3rd Annual International Day of Solidarity with Antifascist Prisoners on July 25, 2017
July 25, 2017 is the third ‘International Day of Solidarity with Antifascist Prisoners’. NYC Antifa:
As the third annual July 25th International Day of Solidarity with Antifascist Prisoners approaches, we find ourselves fighting the hydra of fascism and far-right ideology. While its many heads have distinct looks in different parts of the world, this beast spews the same venomous poison of nationalism and bigotry everywhere. It demonizes refugees and immigrants, stokes hatred for Muslims, and attacks LGBTQ and other oppressed groups who are fighting for liberation and their very lives.
The July 25 International Day of Solidarity with Antifascist Prisoners originated in 2014 as the Day of Solidarity with Jock Palfreeman, an Australian man serving a 20-year sentence in Bulgaria for defending two Romani men being attacked by fascist football hooligans. Whether acting as individuals or as part of larger organized demonstrations, this is the kind of bravery and solidarity which defines antifascist actions against the forces of hate. Since the day of solidarity last year, we have seen this spirit all over the world—in Indonesia, Czech Republic, Brazil, Poland, England, Greece, the United States, France, Syria, Australia, Japan and all points in between.
Read more in English here; you can read translations of the call out im Deutschen, ελληνικά, français, Bahasa Indonesia and other languages here.
The Antifascists (documentary film)
The Antifascists is a new Swedish/Greek documentary ‘that takes us behind the masks of the militant groups called antifascists’.
It will hopefully be screening in Australia later in the year.
The Anti-Antifascists (lol)
Or: Bring all the crew mate it’s gonna be YUGE. Possibly the biggest Sydney has seen for this type of protest march.
On Saturday, July 1, Nick Folkes and the ‘Party for Freedom’ held a small rally in Newtown in order to whinge about ‘anti-fascists’. About 20-30 or so individuals attended the event, which consisted of marching the brief distance from Newtown railway station (chanting the usual inanities), then gathering outside Sergio Redegalli’s former studio (for more chanting), then standing around for an hour as puzzled locals went about their business. Peter Grace:
Apart from All The Usual Suspects, among those who bothered to rock up was Mark McDonald, the former leader of the short-lived neo-Nazi groupuscule ‘Squadron 88’. His presence was more welcome on Saturday than it was in July 2015, when he and geriatric bonehead Ross ‘The Skull’ May were kicked off the ‘patriot’ bus from Sydney to Melbourne for being ‘Nazis’. Among those who turned on the pair was Shermon ‘The Great Aussie Patriot’ Burgess who, since being kicked off Facebook, has now embraced, inter alia, Adolf Hitler and Flat Earthism. Still, the neo-Nazi pinhead was also presumably heartened by the PFF’s recent adoption of the ‘White GeNOcide’ meme, ably embodied by Folkes’ own marriage to an Asian woman (with whom he apparently has children) and the mixed-up confusion that is his young sidekick Toby Cook (below), whose commitment to White nationalism is unimpeded by his own non-European ancestry.
They’re a wEiRd mob!
*Oh yeah: neo-Nazis, White supremacists and AltRight geeks (‘Dingo Con’) also held a gathering in Sydney on the weekend to talk shite. Local neo-Nazi Blair Cottrell attended but Yanqui neo-Nazi Mike Peinovich did not. Note that former Labor leader Mark Latham is a YUGE fan of the neo-Nazi dogs. See also : Mark Latham is working with Rebel Media. Can he also work at the Daily Telegraph?, Jason Wilson, The Guardian, June 14, 2017.
In the last two weeks, Alt-Right trolls have attempted to replay the events in Houston, Texas in June, where using over the top threats from fake antifa groups on social media, they galvanized a ‘counter-protest’ from the militia movement.
Moreover, it turned out that the people behind the trolling where also raking in thousands of dollars off of crowdfunding for the ‘counter-demonstration’ which drew several hundred and led to infighting between militia members and neo-Nazis. Seems like the Right has a business plan! Make a fake antifa group, make over the top threats, and then crowd fund money off of people that want to protest it.
