Tagged with James Saleam

antifa notes (november 29, 2017) : From MUFF to Romper Stomper

First, a few updates:

1) Dick & MUFF

Following his batshit, public, and VERY ANGRY reaction to the same-sex marriage ballot survey’s majority support, after first doubling-down on his defiance of the (((gay))) agenda and — not coincidentally — following MUFF’s sponsors, and a considerable number of its supporters, declaring MUFF to be FUBAR, Richard Wolstencroft announced his resignation as Director and handballed responsibility for it to his mate and MUFF patron, Frank Howson. Whether or not this means MUFF will continue remains an open question. In any case, Dick did find vocal support from at least one other filmmaker: Ian Nicholson of the Sydney Short Film School. Ian also decried the influence of ‘dumb, lefty cunts’ on Australian culture and society, and compared gay couples to motorbikes. True Story! Resembling Richard in more ways than one, after doubling-down on his original cray-cray and — not coincidentally — after the Australian Cinematographers Society announced that he was no longer welcome to use their facilities to run his skool, Ian made a public apology.

See : Richard Wolstencroft & MUFF ~versus~ Those Degenerate Gays, November 18, 2017.

2) Patriot Blue

‘Patriot Blue’ is serial pest Neil Erikson’s latest political vehicle, one into which he’s enrolled his stoopid mate, Ricky/Rikki Turner. (Other participants in the stoopid have included Paul ‘Guru’ Franzi, Pommy whinger Garry Hume, George Jameson and Penny Tridgell (Party for Freedom, Sydney), Luke Phipps, Lachlan/Logan Spalding, and a handful of others.) After having made a splash by disrupting council meetings and, most recently, racially abusing Labor MP Sam Dastyari at a pub, on Friday (November 24), Neil and Ricky/Rikki took it upon themselves to attempt to disrupt a solidarity rally with the men on Manus. Collective Action have published an account of what followed here: What happened in Melbourne yesterday? (November 25, 2017). Yesterday’s Manus solidarity rally in Melbourne did not “turn violent”, it was attacked first by a known fascist and then by the police. The racist violence of the Australian state, directed at Indigenous peoples, Muslims, and anyone who would dare seek asylum whilst non-white, continues to embolden far-right thugs …

Finally, in addition to clashing with STAN over their unauthorised use of ‘Patriot Blue’, Neil and Ricky/Rikki have also fallen foul of TOLL, which yesterday published the following statement on the boys’ use of TOLL uniforms during their dickheaded stunts:

3) FREE PHIL!

Old mate Phill Galea is slowly making his way through the courts — today he was again having his bRanes assessed. AAP:

Probe into accused Vic terrorist’s mind
November 29, 2017

A far-right anti-Islam extremist accused of planning to bomb left-wing groups in Melbourne may not stand trial for terrorism offences if a second expert finds him mentally unfit.

Phillip Galea, 33, faced the Victorian Supreme Court on Wednesday via video link for a brief directions hearing about his case, which is still before a lower court.

Galea is charged with making preparations for terrorist attacks against properties occupied by Melbourne anarchist groups between November 2015 and August 2016.

The 33-year-old is also charged with collecting or making documents to prepare for terrorist acts between September 2015 and August 2016.

A pre-trial committal hearing in the Melbourne Magistrates Court has been delayed amid concerns about his mental state.

Prosecutors and defence lawyers on Wednesday said they are waiting for a report by a second mental health expert before deciding if Galea’s fitness to stand trial should be determined in the Supreme Court.

Galea is due to see a psychiatrist on December 13 for a second opinion.

His case will return to the Supreme Court on January 29 so counsel can decide the next step.

Galea has been in custody since he was arrested in August 2016.

Police have accused Galea of preparing to target various locations inhabited by the Melbourne Anarchist Club and Melbourne Resistance Centre.

The Braybrook resident allegedly told an associate he wanted to cause as much devastation to his targets as possible in a coordinated attack, according to a summary previously released by the Magistrates Court.

He allegedly ordered potassium nitrate for smoke bombs, aligned himself with right-wing groups True Blue Crew and Patriots Defence League Australia, and researched how to make improvised explosive devices.

