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Exquisite Corpse - A Journal of Letters and Life
Broken News
The Swastika & the Crescent
by Martin A. Lee || Author's Links
In the wake of Sept. 11, new light is thrown on the international ties
increasingly linking Muslim and neo-Nazi extremists (from the Southern
Poverty Law Center's "Intelligence Report," Spring 2002).
As Germany's defeat loomed during the finals months of World War II,
Adolf Hitler increasingly lapsed into delusional fits of fantasy.
Albert Speer, in his prison writings, recounts an episode in which a
maniacal Hitler "pictured for himself and for us the destruction of
New York in a hurricane of fire." The Nazi fuehrer described
skyscrapers turning into "gigantic burning torches, collapsing upon
one another, the glow of the exploding city illuminating the dark
sky."
An approximation of Hitler's hellish vision came true on Sept.
11, when terrorists destroyed the Twin Towers in New York, killing
nearly 3,000 people. But it was not Nazis or even neo-Nazis who
carried out the attack, which allegedly came at the hands of foreign
Muslim extremists. Still, in the aftermath of the slaughter, white
supremacists in America and Europe applauded the suicide attacks and
praised Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the massacre. An official
of America's premier neo-Nazi group, the National Alliance, said he
wished his own members had "half as much testicular fortitude." The
awestruck leader of another U.S. Nazi group called the terrorists
"VERY BRAVE PEOPLE." Neofascist youth in France celebrated the event
that evening with champagne at the headquarters of the extreme right
Front National. Jan Kopal, head of the Czech National Social Bloc,
declared at a rally in Prague that bin Laden was "an example for our
children." German neo-Nazis, some wearing checkered Palestinian
headscarves, rejoiced at street demonstrations while burning an
American flag. Horst Mahler, a former left-wing terrorist and
prominent member of the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD) in
Germany proclaimed his solidarity with the terrorists and said America
had gotten what it deserved.
What's going on here? For decades, American extremists have
lumped Arabs in with dark-skinned "mud people." In Europe, neo-Nazis
have been implicated in countless xenophobic attacks on Arabs, Turks
and other Muslims. Extremist parties on both sides of the Atlantic
hope to bar entrance to non-white immigrants.
The peculiar bond between white nationalist groups and certain
Muslim extremists derives in part from a shared set of enemies: Jews,
the United States, race-mixing, ethnic diversity. It is also very much
a function of the shared belief that they must shield their own
peoples from the corrupting influence of foreign cultures and the
homogenizing juggernaut of globalization. Both sets of groups also
have a penchant for far-flung conspiracy theories that caricature
Jewish power.
But there is more. Even before World War II, Western fascists
began to forge ideological and operational ties to Islamic extremists.
Over the years, these contacts between Nazis and Muslim nationalists
developed into dangerous networks that have been implicated in a
number of bloody terrorist attacks in Europe and the Middle East.
Wealthy Arab regimes have financed extremists in Europe and the United
States, just as Western neo-Nazis have helped to build Holocaust
denial machinery in the Arab world. In the 1970s, Saudi Arabia hired
an American neo-Nazi as a lobbyist in the United States. In the 1980s,
U.S. neo-Nazi strategist Louis Beam openly called for a linkup of
America's far right with the "liberation movements" of Libya, Syria,
Iran and Palestine. In the 1990s, an American Black Muslim was
convicted in a plot to bomb the United Nations and other New York
landmarks that was masterminded by a blind Egyptian cleric (see
sidebar: "Strange Bedfellows"). Just last year, a meeting sponsored by
a U.S. holocaust denial group brought together Arab and Western
extremists in Jordan (see sidebar "Between Friends").
Although links like these illustrate the ties between Muslim
extremists and Americans, such ties are far more developed in Europe.
But since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, there are a number of
signs including a spate of articles by American neo-Nazis that have
appeared in Islamic publications and Web sites that an operational
alliance may be taking shape in the United States as well.
Banking for Allah
Perhaps the best contemporary snapshot of this Nazi-Islamist extremist
axis comes in the person of one Ahmed Huber, a neo-Nazi whose home in
a suburb of Berne was raided by Swiss police on Nov. 8, after U.S.
officials had identified him as a linchpin in the financial
machinations of Osama bin Laden. The raid was part of a coordinated
law enforcement dragnet that seized records from the offices of Al
Taqwa, an international banking group. Al Taqwa, which literally means
"Fear of God," had been channeling funds to Muslim extremist
organizations around the world, including Hamas, a group active in the
Israeli-occupied territories.
