One minute, you’re celebrating Adolf Hitler’s birthday at Hofbräuhaus …
Nek minnit …
• The above photograph originally appeared in Anzac Day 2017: Dawn service and Shrine of Remembrance live coverage but was later removed from The Age website. You can read more about the neo-Nazi leader of the ‘United Patriots Front’ in Blair Cottrell, rising anti-Islam movement leader, wanted Hitler in the classroom (Michael Bachelard, Luke McMahon, The Age, October 15, 2015), while in ASIO monitoring of right-wing extremists uncovered alleged plan to attack radical left (Nick McKenzie, Michael Bachelard, The Age, August 13, 2016), it’s noted that A Reclaim offshoot, the United Patriots Front, led by Melbourne bodybuilder Blair Cottrell, is among the most hard-line of the recent right groups. Mr Cottrell once called for Adolf Hitler’s portrait to be hung in every Australian classroom. More recently his image featured in a localised version of a European white supremacist video, This is Europa, which was hosted briefly on the UPF Facebook page. In the video, images of Hitler were replaced by video of Mr Cottrell. (The alleged plan was hatched by UPF fanboy Phill Galea, who returns to court on Friday, April 28.)
• Note that, following the end of WWII, the Returned Services League fought against allowing Jewish refugees into Australia — Ken Bolton, the NSW state president of the RSL, ‘claimed that the postwar refugee migrants were “German Jews of the same ilk as those who came before,” and that they would work for their own, rather than Australia’s, benefit’ — but a few managed to sneak in, including some who in 1984 established the Jewish Holocaust Centre in Elsternwick, Melbourne. (Apparently, ‘Melbourne has the highest number of Holocaust survivors in Australia and Australia has the highest number of survivors per capita in the world outside of Israel’.)
• Finally, unlike anti-Semitism, (neo-)Nazism has obviously never been a Big thing in Australia, but in the wake of Reclaim Australia, a small number of younger adherents to neo-Nazi doctrines have been inspired to take action, and the UPF helped to give birth to one of the latest additions to the milieu: ‘Antipodean Resistance’. Having previously plastered Swinburne University and the University of Melbourne in propaganda, like the leadership of the UPF, they too celebrated Hitler’s birthday in style.
A little under 12 months ago, the anarcho-syndicalist International Workers’ Association / Asociación Internacional de los Trabajadores (IWA-AIT) underwent an acrimonious split. Well, of sorts. In any event, at its XXVI Congress (December 2-4, 2016, Warsaw, Poland), the (Spanish) CNT, (German) FAU and (Italian) USI sections were disaffiliated ‘as a result of a conscious disregard for process, statutes and dues of the IWA’. For its part, in November 2016 the CNT organised a conference in Barakaldo, with participants from ‘comrades from IWW from the USA and Canada, IWW from the UK and Ireland, FAU and IWW from Germany, IP from Poland, USI from Italy, ESE and Rocinante from Greece, CNT-GAP and CNT-Vignoles from France and FORA from Argentina, as well as receiving solidarity statements from the Sociedad Obrera from Paraguay, FOB from Brazil and CNT-STCPP from France’. The purpose of the gathering was to establish a new international. In January 2017, the FAU published a statement elaborating upon its issues with the IWA-AIT and committing the organisation, along with the CNT and USI, ‘to jump-start a new international project’. More recently (April 17, 2017), segments of the CNT have published a statement [ESP] which suggests that at least some will be adhering to the IWA-AIT rather than joining in this new project.
From various unions of the CNT-AIT that left what is now called the “CNT”, together with others that remain in it but with a critical stance, as well as with many others that were expelled or purged for having denounced the irregularities committed, we have met in Villalonga from the 13-16 of April in the Congress of Restructuring the anarchosyndicalist organization. We would like to publically communicate the reasons and the resolutions of our Congress and make a call to unite in our organization in order to strengthen and give potential to revolutionary, anti-authoritarian and emancipatory anarchosyndicalism.
Motivations: In the last few years, what now calls itself “CNT” has been suffering an ideological derive [ie, drift] in all senses. This has included a series of scandalous situations in which some things are decided in the absence of assemblies, there has been a rupture of Confederal pact and federalism, a lack of solidarity, the inexistence of transparency[1], executive decisions of the Committees, the buying of votes, falsification of agreements, committees that veto the unions or their proposals without putting them on the agenda, centralism and even physical aggression. This derive has produced a weakness in [the] CNT that anybody can see: the need to have paid position[s] because of an absence of militants, the inability to publish the CNT newspaper, the decrease in the number of unions federated… Above all, it has provoked the serious fact that it was expelled from the IWA, our International which established anarchosyndicalism in the world, because of the numerous irregularities committed by its Spanish section, the “CNT”, among others not paying the dues[2], as established in the statutes, but also trying to organize a parallel international, only because it could not impose its agreements in the Congresses of the IWA[3].
The Congress of Restructurization: We met in order to give structure to the numerous anarchosyndicalist unions that exist in the geographical area, to affirm anarchosyndicalism and the values that have inspired it, especially direct action, against parliamentarianism and bourgeois representationism that are being injected into supposedly revolutionary organizations, including the “CNT”.
