Muslims intercepted at sea by nationalists

WASHINGTON— Europe’s white nationalists are taking border control into their own hands.

Funded with money from American white supremacists and the “alt-right” movement, a group called Generation Identity has chartered a ship it plans to use to snatch Muslim migrants out of Mediterranean waters and deliver them back to the Middle East.

The group says it will be looking for migrants in distress, leaning on maritime law that requires any boater to come to the aid of another in order to collect and redirect non-white refugees. The group also plans to monitor the activity of non-governmental organizations, whose rescue operations in the Mediterranean are characterized by Generation Identity as human smuggling.

Generation Identity calls its effort “Defend Europe.”

“Defend Europe is the only way to secure the European borders and to stop the drowning in the sea,” said Martin Sellner, an Austrian member of Generation Identity who is leading Defend Europe, in a promotional video about the project.

Generation Identity — begun in France and now in Austria, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands — raised funds for the ship on an American alt-right crowdsourcing platform, winning the attention of some of America’s most famous white supremacists.

David Duke, infamous anti-Semite and former Ku Klux Klan leader, tweeted out a link to Defend Europe’s fundraising page. The Daily Stormer, a neoNazi and white supremacist American information site, has published several articles supporting the idea and calling for it to be replicated “on a massive scale.”

Defend Europe sought $80,000 for its ship. It raised more than $158,000.

Generation Identity launched the Defend Europe project in May after a group of its members physically blocked a humanitarian ship that was patrolling the Mediterranean in search of migrants in distress.