019, resulting in a council inquiry - though no action was taken by his party. He has also been brought before the council's standards committee in the past over complaints about remarks he made on social media. While cops previously attended the town hall itself to serve Gomez-Aspron with a Police Information Notice in relation to harassment claims made by a member of the public. However, it must be noted, receiving such a notice does not mean an acceptance of wrongdoing and it does not appear any further action was taken. READ MORE NEWS TERROR NAZIS GUILTY Neo-Nazis who hoarded weapons & planned mosque terror attack face jail One councillor - who wished to remain anonymous - told The Sun: 'He is reviled throughout St Helens for his inappropriate behaviour and attitude. 'Many feel that he is not fit for public office, never mind the prestigious role as mayor.' A reported 11 councillors walked out in protest during the swearing in ceremony on May 14. The Hitler photo has been circulating again online since Gomez-Aspron's induction as mayor. And a parliamentary petition has been launched - which currently has around 1,000 signatures - calling for him to be removed. It describes the decision to make Gomez-Aspron mayor an 'outrage' and labels him a 'bully'. Mystery of Hitler's secret tunnel labyrinth in Poland where 5,000 workers died… and no one knows why it was built It adds: 'His poor conduct as a councillor is disgraceful and how he has gotten away with his behaviour for so long is hard to contemplate and now he has been elected mayor is just plain and simply disgusting.' Gomez-Aspron - who once scooped £100,000 with a pal on TV gameshow Million Pound Drop - last year apologised after comments he made during a full council meeting were reported to the authority's Monitoring Officer. He described a fellow councillor's intention to vote against a council tax rise as having 'diatribe' reasoning and said he has 'not a clue what he is talking about'. In the row, Gomez-Aspron described two independent councillors as the 'Earlestown Brain Trust', and later said that 'it was wrong to imply there was a brain'. The council subsequently confirmed the complaint was upheld and resolved with an 'alternative resolution', with Gomez-Aspron going on to apologise. The council was also forced to apologise in 2015 after Gomez-Aspron allegedly used a euphemism for a derogatory word when speaking to a constituent on Facebook. Gomez-Aspron ended a conversation with a woman on the social network website by writing 'See you next Tuesday'. But, the expression was reportedly abbreviated into text speak, using 'C' and 'U' for the first two words and a capital 'N' at the beginning of the word 'next'. St Helens Council's Standards Committee was told the expression is widely known to be a euphemism for a derogatory four-letter word. Gomez-Aspron denied he knew the expression could be offensive. The councillor was also previously censured by the authority and it was recommended he be removed from its personnel appeals committee, and replaced as armed forces champion, in relation to his alleged comments on social media. In 2017 the council's standards committee found 12 complaints made by residents were in breach of the council's code of conduct in full or in part. A further complaint saw a resident allege Gomez-Aspron had thrown eggs at his house, though a report stated this could not be proven. 'I have matured and learnt' The controversial Hitler snap was taken in 2009 during a fundraiser dinner for a children's charity, with Gomez-Aspron - not then a member of Labour or a councillor - later describing the outfit choice as a 'clumsy' decision. He claimed it was part of a satirical comedy routine he did alongside pals inspired by Mel Brooks' film The Producers - and that others dressed as German soldiers were cropped out of the photo that subsequently went viral. Speaking in 2019 he said: "I have matured and learnt a lot since then, and it goes without saying that I would not do this now. "I know how this could be seen as insensitive and how it could cause hurt and offence. "That was not at all my intention and I sincerely apologise." The photo had originally surfaced while Labour, then led by Jeremy Corbyn, was dogged in an anti-Semitism row. Gomez-Aspron did not wish to comment when approached by The Sun. We also contacted the Labour Party for comment. 5 Nazi leader Adolf Hitler is responsible for WW2 and the Holocaust, and considered one of the most evil people in history Credit: Getty Images
New European
23-05-2025
- Politics
- New European
The rise of British Nazis
There is no single reason someone becomes an extremist – inequality, lack of economic opportunity, the dizzying pace of technological change, social atomisation and fragmentation, and cultural ennui can all push people to seek belonging, meaning and purpose on the far right. But our knowledge of history and the language used by prominent people can also be an influence. Last Wednesday, three British neo-Nazis were convicted of planning to carry out a terrorist attack at mosques or synagogues as part of a 'race war' – yet more evidence of a growing UK terror threat from far right extremists. If you missed the story, it may have been because you were distracted by rising temperatures in the country's ongoing and increasingly feretic debate on migration. The verdicts came two days after prime minister Keir Starmer warned of Britain becoming 'an island of strangers' if our immigration system was not reformed. Home Office data shows a steady increase since 2020 of UK prisoners in serving