We have taken the following agreements:
– We have adopted new statutes which are free of provisions which have supported or can support authoritarian practices, vertical structures and executive committees. In exchange, we are fostering consensus among the unions, more means for the local organizations and more autonomy against the committees, which will be reduced to authentic organs limited to coordination.
– Affiliation to the IWA, with the CNT-AIT being its Section in Spain, putting an end to the irregular situation that has been promoted by the Committee of the “CNT”, and contributing to the promotion of internationalism which is so necessary for the opposition of a globalized capitalist world, a question that characterizes the real anarcosyndicalism and not this colonialism of a negative and irrational “CNT”.
– We consider ourselves the continuation of the CNT created in 1910, the anarchosyndicalist and historic one.
– We call on all the anarchosyndicalists in the geographic area to retake and resurge anarchosyndicalism and to put it in the place that it should be: as a libertarian and emanicapatory reference for the working class in the whole world.
From Villalonga, libertarian greetings, in solidarity and internationalist, to all the people, groups and organizations that aspire for freedom.
======
1. Such an absence of transparency, for example, encouraged the theft of around 20,000 euros from the CNT treasury by the General Secretary based in Valladolid.
2. For example: The union responsible for the CNT newspaper is no longer nominated by the unions and decided in Plenaries, but by the Confederal Committee, since the XI Congress in Zaragoza. (Translator’s explanation: The CNT’s reformist and executive wing have caused the situation in which the paper has not been published in years, due to the fact that they are trying to keep control of the publication and infuse it with their politics.)
3. A paradox since some unions that were expelled from the CNT were for dues arrears. While the CNT failed to pay dues to the IWA, it paid for a legal office of cronies whose cost were higher than the dues to the IWA. This office also absorbs all the resources destined to help repressed workers and prisoners that are from or collaborate with the CNT.
4. This decision was made by the Committees of the CNT without any agreement of the unions or the Congress. Leaving the IWA was not proposed in the XI Congress of the “CNT”.
======
See also : ASF-IWA (Australian section of the IWA).
Michael Schmidt
In September 2015, AK Press issued a statement about one of its authors, historian Michael Schmidt, describing him as “an undercover fascist” and “a white nationalist trying to infiltrate the anarchist movement”. Subsequently, Alexander Reid Ross and Joshua Stephens published a series of articles detailing the allegations, and there has been a good deal of discussion online About Schmidt. Most recently, the Instituto de Teoria e História Anarquista (ITHA) / Institute for Anarchist Theory and History (IATH) have published a 2017 Statement on Michael Schmidt Case / Declaração sobre o caso Michael Schmidt (March 23, 2017) and Schmidt’s one-time co-author Lucien van der Walt has also released a statement: Lucien van der Walt – 2017 Statement on Michael Schmidt Affair – 10 April 2017 while anarkismo has published a Statement on the Schmidt Case and Proposed Commission of Inquiry. Schmidt himself has recently announced his intention to complete an anarchist history titled Wildfire, ‘a 16-year study [which] will be the most comprehensive global history of the anarchist movement over 15 decades’.
Other …
• On ANZAC Day, the Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group has issued a statement on the subject of WAR: WWI was a crime against humanity, with two rival imperialist alliances fighting it out to redivide the colonies, markets and resources of the world. The lives of soldiers, Australians included, and civilian populations were sacrificed to the power and profits of their own ruling classes …
• On the Role of Black Bloc: A Critical Look, K., First of May Anarchist Alliance (M1), April 18, 2017: When we, as anarchists or anti-fascists, go out into the streets, questions should arise: What are we doing here? What are our goals? What is the most appropriate or powerful way to achieve those goals? Our tactical choices should always be in service of our goals — they should never be goals in themselves. I fear that in the anti-fascist movement, the tactic of black bloc has become fetishized and that this fetishization has impeded the growth of our movement and struggle …
• Channel Zero is a newly formed podcast network of several anarchist and anti-authoritarian podcasts across so-called North America. Our goal is to create an ever growing platform to expand the reach of anarchist analysis into a larger and more public audience. Currently, we are made of up the Final Straw, the Crimethinc Ex-Worker Podcast, SubMedia, the Solecast, Which Side Podcast, Resonance: an Anarchist Audio Distro and the IGDCAST. Our goals with this network are several fold. First, we aim to support each other and expand the audience of all of our podcasts with a common website and platform where each of our shows can easily be found.
Jewish neo-Nazi, Australia First Party (AFP) member and Daily Stormer writer Nathaniel Jacob Sassoon Sykes (AKA ‘Hamish Patton’) has been confirmed as one of the contributors to the ‘United Nationalists Australia’ blog and Facebook page (which largely functions as an online shitsheet for the AFP).
The Southern Poverty Law Center, along with its Montana co-counsel, filed suit in federal court today against the founder of a major neo-Nazi website who orchestrated a harassment campaign that has relentlessly terrorized a Jewish woman and her family with anti-Semitic threats and messages.
The lawsuit describes how Andrew Anglin used his web forum, the Daily Stormer – the leading extremist website in the country – to publish 30 articles urging his followers to launch a “troll storm” against Tanya Gersh, a real estate agent in Whitefish, Montana. Gersh, her husband and 12-year-old son have received more than 700 harassing messages since December.