Note that, while the majority of his patriotik kameraden have run screaming from Galea, in Queensland one-man band Mike Holt is spearheading a campaign to #FREEPHIL. Launched in August, Mike’s petition has to date attracted over 1,000 signatories. According to the OAP, Phil Galea, Australian patriot, was arrested and accused of being a terrorist in August 2016 after he followed and filmed ANTIFA terrorist thugs at their headquarters. The police allege that he had “bomb making materials”, but Phil denies this and says he can prove why he had the chemicals for peaceful scientific experiments.

LOL.

More recently (November 16, 2017), Mike published a letter from Galea about a dead patriot called Shannon Wallace, in which Phillthy speculates that Wallace may have suffered an ‘unnatural’ death (possibly murdered by use of a ‘sonic gun’?). In early 2016 I visited Shannon Wallace in what was called The Compound by him and his father, writes Phil, before providing a garbled account of various persons and events and identifying Darren Norsworthy (PDLA and ‘Battalion 88’) and ‘Aaron’ [Dekeulenaer, presumably; a nazi dork from Ballarat associated with PDLA, ‘Battalion 88’ and RWRAU] as police informants. Phill also writes:

If I was murdered (or had an “accident”), Shannon was to use an internet café to sign into my e-mail account and send Blair Cottrell (UPF), Mike Holt (Restore Australia), and Liz Sheppard (Reclaim Australia) all of my recordings from a fake account. Then Shannon was to use the Linux computer I had given him to make dozens of copies of the discs and hand them out to all True Blue Crew Members who were on a list I had given him when he went to the Melton anti-mosque rally. Then he was to hand the discs directly to the press as well.

And so on and so forth …

See also : Will the Alt Right Produce the Next Timothy McVeigh?, Alex Reid Ross, AlterNet, November 27, 2017 (‘The history of white nationalism suggests we could be entering a period of violent upheaval’).

4) Pauline Hanson ~versus~ Queensland

Sadly, NASA and the United Nations successfully conspired to rob Malcolm ‘Jew World Order’ Roberts of his rightful place in Queensland’s state parliament on the weekend. Worse yet, it seems as though possibly only one ONP candidate, Stephen Andrew, will get the bump. On a brighter note, Pauline Hanson will be pocketing a cool million from the election, adding to the estimated six million dollarydoos she’s earned contesting numerous elections over the last 20 years.

5) Anti-Semitism

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) has published its annual report on anti-Semitism in Australia. See : Antisemitic incidents in Australia up nearly 10% over year, study says, Helen Davidson, The Guardian, November 27, 2017; read/download a copy of the report here. Among those who get a guernsey are Hitler fanboys Antipodean Resistance, Mark Latham’s chums at The Convict Report (‘The Dingoes’), the Australia First Party, Nationalist Alternative, United Nationalists Australia and Blair Cottrell, David Hilton and even Brendon O’Connell. Speaking of O’Connell, it appears that he’s currently stuck in jail in New Zealand, presumably before Kiwi authorities deport him (see : Anti-semitic blogger detained for nearly six weeks, Radio New Zealand, November 21, 2017).

See also : Nazi-inspired vandals deface central Ballarat, damage house, Brendan Wrigley, The Courier, November 14, 2017.

Coming at things from a slightly different angle, the latest issue of the Australian Jewish Democratic Society’s zine ‘Just Voices’ (No.14, November 2017) is also dedicated to the subject of anti-Semitism, a broad topic that encompasses many different and related phenomena, past and present. It deserves our attention now no less than ever, especially since it is largely neglected in the Left, and concerns many developments within mainstream culture, including the American government openly spouting antisemitic views. It also contains, inter alia, an interview with the compañerxs of Jews against fascism. NB. Jaf are also organising a presence at the Milo Yiannopoulos show on Monday (December 4).

