Tagged with Soldiers Of Odin

antifa notes (august 29, 2018) : March For Men, Nazis Go To Canberra +++

Ah-men

On Saturday, YouTube personalities and budding AltLite superstars Avi Yeminem and Sydney Watson organised a ‘March For Men’ in Melbourne. Unlike ‘March For Men’ events in the UK, this march did not raise funds for cancer research but rather was an excuse for IRL trolling and the sale of crappy merch.

Reports on attendance range from 150 (Jeff Sparrow) to 250–300 (spotters) to 500–700 (organisers); a smaller counter-protest was organised by CARF. According to CARF, in addition to Men’s Rights Activists, the event also attracted participation by members of neo-Nazi grouplets Antipodean Resistance and The Lads Society, as well as the methgoblins of the True Blue Crew (TBC) and, in a rare excursion, The Proud Boys (PBs). The PBs also carried a banner reading ‘The West is the Best’ but, sadly, it got lost, then incinerated:

For an account of the action, see : ProudBoys Victoria Go Flaccid…; note that PB fuehrer Gavin McInnes is scheduled to tour STRAYA in November. See also : ‘Stop the name-calling!’: anger unites Melbourne’s March for Men protesters, Jeff Sparrow, The Guardian, August 26, 2018 | What the people at Australia’s March for Men had to say, Madison Griffiths, The Feed, SBS, August 27, 2018.

Speaking of violent misogynists, Adam Giles’ ‘mate’, the steroid-munching neo-Nazi Blair Cottrell, dropped this banger on Twitter on Monday night, before then suspending his account … presumably to return another day to continue to threaten street performers and schoolgirls with violence:

See also : Blair Cottrell and the problem of male aggression, Clementine Ford, The Age, June 26, 2018.

Mister Cottrell, having been convicted in September last year of inciting hatred for Muslims, returns to court in November to appeal the conviction, when he’ll be ably-represented by Adelaide barrister John (W) Bolton, increasingly the go-to law-talking guy for the extreme-right. On his blog, Mister Bolton (Invalid because they impermissibly burden the implied freedom of political communication contrary to the Commonwealth Constitution., July 18, 2018) writes that:

At 9.00 a.m. on 19th July 2018 Mr.Cottrell appeared in the County Court in Melbourne. He has lodged an appeal against a conviction after a [t]rial in which he was un-represented in the Victorian Magistrate’s Court. The appeal was set for a mention only and trial directions.
​
The [t]wo day County Court trial date in August 2018 has now been vacated because a notice was lodged with the Court that asserts that the sections of the Victorian Racial and Religions Villification Act [sic] with which Mr. Cottrell is charged are invalid.

Note that Mister Bolton is organising some crackpot PR stunt in Lakemba in NSW in October.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

One court date that has not been vacated takes place on Friday, when THE MILO FIVE FOUR THREE (Neil Erikson, Rick Turner & Richard Whelan: Garry Hume and Garry ‘Soldier of Odin’ Mattsson have both obtained diversion orders) will be appearing in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court for contest mentions arising from the Milo stoopid of December last year. The stoopid also resulted in Victoria Police billing tour organisers $50,000 for their troubles but, not surprisingly perhaps, Damien Costas and Penthouse Australia have told them to go fuck themselves. As for the Infowars-supplements salesman, dumped from the line-up of some US conference called ‘Politicon’, he returns to our shores in November, bringing with him some very expensive luggage, not least fellow right-wing blabbermouth Ann Coulter.

In any event, as well as having a court hearing in Victoria on Friday, Erikson has another court date in Gosford (NSW) on September 11 to face charges arising from his disruption of a service at Gosford Anglican Church. Standing alongside Erikson on this occasion will be a handful of racist gronks from the TBC (who are also demanding that Father Rod Bower is dismissed from his position).

See also : Neil Erikson ~versus~ Law & Order (June 30, 2018).

Nazis Go To Canberra

This Saturday, The Performance Artist (Formerly Known As The Great Aussie Patriot), Shermon Burgess, has organised a rally in Canberra. Grandly titled ‘Spirit of Australia’, it would be more aptly described as ‘Spirit of Nazi Germany’. Thus in addition to Burgess, the MC for the event is Matt Lowe, currently the fuehrer of a tiny neo-Nazi grouplet called ‘Australian Patriot Uprising’, a splinter from the now-defunct ‘Party for Freedom’. While the list of speakers, like the expected attendance, is very smol (Burgess and Lowe), Senator Fraser ‘Final Solution’ Anning appears to have initially accepted an invitation to speak on the podium but then to have withdrawn. One group that will not be attending the event is the TBC in NSW, who’ve recently made the Columbus-like discovery that: a) some of their comrades are ‘nazis’ and; b) it can be a bit tricky claiming to be a 100% True Blue Dinky-Di Aussie Patriot™ while organising with ‘nazis’.

anTEEfa

On the weekend, ‘Independent Australia’ published an interview what I done with Martin Hirst, which you can read here. See also : Understanding the mainstreaming of the far right, Aurelien Mondon and Aaron Winter, Open Democracy, August 26, 2018.

As noted previously (April 24, 2017 and October 4, 2017), there’s a number of spectacularly daft (fake) ‘antifa’ pages on Facebook. More recent/still extant pages include: Antifa Queensland; Antifa Sydney; Brisbane Antifa; Sydney Antifa.

Finally, there’s a nu/olde anti-fascist kid on the bloc: PUSH! Organising and Educating to Build an Anti-Fascist United Front and ‘The Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group is pleased to announce that we have participated in the launch of a new anti-Fascist organisation. The initial callout is reproduced below.’

