Right Wing Resistance, Ricky White, & slackbastard

A problem for the Australian antifa, and indeed for anti-fascist groups in Europe and the US, is that few people and organisations they oppose here have much to do with Nazism. ~ Chip Le Grand, Antifa Australia goes for the jugular, The Australian, December 9, 2017

On December 14, 2018, a judgement was delivered in the Supreme Court of NSW in the case of ‘State of New South Wales v White [2018] NSWSC 1943’. ‘White’ refers to Ricky White, who at one time was the 2IC of ‘Right Wing Resistance Australia’ (RWRAU), the Australian branch of a tiny neo-Nazi network established in Aotearoa/New Zealand in 2009 by veteran neo-Nazi activist Kyle Chapman.

The case, before The Honourable Justice Natalie Adams, was in response to an application to have White subject to a supervision order under the relevant sections of the Terrorism (High Risk Offenders) Act 2017 (NSW), and resulted in the following orders being issued by the court:

(1) Pursuant to ss 20, 25(1)(a) and 26(6) of the Terrorism (High Risk Offenders) Act 2017 (NSW), the defendant is to be supervised under an extended supervision order for a period of two years from the date of this order.

(2) Pursuant to s 29(1) of the Terrorism (High Risk Offenders) Act 2017 (NSW), the defendant is to comply with the conditions set out in the Schedule to this judgment for the duration of the extended supervision order.

(3) Access to the Court file in these proceedings is restricted such that access would only be permitted to a non-party with the leave of a Judge of this Court and with prior notice to the parties so as to allow them to be heard in respect of the application for access.

In addition to legal argument, the judgement contains reference to White’s background, activities as a member of RWRAU, and a brief account of the groupuscule’s origins, history and activities, furnished to the court by academic Professor Paul Spoonley, Pro Vice-Chancellor of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Massey University of New Zealand.

As noted above, access to Spoonley’s report is restricted.

I haven’t paid all that much attention to RWRAU, but did take note of White being charged with the arson of a church in September 2016 (of which he was later found guilty); the court d0x also reveal him to have had a previous conviction for ‘phone calls to the Sydney Jewish Museum in 2014 which involved anti-Semitic threats of extreme violence and sexual assault’. As a result, ‘he was arrested and charged on 4 April 2014 and was ultimately convicted of three counts of using a carriage service to menace/harass/offend and one count of using a carriage service to threaten serious harm. He was fined and placed under a 12 month recognizance.’

As for RWRAU, Justice Adams writes:

42 I have had regard to the report by Professor Paul Spoonley, Pro Vice-Chancellor of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Massey University of New Zealand. Professor Spoonley has expertise in race relations, right wing extremism, skinhead political movements, anti-Semitism and so forth. He provided the following information in relation to RWR.

43 Sometime in about 2008 or 2009, RWR emerged in New Zealand, bringing together various skinhead activities and white supremacist activists. It was created and named by activist Kyle Champan. In addition to aggressive opposition to cultural diversity and multiculturalism, advocacy for white pride and racial purity and the use of neo-Nazi imagery, Mr Chapman endeavoured to involve RWR in political events and campaigns (such as disrupting political meetings), to make the group visible (such as vigilante patrols in Christchurch) and to promote it through the use of social media. RWR was also made very recognisable due to the adoption of a black uniform, insignia on the lapels and black foraging caps reminiscent of Nazi German uniforms.

44 RWR was heavily reliant on the direction and initiative provided by Mr Chapman. He had actively engaged with the media, including social media. When Mr Chapman left, the visibility and degree of organisation meant that the activity of RWR has faded somewhat in the last few years. However, there are several individuals who keep elements of RWR alive in social media. One of those persons was the defendant who used the online pseudonym “slackbastard”.

45 RWR remained active both online and in relation to various activities through to 2016-17. During this year there were reports of violence involving RWR members in Brighton, Christchurch during a RWR annual “flag day” after the group had marched through the CBD and attended the Bridge of Remembrance in black clothing and boots, flying a Union Jack, the Cross of St George and a “white power” flag. [See : Man stabbed at Right Wing Resistance party in Christchurch, Sam Sherwood, stuff.co.nz, October 24, 2016.]

46 The Australian RWR was said to have much of the same ideology and politics as its New Zealand counterpart. Slogans used on websites hosted by the Australian RWR included “Asia for the Asians. Africa for the Africans. White Countries for Everbody” and “anti-racism is a code word for anti-white”. One blog stated “Race: No Muslims, Blacks, Asians, Jews” and depicted neo-Nazi images.

47 I have had regard to this material and the material set out below. I am satisfied that the offender burnt down the church in Taree with the intention of advancing a political religious or ideological cause and intending the intimidation of the public or a section of it.

In which context, a few further remarks are in order.

The founder of RWR, Kyle Chapman, has a long and distinguished history of playing Nazi dress-ups, including with the New Zealand Hammerskins and New Zealand National Front, as well as the National(ist) Alliance, Survive Club, and a number of other crank projects. In fact, the first occasion upon which Chapman’s name appears on the blog is way back in June 2006, when he was touting the virtues of something called the ‘Phantom Recon Militia’.