Huber, a former journalist who converted to Islam and changed
his first name from Albert, served on the board of Nada Management, a
component of Al Taqwa. After Swiss authorities froze the firm's assets
and questioned Huber, the 74-year-old denounced Washington for doing
the bidding of "Jew Zionists" who "rule America." In January, Nada
Management announced that it had gone into liquidation.
A well-known figure in European neofascist circles, Huber "sees
himself as a mediator between Islam and right-wing groups," according
to Germany's Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Portraits
of Hitler and SS chief Heinrich Himmler adorn the walls of Huber's
office, alongside photos of Islamic political leaders and a picture of
Jean-Marie Le Pen, the present-day boss of the French Front National.
In accordance with his self-proclaimed mission to unite Muslim
fundamentalists and extreme right-wing forces in Europe and North
America, Huber has traveled widely and proselytized at numerous
gatherings. In Germany, he speaks often at events hosted by the
neo-Nazi National Democratic Party, which publicly welcomed the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks. Huber also befriended British author David
Irving and other Holocaust deniers while frequenting "revisionist"
conclaves.
A bin Laden Fan in Chicago
At the same time, Huber made the rounds of the radical Islamic circuit
in Western countries. In June 1994, he spoke about the "evils of the
Jews" at a mosque in Potomac, MD. (just outside Washington, D.C.),
where videotapes of Huber's speeches are on sale. During a subsequent
visit to Chicago, he attended a private assembly that brought
together, in Huber's words, "the authentic Right and the fighters for
Islam." Huber told journalist Richard Labeviere that "major decisions
were taken [in Chicago] … [T]he reunification is under way."
Huber acknowledges meeting al-Qaeda operatives on several
occasions at Muslim conferences in Beirut, Brussels and London. He has
been quoted in the Swiss media as saying that bin Laden's associates
"are very discreet, well-educated and highly intelligent people." The
U.S. government claims that Huber's banking firm helped bin Laden
shift financial assets around the world. But Huber denies any
involvement in terrorist activities. He insists Al Taqwa was engaged
in charitable work, providing aid for social services that benefited
needy Muslims.
Described as "the financial heart of the Islamist economic
apparatus," Al Taqwa is intertwined with the Muslim Brotherhood, a
longstanding, far-right cult whose emblem is a Koran crossed by a
sword. The influence of the Brotherhood extends throughout the Muslim
world, where it vigorously, and often violently, opposes secular Arab
regimes. In 1981, partisans of the Muslim Brotherhood were implicated
in the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Several
members of Islamic Jihad, an extremist sect closely associated with
the Brotherhood, were also involved in the Sadat assassination. By the
early 1990s, Islamic Jihad would closely ally itself with bin Laden's
al Qaeda network.
Back to the Beginning
The roots of the Muslim Brotherhood -- and, in many ways, the
Nazi-Muslim axis -- go back to the organization's formation in Egypt
in 1928. Marking the start of modern political Islam, or what is often
referred to as "Islamic fundamentalism," the Brotherhood from the
outset envisioned a time when an Islamic state would prevail in Egypt
and other Arab countries, where the organization quickly established
local branches. The growth of the Muslim Brotherhood coincided with
the rise of fascist movements in Europe -- a parallel noted by
Muhammad Sa'id al-'Ashmawy, former chief justice of Egypt's High
Criminal Court, who decried "the perversion of Islam" and "the
fascistic ideology" that infuses the world view of the Muslim
Brothers, "their total (if not totalitarian) way of life ...[and]
their fantastical reading of the Koran."
Youssef Nada, current board chairman of Al Taqwa, had joined the
armed branch of the Muslim Brotherhood as a young man in Egypt during
World War II. Nada and several of his cohorts in the Sunni Muslim
fraternity were recruited by German military intelligence, which
sought to undermine British colonial rule in the land of the sphinx.
Hassan al-Banna, the Egyptian schoolteacher who founded the Muslim
Brotherhood, also collaborated with spies of the Third Reich.
Advocating a pan-Islamic insurgency in British-controlled
Palestine, the Brotherhood proclaimed their support for the Grand
Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, in the late 1930s. The Grand
Mufti, the preeminent religious figure among Palestinian Muslims, was
the most notable Arab leader to seek an alliance with Nazi Germany,
which was eager to extend its influence in the Middle East.
