Ukrainian Nazi at Chatham House

Karas and his pals

by New Worker correspondent

The notorious Ukrainian Nazi Yevhen Karas was recently a star speaker on the topic War in Ukraine: The battleground for the future of Europe at Chatham House, a leading British think tank.

Chatham House describes its goal as "to help governments and societies build a sustainably secure, prosperous, and just world" and has been praised by the Institute of Directors for “providing a safe space for speakers and encouraging openness”.
Karas was billed as a “Major” in Ukraine’s 413th  Separate Battalion of Unmanned Systems – in other words a straightforward Ukrainian army officer.
But Chatham House omitted to mention that he  was the founder of the notorious S14 ultra-violent Nazi gang, created in 2010 as a youth wing of the far-right Svoboda party, which he viewed as “too moderate”. He was photographed in his youth smiling while giving a ‘Sieg Heil’ salute.
S14 derives from the Ukrainian word ‘Sich’, a historical name for Cossack political-military bodies, alongside the number 14, a common white supremacist and Nazi reference to David Lane’s 14 word call – “we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children".
After the 2014 NATO Ukraine coup S14 developed close ties with the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), which used S14 to attack anti-fascists they couldn’t pursue legally. In a 2017 interview Karas boasted that the SBU had tipped off Nazi groups about “separatist meetings” saying “They inform not only us, but also Azov, Right Sector, and so on”. Well well well, how interesting!
Two S14 members were the main suspects in the brutal murder of journalist Oleh Buzyna in 2015, along with another who has never been identified, but is widely believed to be Karas. Ten years later no-one has been convicted for the murder.
In 2018 masked S14 members attacked three Roma settlements with guns and knives, killing one person. Doctors then had to call the police when the injured victims were attacked at the local hospital. Seven years later, as a result of pressure from Kiev’s Western backers, three S14 members were eventually jailed. Even the British MI6 front website Bellingcat has declared that it was “still ok” to call S14 neo-Nazis. So that’s good to know!
In 2020, the group quietly rebranded itself as the “Foundation for the Future,” apparently a more “respectable” umbrella for neo-Nazi organisations, including S14 and the international white supremacist Misanthropic Division – the Azov battalion’s international wing for recruitment and propaganda.
The British wing of the Misanthropic Division, according to Hope not Hate, has connections with the fascist National Action and Combat 18 groups.
Karas also believes that a nuclear war would be good for Ukraine, saying in an interview last December "after a nuclear strike, nothing worse will happen. Then we just fight. China and India will drop Russia and the West will need to help us. Also we will evolve as humans technologically, since we need to live with radiation". His wisdom must have been invaluable for the respected experts who gathered at Chatham House!
And the moral of this story? Karas’ London appearance has been a useful reminder of just how well Nazism is embedded throughout official Ukrainian structures, and is  still very much thriving, alive and well. Or alternatively, that the capitalist censored mass media’s across the board assertion - enthusiastically supported by many so-called 'leftists' and trade unionists in Britain - that fascism in Ukraine is an irrelevant minority is simply bullshit.

Met foil fascist terror

MARK Rowley, a retiring assistant commissioner for the Metropolitan Police, last week announced that London police had foiled four extreme right-wing terror plots last year.

Rowley, who was the head of counter-terrorism policing in Britain, used his retirement speech to warn against the rise of the far-right and to draw parallels between far-right groups and figures and the Islamist extremists they claim to despise, in the annual Colin Cramphorn memorial lecture in central London.

In a conference with journalists before the speech, Rowley said the far-right terror threat was “significant and concerning,” and the public should be “gravely concerned” by the existence of National Action, the white supremacist, neo-Nazi group banned under terror legislation.

“The right-wing threat was not previously organised,” he said. “Every now and then there’s been an individual motivated by that rhetoric who has committed a terrorist act but we’ve not had an organised right-wing threat like we do now.”

He said a third of referrals to the Government’s Prevent strategy, reducing radicalisation in communities, are now individuals engaged with far-right terrorism.

In his speech, Rowley draws many comparisons between Islamist and far-right groups and figures, such as ISIS and Anjem Choudary in the former, and National Action and former English Defence League (EDL) leader Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley Lennon) in the latter.

“Ironically, while Islamist and extreme right-wing ideologies may appear to be at opposing ends of the argument it is evident that they both have a great deal in common,” he said.

Tommy Robinson reacted angrily to Rowley’s speech and has threatened to “find” Britain’s most senior counter terrorism officer, after he warned of the growing threat of far-right terrorism.

The EDL figurehead on Monday re-posted a tweet by a supporter who said the police were “so so wrong” to equate Mr Robinson with ISIS-supporting hate preacher Anjem Choudary. “I’m gonna find Mark Rowley,” said Robinson. He did not immediately elaborate about what he meant.

