Very briefly, a couple of people have contacted me regarding the distribution of some White supremacist propaganda at Swinburne University in Hawthorn. Here’s a sample:
The posters appear to have been sourced from Stormfront; the world’s leading White supremacist website, established some years ago now by Don Black, a former Klansman and convicted terrorist. Just recently, his son Derek Black, another active proponent of White supremacy, has denounced his father’s ideology, declaring that white nationalism was really about “an entrenched desire to preserve white power at the expense of others”.
Presumably, a student at Swinburne has some ‘issues’ regarding their racial identity they would probably be better off talking to a counsellor at the campus than expending their energies trying to create an unwelcoming environment for the many thousands of other students who attend the Hawthorn campus. Note that, over the last few years, nazis of one sort or another have distributed their agitprop at LaTrobe, Melbourne and RMIT universities. Most recently, stickers have been spied outside Ascot Vale train station — the same stickers (including one proclaiming ‘Death to Refugees!’) which have seen five men in court in WA, charged with criminal damage. Ascot Vale was also the site of the vicious bashing of a Vietnamese student, Minh Duong, in December 2012, by a group of self-proclaimed nazis …
In any event, props to the students unwilling to tolerate this kinda visual pollution.
Update : Chilling: Queensland’s war on civil liberties, Robert Corr, overland, October 22, 2013. ‘Indeed, the Queensland laws have been drafted in scatter-gun fashion. None of the legislation is limited to bikie gangs. The Vicious Unlawful Association Disestablishment Act, for instance, includes references to ‘any other group of 3 or more persons by whatever name called, whether associated formally or informally and whether the group is legal or illegal’. The Queensland Law Society notes this could include sporting groups and book clubs; the onus will be on the accused, rather than the state, to prove that ‘the relevant association is an association whose members do not have as their purpose, or one of their purposes, engaging in, or conspiring to engage in, declared offences’.’
The QLD state government’s Criminal Law (Criminal Gangs Disruption) Amendment Act contains an official list of 26 OMCs declared criminal organisations. See if you can spot Them from the list below …
• Bandidos • Beatles • Black Uhlans • Bloodhound Gang • Bonnot Gang • Brotherhood of Mutants • Coffin Cheaters • Comancheros • Coordinating Committee for the Refoundation of the Fourth International • Dead Ringer Rosies • Dolls of Hazzard • Finks • Fourth Reich • Fifth Reich • Gang-gangs • GANGgajang • Gang of Four • Gladiators • God Squad • Gypsy Jokers • Hatfields • Hells Angels • Highway 61 • Iron Horsemen • Jets • Kelly Gang • Kool & The Gang • Life and Death • Lone Wolf • McCoys • Mobshitters • Mongols • Monkees • Muslim Brotherhood Movement • Neighbours • Nomads • Notorious • Odins Warriors • Outcasts • Outlaws • Phoenix • Queen Bees • Rebels • Red Devils • Renegades • Rock Mobsters • Scandal’Us • Scorpions • Sharks • Toxic Avengers • Vibrating Bum-Faced Goats • Wiggles …
The US state and criminal justice system frequently adopts harshly punitive measures against political prisoners — as the recent case of Herman Wallace (and countless others) attests.
As the I-Team reported on Friday, Neiweem is a self-professed anarchist who is a member of the Anarchist Black Cross and frequents their chat rooms. In 2010, he was charged with punching a Chicago police officers [sic] in the face, a case for which he is now on probation.
According to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, Neiweem is charged with attempted possession of explosives or incendiary devices.
“Neiweem made statements during the course of the NATO investigation indicating that he knew how to make a pipe bomb and requesting the materials to make a pipe bomb. No pipe bomb ever made he is being charged based on the statements that he made,” said a law enforcement source familiar with the case.
Even as President Obama, heads of state and foreign ministers arrived in Chicago, police and the U.S. Secret Service were concerned about the plans, plots and schemes that might still be hidden, said several counter-terror investigators who asked not to be quoted by name.