2018 True Blue Crew Aussie Pride / Flagwit Parade : All Aboard The Failboat — Toot Toot!

tl;dr : LOL

In Melbourne on Sunday, a small group of racists and fascists, assembled under the banner of the ‘True Blue Crew’ (TBC), undertook a rally and march, ostensibly in order to celebrate ‘Aussie Pride’. The flagwit parade is an annual event, inaugurated in 2016. Thus, this was in fact the third occasion that the TBC has rallied: you can read about last year’s event here and the 2016 event here. Most estimates place the number of participants at around 60-80, with numbers varying somewhat over the course of the few hours that the TBC occupied the CBD. In comparison to 2016 and 2017, this represented a small but significant drop in attendance, and confirms that, while the TBC, its numerous patriotik equivalents, and the various personalities that constitutes the movement’s leadership, can command hundreds of thousands of followers on facebook, this does not translate into actual mobilising capacity.

Touted by Timmeh! of AltRight upstart The Unhinged as being the biggest event on the nationalist calendar, participants assembled outside the Exhibition Building a little after midday, performed an execrable rendition of the national anthem (‘boundless plains to share’ — lol), and then, reinforced by a sizable police contingent, they marched: via Exhibition Street, to the corner of Bourke and Spring Streets in the CBD. Upon arrival, the ultra-nationalists milled about, exchanged pleasantries with the opposition corralled by police on Spring Street, then listened to speeches by local neo-Nazis Blair Cottrell and Tom Sewell of ‘The Lads Society’.

After about 20 minutes of this no-doubt electric speechifying, the group — which at this stage numbered around 50 or so — were again marched away by police (via Spring Street) to Carlton Gardens, whereupon the event more-or-less ended. Fittingly, Cottrell ended his speech by declaring Melbourne to be a ‘shithole’; I suspect he may have been a tad upset that, after three years of self-promotion, only a tiny number of gronks were prepared to follow their fuehrer into battle on Bourke Street. In any case, some of the Lads reassembled for a drink at Transport Bar in Fed Square (see below) and then at Y&J’s.

Naturally — what with Melbourne being a shithole and all — the rally and march was also the subject of a counter-rally, organised by the Campaign Against Racism & Fascism (CARF) and allied groups. Their accounts of the day are also worth reading, and hopefully some lessons have been learned. In this context, it should be emphasised that, while the combined numbers of people taking part in the rally and counter-rally was several hundred, this was possibly exceeded by the number of police mobilised in order to contain them: as ever, it’s the state that determines the terrain. Be that as it may, here’s some links to media reportage, and below these are a few further notes for those interested. See : ‘They can’t summon as much violence as I can’: Leader of far-right ‘true blue crew’ vile boast as his supporters clash with anti-racism supporters at Melbourne ‘flag pride rally’, Cait Kelly/Australian Associated Press, Daily Mail Australia, June 24, 2018 (NB. To the best of my knowledge, this is one of the only media reports that actually labels Cottrell correctly as a neo-Nazi.) /// Far Right Group Host Rally In Melbourne But Were Outnumbered By Counterprotestors Three-To-One, Max Koslowski, Junkee, June 24, 2018 /// Far-right and counter protesters scuffle in Melbourne CBD, Rick Goodman, The New Daily, June 24, 2018 /// Far-right and anti-racism protesters trade verbal barbs in CBD clash, 9News, June 24, 2018 /// TRUE BLUE CREW AUSSIE PRIDE MARCH (AAP).

With regards to the political complexion and very brief history of the TBC, Tom Tanuki provides the following colourful, but basically accurate account:

The True Blue Crew are rallying tomorrow in the city, holding a vague kind of ‘flag worship’ event. It marks two years since an event in Coburg when the TBC got popular for punching on with lefties. Are you going to counter them or to wave a flag alongside them? Either way, it’s important to know what exactly the TBC is. Let’s recap and go through what we know in brief.

The TBC were formed after a few of their original core crew got into a scrap with some Antifa kids after a 2015 rally. ‘Never again,’ they said! So, the TBC were originally meant to be a patriot answer to black bloc Anteefa contingents.

Their red letter day came in May 2016, when they took part in an organised attempt to have the far-right march through Coburg. Their brief, televised fights with masked lefties were a big popularity boost for them. TBC started charging membership fees – $20 a week, $10 for ‘casual’ members. At one point, they were earning tens of thousands of dollars in just a few months! The money was being managed by TBC ‘President’ Kane Miller’s partner and her sister and all of that money was going to Kane. He was largely spending it as he liked.

Behind closed doors, the ‘President’ was abusing his partner. He even broke her back. He wasn’t the only woman-bashing TBC member, either – and when photographic evidence of another member’s brutal assault on his wife was made public, Kane avoided the increasing media spotlight on TBC by kicking Mark out. Members knew that decision made Kane a bit of a hypocrite, for the abovementioned reasons… So they started leaving the TBC. Kane’s abused partner finally left him too and the money management side of TBC went down the drain. The things she revealed about the abuse meant even more TBC members left the group – and they took their membership fees with them.

Kane went quiet for a long while, feeling defeated. TBC ‘club meetings’ dwindled after a time to little more than 12 unemployed blokes sitting around sucking cones in Kane’s mum’s living room. But the lure of conning working class Aussies out of their hard-earned wages still called to Kane. So TBC returned somewhat with an Australia Day BBQ in St Kilda (a genius idea he came up with after a sesh watching the new Romper Stomper). And he had some stupid fucking idea to wander around parks with a bunch of other losers looking for Sudanese children to fight. A meeting he held at Tom Sewell’s Cheltenham clubhouse was televised, with Channel 7 airing a description of the TBC’s initiative as being ‘like a Neighbourhood Watch’ – and it seemed to the world like the TBC were back!

