Cracking scene from #antifa rally in Brisbane ~versus~ #GoldenDawn

In this scene from Friday’s rally, two members of The Master Race are given a little lesson in manners by some unionists.

The nazi in the cap and glasses is Jim Perren.

In addition to being one of the authors of the neo-Nazi Whitelaw Towers blog, Perren was a member of the batshit ‘White Pride Coalition of Australia’, a coalition of nazis, KKK members and assorted other fascist b0zos. In its forum he used the handle ‘stug111′. Among many classic lines employed by Perren is this gem (made in reference to a September 2004 article on the neo-Nazi New Zealand National Front):

“Anti-Asian is only a reflection of the [party's] racist kind of ideology. Today it’s an Asian. Tomorrow it might be the Maori, Jewish or Muslim community.”

Hang on Mr Do Hong Ding Bing Gook Oy what about the Arabs, Sudanese, Islander, Japanese, Race Traitors, Niggers, Commos, Poofs, bugger it any non Aryan. Don[']t forget them. I wonder if this gook is being payed [sic] by the Jews. I would say yes. Keep up the good [sic] NZNF we have them in a panic.

Oddly enough, Perren didn’t avail himself of this golden opportunity to ask the various “Arabs, Sudanese, Islander, Japanese, Race Traitors, Niggers, Commos, Poofs, bugger it any non Aryan” unionists if they were in the employ of The Jew …

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So who were these nazis anyway? Australia First & Golden Dawn in Brisbane

Approximately 14 nazis attended the failed Australia First/Golden Dawn rally in Brisbane on Friday. Below are photos of those who attended. Three other nazis — sporting nazi t-shirts — also attended, and apparently tried to attach themselves to a union contingent (they were told to shoo). Since the rally, incensed at not being able to goosestep down Queen Street, AF and GD have declared WAR! on the BLF, CFMEU and ETU in Queensland.

Good luck with that.

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Above : Iggy Gavrilidis. Based in Melbourne, Gavrilidis is the leader of Golden Dawn in Australia and one of only two or perhaps three GD members to actually attend the rally.

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[Photo: Max Riethmuller @ altmax.com.au]

Above : Jim Perren on right. Perren is a former member of the (now defunct) neo-Nazi ‘White Pride Coalition of Australia’ (WPCA). He briefly came to the media’s attention in 2005. “THE man behind a race-hate campaign in southern Queensland has been identified as a professional kangaroo shooter from the Darling Downs town of Crows Nest.” Perren was later employed as a bouncer at a Toowoomba pub and has been one of two men responsible for the neo-Nazi Whitelaw Towers blog (the other being the Sydney-based Peter Campbell).

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Above : Unknown. Presumed member/supporter of GD.

nazi8a

Above : Unknown.

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Above : Unknown. Presumed members/supporters of AF.

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Above : Unknown. This AF member/supporter got very upset when he lost his flag and proceeded to wave a stick at the counter-rally (much to their amusement).

nazi2a

Above : Unknown. And. not. happy.

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Above : Old Bearded Man was carrying a sign. Possible great-uncle to ‘Steve the National Socialist supporting Australia First NSW’.

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Above : Unknown. Also. not. happy.

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Above : Aaron Heaps. AF Brisbane spokesperson and former One Nation Party candidate (Forde, 2004).

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Above : Unknown. But possibly suffering from a (political) hangover.

Bonus boneheads!

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Above : Three boneheads leave the rally. Behind them is a union escort. Hammered is a reference to the annual neo-Nazi gig held in QLD organised by neo-Nazi groups Blood & Honour and the Southern Cross Hammerskins. (NB. This year’s Hammered festival was held in Newcastle, NSW on Saturday, May 3.) The Hammerskins received some brief media attention in Australia when one of its members, Wade Michael Page, shot dead six Sikhs in Wisconsin in August 2012 before committing suicide.

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beardynazi&mate

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Australia First / Golden Dawn defeated 1-0 by Antifa

The Brisbane branch of the Australia First Party (AF) tried to hold a rally, march and picket today in support of their comrades in the Greek Golden Dawn (GD) party. Sadly, despite calling upon every other nazi and White supremacist in Queensland to join them, just a dozen or so racist losers managed to make their way to Musgrave Park … and the rest, as they say, is another embarrassing chapter in the history of AF.

Sincere thanks to all those who helped to ensure that the nazis were unable to rally, march, picket — or do much of anything apart from look like the fools that they are — and that Golden Dawn was treated to a rather bleak morning and afternoon.

See : They came, they saw, they… caught a cab outta there!, Fight Dem Back!, May 2, 2014 | Golden Dawn supporters chased out of CBD, Westender, May 2, 2014 | Golden Dawn supporters clash with anti-fascists in Brisbane, Brisbane Times, May 2, 2014 | Golden Dawn march, 4BC, May 2, 2014.