6) From Cootamundra to Cheltenham


Above : James Buckle of gun lobby group Firearm Owners United outside his neo-Nazi clubhouse in Cheltenham

Speaking of Nazis … back in September there was a by-election in the regional seat of Cootamundra in NSW, which the Nationals managed to retain (but experienced a big swing away from the party, rendering it nominally marginal). Australia First Party fuehrer Dr James Saleam ran (coming last on 453 votes or 0.99%), as did Matthew Stadtmiller of the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers (who got just a few more votes than Dr Jim). Earlier, in January, Stadtmiller had described NSW MP (and Minister for Lands and Forestry and Racing) Paul Toole as a ‘Nazi’; this prompted an article in the regional Southern Cross newspaper in September about his faux pas, one which prompted a further contribution from former Cootamundra MP Katrina Hodgkinson. Weirdly, the article also included commentary from James Buckle of gun lobby group ‘Firearm Owners United’: “We expect this sort of thing from Greens candidates, not from outgoing Nationals,” group president James Buckle told the Herald on Thursday morning. “It’s just another sign the Nationals have abandoned their rural constituents and we’ll be actively lobbying against them in the Cootamundra by-election.” That’s wEiRd because, apart from anything else, Buckle is a Melbourne resident and one of those who, in addition to Blair Cottrell and Thomas Sewell, is part of something called ‘The Lads Society’: a clubhouse for neo-Nazis based in Cheltenham.

See : ‘The Lads Society’ : A new neo-Nazi social club opens in Melbourne, October 28, 2017.

7) Fascism in reality (and phantasy)

Romper Stomper returns to the (small) screen in the New Year. See : Geoffrey Wright on his Romper Stomper remake – and why Donald Trump inspired him, Tim Elliott, The Age, November 17, 2017.
• “Sweetman was a Melbourne neo-Nazi who axe-murdered a fellow bonehead at a party to celebrate Adolf Hitler’s birthday, which sounds ridiculous but is true,” Wright tells me. Wright read all the reports on Sweetman, and even talked to people who knew him, eventually drawing from his story the rudiments of Hando, the character at the centre of what would become the film Romper Stomper. Old Mate was released from Fulham prison on parole in October 2005, after serving 15 years of a 20-year sentence for the 1990 murder of David Noble; he then (briefly) settled in @ The Tote along with Patrick O’Sullivan. A former Creatard, O’Sullivan is now ‘Combat 18’; in 2002, O’Sullivan was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for stabbing another bonehead (also at a party) — which is where he became chums with Sweetman.
• The day I visit the Melbourne set, Wright is directing a scene in which Farron and Laila appear on No Quarter, ostensibly to discuss a clash that took place, at a recent halal-food festival, between Patriot Blue members and hard-left activists. The clash would appear to be based on an incident in Melbourne in April last year in which Nick Folkes and the Party for Freedom had its anti-Muslim rally gatecrashed by anTEEfa.
• Like Romper Stomper, the US film Imperium (2016) — which borrows its title from Francis Parker Yockey‘s 1948 magnum opus — also features anTEEfa, who are known as ‘The Anti-Fascist League’ (in Romper Stomper they’re called ‘anti-fash’ or something). At one point, Daniel Radcliffe and his nazi chums — Radcliffe plays the role of an FBI agent tasked with infiltrating the nazi group — assemble at a comrade’s haus to watch a TV show promoting an upcoming nazi rally. The hosts make reference to their opposition (The Anti-Fascist League) and then show some photos of the mob expected to rock up and try and spoil the party. Fuck me dead if it isn’t a photo of THE LEAGUE in action in Melton in November 2015.

See also : Dead fascist poets society: why CasaPound are no book club, libcom, November 10, 2017 /// I learned German with white supremacist Richard Spencer, Julie Hill, The Spinoff, November 12, 2017 /// A Contemporary Taxonomy of Britain’s Far Right, base, November 21, 2017 (‘Anti-fascists need to look at how the far-right has organised in the past and is currently organising if they are to halt the rise of a potentially resurgent far-right’) /// Andrew Anglin: The Making of an American Nazi, Luke O’Brien, The Atlantic, December 2017 (‘How did Andrew Anglin go from being an antiracist vegan to the alt-right’s most vicious troll and propagandist—and how might he be stopped?’).

