UKIP: Even more on Nigel's new fascist friends

How ironic that Nigel Farage has told the staff of the MEP's favourite Brussels watering hole, O'Farrell's, that if they serve the two BNP MEPs then UKIP will withdraw their custom.

The manager of O’Farrell’s was so concerned by this threat that when the two BNP MEPs arrived and tried to order drinks they were told to leave.

I would suggest that the manager of O’Farrell’s should take a closer look at UKIP’s latest chums before listening to Nigel Farage and blacklisting the BNP. Compared to Farage’s new fascist friends the BNP look like a bunch of second-rate amateurs!

True Finns.

Timo Soini, leader of the Finnish Perussuomalaiset (True Finns) Party, and rather oddly a keen supporter of Millwall F.C., should add a little spice to Farage's new group.

He wants to restrict entry to Finland for foreigners, and calls for legislation to force those already there to integrate. Describing itself as "populist", the True Finns has its roots in agrarian politics, is anti-capitalist, believing that entrepreneurship hampers bureaucracy. The party attracts a great deal of support from those who would have previously voted for the SDP or the Left Alliance. Its mix of "back to the soil" agrarianism, populism, and militaristic nationalism has led many observers to categorise the party as National Socialist. Indeed, in keeping with Nazi tradition, Soini was a corporal in the army.

In April 2009, all the leaders of Finland's political parties signed a declaration condemning racism. Only Soini refused to sign. The party also believes homosexuality to be an "aberration". Finnish celebrity Teuvo Loman complained to police about a Facebook site, called "Lets beat Teuvo Straight", set up by a True Finns candidate for Urjala municipal council elections. The site allegedly promoted violence against Loman.

In December 2006, True Finn councillor Jussi Halla-aho caused a controversy when he published the following comments as part of a discussion about immigrants and rape: “The number of rapes will increase in any case. Therefore, as more and more women will undoubtedly get raped, I sincerely hope that at least the right women, the green-leftist reformers and their voters, will find themselves in the clutches of the rapists, who randomly select their victims. Rather them than anyone else. With people like that nothing else works, except when their own multiculturalist views turn against them.” Halla-aho, who describes asylum seekers as "parasites", has been charged with hate crimes.

Another interesting True Finn politician, is the former wrestler and parliamentarian Tony "the Viking" Halme. In 2004, he received a four-month suspended prison sentence and was ordered to pay fines totalling 80 income-linked "day-fines" - amounting to EUR 4,480 - for criminal offences that were uncovered in connection with a drunken firearms violation episode in the summer of 2003.

Other charges brought against Halme included behaviour likely to cause danger, smuggling, possession of imported goods knowing them to be illegal, and drug use. The latter is ironic, as he has called for drug offenders to be sent to Russian prisons, where they can be dealt with in a more cost effective manner. The day after he was elected to parliament he caused a stir by attacking President Tarja Halonen as a "Lesbian". (Halonen had been a champion for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans-Gender rights in her country). In 2006 Halme was convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol. In that same year he was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital.

The True Finns will sit well with the populist Lega Nord, the Italian party expelled from the Independence & Democracy Group by Farage following allegations of racist behaviour. That party is partly defined by its homophobia.

Lega Nord.

Giancarlo Gentilini, Lega Nord's deputy mayor of Treviso called in 2007 for the "ethnic cleansing" of homosexuals." I will immediately give orders to my forces so that they can carry out an ethnic cleansing of faggots," he told a local television station. "The faggots must go to other cities where they are welcome. Here in Treviso there is no chance for faggots or the like."

In the same year he taunted Pecoraro Scanio, Italy's Minister of the Environment and an open bisexual, by saying: "In Gorgo, a woman was raped with a chisel in the back and in the front. I say to Pecoraro Scanio that I want the same thing happens to his mother and his sister."

Pro-Federalist Lega Nord – the party's constitution says that the party will end its political activity when federalism is obtained - are no strangers to racially motivated violence: indeed, MEP Mario Borghezio was fined in 1993 for beating a 12 year old Moroccan child. In 2005, whilst sitting as an MEP, he was found guilty of setting fire to the belongings of immigrants under a railway bridge in Turin, during a vigilante raid. In September 2007 he was arrested by Belgian police for his part in an anti-Islamic demonstration.

The former leader of Lega Nord, Umberto Bossi, an MEP in the last parliament, was convicted of incitement to violence in 1998. He received a one-year suspended prison sentence. He had previously received a conviction for taking a 200 million bribe. In 2003 he described Africans as "Bingo-Bongos", and suggested that the Italian navy should open fire on boats carrying refugees.
Notorious holocaust denier Father Floriano Abrahamowicz is considered to be the "unofficial Chaplain" of Lega Nord. He told an Italian newspaper: "I know the gas chambers existed... but I don't know if anyone was killed in them. I know that, in addition to the official version, there is another version..." He has also been a vocal supporter of Erich Priebke, the German SS officer convicted of war crimes for a 1944 massacre in Rome, extradited to Italy from Argentina and currently living under house arrest.

The Lega has its own militant faction, the so-called Green shirts.

Morten Messerschmidt: Heil Hitler, & some embarrassing songs.

The Danish People's Party (DPP), rejected by the British Conservatives, has been condemned by the Paris based European Jewish Congress for its approach to the question of immigration. It has also been accused of Islamophobia.

Morten Messerchmidt is one of the DPP's new MEPs. In 2002 he was sentenced to prison for racially motivated offences. In April 2007 he was reported to have been drunk in a restaurant in Copenhagen, and was seen "Heiling Hitler". Messerchmidt subsequently admitted singing Nazi songs at the restaurant. The incident caused him to temporarily resign from his position in the government.

Messerchmidt is a former assistant to Mogens Camre MEP, himself reported to the police for possible violations of anti-racism legislation in 2007.