Although he loathed Arabs (he once described them as "lacquered
half-apes who ought to be whipped"), Hitler understood that he and the
Mufti shared the same rivals -- the British, the Jews and the
Communists. Indicative of the old Arab adage, "The enemy of my enemy
is my friend," they met in Berlin, where the Mufti lived in exile
during the war. The Mufti agreed to help organize a special Muslim
division of the Waffen SS. Powerful radio transmitters were put at the
Mufti's disposal so that his pro-Axis propaganda could be heard
throughout the Arab world.
A Mecca for Fascists
After the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Grand Mufti fled to Egypt. His
arrival in 1946 was a precursor to a steady stream of Third Reich
veterans who chose Cairo as a postwar hideout. The Egyptian capital
became a safe haven for several thousand Nazi fugitives, including
former SS Captain Alois Brunner, Adolf Eichmann's chief deputy.
Convicted in absentia for war crimes, Brunner would later reside in
Damascus, where he served as a security advisor for the Syrian
government.
Several American fascists visited the Middle East during this
period, including Francis Parker Yockey, who made his way to Cairo in
the summer of 1953, a year after the corrupt Egyptian monarchy was
overthrown by a military coup. The Brotherhood had played a major role
in instigating the popular uprising that set the stage for the
emergence of Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser as Egypt's new leader. But
Nasser, who had little interest in mixing politics and religion, would
subsequently have a falling out with the Islamic fundamentalist sect.
When Nasser wanted to overhaul Egypt's secret service, he asked
the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency for assistance. But the U.S.
government "found it highly impolitic to help him directly," CIA agent
Miles Copeland recalled in a memoir; so the CIA instead secretly
bankrolled more than 100 German espionage and military experts who
trained Egyptian police and army units in the mid-1950s.
An American Reaches Out
During this period, the Grand Mufti maintained close relations with
the burgeoning Nazi exile community in Cairo, while cultivating ties
to right-wing extremists in the United States and other countries. H.
Keith Thompson, a New York-based businessman and Nazi activist, was a
confidant of the Mufti. "I did a couple of jobs for him, getting some
documents from files that were otherwise unavailable," Thompson
acknowledged in an interview.
Thompson also carried on a lively correspondence with Johannes
von Leers, one of the Third Reich's most prolific Jew-baiters, who
converted to Islam and changed his name to Omar Amin after he took up
residence in Cairo in 1955. "If there is any hope to free the world
from Jewish tyranny," Amin wrote Thompson, "it is with the Moslems,
who stand steadfastly against Zionism, Colonialism and Imperialism."
Formerly Goebbels' right-hand man, Amin became a top official in the
Egyptian Information Ministry, which employed several European
fascists who churned out hate literature and anti-Jewish broadcasts.
Another German expatriate, Louis Heiden, alias Louis Al-Hadj,
translated Hitler's Mein Kampf into Arabic.
The Egyptian government also published The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion, the infamous anti-Semitic forgery that purports to
reveal a Jewish master plan for taking over the world. A staple of
Nazi propaganda, the Protocols also are quoted in Article 32 of the
charter of Hamas, the hard-line Palestinian fundamentalist group that
is supported by the Muslim Brotherhood -- even though Muslim scholars
say such views are an anathema to mainstream Islam. "There are no
historic roots for anti-Semitism in Islam," says Hasem Saghiyeh, a
columnist at Al Hayat, a London-based Arab newspaper. "The process of
translating books like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on as
popular a scale started in Nasser's Egypt, but only the Islamic
fundamentalist movement incorporated them into its literature."
Mercenaries for Palestine
After Israel's overwhelming victory in the Six Day War in June 1967, a
mood of desperate militancy engulfed the Palestinian refugee camps.
Deprived of a homeland, the leaders of the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) apparently felt that they couldn't afford to turn
down offers of help, no matter how unsavory the donors. Karl von Kyna,
a West German neo-Nazi mercenary, died during a Palestinian commando
raid in September 1967.
Eager to continue their vendetta against the Jews, several
right-wing extremists subsequently joined the Hilfskorp Arabien
("Auxiliary Corps Arabia"), which was advertised in the Munich-based
Deutsche National-Zeitung, a pro-Nazi newspaper, in 1968.
The following year, the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (PFLP) hijacked several commercial airplanes. When three
PFLP members stood trial after blowing up an Israeli jet in Zurich,
the legal costs for their defense were paid by Francois Genoud, an
elusive Swiss banker described by the London Observer as "one of the
world's leading Nazis." Genoud had previously picked up the tab for
Adolf Eichmann's legal defense, and a number of other Nazi war
criminals and Arab terrorists would also benefit from his largesse.
