Anti-Fascists have eye on Barrett
Press Release • Friday 16th May
Anti Fascist Action (AFA) today responded to a press report that far-right political activist Justin Barrett is planning to launch an anti-immigrant "political movement".
Jo Tobin, a spokesperson for AFA, said: "We have been monitoring the activities of Justin Barrett for a number of years; it was AFA who first released the information to the press, last October, about his links to fascist parties in Germany and Italy. Mr Barrett will be aware of the consequences these revelations had on his campaign. If he persists now further action will be taken against him."
Press reports about Barrett's proposed "political movement" reveal clearly his racist, reactionary and ignorant views. He openly reduces the immigration debate to one about "blacks" or "coloureds" and "whites" as well as claiming that the only people he defines as "Irish" are those who are born on this island and are "Catholic and Gaelic". Barrett's so-called "movement" appears to be one which would marry insular right-wing nationalism to racism and views on sex and "family values" which have been long rejected by the Irish people.
Ms Tobin continued:
"It also has to be questioned to what extent there is a "political movement", no other political figures or groups have publicly backed up Barrett's plans. Mr Barrett's main talent is for self-promotion. This statement comes at the same time as the re-launch of his book and just a year before the local elections."
Anti Fascist Action has in the past taken political and physical action against groups promoting racist and fascist views in Ireland, and this policy still remains in force.
[ENDS]
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Irish Independent • 16th May 2003
No more immigrants, writer warns
Alison O Connor, Political Correspondent
Anti-abortion campaigner Justin Barrett has warned of the dangers of allowing large numbers of immigrants into Ireland saying they could alter the nation "irreversibly".
"We are and will remain a relatively tiny nation for the foreseeable future and it would take very little to upset that delicate balance which preserves our nation and with it the inheritance of future generations," said Mr Barrett who has just republished his privately printed book "The National Way Forward".
The real racists, he said, are those who insist that Ireland has not taken its share of immigration "because they are the ones who are not counting the whites and are measuring the issue in terms of coloureds."
His tome was much sought after by his opponents for possible political ammunition during the last Nice Treaty campaign. However no copy of the book could be found.
Now, as he hopes to form a new "political movement" Mr Barrett said last night he had republished the book, so that it could be freely available.
The book, part of a vision for that new political movement, calls for a Republic which is "Catholic, gaelic and free". He said: "People were saying there were terrible, awful things in it during the referendum campaign. The point of publishing is that it has been made available and no one can say it is hidden." Mr Barrett examines the X case controversy as well as giving his views on the European Union, the economy, Catholicism and Irish Nationhood.
During the October referendum, Mr Barrett found himself involved in controversy after it was revealed he had attended meetings of far-right activists in Germany. In a chapter entitled "A Country of Our Own" Mr Barrett said the immigration debate had given rise to the wildest pronouncements about the re-emergence of fascism.
Anti-fascists slam right-wing campaigner
Irish News - 20th May 2003
By Valerie Robinson
Anti-fascist campaigners in the Republic have vowed to battle against plans by controversial activist Justin Barrett to set up an anti-immigration political movement.
The Anti-Fascist Action (AFA) group was responding to reports that Mr Barrett had launched a bitter attack on refugees, political leaders and ‘the left’.
The anti-abortion and anti-Nice Treaty campaigner stated in a reprint of his book, ‘The National Way Forward’, that he wanted to set up a "national opposition group" against immigration.
In the book he writes: "The refugee advocates are, almost to a man and woman, the abortion advocates, the contraception advocates, the Europhiles, the anti-Catholic bigots. In other words the whole rotten cabal of the left."
He also claimed that paedophilia was "consistent" with homosexuality and that a new Ireland required an "unceasing fidelity to the Catholic Church and its authentic teachings, not the half baked social gospel propounded these last 30 years or so in its place."
AFA spokeswoman Jo Tobin said the group had been "monitoring the activities" of Mr Barrett for several years and warned that "action will be taken against him" if he persisted in making anti-immigration claims. She claimed that Mr Barrett had reduced the immigration debate to one about ‘blacks’, ‘coloureds’ and ‘whites’. She also claimed that the only people Mr Barrett defined as Irish were those who were born on the island of Ireland and who were Catholic and Gaelic.
Justin Barrett made the headlines last October when it emerged that he had attended events organised by Germany’s far-right National Democratic Party. Fellow honorary guests at the rally in the Bavarian city of Passau in May 2000 included an Italian right-wing extremist and a former Nazi SS officer.
Meanwhile, a white supremacist organisation, which is opposed to a "black Ireland" recently failed to be recognised as a political party. The Democratic Peoples Party had unsuccessfully applied to join the Dail’s Register of Political Parties."
Book rails against 'whole rotten cabal of the left'
Irish Times - 17th May 2002
by Arthur Beesley
The anti-abortion and anti-EU campaigner, Mr Justin Barrett, has launched a strident attack on refugees, politicians, liberalism and the Belfast Agreement.
