Staunton, March 21 — Even as Moscow denounces anything it views as a manifestation of fascism abroad and prepares to mark the anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany, the Russian authorities are hosting tomorrow a meeting of Europe’s neo-Nazis, extreme nationalists, and anti-Semites who share one thing in common – their unqualified support for Vladimir Putin.
The meeting called the first “Russian International Conservative Forum” and nominally hosted by the Russian National Cultural Center – People’s House is in fact the work of the Rodina Party and says it includes only European rightists who support Putin on Ukraine (see Rosbalt and Ekho Moskvy).
The organizers say that those taking part are “exclusively” from parties officially registered in European countries and that they could not be if they were neo-Nazi because “this is a criminal ideology which is banned in Europe.” What these parties do share is opposition to their governments “which are US puppets.”
Further, Yuri Lyubomirsky, head of the Right to Bear Arms group and one of the organizers says, “all these parties actively defend the interests of Russia regarding Crimea and the events in Ukraine’s South-East.” And he expressed “hope for constructive cooperation” between them and like-minded Russians such as himself.
Not surprisingly, this action has outraged many in Russia from the communists to Yabloko party member Boris Vishnevsky to human rights activists who have called on the government to ban the meeting and say they will picket and possibly disrupt it if the authorities do nothing to stop this assemblage from taking place.
Just how noxious this meeting is and how it underscores just how few people in Europe Putin’s regime can get to openly support it as opposed to the far larger number who are not prepared to do anything to oppose the Kremlin is underscored by the list of those who are scheduled to speak or otherwise take part.
They include:
Jared Taylor, an American who calls for white supremacy.
Nicholas Griffin, head of the British National Party and a prominent Holocaust denier.
Roberto Fiore, head of the New Force party in Italy which pursues traditionalist and extreme right causes.
Udo Voigt, Former head of the right-wing extremist National Democratic Party of Germany and now a deputy in the European Parliament noted for his anti-Semitic and xenophobic views and frequently found subject to legal sanctions for them.
Georgios Epitidios, a representative of Greece’s Golden Dawn party which is viewed in Athens as neo-fascist and neo-Nazi and whose party’s emblem is a stylized swastika.
Stefan Jakobsen, the head of the Party of Swedes and who is widely considered a neo-Nazi.
Daniel Karlsen, the head of the Party of Danes and one of the founding members of the National Socialist Movement of Denmark.
Gonsalo Martin Garcia, a leader of the ultra-right Spanish National Democratic Party.
Horatio Maria Guerre, president of the European Communist Party Millenium which seeks the dissolution of NATO and the end of what he calls “the hegemony of liberalism and the unipolar world.”
Aleksandr Hofman, the foreign minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Peoples Republic.
And from Russia itself, among others:
Aleksey Zhuravlyev, a United Russia Duma deputy who has attracted attention for his calls to strip the rights of those in non-traditional families to have children.
Yegor Kholmogorov, a Russian nationalist who has said that “the war for Novorossiya is a national liberation war of the Russian people for its reunification and for the elimination of invented borders.”
Stanislav Vorobyev, the coordinator of the Russian Imperial Movement who has called for “Russian men to join the joint struggle for Novorossiya under the imperial flag.”
Ivan Ovsyannikov of the Russian Socialist Movement notes that “the forum calls itself conservative, but this is a lie. These are not people like the British conservatives; these are parties of the extreme right wing.”
And Boris Vishnevsky, a Yabloko deputy in St. Petersburg’s legislative assembly, concurs.
He says that he is horrified by any manifestations of interest in fascism in foreign countries but notes that he is not a citizen of any of them and consequently is “not responsible” for their laws. But he is a Russian citizen, and as such he feels entitled to ask: “Why should such forums take place in my country with the complete silence of state structures?”
“I do not know how any former [Waffen SS] legionnaires remain in Latvia,” he continues, but I consider that they are less dangerous for society that contemporary neo-Nazis who can freely assembly and disseminate their views” as such people plan to do in Russia’s northern capital on Sunday.
“And the views [of those planning to come] are xenophobia, hatred of aliens and dividing people into categories which always gives rise to bloodshed. To the manifestation of fascism in one’s own country one must react with the very same intolerance as to fascism somewhere else,” Vishnevsky concludes.