Rainbow Ark magazine

London-based New Age magazine Rainbow Ark.

Matthew Kalman & John Murray in their 1995 article ‘New-Age Nazism’ (published in the New Statesman & Society, 23 June) noted:

"Recent issues have targeted the same Jewish bankers, "Illuminati" and suchlike, and it has printed a fair amount of Icke material. It helped organise a lecture he gave at the Glastonbury festival and other meetings.

"Rainbow Ark, despite operating in the New Age milieu, was launched from the flat of a well known right-wing racist propagandist, Mary Stanton. It was used by the National Front during one election as its press office. Stanton was also questioned by MI5, who were investigating the appearance of her address on a list of international contacts for the anti-Semitic far right. In the launch issue of Rainbow Ark, the three largest donors are gratefully thanked for gifts of pounds 250 and over: Mary Stanton, Anthony Chevasse and a Mr Bloom. Above is an advertisement seeking volunteers for Stanton's "Free Society to Save the Planet".

"Chevasse is intimately involved with Rainbow Ark. Little is clear about him except his interest in the right-wing economic theories of C. H. Douglas, who was attracted to the Nazis. The key organisation pushing Douglas' ideas is the British League of Rights, headed by Don Martin. Martin is an important figure in the far-right. His writing has appeared in the British National Party's paper, Spearhead. One lecture he gave, organised by Rainbow Ark, was picketed by anti-fascists. The magazine's editors clearly have close ties to Martin - one says they meet him periodically for briefings.

"An idea of Martin's beliefs can be derived from his mail-order firm, Bloomfield Books. This services the far right with more than 700 of their favourite books and magazines - including the 100,000-plus circulation anti-Semitic Spotlight, another source used continuously by Nexus, as well as Icke. The books include the usual Nazi favourites: Did Six Million Really Die? and so on.

"BNP leader John Tyndall calls Martin and the organisations he runs "allies". The British League of Rights, for example, seeks among its aims: "To oppose large-scale immigration of alien peoples, and to work for the maintenance of a homogenous community." Martin is also a friend of Lady Jane Birdwood, who has a criminal record for promoting racially inflammatory material. His organisations are known for their avoidance of publicity in their own right and an often high-level involvement in campaigns by other organisations. Martin is known also for taking over groups. One, the British Federation for European Freedom, was turned into the British arm of the ultra-rightwing World Anti-Communist League, a franchise later taken over by the pro-apartheid Western Goals...

"Public meetings organised by Rainbow Ark in May gave an Australian ex-stockbroker, called (pseudonymously) Peter Celine, an opportunity to expound a typical Icke/Nexus narrative of bankers, freemasons, Illuminati et al, along with his call for rebellion and the formation of five-person cells. When asked where to find such "suppressed information", he explained that he had been pointed to Donald Martin's Bloomfield Books by Rainbow Ark's editor.

"Anna Hall, editor of Rainbow Ark for its first 11 issues, insists: "During the time I was editor, nothing which could be labelled fascist, racist, anti-Semitic or Nazi in content was published." In common with many committed green activists, she seems to have been unaware of the wider beliefs of some of the people she was dealing with - such as her British Israelite landlady, Mary Stanton. "In Australia, its country of origin, the far-right links of Nexus are quite well-known following media exposure. Editor Duncan Roads has been forced onto the defensive over his printing of militia articles. Roads is himself very interesting. He stepped into the advertising department of Nexus from the Rotting Stone-funded alternative magazine Simply Living. On Australian radio recently, he was asked if the holocaust took place: he said he remained "open-minded"...

"Nexus's British agent, who, like the Rainbow Ark group, was at the launch of Icke's book, unselfconsciously provided further shocking details of this growing anti-Semitic propaganda network. Sitting in Nexus's UK office, he eagerly displayed his copy of the Protocols, and spoke admiringly of the revisionist historian David Irving. There were no gas chambers at Auschwitz, he said.

"As he began to describe the "global conspiracy", he said he'd helped David Icke with a chapter in his forthcoming book, calling into question the facts of the holocaust. The Jewish Chronicle got confirmation that the chapter existed from Icke's Bath-based publisher Gateway Books. Gateway has now dropped the book - its money-spinning star author apparently unwilling to make significant excisions. The book is now to be published in Cambridge by Bridge of Love, with the title changed from The Robot's Guide To Freedom to . . . And The Truth Shall Set You Free. "I am struggling to find a publisher for my next, now completed book, because they are all in the toilet after reading the contents without the need of a laxative," veteran Icke-watcher David Black was told in May. On an advertising flyer for the book, the name Sam Masters is given and a Cambridge address. "Bridge of Love" is, of course, simply David Icke and Masters, his assistant. The 500-page book is due out in mid-August.

"The response to Icke by anti-fascists has been slow, with initially only a few anti-fascists in the Green Party and from Green Anarchist magazine appearing to take seriously his success in promoting a potentially racist and Nazi doctrine. He was banned from speaking at the Green Party conference in 1994.

"However, as far back as 1991, Icke-watcher David Black had warned where Icke's logic could lead. Noting the roots of his New Age thinking in the mystical teachings of Theosophy developed by Madame Helena Blavatsky, he warned: "Blavatsky's fantasies were readily taken on board by the disillusioned nationalist romantics who pioneered Nazism in Germany." Indeed, the Nazis took the group's symbol, the swastika, and made it the emblem of the Nazi party. Later Theosophists like Alice Bailey promoted an intense anti-Semitism. In 1947, she called the Jews "a very cruel and aggressive people". She even identified the Jews as the world's worst problem, stating - in the immediate aftermath of the holocaust - that "there is no other problem like it in the world today". The holocaust was simply Jewish karma for their "depths of human evil".

"Rainbow Ark has a similarly frightening theory: "When a person has strong hatred of another race, their higher self often (karmically) makes sure they incarnate in that race to balance them out, thus many of the worst kind of Nazis have already incarnated in Jewish bodies, explaining therefore some of the fireworks which are going on and will go on in Israel." In other words, many Jews are Nazis reincarnated...

"As far-right watcher, Larry O'Hara, says: "This is a worrying phenomenon. A demoralised left seems to have forgotten many of the lessons it should have learnt from history. The fact is, many of the ideas articulated in magazines like Nexus are hostile to the US-dominated New World Order, and murderous political police, the FBI and others, for good reason. We need to differentiate very carefully between what is valid and what isn't." But above all, we must make the green and New Age movement aware of the racist and neo-Nazi thinking that is trying to masquerade under its banner."