“In the Communist Party’s Morning Star newspaper last September, Geoff Brown cited both the BNP’s support for Israel against Hezbollah, and chairman Nick Griffin’s support for the Jewish writer Bat Ye’or who has warned of an Islamist takeover of Europe, as evidence of a Jewish/fascist axis. As was clear from this article, such a vicious attempt to link the Jews with the fascists was prompted in large measure by an attempt to bury the link between Islamic fascism and the left.”

Melanie Phillips in the Jewish Chronicle, 10 November 2006

In fact Brown’s article was mainly a critique of the ludicrous claim made by the All-Party Parliamentary Committee on Anti-Semitism (under the influence of Searchlight) that the far right has allied itself with Islamists in order to incite hatred against the Jewish community. Brown pointed out that, as far as its public propaganda is concerned, the BNP has almost entirely ditched anti-semitism in favour of inciting hatred against Muslims, and in doing so openly promotes the Islamophobic rantings of Bat Ye’or.

Addressing the future evolution of the BNP under Griffin’s leadership, Brown wrote that “the possibility of the BNP making a pitch for the support of a right-wing minority within the Jewish community on an anti-Muslim programme, as the far-right party Vlaams Belang has successfully done in Belgium, cannot be excluded” (emphasis added). How exactly does that amount to “a vicious attempt to link the Jews with the fascists” or to “smear Jews … as being the neo-fascists’ natural allies”?

You can understand why Mad Mel might be a bit sensitive about the idea of fascists finding common ground with right-wingers in the Jewish community. Last year a BNP writer name-checked Phillips as one of the newspaper columnists whose opinions BNP supporters “feel most closely match their own”.