Bad day for Britain First in Bromley

by New Worker correspondent

THE NEO-FASCIST organisation Britain First (BF), notorious for violent attacks on mosques, has problems. Its leaders Paul Golding and Jayda Franzen have a number of court orders against them, and Golding is obliged every Saturday between 2pm and 4pm to sign in at his nearest police station. As he lives in Penge, south London, that police station is in Bromley, next to Bromley South Rail Station.

This limits the range of political demonstrations he can take part in on Saturdays. So, trying to make a virtue out of a necessity, he called a national mobilisation of BF supporters outside Bromley Police Station for last Saturday.

Ex-BNP members mingled with ex-Combat 18 thugs. This really was a rump and was the lowest BF demo for some time. But the total number who turned up – around 40 – was massively outnumbered by local anti-fascists.

These included Labour Party members, Liberal Democrats, Greens, South London Anti-Fascists, Antifa, trade unionists from RMT, TSSA, ASLEF, Unite the Union, the NEU educational union and the civil service union, and Disabled People against Cuts  (DPAC) – plus some passers-by who joined in.

And the anti-fascists were noisy, very noisy, and succeeded in drowning the noise of a BF amplifier playing ‘patriotic’ music.

Several of the fascists, overweight and with greying hair, were wearing a khaki uniform bearing the word “Security”. Political uniforms were outlawed by a public order Act in the 1930s. Anti-fascists will be taking up this issue with the appropriate authorities.

The fascists had hoped to march from Bromley North to the station but were banned from marching through the shopping centre on a Saturday afternoon.

Anti-fascists outnumber EDL in Westminster

Weyman Bennett in the middle of the police kettle

 by New Worker correspondent

WESTMINSTER was buzzing with protests and demonstrations last Saturday: there were people demanding affordable housing and an end to demolition of council estates with the removal of low income residents to all points of the compass far from London, to make way for grand developments of luxury flats that will be bought for £millions and then stand empty as investments.

There was a women’s right march and there were people demanding justice for the victims, survivors and bereaved of the Grenfell fire, with the full death toll still not known, and fearful that the tragedy will add their numbers to those being forced out of London.

And there were people protesting at the shameful deal being stitched together by what is left of Theresa May’s Tory government with the extreme right-wing bigots of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). This is to create a coalition that would have a tiny majority in the House of Commons to try to ward off Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s promise to waste no opportunity to bring this government down.

These four honourable causes merged into one protest in Parliament Square whilst not far away, at the top end of Whitehall and the corner of Trafalgar Square, anti-fascists from Unite Against Fascism (UAF) were assembling to express solidarity with the victims of the Finsbury Mosque terrorist attack and to try to block a planned march by the Islamophobic English Defence League (EDL), which was the EDL’s response to the terrorist attack near London Bridge and Borough Market a couple of weeks ago.

There were not as many of the UAF as usual because many comrades were engaged in other protests: bad housing is killing and injuring more low paid workers, including Muslims and other minority ethnics, than all the shades of fascism, racism and terrorism put together.

Meanwhile the racists were gathering in the Lord of the Moon pub at the top end of Whitehall as usual with the entrance to the pub guarded by a triple cordon of police.

To top it all there were serious roadworks outside the Houses of Parliament – Big Ben /The Elizabeth Tower was swathed in scaffolding – and all along the Victoria Embankment a new giant sewer is being installed to replace the one built by Joseph Bazalgette after the Great Stink of London in 1858 forced Parliament to close.

This meant that traffic in Whitehall was choc-a-bloc and the usual crowds of tourists from all over the world were sweeping back and forth like herds of confused wildebeest, packing all pavements as they were forced into long detours to find somewhere safe to cross the road.

And the Metropolitan police were out in great numbers telling everyone where they could and could not go.

Large numbers of police forced the UAF demonstrators on to the Embankment, where a special pen had been prepared to keep them kettled in one place. They included UAF joint general secretary Weyman Bennett and former Anti-Nazi League leader Paul Holborough.

The kettling was to clear the way for the EDL to march, also to the Embankment. But as they marched crowds of young anarchist anti-fascists ran alongside, jostling the police protective cordon and filling the air with chants of: “Fascist scum, off our streets,” and music blasted from huge loud speakers in a trailer pulled by bicycles.

For a while all was confusion and noise until superior numbers of police finally managed to force the anarchists into the same area as the UAF anti-fascists, nearly doubling their numbers.

The EDL turn-out was very low, between 40–50 as they huddled under trees under the sudden first rain London had seen for a few weeks. They made their Islamophobic speeches close to the boarded-up sewage replacement excavations as the ghost of the Great London Stink emanated from drains and manhole covers.

The EDL had intended to march on Parliament but their way was firmly blocked by the assorted anti-fascists and they were forced to leave in low spirits.

Not long after that the UAF and other anti-fascists left, heading towards Parliament and singing “Refugees are welcome here” to the tune of Camptown Races, to join the other demonstrators from Parliament Square, who had by this time marched up Whitehall to stand opposite Downing Street.