Fortunately for the mixed-up Jewish neo-Nazi, Sykes’ own organisation and promotion of similar troll campaigns directed at various public figures in Australia remains entirely lawful and er, kosher. Further, Anglin is happy to have a Jewish man contribute to his hatesite.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
3) whatever happened to … ?
April 4, 2015 was the date of the first series of ‘Reclaim Australia’ rallies; a second took place on the weekend of July 18/19, and the third and final series of rallies on November 22, 2015. Since that time, one other rally has been organised under the auspices of Reclaim, in Sydney on January 29, 2017, while a further rally is scheduled to take place on June 12 in Melbourne. Otherwise, the network has given birth to a range of other groups and projects, including the United Patriots Front (UPF), True Blue Crew (TBC) and Soldiers of Odin (SOO), each of which has staged its own events and activities.
Oh, and speaking of the TBC, their #BFF Phillip Galea was in court again last week:
An alleged extremist accused of plotting an attack against Melbourne’s anarchists engaged in “preparatory” acts rather than an actual terrorism attempt, a court has heard.
Phillip Michael Galea, 32, appeared in the Melbourne magistrates’ court on Wednesday via video link charged with collecting or making documents to prepare for terrorist acts between November 2015 and August 2016.
The anti-Islamist [sic] is also charged with acts in preparation for a terrorist act between September 2015 and August last year.
Magistrate Charlie Rozencwajg said Galea was charged with plotting, not with attempting to commit an attack. Galea’s defence team requested access to tapes and other prosecution materials.
Rozencwajg granted the request amid hopes the case could be expedited. He said Galea had allegedly engaged in preparatory acts of plotting attacks against various locations inhabited by Melbourne’s anarchists [?!] and the Melbourne Resistance Centre.
Prosecutors are relying on evidence contained in secretly recorded phone conversations during which Galea allegedly talks to other people about his plans.
Galea allegedly said: “They thought what I was planning before was dangerous. They’ve got no idea.”
Police allege Galea also researched homemade bombs, ballistic armour and guns.
The matter was adjourned until 28 April.
When Reclaim Australia first emerged, its figurehead was Shermon Burgess (AKA ‘The Great Aussie Patriot’), while in October 2015 Novocastrian John Oliver (Patriots Defence League of Australia), Wanda Marsh from Adelaide, and Liz Shepherd (AKA ‘Catherine Brennan’) in Sydney appeared as its putative leaders on Seven’s Sunday TV show. In 2016, the trio appear to have gone their separate ways, and there now exists two iterations of ‘Reclaim Australia’: one an incorporated association (including Oliver), the other under the control of Shepherd. It was this latter grouping that organised the rally in Sydney in January and is organising the Melbourne event in June (which has drawn the support of whatever remains of the TBC and assorted other dregs).
Prior to this, in May 2015, Burgess abandoned Reclaim to establish the UPF, which held its first, ‘anti-communist’ rally in Richmond that month, a feat which the TBC attempted to replicate in Coburg a year later. (Burgess abandoned the UPF to neo-Nazi and convicted stalker Blair Cottrell in late 2015.) The UPF held two more major rallies in Bendigo that year, on August 29 and October 10, both in opposition to the construction of a mosque, and one tiny rally in Melbourne (in November). The October rally attracted as many as 1,000 participants — the largest rally to be organised by either the UPF or Reclaim. Buoyed by this apparent groundswell of support, in November the UPF announced that it would be forming a political party, ‘Fortitude’, and in February 2016 they held meetings in Orange, NSW, Toowoomba, QLD and again in Bendigo in order to promote it. Sadly, the party never formed, and the UPF spent most of the rest of 2016 shedding members, engaging in publicity stunts, tagging along on other demonstrations, being a minor nuisance, and gathering tens of thousands of ‘Likes’ on Facebook.
Recently, Burgess has been posing online as one half of Facebook page ‘Nationalist Uprising’ (previously: ‘Australian Settlers Rebellion’), talking up the threat (((bankers))) pose to the Western world, and opining that national socialism is actually A Jolly Good Thing. This has provoked local (Melbourne) crank and Pauline Hanson fanboy Avi Yemini to denounce Burgess as a ‘Nazi’. At the same time, the other half of ‘Nationalist Uprising’, Neil Erikson, has been trying to further distance himself from his neo-Nazi past (he has a criminal conviction for harassing a Melbourne rabbi and was active in various neo-Nazi projects for around 15 years or so), partly by way of cuddling up to … Avi.
Erikson hopping into bed with Yemini is slightly … odd … but comprehensible given how much they share in common, including but not limited to a pathological hatred of Muslims (along with dirty rotten stinkin’ commies: Public Enemy No.1 according to the new #BFFs), and joint opposition to non-White immigration (Yemini has likened African migrants to human garbage). Given that Yemini and UPF fuehrer Blair Cottrell — whom Erikson has denounced on many occasions as a ‘Nazi’ — have been making eyes at one another these last few months, it may even be that Erikson and Cottrell will kiss and make up at some point — perhaps while the pair are sitting together in court?
