Ah-men
On Saturday, YouTube personalities and budding AltLite superstars Avi Yeminem and Sydney Watson organised a ‘March For Men’ in Melbourne. Unlike ‘March For Men’ events in the UK, this march did not raise funds for cancer research but rather was an excuse for IRL trolling and the sale of crappy merch.
Reports on attendance range from 150 (Jeff Sparrow) to 250–300 (spotters) to 500–700 (organisers); a smaller counter-protest was organised by CARF. According to CARF, in addition to Men’s Rights Activists, the event also attracted participation by members of neo-Nazi grouplets Antipodean Resistance and The Lads Society, as well as the methgoblins of the True Blue Crew (TBC) and, in a rare excursion, The Proud Boys (PBs). The PBs also carried a banner reading ‘The West is the Best’ but, sadly, it got lost, then incinerated:
For an account of the action, see : ProudBoys Victoria Go Flaccid…; note that PB fuehrer Gavin McInnes is scheduled to tour STRAYA in November. See also : ‘Stop the name-calling!’: anger unites Melbourne’s March for Men protesters, Jeff Sparrow, The Guardian, August 26, 2018 | What the people at Australia’s March for Men had to say, Madison Griffiths, The Feed, SBS, August 27, 2018.
Speaking of violent misogynists, Adam Giles’ ‘mate’, the steroid-munching neo-Nazi Blair Cottrell, dropped this banger on Twitter on Monday night, before then suspending his account … presumably to return another day to continue to threaten street performers and schoolgirls with violence:
See also : Blair Cottrell and the problem of male aggression, Clementine Ford, The Age, June 26, 2018.
Mister Cottrell, having been convicted in September last year of inciting hatred for Muslims, returns to court in November to appeal the conviction, when he’ll be ably-represented by Adelaide barrister John (W) Bolton, increasingly the go-to law-talking guy for the extreme-right. On his blog, Mister Bolton (Invalid because they impermissibly burden the implied freedom of political communication contrary to the Commonwealth Constitution., July 18, 2018) writes that:
At 9.00 a.m. on 19th July 2018 Mr.Cottrell appeared in the County Court in Melbourne. He has lodged an appeal against a conviction after a [t]rial in which he was un-represented in the Victorian Magistrate’s Court. The appeal was set for a mention only and trial directions.
The [t]wo day County Court trial date in August 2018 has now been vacated because a notice was lodged with the Court that asserts that the sections of the Victorian Racial and Religions Villification Act [sic] with which Mr. Cottrell is charged are invalid.
Note that Mister Bolton is organising some crackpot PR stunt in Lakemba in NSW in October.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
One court date that has not been vacated takes place on Friday, when THE MILO FIVE FOUR THREE (Neil Erikson, Rick Turner & Richard Whelan: Garry Hume and Garry ‘Soldier of Odin’ Mattsson have both obtained diversion orders) will be appearing in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court for contest mentions arising from the Milo stoopid of December last year. The stoopid also resulted in Victoria Police billing tour organisers $50,000 for their troubles but, not surprisingly perhaps, Damien Costas and Penthouse Australia have told them to go fuck themselves. As for the Infowars-supplements salesman, dumped from the line-up of some US conference called ‘Politicon’, he returns to our shores in November, bringing with him some very expensive luggage, not least fellow right-wing blabbermouth Ann Coulter.
In any event, as well as having a court hearing in Victoria on Friday, Erikson has another court date in Gosford (NSW) on September 11 to face charges arising from his disruption of a service at Gosford Anglican Church. Standing alongside Erikson on this occasion will be a handful of racist gronks from the TBC (who are also demanding that Father Rod Bower is dismissed from his position).
See also : Neil Erikson ~versus~ Law & Order (June 30, 2018).
Nazis Go To Canberra
This Saturday, The Performance Artist (Formerly Known As The Great Aussie Patriot), Shermon Burgess, has organised a rally in Canberra. Grandly titled ‘Spirit of Australia’, it would be more aptly described as ‘Spirit of Nazi Germany’. Thus in addition to Burgess, the MC for the event is Matt Lowe, currently the fuehrer of a tiny neo-Nazi grouplet called ‘Australian Patriot Uprising’, a splinter from the now-defunct ‘Party for Freedom’. While the list of speakers, like the expected attendance, is very smol (Burgess and Lowe), Senator Fraser ‘Final Solution’ Anning appears to have initially accepted an invitation to speak on the podium but then to have withdrawn. One group that will not be attending the event is the TBC in NSW, who’ve recently made the Columbus-like discovery that: a) some of their comrades are ‘nazis’ and; b) it can be a bit tricky claiming to be a 100% True Blue Dinky-Di Aussie Patriot™ while organising with ‘nazis’.
anTEEfa
On the weekend, ‘Independent Australia’ published an interview what I done with Martin Hirst, which you can read here. See also : Understanding the mainstreaming of the far right, Aurelien Mondon and Aaron Winter, Open Democracy, August 26, 2018.
As noted previously (April 24, 2017 and October 4, 2017), there’s a number of spectacularly daft (fake) ‘antifa’ pages on Facebook. More recent/still extant pages include: Antifa Queensland; Antifa Sydney; Brisbane Antifa; Sydney Antifa.
Finally, there’s a nu/olde anti-fascist kid on the bloc: PUSH! Organising and Educating to Build an Anti-Fascist United Front and ‘The Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group is pleased to announce that we have participated in the launch of a new anti-Fascist organisation. The initial callout is reproduced below.’