antifa notes (october 4, 2017) : Stephen Johnson, The Daily Mail Australia, ‘Melbourne Antifa’ and more …

Posted on October 4, 2017 by @ndy

[Update (October 5, 2017) : snopes has an article up debunking the ‘Melbourne Antifa’ account here: Did ‘Melbourne Antifa’ Claim Responsibility for the Vegas Massacre?, Kim LaCapria, October 4, 2017.]

1) Stephen Johnson, The Daily Mail & ‘Melbourne Antifa’

In response to the massacre in Las Vegas, Stephen Johnson of The Daily Mail has republished a statement by ‘Melbourne Antifa’ — a troll page on Facebook — praising the killer. Titled ”One of our comrades has made those Trump supporting dogs pay’: Left-wing ‘Melbourne Antifa’ extremists condemned for praising Las Vegas shooter after he shot dead 59 people’ (October 3, 2017), the article has been widely-shared on social media: by the stupid, the gullible, the malicious, and spambots.

This is the third occasion upon which Stephen has relied upon his friends on the AltRight to help propagate obviously fake material, previously having republished two other statements by the same troll page regarding Mohamed Elmouelhy (‘With friends like these … Left-wing extremist group DEFENDS halal boss’ claims Australian women need Muslim men to fertilise them – calling critics ‘racist”, July 31, 2017) and Andrew Bolt (”List them as a terrorist organisation’: Malcolm Turnbull urged to formally declare group that attacked Andrew Bolt as dangerous extremists’, June 11, 2017).

Of course, Stephen knows this material is nonsense, but it makes for very good clickbait, which for a hack is the only thing that matters. As such, it’s highly unlikely that this is the last time he’ll contribute another small pile to the mountain of ‘fake news’ in circulation, and other dickheaded statements by the troll page will continue to be republished by him.

Finally, the ‘Melbourne Antifa’ Facebook account is one of several such troll pages, which include Antifa Adelaide, Antifa Adelaide – Australia, Brisbane Antifa, Hobart Antifa, Sydney Antifa, Antifa Sydney, Antifa Townsville and presumably others. Fair dinkum pages include: Antifascist Action Brisbane, Antifascist Action Canberra, Melbourne Antifascist Info and Anti Fascist Action Sydney.

See also : Facebook and Google promote politicized fake news about Las Vegas shooter, Sam Levin, The Guardian, October 3, 2017 | A running list of viral hoaxes and misinformation about the Las Vegas shooting, Abby Ohlheiser, The Washington Post, October 3, 2017 | Here Are All The Hoaxes Being Spread About The Las Vegas Shooting, Ryan Broderick, Buzzfeed, October 2, 2017 | Was Las Vegas Shooter Identified at an Anti-Trump Protest?, Dan Evon, snopes, October 3, 2017.

2) Blair Cottrell is appealing

Blair Cottrell, the former leader of the now moribund ‘United Patriots Front’ (UPF), was in court again yesterday to lodge an appeal against his conviction last month — along with former flunkeys Neil Erikson and Chris Shortis — of serious religious vilification.

United Patriots Front member Neil Erikson gives up fight against revulsion charge
Wayne Flower
Herald Sun
October 3, 2017

UNITED Patriots Front leader Blair Cottrell will continue the fight to clear his name of hate speech charges alone after his mates left him holding the can.

Cottrell fronted the County Court today where an appeal date was set for next year.

But the court heard his alleged co-offender Neil Erikson had failed to lob into court a day earlier, thus abandoning his appeal.

Cottrell, 27, Erikson, 32, and Christopher Neil Shortis, 46, were each convicted and fined $2000 last month for knowingly engaging in conduct with the intention of inciting serious contempt for or revulsion of a class of people, namely Muslims, under the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act.

The tough talking Erikson had previously been staunch in his defiance of the charge, calling on Victoria Police Commissioner Graham Ashton to appear at an earlier hearing at the magistrates’ court.

“They are corrupted. They have pushed for this case. They have pushed for us to be at court today. I think it’s a conspiracy against right-wing politics and conservative values,” he said at the time.

The men were the first to be convicted of the crime since the Act came into force in 2001.

They were charged in 2015 after they made a video protesting the construction of a mosque in Bendigo in which they beheaded a dummy with a toy sword and spilt fake blood on the footpath outside Bendigo City Council offices.

In finding the men guilty, Magistrate John Hardy condemned their behaviour, declaring they had each “crossed the line”.

At the end of last month’s hearing, each of the men claimed they would appeal their convictions.

A County Court spokesman said the court still had no record of Shortis ever lodging an appeal.

The wannabe politician had been highly critical of the government throughout his court proceeding.

On conviction, he maintained he did not recognise the little-used law and complained that people had mocked his Christian faith without recourse.

“A court of law is not a place for hurt feelings,” he said.

Today’s appearance by Cottrell drummed-up none of the drama seen at previous hearings.

On those occasions, city streets needed to be blocked-off to accommodate scores of protesters and television reporters jostled with Cottrell’s supporters outside court.

Cottrell’s appearance today attracted no more than three reporters, with not a single UPF supporter in attendance.

Cottrell initially missed the hearing, which was promptly struck out by Judge Barbara Cotterell.

But the UPF frontman arrived shortly after and he was allowed to continue the appeal.

He told the court he was in the process of seeking new lawyers.

It remains unclear on what grounds Cottrell hopes to run his appeal.

Neo-Nazi Cottrell is presumably hoping to replicate the successful appeal (2006/7) of similar charges brought against Christian fundamentalist preachers Daniel Nalliah and Daniel Scot.

3) Neil Erikson & Michael Holt

Speaking of courts, hatred, Neil Erikson and the UPF, last week another one of Neil’s former chums, Michael Holt, was sent to jail. See : White supremacist Michael Holt sentenced to 4.5 years for weapons, child porn offences (Harriet Alexander, The Sydney Morning Herald, September 29, 2017). This is not the first time Neil’s mates have found themselves in trouble with the law. Previously, in December 2012, other former comrades of Neil Erikson’s, members of the ‘Crazy White Boys’, were sent to jail for a vicious assault upon a Vietnamese student. Currently, members of the Perth-based Aryan Nations (Melony Attwood, Robert Edhouse, Corey Dymock and a 17-year-old who cannot be named), comrades of Neil’s but also the UPF’s, are awaiting trial for the murder of 42-year-old Alan Taylor, found beaten to death in his Girrawheen bedroom in April last year (Teenager admits lie and avoids jail, Tim Clarke, The West Australian, August 10, 2017).

Top Blokes, these nazis.

See also : Slideshow: Rise And Fall Of Aryan Nations In North Idaho, James Dawson, Boise State Public Radio, October 2, 2017.

