A far-left Antifa member was arrested by Kent police following an attack on attendees of a Generation Identity conference which saw two overseas speakers, including Martin Sellner, detained and refused entry to the UK by border forces ahead of the event.
The Identitarian conference, which was labelled “European Reunion,” was held in Sevenoaks, Kent on Saturday with the exact location of the event kept private until far-left activist organisation HOPE not Hate published the exact location on Twitter. The far-left group then encouraged others to retweet the address.
Following the publication of the event location, several Antifa Twitter accounts also published the location promising to head to the area while posting an image advocating “hunting” members of the anti-mass migration activist group.
After Antifa arrived at the location the Identitarians had already vacated the conference venue. In a press release the group gave the reason for leaving the venue saying, “with the last of our speeches done and news that far-left groups were on there way, we decided to vacate the venue so that it wasn’t damaged if we were attacked.”
The Stag Theatre, however, claimed the group were kicked out of the venue, writing on Facebook that they had booked the room in the theatre under “false pretences.”
Attendees were later attacked by several masked Antifa extremists, with much of the attack being caught on video. The far-left then engage in a mass brawl, with at least one member of the Identitarians claiming to have been hit with a glass bottle.
Local news website Kent Online reported Sunday that a 27-year-old man, of no fixed address, was arrested by Kent police in connection with the violence. The man was later released on bail pending an investigation into the violence.
Before the conference, two of the main speakers, Martin Sellner of Austria and Ábel Bódi of Hungary were detained by UK border forces and denied entry into the country on Friday.
Bódi, who was released and sent back to Hungary Saturday, posted the letter he received from the Home Office outlining the reasons for not being allowed in the UK on social media. According to the letter, the Hungarian activist did not share the correct values because of a speech that was found on his person that spoke of “anti-Islamisation.”
Martin Sellner was also detained at Stansted airport Friday and was not released until Sunday evening.
Sellner, along with his partner, author and political commentator Brittany Pettibone, was detained and refused entry last month after wanting to deliver a speech on the topic of free speech at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park.
His speech, part of which he had written while in detention, was later delivered to a crowd of thousands by former English Defence League leader turned citizen journalist Tommy Robinson.
Breitbart London spoke to Sellner following his release from detention Sunday night. According to Sellner, the border forces argued that he had been in possession of “items that indicate affiliation to far-right ideology” which included a speech and the book The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam by UK author Douglas Murray.
Sellner claimed that the speech in his possession was the essay “Civil Disobedience” by 19th-century anti-slavery campaigner and philosopher Henry David Thoreau which he had modified and applied to the present day.
“I went there because I knew there is no ban and I have the right to freedom of movement in the Schengen Zone as well as the right of freedom of speech in the West. The UK, shutting down its borders to foreign ideas, is becoming a totalitarian state, a multicultural USSR in the middle of Europe,” Sellner said.
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