Bigots in Europe are living for Trump's Islamophobic retweets

Donald Trump’s retweets Wednesday didn’t just make one fringe-dwelling British Islamophobe happy, he also energized her racist and anti-Semitic allies throughout Europe.

Jayda Fransen’s Britain First is a marginal and toxic presence in the U.K., viewed as a hate-preaching street movement that is far beyond the bounds of political respectability. Trump’s implicit endorsement of their agenda when he retweeted a handful of anti-Muslim videos has been universally condemned in Britain, even prompting the typically circumspect Prime Minister Theresa May to say it “was the wrong thing to do.”

Given the close ties between Fransen’s party and far-right groups elsewhere in Europe, those three taps of the president’s thumb did more to energize extremists across the continent than his handlers may realize — particularly in Poland, according to one expert tracking the country’s far right.

“By legitimizing Fransen and Britain First, Trump is legitimizing her racist and anti-Semitic allies [in Poland],” Rafal Pankowski told VICE News.

Pankowski, a sociologist at Warsaw’s Collegium Civitas university and member of the anti-racist group Never Again, said Britain First has been at the forefront of the internationalization of the far right in Europe, forging particularly strong ties with Polish ultranationalists over the past year. With Trump’s retweets, Pankowski warned, the narrative of a war between Islam and the West, pushed heavily by far-right groups in both countries, was just amplified to a vast international audience.

“We are witnessing a very dangerous phase of the internationalization of extremism,” Pankowski said.

Fransen, who received just 56 votes when she stood for election in 2014 and whose group is estimated to have only about 1,000 members, has been barely able to disguise her delight that her message has been signal-boosted by the world’s most powerful man.

She told VICE News that she saw the president’s retweets as an explicit endorsement of her anti-Islamic agenda.

“He’s retweeted those to show his support for myself, an individual who has been outspoken with regards to Islam and Islamic terrorism,” she said. “Donald Trump is well aware of the fact that Britain has been infiltrated by mass Islamic immigration. It’s created no-go zones.”

READ MORE: How far-right extremism exploded into the mainstream in Poland

In Poland, Trump’s retweets were especially well received by the country’s growing ultranationalist movement. Far-right website Najwyzszy Czas (High Time) noted approvingly the way Trump used Twitter to circumvent the mainstream media and engage in “the real propaganda war against Islamists” by “exposing the barbarity of Muslim extremists.”

Underpinned by their shared narrative of a Christian European homeland under threat from Islamic immigration and terrorism, the connection between rabidly anti-Islam British and Polish groups, which included some of the most extreme and vocal figures on the European far right, has been strengthening this year. Both sides have worked together in recent months, joining rallies, cross-promoting their social media, and sharing tactics.

Britain First’s closest associations among the Polish far right are with two of the country’s most notorious hate preachers, Jacek Miedlar and Piotr Rybak, who share the British group’s staunchly anti-Islam agenda but also have reputations as anti-Semites.

Rybak has been convicted for burning an effigy of an Orthodox Jew, and made headlines this week for hanging a banner forbidding entrance to “Jews, Commies and all thieves and traitors of Poland” on the gate of a guesthouse he owned. Miedlar, a suspended Catholic priest, has also been frequently accused of anti-Semitism in his firebrand speeches.

Both speakers have travelled to the U.K. to speak at Britain First rallies this year but were turned away by British border authorities on the grounds of hate speech. In turn, Fransen has repeatedly appeared alongside them at rallies in Poland, and demonstrated at a protest outside a Warsaw courthouse in June where Miedlar was on trial for tweeting about a liberal MP: “There used to be the razor for such people.”

Pankowski said Britain First has been inspired by the Polish far right’s ability to mobilize huge numbers on the streets, while the Poles are in turn impressed by their British counterparts’ strong internet presence, which includes a Facebook page with more than 1.7 million followers.

“They both use quasi-religious medieval references in promoting war against Islam,” Pankowski said.

It’s a narrative that the Polish far-right feels Trump has directly boosted. During his visit to the Polish capital in July, the president gave a hallmark address that touched on themes dear to Polish nationalists, referencing God, questioning “whether the West has the will to survive,” and vowing that “our borders will always be closed to terrorism and extremism.”

The speech left the Polish far right “ecstatic,” said Pankowski.

Still, none of them ever could have dreamed they’d be retweeted by the president of the United States.

On Thursday, Fransen took a page from Trump’s playbook by railing against “The Failing @nytimes” in a tweet, copying in her new online pal in the White House for good measure.

“If you EVER send another slimy reporter to my home address after I refused you an interview, I can promise you that those vultures you hire as your reporters will be getting home visits of their own,” she tweeted.

No Trump boost on that one.