This time around, trolls using the page ‘Harrisburg Antifa’ alleged that antifascists would burn flags and urinate on the graves of Confederate soldiers. These outright lies were then picked up by the ‘journalists’ at Fox News and distributed as actual truth. This connection between Alt-Right trolls and Fox News is not new; just last week Fox reprinted an article written by a member of the Alt-Right who wrote a hit piece about IGD at HeatSt.com.
Interestingly enough however, in the lead up to the protest, Navy Jack, a mover and shaker within the far-Right Oath Keeper militia, called out the event as total make-believe in a tweet (see image on the top-right), which has since been deleted. Navy Jack also included the photos of the two people he believed were behind the fake event and called it #FakeNews.
Other members of the far-Right, such as Joe Biggs, who recently left InfoWars because of the #Pizzagate conspiracy, have stated publicly that the rise of such fake antifa accounts have hurt the far-Right who continues to take them seriously.
In Melbourne on the weekend a dozen or so members of private security company Asolate Security, in conjunction with various self-described ‘patriots’ from the Soldiers of Odin and a handful of other groupuscules, conducted brief forays into Southbank, apparently in order to stop African yoof from stealing Moomba showbags. Or something. The meatheads are active online as ‘A26A’.
I’ve just finished reading John Safran‘s new book Depends What You Mean By Extremist: Going Rogue with Australian Deplorables (Penguin, 2017). Having been a resident in these parts for some time, I enjoyed tagging along with John as he romped through this ‘mad world of misfits’ in ‘the year the extreme became the mainstream’, and had some fun identifying (or trying to identify) the various characters in the book, frequently shielded by pseudonyms. While reactions among friends and comrades has been mixed, and I haven’t read too many reviews as yet, Simon McDonald reckons it’s an easy-reading but hard-hitting expose of political extremism in STRAYA, which I suppose is apt. So in lieu of a proper, y’know, literary review, I thought that, as an anarchist and someone who’s also paid close attention to the far right Down Under, I’d jot down a few notes.
Overall, few of the ‘extremists’ in the book, whether nominally anarchist or Muslim or patriotik, are depicted as being much more than laughable, even if — with the possible exception of the teenybopper who organised the pro-Trump rally in Melbourne in November last year — they’re not engaged in ‘politics’ for the #lulz, and even if for some, principally the Muslim radicals, their religiopolitical practice can entail some fairly serious repercussions (arrest and prosecution, imprisonment, even death). With regards the far right in particular, the cast of characters includes most if not all of the individuals I’ve previously referred to on the blog and who’ve assumed central roles in the far right’s most recent and spectacular excursions into public life: Shermon Burgess aka ‘The Great Aussie Patriot’ (Australian Defence League/Reclaim Australia/United Patriots Front), Ralph Cerminara (ADL), Blair Cottrell (Nationalist Alternative/UPF), Rosalie Crestani (Rise Up Australia Party), Neil Erikson (Reclaim Australia/UPF), Nick Folkes (Party for Freedom), Dennis Huts (UPF), Scott ‘Potty Mouth’ Moerland (RUAP/UPF), Danny Nalliah (RUAP/UPF), Debbie Robinson (Q Society/Australian Liberty Alliance), Dr Jim Saleam (Australia First Party), ‘Farma’John Wilkinson (UPF), Avi Yemini — even geriatric neo-Nazi Ross ‘The Skull’ May makes a brief cameo.*
Perhaps the most coherent perspective, surprisingly enough, is provided by UPF fuehrer Blair Cottrell, who outlines a rational (if rather unlikely) pathway to state power for him and his mates, and for whom the hullabaloo over halals represents merely a convenient platform from which to practice his best Hitler impersonation. Notably, Der Uber Der confesses (p.152) to viewing his followers in much the same way as he views Jews: as divided into highborn and lowborn, order-givers and order-takers. (Of course, there are no prizes for guessing to which category Blair assigns himself.) The seeming absurdities and contradictions which plague the various deplorable characters in the book are remarked upon continually throughout the text: valour thief, serial pest and implacable opponent of Islam, Communism, ‘Third World’ immigration and multi-culturalism, Ralph Cerminara (pp.23–27), apparently has an Italian father, an Aboriginal mother, and a Vietnamese partner, while Dr Jim Saleam causes other white nationalists to snigger behind his back on account of his Lebanese ancestry. John is also keen to underline the fact that religion, especially Christian evangelicalism and fundamentalism, plays a critical role in the worldview of a large segment of Deplorable Australians. Enter Danny Nalliah’s Catch The Fire Ministries/Rise Up Australia Party, that grouping which has done the most to add some, ah, colour, to the various events organised by Reclaim and the UPF. Speaking of Danny, Scott Moerland also stars as ‘Mr Normal’ (p.79). Well for a time at least, before eventually being revealed as being ‘some sort of doomsday Christian’ (p.84): a fact which helps explain why he ran as the RUAP candidate for Oxley at the 2013 federal election (Scott got 400 votes or 0.43% for his troubles).
