Month: March 2024

Baying Jew-haters hurl abuse at little Jewish girl coming to opening of Holocaust museum in Amsterdam

Image: Twitter screen shot

By Monica Showalter

At a Dutch museum dedicated to preserving the consequences of Jew-hate, a small girl got to experience that hate, too, as baying mobs waving Palestinian flags screamed out their hatred for Jews at the child.

Here is what was seen on Twitter:

The picture was curiously redolent of Norman Rockwell’s famous masterpiece about desegregation of schools titled “The Problem We All Live With,” in this illustrative painting:

Here’s the best account of the context — from The Guardian of all places:

Three-quarters of the Dutch Jewish population – 102,000 people – were killed by the Nazis during the second world war, the highest proportion in western Europe. But, unlike some other countries, the Netherlands has never had a national museum devoted to those horrors.

That changed on Sunday when, eight decades after the second world war and in the presence of the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, the Dutch king opened the country’s first Holocaust museum on the site of an Amsterdam creche and former teaching college where 600 children were smuggled to safety.

Wearing a kippah, the monarch, Willem-Alexander, said: “There is no excuse for not knowing, no room for perspective. Ifs and buts are not appropriate here. Knowing about the Holocaust is not optional. This museum shows us what happened. And not so very long ago.”

Herzog, whose attendance sparked protests amid Israel’s continuing offensive in Gaza, said the museum sent “a clear and powerful statement: remember, remember the horrors born of hatred, antisemitism and racism and never again allow them to flourish.”

“Unfortunately never again is now, right now. Because right now, hatred and antisemitism are flourishing worldwide and we must fight it together,” added the president.

Waving Palestinian flags and banners, protesters in a square close to the museum voiced their anger at his visit, chanting “ceasefire now”. The human rights group Amnesty International, meanwhile, put up detour signs around the museum to direct Herzog to the international court of justice in The Hague.

The little girl was a great grandchild of one of the few Jewish survivors of the Nazi Holocaust of Dutch Jews. To take the Google Translate of the Dutch-language caption on Twitter:

The aggression of the hate mongers was also directed yesterday against the youngest generation of Jews. The great-granddaughter of survivor Rudy Cortissos is being verbally abused. Thank you, Mayor of Amsterdam, for derailing this historic day into one of the darkest for the Jewish Netherlands after the war. #Amsterdam #Holocaustmuseum

Which takes the standard pro-Palestinian Jew-hating protest we have seen since October to a whole new level.

It’s shocking that anyone with any cause whatsoever would scream at a child. To scream at a Holocaust survivor child is utterly vile, and takes a special kind of antisemite to have the nerve to do it.

One thing this nasty, uncalled-for abuse of this small child tells us is that the left’s claim that its so-called “anti-Zionism” has nothing to do with antisemitism is absolutely false. They claim it’s about policy differences, not Jew-hate, but this incident lays it out loud and clear that this is about Jew-hate. They hate that child for surviving and their shrieks amount to cheering for Hitler. To do that in front of a Holocaust museum to an innocent child tells us everything we need to know about this crowd. They are naked Jew-haters and their brazenness abuse against children and a museum dedicated to the sacred memory of the lost signals that they’re Hitler’s spiritual denizens.

It doesn’t get more vile than this. Maybe we ought to know more about who they are, whether they belong in Europe, who failed to teach them the history of the Jews, and why they turned up at that Holocaust museum to scream obscenities.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/03/jewhaters_hurl_abuse_at_little_jewish_girl_coming_to_opening_of_holocaust_museum_in_amsterdam.html

France’s RN leader Bardella reveals ‘tricolour strategy’ for European Parliament elections

Screenshot X

The right-wing populist National Rally of Marine Le Pen holds a commanding lead of 13 points over French President Emmanuel Macron in the upcoming elections for the European Parliament.

Three months before voters in France and across the EU will go to the polls and determine the composition of the bloc’s next parliament, President Macron continues to struggle as he looks to move on from a year dominated by civil unrest his country, from racially-inspired riots, to labour union strikes and mass demonstrations against his raising of the pension age, and the nation’s farmers shutting down critical roadways in protest of his green agenda.

