Nick Griffin, the former chair ot the BNP wants British nationalists to join the Army over far-right fringe groups to receive military training ahead of a so-called ‘civil war’
Warped former BNP chair Nick Griffin wants so-called British nationalists to join the Army as reserves to receive military training ahead of a “civil war”.
The 66-year-old extremist says he “recommends” this over joining an hard-right fringe group owing to the risk of arrest for political associations. In a scaremongering web article, Griffin wildly claims that Britain faces a war within the next five years within Britain’s Muslim and non-Muslim population.
He claims that joining a “private body for political purposes is liable to lead to lengthy prison sentences”, so instead he suggests people join the Army Reserve to get “genuine military training”.
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He writes: “My recommendation that patriotic young Brits should keep their political opinions to themselves and join the Army Reserve. That way, they get genuine military training perfectly legally, and are even paid while doing so.
“Those who have gone down this road will be a damned sight more use than those who got lured down the blind alley of illegality and thrown, still untrained, into prison. This is surely very much better than it would be to get involved in extremist fringe groups which indulge in very limited physical training.”
He later advises how they can avoid active service should they be called up. He writes: “A serving reservist who develops a sincere conscientious objection can apply for discharge.
“It does not take much imagination to think of ways a reservist drafted to one of the elite’s absurd and obscene foreign wars would be able to claim a recently developed reason for refusing to serve. One could, for example, have recently become a very committed Christian… who may now be unable to countenance killing fellow members of the Orthodox Church.”
The demands will alarm the Ministry of Defence, which has tried to weed out far right extremists. In 2021 it emerged at least 16 members of the military were referred to a scheme to steer people away from extremism. In 2018 Lance Corporal Mikko Vehvilainen, a Finnish-born British soldier, was jailed for eight years for terror and explosives offences.
He had urged comrades to join a race war. Police found Nazi gear and weaponry at his accommodation. Privately-educated Griffin won a following in the 2000s but his career petered out after a 2010 General Election bid flopped.
