"Anna" Goes to Elle

More awesomeness, this time from the pages of Elle: 'The Believers', by Andrea Todd (May 2008). Todd's article profiles "Anna", an FBI informant whose testimony -- along with two other accused turned co-operating witnesses, Zachary Jenson and Lauren Weiner -- has proven crucial to convicting Eric McDavid on September 27 last year of "conspiracy to destroy property by means of fire or explosives". Eric -- who's scheduled to be sentenced on May 8, 2008, and faces up to 20 years in jail -- is one of a number of victims of the US Government's Green Scare campaign against the radical environmental movement in the United States, and in particular the 'Earth Liberation Front', which the FBI has deemed to be a terrorist grouping, and Public Domestic Terrorist Enemy #1 (see John Vidal, 'The green scare', The Guardian, April 3, 2008) on account of the fact that individuals and small groups acting in its name have caused millions of dollars damage to a number of environmentally-damaging projects over the last decade or so.

Naturally, there's been 3/4 of 2/3 of fuck-all in the Australian media about the Green Scare, but a scan of Todd's article is available at veganxjen's livejournal and as a PDF at Worcester Indymedia. You can also read an analysis of Anna's case on Portland IndyMedia: What the Elle? When corporate media tackles anarchism, the FBI, informants, and the ELF (April 23, 2008): "Perhaps Andrea Todd deserves a little credit. She was, after all, attempting to write an article about someone who lies for a living. Getting true, accurate information from such a source can be difficult at best, impossible at worst."

See also : Nicky Hager, 'Private investigators still digging on West Coast', Sunday Star Times, April 20, 2008, regarding attempts by a Kiwi energy corporation to spy on local activists opposed to their destruction of Happy Valley.

Alexander Downer blogs!

Awesome!

Did you know that:

Alexander has met Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell and Condi Rice?

He once sat across the Parliament from Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating? All at the same time?

In 1953, his father was part of the delegation the Australian Parliament sent to London to attend the coronation of Queen Elizabeth?

Upon arrival at the Elysee Palace -- in Paris -- he was greeted -- on the front steps -- by President Chirac?

In 2006, he called on the CEO of Guggenheim museums in New York to discuss why Adelaide can't build the most innovative, unique, attractive art museum in the southern hemisphere?

Having worked for Malcolm Fraser, Alexander found him to be one of the most dedicated and patriotic people he had ever met?

Alexander has a vice? And that vice is... golf? Or that his putter is Korean, and was given to him by Ban Ki Moon, the Secretary General of the United Nations after Alexander cleaned him up on a splendid course in Seoul?

Chris Patten, the last British Governor of Hong Kong, is an old friend?

If only we learned to drive better we could do a lot for the environment: it’s just common sense?

Environmentally-sensitive Korean putter signed by Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, Queen Elizabeth, President Chirac, the CEO of Guggenheim museums in New York, Malcolm Fraser (again), Ban Ki Moon and Chris Patten to GrodsCorp.

The New Right, "national anarchism", and A White Australia

Recently, a minor debate concerning the political perspectives of the New Right has taken place within the local fascist milieu, especially in relation to the hot-button topics of the nation, the state, the nation-state of Australia, and the preservation of the White race (of which, globally, there are only something like 1 billion members; within Australia, approximately 85% of the population is of European/White [predominantly 'Anglo-Celtic' or 'Anglo-Saxon'] descent). The preservation of the racial (White) and ethnic (Western and Northern European) composition of the Australian population is the key concern of the 'White (Australian) nationalist' milieu, although how to maintain this dominance is the subject of heated discussion. As such, the debate helps to clarify some of the issues surrounding the relationship between the New Right in Australia (and er, New Zealand) and 'national anarchism'; or at least, the manner in which that relationship is understood by members of the New Right and other members of the local fascist milieu, as well as the different approaches the New Right, 'national anarchists', and other fascist groups take towards questions of social change and political strategy.

Defend Australian Nationalism!

To begin with, the debate was sparked by the leader of the Australia First Party (NSW), Dr James Saleam, a veteran fascist and ideologue. In essence, Saleam questioned the political implications of the New Right's apparent embrace of Troy Southgate's peculiar notion of 'anarchism' for the future of White Australia. Saleam's concern is justified, as the implications of Southgate's vision of villages full of Whites living -- perhaps slightly uncomfortably -- among other villages composed of Blacks, Browns, Yellows and (presumably) all the other colours of the Homo Rainbow -- whatever they might be now or in the future -- does indeed spell the potential end of a White Australia.

Saleam's essay is titled, with his usual sense of pomp and circumstance, 'An Error In New Right Australia / New Zealand: Is There An Effective Acceptance Of Multiculturalism And Multiracialism In Australia?'. He writes:

A senior person in New Right Australia / New Zealand [Welf Herfurth] addressed a meeting in Sydney on February 15. Around the same time, he also did an interview for a certain magazine ['Doing the New Right thing by people: An interview with a key organiser for the New Right and National Anarchist movements in Australia', Destiny, No.3, February 2008]. A few important statements of position were made (and some strongly implied in the dialogue) that may not only imperil the acceptance of general New Right ideology within the broad Australian nationalist movement, but which could compromise the position of that group itself inside any front for Australian renewal. This situation arises because New Right ideology in Australia has been combined by the speaker and the group with the political philosophy of 'national anarchism'. And there are some ideological-political concepts in current national anarchism which place it in juxtaposition to long-standing Australian nationalist principle.

Destiny is a local, Melbourne publication, launched late last year, and closely allied with the 'Australian Protectionist Party' (APP). The APP emerged as a result of a split in Saleam's AF; this split, in turn, the apparent result of qualms over Saleam's history as a neo-Nazi and convicted criminal (a stick with which the media continues to beat Saleam about the head with, much to his chagrin), continued, close association with other neo-Nazis such as Ross 'The Skull' May, and his autocratic leadership style. In addition to Destiny, the interview with Herfurth was also published on mathaba.net, a UK-based site which has sought to close down my writings, and for which Herfurth, along with other members of the far right, is a regular contributor. (Among its previous contributors is Bill White of the US-based 'American National Socialist Workers’ Party', aka the 'American Nazi Party'. Bill is currently facing "fines and possible jail time for interfering in a local racial discrimination suit involving black tenants of a Virginia Beach apartment complex" (Roanoke white supremacist faces fines, possible jail time, Tim McGlone, The Virginian-Pilot, April 3, 2008).

In his Destiny/mathaba.net interview, Herfurth notes his interest in politics, opposition to liberal democracy and globalisation -- especially in terms of their role in the creation of a global 'mono-culture' -- and claims that 'national anarchism' is 'the radical answer to globalisation and the tyranny of liberal democracy'. The New Right and 'national anarchism' are not political parties, he notes, but social movement organisations which serve to facilitate the growth of a broader movement based on their ideas and practices. The failure of One Nation to facilitate this development is instructive, he argues, of the pitfalls of an approach to social change based upon a reliance on parliamentary politics.

(Herfurth was once an official in ONP before being expelled[?]. He was also a member of the Australian Friends of Europe (AFE), formerly Australian Friends of the BNP (British National Party). It sought to foster cooperation between "nationalist" groups against "globalist" socialism. The main AFE activists were Mark Wilson, former BNP organizer in Epping, UK, and Herfurth. The group made contact with, and was invited to address, Saleam's former political party National Action, the Australian League of Rights and branches of the ONP.)

In terms of the distinction between the New Right groupuscule and 'national anarchism', Herfurth believes that the former can act to cohere 'nationalist' ideology, while 'national anarchism' adopts an activist approach: "In my view, the National-Anarchists are the activists of the New Right". An example of this activism is the presence of a group of 'national anarchists' at the APEC summit last year; to date, the first and only public manifestation of 'national anarchism' in Australia of this sort. This kind of activity is intended to "confuse the so-called traditional Left, including the mainstream anarchists... so that they will start to think beyond their dogmas. Ultimately, National-Anarchism aims at an Australia of autonomous communities which are self-sufficient." Herfurth then notes his experiences as a political activist in Germany (Herfurth was a member of the neo-Nazi NPD), and the German far right's willingness to engage in broad, 'cultural' forms of political activism; an approach which he fulsomely endorses.

As for the crux of Herfurth's vision for the land Down Under:

7. What is your vision for the Australian Nation?

What is the Australian Nation and what is the Australian way of life? By law everybody is an Australian if they have an Australian passport [sic]. I disagree with that ‘civic nationalist’ view, of course.

Ideally, what I would like to see is an Australia which is a country with many autonomous communities that control their own local affairs. That means no state government, but one needs a federal body that controls foreign affairs. I want a country of free people who can determine their own destiny and future.

Realistically – that is, for the time being – I want to see a society that rejects liberal democracy. We should form our own groups of friends and associates, and interact with them, and exchange labour and goods within those groups. By doing that, we will form a parallel society. That is, we have a National-Anarchist system within a system.

In response to this proposal -- and Herfurth's reported remarks at the February 15 meeting -- Saleam concludes that Herfurth advocates a possible Australia of the future consisting of "a patchwork of quasi independent communities, living in loose association"; "What does this all mean ideologically and politically?" asks Herr Doktor.