According to an Ipsos survey of French voters, Macron’s neo-liberal globalist Ensemble! coalition, which includes his own Renaissance (RE) as well as the centrist Democratic Movement (MoDem) and the globalist Horizons party, is only on pace to receive 18 per cent of the vote in the June elections, declining a further two points over the past three months.

Meanwhile, the populist opposition National Rally, led by 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, who took over as president of the party in 2022 as former presidential candidate Marine Le Pen transitioned to leading the parliamentary branch of the party in the National Assembly, is projected to win 31 per cent support after increasing in over the past three months by three points.

The surge means the populist party, capitalising on anger over mass migration, economic failures, and the green agenda, now commands a 13-point lead over Macron and his allies.

The polling firm noted that 72 per cent of those backing the National Rally said their top issue in the European elections was to show their disapproval of the president and his globalist government in Paris, compared to 39 per cent on average among all voters.

“The anti-Macron vote is therefore clearly the Bardella vote,” Brice Teinturier of the Le Monde newspaper remarked.

The survey also revealed that the National Rally has solidified and strengthened its hold among the working class, particularly those classed as labourers, such as those who work in agriculture, with 57 per cent of such voters backing the populist party.

However, while the party has been able to maintain its traditional support base among the working class, the poll found that it is beginning to expand its reach into the middle classes of France.

“The correlation between the RN vote and the income level is smoothing out, with notably little variation between households earning less than €1,250 per month and those earning up to €3,500, all voting more than 30 per cent for the Bardella list,” Teinturier said.

Although the party is very much still dominated by former presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, the June elections will serve as the first major litmus test for Bardella after taking the helm of the party in 2022.

While young in years, Bardella has been active within politics for over a decade, having joined the National Rally as a 16-year-old, and has since served in various roles, including as a Member of the European Parliament, and the vice president of the RN before taking over the top spot two years ago. If the polls hold true, Bardella would have led the National Rally to one of its best performances in a national election in the history of the party and therefore would likely entrench himself as the undisputed heir the Le Pen political dynasty.

It is widely expected that Marine Le Pen, who has failed in three attempts to win the presidency, will look to give it ‘one more go’ in trying to become president of France in 2028 when Macron’s second and final term in the Élysée Palace comes to a close.

However, some may begin to question this, with Bardella’s rising political stardom rocketing him to the position of the second most popular politician in the country, besting Le Pen and only trailing behind former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe.

For now, there appears to be no daylight between Le Pen and Bardella. In a dual interview with the Journal du Dimanche in January, Bardella said: ‘Marine has the solidity coupled with the experience of three candidacies in the presidential election. Today, there is no longer any structural obstacle to our coming to power and her being elected President of the Republic in three years.”

Meanwhile, Le Pen said of Bardella: “One of the great responsibilities of a party leader is to find an heir. There is nothing worse than a leader who does everything to never have a successor… Is it reassuring to have someone who will be able to take your place tomorrow? Yes, it’s very reassuring.”

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/03/12/le-pens-national-rally-holds-13-point-advantage-over-macron-in-eu-parliament-elections/

Yes to Life: 35,000 March Against Abortion in Madrid

Photo: Día Internacional de la Vida “Sí a la Vida” / Facebook, 10 March, 2024.

Under the motto ‘Yes to Life,’ tens of thousands marched through the streets of Madrid on Sunday to take a stand against abortion. 

According to Si a la Vida, which organized the demonstration, more than 35,000 people from all over Spain turned out at the capital to proclaim that “there are no people who have less value due to their health or capacity.”

Participants carried signs reading, “Thank you mom, for letting me be born,” “The embryo is a human being,” “Listen to the heartbeat, I’ll tell you I’m alive,” “The right to life for all without exception,” and “Young people say yes to life.”  

Before the march set out on its route, Madrid’s Deputy Mayor Immaculate Sanz, greeted the crowd, asserting that “policies in favor of abortion” be denounced. 

Several VOX politicians were also seen at the march including Rocío Monasterio, head of the party in Madrid. She told El Debate that the defense of life is “fundamental to political action. Everything else is secondary,” stressing that all policies have to “defend the dignity of the person.”