sentences for right wing terrorism offences. In the last 12 months, Tobias Gleed received five-and-a-half years for possessing and distributing terrorist material, while Gabriel Budasz got an extended sentence of 12 years' imprisonment for extreme right wing material. Colin McNeil, who operated two websites that spread far-right propaganda and encouraged terrorism which featured documents, images and videos glorifying Hitler, the Nazis and Neo-Nazis, got seven years. His sites were cited as inspiration for Payton Gendron, who went on to murder 10 people in a mass shooting at a grocery shop in Buffalo in 2022. Suggested Reading London's visionaries and fascists Andy Owen The three individuals now waiting to receive substantial jail terms when they are sentenced in July – Brogan Stewart, Marco Pitzettu, and Christopher Ringrose – were part of an online group that 'idolised the Nazi regime'. They were convicted of planning an act of terrorism, as well as multiple terrorism and firearms offences (Ringrose was also charged with manufacturing a component for a 3D-printed firearm). The trio used a Telegram group called Einsatz 14, on which they discussed executing Rishi Sunak and torturing imams. The number 14 is used by white supremacists as a reference to the so-called '14 Words': 'We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.' This slogan was coined by David Lane, a member of a US white supremacist called The Order, who were responsible for the 1984 assassination of Jewish radio host Alan Berg in Denver, Colorado. Lane died in prison in 2007, but remains an important ideologue of contemporary white supremacy. Einsatz can be translated as 'mission' or 'commitment'; it is possible that the British group – none of whom exhibited notably high intelligence or deep historical knowledge at trial – used this German word and a significant right wing symbolic number without realising there was a real Einsatz 14. The Einsatzgruppen were paramilitary Nazi death squads used to conduct mass murder in Poland, before being employed in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in eastern Europe. Einsatzgruppe H was a special task force created as part of the deport the German suppression of the Slovak National Uprising. Einsatzkommando 14 or 'Einsatz 14', was one of its units which committed the two of the largest massacres in the history of Slovakia, at Kremnička and Nemecká, killing almost 2000 people connected to the uprising as well as Jews and Romani, including children. Despite attempts by far right parties in Slovenia to recast the uprising as a communist effort to suppress a nationalistic government, Einsatzkommando 14, were a murderous occupying force upholding a puppet regime and an active participant in genocide, who tried to hide their war crimes through the burning of corpses in lime kilns. Even decades after their unspeakable crimes, it is hard to understand the attraction that vile murderers like these have for extremists who like to believe they are in some way defending Britain. Arguably our finest hour was when Churchill refused to make peace with a seemingly unstoppable Germany, whose blitzkrieg across western Europe had taken it to within 33 miles of silver sea from the English coast. It is bizarrely ironic that so-called British patriots idolise the enemy who their own country was engaged with at this precarious point. As Britain stood defiantly alone, between 1940 and 1941, the government monitored the morale of the people and emphasised that the decision to fight on was one of principle, not just expediency. Britain was not only refusing subservience to a foreign power but was specifically refusing Nazi control. The government highlighted the national traits that made Britons the opposite of Nazis. It is sometimes easier to define yourself in opposition to what you are not. Britain fought to protect the ideal of national self-determination for all nations (as it does in support of Ukraine now). It fought as a democracy to protect democratic and communitarian values not just of our own country but for all Europe. Instead of sympathising with Hitler's ideas on racial purity, Britain fought as an asylum for oppressed racial minorities fleeing Europe across the channel by any means they could, and as a defender of equal civil rights for all citizens. The very notion of fascism on these shores seemed to have been vanquish forever. Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists had had their moment in the 1930s, when they claimed a membership of 50,000, held showy rallies and won the support of the Daily Mail's owner, Lord Rothermere. But Mosley was interned soon after the start of the war and even when released, his apologies for Hitler made him a marginal figure. By the time of Enoch Powell's notorious 'Rivers of Blood' speech in 1968, however, right wing politicians had begun to appeal to the spirit of 1940 in anti-immigrant campaigns. In the aftermath of Starmer's 'island of strangers' speech he was accused of using a near-echo of words used by Powell. Powell spoke of Britons who 'found themselves made strangers in their own country'. The main focus of his speech was the introduction of the Race Relations Act which he strongly objected to. The Act prohibited discrimination on the grounds of race in certain areas of British life, particularly housing. An uncomfortable and less reported fact is that three days after the speech, as the bill was being debated, 1,000 dockers marched on Westminster in support of Powell. Other mass demonstrations of working-class support, much of it from trade unionists followed. A Gallup poll showed that 74% of those asked agreed with his speech. Powell claimed his speech was 'going to go up 'fizz' like a rocket; but whereas all rockets fall to the earth, this one is going to stay up'. At a time of social and economic upheaval his words had an impact, stirring up an emotional response in many who had genuine grievances with how their society was changing. The National Front (NF) had been founded the year before in 1967. It reached the height of its electoral support during the mid-1970s, when it was briefly England's fourth-largest party in terms of vote share, peaking at the 1979 general election with 191,719 votes. It suffered a steep decline throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and saw a faction separate to form the British National Party (BNP), who were initially more focused on marches and rallies, creating the Combat 18 paramilitary—a coded reference to Hitler—to protect its events. Both the NF and the BNP experienced a small increase in popularity at the polls in the 2000s after the massive spike in immigration caused by the Labour government's decision to open the UK's labour market up to the ten new states that joined the EU in 2004. At the time, the UK needed immigration to support a booming economy and believed other member states would adopt similar policies (only Ireland and Sweden did). The increase in popularity was temporary as membership and vote share for both soon declined dramatically, with the BNP further splitting into groups including Britain First and National Action, and the English Defence League (EDL) replaced it as the foremost far right group. One of the main reasons for the drop in popularity was the rise of new, more socially palatable, anti-immigration parties. The increased immigration of the 2000s provided an opportunity for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) – previously a single-issue Eurosceptic party – to fuse the separate issues of EU membership and immigration. In 2006, Nigel Farage assumed leadership and the party adopted a wider policy platform capitalising on concerns about rising immigration, suggesting the results of government policy were instead results of EU membership. With UKIP gaining ground, David Cameron's government believed adopting a hardline anti-immigration stance would boost Conservative votes. By 2012, the then home secretary Theresa May believed that the way to cut numbers coming to the UK 'was to create here in Britain a really hostile environment for illegal migration'. The 'hostile environment' strategy came to encapsulate a broader attitude towards migrants in the UK, culminating with the Windrush scandal, when people, particularly those who had immigrated from Caribbean countries in response to UK's call for migrants, were wrongly detained, denied legal rights, threatened with deportation, and in at least 83 cases wrongly deported by the Home Office. The Conservatives seemingly learnt nothing from Windrush. In 2022, then home secretary, Suella Braverman used language commonly used by the far right when she spoke of, 'stopping the invasion on our southern coast.' In 1940 the Dunkirk evacuation was planned from Dover Castle, which then played a key role defending Britain from the Nazis. In 2019, the Neo-Nazis in Britain First started beach patrols in Kent and in 2020, blocked the port of Dover. Later, they launched their own patrol boat, promising to stand firm 'against the unprecedented invasion by economic migrants'. The hostile environment strategy did not prevent significant breakthroughs for UKIP at the 2013 local elections, 2014 European parliamentary elections, and 2015 general election. After the 2016 Brexit referendum, Farage stepped down as leader, later joining the Brexit Party and then Reform. The constant shifting to the right on immigration by the Conservatives did not save them and has legitimised language that would have previously been a sacking offensive (as it was for Powell). Data provided by advocacy group Hope not Hate has tracked a rise in anti-migrant demonstrations over the last few years, most notoriously in the aftermath of the 2024 Southport murders. These riots saw the continuation of a trend of attacking asylum centres, which can be traced back through Britain First's attacks in 2020 on an hotel housing asylum seekers in Bromsgrove, weeks after Farage filmed in the town, as part of his tour of alleged refugee shelters across the country. Farrage now claims to be the real opposition party to Starmer's Labour. Multiple candidates that Reform put forward for local elections in May posted hate, pushed far-right conspiracies and praised extremists, including posts promoting the conspiracy theory that Muslims are seeking to 'supplant the native population' in the UK. In recent days, Farage has been condemned after claiming some asylum seekers coming to the UK on small boats could be 'Iranian terrorists' and again referred to an 'invasion' of immigrants. The rocket Powell fired is still up. Immigration matters to people as much now as it did at Powell's time. The pros and cons need to be evaluated and debated, but we need to do so with responsible language and a historical appreciation of where certain ideologies can end up. The perceived endorsement of anti-immigrant sentiment by politicians – now including the prime minister – has real-world impact. It emboldens those such as Stewart, Pitzettu, and Ringrose instead of setting them up as those we can all define ourselves in opposition to. We should never forget our own history of such opposition to Nazism, an ideology that ends up with bodies in ovens. Our ancestors from throughout the Commonwealth gave their lives so it would remain a stranger to these islands. It is an ideology that is anti-British.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Yahoo
Washington state man locked up without bail for threatening to kill Sheriff Mike Chitwood
A Washington State man who doesn't approve of Sheriff Mike Chitwood's public shaming of children arrested for making threats against schools was arrested after sending a letter saying he was going to kill him, an arrest report shows. "Do you know what the Internet does with children you expose?" Matthew Moulton, 45, of College Place, Washington, wrote to the sheriff. "They put them in AI and make child porn with them." Moulton was extradited to Volusia County and booked into the jail on Wednesday on a charge of written threat to kill or do bodily injury. He was locked up on Thursday without bail. Chitwood was at the airport to greet Moulton on his arrival in Florida in handcuffs. According to investigators, Moulton sent the threatening letter to Chitwood on March 20. In his letter, Moulton also accused Chitwood of threatening his First Amendment rights. "I am going to have to threaten you with death. It's coming," Moulton told Chitwood in the letter. "There is nothing you can do to stop it." Moulton, who called himself a Patriot, included a YouTube link in the letter that showed a collection of video footage where Chitwood is shown taking a stand against Neo-Nazis, publicly talking about death threats he had received, and threatening parents with perp-walking their children for making bogus school shooting threats. Volusia County deputies, assisted by the College Place Police Department, located Moulton at his mother's home in Washington, the report said. This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Washington State man in jail for threatening to kill Volusia sheriff
Kiwiblog
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Kiwiblog
He should have apologised
The ABC reports: There are concerns that former Victorian Liberal leader John Pesutto will be bankrupted after being ordered to pay costs of $2.3 million after losing his defamation battle with Moira Deeming. … The Federal Court order handed down on Friday morning, raises the prospect Mr Pesutto will be bankrupted and forced out of state parliament. Ms Deeming successfully sued Mr Pesutto after he moved to expel her from the party room in 2023 after she attended an anti-trans-rights rally that was gatecrashed by Neo-Nazis. He threw his own MP to the wolves and smeared her because she attended a women's rights rally. A court found he had defamed her. He thought she would not dare fight back against the party leader, but he underestimated her. Maybe it was her Maori ancestry that made her so tenacious, but she fought and won.
Scottish Sun
14-05-2025
- Scottish Sun
Sick Neo-Nazis who stockpiled over 200 weapons & planned terror attack on mosque facing jail
Days before their arrest, in a group call, they discussed seeking 'human targets' near the mosque MOSQUE TERROR NAZIS GUILTY Sick Neo-Nazis who stockpiled over 200 weapons & planned terror attack on mosque facing jail THREE neo-Nazi extremists who stockpiled more than 200 weapons are facing substantial jail terms for planning a terror attack on a mosque. Christopher Ringrose, Marco Pitzettu and Brogan Stewart hoarded machetes, swords, crossbows and an illegal stun gun believing a race war was imminent. 5 Three neo-Nazi extremists who stockpiled more than 200 weapons are facing substantial jail terms for planning a terror attack Credit: PA 5 Brogan Stewart was discovered to have a Nazi flag hanging in his bedroom Credit: PA 5 Marco Pitzettu, a mechanic, shared videos of the 2019 mosque massacres in New Zealand Credit: PA Ringrose also 3D-printed most components of an assault rifle, which only needed a barrel and firing pin to complete. Their nine-week trial heard the group idolised Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, shared racist and homophobic slurs and glorified mass murderers. The three, who are understood to have never met in person before their arrests, discussed attacking the al-Amin Islamic educational centre in Leeds. They communicated on the encrypted app Telegram under the name Einsatz 14 — a reference to Nazi death squads. The men were arrested in February 2024 as the security services believed an attack was imminent after undercover cops infiltrated their group. Sheffield crown court heard jobless Stewart, 25, lived with his mum in Tingley, West Yorks, and had a Nazi flag hanging in his bedroom. He recruited Ringrose, 34, of Cannock, Staffs, and Pitzettu, 25, from Mickleover, Derby. Married Ringrose, boss at a car parts supplier, posted a photo of his one-year-old son in a Nazi skull mask. Pitzettu, a mechanic, shared videos of the 2019 mosque massacres in New Zealand. Days before their arrest, in a group call, they discussed seeking 'human targets' near the Islamic centre. Stewart told them to 'do whatever we do then back at mine for tea and medals and a debrief'. A jury yesterday rejected claims they were fantasists and found the three men guilty of multiple terrorism offences. They are in custody to be sentenced in July and judge Mrs Justice Cutts told them: 'You must all expect substantial custodial sentences.' Det Chief Supt James Dunkerley said the men had taken 'real world steps to plan and prepare for carrying out an attack on innocent citizens'. 5 Christopher Ringrose 3D-printed most components of an assault rifle Credit: PA