4) David Hilton : Ace Detective

AltRight blogger David Hilton (AKA ‘Moses Apostaticus’) has published a post on his website tradnash[dot]net claiming that I’m somebody called PD (and his wife). As on the two previous occasions David has ‘outed’ me, the allegation is untrue, but his fellow meatheads are of course delighted. Peter Grace:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

BONUS! STOOPID

In addition to The Daily Mail, the Las Vegas massacre has produced a phantastic range of batshit. These articles document some of the best additions to the rich, creamy discourse:

Alex Jones Is Already Floating A Conspiracy Theory About The Vegas Mass Shooting Being A Hoax, Kimberly Ricci, Uproxx, October 2, 2017;
Misinformation Is the New Normal of Mass Shootings, Ben Strauss and Derek Robertson, Politico, October 2, 2017 (‘Conspiracy theories and other deliberately false assertions have become as predictable as the gun control debate’);
Out-of-Control Alex Jones Blames Leftists, Communists, Globalists, ISIS, Antifa for Las Vegas Shootings, Jarrett Lyons, AlterNet/Salon, October 2, 2017;
Reddit’s Trumpkins on the Vegas shooting, before and after they learned it was a rich old white man, boing boing, October 3, 2017;
Alex Jones Justifies Las Vegas Conspiracy Theories: ‘I Talk To The President Sometimes’, Jared Holt, Right Wing Watch, October 3, 2017;
Las Vegas conspiracies are still spreading on Facebook, Noah Kulwin and Rex Santus, VICE, October 3, 2017;
Las Vegas Shooter Stephen Paddock Was ‘Antifa,’ According to Persistent Alt-Right Conspiracy, Michael Edison Hayden, Newsweek, October 3, 2017.

Posted in !nataS, Anti-fascism, Death, Media, State / Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Who are Antipodean Resistance?

Posted on September 28, 2017 by @ndy

The name ‘Antipodean Resistance’ (AR) has been in the news again recently, both on account of its conducting so-called ‘training camps’ in Victoria and Queensland but also as a result of it spreading homophobic propaganda at the University of Tasmania. Most of the reportage on the group has slotted into the “SHOCK! HORROR!” category, and revealed bugger-all about its origins, membership, or relation to the broader milieu from which it emerged.

This is par for the course when it comes to media reportage on the antics of the far-right in Australia, and is to be expected. To cite one example, ‘What is Australia’s white supremacist group, Antipodean Resistance?’ (Olivia Lambert, news.com.au, September 7, 2017): ‘AUSTRALIA’S secret collective of neo-Nazis is spreading shocking messages of hate, yet chillingly claims its members are growing in number.’ Further:

The Daily Telegraph reports the neo-Nazis are now being monitored by the ASIO out of fear the extremist group could turn violent.

“Members of these groups are diverse and have different agendas, including extreme right-wing and extreme left-wing ideologies,” ASIO said to a parliamentary review into the expenditure of security agencies.

In other words: ASIO is undertaking the work it always has.

A few more preliminary remarks are in order:

First, AR is not unique, and neo-Nazism isn’t ‘new’ (in this sense): there have been neo-Nazis running about the place since Hitler killed Hitler, and there likely always will be. One of its contemporary expressions may be found in the AltRight; The Beast Reawakens by Martin A. Lee (Little, Brown and Co., 1997) explores the re-emergence of Nazism in Germany in the aftermath of WWII and its renaissance in various territories in Europe, the United States and elsewhere: you can read the introduction to Lee’s 1997 work here; of related interest is David Bird’s Nazi Dreamtime, ‘the ground-breaking story of extreme-right, ultra-nationalist thought and practice in Australia in the period immediately before and during the Second World War. It focuses on those native-born Australians who were attracted to the ideology of Nazism in Germany from 1933.’

Secondly, much of the reportage on the group fails to recognise that its shitty propaganda campaigns are aimed at generating precisely the SHOCK! HORROR! headlines it craves. While the report is in some ways quite valuable, the headline ‘Antipodean Resistance Neo-Nazi group trying to sway Australia’s same-sex marriage postal vote’ (Danny Tran, ABC, September 5, 2017) is misleading: the Hitler fanboys of AR aren’t trying to ‘sway’ opinion; they’re trying to reach as wide an audience as possible with a view to potentially recruiting that segment of the population for whom their rank prejudice appeals. (See also : Follow the lede: Danny Tran on the neo-Nazi propaganda in the same-sex marriage debate, ABC Overnights, September 18, 2017.)

Thirdly, all the reportage on AR thus far has failed to recognise its links to and origins within the so-called patriotic movement. Reclaim Australia — along with the United Patriots Front (UPF), True Blue Crew (TBC), and various other extreme-right satellites — has provided precisely the warm and nurturing environment in which an explicitly neo-Nazi grouplet like Antipodean Resistance has been able to gestate. Further, no reportage has noted that the group has publicly stated that it models itself upon relevant groups overseas: National Action (NA) in the UK and the Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) in Scandinavia in particular.

In this context, it’s worth noting that in December 2016 NA was proscribed in the UK as a ‘terrorist’ organisation, while most recently 11 suspected members of the neo-Nazi group have been arrested on suspicion of terror offences across England and Wales (National Action: 11 suspected members of banned neo-Nazi terror group arrested in England and Wales, Lizzie Dearden, The Independent, September 27, 2017). As for the NRM, in July three of its members were sentenced to jail for ‘carrying out bomb attacks on a left-wing bookstore and an asylum center and an attempted bombing of a second asylum center’; last year, another NRM member, ‘Jesse Torniainen, was sentenced to two years in jail for an aggravated assault that allegedly led to a man’s death at a Nordic Resistance Movement demonstration in Helsinki’, while Finnish police have applied to have the organisation proscribed in that country.

In Australia, the NRM’s kissing cousins, the ‘Soldiers of Odin’, are compared to the Guardian Angels by The Age.

Antipodean Resistance

The group has its origins on tumblr and on neo-Nazi website ‘Iron March’ (IM), with two young fellows from Melbourne, one using the handle ‘kehlsteinhaus’ (‘Eagle’s Nest’: a Nazi-era building erected atop the summit of the Kehlstein, a rocky outcrop that rises above the Obersalzberg near the town of Berchtesgaden), and the other ‘Xav’, forming its core.

kehlsteinhaus

On March 2, 2016, ‘kehlsteinhaus’ wrote by way of introduction to IM that he was 22yo, unemployed, and interested in creating an Australian version of NA. Originally from Perth, he now resides in Melbourne. ‘kehlsteinhaus’ also claims to have been a ‘communist’, a ‘democratic socialist’, to have attended meetings and rallies organised by Socialist Alternative, but most recently to have been involved with the UPF. And, like Blair Cottrell and Neil Erikson, he also claims to be a member or former member of the Melbourne-based neo-Nazi grouplet ‘Nationalist Alternative’ (NAlt). According to ‘kehlsteinhaus’, ‘Blair and Thomas [Sewell] are full 14/88. I’ve met and talked to them in person many times. They’ve recently converted [Chris] Shortis, who now thinks Hitler was right about pretty much everything. [Scott] Moreland [sic] is shit. [Dennis] Huts is a mixed bag.’