The event has been growing in recent years, as the numbers attest to. More than 500 local organizations participated with bus transport organized from many parts of Spain outside the capital. 

Some participants from Cantabria in northern Spain told El Debate, “Life is the most precious and important gift from heaven. Life begets life and death begets death. That’s why we’re here today.”

This year’s march focused on protecting and supporting those with disabilities. At the end of the march, families with a member with a disability testified to the beauty of these lives, too. 

“Carlitos is 26 years old and is like a six-month-old boy. He does not walk, he does not speak, he does not communicate,” Paloma Zafrilla told the crowd the story of her brother. “What he does do is smile and whimper. There is no greater life than that of my home and family, especially for my brother. The union we have and the love that has grown among us.”

Speakers also lamented the lack of public resources devoted to helping pregnant women compared to that given to financing abortion, only 20 million euros allocated to support pregnant women, while 40 million are allocated to finance abortion. 

The demonstrators observed a minute of silence, too, in memory of “all those children who were not born, in memory of the victims of euthanasia, of those killed by rare diseases, and of all victims of the culture of death.”  

The excellent participation in the march comes on the heels of the French government’s decision to enshrine abortion as a protected ‘freedom’ in its national constitution, a tragic decision which the organizers and speakers did not fail to denounce during the event. 

https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/yes-to-life-35000-march-against-abortion-in-madrid/

BBC Should be Renamed ABBC: Anti-British Broadcasting Channel – So Much of its Content Undermines UK

Last year the BBC inserted modern “anticolonialism” themes into Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. Now, in an adaptation of Hard Times, the BBC claims that life in 21st century Britain is as harsh as in the brutal Victorian / Dickensian era! NCF Senior Fellow Rafe Heydel-Mankoo joined Talk TV’s Julia Hartley-Brewer to discuss.

“Submit to Allah”: SOS Calvaires supports a French community in the Dordogne after a cemetery was damaged

The cemetery of Clermont-d’Excideuil (Dordogne). ©SOS Calvary

A cemetery was vandalised. On the night of the 10th to 11th March 2024, the cemetery of Clermont-d’Excideuil (Dordogne) was smeared with tags, according to a statement from the SOS Calvaires association. No fewer than 58 graves were smeared with tags, including the memorial to the fallen of the First World War and the door of the village church. The inscriptions are all related to Islam. “Submit to Allah” is written on one of the graves, but also: “Ramadan”, “Allah”, “Dog”, “Gwers” or “The Muslim bear awakens”.
SOS Calvaires “expresses its full support for the municipal authorities of Clermont-d’Excideuil and the people whose family graves have been desecrated, as well as for the Périgueux gendarmerie, which is in charge of the investigation”, states the organisation, which restores crosses throughout France. “There is no stronger symbol than the attack on the resting places of our elders, on those who fought for France to be free and on the crosses that characterise the landscapes of our country,” said Alexandre Caillé, Director General of the SOS Calvaires association. The association has been given authorisation by the city council and will be working from Saturday to restore the cemetery with the help of a team of volunteers present in the region.

France: 50 Christian graves and monuments in the cemetery of Clermont-d’Excideuil smeared with Islamic slogans – Allah's Willing Executioners

« Soumettez-vous à Allah » : SOS Calvaires soutient une commune de Dordogne après la dégradation d’un cimetière – Valeurs actuelles

Lyft Partners With Trans-Identified Male To Promote New “Women+” Safety Feature

A trans-identified male lyft driver has been given a paid partnership with Lyft to promote their Women+ Connect feature on his social media. Launched throughout the US in February, the feature was intended to make female passengers feel safer when using the service by allowing them to opt for a female driver.

“Women+ Connect, a highly-requested feature that lets women and nonbinary riders and drivers ride together more often, is now available nationwide,” Lyft said in a press statement on their website following the roll-out of the program.

“Drivers and riders asked for it, and Lyft is the only rideshare company with Women+ Connect in the US,” said Lyft CEO David Risher. “When rideshare is better for women and nonbinary people, rideshare is better for everyone. We’re proud to bring the comfort and camaraderie of Women+ Connect to millions across the country.”

