• on saturday (april 16), jura books (sydney) will be hosting a discussion w visiting academic alex prichard on the subject of ‘Anarchy, Freedom, and Constitutionalism’ : “How do you know when you’re free? Anarchists have usually said you’re free to the extent that you’re not dominated. But what secures this non-dominated state? Do we need to be empowered, or is something else needed?”
• you can listen to alex and fellow academic saul newman discuss anarchism on late night live with phillip adams here (anarchy rules!, april 5, 2016).
• also on april 23, hot shots in footscray is hosting a series of skills workshops on coping w trauma / metal working / screen printing and moar.
• in melbourne, may day this year happens to fall on a weekend (sunday, may 1). anarchists will be among those gathering outside trades hall for the occasion.
April 4 was the one-year anniversary of the first ‘Reclaim Australia’ rally. The occasion prompted me to write a few lines on my Facebook page (see below). Since then:
• Several members and/or close associates of the UPF — Ralph Cerminara, Blair Cottrell and Neil Erikson — have been nominated to appear in the Magistrates Court in Maryborough on Thursday, April 14, to respond to an application for an intervention order by a former associate, Joelle Norris. Whether Cottrell & Co appear or not would seem to depend on several factors. One is whether or not it has any impact on his parole conditions (if any). If so, he will likely appear to contest the order. It’s equally possible that Cottrell hasn’t been served with a notice of the hearing — but far less likely to have failed to notice its appearance on Facebook. Given his history of family violence, Cottrell would presumably be savvy enough to understand that if he fails to attend the hearing it will almost certainly be granted in Norris’s favour, meaning it’s very much in his interests to attend and to contest. Who knows? Hopefully he doesn’t bring an axe or a tomahawk along with him …
• Speaking of BFFs, Peter Grace has examined Cottrell’s views on ‘friendship’ here:
• Also on April 10, around 20 or so flagwits belonging to Nick Folkes’ Party for Freedom gathered near the Halal Expo in Sydney. They shouted abusive slogans, waved placards for a while, and then went home.
• Dr Jim Saleam’s Australia First Party has lodged an application with the AEC to use the Eureka flag as its symbol on ballot papers (see : Australia First Party’s use of Eureka flag angers rebels’ descendants in Ballarat, Bridget Judd, ABC, April 12, 2016). The quest to appropriate the symbol is a long-running campaign of Dr Jim’s, dating back to the 1970s, and disputes over its status as an emblem of ‘left’ or ‘right’ has involved a wide range of historical and contemporary actors, from anarchist to neo-Nazi. Certainly, when the AFP joined fellow neo-Nazis from Golden Dawn at a public demonstration in Brisbane in May, 2014, they were rudely reminded that, as far as anti-fascist construction workers are concerned, the flag has no place in their hands. (Note that Jim Perren, one of the AFP dingbats present at the rally and co-author of the neo-Nazi ‘Whitelaw Towers’ blog, later helped arrange the UPF’s visit to Toowoomba in February.)
In any event …
As a mobilising force, Reclaim Australia seems to have more-or-less disappeared up its own bottom: — widely understood as an essentially racist and xenophobic movement, met with sometimes fierce opposition on the streets, riven by internal conflict among the handful of dumbs and mads who constituted its core organisers, and in other ways eclipsed by the emergence (or re-emergence) of various other, largely online anti-Muslim projects, chief among them the UPF, RA appears spent. If so, RA will have become just one more of the already innumerable anti-Muslim propaganda pages FB happily carries and promotes. Of course, this may be a temporary retreat, and RA once again be the broad umbrella under which a liquorice all-sorts of anti-Muslim prejudice takes to the streets. Who knows? Barring some dramatic development, it does seem doubtful it will again stir as many suburban keyboard warriors as it did in 2015.