Of course, the other person Erikson and Cottrell have been jointly charged with — following the UPF stunt in Bendigo in October 2015 — is Chris ‘The United Nations is attempting to install the Pope as leader of a new world government!’ Shortis, who left the UPF to join the AFP last year. Slightly coy when under Cottrell’s fuehrership, the Christian fundamentalist bizarr0 is now openly promoting White nationalism (Cottrell continues to wear a mask), and has very grave concerns over the ‘Judeo-‘ in Judeo-Christianity, the poor boy. Note that all this is occurring just as fellow AFP member & Daily Stormer writer Nathaniel Jacob Sassoon Sykes has been exposed as … a Jew!
They’re a weird mob, and the weirdness extends to Nick Folkes and the Peanuts (‘Party’) For Freedom, who like AFP (and UPF) also apparently oppose ‘White genocide’. (Folkes himself has ‘mixed race’ children — which would seem to suggest that there’s one law for Nick; another for the rest of us: LOL!) Thus, in the latest in a seemingly endless parade of dingbat publicity stunts, on Easter weekend in Sydney, Folkes and a half-dozen or so other Peanuts picketed a childcare centre, babbling on about its dastardly dedication to committing White genocide thru integrated care. The fact that non-White folk, presumably residents and/or citizens, joined in the idiocy is somewhat remarkable … though it should also be obvious that the patriotik and White nationalist milieu in Australia is shot thru with such absurdities and contradictions.
Finally, to return to Cooma, when he’s not picking fights with the TBC 600kms away in Melbourne, Burgess can of course be found blathering away on Facebook, regurgitating half-digested and very dank memes produced by cranks like Alex Jones (see below). Oh, but while it remains unclear if Burgess has cleared his debt of $170,000+ to Sutherland Shire Council, on the weekend the keyboard warrior from Cooma was kicked off that rascally ‘Zionist’ Zuckerberg’s site. Peter Grace explains:
The King of the Konspiracy Kooks, Alex Jones, has had his lawyer admit in court that he’s, like, ‘playing a character’ (see : President Trump’s Favorite Conspiracy Theorist Is Just ‘Playing a Character,’ His Lawyer Says, Maya Rhodan, Time, Apr 18, 2017). This has not gone down too well with at least some of his fans, but the wanker who hounded families of the Sandy Hook massacre is also insisting others’ respect his privacy in his custody battle with his former wife (see : Sandy Hook truther Alex Jones asks for privacy in custody battle ‘for the sake of my children’, Cleve R. Wootson Jr., The Washington Post, April 22). For anyone who cares, an interesting profile of Jones was published in RS a few years ago. See : Meet Alex Jones, Alexander Zaitchik, Rolling Stone, March 2, 2011 (‘The most paranoid man in America is trying to overthrow the ‘global Stasi Borg state,’ one conspiracy theory at a time’). Otherwise:
What do you get when you combine an atomized, alienated public that possesses a deep and justifiable mistrust in institutions with a floundering press-political-entertainment complex that’s desperate to hold our nanoscopic attention spans? You get a nation of half-assed shamuses who’ve traded genuine political argument for paranoid fantasies about alien masterminds, lizard overlords, and government airplanes dispersing mind-control mist over population centers, not to mention presidential candidates who think and talk just like conspiracy theorists.
That’s Corey Pein (Protocols of Moron, Magical Thinking, The Baffler, September 20, 2016). His podcast, News from Nowhere, is also recommended listening, especially, in this context, episode one, in which he ‘considers the role of conspiracy theories in the 2016 US presidential elections, with special guest appearances by Alex Jones, Donald Trump, the John Birch Society and an assortment of Holocaust deniers and the politicians who pander to them, such as Green Party vice presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka.’ Closer to home, Jason Wilson contributes his conspiratorial insights in Conspiracy theories used to be a fringe obsession. Now they’re mainstream, The Guardian, April 13, 2017. See also : Alt Wrong, Richard Cooke, The Monthly, April 2017:
Given that Hanson is so often described as “speaking for” ordinary Australians, or ordinary people, or a silent majority, or a real Australia, one wonders why these constituencies have chosen a champion who isn’t much good at speaking at all. Hanson is not just inarticulate by the standards of a politician; she is inarticulate by the standards of ordinary people. It would not be difficult to enter an average pub or RSL club and find someone more knowledgeable, nuanced and capable of stringing a sentence together, and on just about any topic. But that is not what Pauline Hanson is for. Her similarity to Trump is much exaggerated (for one thing, she did not mount a hostile takeover of the Liberal Party), but they do share one critical component: their relationship with language.
On ‘conservatism’ in the US, also worth listening to is Corey Robin on the Reactionaries’ Minds Under Trump (The Dig, Jacobin, March 28, 2017): ‘What a moment to read, or to re-read, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin, political scientist Corey Robin’s 2011 collection of essays — especially if you need to disabuse friends and family of the notion that Trump is some historic degradation of conservatism’s good name rather than a malignant, nasty outgrowth of a long history of violent reaction against left movements for equality.’
Below : Nathaniel Jacob Sassoon Sykes (L) and Dr Jim Saleam (R), attending a Reclaim Australia rally in Sydney, 2015 (see also : The rise of the Australian far right, Late Night Live, Radio National, November 26, 2015).
File Under : TOP KEK.