As well as bringing to mind other cases of anarchists being imprisoned for refusing to testify before grand juries in the US (example: Jerry Koch), Neiweem’s case also invokes Queensland, the G20 meeting scheduled for next year, and the cray cray bills the Queensland state government has just passed, including the fabulously titled ‘Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment Bill’ [PDF].
Introduced on the basis that OMCs have become too big for their leather boots, the new laws grant government authorities enormous powers to criminalise just about any association it chooses to, with harsh penalties for those who find themselves declared to be vicious, lawless and in association with others of the same ilk. In response, a number of bikies have decided to formally quit their clubs (in a move not dissimilar to when, a century ago, Wobblies quit the IWW following its repression under the provisions of the Unlawful Associations Act of 1916). For further discussion see : Bikies quit clubs, hire lawyers, in wake of Qld’s tough new laws, ABC, October 18, 2013.
As for the NATO 5, as noted, authorities allege that the famous figures made statements regarding the manufacture of incendiary devices, aka ‘Molotov cocktails’. And I don’t know about you, but whenever I think ‘Molotov cocktails’ and summit protest I think ‘Molotov bong’, ‘Jonny Hammerlock’ and the WTO. That’s because back in 2002, at the time of the WTO summit in Sydney, The Daily Telegraph chose to manufacture a story involving a fellow who called himself Jonny Hammerlock. Mr Hammerlock proudly declared from the front pages that he would be in the front lines of the protest, doing something-or-other with his World Famous Patented Molotov Bong. (Note that Jonny, whom nobody I knew had previously encountered, disappeared once the newspaper had done its job.)
Finally, as for the G20 summit in Brisbane in November next year, my fingers are xed that Jonny, or somebody very much like him, might make a (re-)appearance. In fact, I imagine they’re already online right now …
On October 14 there was a small protest (about 15 people according to ABC-KGO) outside Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California, U$A.
“The protest, according to organizer Michael Mendelson, was sparked by Facebook’s refusal to remove anti-Semitic hate pages aimed primarily at Jews, Jewish Americans and supporters of Israel.”
Mendelson is responsible for establishing a Facebook page called ‘Help Report Hate & Anti-Semitic Pages’.
The Sydney-based Online Hate Prevention Institute helped to publicise the event and gave it its support, and so too did US blogger Pamela Geller, whom protest organisers describe as one of its ‘sponsors’.
In June 2013, Geller and Robert Spencer were banned by the British Home Office from entering the UK, where the pair were to address an English Defence League rally, on the grounds that they were likely to ‘mak[e] statements which may “foster hatred” and lead to “inter-community violence” in the UK’. The EDL’s leader, Tommy Robinson aka Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, quit the group just last week, claiming that it had been hijacked by extremists, including neo-Nazis.
[*Teachers in Brazil have been on strike. In Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday last week 'Anarchist groups smashed banks and burnt a bus, while "Black Block" protesters threw firebombs at the police, who responded with teargas, rubber bullets and percussion grenades' (Grauniad). The teachers' union has reportedly declared support for the bloc.]
Anarchists promise to disrupt ‘absurd’ World Cup
James Hider in Sao Paulo The Times
October 14, 2013
BRAZILIAN anarchists, who form part of the global anti-capitalist movement, have pledged to target next year’s World Cup.
The group says the event is an extravagant waste of money in a country where millions live in poverty.
In an interview with The Times, a member of the Black Bloc anarchist group [sic] said: “FIFA lies to us, it is all money laundering. The people get nothing out of it. They’ve spent millions on stadiums and have a law saying they don’t have to disclose how much they spend. FIFA will rule this country for the time of the World Cup.”
The 26-year-old heavily-tattooed black-clad anarchist, who asked not to be identified, said: “The World Cup is absurd. It will be a focus for us and we will fight it.”
Brazil is under intense scrutiny to show that it is able to contain mounting social unrest as it tries to organise two of the world’s most watched sporting events – a football World Cup next year and the Olympics, in Rio, in 2016. It is already far behind schedule in building the stadiums and infrastructure required for next year’s event.
