Three Unite the Kingdom Fascists Failed to Disrupt Our Picket of Barclay’s Bank in Brighton

Why does 5 Pillars Give Uncritical Publicity to Nick Griffin ex-BNP Chair Who Believes Islam is A ‘Vicious & Wicked’ Religion?

Brighton Picket of Barclays Bank & Fascist Counter-Protest Seen Off 17 January 2026

There is a nationwide campaign to Boycott Barclays Bank because Barclays now invests over £2 billion in, and provides financial services worth £6.1 billion to, companies arming Israel. 40 years ago Barclays was investing heavily in Apartheid in South Africa so nothing much has changed. Barclays is and always has been a racist bank.

Fascist Mother and Her 'Sweet' Zionist Princess

The Fash Minder with a Hitler Moustache

It is therefore not surprising that supporters of the openly White Supremacist Unite the Kingdom should seek to mount a counter-protest, albeit only 3 of them, to demonstrate their support for a ‘British’ bank.

I went along to the picket in North Street, Brighton and noticed after a while a Union Jack with 2 women on either end of it side by side with our own banners, so I thought it would be a friendly thing to go and talk to them.

I asked one of them why it is that fascists are such ardent supporters of Zionism and Genocide and why they were opposing our picket.  The woman I spoke to didn’t seem able to answer my question. Instead she insisted that I should get out of her private space which seemed to extend well beyond her rancid features.

She then pushed me in the chest so I pushed her at which point the other woman came and tried to attack me. I parried her flailing arms and then the male minder with a Hitler moustache joined in as did a load of protesters and the Police.

Picket of Barclays Bank – BHPSC (see their banner at the 30s mark)

They made a bogus complaint of assault but the Police could see it was a case of much ado about nothing and apart from taking my details weren’t inclined to do anything.  Meanwhile these creeps had lost their place on the wall besides other protestors and the police told them to go onto a side street out of the way which meant that no one could see their patriotic mugs.  Mission accomplished.

What is interesting about this is how British fascists now overtly support Zionism and Israel as integral as part of their political agenda thus giving the lie to the assertion that it is us who are anti-Semitic.

There was a time when British fascists used to disguise their anti-Semitism with a self-proclaimed opposition to Zionism when what they meant was Jews. Today their main targets are Muslims and they hide their anti-Semitism behind support for Zionism. Which is of course understandable since even the thickest Zionist now accepts that Zionism and Jewish Supremacim is a manifestation of White Supremacism.

Dilly Hussein’s Idiocy

 I mention this because the Islamic fundamentalist site 5 Pillars which is run by Dilly Hussein, doesn’t seem to understand that anti-Muslim racism/Islamophobia and Zionism are two sides of the same racist coin.

5 Pillars, which claims to be the most popular Islamic site in Britain, seems to have a fondness for far-right Islamophobes and anti-Semites.

Dilly Hussein

In February 2024 it interviewed Mark Collett, who characterised Jews as ‘shapeshifters who purport to be “normal white” people but are not.’  Mark Collett is a British neo-Nazi who was chairman of the Young BNP. In 2019 he went on to form the fascist, white supremacist Patriotic Alternative.

5 Pillars is vehemently homophobic and anti-woman going so far as to praise the Taliban’s exclusion of girls from education. It would seem that their reactionary position on social questions has led them to embrace the worst Islamophobes.

Later in 2024 IMPRESS, a press regulator, ruled that a podcast episode featuring Jayda Fransen, former deputy leader of Britain First, included unchallenged antisemitic conspiracy theories. Fransen is a Christian fascist and it would seem that support for a reactionary social agenda, anti-gay and anti-trans forms common ground between Dilly and Britain’s far-right.

Nick Griffin | Civil War in Britain, American Deep State & The Zionist Lobby

Before writing this I contacted 5 Pillars twice to ask why they were interviewing fascists but I got no response. I did this after having come across an interview by Dilly with one Nick Griffin, the former Chairman of the British National Party.

This is the same Nick Griffin who was acquitted of incitement to racial hatred in November 2006 for describing Islam as a ‘wicked, vicious’ faith.  Griffin today proclaims that he is opposed to Zionism when it is, or should be, obvious that Griffin’s opposition to Zionism is a thinly disguised anti-Semitism.

Griffin was charged after making a speech to BNP supporters at a pub in Keighley, West Yorkshire, in January 2004. During his speech he said that Muslims were turning Britain into a “multiracial hellhole”.

Griffin was acquitted alongside the BNP's head of publicity, Mark Collett. Collett had referred to asylum seekers as “cockroaches”, telling the gathering: “Let's show these ethnics the door in 2004”.

At the time of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006 the BNP was a fulsome supporter of Israel, so much so that Ruth Smeed, of the Board of Deputies of British Jews admitted that the BNP website

is now one of the most Zionist on the web – it goes further than any of the mainstream parties in its support of Israel.’ [‘BNP seeks to bury antisemitism and gain Jewish votes in Islamophobic campaign The Guardian, 10.4.08.]

In an article Nationalism and Israel on the BNP’s site Lee Barnes, their legal advisor wrote:

As a Nationalist I can say that I support Israel 100% in their dispute with Hezbollah. In fact, I hope they wipe Hezbollah off the Lebanese map and bomb them until they leave large greasy craters in the cities where their Islamic extremist cantons of terror once stood.

Now it might be that Nick Griffin has had a Damascene conversion to anti-racism and anti-imperialism but somehow I doubt it. In the little of the interview that I watched Griffin made it clear that he doesn’t want Muslims in Britain.

It is issues like homophobia that enable Muslim fundamentalists like Dilly Hussein and anti-Muslim racists like Nick Griffin to find common ground. This is one reason why anti-racists should never compromise on their opposition to homophobia and transphobia or be tempted to adopt a reactionary social agenda.

Tony Greenstein

 BNP leader cleared of race hate charges