Those Opposed
In terms of mobilising opposition to Reclaim Australia, the UPF, et. al., the book concentrates on one project: No Room For Racism (NRFR) in Melbourne, for which Mel Gregson is deemed the ‘matriarch’ (p.92). For those of you coming in late, NRFR was established in early 2015 in order to promote opposition to the first (April 4, 2015) Reclaim rally in Melbourne. (Other anti-fascist and anti-racist groups and projects emerged in other towns and cities at the same time.) After April 4, another campaigning group was established in Melbourne called Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (CARF), but its activities play no part in John’s account. In any case, given that both NRFR and CARF are capable of making their own assessments, in the remainder of this post I’m gonna concentrate on a coupla Muslim figures portrayed in the book, before concluding with an assessment of John’s portrayal of my comrades, Les Anarchistes.
(Radikal) Muslims
The ‘extreme’ Muslims featured in the book are Musa Cerantonio, some bloke called ‘Hamza’ and some other fella named ‘Youssef’. Also making a special guest appearance is ‘Ahmet the Turk’, and in ‘The Sufi in the garden’ (pp.40-44), John meets a Sufi; someone who might function as a ‘counterpoint’ to two other Muslims (Musa and Hamza) he talks to about Islam and politics. While the ‘Sufi’ is, like other characters in the book, unnamed, it wasn’t too difficult for me to work out to whom John might be referring. For what it’s worth, they have a very different recollection of their conversation to John’s. Later in the book (p.224), John makes reference to a ‘famous-enough Muslim’, and pays particular attention to something the Islamic semi-idol posted on their Facebook page. Again, it wasn’t too difficult for me to discover who this person is, and I thought it would be worthwhile examining the incident a little more closely, both because of what it reveals about the writing process, but also because it helps shape what eventually becomes one of the key themes of the text: anti-Semitism and its (ab)uses. John writes:
‘We, French-Muslims, are ready to assume our responsibilities.’ Dozens of celebrities and academics have written a letter to a Paris newspaper. The signatories say that local Muslim communities must work harder to stop the extremists in their midst, and to honour those killed the letter lists all the recent terrorist attacks in France.
Except one.
The one at the kosher deli.
‘You are ready to assume your responsibilities’, writes a French Jewish leader in reply, ‘but you are off to a bad start. You need to understand that these anti-Semitic attacks were committed against Jews, who were targetted for being Jewish. In any case we’ll always be here to remind you.’
Those signatories aren’t the only Muslims who believe in Jewish exceptionalism. From France to my hometown …
In which context, a few things:
• The terrorist attack on the kosher deli/the Porte de Vincennes siege (January 2015) involved a man who’d pledged allegiance to Daesh/Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, killing four Jewish shoppers and holding others hostage before being shot dead by French police.
• The statement by some French Muslims was published in Le Journal du Dimanche on July 31, 2016 (see : “Nous, Français et musulmans, sommes prêts à assumer nos responsabilités”). The letter makes explicit reference to five terrorist attacks: at Charlie Hebdo (January 2015); at Bataclan theatre (November 2015); at Magnanville (June 2016); at Bastille Day celebrations in Nice and at a church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray (July 2016). The list is not exhaustive. Thus the letter fails to reference the Toulouse and Montauban shootings of March 2012 (in which a French rabbi, among others, was shot dead), the La Défense attack (May 2013), the Tours police station stabbing (December 2014), the February 2015 stabbing of three French soldiers on patrol outside a Jewish community centre in Nice, an attack upon churches in Villejuif in April 2015, the Saint-Quentin-Fallavier attack of June 2015, the Thalys train attack of August 2015, a man who drove his car into soldiers protecting a mosque in Valence in January 2016, an attack upon a police station in Paris later that month and, finally, an attack upon a family at a holiday resort in Garda-Colombe in July 2016.