It was not like a Neighbourhood Watch. It was just more hare-brained, shard-addled fantasy garbage from a man who was desperate to be given more membership fees to enjoy himself with. He says it’s for a ‘clubhouse’ but it isn’t and it never will be. TBC only have about 5-10 people contributing membership fees and they get most of their cash from merch. It’s not enough. Kane just wants to siphon more money out from poor, angry, confused Aussies.

That money won’t do anything but fund the TBC ‘President’ and his lifestyle. This is a man who gets cash-in-hand from his Muslim boss (serious!) and has membership fees go into his mates’ bank account so child support can’t take it. This is a man with convictions for domestic violence (he was also violent to his last ex, who also dumped him), multiple AVO breaches and firearms charges who won’t pay for his own child. Money given to TBC is fleeced money, and it pays for a shit fucking dude.

Hey. Put the culture wars down for a moment. Are you a right-winger intending on going tomorrow? Don’t. Pick your battles, and more importantly, pick your allies. These are bad ones. Spend your petrol money on beer, yeah? Enjoy your Sunday.

Are you a left-winger going tomorrow to counter? Fuck yeah! I can’t come coz I’m interstate. I wish I could. I’d love to yell at them. Of course you should show these egomaniacal arseholes they can’t march through the city uninterrupted. Go and yell at racist dogs!

Just remember, y’all – the filmed fights at Coburg were the best thing that ever happened to these guys. So, be careful. And don’t lose on camera!

While the bulk of those who attended the event were members of and/or sporting TBC merch, also present were members of neo-Nazi grouplet Antipodean Resistance, Cooks Convicts (Neil Erikson, Rino ‘Bluebeard’ Grgurovic and Ricky Turner), The Lads Society (‘Troy Bloodstone’, Blair Cottrell and Tom Sewell), Soldiers of Odin (Jay B Moore) and, for some reason, Daniel Purton/A26A (AKA ‘The Crew’).


They were joined by a handful of budding AltRight media creators — a teenybopper calling himself ‘The Young Conservative’, Some Guy called Bayden Mottee and his sidekick Lee/Leon Taylor (who travelled from NSW for the event) — while most of the rest were faces familiar from previous rallies. The nipsters below were in the company of Jacob Hersant:


Finally:

• According to spotters: police worked closely with TBC throughout the course of the event and relations between the two were friendly and relaxed — one might even say that they worked hand-in-glove. This was no doubt a good and useful thing, as several TBC members were wearing gloves that were steel-reinforced. Police conducted a handful of body searches on rally-goers but were rather more thorough in the case of anti-fascists; upon completion of the event, participants were invited by Cottrell to join he and the other neo-Nazi Lads at their club house in Cheltenham.

• Having journeyed to Transport Bar at Fed Square upon completion of the rally, Cottrell and a number of his followers took the opportunity to engage in some cultural criticism. Spying a street performer, ‘Dandyman’, dressed in pink, and possibly imagining himself in the role of head of an Antipodean Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, Cottrell & The Gang vocally objected to the performer’s pink costume. This, apparently, was sufficient reason to demand that he remove himself from the Square, and sufficient evidence for the performer to be accused of being a paedophile(!). Requesting assistance from police, they merely oversaw the cancellation of Dandyman’s performance and their removal from the Square. Granting de facto recognition of the authority of Cottrell & The Gang to decide who comes to Fed Square and the circumstances in which they come is a bold move by police, but is perhaps in keeping with the generally amiable relations between the two forces. In any case, it also reminded me of another brilliant piece of cultural criticism Cottrell mounted back in June 2015 as the poor boy struggled to come to terms with the suburb of Northcote:

… The drive into the heart of the city from the northern suburbs was not without drama. I was among our two carloads of eager souls traveling from the north inbound and I have never experienced such appalling traffic conditions.

I specifically remember crawling slowly through the suburb of Northcote and I have never in my life witnessed such a putrid expression of civilized humanity; not even in Dandenong is there such a profoundly visible depression of the buildings, the atmosphere, and the people themselves. I found myself staring open-mouthed out of the car window; for some moments, I was in a state of disbelief and felt as though the surrounding depression was creeping through my car window and licking at my sentiments of hope. The contagious despair of the place threatened to engulf my person after only a few minutes of being there.

Had the people living here really begun to believe such conditions were normal?

The walls of the buildings were literally caked in vulgar graffiti – and not the kind which had any creative or admirable aspect to it. Peeling and faded old advertising posters for music shows long since passed, mold and rot which would take the local business owner perhaps 30 minutes to remove with a high pressure hose, yet none anywhere seemed to have bothered. Even the smell of the place quickly quelled a painful hunger for breakfast I had been feeling hitherto.

And the propaganda there was all anti-racist material.

Posters, graffiti, and even large banners hanging from old public buildings of British-Australian architecture read “racism-free community”, “smash racism”, and so forth.

A structural dedication to past Australian military services, a building of some sort with architectural dedications in the front gardens, was the only decent looking building in the area, however, not even it was spared by the local graffiti bandits who had ‘tagged’ the walls and panels with some unintelligible scribble.

Was this suburb of Northcote the ultimate expression of so-called anti-racism? If so, the cultural degeneration of this place speaks absolute volumes of the philosophical and moral backwardness of these self-abnegating plebeians: today’s Marxistic Left-wing.

Had these pioneers of cultural decay gained any knowledge of our intentions on this particular day, you can rest assured they would have flocked to the area in formidable numbers to “smash the fash”, as they put it …

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

PS. TBC gangs in Perth and Sydney also held flag-waving rallies. In Perth, approximately a dozen or so boofheads assembled in order to be laffed at by scores more; in Sydney, Kokoda veteran Bill Ryan took the opportunity to denounce racism, but received little if anything in the way of support. Sydney eh?