The Australian nationalist position has always been that the country is one country, neither for division nor for colonisation into spheres of influence, nor to be the subject of Euro-genocide by resettlement. It has been argued that a single Australian European identity animates the "whole white people of this continent" (William Lane). The Australian nationalists have demanded a new White Australia Policy, organised humanely and logically to secure this continent for a 'race' and for a 'nationality'...

National anarchism runs the risk of creating goals which would disintegrate the nationalist vision into a compromise with the undesirable. There is little sense saying that we aim to salvage something from the disasters of non European immigration and multiculturalism and will take refuge in "our communities". The sad fact is that "their communities" will become the springboard of imperialism and recolonisation...

Saleam then proceeds to trace the evolution of 'national anarchism' within the English far right, and argues that it has lead, perhaps inevitably, to a form of political compromise, and a loss of a properly national perspective; that is, a concession to the existence of "an apartheid patchwork of communities (sic) on the soil of the British Isles". Any such concessions should be viewed, in his opinion, as a strictly temporary measure, one which does not imply "that we should surrender our right to our homeland to any group whatsoever, or compromise our 'integrity' as a people". Rather, relationships with non-White communities form "part of any counter-power strategy... a strategic operation that permits us to husband resources for the long struggle for state power... any other policy that operates to undermine our purpose would ultimately be anathema to the maintenance of the Australian identity, a denial of the vision splendid of Australian independence and the potential of Australian freedom."

Nevertheless, Saleam recognises the value of the New Right as a whole, if not its apparent embrace of 'national anarchism', a doctrine which might be interpreted by their 'White nationalist' comrades as implying "that it stands for a multicultural / multiracial Australia". As such, the New Right should "commit formally without hesitation or equivocation - to the White Australia Policy and to the Australian Identity over all". Finally, Saleam reiterates his own belief that, contrary to the wishes of the "traitor class" that currently rules Australia, "there must be a vanguard organization of nationalism to create a new protective Australian state": for race, and for nation.

In response to Saleam's criticisms, the 'New Right Australia New Zealand Committee' issued a statement on national anarchism and Australian nationalism (March 25, 2008). The author -- one suspects Herfurth of being responsible -- points out that: the New Right "is comprised of many people of many different views"; it does not have or claim to possess a political line shared by all of its members; "Australian identity is gradually being eroded" (because of immigration, and because of American and globalist pop culture); and finally that the New Right is a relatively new grouping, still groping its way forward.

Which does little to answer Saleam's questions.

Examining the doctrines of the New Right in Europe, however, and the ideas of Troy Southgate in particular, provides more substance to their views. In defining the New Right, Herfurth endorses the definition provided by the German Federal Ministry of the Interior in its 2005 Annual Report on the Protection of the Constitution, viz:

The New Right first emerged as a movement among French intellectuals in the 1970s which sought to raise the intellectual standards within the right-wing extremist camp. Among other things it invokes anti-democratic thought propagated by representatives of the “conservative revolution”, a political current in the Weimar Republic. The activists of the New Right want to abolish or at least impair the democratic constitutional state. To this effect, they try to gain influence within the area of cultural politics in order to finally delegitimise the democratic constitutional state and radically change the political system...

The second, crucial element necessary to understand the ideological perspective of the New Right Australia (and er, New Zealand), according to Herfurth ('the Committee') is French thinker Alain De Benoist. In essence, de Benoist argues -- like previous fascist thinkers -- in favour of an 'organic' conception of the nation.

Nationalists are proponents of holism. Nationalists see the individual as a kinsman, sustained by the people and community, which nurtures and protects him, and with which he is proud to identify. The individual's actions represent an act of participation in the life of his people, and freedom of action is very real because, sharing in the values of his associates, the individual will seldom seek to threaten the basic values of the community with which he identifies. Societies which lack this basic sense of national unity are inherently prone to suffer from repeated situations wherein the opposing values of its egotistical members conflict with each other.

Furthermore, proponents of nationhood contend that a society or a people can survive only when: a) they remain aware of their cultural and historical origins; b) when they can assemble around a mediator, be it individual, or symbolic, who is capable of reassembling their energies and catalyzing their will to have a destiny; c) when they can retain the courage to designate their enemy. None of these conditions have been realized in societies that put economic gain above all other values, and which consequently: a) dissolve historical memories; b) extinguish the sublime and eliminate subliminal ideals; c) assume that it is possible not to have enemies.

~ 'Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft: A sociological view of the decay of modern society', based on an original essay by Alain de Benoist, translated and interpreted by Tomislav Sunic, Mankind Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Spring 1994)

(Note that Mankind Quarterly is published by Washington-based 'The Council for Social and Economic Studies'; it was first published in 1961 by Edinburgh-based 'International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics'. See: Race Science and the Pioneer Fund, originally published as "The Funding of the Science" in Searchlight, No.277 (July 1998).)

"Where does the New Right Australia/NZ stand in relation to de Benoist? In broad agreement" says Welf.

New Right and 'national anarchism'

According to Herr Herfurth, "National-Anarchism, as conceived by Troy Southgate, believes in what Marx called ‘The withering away of the State’"; he then proceeds to mangle Marx's phantasy concerning this withering (one following upon a successful proletarian revolution, the abolition of capitalism, and the institution of a 'dictatorship of the proletariat') as the outcome of economic or ecological crises (Southgate). According to Troy, "Western nation-states will break up into separate, ethnically homogenous communities, concentrated in the rural and semi-rural areas"; a rural idyll the virtues of which are extolled by fellow Englishman, the eco-fascist Richard Hunt. (Hunt was once editor of Green Anarchist, but was told to piss off in 1991, shortly after publishing an editorial in Green Anarchist in support of the Gulf War. Hunt then launched Alternative Green, which became the mouthpiece for the views of 'national anarchists' gathered around Southgate. Green Anarchist subsequently underwent a split, with "the original unapologetic anarcho-primitivist publication" last publishing an issue online in 2003; the other, under the editorial control of Steve Booth, doesn't appear to be available online. See Primitivism.com and Green Anarchy for more on, ah, primitvism. And er, green anarchy.)

In practice, according to Herfurth, this means, among other things, rejecting parliamentary politics. "The best thing a nationalist ['anarchist'] can do is isolate himself and his family from multiculturalism and multiracialism", by also rejecting mass culture and instead embracing homeschooling. Southgate -- and by implication 'national anarchists' -- disavow a 'white revolution' as a lost cause; "The only solution is to create a ‘parallel society’, here and now, that is, work to build an ethnically-homogenous community – or rather, improve relations between the disparate and separate individuals who make up that community, and encourage them to think of themselves as a community, and not individuals – which will exist in total isolation from the State, and from political parties".

"Where does the New Right Australia/New Zealand stand in relation to National-Anarchism?" asks Herfurth.

Firstly, it is not a National-Anarchist group, but some members are National-Anarchists. As for the relation between National-Anarchist theory and New Right ideology, it was stated (erroneously) in the article, “The New Right Manifesto” (published on the Internet in 2007) that the National-Anarchists represent the application of de Benoist’s ideas, that ‘New Right is the theory, National-Anarchism the practice’. This was debatable [as well as being contradicted by Herfurth himself, in his interview with Destiny/mathaba.net: "In my view, the National-Anarchists are the activists of the New Right"], as the reader can see for himself when comparing the two doctrines (Nouvelle Droit and National-Anarchism) as expounded here. Many of the street activists for the New Right are not National-Anarchists (many of them are not Christians, either, or animal liberationists) [which would explain why Darrin 'Damn Muslims!' Hodges -- currently a member of the APP, and formerly a member of both AF and Stormfront.org -- was a conspicuous presence at the 'national anarchist' demonstration at APEC].

Herfurth then refers to the fact that Southgate, like Herfurth, is an organiser with the New Right (in the UK), which to the impressionable "may seem to give the impression that National-Anarchism and the New Right (in Britain, or Australia) are the one and the same thing, or at least closely tied together".

Quite.

"So may the fact that members of the New Right Australia/New Zealand have given lectures on National-Anarchist ideas at nationalist events, or given sympathetic expositions of National-Anarchism to other nationalists in private conversations or in correspondences."

Indeed.

More revealing, perhaps, is to examine exactly what shenanigans the New Right in the UK has been up to in the form of its periodic London meetings. As previously discussed, the featured speakers, with very few exceptions, are all drawn from the far right: the BNP, NF, League of St George, Church of the Creator, Holocaust denialists/revisionists, 'Racial Bolsheviks', racists and fascists of one description or another. Probably the choicest figure to grace the New Right podium in the UK, however, is Lady Susan (Michèle) Mainwairing / Griaznoff / Peacock / Sangster / Renouf, Aussie "bimbo" and champion of free speech (especially for gentlemen such as Robert Faurisson, David Irving, Germar Rudolf, Ernst Zundel and others).

After further equivocation, Herfurth ('the Committee') conclude that "Probably, in organisational terms, it is necessary to split the New Right into two separate departments – a think-tank and a street activist wing"; a formal recognition, I would suggest, of a de facto reality.