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!!! HAPPY MAY DAY COMPAÑERXS !!!

On International Workers’ Day, solidarity w all immigrant workers. Smash Fortress Australia. Long live anarchy!

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What was I thinking?

A dear friend of mine recently asked me to provide them with a list of my contributions to other sites and to articles in which I receive a mention.* I compiled a list and thought I may as well publish it here too …

2014

April 23, 2014
This Guy Has Been Trolling Neo-Nazis for Nearly a Decade (Vice)*
See also : This Guy … [vice] (April 24, 2014)
Who’s Behind The ADL’s Racist Violence? (New Matilda)

April 11, 2014
False dawn: fascism in Greece and Australia (Overland)

April 5, 2014
Hunting Australia’s neo-Nazis (The Saturday Paper)*
See also : Comments on ‘Hunting Australia’s neo-Nazis’ [The Saturday Paper, April 5, 2014] (April 6, 2014)

March 27, 2014
Investigating Stormfront: Whiteness, Demography and Politics (Honi Soit)*
See also : Stormfront morans v Honi Soit (March 30, 2014)

March 10, 2014
International guests Q up for bigotry (Overland)

February 10, 2014
A rose by any other name: making stuff up about anarchists (Overland)

January 29, 2014
Who Are The Australian Defence League? (New Matilda)

January 22, 2014
Who’s Keeping An Eye On Aussie Neo-Nazis? (New Matilda)

2013

December 19, 2013
How The Press Sets Up A Protest Crackdown (New Matilda)

November 13, 2013
The Australian doing hard time overseas (no, it’s not Schapelle) (Crikey)

August 30, 2013
Smashing the fash: fascism in Australia (Honi Soit)*

… previously …

Australian Politics in a Digital Age, Peter Chen, Chapter 4 — Anti-social media (2013)
‘Empowering protest through social media’, Simon O’Rourke (2011) [PDF]
‘Forbidden knowledge? The politics of voice, white privilege and the ethics of research’, Denise Cuthbert, Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies (Vol.4, No.2, 2008) [PDF]

Posted in !nataS, Anarchism, Anti-fascism, Broken Windows, History, Media, State / Politics, Student movement, That's Capitalism!, War on Terror | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Nazi Brisbane? Tell him he’s dreaming.

[Update (April 30) : In just two days fascists will be gathering to march in Brisbane in support of Golden Dawn. Already over 350 people on Facebook have indicated they will oppose their presence. An antifascist from Melbourne writes:

Antifascist Greetings,

I'm part of the anti-Golden Dawn collective in Melbourne, so I can't make it to this but I just wanted to send my solidarity to you all.

I can tell you that from the point of view of Golden Dawn, how this march looks in Greece is very important to them. They want to convey to their supporters at home that they have support and sympathy around the world and disrupting that is paramount.

On the other hand, anti-fascists in Greece will also be watching and a failure for GD will further boost morale in their struggle.

The whole of Greece will be watching!

It appears that GD have outsourced the organisation of such rallies to AFP (Sydney and Brisbane being the "strongest" AFP support bases) for the time being. I believe they are wanting to organise something in Melbourne after this. Again, a figurative bloodied nose can help stop this or any other escalation of their public presence.

Enough is enough.]

As noted previously, the Brisbane branch of the Australia First Party (AF) has organised a rally, march and picket in support of the Greek neo-Nazi organisation Golden Dawn (GD), which is currently the subject of a criminal investigation. “Of the party’s 16 MPs, 13 face charges of setting up a criminal organization and six of them, including party fuehrer Nikos Michaloliakos, are in pre-trial custody” (ekathimerini.com, April 25, 2014).

The Little Nuremberg rally is scheduled to begin at 11.30am on Friday, May 2 opposite The Greek Club in Musgrave Park and to include members of AF, GD, and various local nazis. Precisely how much support AF/GD have in Brisbane is unknown at this stage as the party has not held a public rally of this sort before. This may explain why AF spokesperson (and former One Nation Party candidate) Aaron Heaps has used the Stormfront website to implore every anti-Semite, neo-Nazi and White supremacist in Queensland to join him at Musgrave Park. Note that, according to a report recently released by the Southern Poverty Law Centre, “[n]early 100 people in the last five years have been murdered by active users of the leading racist website”.

Curiously, Musgrave Park is the site of the Brisbane Aboriginal-Sovereign Embassy; at the Invasion Day rally this year, a handful of AF members tried to disrupt proceedings. The choice of Musgrave Park as a rallying point — and the daft attempt to disrupt the Invasion Day march — suggest AF have few if any problems reminding local Indigenous peoples that this is (a) White Man’s Land

In any case, over 250 people have now indicated they may join a rally to counter the fascist mobilisation. A Community Organising Meeting Against Racism and Fascism is taking place at 6pm on Wednesday, April 30 to discuss how best to respond to the nazi march.

