Above : Dave Pellowe (Axiomatic Events) / Daniel Spiller (Future Now Australia)
Oh dear.
Last weekend, ‘Cooks Convicts’ — in this case Neil Erikson, his loyal sidekick Ricky Turner, and a coupla bikies — paid a nocturnal visit to Dave Pellowe’s house in Queensland. According to Erikson & Co, Pellowe is the person responsible for sabotaging fellow Queensland businessman Daniel Spiller’s attempt to organise back in April a tour Down Under by infowars supplements salesman Milo Yiannopoulos. The plan, apparently, was for Yiannopoulos to join Erikson, Sky News’s Ross Cameron, and ‘Proud Boy’ Gavin McInnes to talk shite LIVE! and/or via skype in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth. For whatever reason, Spiller’s tour collapsed in a heap almost immediately upon his making the announcement.
In any (non-)event, Pellowe, trading as ‘Axiomatic Events’, has recently decided to join others, like Spiller and Damien Costas (the publisher of Penthouse and sponsor of Milo Yiannopoulos’s December 2017 tour), in seeking to profit from the international troll circuit. As Richard Cooke writes (Australia’s welcome mat for right-wing trolls, The Saturday Paper, October 21-27, 2017): ‘In so many ways, Milo Yiannopoulos is unremarkable. He is just one of a long line of conservative grifters making hay in Australia.’
In 1943, a time when the devil had the best poems, if not the best tunes, George Orwell could write: “By and large the best writers of our time have been reactionary in tendency.” Sadly, the West just can’t field the calibre of fascist it once did. He was talking about W. B. Yeats, and could have also called upon Ezra Pound, Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Knut Hamsun from the far right. After that lot, Milo Yiannopoulos feels like a real climb-down.
A right-wing troll and professional attention seeker who scores novelty points for being gay, Milo was fast on his way to assisted career suicide in the rest of the world, dumped by his publisher and even his own website. But here he swung interviews on morning TV and FM radio to promote a series of Australian appearances later in the year, following a hallowed local tradition of taking the world’s worst commentators seriously. Elsewhere these people barely qualify as hecklers; here, they’re ushered onto centrestage.
The Melbourne leg of Milo’s tour (at Melbourne Pavilion in Kensington) witnessed clashes, and on Friday, June 8, ‘Cooks Convicts’ members Erikson, Turner, one of Erikson’s old neo-Nazi comrades, Richard Whelan, Garry Hume, and ‘Soldier of Odin’ Garry Mattson are to face Melbourne Magistrates’ Court, charged with a variety of offences, including assault. Erikson’s last adventure in court took place early last month, when he was given a slap on the wrist for contempt of court. The judge in that case (Toll Transport Pty Ltd & Ors v Erikson (No.3) [2018] FCCA 1120 (11 May 2018)) observed that:
Mr Erikson has not provided any expression of genuine contrition. In fact, having observed Mr Erikson’s conduct over a number of proceedings, I have formed the view that he is indifferent to the seriousness of his contempt. The evidence that Mr Erikson has given in these proceedings has been inconsistent, implausible and lacks credibility. I observed in the Contempt Decision that it was likely that when it suits him, Mr Erikson has a tenuous relationship with the truth.
Similar observations were made by another judge when Erikson was convicted of stalking and harassing a local 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. But she ignored prosecution pleas to jail Erikson, sentencing him instead to psychological assessment and treatment in the community. “There is no other explanation except that they were motivated by prejudice, if not hatred, toward the victim because of his race,” she told Erikson.
Erikson himself expressed the same to me:
Note that the expedition to David Pellowe’s home in Queensland by ‘Cooks Convicts’ was preceded by the disruption of a church service in Gosford (which scared some old people outta their wits) and a visit to the home of Catherine Deveny in Melbourne. In both cases it appears that the cooked units escaped without penalty.
Speaking of cooked units, several former United Patriots Front flunkeys have had to goto jail recently. Thus in addition to the murder convictions of Aryan Nations members Robert (Wayne) Edhouse and Melony (Jayne) Attwood/Taylor in Perth, in Canberra UPF fanboy Nathan Davidson was last month sentenced to six years and nine months (with a non-parole period of three years and eight months) for drug offences (Dealer sentenced over massive Civic drug bust, Alexandra Back, The Canberra Times, May 26, 2018). Oddly, another report on the sentencing (Canberra man jailed after drugs, cash found in kitchen appliances, Elizabeth Byrne, ABC, May 26, 2018) includes the following:
Davidson also admitted to the court he once had links to far right groups and has tattoos including a German eagle. But he said he was no longer affiliated, partly because his drug-taking and dealing behaviour was at odds with their beliefs. “I was an embarrassment to them,” he said.