BONUS! DandyMan versus nazi goons

This article by Richard Watts provides a good breakdown of Cottrell & The Gang’s harassment of Dandyman and the heartening response of the Melbourne community: Street performer reclaims Fed Square after far-right threat, ArtsHub, June 26, 2018. See also : Dandyman to perform this afternoon despite right-wing attack, Javier Encalada, The Northern Star, June 26, 2018 /// Melbourne street performer abused with homophobic slurs, Jesse Jones, Star Observer, June 26, 2018 /// What Happened When A Far-Right Group Bullied A Street Performer?, The Project, Channel Ten, June 26, 2018 /// Blair Cottrell and the problem of male aggression, Clementine Ford, The Sydney Morning Herald, June 26, 2018.

Cottrell was accompanied by at least thirteen others during the course of his artistic cleansing of Fed Square:

1: Luke Phipps; 2: Bayden Mottee; 3: Ian Sayer; 4: Max Towns; 5: Lee/Leon Taylor; 6: Jacob Hersant (Antipodean Resistance); 7: TBC; 8: Kane Miller; 9: ‘Troy Bloodstone’ (Lads Society); 10: TBC; 11: Rino ‘Bluebeard’ Grgurovic; 12: Steven Hansford; 13: TBC.

See also : We give you Melbourne’s thug Taliban, DYVRS, June 26, 2018.

Dave Pellowe & Axiomatic Events ~versus~ Daniel Spiller & Future Now +++


Above : Dave Pellowe (Axiomatic Events) / Daniel Spiller (Future Now Australia)

Oh dear.

Last weekend, ‘Cooks Convicts’ — in this case Neil Erikson, his loyal sidekick Ricky Turner, and a coupla bikies — paid a nocturnal visit to Dave Pellowe’s house in Queensland. According to Erikson & Co, Pellowe is the person responsible for sabotaging fellow Queensland businessman Daniel Spiller’s attempt to organise back in April a tour Down Under by infowars supplements salesman Milo Yiannopoulos. The plan, apparently, was for Yiannopoulos to join Erikson, Sky News’s Ross Cameron, and ‘Proud Boy’ Gavin McInnes to talk shite LIVE! and/or via skype in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth. For whatever reason, Spiller’s tour collapsed in a heap almost immediately upon his making the announcement.

In any (non-)event, Pellowe, trading as ‘Axiomatic Events’, has recently decided to join others, like Spiller and Damien Costas (the publisher of Penthouse and sponsor of Milo Yiannopoulos’s December 2017 tour), in seeking to profit from the international troll circuit. As Richard Cooke writes (Australia’s welcome mat for right-wing trolls, The Saturday Paper, October 21-27, 2017): ‘In so many ways, Milo Yiannopoulos is unremarkable. He is just one of a long line of conservative grifters making hay in Australia.’

In 1943, a time when the devil had the best poems, if not the best tunes, George Orwell could write: “By and large the best writers of our time have been reactionary in tendency.” Sadly, the West just can’t field the calibre of fascist it once did. He was talking about W. B. Yeats, and could have also called upon Ezra Pound, Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Knut Hamsun from the far right. After that lot, Milo Yiannopoulos feels like a real climb-down.

A right-wing troll and professional attention seeker who scores novelty points for being gay, Milo was fast on his way to assisted career suicide in the rest of the world, dumped by his publisher and even his own website. But here he swung interviews on morning TV and FM radio to promote a series of Australian appearances later in the year, following a hallowed local tradition of taking the world’s worst commentators seriously. Elsewhere these people barely qualify as hecklers; here, they’re ushered onto centrestage.

The Melbourne leg of Milo’s tour (at Melbourne Pavilion in Kensington) witnessed clashes, and on Friday, June 8, ‘Cooks Convicts’ members Erikson, Turner, one of Erikson’s old neo-Nazi comrades, Richard Whelan, Garry Hume, and ‘Soldier of Odin’ Garry Mattson are to face Melbourne Magistrates’ Court, charged with a variety of offences, including assault. Erikson’s last adventure in court took place early last month, when he was given a slap on the wrist for contempt of court. The judge in that case (Toll Transport Pty Ltd & Ors v Erikson (No.3) [2018] FCCA 1120 (11 May 2018)) observed that:

Mr Erikson has not provided any expression of genuine contrition. In fact, having observed Mr Erikson’s conduct over a number of proceedings, I have formed the view that he is indifferent to the seriousness of his contempt. The evidence that Mr Erikson has given in these proceedings has been inconsistent, implausible and lacks credibility. I observed in the Contempt Decision that it was likely that when it suits him, Mr Erikson has a tenuous relationship with the truth.

Similar observations were made by another judge when Erikson was convicted of stalking and harassing a local rabbi:

Magistrate Donna Bakos said she had no doubt Erikson’s calls were motivated by prejudice and found he had little remorse for his crime. But she ignored prosecution pleas to jail Erikson, sentencing him instead to psychological assessment and treatment in the community. “There is no other explanation except that they were motivated by prejudice, if not hatred, toward the victim because of his race,” she told Erikson.

Erikson himself expressed the same to me:

Note that the expedition to David Pellowe’s home in Queensland by ‘Cooks Convicts’ was preceded by the disruption of a church service in Gosford (which scared some old people outta their wits) and a visit to the home of Catherine Deveny in Melbourne. In both cases it appears that the cooked units escaped without penalty.