Sydney resident and Australia First Party (AFP) member Nathan Sykes — AKA ‘Hamish Patton’, ‘Stanley Dangerfield’, ‘Michael Slay’, ‘Great Australian Bite’ et. al. — has been revealed as both ‘one of Australia’s worst online trolls’ … and as being of Jewish descent:
In a ramshackle inner Sydney boarding house, surrounded by his collection of Adolf Hitler dolls, a 48-year-old unemployed neo-Nazi plies his trade as one of Australia’s most aggressive online trolls.
Nathan Sykes – a former journalist and bankrupt – has spent much of the past few years under various pseudonyms harassing and baiting left-wingers and Muslim activists through social media, and writing anti-Semitic articles on neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer …
But what makes Nathaniel Jacob Sassoon Sykes particularly unusual is that, despite his neo-Nazi persona, he himself is a Jew.
Sykes was born in December 1968. Virtually everything else about his upbringing is shrouded in mystery and he has gone out of his way through pseudonyms to obscure his identity.
But Fairfax Media can now reveal that Sykes is part of an international network of trolls, and has been crucial in the campaigns to vilify a number of high-profile Australians, including Racial Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane, Muslim activist Mariam Veiszadeh and Guardian journalist and left-wing commentator Van Badham …
• As noted, this is not the first time that a Jewish man has been revealed as being a major contributor to Andrew Anglin‘s Daily Stormer website, ‘the best-read English language neo-Nazi website in the world’, which fact is rather … odd.
• As well as contributing articles to the Daily Stormer, Sykes was also a contributor to the now defunct neo-Nazi Whitelaw Towers (WLT) blog. The WLT blog was established over ten years ago by neo-Nazis Peter Campbell (NSW) and Jim Perren (QLD), both formerly members of the ‘White Pride Coalition of Australia’ (WPCA : 2002–2004), an online forum for neo-Nazis, Klan members, and assorted other White supremacists. Campbell deaded in August 2013, with Sykes seemingly joining Perren at some point thereafter; all three have been fulsome supporters of Dr Jim Saleam’s White nationalist AFP. In February 2016, Perren was also responsible for helping to organise the United Patriots Front (UPF) tour of Toowoomba in Queensland.
• Sykes has also been active on the neo-Nazi/White supremacist website Stormfront since December 2011 as ‘Great Australian Bite’, posting over 12,000 comments. His contributions to Daily Stormer number well over one-hundred-and-fifty separate articles.
• Sykes is a big fan of fellow AFP member Chris Shortis, one of three men currently facing charges as the result of a UPF stunt in Bendigo in October 2015. Sykes attended court last month in Melbourne, along with Dr Jim Saleam, to express support for Shortis. Looking rather stylish in his blue suit, Sykes was also sporting several rings, including one with a Golden Dawn symbol. Prior to this, in December 2016 in Sydney, Sykes attended a rally outside the Russian consulate, where he was joined by other AFP members (including Saleam), Golden Dawn members, and assorted other far-right elements. Oh, and University of Sydney academic Tim Anderson.
Above : (L to R) : Sykes (w camera); Tim Anderson, Simeon Boikov (Zabaikal Cossack Society of Australia), Dr Jim Saleam (AFP), Iggy Gavrilidis (Golden Dawn Australia).
The last few months has witnessed the emergence of a number of fake antifa accounts on Facebook and Twitter. Most are fairly obviously fake, some less so. In any event, blogger b9AcE has compiled a list of fake antifa accounts, around 40 or so, and notes that:
After those and other fake antifa-accounts were made well known, they and other newly created ones now use extremely obvious sarcasm, whereas many previously even copied the entire content of genuine antifa-accounts to seem legitimate.
In the cases of accounts that clearly pretended to be legitimate, they seem to now in many cases have deleted the content that was obviously meant to mislead.
Considering this change, the purpose of the original post has been fulfilled… by them.
On those grounds, it does not seem beneficial to post further updates to the previous list here.
If the behavior changes again, that stance might change and this revision’s notification be replaced by other content.
Note also that a silly ‘Antifa Australia’ Facebook page has popped up here, ‘Boston Antifa’ have been revealed as two right-wing nerds called Alexis Esteb and Brandon Krebs, while snopes ponders a fake antifa flyer here. My personal favourite fake is the Antifa Squad YouTube channel and this comment (posted on or about November, 2013):
The global Google boycott keeps on rolling, with the Australian government the latest big spender to suspend advertising on Google’s YouTube platform.
The move comes at the end of a week when several advertisers have pulled out of the platform causing massive brand damage to Google …
Some YouTubers like Millennial Woes – a Scotland-based video blogger who posts bigoted monologues – claim to be able to make a living from their posts, according to one expert on far right groups.
And in Australia groups like the far-right United Patriots Front use social media to reach out to supporters.
“Blair Cottrell and the United Patriots Front use Facebook as their main platform, not YouTube. And while they have a real large audience and some of their Facebook videos reach millions, these are not monetised by them but rather by Facebook,” another expert said.
The UPF has tried to use crowd funding to raise money, but these are usually shut down by appeals to the platform for breaches of terms of service, he added.
