Tagged with John August

John August ~versus~ slackbastard

    NB. I began writing this in mid-January, put it aside, and am only now returning to it. In the interim, the NSW Humanist Society/Humanist Society of NSW held a meeting on February 14, 2010, to elect a new Committee of Management, but I’m unaware of the results of this meeting (see below), and who now constitutes the Committee. The latest edition of the Society newsletter, however, states that the person previously responsible for letting the Hall (David Duffy) has been replaced, and those wishing to hire it will be more stringently vetted in future.

Introduction

As noted, John August, the President of the NSW Humanist Society/Humanist Society of NSW, has recently released a statement regarding the Society, Humanist House, and the ‘Public Information Forum’ (PIF), a fascist grouping whose meetings at the House in October and November 2009 were accompanied by protest. After detailing some recent history involving the Society’s relationship to and with the PIF (aka ‘Klub Nation’/’Klub Naziya’/’Mark Pavic Group’), as well as an attempt to introduce a statement in opposition to racism and xenophobia into the group’s Constitution, August notes that the Society’s last AGM:

…resulted in a committee which included many PIF members who had not previously attended social gatherings or committee meetings, contributed to the Humanist Viewpoints or otherwise taken an interest in the NSW Humanists. The election was itself problematic, with no scrutiny of candidates before the election, and confusion about preferential voting.

The Society zine (Humanist Viewpoints, Vol.48, No.4, October/November/December 2009) states that the:

2009 AGM was well attended and the new committee consists of John August (President), David Duffy and Waratah Rosemarie Gillespie (Vice Presidents), Victor Bien (Treasurer), Affie Adagio (Hon Sec/Editor) and Angela Drury (Assist. Sec). Ordinary committee members: Dylon Anderson, Ken Cratchley, Tony D’Angiolillo, Hugh Drewitz, Gillian Ellis, Fred Flatow, Robin Hall, Mark Pavic, Andrew Wilson, and John Wright.

The same number also welcomes the (‘White nationalist’) Australian Protectionist Party’s NSW spokesperson Darrin Hodges into the Humanist fold.

Protest

In relation to public protest at Humanist House, August has little new to add. There were two such protests — in October and November — timed to coincide with the meeting of the neo-Nazis. August reiterates the fact that he considered the protests violent (a Society member who witnessed one of the protests asserts that the protesters struck the building, and “a glass panel inside Humanist House was damaged around this time”) and therefore unwelcome, and that he remains at a loss as to the identities of those participating. August also complains that participants failed to contact the Society prior to the protests in order to communicate their concerns, and have not done so since. For their part, the neo-Nazis apparently accused August and the committee of collaborating with the protesters and, inter alia, “claimed that the police would be investigating the damage which resulted to Humanist House”. In summary: “The protester’s careless and ill-thought out actions exacerbated an already difficult and stressful situation. Great work, guys.”

Police

Again, not a great deal of new information. August spoke to Redfern police about the protests, who expressed knowledge of the involvement of participants in other political activity (“The protesters knew that the group went by the name “Klub Nation”… and it seems had been protesting elsewhere”).

Politics

In news just to hand:

I was intrigued to note that the Humanist Society of NSW was not an exhibitor at the Global Atheist Convention, an event at which one of its Patrons, Robyn Williams, was a guest speaker.

Pam Walker has authored an article — Anti-fascist protests at Humanist House, City Hub, March 17, 2010 — which states that Mark Pavic was elected Vice President of the Society at its February 14 meeting. If correct, then the fascists have not only not been removed from the Society but, seemingly, further cemented their place within it. Which is, of course, unfortunate: moaron that subject — and August’s understanding of the political issues raised by neo-Nazi infiltration of a Humanist association — later.

In the meantime, however, readers should note other events from Australian history — from 100 or more years ago. Humanists in particular should discuss the relevance of this history with other groups in civil society.

NB. The Melbourne Anarchist Club was formed on May 1, 1886 by members of the Australasian Secular Association. Anarchists played a key role in challenging Christian domination of the colonies, and in particular bourgeois opposition to participation by the working class in public life. In 1889, and the years following, anarchist and socialist agitators such as Chummy Fleming, Sam Rosa and John White participated in regular public protests demanding the opening of libraries and other civic institutions on Sundays.

Bonus History!

[Source : Radical Melbourne, Jill and Jeff Sparrow, Vulgar Press, 2001, pp.161–164.]

In 1883, The Argus published an article condemning the presence of the poor in the Public Library on Swanston Street:

A visitor to the library may test the matter first by his nose. He can smell vagrancy the moment he crosses the threshold. Using his eyes, he can see it right up and down the long hall; peering curiously about, he can find it in any of the alcoves, nicely sheltered and walled about with books. If he chooses to particularise, he may see an unmistakable specimen enter, shuffle up to a bookcase, select a volume of light literature, choose a seat, set up his elbows as supports to his head, and bend his eyes on the print. In a little while he spits. In an hour he will sleep; if he snores an attendant may disturb him; then he will read and spit again.

The Argus proposed two solutions – regulations forcing potential entrants to show a letter of introduction from a ‘respectable’ household or, failing that, the division of the building into distinct areas for different classes. By name, the library might have been ‘Public’ (or ‘Free’), but there was more than a suggestion from Melbourne’s elite that the building and its collection remained rather too good for the populace, since ‘the books . . . are handled, and soiled, and spoiled, and frequently mutilated, by creatures who would be better bestowed within Her Majesty’s gaols’.

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NSW Humanist Society 1 ‘Public Information Forum’ 0

A ‘Final statement by John August, President Humanist Society of NSW, regarding Humanist House and the PIF’ has been published on Indymedia, dated January 8, 2010. It concerns the relationship between the Society and the ‘PIF’, or ‘Public Information Forum’, a small group which has been associated with the Society for the last decade or so, and which has been the subject of some controversy given its fascist political complexion.

In brief, the Society has announced that it will no longer be making its premises in Chippendale available to the innocuous-sounding PIF. (An aside: according to Martin Walker in his The National Front (1977), citing Rodney Legg, ‘NF Directorate meetings were always held in a public house booked in the name of the Anglo-Asian Friendship Society’ — arf arf.) This decision was made at some unspecified but recent point by an Executive appointed at a Special General Meeting late last year. Otherwise, August’s statement provides his account of events within the Society over the last few months, culminating in the SGM. Of note is the fact that a large number of Sydney-based racists and fascists have joined the Society, and a proportion of these elected to the Society’s Committee. The Executive is currently organising an AGM at which a new Committee will be elected; the composition of this Committee will reflect the relative strength of the racist and fascist contingent.

Finally, on a spotterly note: “While other hirers of [Humanist House] have a public identity and often a webpage (one example is the “Spartacist” group, a previous tenant, which have a regular publication, website and entry on Wikipedia), there is no similar such information available on PIF”.

See also : Fascist infiltration of the ‘Humanist Society of New South Wales’ (Inc.) (November 25, 2009) | Klub Naziya / Klub Nation / Public Information Forum / Jason Rafty… (November 15, 2009) | Neo-Nazis in Sydney // Neo-Nazis in Phoenix (November 10, 2009) | Klub Naziya in Chippendale (November 7, 2009) | Neo-Nazism ~versus~ humanism (November 4, 2009) | Is neo-Nazism humanist? (October 14, 2009).

Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.

~ Frederick Douglass, “If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress”, August, 1857.