Where did the money come from? According to European press accounts,
Genoud was managing the hidden Swiss treasure of the Third Reich, most
of which had been stolen from Jews. "Security services claim he
transferred the defeated Nazis' gold into Swiss bank accounts,"
reports Gitta Sereny, who called Genoud "the most mysterious man in
Europe."
After World War II, Genoud served as the financial advisor to
the Grand Mufti. In 1958, the Swiss Nazi set up the Arab Commercial
Bank in Geneva to manage the war chest of the Algerian National
Liberation Front, whose partisans were fighting to free their country
from French colonial rule. Several Third Reich veterans, including
Major General Otto Ernst Remer, who had served as Hitler's bodyguard,
smuggled weapons to the Algerian rebels, while other German advisors
provided military instruction. Under the guise of supporting the
Arabs' struggle against French colonialism, Genoud and his Nazis
cohorts were following the same geopolitical strategy that Hitler had
pursued in the Middle East.
Black September and Achille Lauro
In addition to brokering arms sales to Arab militants, Genoud helped
subsidize terrorist networks in Europe and the Arab world. This
financier of fascism waited until the statue of limitations ran out
before admitting that he had personally written and sent ransom notes
demanding $5 million to the German airline Lufthansa and several news
services after PFLP terrorists hijacked another jet in 1972. That same
year, the Black September organization murdered nine Israeli athletes
at the Munich Olympics. When Black September leader Hassan Salameh
needed medical attention, Genoud arranged for him to be treated at a
private clinic in Lausanne.
In 1974, PLO chief Yasser Arafat publicly indicated a
willingness to renounce international terrorism and declared his
interest in a settlement that would finally establish a Palestinian
homeland in the Israeli-occupied territories. These steps toward
moderation angered Arab hardliners, who ruled out any compromise with
Israel. Not surprisingly, Genoud and other neofascists favored the
most belligerent factions that kept calling for the annihilation of
the Jewish state.
After bombing four U.S. Army bases in West Germany in 1982,
Odfried Hepp, a young neo-Nazi renegade, went underground and joined
the Tunis-based Palestine Liberation Front (PLF). Hepp, one of West
Germany's most wanted terrorists, was arrested in June 1985 while
entering the apartment of a PLF member in Paris. Four months later,
PLF commandos seized the Achille Lauro cruise ship and murdered Leon
Klinghoffer, a wheelchair-bound Jewish American. Included on the PLF's
list of prisoners to be exchanged for the Achille Lauro hostages was
the name of Odfried Hepp.
Fundamentalist Revolution in Iran
Islamic fundamentalism got a tremendous boost when the Ayatollah
Khomeini toppled the Shah during the 1979 Iranian revolution. The
Ayatollah's description of the United States and the Soviet Union as
"the twin Satans" dovetailed neatly with the "Third Position" politics
of many European and American neofascists, an ideology the rejects
both American capitalism and Soviet Communism. Some white supremacists
also shared Khomeini's dream of launching a "holy war" against what
was seen as decadent, Western-style democracy. When Iran issued a call
for the assassination of author Salmon Rushdie for writing The Satanic
Verses, several neo-Nazi groups supported the Iranian fatwa.
Far-right fanatics also hailed the 1983 suicide car-bombing by
Iranian-backed Shiite terrorists that killed 271 U.S. Marines in
Beirut. The British National Front had nothing but praise for
Khomeini's Islamic Revolutionary Guards: "Their belief in their cause
is so strong that they will run through mine fields unarmed to attack
enemy positions; their ideals are so all-consuming that they will
drive truck bombs into enemy camps knowing full well their [own] death
is inevitable .... This power, this contempt for death, is the stuff
of which victories are made."
In 1987, French police cordoned off the Iranian embassy in Paris
and demanded that a magistrate be allowed to interrogate Wahid Gordji,
an Iranian official suspected of orchestrating a series of bombings
that rocked the French capital during the previous a year. French
investigators got on to Gordji's trail after they discovered a check
for 120,000 francs (about $20,000) that he had written to Ogmios, a
neo-Nazi publisher and bookstore in Paris. The money was used to
underwrite a slick catalogue promoting The Myth of the Jewish
Holocaust and similar titles. But the Iranian government rebuffed
French authorities, who wanted to question Gordji, causing a rupture
in diplomatic relations between Paris and Tehran. The six-month
embassy stand-off was finally resolved after French officials met with
representatives of a group called "The Friends of Wahid Gordji" -- a
group which included the redoubtable Nazi banker Francois Genoud.