Speaking of cooked units, several former United Patriots Front flunkeys have had to goto jail recently. Thus in addition to the murder convictions of Aryan Nations members Robert (Wayne) Edhouse and Melony (Jayne) Attwood/Taylor in Perth, in Canberra UPF fanboy Nathan Davidson was last month sentenced to six years and nine months (with a non-parole period of three years and eight months) for drug offences (Dealer sentenced over massive Civic drug bust, Alexandra Back, The Canberra Times, May 26, 2018). Oddly, another report on the sentencing (Canberra man jailed after drugs, cash found in kitchen appliances, Elizabeth Byrne, ABC, May 26, 2018) includes the following:

Davidson also admitted to the court he once had links to far right groups and has tattoos including a German eagle. But he said he was no longer affiliated, partly because his drug-taking and dealing behaviour was at odds with their beliefs. “I was an embarrassment to them,” he said.

In which context, two things: 1) Davidson’s tattoos include not only a ‘German eagle’ (lol) but the words ‘Aryan’ on one arm and ‘1488’ on the other; 2) UPF fuehrer Blair Cottrell, now busy building a neo-Nazi cadre called ‘The Lads Society’, also has criminal convictions for abusing steroids. As a general rule, then, neo-Nazi criminals are only an ’embarrassment’ to the far right if they get caught.

notes

• Speaking of tours, Axiomatic Events/Dave Pellowe is also touring Marijke Rancie, AKA ‘Political Posting Mumma’; she’ll be appearing at Mt Gravatt Bowls Club in Queensland on June 21. Rancie gained some notoriety for fronting an anti-‘Safe Schools’ campaign last year. A Tory who was employed in December last year as an electorate officer for Mount Waverley MP, Michael Gidley, Rancie is also part of a wave of fun-da-mentalist Christians currently attempting to seize control of the Tories in Victoria (see : The religious minority seizing power in the Liberal Party, Ben Schneiders & Farrah Tomazin, The Age, June 3, 2018).

• Recently, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (‘Tommy Robinson’) went to jail, after trying — but failing — to sabotage a rape trial in the UK. See : What on earth happened to poor Tommy Robinson? 10 Things You Should Know., thesecretbarrister, May 28, 2018. Naturally, this made his fans in the UK, Australia and elsewhere very unhappy. In response, Avi Yeminem and the Australian Liberty Alliance organised a picket outside the British consulate in Melbourne on May 28, and will be gathering again outside the consulate in Melbourne and elsewhere in the country this weekend (June 9/10).

• Meanwhile, in Russia, Putin’s gangsta state has (again) declared war on anarchists and antifascists, on this occasion attempting to frame a number as belonging to a fictional terrorist network called, imaginatively enough, ‘The Network’. See : The Network: Russia’s Odd, Brutal, and Maybe Invented Pre-World Cup Terrorism Case, Joshua Yaffa, New Yorker, June 3, 2018. See also : avtonom.

• Speaking of anTEEfa, check Northern Suburbs Antifascists; for the western ‘burbs, contact westsideantifa[at]protonmail[dot]com.

• Finally, some items of interest from the US:

Stabbed at a neo-Nazi rally, called a criminal: how police targeted a black activist, Sam Levin, The Guardian, May 25, 2018;
A Member Of The Far-Right Proud Boys Menaced A Twitter User On His Doorstep, Andy Campbell, Huffington Post, May 26, 2018;
After Charlottesville: how a slew of lawsuits pin down the far right, David Smith, The Guardian, May 29, 2018;
The Daily Caller exposed for publishing prolific antisemite; still employs editor with white nationalist ties, Hatewatch, Southern Poverty Law Centre, May 29, 2018 (starring David Hilton/Moses Apostaticus);
How the resurgence of white supremacy in the US sparked a war over free speech, Alex Blasdel, The Guardian, May 31, 2018;
Trump’s Loudest Anti-Muslim Twitter Troll Is A Shady Vegan Married To An (Ousted) WWE Exec, Luke O’Brien, Huffington Post, June 2, 2018;
Islamophobia Inc., Al Jazeera, May 14, 2018:

Across the United States, there has been a growth in organizations that portray Islam as a threat.

Over two years, the number of groups that make up what’s become known as the Islamophobia industry has more than tripled.

This investigation reveals the tactics these groups use to instigate a fear of Islam, including how they manipulate social media to create a false narrative that Muslims are trying to take over the country.

Anti-Muslim messages proliferate social media with bought-in followers, fake accounts and robotic amplifiers.

The investigation also shows how these organizations try to suppress the rise of a Muslim political voice in America. It uncovers the “dark money” that has fuelled the rapid growth of Islamophobia Inc. – tens of millions of dollars which is funnelled through secretive, anonymous donor funds.

We unveil the donors of the dark money and ask; what do they ultimately hope to achieve?

#7SummerOfNazis : The True Blue Crew & Co. Go Hunting Blacks While Channel 7 Cheers

img via The Simpsons against the Liberals

[UPDATE (January 17, 2018) : See also : How do you solve a problem like the ‘African Gang Crisis?’, Cam Smith, Overland, January 17, 2018.]

For those of you coming in late, on Sunday in Cheltenham the ‘True Blue Crew’ (TBC) — a racist street-gang based in Melton and Bendigo — organised a meeting in order to discuss the establishment of a vigilante group, one tasked with tackling #AfricanGangs. According to reports, the meeting attracted several dozen people: members of the TBC, the ‘United Patriots Front’ (UPF), and several members of other tiny, radical right-wing satellites.

