US Holocaust Museum gunman linked to BNP

Nick Griffin is doing all he can to persuade us that the British National Party is not racist and that voting for them is something a democrat might consider, so he's not going to be too keen on reports today that James von Brunn (as suitable names for Nazis go he's got a definite win there, we'll give him that much), the elderly white supremacist who opened fire in Washington's Holocaust Museum and shot a security guard, has been linked to the American Friends of the BNP which is believed to have raised around $40,000 for the far right organisation.

The photograph showing a meeting between BNP leader Nick Griffin and Stephen "Don" Black of the KKK,
as exposed by the Daily Mirror.

The findings come soon after a photograph of Griffin in the company of Stephen "Don" Black, a Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, forming just another small part of the evidence that Griffin is nothing more than a racist and a fascist.

Todd Blodgett, treasurer of the AFBNP prior to the organisation's demise in 2001, informed the Washington Post newspaper that he and von Brunn had attended fund-raising meetings together. Mark Cotterill, who ran the group, also says that von Brunn was a member. "I have just checked my database and he is down as 'meetings only', so he was not a major donor, although he may have put some money on the plate when it was passed round," he adds. Nick Griffin is known to have spoken at two AFBNP meetings and has said that money raised and donated by them made a "significant contribution to the BNP's General Election campaign," referring to the party's contesting of the 2001 election.

"It is clear that Nick Griffin is at the centre of an international network of white supremacists," says Dan Hodges of anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, pointing out that the BNP must now explain in full their links with von Brunn.

A court affidavit has revealed that a notebook was discovered in von Brunn's car bearing the words, "You want my weapons, this is how you'll get them. The Holocaust is a lie. Obama was created by Jews." He is also known to have been the author of Kill The Best Gentiles, an anti-semitic work which aimed to expose the supposed Jewish plot to destroy the white gene pool and attacked what he called the browning of America.

Von Brunn received a conviction in 1983 as a result of an attempt to kidnap members of the US Federal Reserve Board, and blamed his six-year prison sentence on having been tried by a "Jew judge" and a "Negro jury." Heidi Beirich, speaking for the Southern Poverty Law Center, says that von Brunn believes "Jews control the Federal Reserve, the banking system, that basically all Jews are evil." She also stated, "He's an extreme anti-semite." His ex-wife has claimed that "he would simply constantly berate the Jewish people and black people and it was something that consumed him. It was all consuming," in an interview with Fox News. She says that this was the reason she eventually sought divorce from him.

Von Brunn currently remains in hospital but was charged with murder and killing in the course of possessing a firearm at a federal facility yesterday, both crimes that are potentially punishable by death. He may also face hate crime charges.

Over to you, Mr. Griffin. I'm sure plenty of us are willing to accept that neither you personally nor your party were familiar with von Brunn, and quite possibly were not even aware that he existed. That still leaves a question of why your democratic, non-racist, legitimate political party is associated with a group such as the AFBNP when it's connected with people like von Brunn, however.