‘kehlsteinhaus’ also maintained several tumblrs, among them: antipodeansolutions, nedkellyofficial, the-kangaroos-nest and thesagesworld (now closed, but traces of which remain) and often skipped from one to the other. The launch of AR in late 2016 meant that he transferred his online activities from tumblr to IM and the grouplet’s own site (launched in November 2016) and Twitter account (created in February 2017). His parting message:

LOL.

In September 2016, ‘kehlsteinhaus’ also stated that he does volunteer work at a church and dreamed of being a politician, academic or teacher — or possibly a member of a right-wing death squad. Further, the aspiring acdemic and/or RWDS member claimed to have an uncle and a sister who are married to ‘Indians’ (with whom they — gasp! — have children), not to drive a car but to use public transport, being 5’10” or 5’11” and going to Wollongong in October 2016 in order to attend his cousin’s wedding.


The boys made their first step into LARPing as an organised grouplet in July 2016 at a tiny ‘Blue Lives Matter’ counter-rally in Melbourne, where they joined Blair Cottrell (cleverly disguised as ‘Bruce’) in order to hold a brief rally before being told to shoo by police. According to kehlsteinhaus:

I’m not fully certain on everyone, but some are ‘from’ the UPF, Ironmarch, [The Right Stuff], a uni group I know little about, and skinhead groups. There’s actually quite a lot of us, and I thoroughly recommend starting things in your city. We can’t do this all by ourselves. Two of the people there flew over from Adelaide for goodness’s sake. … I was carrying the GO HOME SOROS DRONES sign.



Prior to this, he and his crew (above) also attended the TBC anti-leftist counter-rally in Coburg, for which he provided a terribly exciting account on his tumblr of how the TBC & Co beat to a pulp their anti-fascist opponents. On that occasion, most of the boys appear to have been wearing merch with the Wolfsangel (AKA the Dopplehaken or Wolf’s-Hook emblem). Old School bonehead and ‘Combat 18’ member Dan Newman (AKA Danny Krieger) was also in amongst the boys on that day, and has worn the fashionable ensemble on other occasions.

On his own or in the company of others, ‘kehlsteinhaus’ also attended: the UPF rally in Melbourne in November 2015 (‘I arrived early because I wanted to finally meet Blair, after following his progress since he began … I met Thomas Sewell, who I am a bit of a fan of … I doubt I made the best first impression on Thomas, who probably saw me as just another supporter (which I am determined not to be)’; the failed launch of ‘Fortitude’ in Bendigo in February 2016 and; the TBC flag rally in Melbourne in June 2016 (at which Blair ‘made his most moderate speech I’ve heard that was thematically all over the place, as well as containing yet more attempts at trying to look non racist in front of the media (for those not aware, Blair Cottrell is the leader of the group, and a National Socialist, which makes the whole thing quite frustrating)’. On most of these occasions ‘kehlsteinhaus’ was masked, but he did post one photo to tumblr in which he is not:

Perhaps someone out there recognises him? (Keeping in mind he may be 1/364th Aboriginal.)

Xav

The other key figure in AR is another young fellow who posts on IM as ‘Xav’. ‘Xav’ joined the IM forum in May 2015, describing himself as a 22yo national socialist of English and German descent, a Uni dropout who lives in Melbourne, and as someone who was, like many of the other AR boys, ‘radicalised’ online. His favourite authors are dead nazis William Pierce (author of The Turner Diaries) and George Lincoln Rockwell.

borderprotectionist

Another tumblr radical (his blog now also deleted), borderprotectionist is an older Melbourne resident who more closely approximates the Old School nazi stereotype: crudely racist and with shit tatts. He also has children, it appears, and likes to play and to pose with guns.


Arschschmerzwagen/terminalautist88/Vandal Nationalist

Another IM user, Vandal Nationalist joined in April 2016 and described himself at the time as a 17yo and of British and German descent. A self-described edgy, atheist and leftist gamer at 14:

I started playing a lot of Company of Heroes and that got me interested in World War 2. I always liked the Germans better since I have German heritage and was/still am learning German. I wanted to learn more so I started watching the good goy World War 2 documentaries on Youtube until I stumbled upon Adolf Hitler: the greatest story never told. I’ve been a bad goy ever since. I normally frequent 8ch.net/pol and therightstuff.biz forums but I decided to join the Iron March forum after listening to all of Fascism 101 videos on YouTube. They’re excellent but I wish there were more on there. I’m interested in joining any Fascist/National Socialist group in Melbourne.

Very oddly, ‘Vandal Nationalist’ posted several photos purporting to be of himself (which I won’t republish here) on IM.

J**** H******

Finally, earlier this year a geek was spotted chucking up AR stickers in Carlton and Fitzroy. This fine young fellow would appear to be J***** H****** — a very naughty boy, and someone whose parents do not share his love of Mister Hitler.

NB. I’ll probably be adding more detail to this post in time, but for various reasons — not least because a number of the geeks in question are young and their parents are not. happy. with their career choices — what this consists of is not entirely up to me.

See also : White supremacists claim postal survey sparked interest, Stephen Smiley, The World Today (ABC), September 5, 2017 | Australian neo-Nazi group peppers schools with racist fliers, Amanda Erickson, The Washington Post, August 16, 2017 | White supremacist posters targeting students placed at Melbourne high schools, Melissa Davey, The Guardian, August 16, 2017 | Anti-Chinese Posters at Melbourne Universities Are Tied To White Supremacists, Isabella Kwai and Xiuzhong Xu, The New York Times, July 25, 2017 | Offensive flyers targeting Chinese students found at Melbourne universities, Kathy Lord, ABC, July 25, 2017 | Nazi posters in Melbourne, Australian Jewish News, February 17, 2017 | Neo-Nazi posters at Melbourne Uni, Peter Kohn, Australian Jewish News, December 8, 2016.

Posted in Anti-fascism, Student movement | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

antifa notes (september 27, 2017) : good night alt right

Posted on September 27, 2017 by @ndy

local

Oh dear.

In a lulzy moment, those scallywags at Jews against fascism have stumbledupon an image of neo-Nazi Blair Cottrell trussed up like the fascist turkey he is. Not everybody finds the image amusing, however, including Blair’s father, Brian:

Brian also apparently doesn’t like Jews any more than his son does — but that comment went down as quickly as it went up.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree eh?

Speaking of anti-Semites, The Daily Caller columnist David Hilton (‘Moses Apostaticus’) is featured in an article on the OHPI site titled ‘The far-right trolls’ (September 11, 2017). And speaking of The Daily Caller: The Daily Caller Removes ‘Unite the Right’ Organizer Jason Kessler’s Bylines From Web Site (Bethania Palma, snopes, August 14, 2017): ‘The conservative site has deleted articles by a white supremacist who organized the deadly rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.’

Also in September, Tory MP Nick Wakeling was revealed to be the brother of neo-Nazi and Cottrell and United Patriots Front fanboy Tim Wakeling. According to the Herald Sun (Liberal MP Nick Wakeling rejects brother’s extremist Facebook views, Anthony Galloway, September 10, 2017), Nick has no desire to join his brother in dreaming of the mass killing of Jews at Auschwitz. In the meantime, Tim’s younger kameraden have been distributing neo-Nazi propaganda at the University of Tasmania campus: Nazi attack on University of Tasmania campus condemned, Nick Clark, The Mercury, September 25, 2017.

