Arthur Kemp is a Rhodesian-born writer and the owner of Ostara Publications who was from 2009 to 2011 the foreign affairs spokesperson for the British National Party before resigning from that party. He was born in Southern Rhodesia and worked as a journalist in South Africa before moving to the United Kingdom in 1996.
Biography
Career in South Africa
Kemp was born in Southern Rhodesia, spending his early years in South Africa. Kemp worked as a journalist for the South African Conservative Party, which opposed South Africa's transition to universal suffrage. Kemp also wrote for The Citizen newspaper. Kemp was conscripted and served as a sergeant in the South African Police in Johannesburg from 1987 to 1988. In 1993, Kemp was a prosecution witness in the trial relating to the murder of the South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani. Kemp gave evidence against Clive Derby-Lewis and his wife saying they admitted their involvement during a lunch the three had together two days after Hani's death. Clive Derby-Lewis and the actual assassin, Janusz Walus, were found guilty and sentenced to death, while Gaye Derby-Lewis was acquitted. Kemp has written that he was later expelled from the Conservative Party for publicly opposing apartheid and arguing in favour of Afrikaner separatism.
Having moved to the UK in 1996, Kemp became manager of Excalibur, the British National Party 's merchandising arm, but as of November 2010, he no longer held that position. Kemp was then placed in charge of maintaining the BNP website. In 2004, he assisted Nick Griffin in the elections for the London Assembly and also attended a BNP rally in Bromley. Andrew Johnson of The Independent wrote in 2009 that Kemp "was spotted in the BNP's election headquarters in Wales preparing thousands of campaign leaflets." The BNP released a video of the European election leaflet operation which provided evidence that the operation was under the control of the Birmingham BNP activist Richard Lumby. In March 2011, Kemp resigned from all positions in the party including that of web editor, foreign affairs spokesman and Advisory Council member. No official reason was given. On 2 September 2011, Kemp announced on his blog that he was no longer a member of the BNP.
Publications
In 1990, in South Africa he published a book on the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, Victory Or Violence: The Story of the AWB, which he re-published in 2009 as Victory Or Violence: The Story of the AWB of South Africa. This book was subsequently updated and revised in 2012 to include information about the murder of Eugène Terre'Blanche. Kemp has written and self-published several books including March of the Titans: A History of the White Race, described as "clearly neo-Nazi material" by historian Paul Jackson. Alan Waring described it as "a typical product of British neo-Nazism, synthesizing Holocaust denial and spurious claims about white racial superiority. An article in The Guardian says that the book questions the number of Jews killed in the Second World War, and "is popular with far-right activists around the world". In the Western Mailnews article he is quoted as saying, "I deny outright that my book denies the Holocaust." The book itself is quoted as saying "... certainly far fewer died than what is most often claimed. Increasingly, all the evidence urges a complete revision of this aspect of the history of World War Two." According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, in 2005, some of Kemp's writings had been reproduced in National Alliance publications, and the National Alliance awarded him the "Dr. William Pierce Award for Investigative Journalism", which brought with it a $250 prize, for his article in National Vanguard, "White South Africa: What Went Wrong?".
Career in the United States
In 2007 the Southern Poverty Law Center reported that Kemp had taken a senior position within the neo-Nazi group National Alliance. In a 2016 report they stated that he had worked as the Alliance's media director during the mid-2000s. The report states that Kemp denied this but that they had wire transfers showing money being sent to Kemp's South African bank.