The UPF, which constituted itself as the vanguard of RA, is also barely a year old, and has obviously undergone some settling of contents during transit. As well as, first, the departure of Shermon Burgess and Neil Erikson from the UPF and, secondly, their denunciation of it as a ‘Nazi’ organisation, most recently Perth flunkey Dennis Huts declared that he was leaving the UPF — as much a man of his word, and his criminal convictions, as his fuehrer, he’s now back — while fellow sandgroper Nic Genovese has also elected to leave. Others to have ostensibly left the group’s inner circle include Kris0 Richardson, Linden Watson and John ‘Farma John’ Wilkinson. In any case, the UPF is now very much a vehicle for the political ambitions of local neo-Nazi Blair Cottrell and his sidekick Thomas Sewell (the football-hating, Hitler-loving pair carried the UPF banner at the Collingwood-Richmond match last week), with the financial support of Christian fundamentalist Chris Shortis, largely moral support from fellow Bible-basher Scott Moerland, and G*d knows what from the crazy, mixed-up Kevin Coombes (aka ‘Elijah Jacobson’ aka ‘Abdullah Islam’; Coombes was first a born-again Christian, then a Muslim, and is now a neo-Nazi sycophant).
Such, at least, is the UPF leadership. Around it has gathered a very small base of (generally quite demented) fanboys, chiefly from Bendigo, Melbourne and Perth, but also including a handful of neo-Nazis and other White supremacists from Queensland and elsewhere; Jim Perren of Whitelaw Towers/Anti-Antifa blog being one. While some have a developed political perspective, an emotional attachment to flags and other nationalist symbols, combined with a visceral hatred of Muslims and other racialised elements, typically eclipses any thoughtful or genuine political commitment. They are thus easily manipulated, lied to, and used — and are. Further, their commitment is just as often fleeting: — their naivete about politics, society and social change leading them to mistakenly believe both that their views are more popular than they are in reality and that acting like a racist dickhead in public is a surefire way to win friends and influence people.
(I should add that the UPF has little support in Sydney partly because its leadership is based in Melbourne but also because Sydney’s far right has already been colonised by Dr Jim Saleam’s Australia First Party on the one hand and Nick Folkes’ Party for Freedom on the other. The UPF has sought counsel from AFP but has not explicitly allied itself to it; Shortis has recently been playing with the PFF in Sydney but was noticeably absent — as was the UPF as a whole — from the PFF’s rare Melbourne excursion last weekend. Sydney is of course also home to Ralph Cerminara, an Australian Defence League activist and serial pest who was previously aligned with Shermon Burgess but is now singing from the UPF hymnbook. Now BFFs, the fact that Cottrell memorably described Cerminara as a ‘cancer’ — and late last year expressed a desire to travel to NSW in order to break the cancer’s jaw for some infraction — gives some insight into the highly unstable nature of the boys’ relationships.)
Of course, in addition to being a ‘street movement’, the UPF also fancies itself as a political party: ‘Fortitude’. Announced with much fanfare late last year in Perth, the UPF embarked upon an east coast tour to promote the fledgling party in February. The tour was not especially successful. Barely 40 or so attended its meeting in Orange, NSW, perhaps twice as many in Toowoomba, QLD (where organisation of the meeting was left in the hands of Catholic relief teacher Liz Carlsen, Perren, and a handful of QLD-based neo-Nazis), and several hundred in Bendigo. The attendance in Bendigo was the largest by far, but still far less than the UPF managed to attract at its peak, which in October last year was somewhere between 500 and 1,000. Further, despite now having over 40,000 likes on FB, it seems as though the UPF/Fortitude is still struggling to obtain the 500+ signatures required in order to register with the AEC (and, crucially, to contest elections under its own name on the ballot). The proximity of the next federal election also means that it’s now almost impossible for the party to do so — even if it did manage to collect the requisite total.
That’s not the only or biggest problem Fortitude faces, for it enters a field already crowded with radical and populist right-wing electoral alternatives, most notably the Australian Liberty Alliance and One Nation. The ALA in particular is a far slicker, well-funded, well-organised and generally palatable option for the anti-Muslim crowd than Fortitude, with its neo-Nazi leadership, criminal history, white nationalism and crude, racist outpourings. It seems possible that even if it does register, Fortitude will likely crash soon after launch, and the boys again be reduced to orchestrating publicity stunts and conducting closely chaperoned (and very small) police rallies. It will then find itself in a position to produce more characters like Phill Galea and Nathan Davidson: — and John Wilkinson’s public exhortation to ‘stop the mosques’ by burning them down will become a much more attractive proposition for its violent fanbase.
BONUS!