Finally, Melbourne University Press is doing a local print run of Mark Bray’s book Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook and Andrew Fenton has written on Australia’s far right fighting for attention (CNN, September 23, 2017), which includes, inter alia, reference to the fact that Neil Erikson is intending to profit from the upcoming Romper Stomper TV show.

and/or general

• After being kicked off several different domains, the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer has finally found a safe space in Iceland (Iceland authorities weighing options after neo-Nazi site registers there, Timothy B. Lee, Ars Technica, September 23, 2017);
• Shane Burley examines the fallout from Charlottesville on the US ‘altright’ in Disunite the Right: The Growing Divides in the Pepe Coalition (Political Research Associates, September 19, 2017), while Spencer Sunshine takes a look at the tiny ‘Mother Of All Rallies’ in Washington on September 16 and asks Was the Failed ‘Mother of All Rallies’ the Beginning of the End of Independent Trumpism? (Colorlines, September 20, 2017);
• Hope Note Hate has published an extensive report on ‘The International Alternative Right’. It charts the movement’s origins, development, key events and figures and includes an analysis of the experiences of a young Swede who went undercover among their circles for a year. It’s highly-recommended reading;
• Finally, anti-fascists in Athens are featured in a report on Al Jazeera (Punching back: Greek gym trains for anti-fascist action, September 19, 2017), while in truthout Sarah Jaffe interviews author Mark Bray about Anti-Fascist Self-Defense: From Mussolini’s Italy to Trump’s America (September 13, 2017).

Posted in Anti-fascism | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

¡ALERTA! Stop fascists rallying @ LGBT Holocaust Memorial, Sydney : Saturday, September 23, 2017

Posted on September 21, 2017 by @ndy

Update (September 23, 2017) : Somewhere between 15 and 30 people bothered to rock up to Nick Folkes’ stoopid. It was shit, really. See : Straight Lives Matter rally in Sydney outnumbered by police, same sex marriage advocates as leader blames ‘violence’, Natalie Wolfe, news.com.au, September 23, 2017 | Sydney, Australia: Report-Back from the ‘Straight Lives Matter’ Counter-Demo, Insurrection News, September 23, 2017.

This post is dedicated to the memory of Willem Arondeus, the gay Dutch resistance member executed by the Nazis in July 1943 and Righteous Among the Nations.

This Saturday in Sydney, Nick Folkes and his Party for Freedom (PFF) are holding an anti-marriage equality rally (‘Straight Lives Matter’) at Green Park (corner of Victoria & Burton Streets), Darlinghurst. Folks in Sydney have organised a counter-protest for which there’s a Facebook event page here.

Green Park is the site of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Holocaust Memorial and just a hop, skip and a jump to both the Sydney Jewish Museum and the Jewish War Memorial and Museum. Fitting, then, that the list of attendees at the hate rally includes anti-Semites, neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers. According to a report on news.com.au (Far right nationalist Party for Freedom to hold ‘Straight Lives Matter’ anti-same-sex marriage rally, Benedict Brook, September 20, 2017):

The party’s leader, Nick Folkes, told news.com.au being gay was a choice and called people who didn’t identify with their biological gender “retards”.

Provocatively, the protest is being held in the Sydney suburb of Darlinghurst, famous for its large LGBTI population and metres from a memorial to murdered gays and lesbians.

The group was unapologetic for holding the rally next to a monument mourning gay people executed by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust.

“We want to make a strong point — I don’t feel we’re provoking anyone, we can hold a rally anywhere,” Mr Folkes said. He said “yes” campaigners could hold a march in a “straight area”.

NSW Police confirmed they would be in attendance at the event.

(Police in Gothenburg, Sweden will also be providing an honour guard for a neo-Nazi march less than 500 feet from a synagogue on Yom Kippur.)


(Above : PFF placard featuring Nazi Totenkopf on L and Sydney Gay & Lesbian Holocaust Memorial on R.)

For those of you coming in late, the PFF developed as a split from the Australian Protectionist Party — itself created as a split from the Australia First Party — in mid-2012, following the APP leadership’s rejection of the Sydney branch’s organisation of a public rally demanding that the Australian government ‘Torpedo the Boats’ carrying asylum seekers to Australia. The unregistered micro-party has a history of organising publicity stunts. In April 2016 its members disrupted a church service in Gosford on account of the Gosford Anglicans’ support for human rights, while in December 2015 the party celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Cronulla pogrom. Most recently, members of the party, along with a handful of others including Neil Erikson, disrupted a meeting of Yarra council in Melbourne in order to protest its decision to cancel celebrations of Australia Day on January 26. Martin Fletcher, the (former) Vice Chairman of the PFF and its IT Guy, once made the video game ‘Muslim Massacre’ available on his now-defunct website: the aim of the game is to kill all Muslims that appear on the screen. Prior to this, his site was used to promote anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial and carried neo-Nazi propaganda.

Among the few dozen who’ve indicated that they’ll be joining Nick Folkes and fellow PFF members Toby Cook, George Jameson and Penny Louise/Tridgell at the hate rally are Sukith Fernando and Simeon Boikov. Sukith is a Tory student activist at the University of Sydney, a contributor to The Spectator (Australia), a Holocaust denialist, and a bit of a Hitler fanboy. (He also got into a spot of bother last week for these views.) Simeon, on the other hand, is a Putin fanboy, a Cossack, and a close ally of both the local branch of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn and the Australia First Party.

As xbops notes:

… it is important to be aware that Party for Freedom are a fascist organisation with a long record of campaigning against sexual and ethnic minority groups – including refugees – and in support of reintroducing the ‘White Australia’ policy … [The PFF are also] growing more brazen in their willingness to display fascist, Nazi, and white nationalist symbolism. In the wake of the events in Charlottesville, Virginia last month, and the emboldening of the US far-right under Trump, it is imperative, now more than ever, to put an unequivocal check on the transnational growth of fascist (and) homophobic movements.

The willingness of the PFF to more openly espouse fascist and White supremacist ideology should also be considered in terms of its re-incorporation of the remnant members of neo-Nazi grouplet ‘Squadron 88’, who attended PFF rallies in Newtown and Lithgow in July. To date, S88 is best-known for shoving shitty anti-Semitic tracts into the letterboxes of folks (many Jewish) in Bondi in August 2014 and more recently for throwing up racist posters in Petersham in July 2017.

Enough is enough!

STOP FASCISTS RALLYING AT THE LGBT HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL
WHEN : 1pm, Saturday, September 23
WHERE : Green Park, Victoria and Burton Streets, Darlinghurst
infos : antifa-au.tk

Posted in Anti-fascism, Sex & Sexuality, State / Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A further note on Avi Yemini’s fascist and neo-Nazi friends …

Posted on September 19, 2017 by @ndy

Yeah well anyway, I thought I might just note in passing some of Avi Yemini’s fanbase among the extreme-right.