Nazis in Baghdad
Links between white supremacists and the Iranian government continued
after Khomeini's death in 1989. On several occasions in recent years,
American neo-Nazi chieftain William Pierce has been interviewed by
Radio Tehran. U.S. white supremacists have also snuggled up to Iran's
archenemy, Saddam Hussein. In 1990, Gene Schroder, an ideologue of the
far-right "common-law court" movement, joined a delegation of Midwest
farmers to Washington for a meeting in the Iraqi embassy, where Iraqi
officials were trying to drum up opposition to the impending Persian
Gulf War. During that 1991 war, Oklahoma Klan leader Dennis Mahon
organized a small rally in Tulsa in support of Saddam. Mahon says he
later received a couple of hundred dollars in an unmarked envelope
from the Iraqi government.
In addition, shortly before the war, German neo-Nazis solicited
support from Iraq for an anti-Zionist legion composed of far-right
mercenaries from several European countries. The members of this
so-called international "Freedom Corps" pretentiously strutted around
Baghdad in SS uniforms. But as soon as bombs started to fall on the
Iraqi capital, the neo-Nazi volunteers scurried back to Europe.
A number of prominent neofascists have expressed support for
Saddam, including Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the Russian demagogue, who
visited Iraq after the Gulf War. Jean Marie Le Pen of the French Front
National also got the red-carpet treatment when he met Saddam in
Baghdad. Although he built his political career by disparaging Arab
immigrants, Le Pen now claims that he is deeply concerned about the
plight of Iraqi children who have suffered under sanctions imposed by
the United Nations. His wife, Jany, who heads a group called SOS
Children of Iraq, has joined Le Pen on several trips to Baghdad. Thus
far, however, Arab children in France have yet to benefit from the
supposed good Samaritan act of the Le Pens.
The Libyan Connection
On June 28, 2000, the Times of London reported that Libyan leader
Muammar Ghaddafi had ordered the deposit of $25 million into a bank in
Carinthia, the Austrian province governed by Jorg Haider, defacto
leader of the far-right Freedom Party. (The Freedom Party is an
immigrant-bashing organization that is home to many neo-Nazis and
former Nazis and has downplayed German war atrocities.) Col.
Ghaddafi's cash gift -- which Haider described as "Christmas for
Austria" -- was meant to ease the strain of sanctions imposed on
Austria by the European Union after the Freedom Party joined Austria's
national governing coalition.
This was the second rabbit Haider pulled from his hat as a
result of two private forays to Tripoli, where he met Ghaddafi. After
his first Libyan excursion, Haider announced he was tackling Austria's
high gas prices by arranging for Libyan gasoline to be sold in
Carinthia at a discount. News photos showed Haider, the
Porsche-driving populist, beaming as he pumped gas for motorists.
Over the years, Ghaddafi has been wooed by several neofascist
leaders, including Italian fugitive Stefano delle Chiaie, who was
accused of masterminding a series of bomb attacks in Rome and Milan.
Described in a 1982 CIA report as "the most prominent rightist
terrorist … still at large," delle Chiaie wrote a letter to Ghadaffi,
inviting him to join in a common struggle against "atheistic Soviet
Marxism and American capitalist materialism," both of which were
supposedly controlled by "international Zionism." Delle Chiaie added:
"Libya can, if it wants, be the active focus, the center of national
socialist renovation [that will] break the chains which enslave people
and nations."
Ghaddafi, the Green Book and Western Extremism
Links between Libya and the European far right have been scrutinized
in several parliamentary and judicial probes in Italy. One Italian
judicial inquiry found that the Libyan embassy in Rome had provided
money to aid the escape of Italian terrorist suspect Mario Tuti
shortly after the bombing of an express train near Florence in 1974.
Tuti was later captured and sentenced to a lengthy prison term for
orchestrating the attack, which killed 12 people and injured 44
others.