In April last year a page called “Slackc-nt” appeared on Facebook. It’s now been publicly disclosed that the author of the page is a man by the name of Andrew Wallis — AKA Drew Smith, Tommo Oro, et. al.. Wallis was also one of the five UPF meatheads — along with Blair Cottrell, Neil Erikson, Chris Shortis and Linden Watson — who paid a visit to 3CR Community Radio and the Melbourne Anarchist Club in November last year.
A month or two ago the Sydney-based fascist grouplet ‘Party For Freedom’ (PFF) — the organisers of the Cronulla Riot Re-enactment failboat last year (and the ‘anti white genocide’ Palm Sunday counter-rally a few weeks ago) — decided that it would be A Good Idea to hold an anti-Muslim rally outside the Halal Expo in Ascot Vale. According to reports, around 20 or so folk travelled down from Sydney to join the rally, and were joined by a smaller number of locals. In any event, their rally was briefly the site of a scuffle, after a small group of anti-fascists decided to say ‘G’day’ and welcome them to marvelous, multicultural Melbourne. There appear to have been no arrests, but the PFF lost a number of flags and placards, and one of their supporters — wearing a PFF t-shirt bearing the slogan ‘Rapefugees Not Welcome Stay Away!’ — appeared on the TV with a cut and some blood on his face.
The PFF will be staging another anti-Muslim protest outside the Halal Expo in Sydney on April 10. This will be the second occasion on which the PFF have done so, having organised a rally outside the Halal Expo in 2015 which was also the site of a minor clash with anti-fascists (see : Protests at halal food expo turn violent, SBS, April 13, 2015).
Also today, a crowd of several hundred gathered at Fed Square to rally against racism and fascism. They also went on a march. A small contingent of Collingwood fans joined the rally, each one of them as beautiful as fascism is ugly. Props!
The neo-Nazi grouplet United Patriots Front (UPF) staged a(nother) provocative little stunt on Friday night, unfurling a banner reading ‘Go Pies’ and ‘Stop the Mosques’ at the Collingwood-Richmond match. After a short while, MCG security removed the banner and ejected those responsible — which included UPF fuehrer Blair Cottrell — from the ground.
The UPF have staged a series of publicity stunts since forming in April/May 2015. These include an ‘anti-Communist’ rally in Richmond (May 2015), roasting a pig outside the ABC offices in Melbourne (June 2015), beheading a dummy outside Bendigo council offices (October 2015) and being uninvited guests at the Melbourne Anarchist Club and community radio station 3CR (November 2015) — while trying to hunt me down.
The Collingwood stunt attracted a good deal of attention for the grouplet, and while it was denounced by the AFL, Collingwood, Richmond and many others — including, of course, many Collingwood supporters — it earned Cottrell another opportunity to appear in the media and to promote the UPF: the purpose of this and previous stunts. Further, the media is loathe to describe the UPF accurately, and the group is variously termed as ‘nationalist’ and ‘far right’ — but never neo-Nazi.
In any case, fair play to the UPF: the stunt was successful, and Collingwood’s statement that if it’s ‘established that [Cottrell & Co] have a formal connection to the club, this connection will be severed’ means little to a man who loves Hitler and hates Collingwood.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Finally, a few months ago Cottrell declared that the UPF would be staging a commemorative rally this weekend to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the April 4 Reclaim Australia rally. It looks like this plan has been shelved, but an anti-fascist gathering will be taking place at Fed Square in any event.
Today in Bendigo, around 2-300 patriots/fascists answered their fuehrer’s call and attended the third and final leg of the United Patriot Front’s whirlwind tour of the ‘east coast’. There they were treated to another of Blair Cottrell’s best Hitler impersonations, whinged and whined about bloody Muslims, and (presumably) joined the UPF’s yet-to-be-registered political party, ‘Fortitude’. (The previous week in Orange, NSW saw around 40 or so gather at the local bowls club and the week before that around 70-80 attended the UPF meeting in Toowoomba, QLD.) The Bendigo Action Collective (BAC) held a ‘March Against Fascism & Bigotry’ which attracted anywhere from 50 to 100 or more in opposition to the fascist group’s presence in town.