To begin with, unhappy with the media reportage of his hate rally on Sunday, Avi instead recommends everybody read the report on the ‘altright’ website ‘The Unshackled’ (2016–) by Tom Pirrone. According to Tom, ‘hundreds’ attended Avi’s shindig — which is about as accurate as most of the reportage on the site, which otherwise reflects the preoccupations of the Tory yoof which constitutes its audience.

The Unhinged editors of The Unshackled are Tim Wilms and Sukith Fernando (above). Like many other #altright yoof, Sukith is a card-carrying member of the Liberal Party, and it was while campaigning for student elections that Sukith got into some hot water at the University of Sydney last week. Thus according to Honi Soit (Holocaust denying student confronted on campus, Kishor Napier-Raman and Aidan Molins, September 15, 2017): ‘Fernando was confronted on Eastern Avenue by members of both Stand Up (Labor) and Switch (Grassroots/independents) who questioned him about his beliefs. Fernando repeatedly claimed that he “didn’t know” whether the Holocaust happened.’ He is also reportedly a member of multiple right-wing Facebook groups, including one called ‘Holocaust Revisionism’.

As was the case with University of Queensland student David Hilton (‘Moses Apostaticus’), being an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier is no barrier to being adopted by more mainstream publications, including The Spectator. Thus in July Sukith contributed a sterling essay to the site (Goodbye Yassmin and #PrayForLondon, July 13, 2017) celebrating Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s decision to leave Australia for London, while also deriding her for her alleged apostasy and racism. For its part, the Liberal yoof who’ve assembled behind the ‘Vanguard’ banner to contest the election have denounced Sukith for his public expressions of racism, anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial and informed the world that, if elected, Sukith will not hold office. On the other hand, Sukith’s brave stand against The Jew at his university did at least win the approval of neo-Nazi and former Grand Poobah of the KKK, David Duke, so that’s something eh.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Leaving aside Sukith, as noted previously, the main body of supporters at Avi’s rally on Sunday were drawn from pre-existing extreme-right street gangs, especially the Soldiers of Odin and True Blue Crew. Funnily enough, apart from ignoring actually-existing laws and legal processes, the implementation of the rally’s demands — minimum sentencing for violent offenders (including minors), no bail for persons charged with violent offences, no parole for those convicted for violent offences, minors to be incarcerated in adult jails and the deportation of immigrants convicted of violent offences — would actually decimate his support base.

See also : TheDingoes.xyz /// The Convict Report /// DingoCon (July 8, 2017).

Posted in Anti-fascism, Death, History, Media, State / Politics, Student movement | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Avi Yemini flops in Melbourne

Posted on September 17, 2017 by @ndy

It was a lovely day for a stroll in the city today.

Oh yeah!

A few dozen racist gronks (Party for Freedom, Soldiers of Odin, True Blue Crew and various other fascist zombies) attended a rally organised by tabloid favourite Avi Yemini (above); several hundred others attended a counter-protest. Otherwise, apart from the shouty, not much happened: one person was detained by police and issued a move-on notice for wearing a face covering; Neil Erikson tried to gatecrash Die PARTEI but was told to shoo.

That’s about it, really.

(Oh, and props to everyone who rocked up to tell Avi and his fascist mates to bugger off.)

See also : MEDIA BACKGROUNDER: Much more than an ‘anti-crime’ protest, Police Accountability Project, September 16, 2017 | The curious case of Britain First: wildly popular on Facebook, but a flop in elections, Nigel Copsey, Democratic Audit UK, July 17, 2017. Campaign Against Racism & Fascism /// Jews against fascism /// Melbourne Antifascist Info.

Below : Fascists receive the traditional Melbourne salute.

Posted in !nataS, Anti-fascism, Media, State / Politics | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments

Avi Yemini ~versus~ APEX : “Make Victoria Great Again” LOL (September 17, 2017)

Posted on September 16, 2017 by @ndy

This Sunday, September 17, Avi Yemini has organised a rally to castigate the Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews, for failing to stop African yoof from slaughtering Victorians.

Or something.

According to Avi:

The government has failed us.

Violent crime in Victoria is out of control and we refuse to wait until the next elections [sic] to demand safety and security for the good people of our great state.

We will be demanding:

1. Minimum sentencing for violent offenders, including teenage ‘minors’.

2. NO bail for violent offenders.

3. NO early release for violent offenders.

4. Adult jails for offenders over the age of 18. No matter their sob story.

5. Deportation of violent immigrant offenders.

6. Empowering the community through the legalisation of defensive tools, such as pepper spray.

Avi has previously stated that ‘[t]here’s no question that Melbourne is currently under siege’, and that those besieging it are APEX (‘APEX: How to end their reign of terror’, July 16, 2016). On APEX, see : In defense of the “Apex gang”, Kieran’s Review, November 7, 2016; on crime in Victoria, see : FactCheck Q&A: is violent crime getting worse in Victoria and do people feel less safe than ever?, The Conversation, February 18, 2017.

Joining him on the day will be All The Usual Suspects, drawn from A26A, Asolate Security Group, Patriots Defence League of Australia, Reclaim Australia, Soldiers of Odin, True Blue Crew, United Patriots Front and various other right-wing satellites.

Well, actually, lvl boss of the TBC, Kane Miller, announced on Tuesday that the boys from Bendigo and Melton will not be joining Avi on Sunday. According to Kane, this is because of the unfortunate fact that, while they too regard African yoof as being suitable only for deportation, Avi simply failed to respond to their messages to him about the event.

This is very sad news.

But wait! There’s more! On Friday, Kane informed the world that he and his Crew will indeed be attending on Sunday, because while they don’t support Avi or his #BFF Neil Erikson (who has previously denounced the TBC as the ‘True Meth Crew’), they rlly do hate African yoof as much as any other flag-waver.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In any case, the Soldiers of Odin — y’know, the mob founded by a Finnish neo-Nazi, Mika Ranta (Finnish Resistance Movement) — will mos def be present, including its President Jason (‘Jay B’) Moore, and Swiss member Jan Herweijer. Jan was recently in the news (August 22, 2017) because he ‘was issued with a letter from the immigration department last month informing him he had failed a character test. The letter, seen by nine.com.au, informs Mr Herweijer the department is considering cancelling his current bridging visa and refusing his partner visa application because of his online activity and affiliation with Soldiers of Odin (SOO).’ Note that in July:

Three men with ties to the [Nordic Resistance Movement] were sentenced on Friday to up to eight and a half years in prison for bomb attacks in western Sweden over the past year. Viktor Melin, 23, received the longest sentence for carrying out bomb attacks on a left-wing bookstore and an asylum center and an attempted bombing of a second asylum center. The attacks took place in November and January. Nobody was killed but one man was seriously wounded in the asylum center attack.

The Soldiers’ cousins in Sweden are also organising a march on a synagogue on Yom Kippur (Neo-Nazis Get Green Light To March Outside Swedish Synagogue On Yom Kippur, Aiden Pink, Forward, September 11, 2017).