8) anTEEfa!


Above : ‘Follow Your Leader’ by David Wilcox : Cover of Anarchist Studies (Vol.25, No.2), Autumn 2017

Finally, there’s been a blizzard of writings on anTEEfa this year. Here’s a sample:

The First Thing Colleges Must Understand About Antifa: What the Word Means, Nell Gluckman, The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 10, 2017.

Pro Anti, Angela Mitropoulos, The New Inquiry, August 20, 2017 (‘Antifa’s horizon is in toppling the legitimacy of extraction and ownership anchored in presumably natural foundations’) /// Antifascism: Pros and cons, Ross Wolfe, The Charnel House, August 20, 2017 /// The Forgotten Roots of Antifa, Kevin Mattson, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, September 19, 2017 (‘Although defenses of Antifa, like a recent one in The New Inquiry, are relevant, the movement may do well to remember its less romanticized intellectual roots, from Orwell to Camus’).

… and for #lulz, see : Alt-right Trump supporters and left-wing Bernie Sanders fans should join together to defeat capitalism, Slavoj Žižek, The Independent, November 25, 2017 (‘Class struggle is back as the main determining factor of our political life – even if the stakes appear to be totally different, from humanitarian crises to ecological threats, class struggle lurks in the background and casts its ominous shadow’).

BONUS! Slime

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

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).

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

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).

Dr Tim Anderson has some funny friends

[I stumbledupon this vid again the other day, courtesy of the scallywags of Anti Fascist Action Sydney (see : With Friends Like These… Tim Anderson & NSW’s Fascists, May 2, 2017), so I thought I may well as chuck it up here along with a few additional comments of my own.]

While it’s true that politics makes for odd bedfellows, it’s an unedifying spectacle to witness an ostensible leftist address a gathering of the extreme-right, in this instance University of Sydney academic Tim Anderson addressing the Leura Forum in November last year. In front of a banner reading ‘One People. One Destiny. One Flag.’, the brief vid below (the full vid is avail online elsewhere) begins with a very subtle dis of The Gay Mafia and a prayer for God Emperor Trump by the MC (dentist Dr Jim Sternhell), followed by a few words from Tim, interspersed with complaints about Jews from an audience member, Ross May.

Apart from anything else, the presence of geriatric neo-Nazi Ross ‘The Skull’ May in the front row of Tim’s audience brings to mind another academic from Sydney, Peter McGregor (1947–2008). An anarchist and a political activist in addition to being an academic, McGregor participated in numerous campaigns, groups and projects during his too-short life. This included participating in the campaign to free one Tim Anderson from jail after he was framed for the Hilton bombing (1978).

Peter’s activities, especially in the name of anti-racism, naturally antagonised fascists and the far right. Hence: ‘The Australian Nazi Party, ideologically aligned with apartheid, organised a brutal and cowardly assault on McGregor in 1971 which I witnessed. Its propagator, one Ross Lesley May (aka “The Skull”), subsequently served time; but the police more often than not acquiesced in Nazi violence and that of fellow racists and the more fanatical rugby fans, who were often inseparable.’

Note that the speaker who followed Tim, Dr Jim Saleam, was also a member of the Australian Nazi Party at this time, while the speaker who preceded him, Keith Windschuttle, has also had some interesting things to say about genocide, and history.

The situation is ironic, perhaps, but hardly a fitting tribute.

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

TheDingoes.xyz /// The Convict Report /// DingoCon

DingoCon

Last weekend, a small group of neo-Nazi geeks, White supremacist nerds, and extreme-right yoof met-up in Sydney to talk shop. Called ‘DingoCon’ and organised under the auspices of #DingoTwitter, the only person to have publicly confessed to having paid their $88 (fnarr fnarr) entrance fee is Melbourne-based neo-Nazi Blair Cottrell, the putative leader of the now defunct Facebook page ‘United Patriots Front’ (UPF). One person who definitely did not attend — and whose presence would apparently have been unwelcome — was Dr Jim Saleam of the Australia First Party: Everyone Wants To Be Fuehrer, but it would seem that the nü gen of Fashy Goys are keen to keep some distance from the fascists in cardigans.


