European Parliament funds were used to promote Holocaust-deniers, in a series of newsletters published by a German neo-Nazi jailed for hate crimes. W+B Medien Nordland Verlag, a small mail-order firm managed by militant neo-Nazi Thorsten Heise, received some €35,000 of European Parliament money in 2018. Heise’s criminal record includes the attempted murder of a Lebanese refugee, appearing in uniform at a Rudolf Hess Memorial March, distribution of CDs to incite hatred against minorities, and violent assaults. He is known to organise neo-Nazi concerts and launched a record label spouting the same music from his home in Thuringia, a central state in Germany where people recently voted in a fascist for city council chair. The money was handed over by Germany’s Udo Voigt when he was still an MEP, representing the ultra-nationalist National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD.) EUobserver obtained the six newsletters published by Heise for Voigt via a freedom-of-information request. The request was made after a European Parliament official in charge of so-called “non-attached” MEPs refused to disclose how the money was spent and by whom. The newsletters are entitled “Nation in Europa” and were primarily written by glorifiers of the Nazi regime and Holocaust-deniers alongside short op-eds by Voigt. Some of the writers had accompanied Voigt as ‘journalists’ on his parliamentary trips to Azerbaijan, Lebanon, Romania, Serbia, and Syria. Spending rules violated Among the more prominent writers was Karl Richter, a Saxony NPD parliamentary staff member, who dedicated a newsletter to Holocaust-denier Ursula Haferbeck. A right-wing extremist with links to the NPD, Haferbeck claims the murder of millions of Jews was a historical fiction and a lie. The octogenarian Haferbeck was sentenced to a two-and-half-year prison term in 2016 for Holocaust denial, a crime in Germany. That verdict followed a separate and earlier 11-month jail sentence for incitement to hate. Her face then made front cover of one of the EU-funded newsletters, followed by a large block title demanding her immediate release. Voigt’s status as a non-attached member is written in fine print in the top right hand corner. This may be a violation of European Parliament rules, which says cover pages must clearly state the name of [the] MEP involved.
via euobserver: EU money used by neo-Nazi to promote Holocaust denial