Joining the Soldiers Of Odin will be whatever remains of the PDLA, which in this case seems to be Damian/Damien Kourevellis (Court told violent man not detained, Steve Butcher, The Age, March 26, 2009):

A man arrested and then released from hospital hours after threatening “suicide by police” was shot and wounded months later by an officer in a second violent confrontation. A court heard that father of three Damien Kourevellis left Sunshine Hospital on March 24 last year after police sought his involuntary detention under the Mental Health Act. Kourevellis that day had assaulted his partner, threatened to blow up her house with petrol bombs and then armed himself with a knife. But he was not charged for seven months.

Kourevellis later ‘pleaded guilty to nine charges from both incidents that included reckless conduct endangering serious injury to police and manufacturing an explosive device’, crimes which bring to mind both Blair Cottrell’s criminal record and of course my good friend Phill Galea, who if he wasn’t awaiting trial on terrorism charges would also be joining Avi outside Parliament.

One grouping that will not be present on Sunday will be Chris Shortis and the Australia First Party. Despite being a confirmed anti-Semite and White supremacist, Avi found time last week to congratulate Chris on his brave defence of the crime of inciting hatred for Muslims. This is a heartwarming tale and one which demonstrates that Avi and Chris can at least bond over their mutual fear and suspicion of Muslims and Africans.

Certainly, the extreme-right and neo-Nazis have nothing to fear from Avi, whose main concern is to combat those opposed to the extreme-right. Thus: The media love to highlight the stereotypical mad-dog, right-wing, “neo Nazi”-looking crew, but they’re not the real problem. The real problem is the so-called “anti-fascists” who claim to be standing against hate (ironically in a very hateful way). (‘Burning the flag: A hate crime every time, The Times of Israel, June 28, 2016).


ABOVE (L to R) : George Jameson (Party for Freedom, Sydney), Chris Shortis (Australia First Party, ex-United Patriots Front), Neil Erikson (ex-UPF, ex-Nationalist Alternative), Blair Cottrell (UPF, ex-NAlt), Ricky Turner, Garry Hume, Luke Phipps.

Finally, the state government passed the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Public Order) Act 2017 this week, which:

essentially bans face coverings during protest events where OC (capsicum) spray is commonly deployed by police (often in inappropriate, excessive and potentially unlawful circumstances). This means journalists, photographers, street medics and legal observers, as well as protestors will not be able to protect themselves from the effects of direct spraying or by-spray. This is despite numerous recent incidents where journalists, medics and legal observers (along with dozens of protesters posing no threat to police whatsoever), have been directly sprayed by ill-disciplined, under trained or over-zealous police.

The CBD has also been declared a ‘designated zone’ between 8am and 8pm on Sunday.

See also : AJDS Statement on Avi Yemini and the rise of far-right racism, September 14, 2017 | Counter Fascism Action: Join the Jew Bloc (Hosted by Jews against fascism) | From Charlottesville to Melbourne: Unite to fight the far right (Hosted by Campaign Against Racism and Fascism): 11.30am, Sunday, September 17, 2017 @ State Library of Victoria.

Posted in !nataS, Anti-fascism, Broken Windows, Death, History, Media, State / Politics, That's Capitalism!, War on Terror | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

What Chip Le Grand gets wrogn about the Australian ‘alt-right’

Posted on September 10, 2017 by @ndy

On the weekend The Australian published an article by Chip Le Grand titled ‘Inside Australia’s own fractious alt-right’ (September 9, 2017) in which the ‘alt-right’ (which is left undefined) is represented by the dynamic duo of Blair Cottrell and Neil Erikson. The pair, along with Chris Shortis, were earlier in the week convicted of inciting hatred for Muslims; all three were at one stage members of the ‘United Patriots Front’ (UPF). The article is interesting but incomplete and what follows is my attempt to flesh out some of Le Grand’s account.

Cottrell the (neo-)Nazi

As Blair Cottrell tells Inquirer, “If you dress up as a brownshirt you are setting yourself up to be laughed at.’’

Cottrell first emerged into the public spotlight at the Reclaim Australia rally in Melbourne on April 4, 2015. On that occasion he gave a brief speech, accompanied by his cousin Christopher and several other members of neo-Nazi grouplet Nationalist Alternative (NAlt). The grouplet emerged during the course of anti-mosque activism in Williamstown several years ago, and until recently met under the auspices of the English-Speaking Union of Victoria at its headquarters in Toorak Road, South Yarra. The leader of the group, Mark Hootsen, was exposed as such by fellow member Neil Erikson in mid- to late-2014 following a dispute between the pair.

Cottrell’s political views may be established by reference to his online commentary, on sites like Facebook and YouTube. I documented these views from May 2015, when he announced the formation of the ‘National Democratic Party of Australia’:

There’s another kid on the fascist bloc: the ‘National Democratic Party of Australia’ (which is neither national, democratic nor a party). The group had a rather inauspicious beginning, ripping off a WA design company (and the WA RSL) to produce NDP agitprop. A convinced racialist, its chief spokesperson, Blair Cottrell, has some association with the Australia First Party and Nationalist Alternative, both of which had a presence on April 4 and are also committed to returning on July 18/19.

Not surprisingly, the Australian version of the German NDP constituted a mere blip on the political radar, and Cottrell soon moved on to the United Patriots Front, “a coalition of neo-Nazis, fundamentalist Christians belonging to the Rise Up Australia Party (RUAP), and a handful of semi-pro Islamophobes”. His views were more exhaustively documented in Quotations From Chairman Blair Cottrell (July 27, 2015). As I noted at the time, “The content below is sourced from comments by Blair Cottrell (AKA ‘National Democratic Party of Australia’), Melbourne organiser and spokesperson for the United Patriots Front, on Facebook, YouTube and Google. Almost all of the comments have since been deleted as part of Cottrell’s efforts to erase his neo-Nazi political commitments.” Some of this content was later reported in ‘Blair Cottrell, rising anti-Islam movement leader, wanted Hitler in the classroom’ (Michael Bachelard, Luke McMahon, The Sydney Morning Herald, October 17, 2015).

In other words, Cottrell’s anxiety not to be portrayed as a neo-Nazi is both rational — being known as a neo-Nazi is the political kiss of death — and commonplace — most neo-Nazis lie and dissemble about their political commitments and Cottrell is no exception. Finally, it’s worth noting that his former kamerad Shermon Burgess claims that, when he met Cottrell for the first time in Melbourne in May 2015, Cottrell had a copy of Mein Kampf in his ute, and when asked why he travelled with a copy of Mister Hitler’s book, referred to it as ‘The White Man’s Bible’. In any event, even if Le Grand chooses to ignore it, there’s certainly no shortage of evidence of Cottrell’s neo-Nazi views.

Erikson the (neo-)Nazi

There are certainly Nazis on the fringes of Australia’s underground alt-right. Neil Erikson, one of Cottrell’s co-accused, used to be one, although he has in recent years disavowed them. He dismisses the emergence of Australia’s newest neo-Nazi group, the Antipodean Resistance, as uni kids playing dress-ups on Twitter and describes his own renunciation of National Socialism as a case of growing up.

