Far-right May Day march

On May 1, 2008, a procession and rally of ultra-right organizations took place in Moscow under the official slogans of combating illegal immigration.

The event was preceded by a fairly active advertising campaign, which initially left no doubts about its nationalist character (the far-right, a few days before the May Day march, directly stated that they would use racist slogans and chants (the least aggressive of which was "Everyone for Russian May Day!" "Non-Russian " no entry!" ), and openly racist Lithuanians calling for participation in the procession were distributed, including in schools.

Belov himself said that permission for the DPNI march on May 1 was received in return for the refusal of all protest events before the inauguration of the President of the Russian Federation. "The city authorities decided to negotiate with us and put forward the following condition: they give us an official platform for the procession on May 1, and we turn off all our events until May 7. We did so. "

The procession was attended by no more than 400 people from the DPNI, the Slavic Union, the Russian National Bolshevik Front (I. Strukov), the Union of Orthodox Banner Bearers (in addition, there was the symbolism of a certain "Front of National Unity - the Imperial Union", using a stylized four-beam swastika) . Most of the marchers were wearing masks.

Even before the procession began, the column began to chant "Sieg Heil!" - and only after that the leader of the DPNI A. Belov appealed to the participants not to use Nazi slogans (which, however, did not help).

The column marched from the central entrance to the All-Russian Exhibition Center to the Ostankino television center, chanting racist, anti-Semitic, anti-migrant (including obscene) slogans, to which the police did not react in any way. All the way the column came across anti-fascist graffiti and posters painted the day before ("Fascism is a disease", "There are no illegal people", "Fascism burn in hell", etc.) - and these are the graffiti. it was not the procession itself that attracted the attention of journalists (we note that almost all the main Russian channels were present there, with the exception of the First, which, however, did not prevent Russian television from ignoring the march almost completely).

A rally was held in front of the Ostankino television center, at which Alexander Belov spoke (twice - at the beginning and at the end of the rally), ex-deputy Andrei Savelyev, "foreign guest" Preston Viginton (who also participated in the "Russian March-2007") and others. We note, however, that the speakers preferred not direct aggression, but hints that were not always adequately perceived by the audience, and this, apparently, significantly influenced the fact that the latter reacted rather sluggishly to the speakers.

The event ended without incident.

See also Galina Kozhevnikova's photo report from the procession and rally

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