• The French Jewish leader is Robert J. Ejnes, Executive Director at the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France (CRIF)/Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions. He posted a comment in response to the statement on his Facebook account on July 31, 2016 [https://www.facebook.com/robert.ejnes/posts/10155122557237942]; the CRIF later posted a modified version of this comment on August 1, 2016. See : Jewish Leader Slams French Muslims for Omitting anti-Semitic Violence From Anti-jihad Petition, Haaretz, August 1, 2016.
• Given that my French-language skills are as advanced as my admiration for Carlton FC, it’s a little difficult to follow the story of the statement, but it’s worth noting that, in response to the criticisms leveled at it of ‘Jewish exceptionalism’, on August 1, 2016, one of the signatories, Socialist Party politician Bariza Khia, published a statement on Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/bariza.khiari/posts/10154298138245900] — later added to the statement published in Le Journal du Dimanche and endorsed by all signatories — in which the signatories claim that the omissions were not deliberate, that they wished to avoid unnecessary controversy, and that ‘Jewish students in Toulouse or clients of the Hyper-Kosher murdered because they were Jews, a Catholic priest martyred in his church, a soldier or a Muslim policeman slaughtered in service … the list of victims is terribly long and so diverse, our nation in all its components, that we must face adversity together’ [machinetranslation]. I suppose it would also be worth adding that it was a Muslim immigrant from Mali who saved the lives of other Jewish shoppers at the supermarket, an action which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised (even if Robert Ejnes did not). See : Malian Muslim hailed for saving lives at Paris market, France24, January 12, 2015.
To return to Almost Famous, John writes that:
… I see today that he’s busy on Facebook, tormenting a family of Israeli immigrants (so, to be clear, Australians) who run the cafe around the corner from my flat. A Muslim friend of his wandered in for a snack a few hours ago and spotted an item on the menu: ‘Israeli breakfast’. Finding out that the family running the cafe are Israeli, she lashed out at them, freaking out everyone in the cafe, and now the famous-enough Muslim is lashing out too, ‘exposing’ this family for being Israeli …
… His Facebook fans pile on: Jews are stingy, so no doubt this Israeli breakfast is the stingiest breakfast ever. That sort of thing.
Again, for what it’s worth:
• While John implies that the discussion takes place sometime in late 2016, in reality the Facebook post is over three years old (May 2013).
• The friend is not described as being ‘Muslim’ but rather ‘Palestinian’.
• According to the account relayed by Famous-Enough Funny-Man: the Palestinian woman cancelled her order because she found out it was an Israeli business; when the owner demanded to know why, she said ‘Because Israel occupies my land’. Allegedly, the owner then followed the Palestinian woman down the street, abused her, and told her to never come near his café again.
• While the post has some caustic commentary, nobody accuses Jews of being ‘stingy’. [EDIT (May 21, 2017) : Somebody did comment to that effect but at some point b/w now + then it was deleted.]
• While I’ve got no idea what happened, and either account could be true, in John’s retelling the Palestinian has become a Muslim, and even if one believes that it’s wrongful for a Palestinian to boycott an Israeli business on account of Israel’s colonial status, a national conflict has become a religiously-motivated one. (Surely there are better examples of anti-Semitic actions on the part of local Muslims than the above?)
Anyways, back to John (p.229):
But hey, maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way. Maybe I should drop in on Mrs Sneer and Mr Snort at the Melbourne Anarchist Club and they can explain to me how spreading avocado over soft-toasted challah is in fact structural violence.
Which would seem as good a time as any to examine how ratbag anarchists are portrayed in the book.