When the feature was first introduced last September, many were quick to point out that allowing men to self-identify as trans or non-binary to become either a Women+ Connect passenger or driver defeated the purpose of such a feature and didn’t help keep women safe.

“On the surface, I would have to say this is a GREAT idea. But you do realize now you give MEN the option to request a woman driver/[passenger], just by saying they are non-binary? Such a great idea, but get the opposite effect when you let your ideology get in the way of logical thinking,” one person replied to the company.

Another user commented: “Lyft is calling it Women+ because it involves men in womanface. Hey @lyft, do you know men with autogynphilia commit more sexual offenses than men without? Do you know much they envy and hate real women? This puts women MORE at risk than less. Disgusting.”

While many initially speculated that the feature gave males the opportunity to abuse gender self-identification to pick up female passengers, Lyft has now made it apparent that this is not an unintended consequence of the feature, but something they encourage.

The ride share app entered into a paid partnership with a trans-identified male TikToker Davie Felton to promote the feature. Felton has 900,000 TikTok followers and primarily makes content about gender ideology.

Felton only began identifying as a woman in August 2023 but claims to have been a driver for Lyft for over 6 years.

In the promotional video, posted to Felton’s TikTok account, he demonstrated how easily he was able to turn on the Women+ Connect feature to match with “women and non-binary” passengers.

“I’m so excited, the feature offers more control over the driving experience for women and non-binary people”, Felton said in the ad.

The TikTok video was reposted to X by @LeftismForU, and immediately prompted outrage amongst female ride share users.

“These paraphilic men pose a significant risk to the safety of women and children. Shame on @lyft for putting women and children in danger. I will no longer use their services,” one woman said in response to the video.

“As a woman, this is the last feature I would use. I would much rather be driven by a normal man than choose an option AGPs will gravitate to,” said another.

Prior to identifying as a woman, Felton sported a long white beard and previously volunteered as a store Santa Claus from 2008 until 2022 where he would ask young children for their name and pronouns. Felton admitted to growing out his beard for the role of Santa, but after he began identifying as a woman he changed his character to “Sandra” Claus.

“Thank you for providing Santa a safe space to ask the kiddos the questions that really matter to them,” Felton said in a video posted on his YouTube account.

On his X account, Felton has regularly expressed anger towards women who are critical of transgenderism.

Felton has also mocked women’s concerns for wanting single sex spaces. He has posted selfies in women’s bathrooms and said he will continue to use women’s spaces regardless of the law.

“Trans people aren’t harming other women in bathrooms! That’s hyperbole and fear-mongering. Men in clergy, that’s where you wanna be looking!” Felton said in one post to X.

The need for a women-only feature on ride sharing apps emerged due to the prevalence of sexual harassment and assault that both female drivers and passengers face. From 2017 to 2019, Lyft logged 4,158 Sexual Assault Reports. However, in their promotional material for their Women+ Connect feature, Lyft focused less on the safety aspect of the feature and presented it as a way for women and trans-identified males to make friends and bond.

One of the first ads posted on Lyft’s own TikTok shows a female driver picking two passengers, one of whom is a trans-identified male, and shows the driver acting as a therapist for the passengers before taking them for milkshakes.

Reacting to the ad at the time, one woman said on X: “They’re playing with women’s lives at this point because women have been attacked by both Lyft and Uber drivers. I’ve been in several Ubers with creepy male drivers. Predators won’t think twice to claim they’re non-binary. The last thing you want at night is a man picking you up.”

https://reduxx.info/lyft-partners-with-trans-identified-male-to-promote-new-women-safety-feature/

‘She thought she was going to die’ – French stars and wealthy terrorized in wave of violent ‘home-jackings’

Celebrities are being targeted across France in an unprecedented wave of “home-jackings,” which are burglaries accompanied by violence and kidnapping. The cases often involve “youths” recruited by experienced ringleaders, such as Kamel Z., who keep their distance from their criminal underlings to insulate themselves from any prosecution.