Otherwise:
• Shermon Burgess and Neil Erikson have re-badged their Facebook page. Previously known as ARSE (Australian Settlers Rebellion), it’s now known as ‘Nationalist Uprising’. By my count, the boys have now burned through: 1) Aussie Patriot Army; 2) Australian Defence League; 3) Australian Settlers Rebellion; 4) Ban Islam Party; 5) European Australian Civil Rights League; 6) Generation Identity Australia; 7) Nationalist Alternative; 8) Nationalist Republican Guard; 9) Neil Erikson Media; 10) NRG Media; 11) OzConspiracy; 12) Pauline Hanson’s Guardian Angels; 13) Reclaim Australia; 14) United Patriots Front; 15) United Patriots Front — Originals and who knows, maybe more. In other words, the pair have had more Facebook pages than they have friends.
• Speaking of Neil Erikson’s (former) friends: ‘Michael James Holt, 26, has pleaded guilty to a string of firearm manufacture and possession charges, including manufacturing a gun without a licence, after police found a large stash of guns and weapons across three properties in 2015 … [Holt] remains in custody and is due to be sentenced on April 12.’ Previously, Erikson had enthusiastically agreed with Holt about the desirability of arranging for the mass execution of ‘mudbloods’ at Federation Square — while selling fairy floss, popcorn and showbags.
Top Blokes.
• Another Top Bloke to have attached himself to the neo-Nazis in the UPF is Canberra’s most impressive cement renderer, Nathan Davidson. Davidson, who while the subject of a suspended sentence for a conviction of assault occasioning actual bodily harm in 2013 and on bail for traffic matters, got busted in early 2016 with drugs and guns and stuff. Word on the street is that the naughty naziboy got a slap on the wrist and is currently serving a community order.
• Not serving a community order — but very much wanting to serve the white community of Manly — is Australia First Party (AFP) member Victor Waterson, who’ll be losing the Manly by-election on April 8. Waterson had fifteen seconds of fame back in October 2014 when he played dress-ups with Nick Folkes (Party For Freedom) and Sergio Redegalli. Previously, Waterson was the losing One Nation candidate for Bennelong at the 2010 Federal election (0.8%), the losing ‘independent’ candidate for Epping at the 2011 state election (2.6%), and the losing AFP candidate for Bennelong in 2013 (0.6%). He was also the losing AFP candidate for McMahon at the 2016 Federal election (2.1%) and for Penrith at the 2015 NSW election (0.7%).
• The Victorian state government has introduced legislation — the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Public Order) Bill 2017 — intended to provide Victorian police with greater powers to control and repress public protest. These powers include, inter alia, greater scope to influence local council’s capacity to grant permits for public protests and to prevent persons from shielding themselves from the effects of chemical weapons (capsicum spray) or to conceal their face at public events. The Bill also re-defines and increases criminal penalties for ‘riotous’ behavior. See : Anti-mask laws proposed in Victoria, Melbourne Activist Legal Support, March 14, 2017.
• Finally, ABC’s 4 Corners has profiled Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party. In a mildly amusing episode (Please Explain), PHONy is revealed as a political plaything for Our Pauline, her gormless followers rich pickings for the chancers that assemble under her banner, and otherwise rather similar to PHONy of the 1990s, with Muslims now replacing Asians as the boogeyman of choice — and the Tories much happier to play along. (Of passing interest is the financial support given the party by multi-millionaire property developer Bill McNee, who has also donated fat sums to the Tories.) See also : antifa notes (march 14, 2017) : One Nation Party too sophisticated for WA; UPF Go To Court; boneheads; ‘Alt-wrong: The Australian right is startling for its incoherence’, Richard Cooke, The Monthly, April 2017:
There is a pat explanation available, where Pauline Hanson is simply the antipodean franchise of a global movement of right-wing populism. Like Nigel Farage in the United Kingdom, or Marine Le Pen in France, or Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, she has been a chronic presence. Like them she has undergone decades of gestation, from a larval stage on the fringes of discourse to a resplendent full expression in the mainstream of politics. But, so far, this rise of the right has proved abortive for Hanson. Unlike them, she is unlikely to contest anything as monumental as Brexit, or challenge for the leadership of her country. Unlike them, she is also one of the least coherent politicians of her era.
The One Nation Party proved to be a bit too sophisticated for the electorate in Western Australia on Saturday, March 11, averaging just under 5% of the vote in the legislative assembly (about 8% in the seats the party ran candidates in). While vote-counting is ongoing, of the 30+ candidates ONP ran, the best performing (10%+) were in Central Wheatbelt, Kalgoorlie, Mandurah, Moore, Murray-Wellington, North West Central*, Pilbara, Swan Hills and Warnbro (*Dane Sorensen was kicked outta ONP after his nomination). The party fared much better in the legislative council, however, where it appears that Our Pauline will have anywhere from one to three allies once the final votes have been tallied. (Note that the gerrymander in WA means that the 3/4 of the WA population what live in the Perth area elect 18 MLCs, while the other 1/4 what live outside Perth elect the same number, giving the Nationals and rural constituencies a disproportionate influence in the legislative council.)
Despite these rather meagre results (preceded by a shambolic election campaign), ‘Liberal puppet’ and party ‘dictator’ Pauline Hanson has declared that the election results ‘fantastic’, and Malcolm Turnbull has refused to rule out the Tories once again directing preferences to their parliamentary allies in ONP.
legislation
On Monday, March 6, Blair Cottrell, Neil Erikson and Chris Shortis appeared in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court for a mentions hearing. While all three were members of the United Patriots Front (UPF) at the time of their alleged offences (October 2015), in late 2015/early 2016 Erikson departed the UPF (but continued to be a Facebook warrior under various labels) while Shortis joined the Australia First Party in early- to mid-2016. Currently, the UPF is reduced to Cottrell and Thomas (Tom) Sewell in Melbourne and Dennis Huts and Kevin Coombes (‘Elijah Jacobson’) in Perth, along with a smattering of fanboys and fangirls across the country and a small army of Facebook fans.