The day appears to have been largely uneventful, though towards the end of the BAC march, outside the Bendigo railway station, a small group of a dozen or more UPF supporters — consisting largely of members of a tiny yoof gang from Melbourne calling themselves the ‘True Blue Crew’ — gave it large and were subsequently told to shoo by police. (You may remember the TBC from such rallies as ‘Reclaim Australia’ in Melbourne on July 18, when three of their members were arrested by police for being naughty and subsequently fined: the fines being paid for by the UPF.) Curiously, joining the TBC was (ex-?)UPF stalwart Linden Watson and Ralph ‘Valour Thief’ Cerminara, a man memorably described by UPF fuehrer (Blair Cottrell) last year as a ‘cancer’, a ‘virus’, and as someone who ‘infects’ and ‘destroys’ everything he touches.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Otherwise:
• The 2-300 UPF supporters who attended today were dwarfed by the crowd of anywhere from 500 to as many as 1,000 who attended the last time the UPF was in town (October 10), which may suggest that the UPF is declining in appeal. On the other hand, their numbers last time were considerably boosted by the presence of Christian fundamentalists from the ‘Rise Up Australia Party’, the period between October and February has witnessed a series of ruptures in the UPF, and the mosque appears to be going ahead despite numerous legal challenges to its construction …
• The UPF’s Perth leader, Dennis Huts — best known for being an uninvited guest at Muslim prayer rooms in hospitals and universities — has declared that he’s leaving the UPF (and public activism). This presumably leaves fascist thug Elijah Jacobson as Cottrell’s subordinate in Perth. Below is a discussion taken from the UPF’s internal discussions on Facebook, in which the boys discuss the virtues of the stillborn ‘Generation Identity: Australia’ project, now re-named ‘Australians Resistance Movement’ and admined by UPF member and neo-Nazi Jim Perren.
• Finally, the UPF has a tiny presence in Tasmania too. Well, of sorts. Their bizarre/disturbing batshit has been documented by anti-fascists in that part of the world in ‘We got chatting a while ago …’ (Antifa Tasmania, February 27, 2016).
This is an announcement of resignation from the Socialist Party, Australian section of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI).
We, the undersigned, refuse to be party to the cover-up of allegations of violence against women and will not remain complicit in the silencing of victims of abuse.
Over recent months we have watched the organisation we built be torn apart by attacks on a woman comrade for coming forward with serious allegations of abuse by a leading male member. We believe such allegations should always be investigated with seriousness and sensitivity, while open to scrutiny and democratic oversight. Instead, we have witnessed an attempted cover-up, defence of the alleged perpetrator and disgraceful treatment of the alleged victim.
As committed socialists and Marxists, we consider this an unforgivable breach between theory and practice. We have a proud history of fighting to end the oppression of women in society. We have published important material on the many ways women are oppressed by capitalist society and have expressed solidarity with the many movements throughout history that have fought and challenged this oppression. However, this important work will amount to nothing if we tolerate the silencing of women within our own ranks.
We are entering a new period of history where self-proclaimed socialists like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn are inspiring people into political action and shaking up the capitalist system. A whole new generation is discovering the ideas of democratic socialism. Socialists should welcome them with open arms. But this can only be done on the basis of taking a principled stand against all forms of oppression.
The struggle for a socialist society – a society that puts the interests of people before profit – must be founded on the understanding that we cannot challenge capitalism while condoning violence against women within our movement. We must oppose all forms of oppression on the basis of class, gender, ethnicity, disability or sexuality.
We have a world to win through struggle, solidarity and socialism. We intend to fight for it.
Signed:
Stephen J
Mel G
Chris D
Emma L
Aish R
Emma Da.
Toby D
Sue M
Matt M
Tess K
Emma Du.
Kyal R
Bridgid O’B
Steven M
Blair Cottrell — the leader of the United Patriots Front and Fortitude — appears as ‘Bruce’ in a recent documentary about youth in prison (the maximum-security Youth Unit at Port Phillip Prison in Truganina). In this passage he describes how he abused steroids, stalked his former partner and her boyfriend, tried to kill him, set fire to their house, and eventually got arrested, convicted, and sent to prison.
I knew steroids were always available to me, so I decided to buy some. I spent $1,000 on my first course, which was testosterone and dianabol … The aggression and the rage that I got from them almost was addictive. It made me feel good, it made me feel powerful. And every time my girlfriend would tell me ‘it’s enough now, you need to cut back, you need to take it easy, you’re getting too angry, you’re getting too big, you just look ridiculous’, I would sort of just dismiss it …
… I was friends with this guy for two years before she broke up with me. And I was under the impression that over these two years he had weaseled his way into her mind and influenced her to leave me and get with him. So I had convinced myself that it was his fault, and he needed to disappear.