Last week, Black Bloc, whose origins [kinda] lie in the European anarchist movement, shot to prominence in Rio and Sao Paulo when dozens of their number attacked banks, buses and shops after a demonstration by striking teachers descended into clashes with the police.
Wearing black clothing, crash helmets, gas masks and scarves round their faces, they set fire to banks, sprayed anti-World Cup grafitti on the walls of damaged buildings and handed out leaflets saying: “Relax people. It’s us, the Black Bloc. What you can’t do, we can. We don’t just attack, we defend people against police abuse and defend our right to protest.”
Political analysts believe that while many Brazilians deplore the violence, their disillusionment with the police and systemic corruption is fuelling support for the protesters and the anarchists who champion them.
The member of Black Bloc claimed that the principal role of the activists was to protect protesters calling for social change from police onslaughts.
“We are growing,” he said, his clothes adorned with the names of punk banks. “Before, it was a small punk group from the underground culture, but now people from other social groups are coming along. Upper-middle class kids are agreeing with us. Young people have more destructive energy and see it as a way to express themselves.” He said social media groups that helped them to organise themselves were infiltrated by police informers during the summer protests.
Black Bloc spontaneously present themselves at left-wing demonstrations, such as last week’s teachers’ strike, and confront the police. Armed with gas masks and plastic shields, they say they want to help legitimate protesters to be heard.
“Our goal is protection. We know the police are better equipped, with rubber bullets and teargas, which they often fire in large quantities,” he said. “But if we stand our ground, the people will stay and the protest will go on.”
The authorities’ response has been to flood the streets with police, gendarmes and even the army: when the Pope visited Rio in June after protesters disrupted the Confederations Cup, more than 10,000 security personnel lined the streets.
Rafael Alcadipani, a professor of organisation theory at the university of Sao Paulo who has studied Black Bloc, said that with a murder rate of 40,000 a year fewer than 10 per cent of which are solved Brazilians believe the police have other priorities than “people breaking windows with stones”.
“The more aggressive and violent the police are, the more they will fuel protests,” he said. “My guess is that they will try to stop a match of the World Cup, which will be big news. Brazilians are crazy about football but the majority of them can’t afford a ticket … it’s a tournament for the rich and people are upset about this.”
…or, in recent months, a handful of boneheads in Perth and Melbourne have been slapping up stickers promoting B&H/C18 LOL. (See also : Volksfront Australia : Back With A Bang!, October 10, 2013.) Thus today I received a photo of some stickers stuck outside Ascot Vale train station (Ascot Vale is an inner northern suburb of Melbourne):
The orange sticker is the same sticker that appeared in Perth six months ago:
The sticker provides a website, email address and mobile number. The website address is for the Blood & Honour website.
Currently, five men have been charged with criminal damage for distroing the stickers in Perth:
The last time B&H/C18 made it into the news in Australia was a few years ago when Perth bonehead Bradley Trappitt (below, far right) was convicted along with two other boneheads of being naughty boys and playing with guns in the vicinity of a mosque. Trappitt has since come under the wing of Sydney-based Welf Herfurth, the leader of a small group of fascist activists variously parading under the banner of the New Right/’national anarchism’. The last of this mob’s excitingly irregular public performances was at a November 2012 rally against an Israeli attack on Gaza. (Note that, in a related case, a former WA police officer named Robert Critchley was acquitted late last year of the charge that he had provided the boneheads with information regarding police investigations into bonehead activity in Perth.)
The B&H site which the stickers promote is an entity (B&H/C18) distinct from the B&H associated with a bonehead gang called the (Southern Cross) Hammerskins. In Australia (if not, say, in Russia), the Hammerskin-aligned B&H is a much more popular and well-established neo-Nazi organising tool, having operated successfully for 20 years in the country and holding regular gigs in Melbourne and a number of other cities including Adelaide, Sydney and most recently on the Gold Coast. The split between the two wings dates back to the years immediately following the death of the founder of B&H, Ian Stuart Donaldson, with the wing aligned to Combat-18 (where 1 = A, 8 = H and AH = Adolf Hitler) more openly committed to political violence against its opponents. (For more infos, see : Blood and Honour vs. Blood and Honour, April 12, 2009.)