In a book he refused to circulate last year when campaigning against the Nice treaty, he also claimed that parliamentary government was "foreign" to Irish people and unsuited to their needs. During the treaty campaign it was disclosed that Mr Barrett had attended far-right rallies in Germany, linked to the neo-Nazi movement.
Mr Barrett called for "presidential democracy" in Ireland, in which a directly elected leader would have the power to nominate "his" own cabinet. "The very fear of taking on such far-reaching responsibilities would scare off the ignorant and feckless," he claimed. "The party system ensures the rise of the basest of characters, and the system acts as a vehicle for deciding not the great issues of the day, but which parliamentary grouping will plunge its snout deepest into the public trough."
Mr Barrett posted copies of the privately published book to journalists. He is circulating it as part of his preparations for a new "political movement". He wrote the book as a discussion document for like minded "conservative people". He said yesterday the book reflected his views, but he did not know if the new "movement" would adopt it as policy.
Arguing against immigration in the book, Mr Barrett claimed "honesty rather than so-called 'racism' demands that it be stated clearly that the non-Europeans create the most intractable problem of all. The Refugee Act would have been better named the "Come Hither Act". "The refugee advocates are, almost to a man and a woman, the abortion advocates, the contraception advocates, the Europhiles, the anti-Catholic bigots. In other words the whole rotten cabal of the left."
He claimed that paedophilia was "consistent" with homosexuality. "In engaging in child abuse, a Catholic priest is acting so contrary to Catholic teaching as to make such a mild description as hypocrite redundant. However, as a homosexual, his actions are consistent, and might lead the general public to draw certain conclusions concerning that so-called 'sexual orientation'."
Mr Barrett claimed that repartition was the "only solution" for the impasse of Northern Ireland. Of the structures put in place in the Belfast Agreement he said: "They cannot work, but they can raise expectations, the cruel disappointment of which will likely usher in a new era of cynicism. The consequences Ireland may well lament in blood."
On sex outside marriage, he wrote: "Observable fact shows that, whatever may come of each individual act, the broad generality is one of unnecessary misery produced by the satiating of momentary passions."
Mr Barrett printed The National Way Forward in 1998 and said he will sell it directly from his home in Longford for E12 a copy. The book's cover is green. There are 191 pages. The blurb criticises "unintelligent and anti-Catholic journalism."
Mr Barrett said he did not write the preface, which was signed "John Grace". This was a pseudonym, he said. While declining to say who wrote the preface, he said Michael Collins used the same pseudonym.
The preface said the "new Ireland" would be built around the Irish language, large families, and a profound love of nation "that does not shrink even at the idea of dying for it". It said such a movement required an "unceasing fidelity to the Catholic Church and its authentic teachings, not the half-baked Social Gospel propounded these last 30 years or so in its place."
Abortion Fighter turns his sights on immigration
Sunday Times - 18th May 2003
by Scott Millar
Justin Barrett, the anti-abortion campaigner, has declared his intention to establish "a national opposition movement" against immigration in Ireland.
In a reissue of his book, The National Way Forward, Barrett describes immigration as "genocidal" and compares the "influx of foreigners" with the Plantation of Ulster.
He says it is not an economic question as to whether Ireland can bear the influx of refugees but a "biological one". He argues that introducing foreigners in large numbers would alter the nation irreversibly and should concern people who want to keep Ireland "as an independent identity worth protecting for its own sake".
Barrett's controversial right-wing views emerged during the second Nice referendum campaign last year, when it was revealed that he had attended European neo-fascist rallies. He refused to make copies of his book available at the time and has kept a low profile since.
The former Youth Defence leader lays out his plans for a new party in a chapter of his book entitled Rules of Engagement. He calls for a form of "political guerilla warfare" and says Ireland needs to clear its head of liberalism.
On the structure of his new party, Barrett promises to "revisit the people who have helped the mother and child campaign and the no to Nice campaign and hopefully to build on this".
Likely recruits to the anti-immigration party were, however, distancing themselves yesterday. Aine Ni Chonaill, leader of the Immigration Control Platform group which campaigns for greater immigration control, said that Barrett was associated with the Catholic right and clearly had a wider agenda than just immigration. "He has not been in contact with me and I have no intention of contacting him," said Ni Chonaill, whose group has failed to win much support in Irish elections.
Dick Roche, the junior foreign affairs minister, said: "It is with dismay that I see a young man write such xenophobic, un-Irish and indeed un-Christian views. The Irish people will be even more repulsed by the man than during the Nice campaign."
In the book Barrett cites as his intellectual influences as Hilaire Belloc, GK Chesterton and Arthur Penty, thinkers whose economic corporatism and racial separation concepts are central to the ideology of the International Third Position fascist network. He also promotes the views of Denis Fahey, a Holy Ghost priest, whose work is widely seen as anti-semitic.
Gerry Gable, the publisher of Searchlight, a magazine that reports on the activities of the far right throughout Europe, said there has been a recent rise in activity of the International Third Position throughout Europe, and among allied groups such as the British National Party. Barrett denies any link with the group beyond attending its meetings in Europe.
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