US: compensation lawsuits used to battle racism

Some mainstream European politicians have been agonising recently about the growth of racist far right parties, which are currently propping up, or part of centre-right coalitions in Europe's most liberal countries, Holland and Denmark, and which have recently been part of right wing coalitions in more conservative countries like Italy and Austria.

However, there may be a simple solution to the problem of racist far right organisations which could consign the heavily in debt BNP, and also the National Front, English Defence League, Scottish Defence League, Welsh Defence League, England First Party, British People's Party, etc. to the history books: The huge compensation award lawsuits after racist crimes which the USA's Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama civil rights law firm, have been using for decades to bankrupt numerous American racist organisations and activists.

For example, after White Aryan Resistance skinheads beat an Ethiopian man, Mulugeta Seraw, to death with a baseball bat, SPLC successfully sued WAR, and its leader, Tom Metzger, for $12.5 million compensation. As a result, Metzger was forced to sell his home, and was bankrupted. WAR continued, but like Metzger, it still has to make regular payments to Seraw's family, in Metzger's case out of his welfare cheques.

In another case, SPLC successfully sued the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, its state leader, and 4 other individual members for $37.8 million compensation (later reduced to $21.5 million on appeal) after they burned down an African American church. As a result of the compensation award, the Christian Knights immediately went from being one of the most active KKK groups in the US, to effectively ceasing to exist.

You can read about these, and other hate and extremism lawsuits on the SPLC website. All of them have been funded by donations from SPLC supporters, as the SPLC do not take any money from the people who they sue on behalf of.

If the BNP, NF, EDL, SDL, WDL, EFP, BPP, etc., and their leaders all faced huge compensation award lawsuits after every hate crime which they or their members were involved in, for engaging in such crimes, or for using malicious and deliberate lies to incite them, they could all obviously be bankrupted very quickly.

Nick Griffin was of course successfully prosecuted for inciting racial hatred after he maliciously and deliberately denied the Holocaust in an article, but unfortunately, he was not sued for a huge compensation award, which could have been paid to Holocaust survivors.

The USA has no racial or religious hatred incitement laws, which is why so much Holocaust denial literature is printed in the US, and which is why SPLC lawsuits cannot sue on those grounds, and have to prove that an organisation or individual engaged in, or incited criminality, but more liberal British laws, and more liberal European laws in general, are much stricter, as they should be.

Hitler and the Nazis would have been bankrupted long before they got into power if Weimar Republic Germany had had such laws, and if an SPLC type law firm had used them rigourously.

For example, the Russian Tsarist secret police (Okhrana) forgery, "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion", which the Okhrana created to turn the hatred which much of the Russian public felt for the Tsar, into hatred of Russia's Jews, incited people to vote for the Nazis, who popularised the forgery, and who were later incited by "The Protocols" to organise the Holocaust.

You can buy Norman Cohn's book about "The Protocols" inciting people to vote for the Nazis, and inciting the Nazis to organise the Holocaust here.

Today, racist organisations are in some cases far more extreme than the Nazis, as I explained in an earlier article, which discussed the current, or past BNP and EFP leaders who admire, or admired a now dead American fascist party leader who was far more extreme than the Nazis, as he openly advocated killing all of the world's billions of non-white people and Jews, so it is very important that contemporary racist organisations which have used "Protocols" type malicious and deliberate lies in their propaganda to win votes, and to whip up racial hatred, and thus incite racist criminality, are made to pay a heavy financial price for their inflammatory mendacity.

Anti-racist lawyers could thus contact the SPLC for advice, and could then begin bankrupting all British far right organisations and leaders, by suing them because of racial or religious hatred inciting malicious and deliberate lies in past leaflets, articles, and other propaganda, which would undoubtedly have led to past hate crimes by them, or by their members.

Anti-racist lawyers could also contact any lawyer friends they have in other European countries, to suggest the same tactic to them.

"Searchlight" magazine, and other anti-fascist organisations, have long been documenting the remarkably large numbers of criminal convictions for terrorism, hard drug dealing, paedophilia, gang rape, inciting racial hatred, racist violence, football hooliganism, etc. which racist activists have, so the law, and a deluge of huge compensation demand lawsuits, are the correct way to deal with the criminals who are responsible for organised racist activism.

Roddy Newman