Ghadaffi's financial largesse and his militant anti-Zionism has
generated support for the Libyan regime among right-wing extremists
around the world, including in Great Britain, where the Green Book,
Ghaddafi's political manifesto, was promoted by the neo-Nazi National
Front. In 1984, according to former British Nazi leader Ray Hill (who
later renounced racism and worked with antiracists), the Libyan
People's Bureau put up money for a special anti-Semitic supplement to
the National Front's monthly magazine. In addition, Ghadaffi's
government picked up the tab for several junkets so that neofascists
from England, France, Canada, the Netherlands, and several other
countries could visit the Libyan capital.
Col. Ghaddafi is also widely admired by white supremacists in
the United States. The Green Book has been featured as the top online
book on the website of the American Front, whose professed aim is "to
secure National Freedom and Social Justice for the White people of
North America." Asserting that he is "against race mixing," American
Front leader James Porrazzo praises Libya and says that his group has
much in common ideologically with Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam,
which has its own links to Ghaddafi (see sidebar, "Strange
Bedfellows). Porazzo also says he has "great respect for the actions
of Hamas and Hezbollah," two radical Islamist groups involved in
suicide bombings, as long as they "see that their home is in the
Mideast and that their religion is great for their people but not
intended for all mankind."
"Working for Their Races"
The Philadelphia-based American Front thinks highly of Osama bin
Laden, too, describing him as "one of ZOG [Zionist Occupation
Government, the name many extremists give to the federal government,
which they believe is run by Jews] and the New World Order's biggest
enemies." And it is not alone. Wolfgang Droege, one of 17 Canadian
racists who traveled on a "fact-finding mission" to Libya in 1989, is
similarly enamored of bin Laden, seeing parallels between bin Laden's
struggle and others supporting "racial nationalism" in North America.
"I've had dealings with Black Muslims, I've had dealings with Arabs,
I've had dealings with people of various races, and I realize that
some of these people are as motivated as I am in working for the
interest of their race," Droege told MacLeans magazine.
While they wouldn't want bin Laden, or anyone of non-European
descent, living next door, leaders of the hard-core racist movement in
the United States have seized upon the Sept. 11 attacks as an
opportunity to expand their strategic alliance with Islamic radicals
under the pretext of supporting Palestinian rights. After hijacked
airplanes demolished the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon,
a number of Muslim newspapers published a flurry of articles by
American white supremacists ranting against Israel and the Jews.
Anti-Zionist commentary by neo-Nazi David Duke appeared on the front
page of the Oman Times, for instance, and on an extremist website
based in Pakistan (www.tanzeem.com). Another opinion piece by Duke ran
in Muslims, a New-York-based English-language weekly, which also
featured a lengthy critique of U.S. foreign policy by William Pierce,
head of the rabidly racist National Alliance. In the wake of Sept. 11,
several American neo-Nazi websites also started to offer links to
Islamic websites.
The psychological dynamics that propel the actions of Islamic
terrorists have much in common with the mental outlook of neo-Nazis.
Both glorify violence as a regenerative force and both are willing to
slaughter innocents in the name of creating a new social order. The
potential for an alliance between American neo-Nazis and Islamic
terrorists -- an alliance that could develop into strong operational
ties -- cannot be ruled out given the long and sordid history of
fascist links to the Muslim world.
Strange Bedfellows
Some American Black Muslims make common cause with domestic neo-Nazis
and foreign Muslim extremists.
In 1961, Elijah Muhammad, founder of the black supremacist Nation of
Islam, met with Ku Klux Klan leaders at the Magnolia Hall in Atlanta.
Although they had different ideas about the skin color of the master
race, they shared the belief that blacks and whites should stay
separate. The following year, Muhammad invited American Nazi Party
chief George Lincoln Rockwell to address a Nation convention in
Chicago, even though Rockwell had often called blacks "the lowest scum
of humanity." Flanked by a dozen storm troopers in swastika armbands,
Rockwell told an audience of 5000 Nation devotees that he was "proud
to stand here before black men … Elijah Muhammad is the Adolf Hitler
of the black man."
Sporadic contacts between Black Muslims and white supremacists
continued after Louis Farrakhan set up his own branch of the Nation of
Islam in 1975. Klan leader Tom Metzger was so impressed with
Farrakhan's anti-Semitic bombast that he donated $100 to the Nation
after a Farrakhan rally in Los Angeles in September 1985. A month
later, Metzger and 200 other white supremacists from the United States
and Canada gathered on a farm about 50 miles west of Detroit, where
they pledged their support for the Nation of Islam. "The enemy of my
enemy is my friend," explained Art Jones, a neo-Nazi militant from
Chicago. "I salute Louis Farrakhan and anyone else who stands up
against the Jews."
