Generation Identity: Far-right group sending UK recruits to military-style training camps in Europe
Footage shows white supremacists training in hand-to-hand combat amid warnings over rising extremism
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Your support makes all the difference.A white supremacist group is recruiting British members and sending them to military-style training camps abroad, an investigation has revealed.
Generation Identity (GI), a pan-European group, officially launched its new UK branch last month but undercover reporters from ITV found supporters had already been taking part in its activities.
One man secretly filmed for the documentary Undercover – Inside Britain’s New Far Right, described GI’s week-long camp in France as “really good”.
“We’d be training for two hours in the morning,” he added. “At the end of the week … we had a mock demonstration.
“It was like really realistic because they had like pepper spray, everything. It was really organised.”
The same man asked: “We have fit girls, fit guys… which side do you want to play for? For the degenerates or the patriots?”
A senior Norwegian member of GI told a reporter who infiltrated the group for six months: “We want young normal people, who want to get involved and we train them.”
Glossy videos show around 200 members practicing hand-to-hand combat and exercising at the “Identitarian Summer University”, before passing out wearing uniforms bearing GI’s logo in a military-style parade.
GI, which started in France and has spread across Europe, claims it represents “indigenous Europeans” and propagates the far-right conspiracy theory that white people are becoming a minority in what it calls the “Great Replacement”.
It announced its presence in the UK by dropping a banner on Westminster Bridge reading “Defend London – Stop Islamisation” last month and is recruiting new members.
Damhnait McKenna, the leader of GI UK and Ireland, claimed the organisation’s ideology on “ethno-cultural identity” and calls for all illegal immigrants to be repatriated, were not extreme.
“We want to bring a revival to our culture and our way of life,” she told The Independent. “Our biggest concern of course is becoming a minority in our own country.”
Ms McKenna claimed that “Islamisation” was under way in Britain and Ireland, adding: “Islam isn’t a religion in my opinion, it’s more of a political force.”
Asked about the volume of racist and antisemitic responses from supporters replying to the group’s online posts, the 38-year-old said anyone who “tries to bring up the Jewish question” is prevented from formally joining GI.
But a group revealed to be a branch of the neo-Nazi terrorist group National Action claimed it shared GI’s ideals, using the group’s colour scheme and running its own training camps.
Scottish Dawn described itself as an “Identitarian social movement” and led marches and protests before being banned in September.
Designating Scottish Dawn as a terrorist group alongside another National Action faction called NS131, Amber Rudd said it was a “vile racist, homophobic and antisemitic group which glorifies violence and stirs up hatred while promoting poisonous ideology”.
Ms McKenna claimed GI had no links to the “mental” faction and said she was not concerned about government or police action against her group.
Support for GI has been rising across Europe during a series of terror attacks claimed by Isis, while it also hijacked concerns over the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants in Europe by crowdfunding a boat to interfere with rescues in the Mediterranean Sea.
Using slick videos and a high-profile social media presence, GI is targeting teenagers and young people in what researchers have called the “weaponisation of internet culture”.
GI’s leaders reject the labels far-right or alt-right and claim they vet members for extremism, but analysts say the organisation is “pure in its white supremacy”.
Nick Lowles, the chief executive of Hope Not Hate, told ITV it was more middle class than traditional street movements, adding: “Their ability to spread their message and fund their operations has never been as high as it is now.”
The leaders of GI’s UK and Ireland branch attended last month’s “Traditional Britain Conference”, alongside defeated Ukip leadership candidate Anne Marie Waters.
The anti-Islam activist was filmed socialising with senior members of the group during ITV’s documentary, where she was caught on camera claiming the UK was “becoming an Islamic state”.
“The EU agreed to turn Europe into an Arabian Islamic continent, in return for trade essentially,” Ms Waters added.
She took second place in the Ukip leadership race but a spokesperson for the party said she was no longer a member, adding: “Her extreme views have no place in Ukip.”
The documentary comes after the leaders of the Government’s counter-extremism programme revealed the number of people referred over far-right radicalisation was rising.
Of the total 7,631 people referred to Prevent in the 2015/16 financial year, 65 per cent (4,997) were suspected of Islamist extremism and 10 per cent (759) of right-wing extremism.
But the figure of right-wing radicals rises to a quarter for those going through the Channel programme, which aims to turn people away from extremist ideologies.
“For young people there is a kind of utopia in far-right or Islamic extremism,” an intervention provider said.
“What these groups have understood is that young people need narratives and they’ve created narratives that make a complicated world seem very simple.”
‘Undercover – Inside Britain’s New Far Right’ will air on ITV at 10.40pm tonight (Thursday)