When she cut me off, which [was] probably around mid-year, that’s when everything got really bad. I started obsessing about this guy. I used to walk past this guy’s house like ten times a night, up and down his street, just watching it, waiting for him to come out of it, and he never did. And I would leave him messages telling him to ‘stand up to me, stand up to me’ and he never replied.
When I never got a reply from him I started carrying knives, and like a hatchet, I had my hatchet … I had a little tomahawk … I had like this little tomahawk that I used to wear it, I put it inside my jacket and in the middle of the night, like one and two o’clock in the morning, I would go out the front of his house and like just hover around, and they always used to stay up really late and smoke bongs and the lights would always be on.
So I would sleep behind this little white picket fence across from his house and look through the cracks, at his house, and as soon as like the door would open my heart would skip and I would stand up and be holding a knife because I’d be ready to go round there and be ready to like kill him because I was pretty determined.
There was one time where he did come out his front door and I had jumped out from behind his fence with a tomahawk in my hand and he ran away. So I put the tomahawk back in my jacket and I chased him, screaming out, telling him to stop, telling him he was a fucking coward. I chased him down about three streets and then he disappeared and that just made me worse and then I started damaging his house I started throwing things at it, through the windows and like, I made a couple of Molotov cocktails, and lit his garage up with those … and I started getting arrested after I did that.
When he made an intervention order against me I took it seriously because it threatens you with two years jail if you break it which is like a restraining order. So I started trying to speak to my girlfriend again. Of course she didn’t speak to me after what I’d been doing …
Since his release from prison in May 2014, his public statements would suggest that Cottrell has not altered his views on women. He also regards feminism as being a Jewish plot. In any case, the neo-Nazi will be addressing a Little Nuremeberg rally in Bendigo this Saturday. A ‘March Against Fascism & Bigotry’ has also been organised.
For those of you coming in late, ‘Whitelaw Towers’ (WLT) is a neo-Nazi blog that often functions as a kind of online shit-sheet for Dr Jim Saleam’s ‘Australia First Party’ (AFP). Thus, while there are many entertainingly batshit articles on the AFP website dedicated to trashing the (deregistered) party’s many political enemies, WLT exceeds the site many times in over in terms of size and scale.
WLT originally developed as a replacement for another, short-lived blog titled ‘Victor Whitelaw’ (February–October 2006). The author was a Sydney-based neo-Nazi named Peter Campbell. When ‘Victor’ stopped publishing, WLT was born (October 2006). Campbell was joined by his comrade in Toowoomba (now Chinchilla), Jim Perren — both men proud members of the now-defunct ‘White Pride Coalition of Australia’ — and more recently by AFP member, the Sydney-based Nathan Sykes.
I didn’t realise it until now, but Peter Campbell is actually deaded, having (reportedly) been killed in a motorcycle accident in August 2013. That means sole responsibility for the blog now resides with Perren and Sykes.
Finally, the WLT Facebook page recently merged with the ‘Anti-Antifa Australia’ page, previously maintained by Brisbane bonehead Chris Smith. I’ve been informed that Smith left the project last year and for most of it Perren assumed responsibility for the page.
United Patriots Front
On Tour
The UPF paid a visit to Orange yesterday (February 20) as the second leg of their ‘east coast’ tour to promote their fledgling, yet-to-be registered political party, ‘Fortitude’. It’s unclear why they chose Orange to promote it (presumably, they have at least one supporter in town) but the party went down like a lead balloon, the meeting attracting something in the order of 40 or so flagwits, most of whom reportedly came from outta town.
The UPF return to Bendigo on Saturday, February 27, and can reasonably be expected to attract at least a few hundred supporters. It will be the third time the boys have staged a rally in town, having previously organised anti-Muslim rallies on August 29 and October 10, 2015. The October 10 rally was their biggest event thus far, attracting somewhere in the order of 500 to as many as 1,000 people.