The Nation's contacts with non-black extremists has not been
limited to domestic neo-Nazis and Klansmen. During his international
travels, Farrakhan has been officially welcomed in a number of
countries, including several repressive Arab states. The Final Call,
Farrakhan's newspaper, describes one such globetrotting expedition in
1986, when he visited Libya for discussions with Colonel Ghaddafi, who
had given Farrakhan a $5-million interest-free loan the previous year.
After Libya, Farrakhan ventured to Jeddah, where he conferred with top
Saudi Arabian officials before paying a courtesy call to Idi Amin, the
exiled Ugandan despot. Farrakhan was also warmly received by General
Zia-ul-Huq, the military dictator of Pakistan, whose abysmal human
rights record coincided with efforts to impose a harsh Islamic
fundamentalist regime in his country.
An American Takes Up the Cause
During the 1980s, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan played a crucial role in
supporting the U.S.-backed mujahedeen resistance forces that were
fighting to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan. Islamic volunteers
from all over the world flocked to mujahedeen training camps in
Pakistan to help win this holy war against godless Communism. They
were joined by scores of combatants from the United States, including
Clement Rodney Hampton-El, an American Black Muslim unaffiliated with
the Nation of Islam, who suffered arm and leg wounds in Afghanistan.
After returning to Brooklyn, Hampton-El worked closely with a
shadowy splinter group called al-Fuqra, whose followers in the United
States and Canada are predominantly Black Muslims. Several other
al-Fulqra initiates had also trained in Pakistan as part of the effort
to throw the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Founded in 1980 by a
Pakistani mystic named Shiek Mubarik Ali Jilani, al-Fuqra was
organized into independent terrorist cells. An avowed enemy of the
Nation of Islam, al-Fuqra has been linked by U.S. officials to 17
homicides and 13 firebombings in the United States. Its targets were
usually other minorities or rival Muslim leaders.
In 1995, Hampton-El was sentenced to 35 years in prison for his
involvement in a failed plot to bomb the United Nations and other New
York City landmarks. Nine other Muslim extremists were convicted as
co-conspirators in this case, including Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a
blind Egyptian cleric, who is serving a life sentence for his role as
ringleader of the plot. The blind sheik has also been linked to the
terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, killing six
people and injuring more than 1000. Hampton-El told an FBI informant
that he had participated in a test explosion for the first attack on
the World Trade Center.
According to recent reports, the Justice Department is probing
possible links between al-Fuqra and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda
network. American officials have obtained a videotape of a December
1993 meeting in Sudan, then a nerve center for the bin Laden
organization, where al-Fuqra leader Shiek Mubarik Ali Jilani met with
members of Islamic Jihad, Hamas and other Islamic terrorist groups.
Representatives of al Qaeda are also believed to have been present at
this meeting. Federal officials also believe that al-Fuqra members
collaborated with Wadih El-Hage, who was sentenced to life in prison
this year for conspiring with Osama bin Laden in the bombings of two
American embassies in Africa in 1998.
Between Friends
U.S. Holocaust deniers help unite neo-Nazis, Arab extremists.
American extremists who claim that Jews fabricated the Holocaust to
discredit Hitler and to justify the dispossession of Palestinians have
made common cause on the propaganda front with jihadists from the
Middle East. At the forefront of this collaborative effort is the
Institute for Historical Review (IHR), the leading promoter of
Holocaust denial in the United States.
Founded in 1978, the Southern California-based IHR distributes
books, pamphlets, audio and videotapes that purport to prove the
Holocaust never happened. These "assassins of memory," as French
literary historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet calls the Holo-hoaxers, also
publish the Journal of Historical Review, which tries mightily to
impress its readers with footnotes and other scholarly trappings. A
recent issue spoke breathlessly of a "white-hot trend: the rapid
growth of Holocaust revisionism, fueled by increasing cooperation
between Muslims and Western revisionists, across the Islamic world."
Early last year, the IHR organized a conference on "Zionism and
Revisionism" that was set for Beirut that March. Billed as an
opportunity for North American and European extremists to meet their
counterparts in the Islamic world, the event was delayed and relocated
due to complaints by Jewish groups and diplomatic pressure from the
United States and Europe. An open letter signed by 14 leading Arab
intellectuals also denounced the conference, which was eventually held
in Amman, Jordan. The featured speaker at this scaled-down meeting,
hosted locally by the Jordanian Writers Federation, was French
negationist Robert Faurisson, a longtime IHR advisor, who told a
sympathetic audience that "Hitler never ordered or allowed the killing
of anyone on account of his or her race or religion" and "the Germans
suffered, in reality, a fate far worse than that of the Jews."
