Dear Kitty. Some blog

From British daily The Guardian:

Suspect in US Holocaust museum guard killing has links to BNP

• James Von Brunn attended AFBNP meetings
• Police charge Von Brunn with murder
• Von Brunn claimed the Holocaust was a hoax

Thursday 11 June 2009

A white supremacist who killed a security guard at a Holocaust memorial in the US has links to the British National party, which gained two MEPs in last week’s European elections.

Thousands of visitors fled the museum in Washington yesterday after James Von Brunn opened fire, killing a security guard. In the gunfight that followed the 88-year-old was shot, and is now in a critical condition in hospital.

Yesterday it emerged that Von Brunn, a longtime antisemite, had attended meetings of the American Friends of the British National party (AFBNP), set up to raise funds from far-right activists in America.

Mark Cotterill, who ran the US-based organisation before it folded in 2001, said: “He did attend meetings. I have just checked my database and he is down as ‘meetings only’ so he was not a major donor, although he may have put some money on the plate when it was passed round.”

The AFBNP treasurer, Todd Blodgett, also told the Washington Post that he and Von Brunn had attended fundraising meetings together in Arlington County. The BNP leader, Nick Griffin, spoke to at least two AFBNP meetings and said the money raised by the organisation made a “significant contribution to the BNP’s [2001] general election campaign”.

Yesterday a spokesman for the party said: “You get a lot of people coming to meetings but I don’t think you can blame us for that. Even if he did go to meetings it was nothing to do with us.”

However, anti-racism campaigners said Von Brunn’s links to the BNP underlined its extremist agenda.

“It is clear that Nick Griffin is at the centre of an international network of white supremacists,” said Dan Hodges from Searchlight. “The BNP must explain the full extent of his organisation’s links with this antisemitic gunman.”

The far-right party gained its first two MEPs in last week’s European elections – Griffin in the north-west and former National Front leader Andrew Brons in Yorkshire and the Humber.

During the campaign photographs emerged of Griffin alongside the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard Stephen “Don” Black, who was banned from the UK by the then home secretary, Jacqui Smith. He was also criticised for defending a BNP leaflet that said black and Asian Britons should be referred to as “racial foreigners”.

US police said Von Brunn, who is in a critical condition in hospital, would be charged with murder and might also be charged with hate crimes and civil rights violations.

At a press conference, Cathy Lanier Washington’s police chief, said security guard Stephen Johns was shot when he opened the door of the museum for Von Brunn. Other security guards opened fire, and Von Brunn slumped to the ground.

Joseph Persichini, assistant director of the Washington FBI field office, said Von Brunn was known to the police as an antisemite and a white supremacist, who had a website that espoused hatred against African Americans, Jews and others.

Von Brunn wrote an antisemitic treatise, Kill the Best Gentiles, decried “the browning of America” and claimed to have exposed a Jewish conspiracy “to destroy the white gene-pool”.

In 1983 Von Brunn was convicted of attempting to kidnap members of the US federal reserve board.

At the time, police said that Von Brunn wanted to take the members hostage because of high interest rates and the nation’s economic difficulties. On the website, Von Brunn blames his six-year imprisonment on “a Jew judge” and “Negro jury”.

Civil rights groups said they had been monitoring Von Brunn for decades. Heidi Beirich, director of research for the Southern Poverty Law Centre’s intelligence project, said: “He thinks the Jews control the Federal Reserve, the banking system, that basically all Jews are evil. He’s an extreme antisemite.”

His internet writings say the Holocaust was a hoax: “At Auschwitz the ‘Holocaust’ myth became Reality, and Germany, cultural gem of the West, became a pariah among world nations.

An 88-year-old neo-Nazi was charged with murder Thursday, the day after he killed a security guard at the US Holocaust Memorial and Museum and then was shot in turn by other guards: here.

Today, sadly, Matt Ortega points to a passage in a Washington Post article on yesterday’s shooting at the Holocaust Museum that shows a union once again acting in its capacity promoting workplace safety — but this time unable to prevail with the employer: here.

ENGLISH DEMOCRATS PARTY - MARK COTTRILL AND THE HOLOCAUST MUSEUM SHOOTER: here.

British-based anti-fascist groups have demanded that the British National Party comes clean about its links with a neonazi gunman who shot and killed a security guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC: here.

Racist rants of elected BNP man, Andrew Brons, revealed: here.

Racists in Greece: here.