The country has a history of these violent home invasions, but recent months have seen an explosion of such cases, including well-known French figures, such as Vitaa, Bruno Guillon, Jean-François Piège, Anne-Sophie Lapix, and Nikos Aliagas.

2023 marks a new milestone

In a special television report by BFMTV, the French news outlet reviewed the most recent cases. On July 21, 2023, a gang broke into the Paris home of PSG’s Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma and his partner, with the perpetrators tying up and stripping both victims. Then, on Sept. 27, the same type of home invasion, with the victims also being stripped, occurred against Bruno Guillon in the Paris region. Guillon, a host on French TV, was threatened with a handgun while his wife was tied up, gagged, and threatened with a hammer. Their 14-year-old son was also tied up inside his room and clamped in place.

On Dec. 18, the home of Alexandre Letelier, who serves as the backup goalkeeper for PSG, was invaded. Both he and his partner were threatened with death in front of their two children, aged two and six. Just two days later, on Dec. 20, the singer Vitaa was kidnapped, along with her husband and three children, after being targeted inside their home in Rueil-Malmaison.

Just a few weeks later, on Feb. 6, 2024, a team broke into Aya Nakumra’s home in Seine-Saint-Denis in Paris. They beat him to the point of hospitalization and robbed his residence.

Other celebrities, such as Nikos Alliagas, a Greek-French entertainer and journalist, as well as journalist Anne-Sophie Lapix, have also been targeted by burglary teams, but those attempts were foiled.

As BMFTV reports, many of these celebrities are targeted due to their presence on social media, where they show off their luxury watches, handbags, and other items.

“They are known for having money and property,” said Laurent Nuñez, the Paris police chief. “You just have to follow certain Facebook or Instagram profiles. We find a lot of information, both about the property held by future victims, and then obviously on their addresses and lifestyle.”

Once the information has been collected, the criminals can take action. In most cases, they “pose as a fake deliveryman, from La Poste or Amazon (…) with a parcel in hand,” explains Djassim Belkourchia, a delegate of the Alliance Police Nationale union.

“Committing a home-jacking in the presence of the occupants often allows them to ask for information on the whereabouts of the goods that are sought, jewelry, luxury watches or computer equipment,” estimates Laurent Nuñez.

France powerless to stop the crimes

Although these crimes have picked up steam in recent months, they have long plagued France. In July 2021, Guillaume Pley, a television presenter, learned that his wife and son, along with their nanny, had been victims of a violent house-jacking while he was flying to the Cannes Film Festival.

In that case, three men barged into the house when the mother, Agathe, had opened the door expecting the nanny.

They pointed a gun at her son’s head, and told Agathe, “If you make any noise, you know what will happen.”

“It’s difficult for a mother, it’s a scene that she won’t forget,” he said about the incident.

The burglars were looking for a luxury watch they had seen the French host wearing on social media, but he had the watch on him during his flight.

“She thought she was going to die because they were very hard on her when they couldn’t find the safe. It made them a little crazy,” he said.

The burglars fled with a counterfeit version of the watch worth a few hundred euros.

Most of the criminals are minors

Following the home invasion of Guillon, two minors and two others who were barely adults were arrested.

“What characterizes the profile of these young perpetrators is that they are essentially all minors. They are perfectly known to the police and justice for acts of violence (…) sometimes even violence with drug trafficking weapons, and they have already been condemned by the judicial authorities,” said Philippe Franchet, the commissioner of the Versailles banditry repression police unit.

However, despite participating in these high-profile crimes, many of these youths have little experience with home-jackings. In most cases, they are recruited by professionals, such as the 27-year-old Kamel Z., who is well known to police and has seven convictions.

He is accused of recruiting young men across Paris, and in many cases, he pays them just a few thousand euros. These underlings do not know each other and often know very little about their targets.

“They already have some experience in the world of banditry and police techniques. They think they will protect themselves from investigations and criminal liability by using young people who are a little less experienced,” explains Philippe Franchet.

Kamel Z. has been indicted for home-jacking at Bruno Guillon’s house, but investigators are also exploring his role in other violent house-jackings.

