THERE are “eerie echoes” of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power playing out in far- and extreme-right protests on the streets of Scotland, an expert in the Nazi leader has said.
Professor Thomas Weber, a German-born University of Aberdeen historian known for his books on Hitler, said he suspected that extremist groups in Scotland had been “studying how the far right managed to get majority support in Europe in the inter-war years” because they are “really following the playbook”.
On Saturday, a “Unite the Clans” rally in Glasgow resulted in 15 arrests – including for possession of an offensive weapon, assault, and breach of the peace – as well as videos showing people of colour being confronted on the street and a delivery driver being attacked with a traffic cone.
The previous day, around 60-80 men dressed in black had arranged into a fascist-style “drill square” outside the offices of the Daily Record newspaper in Glasgow. It followed similar demonstrations outside Glasgow Cathedral and the Holyrood Parliament in Edinburgh.
Craig Houston, a Scottish podcaster and member of the neo-Nazi-backed Restore Britain party, shared a video of Friday’s demonstration which featured a crest of a new group calling themselves “Alba Defensor”.
A flag featuring the crest – which contains a wolf, a sword, and the words “protecting Scotland, loyalty, action” – was also unfurled at the protest. It appears to be the first time the group has ever been publicly named.
After viewing the video, Weber said: “I'm just looking here at the patterns, patterns of what I've now seen in recent weeks as well as patterns of the past, and I've seen escalation. Now it's at the next stage.”
He noted that the words and symbols deployed by “Alba Defensor” echoed those used by Hitler.
“The wolf in the crest is either an accidental or a deliberate echo of the past,” the expert historian said. “Hitler called himself ‘wolf’ … Even if it's an accidental parallel, there's a reason why both Hitler as well as these people are being drawn to the same kind of symbols.”
Weber added: “The wolf, it's a dangerous symbol on the one hand because of the Hitler echo, on the one hand it's the kind of ‘lone wolf’ association that in a way is also an invitation for other Scots, young Scots, to feel emboldened.
“It says, ‘look, you're not on your own, we're all on the same page here and if the state is not doing what the state should be doing, it's acceptable to take violence against the state and against immigrants’.”
“So, I find it troubling that this group is using the wolf as their symbol, that they use slogans such as ‘loyalty’ and ‘action’, which really all have very eerie echoes of earlier [movements],” he said.
The University of Aberdeen professor further said that the demonstrators with “Alba Defensor” would believe that they represent a “silent majority”, and that their public displays would be a signal to others to join them.
“With this going from being secret now into the open, that has eerie echoes of the early Nazi movement,” he explained. “When initially the Nazi Party was founded as the German Workers' Party, it was actually set up as a secret society, the Thule Society. [It] was properly a secret society, then the next stage was also to give itself a name and to go into the public.
“Whether they're deliberately trying to learn their lessons from how the extreme right has risen in the inter-war years or whether they instinctively understand how this works, it seems to me they're really following the playbook of the inter-war years.
“They're following the playbook of far-right and extreme-right movements on how you build a majority movement, how you create street violence, and how you find followers who are willing to take violent action.”
Scottish Green MSP and justice spokesperson Maggie Chapman said that the demonstrations amounted to “fascist thugs ... openly intimidating journalists outside their offices and proudly bragging about their blackshirt-style fantasies”.
“On the same weekend as we’ve seen people being attacked on the streets in Glasgow for simply going about their daily business, we must see action by the police and others against this threat to our democracy and society,” she went on.
“We’ve got to the point of fascists roaming our streets and threatening journalists because politicians and others who should know better have normalised and appeased the lies and conspiracy theories that the far-right and elites are spewing out on social media to divide our society.
"We must stand against the far right in all its forms – on our streets, in our media, in our politics, wherever we find them.”
Houston, who filmed all four Alba Defensor demonstrations but has denied being involved in organising them, said in a video on YouTube that the group’s “ultimate goals and achievements” are “unknown”.
He went on: “However, using common sense and logic, I think most people can come up with their own ideas of that, but that will get spun as being far right, racist, fascist, and all these other ‘isms’ that you can think and throw at it.”
Alba Defensor does not appear to have any online presence. The National was unable to approach the group for comment.