In concluding his/their response to Saleam's critique, Herfurth ('the Committee') examine one final question: "the New Right and repatriation".

'Repatriation'

Get outta our country...

Let into this country, to play with drugs and crime
Hold the hands of them all, they’re never satisfied
People who oppose them, are promptly locked away
And those who thought they had a voice, no longer have a say

Get out! We don’t want you around
Get out! Want the people to shout
Get out! Get outta my sight
Get out! Parasites... Parasites... Parasites...

Legends of Eureka, turn over in their graves
They can see what has happened to the Southern Cross today
Laws made to put us down, laws are made to keep us quiet
Jail all the racists who wanna keep this country white

Reject an alien government, don’t recognise their laws
It’s time to close the floodgates, it’s time to shut the door
Repatriate, ship ’em out, send the bastards back
If they don’t fucking like it, it’ll be in body bags

Get out!

~ 'Parasites', a song by fair dinkum Aussie patriots Fortress. These and other patriotic hymns were last heard live on October 13, 2007 at the Melbourne Croatia Social Club; the gig was held, as it is every year, to commemorate the death of English bonehead Ian Stuart Donaldson in 1993, and organised by local neo-Nazi groups Blood & Honour Australia and the Southern Cross Hammerskins. (Donaldson helped form Blood & Honour in 1987; he also sang in the band Skrewdriver, one of whose members, Murray Holmes, may occasionally be found performing with Perth band The Homicides. The Homicides are also releasing a split EP with Sydney-based T.H.U.G., a partial reincarnation of the earlier, neo-Nazi band White Lightning. T.H.U.G. are scheduled to play the East Brunswick Club Hotel in Melbourne on July 19 with Toe to Toe and a Jimmy Pursey-free Sham 69.) Herfurth attended the 2006 gig held at The Birmingham Hotel in Fitzroy, and is otherwise supportive of the efforts of these upstanding young citizens to uphold traditional values.

"So what is the New Right position on repatriation, and does it believe that repatriation can be achieved through the State, e.g., through a State controlled by a nationalist party?"

In a word: yes.

However, Herfurth notes that there's more than one way to skin a cat, and aliens may be removed from Australia by the use of extra-parliamentary violence. "However, probably the best, most efficient (and most humane) way of achieving the two objectives [that is, halting non-European immigration and sending non-Europeans already residing in Australia 'home'] is politically, through the State. The Australian State can put forward legislation halting non-European immigration immediately, and then use its financial resources to provide the inducement for non-European immigrants to resettle in their homelands."

And who in their Right mind could argue with that?

Nevertheless, actually achieving the best, most efficient, and most humane means of purifying Australia first requires the establishment of a 'Nationalist Gub'mint'. This means either: a) getting a 'Nationalist' Party elected or; b) staging a coup d’état ("or a protracted period of insurgency"). "In Western liberal democracies", notes our anarchist comrade, "such options are not usually considered, and in some Western countries (such as Australia) it is illegal even to contemplate, on paper, such possibilities."

So much for Plan B.

As for Plan A: Q. "Where does New Right stand?" A. "A party with mass-based, popular support, winning power through an election is the best way – and the only legal way"; whatever difficulties such a party may face obtaining its wholesome goal. But of course, that's not the only thing Herfurth ('the Committee') has to say on the subject, and it's at this point that the distinctive contribution of the New Right becomes apparent. Thus:

New Right differs from Australian nationalists insofar as that it makes a thoroughgoing intellectual and sociological analys[i]s of what it is that makes some nationalist parties win and others fail. It has held the NPD up as an example because it believes that the NPD, with its ‘three pillars’ strategy, is going about electioneering the right way. New Right has stated, many times, that the essential thing for a nationalist party to do is to a) build trust and support among the community and b) win over the intellectuals and the students. New Right looks forward to the day when nationalists can use the same tactics, with similar success, as the NPD here in Australia.

New Right believes that power can be won – if it can be won – by a series of sustained ‘shocks’ to the liberal democratic system. In other words, a ‘state of exception’ (to use Carl Schmitt’s phrase) needs to be created in Australia, a disruption of the day to day constitutional functions of the Australian State, when the constitution itself becomes in temporary abeyance... It is only during that disruption – which will break up the normal order of things – that Australian nationalists can go ahead and ‘seize power’.

So how will those ‘shocks’ be brought about? Those shocks need to be induced practically (at the street level); intellectually; and emotionally. At the street level, there needs to be a political confrontation, carried out publicly (and with maximum media publicity) against the Left, who, more than any other group, seek to oppose nationalists’ presence on the street. Intellectually, nationalist intellectuals need to make the case to the public that the liberal democratic system is not working, has not worked, and never will, to make them stop believing in the worthwhileness of the liberal parliamentarian system. Emotionally, nationalist propagandists need to induce a state of permanent emotional agitation in the general public, through media and propaganda organs... Such propaganda aims at keeping the public’s nerves permanently on edge, and directing public animosity against the enemies of nationalism.

These are the same techniques as those used by the German National Socialists and the Italian Fascists in the 1920s and the 1930s, and by the British National Front in the 1970s. It is the New Right’s belief that they can be used, successfully, in Australia. They are means, not ends in themselves, and the end is, in the long-term, the successful ‘seizure of power’.

Not that Herfurth's a neo-Nazi or nothing.

He's an anarchist.

A national anarchist.

Or something.



========================

Welf Herfurth writes a letter to Crikey!, April 22, 2008: Re. "Torch protest: who'll be there, from Amway up" (yesterday, item 10). As a Member of the National Anarchists, and a subscriber to Crikey for many years, I am disappointed that Crikey has not spent more time evaluating their articles by reactionaries like Cam Smith, who was quick to slander the Nationalist Anarchists, whilst at the same time over-looking the Nationalist implications of the Tibetan struggle. One is left with no other conclusion that a double standard exists for those fighting for freedom and self-determination is a struggle that those of European heritage have no right to exercise. The only thing Smith managed to correctly assess in his article about the 'National Anarchists’ is that we are indeed planning on making an appearance at the Torch Relay in Canberra, in support of the Tibetan struggle for independence.

"[The] charter of human rights (guaranteed by international law), says that indigenous populations have the right to resist colonisation and immigration. So the Tibetans are justified – legally – in doing what they do. So are we in the West: after all, we are being colonised: the massive flood of immigration in Europe, North America, Australia, is neo-colonialism." From the New Right Website – Tibet and the Lessons for the West

Every other comment is slanderous deceitful rubbish, used for intellectual repression of ideas that do not support Smith's cultural Marxism. The New Right / National Anarchists are about freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, and the right of national, ethnic self-determination for all peoples. I find it paradoxical that someone who preaches tolerance, diversity and racial harmony would use a racial epithet to criticise those he considers Nazis. The Australian people are intelligent enough to recognise Mr Smith's hypocrisy. The National Anarchists are not Nazis, nor do we support Nazism, or supremacy of any race towards another, including Zionism. I cannot stress highly enough; violent racist action is as far from National Anarchist ideology as you could possibly be. For further information regarding the National Anarchists and the New Right, please have a look at our website. I would recommend Smith do so before writing any other articles about the New Right/National Anarchists.

See also : Eric Krebbers (De Fabel van de illegaal/No-one is illegal), Millionaire Goldsmith supports the left and the extreme right, September 1999 | RESISTING THE NPD: Sleepy German Town Awakens to Fight Far Right, David Crossland, Spiegel Online, October 31, 2007:

Colorful Stunts to 'Sweep Out' NPD

"People are sick and tired of them. No one's saying 'Oh just let them get on with it.' All this has had a positive side effect. People are discussing human rights and democracy in the pubs; there's a process of politicization," said the high school teacher.

The forum has come up with a variety of stunts to counter the NPD. During one far-right rally in the carnival season last February, it got 400 people to turn up with brooms and brushes to "sweep" the far right out of town. "Of course it was just a symbolic act, but the way they were standing there, it looked like a peasants' revolt," said Helmbrecht.

Other tactics have included a local firm counting NPD demonstrators and donating €5 per head to an organization that helps people quit the far-right scene. Sausages were sold under the motto "In Franconia, only the sausages are brown," in reference to the so-called "Brownshirts" of Hitler's Nazi party.

"We've also been projecting messages on facades behind NPD speakers as well as photos from Auschwitz," said Helmbrecht. "When they come here and go on about the memory of their grandfathers, we project a photo of granddad shooting a Jewish prisoner in the head."

Another stunt has been to declare a "Traditional Day of Woodcutting" to coincide with one NPD demonstration. A screaming buzz saw was switched on in a shed next to the memorial site to interrupt proceedings.

NB. See also this brilliant documentary (produced and directed by the London Video History Group), on the 43 Group, a band of British ex-Army, ex-Navy and merchant seamen who after WWII, and in response to a re-emergent fascist movement, formed to defend London by physically beating them off the streets.

¡No Pasarán!