Feeding the Propaganda Machine
Driven by the proliferation of neo-Nazi propaganda and antagonism
toward Israel, Holocaust denial has gained widespread acceptance
across the Arab world in recent years. It's no coincidence that
commentary on the IHR website is translated and posted in Arabic, as
well as in German and English. IHR director Mark Weber takes pride in
the fact that he and other "revisionists," as they like to call
themselves, have been interviewed on Iranian state radio. Iran's
Islamic fundamentalist regime has granted refuge to several European
Holocaust-deniers, who were convicted of violating hate speech laws in
their home countries. Jurgen Graf, an IHR editorial advisor, fled to
Tehran rather than serve a 15-month sentence in a Swiss prison.
A key IHR ally among Muslim extremists is Ahmed Rami, a former
Moroccan army officer who fled his native country after joining a
failed coup attempt against King Hassan in 1972. Today Rami runs Radio
Islam, a Stockholm-based neo-Nazi propaganda outfit. In addition to
articles such as "USA's Rulers: They are all Jews," the website of
Radio Islam carries the full text of The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion, one of the vilest forgeries in modern history.
For many Palestinians, denying the holocaust is tantamount to
negating any Jewish claim to Israel. Columbia University professor
Edward Said, a Palestinian American, laments the proliferation of this
tendency among Arabs. "If we expect Israeli Jews not to use the
Holocaust to justify appalling human rights abuses of the Palestinian
people, we too have to go beyond such idiocies as saying that the
Holocaust never took place," asserts Said.
Such idiocies have become increasingly common in leading
newspapers in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab
countries, where official thinking is reflected in tightly controlled
national media. Support for holocaust denial enables corrupt Arab
governments to deflect attention from their failures, including their
own exploitation of Muslim populations and their brutal repression of
many peoples -- Kurds, Berbers, Egyptian Copts, Maronite Lebanese, and
others -- who, like the Palestinians, are being denied the right to
self-determination.
Saudi Arabia at the Forefront
Of all the Arab nations involved in promoting anti-Semitic propaganda,
Saudi Arabia is perhaps the most egregious offender. In the late
1970s, for instance, the Saudi government retained the services of
American neo-Nazi William Grimstead as a Washington lobbyist. During
this period, the Saudi royal family lavished funds on a numerous Sunni
fundamentalist organizations, including the Pakistan-based World
Muslim Congress (WMC), which was headed by the Grand Mufti of
Jerusalem, an anti-Semitic Nazi collaborator, until his death in 1974.
A few years later, the WMC mailed no-holocaust literature to
every member of the U.S. Congress and the British parliament. Issah
Nakleh, a Palestinian writer affiliated with the WMC, became a fixture
at IHR conferences in the United States and a regular contributor to
the Journal of Historical Review. Nakleh was also well known to
readers of The Spotlight, the anti-Semitic weekly published by the
IHR's now-defunct parent organization, the Liberty Lobby.
Acknowledging their political kinship, WMC secretary-general Dr.
Inamullah Khan, a trusted advisor to the Saudi royal family, sent a
letter to The Spotlight, praising its "superb in-depth analysis" and
stating that the paper deserved "the thanks of all right-minded
people."
Like many American and European neofascist groups, the WMC
espoused a "Third Position" ideology critical of both Cold War
superpowers, as underscored by this headline from Muslim World, the
WMC's official mouthpiece: "U.S. and USSR -- Both Serve Zionist
Interests." But the WMC tempered its anti-American tirades when the
Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Working closely with Saudi
and U.S. intelligence, the WMC supported the Afghan mujahedeen in
their struggle against the Soviet-backed rulers in Kabul. During this
period, WMC chief Inamullah Khan also served as head of the Pakistani
section of the World Anti-Communist League, an international umbrella
organization that included fascist collaborators from Europe, Latin
American death squad bosses, and right-wing extremists from Asia and
North America. After the Soviets abandoned Afghanistan, the World
Muslim Congress and several other Islamic extremist groups once again
turned their fundamentalist wrath against the United States.
(c)1999-2002 Exquisite Corpse - If you experience difficulties with
this site, please contact the webmistress.
--
Michael Pugliese
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