Bendigo is an attractive proposition for the boys for two primary reasons. The first is that the UPF is essentially a Melbourne-based project, with its key leaders — Blair Cottrell, Kris0 Richardson, Thomas Sewell and Chris Shortis — living in town. Further, Cottrell and Sewell have had a long association with neo-Nazi group Nationalist Alternative, another Melbourne-based project. In addition, the UPF has been able to attract the support of Melbourne-based Christian fun-da-mentalist party Rise Up Australia. Secondly, the UPF has been able to piggyback upon a long-running campaign by locals to stop the development of a mosque in town.
On the other hand, the events in Toowoomba and Orange have not generated a whole lot of public interest; the denunciations of the UPF as neo-Nazi by former comrades Shermon Burgess and Neil Erikson have made at least a few of their supporters re-think their commitment to the group; the two previous rallies in Bendigo have taken advantage of support from a broader milieu drawn from ‘Reclaim Australia’, its supporters, and various tiny satellites; the event is the launch of a yet-to-be-registered political party which enters an already fairly crowded field (including the Australia First Party, Australian Liberty Alliance, One Nation, Rise Up Australia and various other, right-wing Christian grouplets).
In summary, the event in Bendigo will be a real indicator of the actual level of support for the UPF and Fortitude, and determine whether or not it has actually been able to build a real social base, at least in Bendigo if not elsewhere in the country. Speaking of which, the Bendigo Action Collective has organised a ‘March Against Fascism And Bigotry’ in opposition to the UPF. For details, see their Facebook page.
Online
As noted in my last post, the UPF’s “inner circle” has been penetrated and material assembled there made available on the intarwebs. The material so far released consist of the circle’s Facebook discussion for the period December 22, 2015 to February 15, 2016 (ie, a few days after the Toowoomba rally) and messages exchanged via the Fortitude page for the period December 11, 2015 to January 20, 2016. It appears possible that other material will be released at a later date.
Most of the discussion that takes place among the boys is fairly mundane and of the sort that accompanies any (tiny) political project: the production and distribution of propaganda, creation of contact lists for supporters, scheduling of meetings and so on. Added to this are opinions about the various personalities to be found in the ‘patriotik’ movement, references to the various squabbles that have taken place during this period, and an attempt to solidify some kind of basic organisational structure. Throughout it is clear that Cottrell functions as the fuehrer and that the other boys are subordinate to him — a position which they seem to quite enjoy. Nonetheless, it’s not all smooth sailing, as this angry video addressed to his underlings suggests:
Otherwise, here’s a few more samples of some of the more, ah, interestink things the boys have had to say:
1. Kris0 Richardson expresses his liking for neo-Nazi warbler Saga:
2. Kris0 Richardson expresses a desire to smash the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, in the face with a hammer on account of his willingness to apologise for the state’s previous criminalisation of homosexuality:
3. Perth-based Elijah Jacobson expresses a desire to give “ANTIFA & SAlt” (Socialist Alternative) a hiding:
4. Nic Genovese (also from Perth) expresses gratitude on being appointed the UPF’s chief propagandist:
5. Kim Vuga hearts the UPF and is going to Perth in March:
6. Cottrell urges the boys to read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion or The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion, the notorious anti-Semitic forgery, and to pay particular attention to Protocol 9.
Somehow or other, material published on the Facebook group “UPF & FORTITUDE ~ INNER CIRCLE” — comprising the ‘inner circle’ of the UPF/Fortitude — done got made public. It provides an interesting glimpse into the inner workings of the group of a dozen or so men who comprise the inner circle, and no doubt similar material will be forthcoming. Here’s a sample:
1. Chris Shortis (‘Chris Neil’) assures new member, Perth-based neo-Nazi Nic Genovese, that the inner circle is safe and secure.
2. Fuehrer Blair Cottrell assures the inner circle that everything is safe and secure. Note that along with Christian fun-da-mentalist Scott Moerland, neo-Nazi Jim Perren, formerly of Toowoomba, is the UPF’s flunkey in Queensland.
3. Blair Cottrell makes a funny about Thomas Sewell’s dreams of being a little Nazi.
4. Perth-based Elijah Jacobson asks who the man is what expresses ABSOLUTE UNWAVERING LOYALTY to his Fuehrer (Sewell provides the answer: Rudolf Hess).