[For Dion] Immigrant fears as number of neo-Nazi murders soars [Russia]

Note that in 2005, local fascists and a sprinkling of boneheads attempted to hold their annual gathering -- the Sydney Forum, co-hosted by Dr James Saleam of the Australia First Party (NSW) and Welf Herfurth of the Sydney-based fascist groupuscule 'New Right' -- at the Russian Club. Upon being publicly revealed as hosts for the racists, the Russian Club pulled the plug, and the event was held at Saleam's bunker in Tempe instead. In 2006, the Estonian Club bravely stepped into the breach, with minimal or no apparent opposition from members of the local Estonian community, who are apparently happy to have their Club associated with the promotion of racism and fascism. Last year (2007), it was the RSL's turn, the venue for the Sydney Forum, in addition to the bunker, being Eastwood; the Bexley RSL hosted the Forum in 2004. As for 2008, who knows?

Locally, bonehead venue The Birmingham Hotel (Fitzroy/Collingwood, Melbourne), despite quite vocal support from local fashion punks, has recently undergone a change of management to a new, less fascist-friendly team.

Immigrant fears as number of neo-Nazi murders soars
"Concern over authorities’ lack of action as boneheads ‘hunt down’ non-Russians"
Sunday Herald
John Follett in Moscow

RUSSIA'S BONEHEADS [not 'skinheads'] have begun to hunt and kill immigrants "like game" in the most serious surge in neo-Nazi violence since the fall of the Soviet Union.



Human rights groups say nationalist extremists murdered 41 people in the first three months of this year, more than four times as many as the same period last year. Some groups put the death toll even higher, at 53.

The number and severity of attacks seems to indicate that radical nationalists have become more organised and more willing to kill and maim, usually with a knife.

Victims are stabbed not once but sometimes 20 or 30 times in frenzied attacks accompanied by racial abuse. Those that survive are often scarred for life; in one recent case an immigrant had his nose and lips sliced off. Some of the victims have been women and children.

The attackers are driven by a hatred of non-Russians, who they believe are diluting the gene pool and irrevocably changing the fabric of their country.

"Russia for Russians" is their main slogan. Far-right websites warn that their followers are poised to crank up the severity of the attacks still further, turning to bombs and guns. The victims are mostly people from former Soviet republics in Central Asia, who come to Moscow and St Petersburg to work in construction or do other manual work that Russians don't want to do.

Though the migrant workers fill a gap in the job market, opinion polls show that many ordinary Russians are uncomfortable with their presence and would like to see immigration controls severely tightened. City officials in Moscow, where most of the killings take place, say there are around 850,000 migrants from Central Asia living in a city that has a total population of 10 million.

Their Asian features make them easy targets for boneheads scanning the streets for people of non-Slavic appearance. The killings have sparked a wave of diplomatic protests from the victims' home countries and stirred talk of a street war between boneheads and revenge-minded migrant workers.

Raimkul Attakurov, ambassador for Kyrgyzstan in Russia, complained in a letter sent to Russia's human rights ombudsman earlier this year about what he called "the savage attacks of fascist monsters".

Police have responded by clamping down [sic] on bonehead activity, especially in Moscow. But rights groups accuse them of a cover-up when it comes to discussing the problem publicly or providing meaningful crime statistics. Police prefer to classify many of the attacks as mere "hooliganism".

[In reality, Russian police are far more likely to repress anti-fascists than they are the murderous gangs of boneheads who regularly assault and kill, not only 'foreigners', but anti-fascists. A recent, unauthorised protest (March 19) by anti-fascists in Moscow was conducted in memory of murdered Russian punk, 20-year-old Aleksey Krylov (March 16, 2008); Aleksey was on his way to a gig by the band Nichego Horoshego. Unusually, none of the several hundred-strong crowd were arrested.]

Moscow prosecutor Yuri Semin said last week that he thought the media had "exaggerated" the upsurge in killings and questioned the reliability of statistics released by human rights groups. The police itself keeps no detailed records but insists the number of race hate crimes is falling.

"If someone kills a Kyrgyz, it's inevitably assumed it's on ethnic grounds," said prosecutor Semin. "For some reason, it's assumed that people can't kill Kyrgyz people for other reasons."

Semyon Charny, an expert at the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, believes the authorities find the problem inconvenient. "The authorities in Moscow are interested in creating a good image for the city," he said. "(But) in recent times the number of extremist crimes is on the increase. It is, as one magazine put it, like a safari."

Police also cite the large number of crimes committed by immigrants whenever the problem is raised, hinting that they are facing a backlash of their own making. Embassies are advising migrant workers to avoid going out on their own, to always be smartly dressed, and to drink alcohol in private rather than in the street.

Galina Kozhevnikova of rights group Sova believes official rhetoric, which has become increasingly strident and nationalistic in tone, is partly to blame. Politicians from outgoing president Vladimir Putin to Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov have made comments that appear to favour ethnic Russians over immigrants, while laws have been introduced to limit the number of non-Russians working in the retail sector.

Police made a string of high-profile arrests in the last year that appeared to have decapitated the underground neo-Nazi movement. But Kozhevnikova said the arrests have, paradoxically, only encouraged others who seek the same notoriety and infamy in far-right circles.

It has, she said, become "fashionable" to be a bonehead and "cool" to kill an immigrant.

Sociologists say Russia is home to about 70,000 skinheads and that they tend to congregate in large urban centres such as Moscow and St Petersburg, which has also seen a large number of murders of non-Russians. About 30,000-35,000 of them have neo-Nazi beliefs.

Yevgeny Proshechkin, chairman of Moscow's anti-fascist centre, urges the authorities to wake up to what he calls "acts of terrorism".

"Things need to be called by their name," he told the liberal newspaper Novaya Gazeta. "We are standing on a dangerous threshold."



See also : Aryan Guard rocks complacency, Jamie Komarnicki, with a file from Tony Seskus, Calgary Herald, April 20, 2008: "Disaffected youth seeking shock value, or something far more sinister?" | Neo-Nazis Clash With Protesters, Pamela Constable, Washington Post, April 20, 2008: "3 Arrested as White Supremacist Group Marches on Capitol" and as 30 losers from the NSM traipsed about Washington. "Members of the public were kept far from the marchers, who wound up on the West Lawn of the Capitol, where they waved flags and made speeches to an empty, sloping expanse of green, surrounded by hundreds of riot police." Oddly, despite being exposed as an FBI informant, Hal Turner was there too.

PS. Happy Birthday Adolf!

Goodbye to all that

With friends like these...

When David Mamet declared last month that he was no longer a 'brain-dead liberal', he joined the ranks of leftwing writers, from Arthur Koestler to Kingsley Amis to Christopher Hitchens, who have moved to the right and attacked former allies. Playwright David Edgar challenges the new generation of renegades

The Guardian
April 19, 2008

A few thoughts.

Edgar's article is an attempt to explain why a number of prominent members of the left-wing intelligentsia -- principally scribblers of one kind or another -- defect, especially to the neo-conservative right; the presumed polar opposite of their previous 'progressive' political perspective. (David Mamet's article is titled Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal': An election-season essay, Village Voice, March 11, 2008.) He argues:

Like previous generations, these defectors have been there, done that, and can now bear witness to their former misbeliefs. In so doing, they are joining a club with an extensive membership. Most of the radical and progressive achievements of the 20th century - including the Russian revolution - were brought about by an alliance between the oppressed and the intelligentsia, and a good proportion of them - particularly the Russian revolution - were followed by disappointment and desertion. For some, disillusion set in as early as 1921, when the Bolsheviks suppressed a sailors' uprising at Kronstadt, the port of St Petersburg and cradle of the October revolution. Subsequent "Kronstadt moments" included the Stalinist purges of the 1930s, the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact, the neo-Stalinist show trials in eastern Europe in the early 50s, Khrushchev's exposure of Stalin's crimes in February 1956 and the Soviet invasion of Hungary in November of that year.

Insofar as Edgar addresses defectors from various strains of Marxism -- Bolshevism and its descendants, including Orthodox Marxism, Trotskyism and even Maoism -- he has a point, although another principal weakness of his thesis, I think, is the class position of the intelligentsia, and even -- or perhaps especially -- its crude material (and political) interests. In this context, I think Chomsky's observations are germane ('Anarchism, Marxism and Hope for the Future', Red & Black Revolution, No.2, 1996):

RBR: The importance of grassroots democracy to any meaningful change in society would seem to be self evident. Yet the left has been ambiguous about this in the past. I'm speaking generally, of social democracy, but also of Bolshevism - traditions on the left that would seem to have more in common with elitist thinking than with strict democratic practice. Lenin, to use a well-known example, was sceptical that workers could develop anything more than trade union consciousness -- by which, I assume, he meant that workers could not see far beyond their immediate predicament. Similarly, the Fabian socialist, Beatrice Webb, who was very influential in the Labour Party in England, had the view that workers were only interested in horse racing odds! Where does this elitism originate and what is it doing on the left?