Mrs Sneer & Mr Snort
As part of his journalisms, John joins the UPF as they party after their second rally in Bendigo in October 2015. (A detour finds him at the wrogn pub, one at which members of ‘Nationalist Alternative’ — ‘They’re like the UPF except they don’t sugarcoat their views on Jews’ — are drinking. Not mentioned in the book is the fact that Blair Cottrell, along with Neil Erikson, is a former member of the tiny groupuscule.) Partying with the UPF includes being filmed doing shots of tequila with them. This is later shared by the UPF on their Facebook page, where they jokingly claim that John is now an official member of the gang. John notes that the reception by some on the left to this example of fraternising with teh enimy is frosty. According to John (p.92), ‘The Melbourne Anarchist Club — those guys who turn up to the rallies with their faces wrapped in bandannas — seem particularly miffed’. This is incorrect, and in this instance John seems to have mixed-up the MAC with ‘Melbourne Antifascist Info’, who did indeed ‘hope there’s a good explanation for why John Safran went out for drinks with the United Patriots Front last night’.
After recounting the UPF’s trip to the Melbourne Anarchist Club (MAC) and radio station 3CR (the expedition consisted of Blair Cottrell, Chris Shortis, Neil Erikson, Andrew Wallis and Linden Watson), John attends the Open Day the MAC organised in response: ‘There are more hot anarchists than I expected here. Don’t get me wrong, there are also flabby radicals who wouldn’t be able to throw a Molotov cocktail without breaking into a wheeze, but still’ (p.157). LOL. It’s at this point that Mrs Sneer and Mr Snort enter the story.
After criticising John for his (inadvertent) appearance in the UPF’s promotional stunt, Mr Snort registers his displeasure with John’s article on the Golden Dawn and AFP rally in Brisbane in 2014. It’s at this point that the distinction between ‘structural’ and ‘non-structural’ violence is introduced: Mr Snort says far-right violence is a form of ‘structural violence’ (that is, part of State, corporate and systemic violence), and left-wing violence isn’t. And furthermore, my ‘comedic story’ contributed to this ‘structural violence’ by equating the two. For John, this distinction, and its flaws, comes to encapsulate what he considers a worrying trend, both on the left and among some Muslims (the Sufi’s view on the Charlie Hebdo attack), one which tries and fails to escape the ethical dimensions of discussions on the uses of violence and which, in the end, dismisses various examples of anti-Semitism as being trivial and unworthy of a serious response. Thus Mrs Sneer claims that [t]here’s not meaningful anti-Semitism these days … in the way there’s meaningful Islamophobia, and in practice, this distinction merely becomes a way of separating worth from unworthy victims, the Naughty from the Nice.
Or something.
Mrs Sneer and Mr Snort are then unfavourably compared to the arguably more nuanced approach of ‘Ahmet the Turk’, who attended the open day to express solidarity with the MAC. Beefy and bald, he says he’s new to politics but when he saw ‘these people getting attacked for essentially defending Muslims? I thought, You know what? We’ve got to show them some solidarity. We need to tell them, “You are not alone.” Just like how they’ve told us that we’re not alone.’ Ahmet and the Seven Turks then rock up to the Reclaim/UPF/True Blue Crew rally in Melton (pp.169–180), where inter alia they’re photographed with Senator Lee Rhiannon (or at least, that’s what Ralph Cerminara reckoned LOL) but otherwise try and keep the peace. (As an aside, John writes that the reason the rally was held in Melton was in order to protest the fact that the local council had approved the building of a mosque. This is incorrect. Rather, protesters were angry and upset because they claimed, falsely, that Melton Specialist School had planned to re-locate from Coburns Road to the former site of Victoria University’s Melton campus in Rees Road, Melton South, but was forced to abandon the site to make way for the Al Iman College. See : Anti-Muslim rally reveals a racism both shocking and commonplace, Crikey, November 23, 2015.)
The other anarchist featured in the book is referred to as ‘The CEO’ (p.186): ‘At the rallies he points his finger here and there, muttering into ears, and the little ninjas scuttle off on the mission’. Again, The CEO was not difficult to identify and again, their recollection of their conversations differs from John’s. In any case, insofar as The CEO’s role is understood to be reflective of actual anti-fascist action, organisation and planning, it immediately reminded me of a white nationalist’s account of the TBC rally in Coburg in 2016, in which at one point in the day’s proceedings ‘advance ANTIFA scouts relayed some order via their weird coded street language of whistles and the mob took off at a dead run’. In other words, there are few if any secrets revealed about ‘ANTIFA’ in John’s book.