“I used to admire Adolf Hitler years ago but since then I have woken up and seen a different side to it. I used to think that all Jews were evil. Now I see that the racist stuff comes from the left. I used to be anti-Israel, now I’m pro-Israel. You can’t be a nationalist and be against Israel.’’ He once accused Cottrell of being a Nazi. He now says he’s not. “There are Nazis out there but they are clowns,’’ he says. “We all think they are clowns.’’

LOL.

By his own admission, Erikson became a ‘Nazi’ as a teenybopper; he first renounced ‘Nazis’ and ‘Nazism’, however, after he and his kamerad Shermon Burgess left the UPF in late 2015, precisely on the basis that the UPF was considered by them to be irredeemably ‘Nazi’. As well as being a member of NAlt, Erikson was also a ‘Crazy White Boy’, a short-lived gang of boneheads whose main claim to fame was the attempted murder of Vietnamese student Minh Duong in Ascot Vale in June 2012. In December 2012, several nazi yoof were convicted of the crime, which is worth recalling in some detail:

Wayne O’Brien, aged 20, and Shannon Hudson, now 21, committed a deplorable and unforgiveable attack on their smaller victim who they jumped as he was walking home alone from a Moonee Ponds 7/Eleven store where he worked.

The victim, a 21-year-old Vietnamese international student, was listening to music on his iPhone when attacked unawares on June 27 this year.

During the ferocious 10-minute bashing he was called names including a “yellow dog”, but Supreme Court judge Justice Betty King today said the bashing robbery was only partially racially motivated.

The victim was punched in the face and, after toppling over a garden fence, was pinned down and punched and kicked.

After he handed over his phone, O’Brien and Hudson dragged him down and bashed him again.

“He was terrified and believed he was going to be beaten to death,” Justice King said in sentencing.

The victim was dragged by his legs into the street and punched and kicked some more, and was also stabbed with a sharp weapon.

“Eventually (he) lost consciousness and lay in the gutter,” Justice King said.

“Despite that, it would appear that the assault continued.”

In what the judge described as a “particularly chilling episode of violence”, Hudson picked up a loose brick from the ground and, after raising it above his head in both hands, brought it down on the man’s head.

“The brick itself broke in half,” Justice King said.

The victim was left lying unconscious and shirtless in a pool of blood.

According to Erikson, after the assault his ‘Boys’ asked him to help dispose of Duong’s body. Whether they did or not (Erikson states that he declined their invitation), it’s curious that Le Grand avoids connecting Cottrell and Erikson to NAlt, and Erikson to the Boys. Of course, Le Grand also avoids reference to the ‘Aryan Nations’ (AN) in Perth. According to Erikson, when the UPF travelled to Perth to attend a rally in November 2015, they stayed with fellow UPF (Perth) member Melony Jane Attwood. Attwood, along with fellow neo-Nazis Robert Wayne Edhouse and Corey Joshua Dymock, are currently on trial for the murder of Alan Taylor, bashed to death with a hammer as he slept at his Girrawheen home in April 2016: barely six months after Attwood/Taylor hosted Cottrell and Erikson (and Cottrell’s sidekick, Li’l Tommy Sewell) at her home in Perth.

In summary, while choosing to focus upon Cottrell and Erikson as the most familiar faces on the ‘alt-right’ in Australia makes a degree of sense, for unknown reasons the fact that both men have emerged from the neo-Nazi milieu is significantly downplayed.

Finally, a few brief notes on some other aspects of Le Grand’s reportage:

• On Facebook kicking the UPF and others off the platform, see : antifa notes (may 10, 2017) : United Patriots Front kicked off Facebook &c. Note that for a brief period the UPF spawned another page titled ‘UPF Media’, which also claimed at one point the title of ‘Alt Right Australia’;
• The nü neo-Nazi grouplet ‘Antipodean Resistance’ — ‘a group that openly proclaims its adherence to National Socialism’ (ie, Nazism) — was spawned by the UPF and NAlt. Formed last year and inspired by the (now-banned) UK group ‘National Action’, members of the group attended various rallies organised by the True Blue Crew and UPF in Melbourne, including the anti-leftist/anti-Muslim/anti-immigrant rally in Coburg in May 2016 and the ‘Blue Lives Matter’ counter-protest in the CBD (along with a superbly-disguised Blair Cottrell) in July 2016.

There is, of course, a lot more to say about AR — and last week the media embarked on a publicity campaign on behalf of the boys — but that will come in good time;
• Finally, the alt-right’s favourite Australian Jew, Avi Yemini, is indeed organising a rally next weekend in Melbourne. While his attempt at organising hate rallies in Melbourne in December 2016 and in Sydney in August 2017 were not entirely successful, for its part the ‘Campaign Against Racism & Fascism’ has organised a counter-protest ‘From Charlottesville to Melbourne: Unite to fight the far right’.

See also : Who is Moses Apostaticus? (September 8, 2017) | TheDingoes.xyz /// The Convict Report /// DingoCon (July 8, 2017) | Depends What You Mean By Extremist : A Review (of sorts) (May 19, 2017) | Melbourne neo-Nazis celebrate Adolf Hitler’s birthday & ANZAC Day 2017 (April 26, 2017) | A (very) brief guide to the Australian far right (December 2016 Edition) (December 5, 2016).

Posted in !nataS, Anti-fascism, Broken Windows, Death, History, Media, State / Politics, That's Capitalism!, War on Terror | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Who is Moses Apostaticus?

Posted on September 8, 2017 by @ndy

Back in July, The Spectator (Australia) published two articles by a writer known as ‘Moses Apostaticus’. After he was identified as elsewhere espousing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, the articles were deleted, and the incident slipped down The Memory Hole (more-or-less, see : Rowan Dean, The Spectator, & anti-Semitism, July 14, 2017). Thankfully, you can still find Apostaticus’s (other) writings on Tucker Carlson’s site The Daily Caller and Adam Piggott’s site XYZ, read his magnum opus Civilizationism online, or receive a terrific education via his YouTube channel.

Rowan Dean’s decision to un-publish Apostaticus’s two contributions to The Spectator TRIGGERED the author, who composed an angwy response. Titled ‘The Far Left Terrorists Hiding in Plain Sight’ (XYZ, July 15, 2017), the article is chiefly dedicated to excoriating writer and broadcaster Jeff Sparrow for Cultural Marxisms and other alleged crimes. Apostaticus also claims that I’m Rob, Jeff’s brother, who is also a very bad egg(head):

Rob’s academic output is exactly the type of derivative, noxious bilge you see across the social sciences today. His papers include such significant and empirical topics as ‘Robots, rape, and representation’, ‘Queerin’ the PGD clinic: human enhancement and the future of bodily diversity’ and ‘Robots and respect: assessing the case against Autonomous Weapons Systems’. That first one is about whether it’s ethical or not to rape a robot. Seriously. Your tax dollars hard at work.