The proposal follows State Government talks with Victoria Police after violent clashes between anti-racism and anti-Islamic activists in Coburg last year.
Attorney-General Martin Pakula said the legislation, which will introduce a new offence of violent disorder, will be introduced to Parliament next week.
“Too often we see at these events people turning up with masks and face coverings to try and hide their identity or to shield themselves from the effects of capsicum spray,” he said.
So: protecting your identity and shielding yourself from capsicum spray are now to be criminal offences.
bonehead
This bonehead was spotted in Ballarat on the weekend: chill out, bro.
Prepare & Repair is a new zine published by a local gang of ne’er-do-wells, intended to help YOU take collective action. You can download a copy for online reading /// for printing and distribution as an A5 zine below …
From the Introduction:
The first question you probably have is who the fuck are we to be saying any of this? That’s a fair question. The simple answer is, nobody in particular. We are ordinary, unremarkable people in the sense that most of our lives are consumed with the same tedium as yours, or most other’s. Work, study, fight centrelink, struggle to pay bills, laugh at the absurdity, rage at the brutality, cry, feel crushed under the unbearable sadness of it all, wish for better days.
What unites our disparate life experiences enough to have slapped together this flying-by-the-seat-of-our-collective-pants project is the simple fact we have ‘picked a side’.
What do we mean by this? At the risk of writing a laundry list, here are a few examples: It seems self-evident to us that the political entity ‘Australia’ is an inherently violent, despotic settler state that will continue to act, with total impunity, in a genocidal fashion against its First Nations people. That is, until it is dragged kicking & screaming towards a process of reparations, treaty, decolonisation & the abolition of its British Imperial institutions, starting with its prisons.
Everything around us is the product of theft, it’s that simple. Theft of lives, of histories, of wisdom & traditions, of lands, of resources, of wages. We know almost nothing of the actual history of the country we live on, even though this continent is home to the oldest continuing cultures on the planet. Where once there were songlines, we have open-cut coalmines, clearcut rainforests & highways clogged forever with commuter traffic.
In less than 300 years on this continent, white fellas have almost completely fucked this place up beyond repair & yet all the government or well-paid media hot-takers can do is blame Aboriginal people for their disadvantage. That’s not just disgusting & wrong, it’s a threat to justice for all sorts of other kinds of people as well including, ultimately, most of the rest of us.
Where other people may see ‘pride’ or ‘patriotism’, we see systems of exclusion, dehumanisation & attempts to hide uncountable abuses of the most fundamental universal human rights. We refuse to be drawn into ‘discourse’ with those who would assault, incarcerate, deport or exterminate our fellow human beings. If they want to try any of these things, they’ll have to go through us.
We similarly reject the idea that there is anything defensible or positive about the incarceration of migrants & refugees: onshore, offshore, wherever, & remind the Labor Party that even a ‘nice’ concentration camp guard is still a concentration camp guard. Where others see people crossing borders, we see borders crossing people.
We think that anyone sleeping rough or hungry amidst so much obvious wealth horded by so few is an act of violence &, frankly, we don’t give a single fuck about what the business community has to say in trying to justify this situation. Our leaders acknowledge through their choice of priorities what the lives of humans, whether here or abroad, are actually worth to them & we think they’re depraved. Every missile that is fired as part of our forever wars in the Middle East not only steals civilian life so callously, it represents thousands upon thousands of poor people denied healthcare, housing & a decent life at home …
Contents
An Introduction
Beyond The Toothless Demand: Taking Action Like The Future Matters
Prep, Pack, Wear
Buddying, Affinity Groups & RIVAL
Picket Lines: A Way To Be Strong, Together
Security & Privacy For Actions
ZOMG It’s An Emergency! And Here’s How You Can Help
What To Do If You’re Having A Shitty Time At An Action
Legal Stuff
Don’t Let Pepper Spray Ruin Your Day!
Pepper Spray After-Care
Radical Self Care
Barrie, the One Nation of today is a very different beast to what it was 20 years ago. They are a lot more sophisticated, they have clearly resonated with a lot of people.
~ Senator Arthur Sinodinos, Insiders (ABC), February 12, 2017
With the WA state election less than a month away, the Tories are shitting bricks over the prospect of hemorrhaging votes to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party, and have stitched up a deal to preference Our Pauline above their coalition partners in the Nationals. (See : Liberal Party to direct preferences to One Nation above Nationals in WA, Matthew Doran and Chris Uhlmann, ABC, February 13, 2017.) Two ONP candidates, Dane Sorensen (North West Central) and David Miller (Collie Preston), have made some squawking noises in protest at the deal — they apparently didn’t get the memo that Our Pauline runs the show — and it’s a reversal of previous Tory policy, but it comes with John HoWARd’s blessing, so s’all good.