Above : George Christensen poses with Kane Miller, lvl boss of the ‘True Blue Crew’.

The Dingoes

While Buzzfeed buzzed about The Dingoes back in October, to date the most publicity The Dingoes mob has received has likely come courtesy of Federal MP George Christensen, who was a guest on their podcast in February. A few months later — after having made the Columbus-like discovery that he’d been chatting to neo-Nazi yoof — Christensen declared that he’d stumbled onto the podcast entirely by mistake, was really sorry about the whole thing, and vowed to stop US neo-Nazi Mike Peinovich from coming to Australia in order to address the conference his erstwhile kameraden had organised for July. (Christensen’s sudden rise and very slow fall from Dingo grace is most-usefully examined by Richard Cooke in the July, 2017 edition of The Monthly.)*

Christensen’s decision to consort with anti-Semites angered some at the time, and Jenna Price may be correct to claim that ‘[o]nly Buzzfeed’s Mark di Stefano thought it wasn’t the best use of a politician’s time’, but as Jason Wilson wrote in February, Christensen is not the only political figure to have embraced The Dingoes:

Last week, for the second time, former Labor leader Mark Latham appeared on The Convict Report, aka The Dingoes, an Australian “alt-right” podcast. It’s part of the network of podcasts hosted by The Right Stuff, a major international far right hub. That’s the same website whose major players have been recently doxxed by the left, and whose unmasking as promoters of fascist ideology has, in some cases, brought suitably ruinous consequences.

After taking note of the fact that both Christensen and former Liberal turned Conservative Federal MP Bernardi were to be guests of The Q Society function in Melbourne in February (LOL), Wilson further writes that:

Bernardi also has other, perhaps even stranger connections. In particular, he has a long relationship with a group called the Sydney Traditionalist Forum. They describe themselves as “the first explicitly paleoconservative-leaning association in Australia”, and “the only local group that embraces the political currents of contemporary dissident reaction”. Their purpose is to provide “a forum where ideas once understood to be common sense can be exchanged, debated and discussed, unfettered and ungagged by modern liberal thought-control”.

The Sydney Traditionalists, as it happens, are also comrades of The Dingoes; which fact — together with their rejection of Dr Saleam — has apparently irked the authors of the United Nationalists of Australia (UNA) blog.

The Dingoes, Klub Naziya, Sydney Traditionalists, Liberals, United Nationalists and Australia First Party

Functioning largely as a forum for (Jewish?!) neo-Nazi and AFP member Nathan Sykes, but also occasionally featuring the musings of former UPF leader turned AFP member Chris Shortis, the UNA blog replaced the similarly batshit ‘Whitelaw Towers’, and frequently takes potshots at the various enemies and rivals of Saleam and the AFP. In keeping with this role, the blog has recently published an account of DingoCon and the nefarious forces allegedly pulling its strings.

According to UNA (‘DINGOES CONNED?’, July 6, 2017), Liberal and Leo Strauss aficionado David McBryde is ‘the man behind the curtain of DingoCon’. The logic governing the proposal is fairly convoluted but whatever its sketchy merits, it does reveal something of the fractious nature of the extreme-right in Sydney. Thus, in another post on the UNA blog authored by Saleam, McBryde is nominated as being one of a number of individuals — along with Steven Moore, Mark Pavic, Jason Rafty and Andrew Wilson — comprising the shadowy Klub Nation (AKA Klub Naziya), a bizarre group which, inter alia, organised meetings at Humanist House in Chippendale in the period 2005–2009 before staging an unsuccessful attempt to seize control of the group which owns it, the Humanist Society of NSW. KN is also alleged to have been involved in some dingbat investment scheme — the purchase of gold and silver — in which several investors allegedly lost some small sums of money. (For more on KN and Humanist House, see : Fascist infiltration of the ‘Humanist Society of New South Wales’ (Inc.), November 25, 2009.)


Above : Andrew Wilson with fellow members of (defunct) neo-Nazi skinhead gang Volksfront.

