British National Party leader Nick Griffin’s historic views on the Holocaust have finally been revealed in depth following the release of a series of previously secret documents.
They show that, when questioned by police investigating race-hate allegations in the late 1990s, Mr Griffin suggested that the figure of six million Jews being killed in the Shoah was “utter nonsense”.
He told officers: “I will be delighted if this does come to court to… discuss the question of… the lie of the six million, at length.”
Mr Griffin, who is expected to lose his European Parliament seat in this month’s elections, was convicted of race-hate charges in 1998 and given a suspended jail sentence. The documents were obtained by the Guardian following a long-running struggle with the Crown Prosecution Service to secure the papers under Freedom of Information legislation.
They pre-date Mr Griffin’s leadership of the BNP and cover a range of issues including Zionism, supposed Jewish control of the media, and nationalism.
On the Holocaust, he told police: “My views are that very large numbers of Jews, certainly, almost certainly hundreds of thousands, were killed during the war for no other reason but that they were Jewish…
“But the allegation that there was a systematic and deliberate policy whereby six million Jews were gassed to death is for a variety of forensic and common sense reasons, utter nonsense.”
Mr Griffin said it was “a fact” that “organised Jewry has a massively disproportionate hold on the mass media”.
During the interviews, he was questioned about articles he had written for a BNP magazine. He predicted a “final victory over those who seek to destroy us”. When asked who he was referring to, Mr Griffin told police: “International capitalism and international Zionism.”
In recent years, the BNP leader has repeatedly refused to discuss his views on the Shoah, saying only that he does not have a conviction for Holocaust denial.
The Community Security Trust said: “Nobody should be surprised by these revelations. This kind of antisemitism and Holocaust denial from Nick Griffin is well known, but it is still valuable to see it stated like this.”