Neo-Nazi organization Blood and Honour launches new website in the Czech Republic

Neo-Nazi organization Blood and Honour launches new website in the Czech RepublicPraha, 28.3.2011 23:47, (ROMEA)Share |

A new website has been launched in the Czech Republic endorsing the international neo-Nazi organization Blood and Honour (BH) and the militant terrorist group Combat 18 (C18). The last website run by the Czech promoters of BH, calling themselves Blood and Honour Division Bohemia, was reportedly blocked by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (the FBI) three years ago.

The designers of the new website have posted the information that C18 is doing its best to “destabilize the system and unleash race war” in the Czech Republic. C18 is said to have been behind several actions in recent months “and will commit many others again soon.” The section entitled “Who we are against and how to fight” includes the following statement: “The communists have their headquarters in the center of Prague off of Wenceslas Square, and what could be easier than driving by and throwing a grenade or an improvised bomb through the gateway?”

Communist Party (KSČM) spokesperson Věra Žežulková says the party will be seeking legal advice regarding the call for violence on the neo-Nazi website. “If the threats are specific, we will turn to the Czech Police,” Žežulková told the Czech Press Agency. She said the KSČM unequivocally condemns racism, violence, xenophobia and similar phenomena and that the party is not surprised by the “hate of these extreme-right groups.”

Jan Šubert, spokesperson for the Security Information Services (Bezpečnostní informační služby – BIS) did not want to comment on the activities or the website of the BH and C18 promoters. He told the Czech Press Agency that the civilian counter-intelligence services have no information that the neo-Nazis would, in recent months, have been behind some sort of organized, sophisticated, subversive action or that something of the sort might occur in the near future. “Of course, violent action by an individual can never be ruled out,” Šubert said, adding that the neo-Nazi scene in the Czech Republic is currently fractured into small groups which operate in isolation without central leadership.

“Naturally, we know about the website. We monitor those pages just like all the other things that turn up on the internet and are somehow related to the extremist scene in this country,” Pavel Hanták, spokesperson for the Organized Crime Detection Unit (Útvar pro odhalování organizovaného zločinu – ÚOOZ) told the Czech Press Agency. However, he did not want to comment on the website. “We of course do not publicize our operational activities,” he said.

In one of the texts on the site, the authors praise the arson attack on a home occupied by Roma people in Vítkov, which the courts found to be a case of the attempted murder of eight people. At the same time, the authors distance themselves from groups such as the Autonomous Nationalists, National Resistance and the Workers’ Social Justice Party, labeling them all “half left-wing”.

A website devoted to the BH and C18 is nothing new for the Czech Republic. Czech daily Hospodářské noviny (HN) reported in May 2008 that the FBI had blocked the most recent one. “Our American colleagues acted at the instigation of British police officers who followed the website and labeled it terrorist,” the daily quoted Karel Kuchařík, then head of the computer crimes division at the Police Presidium, as saying. HN reported that the Czech Police had tried on their own to have the website banned but had not succeeded.

The Blood and Honour organization was founded in the 1980s in Britain by Ian Stuart Donaldson, the singer with the neo-Nazi band Skrewdriver. It takes its name from the battle cry of the Hitler Youth. The organization endorses the legacy of the Third Reich and its main activity is organizing concerts and rallies and publishing and distributing music, magazines and clothing patches. BH divisions have been set up in many other countries.

The number 18 in Combat 18 stands for the initials of Adolf Hitler. The militant group openly calls for attacks on immigrants, Jewish people and Roma people. Political scientist Miroslav Mareš wrote in his handbook for the Czech Police on this issue that C18 was founded at the start of the 1990s in Britain and that divisions and sections of the organization have gradually been founded in other countries as well. Mareš says members of C18 have carried out a number of violent terrorist actions.