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This Guy … [vice]

I did an interview with vice. You can read it here.

A few comments:

• “Trolling” isn’t the most accurate term to describe my blogging and other activity aimed at the far right but hashtag whatever.

FightDemBack! deserves some credit/blame for my blogging.

• A comparison of the the extreme right in Australia, the UK and US is a useful exercise, especially in light of the fact that Australia and the US are products of British colonialism. In the US context, the legacy of slavery plays a crucial role in shaping contemporary US politics, as does the White Australia policy in the Australian context. On race and politics, I recommend Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People (W.W. Norton & Co., 2010), The Invention of the White Race by Theodore W. Allen, published by Verso (Volume One (1994) is sub-titled ‘Racial Oppression and Social Control’; Volume Two (1997) ‘The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America’) and (for Australia) ‘The Power of Whiteness’ (1998) and ‘Whiteness and Blackness in the Koori Struggle for Self-Determination’ (1999) by Gary Foley and the work of Alana Lentin and The Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association (ACRAWSA).

Otherwise, Golden Dawn in Greece and Jobbik in Hungary arguably belong to another category of politics than do the ‘Tea Party’ phenomenon in the US or the Independence Party in the UK (or One Nation in Australia). On the far right, see : A tentative table on far-right radicalism, The Murphy Raid, December 9, 2012.

• On racism in Australia, attitudes have been shaped, crucially, by its status as a (former) colony, the ongoing dispossession of Indigenous peoples, and a long history of commitment to Australia being a White outpost of British Empire in the Asia-Pacific region. It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to understand racial discourses without reference to this history or its contemporary reality, whether expressed as bipartisan support for mandatory detention or the chronic incapacity of the state and its legal and political instrumentalities to recognise Indigenous sovereignty.

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Australian Defence League, racism, violence … [new matilda]

I wrote an article for New Matilda. You can read it here. If you’re in Brisbane and would like to oppose Golden Dawn and neo-Nazism, the nazis are organising a rally and march on Friday, May 2 — counter-action is also being organised.

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161>88 : documentary on Czech #antifa available for download

[... mAd props to antifa.cz ...]

“The documentary 161>88 by Antifascist Action is now available for download in high quality. English and German subtitles are available. Download and share!

The movie maps the evolution of the Czech antifascist movement since the late 1980′s up to 2011. The footage takes the viewer through the period of the first racist murders in the early 90′s, to the protests against the Sládek’s Republicans, clashes with racist hooligans and National Resistance, up to the recent anti-Roma demonstrations. The footage is completed with commentaries and memories of both academics and activists.

Since the premiere in 2012, tens of screenings of the movie were organized around Czech Republic (including the International documentary film festival in Jihlava) and also in many other countries (Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Serbia and others). The movie was also released on a DVD.”

[... also on YouTube ...]

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Boycott, Divest, Disrupt: Strategies to End Mandatory Detention : Sydney, May 10

[In Sydney on Saturday, May 10 at UTS: University of Technology, Sydney, CB06.06.103, a panel discussion on strategies to end mandatory detention (Facebook).]

On March 7, the Sydney Biennale and Transfield announced that they would go their separate ways. This was the result of a boycott launched in response to Transfield having signed a $1.2 billion deal to expand its involvement into the internment camps on Manus Island and Nauru.

The boycott was launched by way of xBorder Operational Matters, and supported by groups such as Beyond Borders, RISE: Refugees, Survivors and Ex-detainees, Students Thinking Outside Borders, and many other individuals and autonomous groups. Importantly, the result could not have been achieved without the ongoing struggles for freedom from those held inside Australia’s internment camps, and the determination of several Biennale artists and staff who withdrew their work from the festival and their value from the Transfield brand.

This was the first success of a campaign to expose the detention industry supply chains that rely on our acquiescence, our money and our labour for the camps to exist. The most effective way to end mandatory detention, therefore, is to make the system inoperable.

This panel is being held to discuss the future direction of this campaign. Specifically, we would like to address the following:

1. Expand upon the success of the Biennale boycott to a wider divestment campaign, including the divestment of superannuation funds, banks, universities, charities from the internment industry

2. Explore the links between the various components of Australia’s racial confinement and control industry (mandatory detention, Aboriginal incarceration, the Intervention, Code of Conduct)

3. Discuss the connections between the Far Right and the militarisation of the border

4. Address how the border of Australia’s colonial state, and divisions of labour along racialised and gendered lines, limits activism and effective action around the border.

[See also : A Few Words About Amigdaleza [Anarchist Prisoners' Network, August 2013] (April 19, 2014).]

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