The BFMTV report notes that these home-jackings are not just targeting celebrities, but also families with no public-facing role. The Merlin family, for instance, was targeted in Calais in April 2023. The mother, Aurelie, was confronted while sleeping on the sofa by a man wearing a white mask and a black hood.

“He started hitting me in the face. I was so paralyzed that I didn’t even feel the blows. I was not in pain, but I could feel the blood starting to flow down my cheek. He hit me again, he asked me for money and he ran away,” says the mother.

She described it as a traumatic event that has left her checking her windows every night out of fear someone could slip into the house.

One psychologist described these home-jackings as one of the most traumatic crimes anyone can experience.

“It’s someone who enters into their private space… The victim is marked in her mind, she knows that this is where the trauma took place and for her, to go back to rebuild herself, she needs to turn the page and therefore change homes very often,” said Marjorie Sueur, a psychologist.

In many cases, the victims are advised to change their homes and start over someplace else.

Home security sales soaring

The brutal crime often leaves many families with trauma, involving both physical and mental scars. Such cases are not just hitting the wealthy and famous either, but ordinary French citizens dealt with over 210,000 home burglaries last year, with a third of these cases occurring while the family was still home.

Now, the sale of home security systems is soaring, with France inching towards a state of insecurity often seen in countries like South Africa and Brazil.

One businessman involved in the sale of home security systems says that in the five years he has been in the business, he has never been so profitable. 

“More and more, people are calling on me for preventive measures (…). We have seen 300 percent more turnover since the start of the year compared to the year before. If we are generalizing, that says a lot about the context in France. The risk of face-to-face confrontation (with burglars) has never been so great,” he said while appearing on the Europe 1 television channel.

https://www.rmx.news/crime/she-thought-she-was-going-to-die-french-stars-and-wealthy-terrorized-in-wave-of-violent-home-jackings/

Italy: 3 Palestinians held in L’Aquila for planning foreign attacks

Wikimedia Commons, SkeLeBon, CC-BY-SA-4.0

Italian police on Monday arrested three Palestinians in Abruzzo capital L’Aquila on suspicion of planning terror attacks on foreign soil, legal sources said.
    A pre-trial detention order was executed against the trio for the suspected crime of “association for the purposes of terrorism, including international terrorism or subversion of the democratic order.” The suspects, police said, alleged carried out proselytising and propaganda for the terrorist association and planned attacks, including suicide attacks, against civilian and military targets on foreign soil.

https://www.ansa.it/english/news/2024/03/11/3-palestinians-held-in-laquila-for-planning-foreign-attacks_34d33efb-d01b-4808-99a7-400414cf7deb.html

In Munich, pro-Palestinian activists ejected Israel supporters from a feminist rally

Foto: Martin Hagen Facebook

In Munich on March 8th, around 400 people gathered in the city center for a demonstration called “Run for Your Life” in memory of sexual violence against Israeli women. At this event, they remembered women kidnapped, raped, and killed by Hamas militants.

As reported by BILD, many participants in the march carried purple posters with the names and photos of the abducted victims. The event was organized by Professor Guy Katz, and among the participants were Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Jewish community in Munich, US Consul General Timothy Liston, and Martin Hagen, the leader of the FDP in Bavaria.

As the group approached Marienplatz, where they intended to join a larger feminist demonstration for International Women’s Day, they were verbally attacked by pro-Palestinian activists.

“You have no place here. You represent Zionist colonialism,” one of them shouted.

Another man from the pro-Palestinian activists declared that he “won’t let racist Zionists say anything” and immediately began chanting slogans for a “Free Palestine.”

“It was very bad. We had to leave; we were excluded from the event. What kind of feminists are these who can’t stand up for Israeli women?” says Guy Katz.

In Munich, pro-Palestinian activists ejected Israel supporters from a feminist rally | Voice of Europe

‘I Want My Country Back’: Nigel Farage’s Reform Party Gets First Member of Parliament as Lee Anderson Defects

Screen grab https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkxtvrFQTaU

A former Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, who was suspended from the party for making comments about Islamism, has defected to the Nigel Farage-founded Reform UK Party.

