THE HATE MACHINE

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Jul 2, 2000 | by words Neil Mackay, Home Affairs Editor

Sources within a number of extreme right-wing groups claim there was talk throughout early 1999 of bombing attacks both in America and the UK around the time of the millennium. There is speculation that Copeland might have decided to bring forward the deadline for race war, and attacks on ZOG - the Zionist Occupation Government, a catch- all to describe the British establishment, government, police and media.

So why has this bitter concept of terrorism and race war taken hold within British fascism, which until the mid-90s had happily consigned itself to ranting about repatriation, street fighting with leftwingers and casual violence against blacks, Jews and gays? The answer is quite simple. Nazism is becoming globalised, and America is taking the lead.

The weekend Copeland bombed the Admiral Duncan bar in Soho, the Sunday Herald revealed the staggering international connections between British Nazis, men like Copeland, and American organisations like the National Alliance, the group whose leader Dr William Pierce inspired the Oklahoma bombing. Pierce told the Sunday Herald that he was working with British Nazis to spread the idea of "leaderless resistance" a concept most closely resembling the cell-structure of conventional terrorist groups like the IRA. Under leaderless resistance, individuals devoted to fomenting race war take action themselves, without the authority of any governing body or army council. Working in cells of one, two or three, the concept exists to prevent operations being penetrated by the intelligence services.

Through his membership of the NSM, Copeland, and the men leading the organisation, had a direct path to men like Pierce. The NSM and NA are closely allied. Copeland would also have had access to men like Tommy Metzger, leader of White Aryan Resistance, who has been sued for incitement to kill blacks. Many members of C-18 and NSM share membership of the National Alliance. The NA also has a British wing.

The British extreme right - men like Copeland - are in direct contact with ideologues like Pierce and Metzger on an almost daily basis. One of the far right's key activists in Scotland, Stephen Cartwright, was deported from America last year by armed federal officers on his second trip to the States to establish even greater links with organisations like the National Alliance. Cartwright is a key figure in bringing the thinking of Pierce to Britain.

Cartwright, a prominent member of the BNP and former C-18 activist, met with Pierce just as Copeland was beginning his bombing campaign. Pierce wrote the blueprint for race war and leaderless resistance with his novel The Turner Diaries, where right-wing terrorists attack the federal government and launch genocide against blacks in America. The book inspired Timothy McVeigh to bomb Oklahoma's federal McMurrah Building claiming the lives of 168 men, women and children in 1995.

Anti-terrorist officers in the UK see Pierce's mentorship of men like Cartwright as one of the most disturbing developments in the history of Britain's far right. The Sunday Herald has learned that at least one cell of extreme rightwingers in Scotland, linked to C-18, are stock-piling weapons. The BNP are busy trying to distance themselves from Copeland. Seeing themselves as a legitimate political party, the BNP are desperately pointing out that Copeland was mixed up in organisations which were infiltrated heavily by Special Branch and MI5. With that in mind, they are concocting a conspiracy theory of their own - that Copeland was either an agent provocateur, or the unwitting stooge of an agent provocateur, acting on behalf of the state to destroy the extreme right wing.