Announced some weeks ago, the TBC declared that the meeting would be held at a secret location, the details of which would be released on late Sunday morning to those who’d expressed an interest in attending and passed their stringent vetting procedures. This was arranged so that the meeting would not be subject to disruption. Within the space of a few hours of this information being distributed, however, it was also made public: the TBC would be meeting at 4pm at Eddie’s bar in Cheltenham. Not long after this, and seemingly as the result of inquiries from journalists and concerned members of the public, the bar’s management decided to cancel the group’s booking, forcing them to hold the event elsewhere.

That elsewhere was Unit 9, 158 Chesterville Road, Cheltenham, the site of something called the ‘Lads Society’.

The ‘Lads Society’ announced its existence in October last year. The property was leased by UPF líder máximo Blair Cottrell’s sidekick, Thomas Sewell, who is joined by, among others, James Buckle — the President of gun lobby group ‘Firearm Owners United’. In promotional material for the new project, Tom indicated that among the reading materials the ‘Lads’ could enjoy perusing at the Society was Mein Kampf, the text Blair Cottrell notoriously declared that he wants issued to all Australian school children.

Annually.

See also : White nationalists True Blue Crew vow vigilante action in Melbourne, Rachel Eddie, The New Daily, January 14, 2018.

While some media did attend the event, and police lurked, only one media organisation was granted ‘exclusive access’ to the meeting: Channel 7.

    First tonight, 7 News has been granted exclusive access inside a secret meeting organised by right-wing activists in response to Melbourne’s African youth crime crisis. Reporter Jodi Lee was invited into the True Blue Crew’s gathering and joins us live now. Good evening Jodi, what went on behind closed doors?

    Jodi Lee: Well good evening Jackie as we go to air tonight that meeting is still very much under way. 7 News was the only media organisation invited inside the meeting where more than 50 people, mostly men, gathered from all across the state. They came from as far as Cobram and Shepparton, Melton in the city’s west and Mornington along the peninsula. Now, they gathered at a meeting spot that belongs to the United Patriots Front but the men there hail from several different groups. They don’t say that they are right-wing activists, they call themselves patriots, and say they have come together to help average Australians deal with what they are calling an immigrant crime crisis. Now, they say they’ve been disappointed by the Andrews government and by Victoria Police who this group believes have been rendered unable to cope with rising crime. Take a listen to what their leaders tonight had to say.

    Blair Cottrell : Well nothing is being done. The government could be doing a lot more to combat this crime but police aren’t being given the powers they need to combat this problem we have in this country.

    Kane Miller : We have a few ideas we hope to put in place, it’s about time the community get involved because it’s clear to see that police can’t save us all.

    Daniel Andrews : People are free to meet and discuss whatever matters they want to. What I would say though is Victoria Police are best capable, best able and best equipped to fight crime and keep the community safe.

    Jodi Lee : Now this group hopes to harness the power of social media to protect both them and their families. They’re hoping to create a kind of ‘Neighbourhood Watch’ that will be able to quickly let people know when an incident, a robbery or an attack in fact, is occurring and hopefully help send locals there to help protect residents, Jackie.

Not unexpectedly, Channel 7’s promotion of the TBC African-hunting project, as well as its decision to put to air the views of a leading Melbourne neo-Nazi and his mate, has come in for some criticism. See : Oh Look, 7 News Gave The Spotlight To An Actual Neo-Nazi, James Hennessy, Pedestrian, January 15, 2018 /// Congratulations Australia, We’ve Successfully Normalised Neo-Nazis, Osman Faruqi, Junkee, January 15, 2018 /// Channel Seven ‘crossed a line’ with neo-Nazi interview, Broede Carmody, The Age, January 15, 2018 /// Channel Seven under fire over interview with far-right activist, Melissa Davey, The Guardian, January 15, 2018 /// No Channel Seven, Cottrell is no ‘right wing activist’. He’s dangerous, John Birmingham, Brisbane Times, January 16, 2018.

Who are the True Blue Crew?

As noted above, the TBC are a Melton and Bendigo-based street gang that emerged in late 2015 and early 2016. It’s one of numerous flag-waving groups that have appeared during the course of the last decade, from the ‘Southern Cross Soldiers’ to the ‘Australian Defence League’. Since its inception, the Crew, under the leadership of Kane Miller, has organised a number of events. Its first rally took place in May 2016 in Coburg. Titled ‘Stop the Far Left!’, the rally intended to disrupt an anti-racist rally organised by the Socialist Alliance, to express opposition to the ‘Islamisation’ of Coburg and support for the concentration camps on Manus and Nauru (see : Coburg 1 /// Fascists 0; Or: The neo-Nazi rally that brought anti-fascists to the streets of Coburg, May 31, 2016 /// More reflections on ‘solidarity’ after the Coburg protest, January 7, 2017). As on future occasions, the TBC were joined on this occasion by (the remnants of) the UPF and a small clutch of (other) neo-Nazis wearing Wolk’s Hook regalia (note that members of this grouping later went on to form ‘Antipodean Resistance’).