As for Sindonis’ allegation of sophistication, it’s laughable, but presumably intended to make (liberal) Tories feel less bad about supporting openly racist, homophobic and xenophobic candidates. And as Stewart Lee has observed, ‘if political correctness has achieved one thing, it’s to make the Conservative Party cloak its inherent racism behind more creative language’.
Above : United Patriots Front’s Perth leader Dennis Huts with Our Pauline.
The 2017 Western Australian state election is scheduled for Saturday, March 11, 2017.
Polling indicates the Turnbull government’s fortunes have slipped since the election, and the Senate success of One Nation has seen the party re-emerge as a real player for the WA state election. For several decades there has been a clear trend for federal governments to damage their state brethren’s election prospects, and the Barnett government will be contemplating the role played by Federal politics in the [defeat] of state conservative governments in Victoria in 2014 and Queensland in 2015.
ENDORSED WA STATE ELECTION CANDIDATES
LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY
Anthony Griffiths (Albany); John Zurakowski (Baldivis); Michelle Meyers (Bateman); Julie Mitchell (Belmont); Sam Brown (Bunbury); Susan Hoddinott (Butler); Rozane Bezuidenhout (Cannington); Terry Popham (Carine); Shaun Reid (Central Wheat Belt); David Miller (Collie Preston); Sharon Polgar (Darling Range); Lawrence Shave (Dawesville); Jenny Bennett (Forrestfield); Warren Duffy (Fremantle); Wayne Martin (Geraldton); John Murphy (Jandakot); Ray Gould (Kalamunda); Richard Bolton (Kalgoorlie); Keith Wright (Kimberley); Tim Taylor (Kwinana); Doug Shaw (Mandurah); Tony D’Angelo (Midland); Jim Kelly (Moore); Ross Slater (Murray Wellington); Dane Sorensen (North West Central); David Archibald (Pilbara); Tshung Chang (Riverton); James O’Malley (Rockingham); Eketerina Zacklova (Roe); Margaret Dodd (Scarborough); Sandra Old (Swan Hills); Sandy Baraiolo (Thornlie); Joe Darcy (Wanneroo); Alex Scholz (Warnbro); Greg Moroney (Warren Blackwood).
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
AGRICULTURE: Rod Caddies, Craig McKinley, Emma McKinley; EAST METRO: Charles Smith, Christopher Fernandez, Lloyd McIntosh; MINING/PASTORAL: Robin Scott, Justin Keating, Janine Varley; NORTH METRO: John Bombak, Ian Hamilton; SOUTH METRO: Philip Scott, Richard (James) Eldridge, Ekaterina Viktorovna Andreeva; SOUTH WEST: Colin Tincknell, Sean Butler, Cameron Bartkowski.
• Here’s WA’s Federal election candidate who received just 37 votes, Phoebe Wearne, The West Australian, July 14, 2016 A big swing towards maverick Queenslander Bob Katter has failed to translate into electoral success in WA, where his party’s candidate battled to win even 40 votes. The wooden spoon for the least votes won in WA at this month’s Federal poll is expected to go to the sole WA Senate candidate for Katter’s Australian Party, Susan Hoddinott, who attracted 37 of a possible 1.5 million votes to date.
• One Nation: a party that knows how to pick ‘em, Gary Adshead, Natalie Richards and Daniel Emerson, The West Australian, January 22, 2017
Christian Pastor Lawrence Shave, ONP candidate for Dawesville, digs chicks in bikinis: What might have taken One Nation by surprise was a recruitment advertisement the pastor placed on a backpacker website in 2015. “Now hiring bikini baristas in Perth,” it read. “Wanted for a coffee/tea drive-through shop establishment. Uniform is a one or two-piece bathing suit and shorts. Must be 18 years or older! No exceptions!”
• Dumped One Nation candidate plans to send ice addicts to ‘uninhabited island’, Catherine Healey, Yahoo7 News, January 24, 2017
Brian Brightman was dumped by ONP as the party’s candidate for Joondalup not because of his ice plan but on account of the fact that he ‘confessed to a 23-year-old conviction for [the] theft of $1100 worth of departure tax stamps when he was a customs officer at Perth Airport’.
• WA election 2017: Pilbara One Nation candidate says taxpayers should not fund ‘lazy’ single mums, Joseph Dunstan, ABC, January 31, 2017
David Archibald has authored dozens of articles for neo-con zine Quadrant, all along the lines you’d expect (climate change denialism, racism, advocacy of genocide, etc.). At the 2016 federal election he was the Australian Liberty Alliance candidate in Curtin, where he received 1,544 votes (1.8%).
• One Nation candidate linked gay marriage to polygamy, Kylar Loussikian, The Australian, February 14, 2017
Ross Slater writes (August 31, 2016) : Legalising same sex marriage will open the door to compulsory homosexual teachings in homes, schools and churches, thereby confusing children, students and congregation because heterosexuality will not be recognised as normal. Eventually legalising polygamy, multitudinous marriages, sibling marriage and reducing the age of consent will follow because identical, naïve arguments used for legalising same sex marriage will be used for legalising the others.
• One Nation candidate says gay activists are using ‘Nazi mind control’, Michaela Morgan, SBS, February 15, 2017
Michelle Meyers is a … brilliant candidate with lots of well thought-out, practical, ideas. She is ensuring the financial security of this country for years to come.
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?"