Finally, the concluding chapters of the book examine Trump’s victory in the US, Pauline Hanson’s return to the Australian Parliament, and the failure of the UPF (as the stillborn ‘Fortitude’ party), the Australian Liberty Alliance and Rise Up Australia Party to make a dent at the 2016 federal election. In the meantime, Musa Cerantonio has been arrested and charged with terrorisms, as has Phill Galea, while Avi Yemini’s attempt to introduce Pauline Hanson and Malcolm ‘Jew World Order’ Roberts to the Jews of Melbourne not unexpectedly fell in a heap. Cory Bernardi has split from the Coalition to form the Conservatives, swallowing Family First and recruiting former ALA candidate Kirralie Smith. Most recently, Bernardi’s neo-reactionary comrade-at-arms George Christensen, having undergone radical weight-loss surgery in Muslim-majority Malaysia, and having previously been a guest speaker at a Reclaim Australia rally and starred on a local neo-Nazi podcast, has now demanded that their New York comrade Mike Peinovich (‘Mike Enoch’) be prevented from entering the country — in order to attend a conference organised by the same crew of nipsters. Neil Erikson has denounced ‘Nazism’ while Shermon Burgess has embraced it. Having been kicked off Facebook, the UPF circus rolls into court again next week (May 23) while the boys in the True Blue Crew have taken some time out from assaulting their partners in order to wave some flags in the CBD on June 25.
* ‘The Skull’ appears as a foil for the UPF in Sydney, which is credited with kicking him off the bus the boys organised to take a small crew of patriotik volk to Melbourne for the joint July 18 Reclaim Australia/UPF rally. At the time, ‘The Skull’ had been adopted as the elderly mascot of a short-lived neo-Nazi groupuscule called ‘Squadron 88’. While the incident is claimed as being proof that the UPF didn’t tolerate the participation of neo-Nazis in its activities, leaving aside the fact that its leadership is (or was) neo-Nazi, in reality ‘The Skull’ was not the only neo-Nazi on the bus, as John Lyons and Martin McKenzie-Murray reported at the time.
A bus trip from Sydney to Melbourne highlighted the way neo-Nazi elements are trying to infiltrate the Reclaim Australia movement. Just after 9pm on Friday, July 17, a mixed group of activists — including four neo-Nazis — turned up at Sydney’s Central station to board a bus organised by UPF. But police were waiting for them. They sought out [John] Oliver, the man who had tried to reveal the identity of Fleming, who was carrying a gun. Oliver tells Inquirer he had notified the police firearms registry that he was transporting the gun to Melbourne but, nonetheless, police did not want the gun on that bus.
Oliver says he was taking the gun to Melbourne so over that weekend he could combine sports shooting and the rally. “Maybe I made an error of judgment to think that I could do the two things on the one weekend,” he concedes.
But he insists that those in Reclaim Australia are mainstream Australians opposing extremism. He says he was concerned there were four neo-Nazis on the bus. “The first thing I saw when I sat down was the guy in front of me draw a swastika on the mist on the window,” he says. “Two of the neo-Nazis were kicked off in Yass and two made it to Melbourne.”
One of those forced off the bus was Ross “The Skull” May, who has become the figurehead of Squadron 88, Australia’s newest neo-Nazi group …
For the few men who comprise the anti-immigration Australia First Party and the neo-Nazi Squadron 88, the numerals referring to “HH” or “Heil Hitler”, it was an opportunity to augment the United Patriots Front’s rally in Melbourne, itself a supplement to the Reclaim Australia rally organised for the foot of the Victorian parliament. A road trip was planned, a bus rented. The journey would be a merry drive from Sydney to Melbourne, a city they deemed a leftist “stronghold”. They packed a gun but Sydney police – aware of the groups – searched them before they departed and it was confiscated …
So the Sydney group were happy to help storm the fortress of Melbourne. They’d take a coach bus into battle. Nine hours of ribald camaraderie before they smashed some commies. It’d be fun. A real weekend.
