The European Union Parliament passed a motion this week to demand member-states ban ‘neo-fascist’ parties and groups and have intelligence agencies fully co-operate with ‘anti-racism’ NGOs.
The motion, which was introduced at the request of Italian MEP Eleonora Forenza, was passed by a vote of 355 MEPs. Many MEPs were not present in the 751-seat chamber for the vote.
The resolution cited several high-profile acts of violence including the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox in 2016, the murder rampage of Norwegian extremist Anders Brevik, along with other cases like the recent arrest this year of members of the Action des Forces Opérationnelles (AFO), who allegedly plotted to attack Muslims they deemed extremists.
While most of the incidents listed in the report were acts of violence, the authors also added the French branch of the Identitarian movement Generation Identitaire, as members had been taken to court and convicted of ‘hate speech’.
The report not only demands the banning of groups like the far-right Italian group Casapound whose members attacked Ms Forenza in September but also recommended anti-hate crime units be set up in police forces across the EU, and that intelligence and law enforcement agencies should fully co-operate with anti-racism NGOs.
The motion also calls for “the protection of community groups and civil society organisations that fight against fascism, racism, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance.”
Breitbart London spoke to British independent MEP Janice Atkinson, vice-president of the populist Europe for Nations and Freedom (ENF) parliamentary group, who said the motion was “a very disturbing example of the growing tendency of shutting down free speech under the guise of claiming that the European Parliament is concerned about the growing acceptance of fascism, racism, and xenophobia.”
“In my understanding, formulating critical opinions is still part of free speech. We in the ENF group, however, condemn the rise of neo-Nazism and extremism, which is mainly coming from national socialism on the Left,” Atkinson said.
“The reality is that ‘shutting down’ can be arbitrary, just like the social media globalists and that the Member States’ police forces ‘instruction’ is harder to implement and will take some time,” she added.
The resolution lacked any reference to far-left extremist violence which has also seen a rise in recent years, including the violence of the Hamburg G20 last year, the attacks on police in France in this year’s May Day riots in Paris, as well as the recent bombing of an office belonging to the populist League (La Lega) party headed by populist Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.