Having successfully cleansed Coburg of Muslims and leftists, the TBC’s next big event was a flag parade in the CBD in June. On this occasion, as well as the UPF and others, the TBC were joined by a large number of Christian fun-da-mentalists from Pastor Danny Nalliah’s ‘Rise Up Australia Party’ (RUAP); the event was given an even more bizarre tenor by their performance of the traditional Australian haka. Also present at the event was alleged terrorist Phill Galea, who thrilled to the corporal punishment handed out to Coburg locals by the TBC at their coming-out party in May:

Having successfully waved flags in the city, the next TBC event was a ‘Rally Against the Rise of Islam in Melton’ in August 2016. This was another bizarre set-piece, this time pitting the TBC methgoblins up against the ‘Soldiers of Odin’ and its leader, Jason Moore (formerly a member of the ‘Patriots Defence League of Australia’). Undeterred by such shenanigans, the criminal prosecution of several of its members for assault (both upon anti-racists and their own — female — partners), common sense or basic decency, as well as appearing at several other events, the TBC returned in 2017 with another flag parade (June 2017) and have now embarked upon the formation — along with their neo-Nazi comrades in the UPF — of a lynch-mob to target African yoof. Or, as Jodi Lee put it, ‘a kind of Neighbourhood Watch’.

vid via ‘The Socialist’

So much for the TBC. As for the UPF and Blair Cottrell, I documented his views — as expressed on Facebook and YouTube — back in July 2015 (see : Quotations From Chairman Blair Cottrell, July 27, 2015), while his violent criminal record is detailed (in his own words) in a documentary film (see : Blair Cottrell : ” … and I started getting arrested after I did that.” #Fortitude /// #UnitedPatriotsFront, February 23, 2016) and by Geir O’Rourke and Angus Thompson for the Herald Sun (June 11, 2016). Of his offending, they write:

Cottrell, 26, was sentenced to four months in prison in May 2012 after being convicted of 13 charges, including seven counts of intentionally damaging property. County Court Judge Michael Tinney convicted the then-22-year-old of throwing a missile, stalking, failing to comply with a community-based order, and two counts of recklessly causing serious injury. In December 2013 he was fined $1000 and sentenced to seven days in jail by a County Court judge for aggravated burglary, property damage, arson, trafficking testosterone, possessing a controlled weapon and breaching court orders.

Last September, Cottrell — along with former UPF comrades Neil Erikson and Chris Shortis — was also convicted of serious religious vilification and received a small fine (and is appealing his conviction).

Thus, while it should be obvious where the UPF, Cottrell and his sidekick Sewell are coming from, their reaction to the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville last year is telling:


As for Herr Cottrell’s attitude towards the (((media))):

Finally, Neil Erikson — who definitely did not attend the meeting on Sunday, as that would mean he was in violation of court orders not to associate with fascists — was in court again on Monday, facing a charge of contempt-of-court. See : A Dumbass Convicted Racist Almost Accidentally Swore On The Koran In Court, Cam Tyeson, Pedestrian, January 16, 2018 /// Anti-Islam activist Neil Erikson admits he breached court orders, The Guardian (AAP), January 15, 2018 /// Anti-Islam activist mistakes Koran for Bible in court appearance, Adam Cooper, The Age, January 15, 2018.

Note that Erikson was accompanied to court by several other ostensible members of ‘Patriot Blue’: Lachlan/Logan Spalding (also present when PB racially-abused Labor MP Sam Dastyari), Julian de Ross (who also attended the TBC meeting on Sunday) and George Jameson and Penny Louise, recently expelled from Nick Folkes’ micro-Party For Freedom in Sydney. Joining Julian was also Daniel Jones, previously employed as a bodyguard to Avi Yemini, but otherwise — like a number of the budding vigilantes — working in the security industry.

Romper Stomper Pulls On Its Boots Again (But Forgets To Thread Its Laces)

WARNING : CONTAINS SPOILERS

Everything that needs be said about Stan’s new drama Romper Stomper has likely already been said, but for what it’s worth I thought I’d throw my two cents in.

To begin with, I suppose I should mention that I was contacted by the show’s producers back in August, asking me if I was interested in having a chat. I said yeah sure, but I never got a reply. In any event, I doubt very much anything I would’ve had to say would’ve made much difference to the final product, which adopts the conventional wisdom of liberal pundits: both neo-Nazis and anti-fascists are Bad because violence.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Among folks I know who watched it, most but not all thought it was Pretty Bad: ‘enough plot holes to trigger trypophobia’; ‘the acting was woeful’; ‘underwhelming’. Among the experts, opinion on the show seems fairly-evenly divided between fanboy enthusiasm (academic Troy Whitford describes it as ‘a compelling investigation into Australia’s extremist politics’) and severe reservation (television critic Craig Matheson reckons it ‘commits a fatal error by rehabilitating extremists’). On the whole, I thought it was reasonably entertaining, if somewhat daft in its pretensions to documenting recent political conflicts in Melbourne; I’m also a sucker for any show which depicts the city and enjoy guessing the location shoots (which in this case were kinda odd).*

Written by director Geoffrey Wright, James Napier Robertson, Malcolm Knox and Omar Musa, the first episode begins with a peculiar re-telling of a ‘real life’ incident which occurred in April 2016, when the Sydney-based ‘Party for Freedom’ organised a picket outside the halal expo in Ascot Vale. The reality was fairly mundane: a small group of anTEEfa clashed with the picketers, nicked some of their tat, and one white supremacist, Ryan Fletcher, fell over and hurt himself. The fictional account, on the other hand, features a very elaborate display on the part of the ‘Antifasc’ and a near-total absence of police. (IRL, all of the patriotik events of 2015–2016, especially those in Melbourne, witnessed very large and often overwhelming police mobilisations.) It was also amusing to witness ‘Antifasc’ retrieving rocks from a bucket and their primitive battle formation. While the scene serves to underscore the amateurish and para-military nature of ‘Antifasc’, it could be that the spectacular was inspired by a similar scene at an anti-Trump rally in November 2016:

Barista, Barista! Antifascista!

The clash outside the halal expo is also recorded by one of the ‘Antifasc’ and this data is then fwded to ‘McKew’, a politics lecturer who performs the role of the bRanes behind ‘Antifasc’. McKew maintains a site called ‘The Slacker’s Guide to Fascists’ which helpfully contains the byline ‘This blog is for all things Antifascist based in Melbourne Australia’.

No prizes for guessing who inspired that hottt take.

