Racists, Neo-Nazis, Far Right Flock to Russia for Joint Conference

http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/europes-far-right-comes-to-russia-in-search-of-shared-values#.iiQv77pWg0


Racists, Neo-Nazis, Far Right Flock to Russia for Joint Conference

posted on March 22, 2015, at 3:38 p.m.

Max Seddon
BuzzFeed News World Correspondent

Russia’s appeal to Europe’s fringe was on full show Sunday at the International Russian Conservative Forum, a conference organized by a pro-Kremlin ultranationalist party to cement far-right ties, as one participant put it, “from Gibraltar to Vladivostok.” United by their hatred of Washington, the European Union, and LGBT people, about 200 far-right politicians and activists from across Europe gathered in St. Petersburg’s Holiday Inn to rail against liberal tolerance and implore Russia to lead the fight for Christian morality.

“Constantinople has been and gone,” said Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party until last year. “Rome and the persons who came from Rome have gone the same way. It’s absolutely inevitable that in the lifetimes of most of the people in this room, Western Europe will either become an Islamist caliphate or there will be a terrible civil war or perhaps both. Which makes the survival of Christendom absolutely impossible without the rise of the Third Rome: Moscow.”

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Rhetoric at the conference, however, outstripped — and sometimes contradicted — Russia’s official line. Of the three members of the European Parliament there, one, Germany’s Udo Voigt, has described Adolf Hitler as a “great German statesman.” The other two hail from Greece’s Golden Dawn, whose logo is a barely disguised swastika. “It’s a bizarre lineup,” Jared Taylor, an American “racial realist,” told BuzzFeed News. “It’s the fringe of the fringe.” Speakers railed, variously, against Freemasons; the corrupting influence of Hollywood; “Nazi fascists in the EU”; a “global cabal” of “bloodsucking oligarchs”; non-white immigrants practicing “alien traditions”; “fags and dykes”; and “Zionist puppet filth.”

This may have proved a bit much in Russia, where Putin frequently rails against “neo-Nazis” in Ukraine and has raised rhetoric over World War II to levels unseen since Soviet times. Rodina’s leader, lawmaker Alexei Zhuravlev, had been scheduled to open the conference, but mysteriously failed to appear. “I have to go to Donbass immediately,” he tweeted on Friday, using a Russian name for the conflict zone in east Ukraine. “It’s an urgent matter. No further details.” Igor Morozov, a member of Russia’s upper house of parliament, also dropped out. State TV crews were conspicuously absent.

Conference speakers insisted their critics had it all wrong. “Everything that’s happening in the Donbass is anti-fascism. Everything that Ukraine does is fascism. There’s no other fascism in the world,” said Alexei Zhivov, leader of an obscure organization called the Battle for Donbass. Others tried to outdo each other in their fealty to Russia and Putin personally. “It is striking how cleverly and subtly President Putin is avoiding armed conflict,” said Voigt, the German far-right leader. Kris Roman, a Belgian man who runs a “think tank” called Euro-Rus that appears to consist solely of himself, listed several Kremlin critics who were murdered or died suspiciously. “I know where they live,” he said. “They live in hell.”
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