In which context, two things: 1) Davidson’s tattoos include not only a ‘German eagle’ (lol) but the words ‘Aryan’ on one arm and ‘1488’ on the other; 2) UPF fuehrer Blair Cottrell, now busy building a neo-Nazi cadre called ‘The Lads Society’, also has criminal convictions for abusing steroids. As a general rule, then, neo-Nazi criminals are only an ’embarrassment’ to the far right if they get caught.
notes
• Speaking of tours, Axiomatic Events/Dave Pellowe is also touring Marijke Rancie, AKA ‘Political Posting Mumma’; she’ll be appearing at Mt Gravatt Bowls Club in Queensland on June 21. Rancie gained some notoriety for fronting an anti-‘Safe Schools’ campaign last year. A Tory who was employed in December last year as an electorate officer for Mount Waverley MP, Michael Gidley, Rancie is also part of a wave of fun-da-mentalist Christians currently attempting to seize control of the Tories in Victoria (see : The religious minority seizing power in the Liberal Party, Ben Schneiders & Farrah Tomazin, The Age, June 3, 2018).
• Recently, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (‘Tommy Robinson’) went to jail, after trying — but failing — to sabotage a rape trial in the UK. See : What on earth happened to poor Tommy Robinson? 10 Things You Should Know., thesecretbarrister, May 28, 2018. Naturally, this made his fans in the UK, Australia and elsewhere very unhappy. In response, Avi Yeminem and the Australian Liberty Alliance organised a picket outside the British consulate in Melbourne on May 28, and will be gathering again outside the consulate in Melbourne and elsewhere in the country this weekend (June 9/10).
• Meanwhile, in Russia, Putin’s gangsta state has (again) declared war on anarchists and antifascists, on this occasion attempting to frame a number as belonging to a fictional terrorist network called, imaginatively enough, ‘The Network’. See : The Network: Russia’s Odd, Brutal, and Maybe Invented Pre-World Cup Terrorism Case, Joshua Yaffa, New Yorker, June 3, 2018. See also : avtonom.
• Speaking of anTEEfa, check Northern Suburbs Antifascists; for the western ‘burbs, contact westsideantifa[at]protonmail[dot]com.
• Finally, some items of interest from the US:
Stabbed at a neo-Nazi rally, called a criminal: how police targeted a black activist, Sam Levin, The Guardian, May 25, 2018;
A Member Of The Far-Right Proud Boys Menaced A Twitter User On His Doorstep, Andy Campbell, Huffington Post, May 26, 2018;
After Charlottesville: how a slew of lawsuits pin down the far right, David Smith, The Guardian, May 29, 2018;
The Daily Caller exposed for publishing prolific antisemite; still employs editor with white nationalist ties, Hatewatch, Southern Poverty Law Centre, May 29, 2018 (starring David Hilton/Moses Apostaticus);
How the resurgence of white supremacy in the US sparked a war over free speech, Alex Blasdel, The Guardian, May 31, 2018;
Trump’s Loudest Anti-Muslim Twitter Troll Is A Shady Vegan Married To An (Ousted) WWE Exec, Luke O’Brien, Huffington Post, June 2, 2018;
Islamophobia Inc., Al Jazeera, May 14, 2018:
Across the United States, there has been a growth in organizations that portray Islam as a threat.
Over two years, the number of groups that make up what’s become known as the Islamophobia industry has more than tripled.
This investigation reveals the tactics these groups use to instigate a fear of Islam, including how they manipulate social media to create a false narrative that Muslims are trying to take over the country.
Anti-Muslim messages proliferate social media with bought-in followers, fake accounts and robotic amplifiers.
The investigation also shows how these organizations try to suppress the rise of a Muslim political voice in America. It uncovers the “dark money” that has fuelled the rapid growth of Islamophobia Inc. – tens of millions of dollars which is funnelled through secretive, anonymous donor funds.
We unveil the donors of the dark money and ask; what do they ultimately hope to achieve?