5. The boys have a discussion about who’s gonna be standing for Fortitude come this year’s federal election. The other UPF/Fortitude flunkey in Perth, Dennis Huts, like Cottrell, has done time in jail: thankfully, for less than 12 months, meaning he’s free to catapult himself into the Australian Senate.
Hell hath no fury like a neo-Nazi scorned amirite?
Neil ‘Nazi Boy’ Erikson has been busy over the last few days exposing local neo-Nazi elements in the patriotik milieu. Much of what he’s stated — Nationalist Alternative (NAlt) is a neo-Nazi gang; the United Patriots Front (UPF) is led by neo-Nazis (Blair Cottrell, Thomas Sewell); he was #BFFs with the defunct Melbourne-based neo-Nazi gang the ‘Crazy White Boys’, etc. — is already known. But he’s made a few other claims which are revealing:
• NAlt meets at a mansion (146 Toorak Road) in South Yarra which functions as the happy home of ‘The English-Speaking Union of Victoria’, the ‘Royal Society of St George’ and the ‘British Australian Community’ (formerly the ‘United Kingdom Settlers’ Association’). I’d never heard of these groups, but they seem somewhat reminiscent of arch-Tory groups like the ‘Conservative Monday Club’ in the UK; a group which had close links to the fascist ‘National Front’ in the 1970s. (Oh yeah. On its website, the BAC gives props to Swedish neo-Nazi warbler Saga.)
Above : Nathan Sykes (L) with AFP Führer (Dr) Jim Saleam (R).
• Sydney-based ‘Australia First Party’ (AFP) bizarr0 Nathan Sykes — who writes for AFP, Whitelaw Towers (WLT) blog and the US-based neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer — is in fact Jewish. This would, of course, be quite remarkable if true, though not unique: the 2001 film The Believer was inspired by the life and death of Daniel Burros (1937–1965), an American neo-Nazi of Jewish descent. (Burros committed suicide on October 31, 1965, hours after his Jewish heritage was made public. He shot himself in the chest and then the head. At the time, he was reportedly listening to music composed by Richard Wagner.)
Sykes is not. a. fan. of my blog and wrote a batshit piece about me back in March 2015 (see : slackbastard ~versus~ Australia First Party, Daily Stormer, Reclaim Australia (etc.), March 10, 2015). Inter alia, Sykes wrote that I was a “gutless squid” who “champions every cause in the whole spectrum of the social justice warrior rainbow, without being sincere about any. If it’s faggot marriage, Muslim asylum seekers crying in detention because they didn’t get to sneak in and rape a white woman, petrol-sniffing Abos demanding sit-down money or self-hating Whites marching in solidarity with Ferguson, he’s got his tender paw in the scene.” (I’m also denounced as an “ideological fraudster”, “professional mud slinger”, “champion of the Jew-run left-wing media”, “hipster skunk” and “limp-wristed poseur”. Touché! LOL.)
• In December 2015, Brisbane-based neo-Nazi Jim Perren (ex-‘White Pride Coalition of Australia’, WLT blog) was apparently part of the UPF’s (vewy secwet) inner circle. You may remember Jim Perren from such events as the abortive joint rally by Australia First and Golden Dawn in Brisbane in May 2014. Assuming Perren remains a part of the UPF — and has not left or been removed by der Führer in the meantime — the ‘pagan’ neo-Nazi would be holding hands with fellow Queenslander and Christian fu-da-mentalist Scott Moerland: such a happy marriage! LOL.
On the whole, the cracks in the patriotik movement between neo-Nazis and Christian fundamentalists (whose chief embodiment at the moment is the UPF) on the one hand and ‘civic patriots’ (also sometimes termed ‘kosher patriots’ by their anti-Semitic and White nationalist rivals on the right), on the other hand, would appear to be further widening. Reclaim Australia appears to be in steady if not permanent decline — the national page was unpublished a few days ago, and the dumbs and mads who comprised the original committee are at war with one another over money, merchandise and fame — leaving the UPF, in whatever disarray it may be currently, holding the patriotik bag. Of course, fascists rarely play well together, and there are seemingly still many scores to settle among the ranks, so it’s highly likely that there’ll be more recriminations to come …
NB. The UPF is in Orange on February 20 and will be staging its third Little Nuremberg rally in Bendigo on February 27. See : March Against Fascism & Bigotry for more.
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?"