Described as ‘A high stakes drama that follows a new generation of far right activists, their Anti-Fascist counterparts, and its impact on today’s multicultural society’, the most sympathetic rendering is reserved for those:

Caught up in the conflict … three young Muslim characters, Farid, a nurse at an aged care facility studying at university, his girlfriend Laila, a student who will be appropriated as a media star of the left by the antifascist group, and Malik, Farid’s brother and a talented MMA fighter. The revolutionary zeal of the antifascist movement is embodied in the ruthless Petra, her boyfriend Danny, and the ideological ringmaster McKew.

Both Laila and Petra are students of the ideological ringmaster McKew, and indeed ‘Antifasc’ is composed exclusively of Uni students. ‘Patriot Blue’, on the other hand, are salt-of-the-earth types who attended The School of Hard Knocks and The University of Life; leaving aside their leader Blake Farron’s penchant for the poetry of Henry Lawson, the patriotik volk have scant interest in knowledge, but are very committed to acquiring (white) power. While this depiction has some merit, the reality, which is rather more messy, is obviously a little too messy for the show’s writers, and I suppose it makes narrative sense to squash it into more-easily digestible stereotypes. Kane, the troubled yoof who eventually displaces Blake as fuehrer of ‘Patriot Blue’, is presumably meant to be a typical patriot, though his motivations for joining the fascists is never really properly explored.

Other than collect rocks in buckets, members of ‘Antifasc’ also run some kinda street kitchen — the only indication that they’re involved in other political activities — in which they serve ‘Chicken or tomato?’ soup to the homeless. This, presumably, is a reference to Food Not Bombs, which has been providing free vegan food to the public at regular street kitchens for about the last 20 years in Melbourne, and for around 40 years across the globe. It’s at one of these kitchens that ‘Antifasc’ meet with Kane’s li’l sis (recently escaped from juvenile detention). Within the space of a day or two after this fortuitous meeting (the script teems with such coincidences), she suddenly finds herself at the heart of their operations. This is rather poor OpSec, as well as unbelievable, but it serves the story, and reproduces the compressed narrative that describes the arc of almost all the main characters.

The ‘Antifasc’ crew are also rather derelict in their revolutionary duties when in episode four, ‘The Dark Heart of Things’, one of their members, Danny (Petra’s boyfriend), is hospitalised and placed into an induced coma following a bizarre set-piece with ‘Patriot Blue’ on St Kilda beach (which also served as the location of the halal expo in the first episode). Again, police are absent from this scenario, as they are generally, with the exception of one spook working for the AFP. Neither is it front page news — which is also rather remarkable. The episode, written by Musa, also introduces African gangbangers, who run into the ‘Patriot Blue’ crew outside a convenience store (located on Sydney Road in Brunswick). Later, the gangbangers Hyjak N Torcha one of the men they encounter outside the store. Speaking of which …

The interaction between the fictional world of Romper Stomper and reality has been at the centre of many debates regarding it, both in its original iteration as a film (1992) and as TV (2017). Thus when twice-convicted racist Neil Erikson adopted the name ‘Patriot Blue’ in an attempt to capitalise on the publicity surrounding the relaunch, Stan and Roadshow initiated legal action against him for copyright violation:

Stan and Roadshow Productions would like to clarify that while our series does refer to a purely fictional group created for the series called Patriot Blue, there is no association between our organisations or the Romper Stomper production team and those involved in yesterday’s incident [ie, the racist abuse of Labor MP Sam Dastyari at a bar at Victoria University]. We strongly condemn the actions of this group and racial discrimination in all its forms.

Be that as it may, in the last few weeks the actions of so-called #AfricanGangs has once again been in the news, part of a campaign spearheaded by the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Peter Dutton. Dutton, Newscorpse, and numerous trollumnists obviously hope to create a wedge issue by which they further hope that the Andrews Labor state government may be defeated at the 2018 state election. The SCREAMING HEADLINES! have also naturally triggered the methgoblins of the True Blue Crew. (Note that, in episode two, the ‘Patriot Blue’ street patrol not only string up graf artists, beat African yoof and hand out blankets to the homeless, they also smash a meth lab. Remarkably, none of these activities result in police intervention. IRL, just a few weeks ago Nathan Davidson, a neo-Nazi United Patriots Front fanboy from Canberra, was arrested and charged — again — with possession of ‘600 grams of the drug ice, 1000 MDMA pills, as well as $90,000 in cash at his city home’, along with quantities of heroin, cocaine and anabolic steroids.)

Fourth Reich Fighting Men From Melton

Inspired by Dutton and the tabloids, the True Blue Crew has organised a meeting tomorrow to organise vigilantism directed at African yoof — the ones what stick guns in your face, kidnap and torture youse like what they do in ‘Romper Stomper’. Predictably, it’s received a ton of media attention, assurances from police that they’ll be keeping a close eye on the boys, and rapturous applause from the peanut gallery. If successful, the TBC (and the remnants of the UPF) will join the ranks of the Soldiers of Odin, A26A and Asolate Security in mounting street patrols and who knows, maybe even Avi Yemini will join the gang. And in another case of life-imitating-art-imitating-life, the same gang has refused to be SAD and have organised a BBQ for January 26.

On St Kilda beach.

Never Mind The Bollocks

Any body interested in the reality of anti-fascist activism should watch The Antifascists (2017).

See also : Romper stomped, Rick Kuhn, Red Flag, December 30, 2017 /// Romper stomping through the cliches, Nicola Paris, Medium, January 3, 2018.

* Kane and his sidekick Stix both reside at the Victoria Hotel in Brunswick, which also happens to be the favourite watering-hole of ‘Antifasc’.