Except news got out that one of the boys on the bus was Ross “The Skull” May, one of Australia’s more notorious neo-Nazis, and his presence was suddenly considered detrimental.
It is hard to satirise May. As accords his nickname, he looks like a desiccated corpse re-animated by the dark voodoo of Nazism. In reality he’s a semi-coherent octogenarian with few teeth and a sunken face, who in earlier years wore Nazi uniforms and intimidated political opponents.
According to sources, May was told a short way into the road trip to abandon the crusade and he disembarked just outside Canberra. The departure of one man wasn’t insignificant, given there were only about 30 aboard – about 10 to 20 per cent of the eventual anti-Islam congregation in Melbourne.
Finally, and for what it’s worth, on the evening that the bus departed Sydney I took note of the fact that ‘The Skull’, along with members of S88 and AFP, were on board, as did media. I think that this, rather than the UPF’s putative opposition to ‘Nazism’, is what really explains why poor old Ross was told to get off.
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.’
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.
There’s been a significant amount of media coverage in Trumpland about anTEEfa recently, especially regarding the disruption of a speech @ UC Berkeley by AltLite figurehead and professional troll Milo Yiannopoulos. Below are a few relevant articles:
The disruption of Yiannopoulos’ appearance @ Berkeley and the Columbus-like discovery of anTEEfa has caused a whole lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth, not least of all by (Milo’s) Daddy:
In a nod and a wink to his base, Trump has recently made noises about removing white supremacists from the US government shit-list:
The Trump administration’s reported new plan to change a federal program which combats violent “extremism” into a project focused exclusively on “radical Islam” looks like another step toward demonizing Muslims — while adding to concerns that the administration will actively empower open white supremacist groups. Reuters reports that multiple inside sources say the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) grant program will be being renamed either “Countering Islamic Extremism” or “Countering Radical Islamic Extremism.”
Finally, various alleged ‘anti-fascist’ accounts and sites have been springing up recently. In general, be wary of new ‘antifa’ and ‘anarchist’ social media accounts, especially if they simply re-post information 24/7 (as opposed to, say, reporting what is happening in their area or generating original content). On Twitter, look to see if they’re followed back by other respected accounts as well as who actually follows them.
2)
In #STRAYA, the media coverage of the events in Berkeley and protests at Daddy’s inauguration has prompted local fascists to put on their thinking caps, including the bRanes trust @ the United Patriots Front (UPF):
In which context, a few minor points:
• Milo’s performance @ Berkeley was scheduled to take place on February 1; his speech at the University of Washington took place almost two weeks earlier, on January 20. The ‘hero Trump supporter’ who shot the ‘antifa scum’, reportedly a 29yo student and Milo fanboy, was later arrested and released by police. The ‘antifa scum’ who got shot is a 34yo Wobbly.
• Several online petitions have been launched calling upon Daddy to declare ‘ANTIFA’ a ‘terrorist organisation’. One slight problem with this is that ‘ANTIFA’ is not an organisation but a political tendency.
• No ‘antifa’ websites have been hacked. Rather, on February 3, a lapsed domain — antifascism dot org — was squatted by an AltRight guy called Alexander Beck. For teh lulz.
• On February 2, an anonymous shitposting Twitter account — ‘AZ Antifa Front’///@azantifa — tweeted @ AltRight writer Cassandra Fairbanks (@CassandraRules): ‘Some of us know u very personally cass, and know just how afraid u can really get. Be careful doll, for ur duaghters sake’. Soon after, the account — which was only a few weeks old — was suspended by Twitter.
• As noted above, a large number of very dubious anTEEfa accounts have sprung up in the last few months. A few actually worth following are @NYCAntifa, @RoseCityAntifa and @TORCHAntifa.
• The image which accompanies the above post by UPF is of uncertain origin but has been circulating for many years. I first viewed it on the now defunct neo-Nazi ‘Whitelaw Towers’ blog in 2010.