According to another source, Andrew Wilson is in fact one of the regular hosts of The Convict Report, where he podcasts under the name of ‘Aussie Tory’; certainly, Wilson once put the yoof in the Patriotik Yoof League (PYL) — the ill-fated attempt by Saleam’s Australia First Party to develop a yoof wing in the early noughties — and was one of the volk in the similarly short-lived neo-Nazi grouplet Volksfront. Since then, after various twists and turns, the PYL has been replaced by the imaginatively titled ‘Eureka Youth League’, AKA Canberra boy Matthew Grant. (You may remember Grant from such rallies as the UPF anti-Muslim rally in Bendigo in October, 2015.)

Other individuals nominated as being in some way complicit in McBryde’s plotting to undo the (White) nationalist content of The Dingoes and to bring its handful of followers (back) into the Liberal fold are: Sydney Traditionalist, DingoCon organiser, aspiring academic and self-described ‘paleo-conservative’ Luke Torrisi; fellow Traditionalist, sometime Humanist and USYD activist Morgan Qasabian and finally; Clifford Jennings, described by Saleam as an ‘Alt-Right leader and the organizer of Dingo activity’ and a former Liberal: also an aspiring USYD student politician, and organiser of a ‘Pro-Trump Counter Protest’ in Sydney in January (‘Communists, Marxists, Globalists and Cucks are going to be protesting against the inauguration of the God Emperor Trump to the Presidency of the United States of America, please join me in a very merry counter protest. Please invite those who are truly pro-Trump.’).

In summary, it’s not without reason that Jason Wilson wrote that ‘The Dingoes attempt to produce the same edgy fare as The Right Stuff flagships like The Daily Shoah, but they sound a little too much like chinless Young Liberal nerds to bring any real menace’. Beyond that, while much media reportage on the ‘AltRight’ has been obsessed with the bells and whistles (haircuts and memes) attached to it, as a general rule it’s just the old anti-Semitic and fascist whine in new bottles.

See also : Are These Two Jewish Dudes The Aussie Voice Of The Alt-Right?, Leon Gettler, Forward, April 5, 2017 | The Dingoes claim to be ‘growing’ part of Australian alternative-right political scene, Victoria Craw, news.com.au, December 5, 2016 | Big Nazi on Campus: How Well Dressed Racists Are Coming to a College Near You, It’s Going Down, May 15, 2016 | Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment: The Frankfurt School as Scapegoat of the Lunatic Fringe, March 9, 2012.

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* Conservative MPs accidentally-stumbling-into-fascist-and-anti-Semitic-groups has a long, colourful, and generally comedic history Down Under. STRAYA has also often been a safe space for Nazi war criminals, some few recruited by the intelligence agencies to better battle Communism while others, most notoriously Slovenian Nazi propagandist Ljenko Urbančič (1922–2006), pursuing careers within the Conservative parties themselves. Urbančič, who joined the NSW Liberal Party and exercised considerable influence upon it during the 1960s and 1970s via the ‘Uglies’ faction, also enjoyed Australian hospitality by organising campaigns in support of apartheid, White rule in Rhodesia, and against the influence of liberals within the Liberals. The political legacy of the ‘Little Goebbels’ of Ljubljana continues to be exercised and/or exorcised via his #BFF and NSW state MP David Clarke and Clarke’s former acolyte, federal MP Alex Hawke. For more infos on STRAYA as a safe space for Nazis and war criminals, see : Mark Aarons, War Criminals Welcome (Black Inc., 2001).

Sadly, Mike Peinovich (‘Mike Enoch’) did not attend DingoCon, instead electing to goto the Scandza Forum in Oslo, Norway on July 1. Erik Olson (Searchlight) writes: ‘Recently a small “volkisch” far-right group called Scandza Forum started making its presence felt publicly with calls for more international activity. Some minor events took place and then we learned from our inside sources that a major event was to take place in Oslo on 1 July 2017 under the Scandza banner heavily supported by Greg Johnson’s Counter-Currents.’ Note that Johnson was a guest of The Dingoes in September last year.