As Christmas approaches, we can’t help noting how European fascist groups are dusting down their Christian credentials.

Blurring political, racial and religious ideology can be counted among the numerous tactics that the BNP shares with its European Parliamentary allies, as seen in the use of Reverend Robert West to head up the BNP-linked Christian Council of Great Britain. (Its constitution states that, “the Christian Council of Great Britain and Northern Ireland therefore resolved to recognise the godly importance of race and nation as groups based on this historical and providential process of objective descent”.)

In an indication of how they do it overseas, in Hungary a Calvinist priest in Budapest was recently identified as the source of Jobbik leaflets inviting recipients to a ceremony of the installation of a cross on in the centre of the Hungarian capital, as blogger Karl Pfeiffer reports. The Hungarian neo-fascist party has a track record of using and distorting religion to promote its beliefs, most notably through the frequent appearance of Loránt Hegedüs Jr., the Church minister and notorious anti-Semite. Hegedüs has also shared a stage with Jobbik’s high-profile MEP Krisztina Morvai, at a rally where they made speeches wearing the banned outfit of the paramilitary Hungarian Guard. Hegedüs will again speak at a rally for Jobbik’s militia on December 5th, this time sharing the stage with the another of the party’s MEPs, Csanád Szegedi.

Nick Griffin is a busy man, flying around Europe’s fascist organisations and picking up new ways of promoting the BNP wherever he can like a hyperactive magpie. If the Hungarian example is anything to go by, we can expect more Christianity love-bombing from Wrexham.

Rev Robert West: head of BNP Christian astroturf group.

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