This is National Action, the neo-Nazis that Davies followed. Why aren’t they called a terror group?
6:02 am - June 26th 2015
Tweet |
“The revolution doesn’t start a thousand miles away, it starts with you.”
It could be a statement put out by ISIS, the group that has encouraged its sympathisers all over the world to take action in defense of the Caliphate. But actually that’s the strapline on the front page of National Action, a neo-Nazi group in the UK that is committed to “fighting to recapture our country in an increasingly hostile and foreign environment”.
Yesterday, Zack Davies was sentenced for the attempted murder of Dr Sarandar Bhambra, a man who was assaulted because he “looked Asian” according to Davies.
His family said after the sentencing:
We are in no doubt, given the racial and political motivations, that this should have been rightly defined as an act of terrorism. By his own admission, the defendant Zack Davies had extreme neo-Nazi views and is a member of a white supremacist organisation.
So why weren’t the actions of Zack Davies seen as an act of terrorism, when a similar attack by a Muslim man would have been?
And who are National Action, the white supremacist organisation that indoctrinated Zack Davies?
National Action, in their own words, a “National Socialist youth organisation” typically aimed at men “in their late teens or twenties”. They’re not an organised and hierarchical network and, in their own words, shun that sort of organising. It’s likely National Action choose a leaderless style of self-organising after the collapse of the EDL once Tommy Robinson left.
Their website states their mission:
Britain has become a nation of weak cowards who are hypersensitive and scared to say anything. Lying through fear is now considered normal – we have allowed hysterical twits to control how everything is done while our people limp towards rivers of blood. Where are the men who will tell the truth? Where are the men who will stand up and fight?
In June last year the Sunday Mirror ran an expose on them, calling them a Hitler-loving group that wanted to ‘ethnically cleanse’ the UK. Its not clear when the group started but its likely they were formed after the collapse of the BNP and EDL.
The Mirror revealed that they were trying to recruit students on university campuses and heaped praise on Norweigan terrorist Anders Breivik.
In a manifesto called ‘Attack‘ posted on their website, I found this paragraph:
A CASE FOR FASCISM
Nobody has ever gotten anywhere by being ‘moderate’. Nobody has ever gotten anywhere by being ‘nice’. Nobody has ever gotten anywhere by being ‘intellectual’. Nobody has ever gotten anywhere by being ‘respectable’. Men and movements got to where they did by one way and one way only. It is what the enemy calls Fascism, and so far as I have ever found it is the only thing that has ever worked. Just looking at it objectively the patriots in these two countries Germany and Italy used this method, this thing, and with it they kicked communism and took power all by themselves. Deep down isn’t that what we want? Only done right this time.
Done right this time. Hmmm. I wonder what that means. The emphasis in the text above is mine.
There are also comparisons to al-Qaeda inspired suicide bombers.
Fascism produced people who were willing to fight – who is really willing to fight for anything today? I mean really believe in anything enough to face hardship for it? Muslims are an example, they strap bombs to themselves. In our case though most of our people are for whatever reason unable commit perfectly legal acts like voting for nationalist parties – and nationalist activists are unable to hold open meetings and speak the truth. If the health of a people is judged by how vigorously they defend their right to existence then we need to find things that make them do that.
There is open support for Nazi style fascism and heavy implication that this should be achieved through violence or at least force. But these people are not harassed by the authorities.
On March 21st around a 100 National Action sympathisers turned out for a demonstration in Newcastle. There were no police attempts to arrest them of course.
Zack Davies, the extremist who tried to kill Dr Bhambra, posted an image of himself in a balaclava with a large knife and the National Action flag hours before he carried out his attack, reports Channel 4. A large amount of white-supremacist material was found at his house.
National Action regularly posts videos online showing themselves training to fight. C4 News reported yesterday that the group also helped to promote “Isis-inspired” neo-Nazi training camps inside the UK where members learned hand-to-hand combat and trained with knives.
So why aren’t they labelled as a terror group? And why wasn’t Zack Davies’s stabbing called the attack of a ‘terrorist’?
—
Top image taken from the National Action 2014 ‘review’ (PDF).
Tweet | ![]() |
Sunny Hundal is editor of LC. Also: on Twitter, at Pickled Politics and Guardian CIF.
· Other posts by Sunny Hundal
Story Filed Under: Blog ,Race relations
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Reader comments
American John McWhorter has a go at defining what’s the difference between the different labels.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/the-killings-in-charleston-werent-terrorism-119233.html#.VY2xnShwZpU
I guess you have to be sparing in your use of the word terrorism, otherwise it loses it’s meaning.
You expect terrorists to have something quite dynamic about them maybe. And networks that are difficult to close down.
Plus there will need to be a history of terrorist attacks.
Describing every freelance attack by freelance islamists is already stretching the term terrorism.
Zack Davis and the Charleston killer may well have had psychopathic tendencies already, which attracted them to the extreme right wing fringes. But can you call these obviously deranged people terrorists, in the way that the IRA or ISIS are?
Louis Farrakhan and any number of black revolutionaries like Darcus Howe. How about slogans like ” Kill whitey”?
Damon:
You say:
“You expect terrorists to have something quite dynamic about them maybe.
I say:
No, not really. You are being an apologist for murder, and that is never, ever, a good place to be.
Terrorists intend to use indiscriminate violence strategically to frighten, terrify and intimidate. NA are a groupuscle predisposed to violence but with no terror strategy (yet). So Zack Davies’ stabbing was not terrorism, vile though it was.
“But these people are not harassed by the authorities”
Are you sure about that? How would you know whether their ‘phones are tapped or not?
“There were no police attempts to arrest them of course.”
If they were protesting peacefully, why should they be arrested?
The whole post smacks of whataboutery. The surveillance of Islamists – which constitute the main terror threat to the UK’s population – is hardly disproportionate and indeed should be intensified.
i have no problem calling these lot a terror group if there members are proved to have carried out a terrorist attacks in the name of national action,not sure if that is the case yet,but i have a problem here and its called double standards and hypocrisy when we use the term nazi,i class anjem choudary,his hate filled fascist followers and isis as the heirs to hitler and nazism,there genoicide,mass rape,torture and hatred of christians and none sunni muslims in syria and iraq who are not from there brand of islam proves that nazism never went away and has come back in another form,national action and isis have got more in commen than you think because they both seem to share this nazi,fascist supremacist ideology.
Reactions: Twitter, blogs
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
![](/web/20200522174001im_/http://liberalconspiracy.org/images/design/trans.gif)