On a slightly concerning note, in December last year Ascot Vale was the site of a particularly nasty assault upon a young Vietnamese student.
Minh Duong was walking home from his job in Ascot Vale in June when he was set upon by Shannon Hudson, 21 and Wayne O’Brien, 20, both of Ascot Vale.
Mr Duong was kicked and punched repeatedly before being stabbed and having a brick dropped on his head.
The boys responsible for the assault fancied themselves Little Hitlers, and are part of a small, very loose network of nazi yoof in the northern suburbs of Melbourne — tho’ the precise connections between the various elements that comprise the milieu are rarely, if ever, made public knowledge.
blah blah blah — so a blogger in the us has argued, rather poorly, that lorde’s song ‘royals’ is “deeply racist”. i can find very few, if any, who agree with her, but whatever. she concludes her post on the following rather ungenerous note:– “let’s just hope [lorde's] feminism gets a lot less racist as she develops as an artist”.
yeah well, fingers xed eh.
anyway, the CONTROVERSIAL! article by verónica bayetti flores was posted on the feministing site on october 3 but it was scooped by another post by a philosophy teacher named robin james from north carolina, posted on september 18. the september post has received nowhere near the attention the october post done. both condemn lorde for being a racist: in flores’ words, ‘shitting on black folks and rappers’; in james’ case ‘articulating a specific kind of anti-black racism in a way that clearly illustrates the role of white femininity in multi-racial white supremacist patriarchy’ (the professor’s post contains some incredible riffing). why racist? mostly ’cause lorde made the mistake of referring to “gold teeth, Cristal and Maybachs” in her lyrics … and we all know what that means right? *nudge nudge, wink wink*
finally, no big deal, but i thought it was curious that the feministing post makes no ref to the previous, though both writers think the alleged racism in the song is wow …
Very sad … I remember encountering Greg/Spiral Objective mail order sometime in the early ’90s thru an ad in the Green Left Weekly(!). Thru his distro (and label: 1991–2000) he helped introduce me and countless others to a world of punk and hardcore musick, firmly rooted in a commitment to social justice and solidarity with a range of local and global projects.
The fire that destroyed the Black Cockatoo Arthouse (Park St, McLaren Vale, South Australia) and which housed Greg’s collection took place in early September but I only read about it now via Rest Assured zine …
(Details on how you can help Greg and Black Cockatoo Arthouse get back up on their feet are available via Rest Assured.)
On white supremacist forum Stormfront, bonehead Chris Smith has announced the reformation of Volksfront, the neo-Nazi skinhead gang originally formed in the US in 1994, and established in Australia about a decade later.* The development is curious as Volksfront in the US announced its dissolution just over a year ago, in circumstances which remain somewhat obscure, but may be connected to the mass murder by neo-Nazi skinhead Wade Michael Page in August, and increased attention from the US government. Rose City Antifa:
believe that the announced dissolution of Volksfront should be treated with some caution: Volksfront has auto-dissolved once before, in 1998, when members of Volksfront in Portland including Krager were under increased police scrutiny and decided to take apart Volksfront as an above-ground organization. Volksfront then publicly resurfaced in 2001 after three years underground. Randal Krager also made a December 2004 announcement that he had given up leadership of the organization, but was soon enough back as the head of Volksfront. The latest Volksfront announcement may therefore mainly be made out of political convenience. It is possible that key Volksfront activists will continue to work as an underground network, as there is precedent for this in the organization’s history.
Note that prior to this point, VF has operated only in NSW, and a gentleman’s agreement has existed between it and the boneheads belonging to the Southern Cross Hammerskins, restricting VF’s activities to that state. Presumably, the two gangs have arrived at a new understanding. (Smith runs the Anti-Antifa Australia blog and distributes neo-Nazi propaganda via the Heathen Noise website.) Otherwise, VF has worked in close cooperation with Welf Herfurth’s ‘national anarchist’/New Right groupuscule in Sydney, and these ties would appear to remain fairly strong.
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?"
