#mtrsues is the song that never ends, but it pretty much jumped the shark when north shore gel miranda divine joined in the chorus adding a few lines about why being christian gets you crucified. on a slightly less silly note, mtr complains about e.hate here; julia baird goes in to bat for ‘pro-life’ feminists here; and anne summers expresses her vehement disagreement here. finally, Metamagician and the Hellfire Club has More on Jennifer Wilson’s substantive views here and so is skepticlawyer.
in the uk, undercover police have given new meaning to the phrase ‘your body belongs to the state’:
Two undercover police officers secretly fathered children with political campaigners they had been sent to spy on and later disappeared completely from the lives of their offspring, the Guardian can reveal.
In both cases, the children have grown up not knowing that their biological fathers – whom they have not seen in decades – were police officers who had adopted fake identities to infiltrate activist groups. Both men have concealed their true identities from the children’s mothers for many years.
One of the spies was Bob Lambert, who has already admitted that he tricked a second woman into having a long-term relationship with him, as part of an intricate attempt to bolster his credibility as a committed campaigner.
or: top blokes doing a very difficult job keeping society safe from harm.
speaking of spooks, the federal minister for mining interests martin ferguson secretly reckons spying on activists is tops… and everybody in the public sphere is expected to act surprised or something.
During the 1938 ‘sesquicentenary’ Australia Day celebrations, Aboriginal activists, Italian Anarchists and a Chinese Youth Theatre Group were protesting against fascism and racism at home and abroad. The opera will take place in an alternative history where these three protest groups unite to subvert a reenactment of Governor Phillip’s landing, expose the brutality behind the White Australia Policy and kidnap Robert Menzies, all while singing and dancing of course! Come along to this showing to get an Australia day taste of an opera in the making.
Critical Acclaim: ‘That was worse than dying’- Falls Festival Audience Member
in canberra the tent embassy celebrates turning 40 by buying a red sports car, picking up a cute, much younger shelter and heading north.
or maybe not.
two weeks later there’s a:
Melbourne Benefit Screening of Operation 8 with Gary Foley When Thursday, 9 February 2012 Time 19:00 until 21:00 Description Operation 8: Deep in the forest. February 9. 7pm. Nova cinema 4. Tickets and payment on the door. $15 all profits go towards support for the Urewera 4 still on trial. Please reserve tickets via hayley@riseup.net. Please do not reserve more tickets than you need. See you there!
Taame, Rangi, Emily and Urs, are the last to still face charges from the state terror raids of 15th October 2007 and their trial will start on 13th February 2012 in the Auckland High Court. This date has been confirmed which means we all have less than ONE MONTH to get ready and do what we can to support.
Naturally, a series of links. To begin with, some on the subject of feminism. And gate-keeping.
Prompted by Melinda Tankard Reist’s legal spat with blogger Jennifer Wilson, Eva Cox writes ‘Feminism, not religion’ is at the heart of the controversy. She also asks ‘Who decides who gets to use the f-word’ (‘Call Me Whatever The Hell You Want’, New Matilda, January 18, 2012; Helen Pringle disputes Cox’s characterisation of feminist politics in ‘Killjoys, Wowsers And The P-rn Wars’).
‘Enough ink has been spilled in quarrelling over feminism … perhaps we should say no more about it’: Simone de Beauvoir, at the very beginning of The Second Sex (1949). ‘The subject is irritating, especially to women.’
And how.
Jenny Turner examines contemporary UK feminist fashions in ‘As Many Pairs of Shoes as She Likes’ (London Review of Books, December 15, 2011). It’s a pretty caustic affair:
And as for feminist blogging, isn’t it just one of those back-bedroom hobbies, like home-made porn and crafting, that suddenly becomes visible because the technology allows it? (Zadie Smith on ‘the great tide of pornography’ in 2001: ‘It’s not all bad news. We’re talking women whose sexual desires are no longer sublimated into the making of quilts.’)