Speaking of which …
The ding-dong battle between Dr Jim Saleam’s Australia First Party (AFP) and Nick Folkes’ Party for Freedom (PFF) for dominance of the (white) nationalist and patriotik milieu in Sydney goes and goes — it just goes. On the one hand, AFP can boast of being federally registered, while in almost five years of campaigning, PFF has yet to achieve the same status. On the other hand, the racist buffoon Folkes has a well-developed knack of courting the media through publicity stunts (some recent examples include ‘The Battle of Eltham’, Gosford Church invasion and Cronulla Riots re-enactment), and has successfully established himself as the go-to guy for media organisations wanting to portray the ‘typical’ Aussie racist. Folkes’ most recent publicity coup is his appearance in the upcoming SBS doco Is Australia Racist?. In this context, Dr Jim’s serious commitment to resurrecting White Australia is simply no match for Folkes’ cartoonish, provocative, and mediagenic presence.
The most recent stoush between the two sides appears to have been triggered, in part, by the appearance of a young woman named Penny Louise in a shitastic article for The Daily Mail, variously titled ‘Mother explains why she joined United Patriots Front’ and ‘I’ll make Australia great again’: Bikini-wearing mother, 20, explains why she supports anti-immigrant Party for Freedom’ (February 2, 2017). Like other patriotik volk, Louise hearts White Australia, and while Folkes’ sidekick Toby Cook sports a Celtic cross tattoo, Louise prefers to fly the flag:
So how did Louise get her face in the Mail? On January 31, Louise posted a brief video to the UPF page, describing herself as a patriot and member of the PFF. Her embrace of the UPF was of course warmly received and she received a (virtual) pat on the head for her efforts. Somewhat incongruously, her action also prompted Shermon Burgess and Neil Erikson of ARSE (‘Australian Settlers Rebellion’ Facebook page) to express support for this alleged alignment of PFF and UPF:
Of course, Last Thursday, ARSE was denouncing the UPF as a ‘Nazi’ organisation. In fact, the boys spent several months castigating ‘patriots’ for continuing to support the UPF after their departure in early 2016, and ARSE was ostensibly established in order to represent the interests of a de-Nazified patriotik movement. But that was Last Thursday, and now one half of ARSE, Neil Erikson, is due in court on March 6, charged with religious vilification. Also facing charges are UPF lvl boss Blair Cottrell, along with former UPF turned AFP member Chris Shortis. The charge arose from a publicity stunt performed by the UPF — comprising Erikson, Cottrell, Shortis, Linden Watson and ‘Farma john’ Wilkinson — in Bendigo in October 2015.
The Days of Our Patriotik Lives — perhaps best-documented (and humourously-subverted) by Peter Grace in hundreds of videos on his Facebook page and YouTube channel — are full of such shenanigans, with Yesterday’s Hero becoming Today’s Villain and vice versa. This is nowhere more apparent than in the case of valour thief and serial pest Ralph Cerminara. One minute, Burgess was writing Walph love songs; nek minnit — after Cerminara ditched ARSE for the UPF — he was accusing Cerminara of not only being a liar and a coward, but of some very serious crimes.
Given to harassing strangers in the street, on the weekend Cerminara picked a fight with Some Old Guy at a PFF event in Sydney — and ended up on his ARSE.
3)
Inspired by Daddy, and following a three-month taxpayer-funded gig to the USA, reactionary Senator Cory Bernardi has quit the Tories to establish a new party, the Australian Conservatives. Cory Cory Cory enters a crowded field on the parliamentary far right, and it’s an open question if he can successfully prise support away from both the Tories and One Nation Party while he sucks on the government teat for the next five years. Bernardi is #BFFs with billionaire Gina Reinhart, and her investment in the Conservatives would surely make this feasible. So too if the Senator can attract the support of micro-parties such as the Australian Liberty Alliance.
On Friday in Melbourne, Bernardi will be joining rural idiot and Nationals MP George ‘Reclaim Australia’ Christensen at a $150 a head fund-raising dinner for The Q Society. The money raised by the event will apparently be used to help fund the legal defence of Kirralie Smith, who is being sued for defamation by Mohamed El-Mouelhy, president of the Halal Certification Authority.