CHOMSKY: I'm afraid it's hard for me to answer this. If the left is understood to include 'Bolshevism,' then I would flatly dissociate myself from the left. Lenin was one of the greatest enemies of socialism, in my opinion, for reasons I've discussed. The idea that workers are only interested in horse-racing is an absurdity that cannot withstand even a superficial look at labour history or the lively and independent working class press that flourished in many places, including the manufacturing towns of New England not many miles from where I'm writing -- not to speak of the inspiring record of the courageous struggles of persecuted and oppressed people throughout history, until this very moment. Take the most miserable corner of this hemisphere, Haiti, regarded by the European conquerors as a paradise and the source of no small part of Europe's wealth, now devastated, perhaps beyond recovery. In the past few years, under conditions so miserable that few people in the rich countries can imagine them, peasants and slum-dwellers constructed a popular democratic movement based on grassroots organisations that surpasses just about anything I know of elsewhere; only deeply committed commissars could fail to collapse with ridicule when they hear the solemn pronouncements of American intellectuals and political leaders about how the US has to teach Haitians the lessons of democracy. Their achievements were so substantial and frightening to the powerful that they had to be subjected to yet another dose of vicious terror, with considerably more US support than is publicly acknowledged, and they still have not surrendered. Are they interested only in horse-racing?

I'd suggest some lines I've occasionally quoted from Rousseau [Confessions]: when I see multitudes of entirely naked savages scorn European voluptuousness and endure hunger, fire, the sword, and death to preserve only their independence, I feel that it does not behoove slaves to reason about freedom.

RBR: Speaking generally again, your own work -- Deterring Democracy [1992], Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies [1989], etc. -- has dealt consistently with the role and prevalence of elitist ideas in societies such as our own. You have argued that within 'Western' (or parliamentary) democracy there is a deep antagonism to any real role or input from the mass of people, lest it threaten the uneven distribution in wealth which favours the rich. Your work is quite convincing here, but, this aside, some have been shocked by your assertions. For instance, you compare the politics of President John F. Kennedy with Lenin, more or less equating the two. This, I might add, has shocked supporters of both camps! Can you elaborate a little on the validity of the comparison?

CHOMSKY: I haven't actually equated the doctrines of the liberal intellectuals of the Kennedy administration with Leninists, but I have noted striking points of similarity -- rather as predicted by Bakunin a century earlier in his perceptive commentary on the new class. For example, I quoted passages from McNamara on the need to enhance managerial control if we are to be truly free, and about how the undermanagement that is the real threat to democracy is an assault against reason itself. Change a few words in these passages, and we have standard Leninist doctrine. I've argued that the roots are rather deep, in both cases. Without further clarification about what people find shocking, I can't comment further. The comparisons are specific, and I think both proper and properly qualified. If not, that's an error, and I'd be interested to be enlightened about it.

Chomsky elaborated upon this thesis in 'The Soviet Union Versus Socialism', Our Generation, Spring/Summer, 1986. The counter-revolutionary nature of the Bolshevik regime is expanded upon in Maurice Brinton's The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, 1917-21: The State and Counter-Revolution, Solidarity, 1970 (among other places).

In the context of Edgar's article, it might be possible to speak of at least three generations of brainworkers who have defected from 'the Left': the generation of the 1930s, '40s and '50s; that of the post-1960s; and finally the most recent generation, whose renunciation of 'leftist idealism' is a result of the impact of contemporary affairs, especially the so-called 'clash of civilisations' (Islam versus the West). Assuming this to be the case, I think it's possible to locate the disillusionment of successive generations of leftist intellectuals in the failure of Communism and the New Left to generate the kinds of social changes they imagined might be either real (Communism) or possible (the New Left), and in trepidation of the kinds of changes the victory of barbarous Islam might bring in its wake.

Of course, when Edgar writes of defection, he's referring, almost invariably, to disappointed Marxists. This is reasonably self-evident in the case of the pre- and post-WWII generation. In relation to the post-'60s generation, Edgar notes that "Commentators Nick Cohen, David Aaronovitch and Andrew Anthony all had left-wing parents, and were involved in political campaigning around race, gender and class in the 1970s (Aaronovitch was one of Manchester University's notorious University Challenge team, who answered "Marx", "Lenin" or "Trotsky" to every question)." The point being, of course, that despite the reference to Kronstadt -- which might suggest the possibility of going off on another tangent -- there is another historical tradition, of anti-authoritarian or libertarian socialism, which never endorsed the Bolshevik tradition, and for which the 1960s witnessed a brief re-flowering, the influence of which was (and is, to some extent still) evident in the various 'new' social movements which the period gave birth to...

More later.

In the meantime, and just because I can...



Where was I?

Oh yeah.

W a s t e d.

I mean:

The last few years has also seen the emergence of an attempt to link the development of neoconservative thought in the US with Trotsky's ideological legacy. The thesis finds its most pronounced exegesis in Jacob Heilbrunn's They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons (Random House, 2008), but is also explored in Jeet Heer's essay 'Trotsky's ghost wandering the White House' (National Post, Saturday, June 7, 2003). On his blog, Heer also comments on the recent publication of a chart in The Washington Post (February 3, 2008) which traces this history. The linkage is somewhat specious, but expresses, perhaps, an underlying attitude which Chomsky also hints at in the passages above. In his commentary, Heer writes:

What has to be understood is that neo-conservatism is not a coherent set of ideas or a doctrine, but rather a gestalt or an attitude. And part of this attitude, to be found especially in the writers who are most interested in foreign policy who spent time following either Trotsky in the late 1930s or Shachtman in the 1950s and 1960s, is a certain romantic militarism, a fascination with bravado “forward-thinking” strategy (shading over into a support for pre-emptive war and unconventional tactics of guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgency), and a focus on the revolutionary potential of countries outside of North America and Western Europe. This set of attitudes doesn’t derive so much from the historical Trotsky and his political philosophy as much as the myth of Trotsky, the revolutionary intellectual who was also a military genius. I think this mythical Trotsky holds a deep fascination for conservative and neo-conservative intellectuals who might have only spent a few short years anywhere near the real Trotskyist parties (as an example I would cite James Burnham, who constantly kept quoting Trotsky’s words as if they had talismanic power in his National Review columns from 1955 until well into the mid 1970s.) I think it’s this mythical Trotsky that has to be seen as forerunner to neo-conservatism.

The myth of Trotsky -- one revolving around romantic militarism, bravado, guerilla warfare and military genius -- is just that: a myth. In reality, in his capacity as the leader of the Red Army, Trotsky oversaw the destruction of popular forces, the re-institution of Tsarist officers as military leaders, the re-introduction of the death penalty for disobedience and the crushing of all dissent, both within the Army but also in 'Soviet' society as a whole. One of the more dramatic examples of this is Trotsky's role in the betrayal and eventual annihilation of the Makhnovshchina in the Ukraine.

Andrew Flood (Workers' Solidarity, No.59, July 2000):

...in April of 1917 "big rural landowners began everywhere to evacuate the countryside, fleeing from the insurgent peasantry and seeking protection for their possessions". Through direct action "the agrarian question was virtually solved by the poor peasants as early as June - September 1917". As the landlords fled the peasants took over the land and "all of revolutionary Russia was covered with a vast network of workers' and peasant soviets, which began to function as organs of self-management".

The decrees passed by the Bolshevik government in the months after October 'legalised' these takeovers. This was part of the process by which the Bolsheviks got rid of the power of independent organs of workers' self-management like the Soviets (elected workers' councils) and the Factory Committees. 'Legalising' what the workers had already achieved was one way of promoting the right of the central state to have the final say over the working class.

The Bolshevik attitude towards the working class is perhaps best demonstrated by Trotsky's speech to the 1920 9th Party Congress when he declared "The working class cannot be left wandering all over Russia. They must be thrown here and there, appointed, commanded, just like soldiers". "Compulsion of labour will reach the highest degree of intensity during the transition from capitalism to socialism". "Deserters from labour ought to be formed into punitive battalions or put into concentration camps".

These quotes demonstrate the thinking when the Bolsheviks dissolved Soviets, broke up factory committees or jailed and even executed strikers. But if this is how they saw the worker in the factory, how about the 'worker in uniform' in the Red Army?

In 1917 the Czarist Army had fallen apart. Far from the army opposing the revolution, military units were often at the heart of its defence. Not of course the officers, they were for the most part opposed to the revolution. But in 1917 traditional military discipline had disintegrated as soldiers deserted the front, refused to obey orders and elected soldiers' committees. If the soldiers had obeyed their officers in October or February then the revolution would probably have been defeated. So the ending of top down (or 'bourgeois') military discipline was essential to the revolution.

This break down of the old discipline may have been essential to the revolution but once the Bolsheviks were in power it worked against them. They didn't want an army where units might refuse to carry out an order like the crushing of a peasant rebellion or the breaking up of a strike. So, in July 1918 Trotsky (the Bolshevik commander of the Red Army) re-introduced all the old methods of the bourgeois army. He even re-appointed old Czarist officers.

Alongside this the death penalty for disobedience under fire was reintroduced; as were saluting, special forms of address, separate living quarters and privileges for officers. Officers were appointed rather than elected. Trotsky argued that "the elective basis is politically pointless and technically inexpedient and has already been set aside by decree".

These changes were deeply unpopular to the rank and file of the army. This, along with the Bolshevik suppression of the revolution, meant the Red Army had one of the highest rates of desertion of any army in history.

Large scale executions and 'Punishment Battalions' were used to compel soldiers to obey orders. In addition the Red Army's relationship with the local peasants and workers was that of an army of occupation. It seized the supplies it needed and was often used to put down local strikes and insurrections.

Genius.

As for bravado, "...Trotsky was commanding during the Civil War from his armored train. He traveled 100,000 kilometers in it over three years. It had mounted machine-guns, light artillery, a printing press, a radio for broadcast and a flatbed for his Rolls Royce command car. He carried a large amount of tobacco and a brass band on the train to heighten morale of the troops." On a lighter note, Trotsky also expressed his distaste for the use of 'foul language' by the railwaymen who transported him hither and thither: "I consider that a Red warrior, as a fighter for lofty aims, should behave on an armoured train as befits a place of lofty service, and not as though he is in a low tavern" (Order to the Red Army, August 7, 1919, No.140, Konotop).

Fucking wanker.

(Ooops: Pardon my French!)

But to return to Edgar's article, he writes that "All of the great progressive movements of the 20th century in the west - solidarity with republican Spain, the building of welfare states, the civil rights movement in the southern United States, the war against apartheid in South Africa - were led by an alliance between progressive intellectuals and the victims of oppression".

This is correct, in a sense. But it's also noteworthy for the manner in which it describes the relationship between 'progressive intellectuals' and 'victims of oppression'. The case of "solidarity with Republican Spain" is revealing, I think, of the underlying political assumptions regarding the nature of this relationship, one in which (non-victimised) intellectuals use their brains to help (hapless) 'victims'. When Orwell, for example, came to write about the Spanish Civil War, he actually excoriated precisely this class of individual, beginning with his essay 'Spilling the Spanish Beans' (New English Weekly, July 29 and September 2, 1937) but more famously (and more fully) in his Homage to Catalonia (1938). Some 'Beans':

The Spanish war has probably produced a richer crop of lies than any event since the Great War of 1914-18, but I honestly doubt, in spite of all those hecatombs of nuns who have been raped and crucified before the eyes of Daily Mail reporters, whether it is the pro-Fascist newspapers that have done the most harm. It is the left-wing papers, the News Chronicle and the Daily Worker, with their far subtler methods of distortion, that have prevented the British public from grasping the real nature of the struggle.

The fact which these papers have so carefully obscured is that the Spanish Government (including the semi-autonomous Catalan Government) is far more afraid of the revolution than of the Fascists. It is now almost certain that the war will end with some kind of compromise, and there is even reason to doubt whether the Government, which let Bilbao fail without raising a finger, wishes to be too victorious; but there is no doubt whatever about the thoroughness with which it is crushing its own revolutionaries. For some time past a reign of terror – forcible suppression of political parties, a stifling censorship of the press, ceaseless espionage and mass imprisonment without trial – has been in progress. When I left Barcelona in late June the jails were bulging; indeed, the regular jails had long since overflowed and the prisoners were being huddled into empty shops and any other temporary dump that could be found for them. But the point to notice is that the people who are in prison now are not Fascists but revolutionaries; they are there not because their opinions are too much to the Right, but because they are too much to the Left. And the people responsible for putting them there are those dreadful revolutionaries at whose very name Garvin quakes in his galoshes – the Communists.

In other words, far from being the passive victims of leftist imagination, workers and peasants in Spain -- organised principally via the CNT-FAI -- were actually engaged in one of the most thorough-going revolutions in history. In this struggle, they were forced to fight not only the Spanish military and fascists, but also their alleged allies in the Communist-dominated Republic. It was the special duty of left-wing intellectuals to obscure these facts, just as many (but certainly not all) did in relation to Kronstadt, the Stalinist purges of the 1930s, and all the other moments in history that Edgar identifies as supposedly triggering their anguished reflections, and 'defection' to some form of political conservatism.

See also : 'Goodbye to All That', Robin Morgan (1970), in which a radical feminist says goodbye to the male-dominated Left. (And its recent sequel, February 2, 2008, on the US election: "Me, I’m voting for Hillary not because she’s a woman—but because I am.")

Countess Michèle Susan Mainwaring Griaznoff Peacock Sangster Renouf ... a LADY of the New Right

One of the more bizarre associations between Troy Southgate's fascist 'New Right' and Holocaust denialism is provided by way of Michèle Mainwairing, more commonly known as Lady Susan (Michèle) Renouf, a title Susan gained through marriage to Sir Francis Henry (Frank) Renouf (1918--1998), a Knightly New Zealand businessman and financier. Susan was also previously known as Susan Peacock and Susan Sangster, through marriage to Australian Tory politician Andrew Peacock (1939--) and Robert Edmund Sangster (1936--2004), a racehorse owner and breeder. According to an article in The Age, the union between Frank and Susan 'collapsed in 1991 after only a few months, when Sir Frank reportedly discovered the then Countess Griaznoff was a truckie's daughter from The Entrance, on the NSW central coast and not a Russian noblewoman. He later described the marriage as a "nasty accident"'(Peter Fray, "Bimbo" who rattled the old buffers club, December 3, 2002). Lady Susan (Michèle) Mainwairing / Peacock / Sangster / Renouf's use of the term 'Countess' was a result of her marriage to Daniel Griaznoff, whose "mother hailed from a line of White Russian aristocrats" according to Renouf.

Andrew Peacock has most recently been in the news for crashing his Mercedes while drink driving (2005) and quitting his post as Chairman of MFS (March, 2008): "The Gold Coast property group went into meltdown in January, revealing a short-term debt of $550 million. About $750 million of mum-and-dad investors' money is locked up in the group's Premium Income Fund, which has been frozen since January 18 because of the company's precarious financial state". Peaccock's other claim to fame -- aside from having been Federal Tory party leader -- was being recorded in March 1987 talking to Jeff Kennett about former PM John HoWARd, whom Kennett described as a "cunt".

Over the course of the last decade, Lady Renouf has made a rather unusual name for herself by championing the rights of numerous Holocaust denialists and/or 'revisionists'. Including, of course, David Irving (1938--) in Austria:

And among the swastikas, a little Aussie flag was flying...
The Chaser
February 21, 2006

... "I am here," she announced grandly, with all the dignity and gravitas that goes with being an ageing, racist, slightly ditzy gold-digger, "to free David Irving and to free Austria from these totalitarian laws". Flanked by the standard-issue "unnamed men" wearing matching flag-pins, she knew her place, her moment and her mission: she was there to stand up for Queen and Country (and David and Adolf).

Irving, she argued, was "standing up to the Zionists". Most fetchingly of all, she demanded – nay, decreed! – that the "so-called Holocaust victims to be exhumed to see whether they died from typhoid or gas". The press corps took this in their stride. (By this point, most of them had managed to download the coverage of her previous outings, including her deriding them as a "Jewish cabal" in 2001). One young and slightly over-earnest Austrian journalist remonstrated with her, but without much enthusiasm. The rest looked at their feet. A moment of awkward silence passed.

Now, standing on the cold paved steps of a building in which Nazis famously beheaded resistence fighters, begging the assembled media pack for a chance to rifle through the remains of the victims of death camps to check whether you can still smell the Zyklon B, is an odd place for a former Miss Newcastle to have ended up. But Fate makes fools of us all – and Fate has pretty self-evidently made a fool of Our Michele.

Perhaps, in her head, this was a rousing call to arms. (You heard it here first: Gentlemen, grab your shovels - we ride for Auschwitz!). To the rest of us, I gotta say, this just sounded like one of the last stops on a downward spiral. Join the dots. She's in the news, she's "controversial", she says stupid, hateful, provocative things. With, I must point out, a faint hint of an Australian accent.

Can an appearance on a reality TV show be far off?

In her capacity as a champion of free speech, Lady Renouf has since gone on to address meetings of the fascist groupuscule 'New Right', in April 2006, January 2007 and most recently in April 2008. Of course, she is merely one among a number of intriguiging characters to address the London forums organised by 'national anarchist' Troy Southgate. (On the 'New Right' in Australia, see: Fascism in Europe... and Australia (April 11, 2008). On Troy Southgate, see Graham D. Macklin, ‘Co-opting the counter culture: Troy Southgate and the National Revolutionary Faction’, Patterns of Prejudice, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2005 [PDF].) As a result of her endeavours, she was also expelled from a Club; more recently 'Labour donor David Abrahams banned from taking beauty queen to club - because of her views on Holocaust' according to The Daily Mail (December 15, 2007).

She's welcome in at least one club, however.

========================

2005

New Right Inaugural Meeting, January 16, 2005

Jonathan Bowden (JB) (British National Party (BNP) cultural officer; former editor, Revolutionary Conservative) : 'The History of the British New Right'
Davide Moiso (DM) : 'Transversal Psychology'

Bowden has an interesting biography and, like all of the other speakers at the New Right forums, not one normally associated with 'anarchism'. Thus he was one of the founders, in 1993, of the Revolutionary Conservative Caucus. According to an article by Nick Lowles in Searchlight ('Right Now! A forum for eugenecists', July 1998): "Politically the RCC was an attempt to promote Revolutionary Conservatism in Britain, drawing inspiration from the French intellectual Old Right, principally the Action Français led by Charles Maurras, and the German Conservative Revolution, which was driven by Oswald Spengler and Ernst Junger. However it saw the need to place this within a very Anglo-American environment. While the RCC did not survive long, being too provocative for its own good, it managed to redraw a right-wing nationalist agenda." Bowden later went on to play a role in the Bloomsbury Forum, a small philosophical circle whose only publication appears to have been a book Standardbearers - British Roots of the New Right, edited by Bowden, Eddy Butler, and Adrian Davies (Bloomsbury Forum, 1999). He later joined the BNP and became its 'Cultural Officer'.

2) March 12, 2005

Alexander Dugin : 'The Eurasian Doctrine of Multipolarism: The Continental Alternative to Globalisation'
JB : 'Nietzsche and Post-Modernism'
Andrew Phillips (Orthodox priest; editor Orthodox England) : 'Holy Europe and Anti-Europe'
Keith Thompson (KT) : 'The Life of Oswald Mosley'

Dugin (1962--) is a Russian neo-fascist. Some tepid criticism of his views may be found in 'Russian Nationalism Today: The Views Of Alexander Dugin', Dmitry Shlapentokh, Contemporary Review, July, 2001. A more critical analysis is available in Vadim Rossman, Russian Intellectual Antisemitism in the Post-Communist Era, University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

Thompson is a veteran neo-Nazi, and helped to establish the League of St George in 1974. This formed as a split from the Action Party, which was formerly known as the Union Movement, the political party founded by Oswald Mosley.

3) May 28, 2005

Alexander Baron (AB) : 'Is There Really An Islamic Threat?'
Alisdair Clarke : 'Aryan Futurism'
Norman Lowell (NL) : 'Imperium Europa: A Unifying Idea'
JB : 'Ernst Junger: Revolutionary Conservative'

Baron is a Holocaust denialist, and attended the conference on the subject in Iran last year, for which he wrote an account later published on mathaba.net. He is also allegedly a former member of the BM, although it's also noted that he has moved some distance from these positions (Michael Whine, 'Holocaust Denial in the United Kingdom', in Nationalist Myths and Modern Media: Contested Identities in the Age of Globalisation, Jan Herman Brinks, Edward Timms, & Stella Rock, Editors, I.B. Tauris, 2006).

Clarke in an optimistic mood: "The New Right weltanschauung is unassailable; it is the adamantine synthesis of the most brilliant minds in European history, from Heraclitus to Martin Heidegger and beyond, and the race-mind which created foundational Aryan mythology. It is the intellectual equivalent of Fortress Europe. The Spirit of Europe will never be crushed; neither by force of arms, nor by decades of toxic propaganda, nor by a treacherous plutocratic elite groveling to yet another Abrahamic religion." Of course that was then and this is now, Clarke is dead, and 'Aryan Furturism' may not be as "unassailable" as the 'New Right'; who knows? Time will tell for Aryan Man.

Lowell (1946--) is from Malta, and an aspiring politician. He's also the founder, in 2000, of Imperium Europa. What is Imperium Europa?

Our aim is that Malta, this Sacred Island of Melita, this land of honey, will be the first liberated nation in the whole, White World - liberated from the enemy within and the enemy without. Malta, at the southernmost tip of Europe, could ignite a flame that would set Europe ablaze.

An IDEA, like a seed could spring to life anywhere.
An IDEA whose time has come, is unstoppable!

This is our dream, our goal: that this IDEA of IMPERIUM EUROPA, born in Malta, would capture the imagination of all Europids and bring that unity, which is imperative for the survival of this minority of biological aristocrats.

The only solution for the old continent is the triumph of the Imperium IDEA.

A Europid bond forged through Spirituality closely followed by Race, nurtured through High Culture, protected by High Politics, enforced by the The Elite.

Quite.

4) September 17, 2005

Eowyn (Odinic Rite) : 'Odinism & Women'
Olivier Devalez (Church of the Creator) : 'Creativity: An Introduction'
AB : 'Satpal Ram: A Case Study in Anti-Racist Brainwashing'
Arlette Baldacchino (Imperium Europa) : 'Viva Malta'
JB : 'Leni Riefenstahl'

Baldacchino is one of only two ladies to have addressed the New Right. An article in the Maltese publication The Independent Online describes her as "the spokesman for Lowell’s crackpot organisation, Viva Malta, which he describes as “the political wing” of his deluded racist fantasy empire, Imperium Europa". Her speech, apparently, "reads like a fourth-form essay written by a kid with a chip on her shoulder and a grudge against humanity". Or so says Daphne Caruana Galizia ('What’s a nice girl like you doing there?').

Devalez is a key figure in the French branch of the Church of the Creator, a 'church' for white supremacists. It was founded in 1973 by Ben Klassen (1918--1993). Following a trademark dispute, however, it's now known as the Creativity Movement. Its former leader, Matt Hale (1971--), is currently serving a 40-year prison term for soliciting an undercover FBI informant to kill federal judge Joan Lefkow, the person responsible for ruling against the Church in its trademark dispute. The Church has come to the attention of the Australian public largely as a result of the Reverend Patrick O'Sullivan's (Melbourne) legal troubles and that of a now-defunct website hosted by another Church member, Colin Campbell III (Adelaide).

============

2006

5) January 14, 2006

KT : 'Mosley & Europe (Part Two)'
Wulf : 'Wodenism: Sons of the Wolf'
AB : 'Drop Dead Doreen Lawrence'
JB : 'Politically-Incorrect Art & Culture'

Wulf (var. Wulff) is a German family name. And the name of some bloke what likes Wodenism.

6) February 18, 2006

DM : 'The Politically Correct'
AC : 'Hans Bluher & the Wandervogel'
Bryan Clough : 'The Kent-Wolkoff Affair'
JB : 'Martin Heidegger & Death's Ontology'

7) April 8, 2006

Richard Edmonds : 'David Irving: The Imprisonment of Historical Discourse'
Lady Renouf : 'Free Speech: Irving in Prison'
JB : 'Bill Hopkins & Anti-Humanist Life'

Edmonds is a former member of the National Front (NF) and current member of the BNP. According to the BBC: "In May 1994 Southwark Crown Court was told that a black man was hit in the face with a glass in a racial attack involving the BNP's national organiser Richard Edmonds three days after Beackon's election victory in September 1993. Edmonds was given a six-month prison sentence but he walked free from Southwark Crown Court because he had already spent three months in custody awaiting trial. Edmonds' co-defendant, Stephen O'Shea, another BNP member, received 12 months."

8) May 28, 2006

Michael Woodbridge : 'Henry Williamson: Regeneration of Man Through Nature'
Lady Renouf : On 'Israel In Flagrante: Caught in the Acts of Turnspeak'
James Thring (Founder, Legal Action Against War) : 'The Relevance of Middle East Affairs to UK National Interests'
Tord Morsund (Nation & Kultur, Norway) : 'Beauty Is Hierarchy'
JB : 'Elitism, British Modernism & Wyndham Lewis'

Morsund is a Norwegian fascist, and helped to arrange for a visit by ex-Ku Klux Klown David Duke to Norway in 2005. Morsund is also responsible for writing the introductory text to a collection of Southgate's political dribblings titled Tradition and Revolution (2007). According to Morsund, Southgate is "an artist, a poet and a musician, a father and a relentless idealist … Troy Southgate’s work as presented speaks for itself here, but what is extraordinary about it is that it is as complex as it is clear and transparent … As a driving force within the English New Right, Troy Southgate has clearly shown that he is indeed interested in broader alliances between leading men, … not within a purely conservative and outdated Right of yesteryear …, but of the Right understood as the real and contemporary opposition with alternatives to the egalitarian ideas that pervade the current dominating political systems of the world."

According to one source (Dave Rich, Community Security Trust), Thring was a confidant of dead Lady Jane Birdwood; according to Searchlight (Nick Lowles, 'A very English extremist', August 2000): "One of Britain’s most prolific racist and antisemitic propagandists... Dowager Lady Jane Birdwood, editor of Choice magazine and close political ally of wartime nazi collaborators, died on 29 June. Often dismissed as an eccentric crank, Birdwood represented the far right of the establishment. Backed by MPs, lords, vicars, retired officers and the wealthy, she was a very English extremist."

Woodbridge is an unknown quantity. Well, almost. In reference and as an introduction to a previous address (January 14, 2006) by Alexander Baron ('Drop Dead Doreen Lawrence') he stated that:

In the wake of the murder of Stephen Lawrence [1974--1993], the victim’s parents Neville and Doreen were portrayed by the mass media as icons of racial tolerance in pursuit of justice conducting a responsible campaign to bring their son’s killers to book, while at the same time exposing police corruption, incompetence and institutional racism. The Lawrences have received accolades galore from the media, politicians, even from the police.