Lee Anderson MP is the first Member of Parliament for Reform UK, having announced his move to the party at a Westminster press conference on Monday morning. Anderson said he is proud of his country’s achievements and said run-of-the-mill opinions held by millions of Britons — such as concerns about mass migration and crime — are not controversial as the media and Westminster political class claim they are.

The blue-collar former Tory, who had been a deputy party chairman and who is known for his blunt, no-nonsense attitude and use of vernacular English not otherwise often heard in the bars and lobbies of Westminster said he would focus now on winning his seat again in this year’s forthcoming general election. He also said he wanted to win other similar seats, saying they had been “let down” by the Conservatives, to whom their voters went in large numbers at the last UK general election during the Boris Johnson era.

Characterised as ‘Red Wall’ seats, these areas that once had a strong industrial base, since destroyed by the flight of manufacturing abroad. While traditionally left-wing ‘red’ voting, these regions can be very socially conservative and turned to the Conservative Party in 2019 to deliver Brexit.

The Conservative Party has since gotten rid of Boris Johnson and through a painful series of challenges finally settled on the ultra-wealthy Rishi Sunak as leader and Prime Minister, who despite his clean and uncontroversial leadership style has seen public support fall to historic lows.

Speaking at the Lee Anderson defection press conference this morning, Reform UK party leader Richard Tice said: “we have to shape and influence, and change the direction of this country of ours, because at the moment it is broken and people are getting poorer. And where does this start… the Red Wall. Millions and millions of people as they hear of us, say ‘thank goodness for Reform’.”

Tice said Anderson would be a “champion” for the Red Wall and be “someone who completely understands it, who is trusted by voters to say it as it is, no-nonsense, no waffle, clear,  basic, commonsense”.

Anderson had been useful to the Conservatives as an emisary to the Red Wall seats, as he was a former Labour member who had left the party over its drift to the hard-left, something he would have in common with many of those first-time Tory voters in those former Labour seats. As part of this process of using Anderson as a spokesman for the Conservatives to working-class voters, he was made a deputy chairman of the party in February 2023.

Despite the Conservative attempt to expand its appeal into new demographics, the party seemed unable to stomach the actual views of those voters, or at least those it had promoted as representing their interests. Earlier this year Anderson was suspended from the party for agreeing with former Home Secretary Suella Braverman — already a victim of an internal party civil war clawing it back towards the globalist centre — who said in February that “The truth is that the Islamists, the extremists and the anti-Semites are in charge now”.

Anderson buttressed those remarks by adding the frequent Hamas-Palestine marches in London illustrated the degree to which London was controlled by “Islamists”. London’s Sadiq Khan, who Anderson namechecked in his comments, called the remarks “Islamophobic, anti-Muslim and racist” and Anderson was suspended from the Party and ordered to apologise.

Speaking on Monday on the occasion of his defection, Anderson referred to this episode, and said:

…like millions of people in this country, I feel like we are slowly giving our country away. We are giving away our way of life, allowing people to erase our history, giving up our streets to a minority of people who literally hate our way of life. We are allowing people into this country who will never integrate and adopt our British values. Parliament doesn’t seem to understand what many British people want, and frankly, some of them need to get out more.

I made some remarks a few weeks back about the London Mayor, for which I was stripped of the whip from the Conservative Party. And let me be clear right now, that I will not apologise. It is no secret I have been talking to my friends in Reform for a while, and Reform UK has offered me the chance to speak out in Parliament on behalf of millions of people up and down the country who feel they are not being listened to… this may sound offensive to the liberal elite, but it is not offensive to my friends, my family, my constituency…

It is not controversial to fight back in a culture war, Anderson said, who insisted concern about high levels of legal and illegal migration, failures by the police, and high levels of crime are not in any way controversial. “I cannot be a part of an organisation which stifles free speech, and many of my colleagues in that place, in the Conservative Party, do back me on this privately”, he said.

Reform UK leader Richard Tice predicted other defections to follow unless the next general election is called imminently.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/03/11/i-want-my-country-back-nigel-farages-reform-party-gets-first-member-of-parliament-as-lee-anderson-defects/