Speaking of which, there’s a NEW! feminist blog called RAW / ROAR: “Left and feminist writing about politics by Australian women, collected in the one place.” The most recent post — A Cosmopolitan Morality by Tammois (January 18, 2012) — concerns MTR, feminism and religion; The Dawn Chorus is another feminist group blog but it ain’t done published nothin’ since January 2011. Otherwise, Hoyden About Town continues to trundle along the information superhighway propagating a peculiar brand of Godless hedonism, while Down Under Feminists’ Carnival “is a monthly collection of blog posts of feminist interest from around New Zealand and Australia”.
Members of the Australian Services Union at the Tenants Union of Victoria (TUV) are currently undertaking industrial action. During 2011, they have been negotiating for a new workplace agreement that forms the basis for their rights at work. If you want to show solidarity with the campaign, please send emails of support to emailus@tuv.org.au
About 400,000 Victorian homes are rented. TUV workers play a crucial role in assisting tenants assert their rights. And yet TUV staff are some of the lowest paid community legal centre workers in Victoria. Striking workers are demanding more equitable conditions, better pay and conditions and an improved service through respect for workers. They deserve our support.
“OUR REFORMERS have suddenly made a great discovery – the white slave traffic. The papers are full of these “unheard-of conditions,” and lawmakers are already planning a new set of laws to check the horror.
It is significant that whenever the public mind is to be diverted from a great social wrong, a crusade is inaugurated against indecency, gambling, saloons, etc. And what is the result of such crusades? Gambling is increasing, saloons are doing a lively business through back entrances, prostitution is at its height, and the system of pimps and cadets is but aggravated.
How is it that an institution, known almost to every child, should have been discovered so suddenly? How is it that this evil, known to all sociologists, should now be made such an important issue?
To assume that the recent investigation of the white slave traffic (and, by the way, a very superficial investigation) has discovered anything new, is, to say the least, very foolish. Prostitution has been, and is, a widespread evil, yet mankind goes on its business, perfectly indifferent to the sufferings and distress of the victims of prostitution. As indifferent, indeed, as mankind has remained to our industrial system, or to economic prostitution.
Only when human sorrows are turned into a toy with glaring colors will baby people become interested – for a while at least. The people are a very fickle baby that must have new toys every day. The “righteous” cry against the white slave traffic is such a toy. It serves to amuse the people for a little while, and it will help to create a few more fat political jobs – parasites who stalk about the world as inspectors, investigators, detectives, and so forth.
What is really the cause of the trade in women? Not merely white women, but yellow and black women as well. Exploitation, of course; the merciless Moloch of capitalism that fattens on underpaid labor, thus driving thousands of women and girls into prostitution. With Mrs. Warren these girls feel, “Why waste your life working for a few shillings a week in a scullery, eighteen hours a day?”
Naturally our reformers say nothing about this cause. They know it well enough, but it doesn’t pay to say anything about it. It is much more profitable to play the Pharisee, to pretend an outraged morality, than to go to the bottom of things…”
A BLOGGER who characterised anti-porn activist Melinda Tankard Reist as a ”fundamentalist Christian” says she has been asked to apologise – or be sued.
Tankard Reist – who briefed lawyers to warn off liberal blogger Jennifer Wilson – says it’s not being called Christian she objects to, but the claim that she is ”deceptive and duplicitous about her religious beliefs”.
For her part, blogger Jennifer Wilson:
…insists that author Tankard Reist, whose resume includes advising anti-abortion senator Brian Harradine, is loath to discuss her links to evangelical Baptism.
”[Her] involvement with fundamentalist Christians opposed to abortion, contraception, surrogacy and homosexuality are well documented, and I have to wonder why she’s singled me out at this point in time for writing about her religious beliefs,” she said in a post written after the lawyer’s letter.
FWIW, there seems to be little doubt that Melinda Tankard Reist (MTR) is a Baptist Christian [“I have no denominational affiliation or church membership"], one who regularly addresses Baptist gatherings and whose views, it would appear, are welcomed by Christians.
In October 2011, the Brisbane launch of MTR’s book Big Porn Inc was promoted by the Priceless Life Centre — a pro-life/anti-choice advisory service based in Queensland — as being one made by a ‘like-minded organisation’. (NB. PLC is a ‘Public Benevolent Institution’ and as such in receipt of a GST Concession, FBT Exemption and Income Tax Exemption.)
In August 2011, she was a featured speaker @ the Lifewell conference, “one helpful and wholistic strategy in restoring lives through Jesus”, organised by Enfield Baptist church in Adelaide.
In May 2011, MTR addressed a yoof conference @ Inaburra school (a Christian educational facility established by the Menai Baptist Church) on the subject of social pressures upon young people (PDF).
In September 2010, she took part in a Women’s Night @ Epping Baptist Church in NSW, “speaking on the effect of popular culture on young women and girls”, taking the ladies who assembled “on a confronting visual tour of images from the media and popular culture which girls are bombarded with”.
In November 2009, she addressed the Australian Christian Lobby’s National Conference on the theme of ‘Putting Kids First’.
In September 2009, when Sheridan Voysey spoke about ‘The Quest for God’, he did so as one of several ‘Inspiring Christians’, including MTR, to address congregations at Belconnen Baptist Church in Canberra.
Curiously, sometime after 2004, MTR was a signatory to the ‘Marriage Manifesto’, a document produced by the ‘National Marriage Coalition’ which, inter alia, campaigns against same-sex marriage. Well, one version anyway: the copy of the 2008 Manifesto published on the Coalition website (PDF) does not contain her name, while that published on that belonging to the Fatherhood Foundation (PDF) does.
And yet nowhere on her personal website does MTR describe herself as a Christian, let alone of which denomination…
January 15, 2012 is the second anniversary of the death of Dieter Samoy. Samoy, a Belgian neo-Nazi skinhead, committed suicide several days after being sentenced to two years in jail for taking part in a violent, racially-motivated assault upon Togolese immigrant Raphaël Mensah in May 2006. Mensah was rendered unconscious in the assault, hospitalised, and spent one month in a coma. He died a year later (of apparently unrelated causes).
At the invitation of local boneheads, in 2008 Dieter’s band, Kill Baby Kill, toured Australia, playing the annual Ian Stuart Donaldson memorial gig (at a pub in Beaconsfield in outer Melbourne) along with local neo-Nazi bands Blood Red Eagle and Ravenous. While Blood Red Eagle has since departed the fold of Blood & Honour sponsored bands in Australia, Ravenous carries on and may even be performing at the Happy Birthday Mister Hitler/Hammered Festival in Brisbane in April.
While on tour a soon-to-be-dead Dieter and his band joined local artistes to record a charming little song named ‘Oh no here comes an Abo’. Sadly, the video of the recording session has been withdrawn from YouTube; happily, you can obtain a copy of the song through local neo-Nazi distro 9% Productions, either online or, indeed, at the gig. Further, those interested in songs in a similar vein need look no further than ‘More Dead Niggers’, which is available on the Deaths Head albums Hang the Traitors and Metal Skin… and may even be played live in April, who knows?
Of course, Dieter Samoy is not expected to be joining them. But if he did…
Updaterer : Farah Farouque has written a piece for today’s Age: Anti-porn activist threatens to sue blogger over religion claims (January 17, 2012). “[T]he debate it [the Internets spat] unleashed has earned the Twitter hashtag #MTRsues – which also displeases Tankard Reist.”
Update : Skepticlawyer has an extensive and very useful discussion of the legal context here. Helen @ Cast Iron Balcony reckons MTR doesn’t speak for her. Weez @ MGK also reckons MTR is a bit silly.
Huh. This is interestink. Blogger Jennifer Wilson writes:
Just got home to find a letter from the lawyers of Melinda Tankard Reist demanding I withdraw all my posts about her or very bad things will ensue.
We’ll see I guess. In the meantime, a few days ago Reist was the subject of an extensive profile in the Sydney Morning Herald. “For Tankard Reist’s part, she says she’s not interested in labels – she just wants people to engage with the substance of what she has to say. “Call me whatever the hell you want, I don’t care,” she says. “I believe my work is pro-woman, pro-girl. Just let me get on with it.”" According to Jennifer: “She’s going to have to sue a few more blogs than just mine, because I’m not the only one who’s written that she’s a Baptist, and attends Belconnen Baptist Church. It’s well in the public domain.”
*And oh yeah. It seems Jennifer left a comment on Rachel Hills’ blogpost regarding her SMH profile on Tankard Reist. It doesn’t appear to have been published (yet) but Jennifer reproduces it on her own blog here. I could be wrogn, but it would seem that it’s this comment and Jennifer’s subsequent elaboration upon it (rooting Melinda’s opposition to pornography in her Baptism) that can has angered Reist and her team of law-talking guys.
After being taken off the card for BAMMA 8 (December 10, 2011) in England, Finnish neo-Nazi MMA Niko Puhakka has now apparently been removed from KSW 18 (February 25, 2012) in Poland. The decision to remove the Finn appears to be related to his neo-Nazi politics. To be precise, public revulsion at the organisers of KSW for allowing a neo-Nazi and former member of Blood & Honour Finland’s security detail to once again invade Poland.
During the inter-war period Syndicalist ideas had repercussion in the Union of Trade Unions (Zwiazek Zwiazkow Zawodowych–ZZZ in Polish) this was 130,000 strong and active from 1931-1939. The association presented itself to join the IWA. It is still active today and assembles Anarcho-Syndicalist and Syndicalist trade unions. During the war the ZZZ and other organizations formed the Polish Syndicalist Union (Zwiazek Syndykalistyczny Polski–ZSP in Polish) which actively battled against Fascists. However it was not isolated from other formations and co-operated with the National Army (‘royal army’–Armia Krolewski–AK) and the People’s Army (‘popular army’–Armia Ludowy–AL). An illegal newssheet, The Syndicalist, was published and ZSP detachments took part in the Warsaw Uprising.
Just days after announcing that Finland lightweight Niko Puhakka would be fighting Artur Sowinski for the vacant lightweight title, Polish organisation KSW has pulled him from the bout.
The move was made after fan outcry over Puhakka’s tattoos and political leanings. He has a tattoo of the Nazi slogan ‘Blood and Honour’ on his chest; that phrase was the philosophy behind Nazi government laws against inter-racial marriages.
KSW released a statement to Fighters Only in which it expressly stated that Puhakka’s removal came after a negative response from fans around the world. Poland also suffered heavily under Nazi aggression and the country bears numerous scars from the World War Two era.
The statement reads:
In connection with controversy surrounding Niko Puhakka, KSW Federation decided to cancel his participation in the upcoming KSW 18 event scheduled for February 25th in Plock. The decision is associated with the respect our federation has for public opinion as well as the belief that personal views and ethical standards are equally important as sporting excitement.
KSW Federation never was and will never be an institution promoting any kind of political, religious or social beliefs. We are a sporting organization, which chooses its fighters solely on a basis of their athletic accomplishments. Our goal is to confront skills, records and names not fighter’s views.
However, the amount of negative feedback we received regarding the above- mentioned fighter forced us to exclude him from the competition. Niko Puhakka’s removal from the fight card does not mean that Artur Sowinski’s participation in KSW 18 will also be cancelled.
A replacement opponent for the Polish fighter will be announced soon.
Oddly, Puhakka had fought for KSW on two previous occasions with no issues, the most recent being in March 2011. It seems either the thought of him fighting for a title in Poland proved unpalatable to fans, or the profile of the bout and associated publicity meant it was the first time his presence on a KSW card was widely noted.
It is not the first time that Puhakka has been ostracised as a result of his politics and while he is definitely a fighting talent, his career has no chances of progressing to any significant international level as long as he is wearing the slogans of the Third Reich.
A few things:
1. Yes, ‘Blood and Honour’ is a Nazi slogan, a slogan (‘Blut und Ehre’) used as a motto by the Hitler Youth.
2. Blood and Honour is also the name adopted by a global network of neo-Nazi skinheads, one formed by Ian Stuart Donaldson (1957–1993; singer-songwriter in the English band Skrewdriver) and Nicky Crane (?–1993) in 1987. B&H produces and distributes neo-Nazi propaganda (principally music and zines) as well as organising gigs, meetings and other forms of cultural activity and political activism.
3. Puhakka was a member of Blood & Honour Finland. According to B&H: (‘Scene News’, Blood & Honour, No.28, 2003):
Finland’s B&H security is one of the toughest security in the world. Our security has European, World and Finnish champions in weightlifting, Finnish championship medallists in boxing and wrestling plus the bad ass freefighters [MMAs] we have in our security ranks. [Our] latest title holder comes from this event. 20.10.2003 our security member Niko, who’s never lost a single freefighting match, won the European championship title in freefighting [80kg]. He won the title from Valentin Siouljine from Belarus. We congratulate the new European champion!
The fight referred to took place at Fight Festival 9 in Helsinki and was Puhakka’s seventh fight and seventh straight victory.
4. Puhakka has never repudiated his views and continues to adhere to a neo-Nazi worldview.
NB. ORGANISING MEETING AGAINST HAMMERED MUSIC FESTIVAL TOMORROW TONIGHT (THURSDAY) NIGHT @ 6.30PM (JANUARY 12), LEVEL 2, TLC BUILDING, 16 PEEL STREET, SOUTH BRISBANE. ALL WELCOME.
I’m not quite sure why, but this year’s neo-Nazi Hammered Festival (scheduled to take place in Brisbane, Queensland on April 21, 2012) has generated more media and public interest than any previous event organised by local neo-Nazis (of which there have been many). Thus, since the publication of an article in Queensland’s Courier Mail on January 8 advertising the event, there has been coverage by Ninemsn, The Jerusalem Post, NEWS.com.au and numerous websites dedicated to music and/or politics (and Brazil’s Globo for some reason). The Festival has also generated considerable heat on social networking sites such as Facebook. On Wednesday (January 11), The Project on the Channel 10 network profiled the event as, apparently, did The Drum on ABC.
Possibly, the sudden surge of interest in local neo-Nazi organising may have been triggered by coverage of the string of murders allegedly committed by a neo-Nazi terrorist cell in Germany over the last decade and only revealed to the public late last year (and which took place under the noses of the German police); it may even be related to the decision by Anonymous hackers, also apparently located in Germany, to establish nazi-leaks.net, a kind of anti-fascist variant on Wikileaks.
Alternatively, it may have simply been a slow news day on Sunday.
Whatever the case, for those of you coming in late, the Hammered Festival is an annual gathering taking place in Queensland and now (2012) about to celebrate its third anniversary. (In its previous two years — 2011 and 2010 — the event was celebrated on the Gold Coast.) The Festival is organised by two local neo-Nazi skinhead (bonehead) associations: Blood & Honour Australia and the Southern Cross Hammerskins. Other groups or projects involved in the event include ‘Crew 38′ (the feeder organisation for the Hammerskins), ‘Women for Aryan Unity’ (a tiny group of Aryan ladies dedicated to propagating neo-Nazism, wholesome diets, and collecting funds for imprisoned neo-Nazi terrorists) and 9% Productions (a local neo-Nazi online distro). This year’s event is also intended to celebrate the Hammerskins’ 20th anniversary in Australia and, not coincidentally, takes place a day after Adolf Hitler’s birthday (April 20, 1889).
While advertised publicly on various neo-Nazi and White supremacist websites, entry to Hammered is by invitation-only, and the exact location of the event is nowhere advertised. This commitment to secrecy has some obvious and proximate reasons but is otherwise in accord with the more general outlook of the groups involved. Thus, there is no ‘public face’ to either B&H or SCHS, and both have a policy of non-cooperation with media. Further, the names of the bands to perform at the Festival have not been made public, and presumably won’t be until after the event. Nevertheless, it seems likely that Melbourne bands Deaths Head/Ravenous and Waffenbruder, Brisbane band Open Season and an ‘international’ act will be among those who goose-step on stage. (NB. The forum.thiazi.net site has probably the most comprehensive neo-Nazi discography online.)
As noted, there has been a considerable (and rather surprising) amount of media coverage of the Hammered Festival. Surprising not only because the event itself is another three months away but also because the same groups have been organising a similar event in Melbourne — the Ian Stuart Donaldson memorial gig — for the last 20 years or so. The ISD gig is larger and actually the key event on the Australian neo-Nazi calendar but has received relatively little media attention. So too because Kenneth Stewart, the only member of the SCHS to be exposed publicly as such, resides in Melbourne, and arguably because the group is stronger in Melbourne (and Geelong) than any other city in Australia. (The Hammerskins have a marginal presence in Aotearoa/New Zealand also, though their most famous member is most likely former member Kyle Chapman, currently the leader of ‘Right Wing Resistance New Zealand’.)
The Controlled Media Project
The Project report on Hammered (5:04) is fairly straightforward, though it contains a few minor inaccuracies (at the start of the report Angela Bishop announces that the 20th anniversary of the Hammered Festival will take place — it’s actually the Hammerskins’ 20th birthday party) and a few points are worth clarifying.
First, the aim of the Hammerskins as reported — ‘To secure the existence of our people and a future for White children’ — is a slogan widely-used by contemporary neo-Nazis and White supremacists and was coined by convicted and now thankfully dead US neo-Nazi terrorist David Lane. (As an aside, some of his ashes were distributed in Australia by neo-Nazis in Perth. See : nutzis are W E I R D : David Lane’s Ashes, February 13, 2009.) Lane belonged to a freedom-fighting terrorist group known as The Order and at the Festival the local branch of ‘Women for Aryan Unity’ will be collecting funds to donate to members of the group currently imprisoned by ZOG in the Jewnited States.
Secondly, the YouTube channel referred to — genocidal88 — belongs to local Melbourne Hammerskin Jesse, singer-songwriter in both Deaths Head and Ravenous. Jesse’s channel functions as a principal outlet for B&H and Hammerskin agitprop and was rendered ‘private’ only after the report in the Courier Mail was published. Some videos remain available elsewhere however, of which the following is an example. (The band featured, the Bully Boys, toured Australia in 2004.)
Thirdly, in addition to being neo-Nazi, B&H and the Hammerskins are indeed global networks. Further, members and supporters of both groups have been convicted of violent crimes. Most recently, James Robertson, a member of Tampa (Florida) B&H was sentenced to life for his part in the murder in 1998 of two homeless men:
According to testimony and evidence presented at trial, Robertson was a member of “Tampa Blood and Honour,” a hate group whose members espoused the belief that white persons of Aryan descent were the superior race. Tampa Blood and Honour members considered the homeless to be an inferior class, regardless of race. “Bum rolling” was a term used by Tampa Blood and Honour members to describe the activity of targeting and committing acts of violence against homeless persons. Specifically, in the early morning hours of September 13, 1998, Robertson and three other members (Kenneth Hoover, Charles Marovskis, and Cory Hulse) of Tampa Blood and Honour murdered two homeless men – Mr. Alfred Williams and Mr. Richard Arseneau.
Not very nice behaviour really.