And Rob, only pretentious dicks still use the Oxford comma. Get over yourself.

Rob’s is the pierced and sallow face behind violent anarchist propagandist Andy Fleming, an online persona who writes hatespeech for the slackbastard blog. He writes regularly encouraging the university-age footsoldiers of Antifa to commit violence against anyone who disagrees with their neo-Marxist orthodoxy.

The close links between the slackbastard blog and Jeff Sparrow are not difficult to find. Slackbastard posted to Facebook the article attacking me, The Spectator and Mark Latham almost immediately upon it being published. Pretty sloppy fellas, even for Antifa.

Duh.

Note that the erroneous claim that I’m Rob Sparrow dates back to the end of 2015/beginning of 2016, and was first advanced by Neil Erikson on the one hand and the Australia First Party on the other. (See : Review : 2015 : Neil Erikson ~vs~ Rob Sparrow, January 2, 2016; you can listen to Rob being interviewed by myself and my ‘The SUWA Show’ co-host Cam Smith here.)

In any event, while I’m not Rob, ‘Moses Apostaticus’ is in fact an ex-high school teacher from Queensland called David Hilton (b.1979), who abandoned teaching history a few years ago to return to study for a PhD. (Or to put it another way: ‘Moses Apostaticus is a PhD student with a background in classics, history and literature. His years in education have made him a lifelong enemy of leftism’.) Thus before he was ‘Moses’, David was also known as @MisterHistory on Twitter (July 2009–April 2015), but despite having academic ambitions, poor old David doesn’t seem to have any great love for academics. Thus in ‘Academics: Smug High Priests of the Establisment [sic]’ (XYZ, May 5, 2017), he states:

Academic training is not training in wisdom, insight or even superior understanding of the problems of the human condition. It may have once been, but that was long ago. Academic disciplines today are training in the use of language as a weapon, as a means of social control. In ancient Greece, such fake intellectuals were called sophists. They are practiced at making the big seem small and the long seem short, but they know nothing. They are empty vessels.

They’re also not very smart. They are good with words to an extent, but even then the cronyism and careerism in academe these days selects for the most sycophantic, conformist and ruthless rather than the dedicated and brilliant. Many of them are rather dim. The only smart academics you’ll find in universities either come from outside the world of academe and have made careers in their fields first, or else are working in fields like medicine which require proven performance as a professional in the domain. Anything with ‘Studies’ after it is basically just cultural Marxist bulls—t.

Whether or not David regards his supervisor as being another empty-headed crackademic fulla cultural Marxist bulls–t is of course anyone’s guess.

Finally, it’s worth noting that, along with former Labor Party leader Mark Latham, sitting MP George Christensen and fellow XYZ contributors Adam Piggott and Ryan Fletcher, David has been a guest on neo-Nazi podcast ‘The Convict Report’; the talking-points he promotes are standard AltRight fare, concentrating upon the pernicious influence of (((Cultural Marxists))) on the education system in particular but also society as a whole, and otherwise developing a strand of fascist thinking dating back to Julius Evola.

See also : How the Alt-Right Trolled Triple J to Advance Their Agenda, Royce Kurmelovs and Rebecca Kamm, Vice, Aug 17 2017 (‘A few hours after the segment, a contributor to the far right site XYZ, writing under the name Moses Apostaticus, published a story titled: Triple J Rejects Multiculturalism, Embraces Alt-Right. Apostaticus, who runs the site RestoringAustralia.net, has a significant online presence.’) | ‘Dr Goebbels’ mastheads’: on antisemitism and News Corp, Jeff Sparrow, Overland, July 13, 2017 | Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment: The Frankfurt School as Scapegoat of the Lunatic Fringe (Martin Jay), March 9, 2012 | Clinton Hits Alt-Right, While Old-School Rightbloggers Play ‘Real Racist’ With Kaepernick, Roy Edroso, Village Voice, August 29, 2016 (‘Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller ran an essay by some guy calling himself, I swear to God, “Moses Apostaticus” (I understand his real name is Biggus Dickus but his wife Incontinentia made him use a pseudonym) who advertised himself as “a PhD Candidate (Education) at a major Australian university and…a known voice in the alt-right sphere.” Dickus went on at length about how Hillary was, like, old and a “Cultural Marxist” and the alt-right is the new hip thing.’).

Posted in Anti-fascism, History, Media, State / Politics, Student movement | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Blair Cottrell, Neil Erikson and Chris Shortis found guilty of inciting hatred for Muslims

Posted on September 6, 2017 by @ndy

Briefly:

Yesterday, The Three Stooges (AKA ‘The Bendigo Three’) — Blair Cottrell, Neil Erikson and Chris Shortis — were convicted of serious religious vilification in Melbourne Magistrates Court over a publicity stunt the boys performed in October 2015, and fined $2,000 each. The trio has indicated that they intend to appeal the decision in the County Court.

See : Far-right nationalists found guilty of inciting serious contempt for Muslims after mock beheading video, James Oaten, ABC, September 5, 2017 | United Patriots Front trio found guilty of inciting contempt of Muslims, SBS (AAP), September 5, 2017 | Far-right trio convicted, fined $2000 each, over mock-beheading mosque protest, Adam Cooper, The Age, September 5, 2017.

The stunt — for which UPF lackeys ‘Farma’ John Wilkinson and Linden Watson acted as gormless witnesses — took place a few days prior to an anti-Muslim rally in Bendigo on October 10, which attracted as many as 1,000 bigots; the largest such demonstration to have taken place in Australia. Both Erikson and Shortis left the UPF in the months following the stunt, while Cottrell has remained the fuehrer of what is now largely a lame-duck organisation, and as of September 5 can add the crime of serious religious vilification to his list of priors. (Cottrell’s criminal record is detailed in a report by Geir O’Rourke and Angus Thompson in 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.’ Cottrell, as ‘Bruce’, appeared in a documentary about youth in the maximum-security Youth Unit at Port Phillip Prison in Truganina, in which he describes how he abused steroids, stalked his former partner and her boyfriend, tried to kill him, set fire to their house, and eventually got arrested, convicted, and sent to prison.)

As for Erikson, having already been convicted in February 2014 of stalking a local Melbourne 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’ — celebrated being given another slap on the wrist by the courts by disrupting a meeting of Yarra Council in order to harass councillor Steve Jolly. (See : Far right protesters storm Yarra City Council meeting over Australia Day ban, Melissa Cunningham, The Age, September 5, 2017 | Yarra Council meeting interrupted by far-right group protesting against Australia Day changes, ABC, September 6, 2017.) Among those who joined Erikson were George Jameson and Penny Louise/Tridgell of the Sydney-based Party for Freedom and locals Paul ‘Guru’ Franzi (sporting Soldiers of Odin merch) and UPF fanboy Luke Phipps. Note that the first public rally organised by the UPF took place in Richmond on May 31, 2015, and was called in order to demand Jolly be thrown out of office.

See also : Fascists flail in Melbourne race hate trial, Corey Oakley, Red Flag, September 11, 2017.

Posted in Anti-fascism, Media, State / Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments