Anti-migrant hatred goes mainstream
Refugees in Britain are living in fear after a spate of protests outside hotels the government is forcing asylum seekers to live in while their claims for asylum are processed by a racist Home Office. In Knowsley, Liverpool, one of these protests turned into a riot in which a police van was set on fire and an angry mob attempted to force their way into the hotel.
Protests against ‘migrant hotels’ are not just being organised by far-right groups. The protest in Knowsley was organised by locals with large Instagram accounts after accusations a school girl had been approached for sex by a migrant had gone viral. With the exception of one notable local fascist, James Costello, from the fascist party Patriotic Alternative (PA), the turnout was largely members of the local community unconnected to any far-right groups.
A Facebook group called ‘Hotels Housing Illegals’ in which such protests were being organized was shut down by Facebook after reaching 14,000 members. Anti-migrant hatred appears to have gone mainstream with a series of protests happening across Britain in February and set to take place in early March. This comes at a time when the Conservative government and Labour Party are stoking such hatred, cheered on by the media, by claiming they will stop migrants from crossing the English Channel ‘illegally’ in small boats.
Fascist party PA was falsely accused of organising the anti-migrant riot in Knowsley and has received substantial amounts of press attention since the riot. PA has attempted to capitalise on this by ramping up its street activity and calling a series of protests. PA leader Collett took responsibility for organising a protest in Skegness, which they claim was their largest protest ever. In Scotland, the PA region attempted to hijack a campaign by locals in Erskine on the outskirts of Glasgow. The West Midlands PA region was active in Cannock.
This has led to an increase in the calls for PA to be prescribed as a terrorist group and comes as PA’s national fitness officer Kristopher Kearney aka Charlie Big Potatoes pled guilty to two counts of disseminating terrorist documents, including the manifestos of several far-right killers. PA has attempted to downplay this. Kearney is awaiting sentencing.
A secretive organisation in the House of Lords called the New Issues Group (NIG) has been exposed by the anti-racist charity Hope Not Hate. For more than a decade, the NIG has been collaborating with far-right activists. The group includes former UKIP leader Malcolm Pearson and the Conservative former deputy speaker of the House of Lords, Baroness Cox.
Anglophone fascist alliances
New British fascist group Vanguard Britannia (VB) claimed to have ‘conducted Activism with [American fascist] Patriot Front Activists in London‘ in the middle of February. On their Telegram channel, VB posted photographs of both groups’ stickers on lamposts and a bollard in the centre of London and a picture of two pints. VB appears to be heavily influenced by Patriot Front.
In mid-February, PA leader Mark Collett had an American fascist called ‘James’ appear on his weekly live-stream as a representative of the White Papers Policy Institute (WPPI). The WPPI is publishing short notes on public policy on Telegram and a Substack page. It has recently published a series of posts reviewing the policies of PA and the National Justice Party (NJP) in the United States. During the stream, Collett revealed WPPI had been working with PA’s deputy leader Laura Melia. WPPI appears to be intending to become a transnational Anglophone fascist think tank and is already closely aligned with PA and NJP.
A week earlier, Collett’s live-stream guest was Joseph Jordan, aka Eric Striker, a founding member of the NJP and key member of The Right Stuff (TRS) podcasting network. The British podcast published by TRS, The Absolutely State of Britain (TASOB), was influential in establishing PA, and Collett was a frequent guest. Several leading figures in PA appeared on TASOB in the years it was being published, and it helped set the tone for PA’s anti-Semitism and extreme neo-Nazism. Kristopher Kearney was a host of TASOB before it stopped.
During the stream with Jordan, Collett claimed he had tried to speak at the NJP’s recent ‘mass meeting’ in Florida on 4 February 2023 but had been denied access to America. Collett claims he had flown to Mexico and spent a week trying to enter the USA from Tijuana.
At the start of February, Collett had American neo-Nazi Emily Youcis appear on the stream alongside PA’s deputy leader Melia. Youcis appeared on Collett’s stream in 2020. Towards the end of the month, Collett released a video on the Russian invasion of Ukraine titled: “UKRAINE – Jews Flee, Whites Die,” in which Collett accused the “Judeo-American state” of wanting to keep fighting “until the last white Ukrainian is dead.”
The NIG in the House of Lords was revealed when Pearson emailed 235 people instead of bcc’ing them. The email was sent to Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, and American anti-Islam activist Pamela Geller among others.
The anonymous British fascist known as ‘Morgoth’ spent part of February in Ireland and published a video about his trip on his YouTube channel which has 57k subscribers.
Turning Point UK (TPUK), the British version of the American hard-right campaign group Turning Point USA has started holding protests outside Drag Queen Story Hours. TPUK held a small protest outside a pub in southeast London at the end of February.