On closer inspection though both Neville and especially Doreen Lawrence have been less icons of tolerance than enemies of individual liberty. They have condoned the use of such totalitarian practices as intrusive surveillance, the suppression of free speech, and the abolition of double jeopardy. Their much vaunted struggle against police corruption, apathy and racism is based on ignorance if not wilful blindness of police investigative methodology, while their attempts to convict the Acourt brothers’ gang of their son’s murder has ignored the fact that all the available evidence suggests that the five men branded murderers by a national newspaper are actually innocent.

This speech analyses and deconstructs the methods and the true motives of Doreen Lawrence and her gang, and methodically rubbishes the specious argument that they are champions of the downtrodden and the oppressed in pursuit of justice.

Take that!

In December, 2004, Woodbridge was also credited (see below) as being the New Right's 'Liaison Officer'.

============

2007

9) January 13, 2007

Sahib Bleher (Islamic Party of Britain) : 'Islam: Outdated Oriental Religion or Visionary Ideology of the Future?'
Wulf (Woden's Folk) : 'The Power of the Runes'
Lady Renouf : 'Jailing Opinions'
JB (New Right) : 'Robinson Jeffers: Misanthrope Extraordinaire'

Bleher -- known as the 'Flying Imam' -- is a German-born Muslim convert, former member of the NPD, Holocaust denialist and regular contributor to mathaba.net. Another member of the IPB, Dr Mohammed Naseem, was "a member of Respect's national council and [was] the party's major funder. He was also the Respect parliamentary candidate for Birmingham Perry Barr in the 2005 general election"; noteworthy at the time for the clash between Respect's respect for LGBT rights, on the one hand, and the IPB's homophobia. Incidentally, Respect made like a banana and split into two last November; on the one hand, an SWP-dominated Respect and, on the other, George Galloway's mob (Respect Renewal). A ding-dong battle for electoral supremacy between the two will take place on May 1 in City and East (containing boroughs: Barking & Dagenham, Newham, Tower Hamlets, City of London).

10) May 5, 2007

Rupert Bell : 'Church of Satan: A Non-Prophet Organisation?'
Actuaris : 'Futurism: Is There A Place For It In The Present?'
Kai Murros (KM) : 'National Revolution'
JB : Performance of Beowulf (Part One)

Actuaris is an actuarial model of the Dutch pension sector, with a strong interest in its future development... or possibly not.

Note that between this meeting and the next, JB got the arse from the BNP. Note that his performance of 'Beowulf' had nothing to do with this development... or did it?

Murros is a Finn who describes himself as a 'Racial Bolshevik'.

11) September 8, 2007

Christopher Chibnall : 'Austin Osman Spare: First Postmodern Occultist'
NL : 'The Idea of Imperium'
JB : 'The Art & Philosophy of JB'
Tomislav Sunic : 'Americanism & Anti-Americanism: A View from Western & Post-Communist Eastern Europe'

Sunic was present at the meeting which formally launched the New Right in London in December 2004 (see below). In fact, the meeting was partly organised to provide Herr Doktor with an opportunity to launch his then-recent book, Against Democracy and Equality. This text was published by Noontide Press. Noontide specialises in publishing and distributing Holocaust denial literature, and has since its establishment in 1978 by Willis Carto (1926--). It's also the publisher of The Journal of Historical Review, a key journal of Holocaust denial. Other titles published by Noontide include the notorious Tsarist forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as well as other classic titles such as Mein Kampf, The Turner Diaries and ex-Ku Klux Klown David Duke's My Awakening. More recently, "The Institute for Historical Review, the most active Holocaust-denial organization in the United States, held a public meeting in Irvine, California, on March 24 [2007]. IHR director Mark Weber and two other veteran Holocaust-denial activists, Bradley Smith and Tomislav Sunic, were the featured speakers."

12) November 3, 2007

KM : 'Psychological Aspects of the European Revolution'
Yaqub Zaki : 'Comparison of Islamic and Western Civilisation'
JB : 'Revisionism: Left & Right, Hard & Soft'

Zaki is a Scot, a Muslim convert, and an "ally" of Lady Renouf, the pair recently attending legal proceedings in Paris initiated by Holocaust denialist Robert Faurisson against former French Minister of Justice Robert Badinter (he lost).

2008

============

13) January 12, 2008

Kenyon Gibson : 'Meet the Press'
Wulf (Woden's Folk) : 'Religion in the New Age'
Adrian Davies (The Freedom Party) : 'Ways and Means'
JB (New Right) : 'New-Left Marxism & the Frankfurt School'

Davies is a barrister and was David Irving's attorney when Mr. Irving tried to appeal the decision in his earlier case against Deborah Lipstadt. He's a former Tory and now Chairman of the 'Freedom Party', on whose behalf he contested the 2005 general election, employing the slogan 'Enoch Powell was right!'. In Bad News For Freedom, only 1.7% of the electorate in South Staffordshire agreed.

14) April 5, 2008

John R. Bell : 'British Blood & British Soil'
Wulf Ingessunu : 'The Solar Race'
Lady Renouf : 'Jailing Their Lawyers'
JB : 'The Films of Hans-Jurgen Syberberg: Leni Riefenstahl's Successor?'

========================

Finally, below is the advertising blurb for the first first meeting of the New Right:

Official Foundation of the New Right / Book Launch

Agenda: This meeting will introduce for the very first time a fresh and exciting project known as 'New Right'. [Ahem. See 'An American National Bolshevik', Loren Goldner's review of Kevin Coogan. Dreamer of the Day. Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International, Autonomedia, 1999.] Concerned at the increasing plight of the British Isles and Europe in general, this dynamic and strictly metapolitical group seeks to unite the disparate strands of the British Right and get everybody pulling in the same direction.

Points of reference: Friedrich Nietzsche, Armin Mohler, Edgar Jung, Carl Schmitt, Ernst Junger, Julius Evola, Rene Guenon, Jean Thiriart, Alain de Benoist, Robert Steuckers, Pierre Vial, Guillaume Faye, Alexander Dugin, Michael Walker.

Date: Sunday 12th December 2004

Time: From 2.00pm until 6.00pm

Venue: Sun Tavern, 66 Long Acre, Covent Garden, London WC2E 9JH (fully licensed bar, food served until 4pm)

Nearest tube: Covent Garden, Holborn or Tottenham Court Road

NEW RIGHT COMMITTEE:

Chairman: Jonothon Boulter
Secretary: Troy Southgate
Treasurer: Lee Consterdine
Press Officer: Dino Caligari
Liaison Officer: Micheal Woodbridge

GUEST SPEAKERS:

*Dr. Tomislav Sunic (Professor of Political Science): AGAINST DEMOCRACY & EQUALITY
*Robert Steuckers (Synergies Européennes, Orientations): HISTORY OF THE NEW RIGHT*

BOOK LAUNCH:

The acclaimed Croatian author, Dr. Tomislav Sunic, will be promoting his new book, 'Against Democracy and Equality' (Noontide Press, 2004), and taking a detailed look at the European "New Right", a significant intellectual movement of men and women concerned about the survival of the West.

The book provides a survey of the New Right's origins, impact and outstanding figures, and an overview of the theory of "revolutionary conservatism". A healthy, enduring society, say New Right thinkers, must be based on the natural principles of hierarchy and aristocracy. Carl Schmitt, Oswald Spengler, Alain de Benoist, and the other leading figures of this intellectual current contend that egalitarianism - whether manifest in Marxism or in liberal democracy - inevitably leads to social decay and entropy.

Rejecting both traditional liberalism and conservatism, the New Right calls for a European rebirth rooted in a stern awareness of history and human nature, and based on a recognition of Europe as an organic entity.

This book, explains a review in American Renaissance newsletter, "not only traces the history of 'revolutionary conservatism' but introduces a contemporary school of European writers who are struggling to find answers to the questions that are not yet being asked ... Dr. Sunic has given us an important book. This review can only begin to summarize the richness of thought that he has found in scores of books and journals that are not even available in English. Dr. Sunic has opened the door to a great but little-known body of learning that directly addresses our current crisis."

Copies of Dr. Sunic's magnum opus - as well as various other literature - will be available to purchase at the meeting itself. Please feel free to bring your own material and don't forget to invite your friends!

Meanwhile, if you require further information, please e-mail: synarc2000@yahoo.com or arktos2002@yahoo.com

*"The radical wing of the New Right is now represented by the Synergies Européennes network, led by Robert Steuckers (Belgium), which publishes Nouvelles de Synergies européennes. At the summer university of the Synergies network, in August 2000, held in northern Italy, key speakers included former Terza Posizione activist Gabriele Adinolfi and Maurizio Murelli, of the Holocaust denial publication Orion. In 2000, a controversy arose in Lyon about the facilities granted by the University of Lyon III to New Right activists, among them Prof. Jean-Paul Allard, a German studies professor. The network he built around the Institute of Indo-European Studies within this university is very clearly connected to Synergies Européennes. (Economist and Holocaust denier Bernard Notin writes under the alias Fréderic Valentin in Synergies.)" ~ The Stephen Roth Institute for The Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism Report on France 2000-1