British Far-right Activists Attend Military-Style Camps with Anti-Islam Group
Three women went undercover for the ITV film Undercover – Inside Britain’s New Far Right, with far-right groups and figures including failed Ukip leadership candidate Anne Marie Waters and anti-immigration group Generation Identity.
Generation Identity wants to bring together a pan-European youth movement to protect what it sees as the identity and culture of white Europeans from what it calls the "great replacement” by immigration and Islamization. The group has said the ITV documentary was a "fake news hit piece”.
Its leader, Martin Sellner, was behind the Defend Europe group that chartered a boat to hamper the rescue of refugees in the Mediterranean. The mission was hit by calamitous setbacks including having to plead for help to a German refugee rescue ship when its own vessel suffered mechanical failure.
One of the undercover reporters, known as Hazel, infiltrated Generation Identity for the documentary and met with members at a pub, where they boast about attending Generation Identity camps in France for military-style training.
One activist, Liam, is recorded saying: "There was a good ratio of boys and girls as well, it was really, really good. We’d be training for two hours in the morning.
"At the end of the week it was really good, we had like a mock demonstration. It was like really realistic because they had like pepper spray everything. It was really organized.”
The same activist is recorded referring to "degenerates”. He later told ITV he had received self-defense training in France.
Generation Identity told ITV the covert filming reveals conference speeches, public tweets and a few remarks taken out of context.
The documentary establishes a link between Generation Identity and Waters, who after losing the Ukip leadership contest formed a new political party called For Britain.
A Ukip member, Jordan Diamond, who regularly attended Waters’ events, is also a member of Generation Identity, the documentary says.
During a car journey to the Ukip party conference, Waters is recorded expressing her extreme views on Islam, saying: "The idea that these (…) can just come along and take it all. Stop all Muslim immigration now.”
Waters is also recorded advocating reducing the birthrates of Muslims. "My thinking is we need to reduce their birthrates now,” she says. "You cannot dismiss the idea, that there are, that most kids are called Mohammed, most kids born in ... boys born in Britain now are named called Mohammed, …. I’m sorry, it’s stupid, it’s dangerous.”
Waters told ITV she opposed racism, antisemitism, misogyny and the oppression usually associated with the far right. She said what others said at her events was not her responsibility, and she did not agree with every view expressed at events at which she spoke.
She said Diamond was not a close associate but a supporter and would not be welcome at future events.
Diamond told ITV he was not a racist, adding that no indigenous population should become a minority in its own land and he did not condone violence.
The documentary will air on ITV at 10.40pm on Thursday, November 9.
Source: The Guardian