Also briefly interviewed by The Project is a Queensland politician. In general terms, the reaction by politicians to the event has been routine: condemnation. However Independent Queensland MP Rob Messenger:
…has launched an online petition in protest against the controversial neo-Nazi “Hammered Music Festival”, after being contacted by members of the public supporting his recent comments on 4BC radio.
The petition calls for the Premier and Opposition Leader to commit to supporting legislative changes that will ensure Queensland has the toughest laws in Australia which enable the banning and punishment of neo-Nazis and other race hate proponents.
The petition notes that local, state and federal political leaders have been reluctant to publicly condemn, or commit to using all laws necessary to ban, this Neo Nazi, race hatred-inspired gathering, with some political leaders blaming inadequate laws as an excuse for not being able to ban Neo Nazi rallies, events and activities.
The petition raises all sorts of questions regarding the state’s ability to proscribe political activity and, in the absence of broader political support, is unlikely to have much effect. In the interview, Messenger likens B&H and the SCHS to “terrorists”, which raises even further questions. Currently, under the terms of the Security Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Act 2002, there are 18 proscribed organisations, all bar one — the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — being Islamist groups.
For his part, during the course of Messenger’s interview Steve Cannane refers to the willingness of Jewish lawyers to represent neo-Nazis in court in order to defend their right to public assembly (the most famous case perhaps being a rally and march in 1977 by the National Socialist Party of America in Skokie, Illinois), while Charlie Pickering assumes that legal responsibility for the Festival must lie with the licensee…
To conclude their item discussing Hammered, The Project panel takes note of the fact that immigration authorities, under the terms of the Migration Act, reserve the right to deny entry to the country by non-citizens judged to be of ‘poor character’. This includes those considered likely to racially vilify or incite discord. (It was on this basis that leading members of the German NPD — Gerd Finkenwirth and Udo Voight — were told to bugger off in 2003 and 2005, thus becoming unavailable to address the annual fascist gathering in Sydney.)
The implication here is that the ‘international act’ coming to play Down Under may similarly be denied entry. The difficulty lies in the fact that the authorities will need to go to some effort to identify those touring, and in previous years have allowed a number of boneheads, mostly US citizens, to tour. It’s in this context that Cannane makes reference to British Holocaust denialist David Irving having been denied entry to Australia (which he was, repeatedly, in 1993, 1996 and 2003) and further argues that, when given the opportunity to speak in public, in the UK his ideas were debunked. Therefore, banning neo-Nazi events is not only questionable from an ethical or legal perspective but also counter-productive.
Judge Gray found that Irving had “for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence” in order to portray Hitler “in an unwarrantedly favourable light” particularly in his treatment of the Jews. Irving had “significantly” misrepresented, misconstrued, omitted, mistranslated, misread and applied double standards to the historical evidence in order to achieve his ideological presentation of history. Judge Gray also found that Irving was an “active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-semitic and racist, and that he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism.”
This book examines degeneration. It notes that degenerates are not always criminals, prostitutes, anarchists, and pronounced lunatics; they are often authors and artists. These, however, manifest the same mental characteristics, and for the most part the same somatic features, as the members of the above-mentioned anthropological family, who satisfy their unhealthy impulses with the knife of the assassin or the bomb of the dynamiter, instead of with pen and pencil. This book investigates the tendencies of the fashions in art and literature; aiming to prove that they have their source in the degeneracy of their authors, and that the enthusiasm of their admirers is for manifestations of more or less pronounced moral insanity, imbecility, and dementia. Thus, this book is an attempt at a really scientific criticism, which does not base its judgment of a book upon the purely accidental, capricious, and variable emotions it awakens—emotions depending on the temperament and mood of the individual reader—but upon the psycho-physiological elements from which it sprang.
~ Max Nordau, Degeneration (7th ed.), New York, D Appleton & Company, 1895.
Two Greek anarchists are making molotov cocktails. One says to the other: "So who will we throw these at then?" The other replies: "What are you, some kind of fucking intellectual?"