Chapman’s dream of creating a neo-Nazi militia — complete with uniforms, ranks, and oaths of loyalty — eventually found its culmination in RWR (est. February 2009), and its associated project of establishing a compound or ‘Land Base’. One of RWR’s first public actions was a vigilante patrol in Christchurch; in 2011 in Wellington they held a flag parade; for ‘White Pride World Wide Day’ in 2013 RWR was joined by Australia First Party fuehrer Dr Jim Saleam. Otherwise, RWR carried on with the all the usual activities associated with being a very smol nazi groupuscule.

Like White, Chapman is also apparently responsible for setting fires: ‘In his younger days in Invercargill he admitted to a series of arsons between 1987 and 1992, including fire-bombing a marae.’

Fast-forward to early 2009, and on Stormfront Chapman announced the creation of ‘Right Wing Resistance’, and in October 2009 commenced publishing a blog of that name (now deleted). In 2013, on his personal blog, Chapman claimed that RWR was going very well.

In February 2015, Chapman, again on Stormfront, claimed that RWR was able and willing to provide ‘training’ for White supremacist recruits in order to travel to South Africa and, presumably, join the fight for a White South Africa. Perhaps not surprisingly, it appears as though this particular mission was not a great success. In any case, in 2015–2016 Chapman gradually stepped back from the group, publicly announced his resignation in September 2016, and another man — an elderly scrapworker called Vaughan Tocker — became the group’s leader and public face.

So far, so typical.

Of course, Chapman had wild ambitions. Thus, RWR was not only going to operate in Aotearoa/New Zealand, but become The World’s Leading White Supremacist Organisation.

Let’s see how that’s fared, shall we?

RWR Leaves Home

In 2012, a handful of neo-Nazis in Scotland joined RWR, following which franchises were established (or were claimed to have been established) in Australia, Canada, Sweden, the United States of America, and numerous other countries. Mostly, this consisted of outreach over teh intarwebs, the purchase of RWR merch, and posing for pictures while wearing said merch. Beyond that, RWR hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory.

Finland

Along with Sweden, RWR made very partial inroads into the neo-Nazi movement in Finland. Among those who reportedly joined the group was Mika Ranta, the founder of the racist street-gang the ‘Soldiers of Odin’ (SOO). The Melbourne franchise of SOO was kindly compared by The Age to the ‘Guardian Angels’ (New York). One of its members, Garry Mattsson, became one of the so-called ‘Milo Five’ (along with Neil Erikson, Garry Hume, Ricky Turner and Richard Whelan), and was later convicted of offences arising from the fussing and fighting outside of Melbourne Pavilion during the Melbourne leg of Milo Yiannopoulos‘s tour Down Under in December 2017. (Ranta himself has criminal convictions for racist violence.)

Scotland

In March 2016, another bonehead, Gary Crane, was reported as being ‘the UK leader of the ultra-hardline worldwide Right Wing Resistance (RWR) movement’. Like other right-wing predators, Crane was especially-committed to recruiting vulnerable yoof, a project given the tabloid treatment in ‘Unmasked: Neo-Nazi racist brainwashing young Scots in bid to lure them into his sick gang of hate’ (Liam Turbett, The Daily Record, March 29, 2016). Included in the article are references to Peter Kramer (RWR Sweden) and diminutive nazi Shane Calvert (‘Diddyman’). According to Turbett, ‘Kramer is a senior member of the Swedish branch of the RWR. He has travelled to New Zealand to meet founding members of the organisation and travels Europe to attend demos dressed as an SS-style Nazi.’

A year later, in March 2017, Crane was sentenced to eight months in prison for his role in ‘violent disorder at last year’s ill-fated National Front demonstration in Dover … The jailing is a mortal blow to the Right Wing Resistance (RWR), a major international revolutionary National Socialist force. Or yet another tinpot gang of fascist uniform fetishists. You decide.’

Sweden

As noted previously on the blog, RWR attracted a tiny following in Sweden. In February 2013, a 44yo member of the group was charged with displaying his SS tattoos at a National Democrats’ demonstration in Gothenburg in 2012. (The neo-Nazi had previous criminal convictions for bad behaviour.)

USA

In February 2017, the ADL reported that a bonehead by the name of Benjamin McDowell got arrest:

On February 15, FBI agents arrested Benjamin Thomas Samuel McDowell, 29, of Conway, South Carolina, alleging he purchased a gun from an undercover agent from the FBI posing as someone connected with a faction of the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations. McDowell, a convicted felon not allowed to own guns, was charged with illegal possession of a firearm.

Further:

McDowell was previously associated with the Right-Wing Resistance, a racist skinhead crew which originated in New Zealand and spread to the United States in early 2015. In fact, in October 2015, one member welcomed him to the crew as the new Unit Leader for South Carolina. Right-Wing Resistance had also been part of the Black and Silver Solutions umbrella group.

Northern Ireland/The Six Counties & Wales

In NI, a single reference to RWR is made in a BBC summary of NI newspaper headlines in December 2017: ‘The [Ulster Gazette] also has a report on a Coalisland man jailed for four months for leaving an anti-Islamic leaflet in Armagh library. A court was told the name Right Wing Resistance was printed at the bottom of the leaflet.’

In Wales, Christopher Phillips gets a guernsey courtesy of Hope Not Hate in ‘Nazi Chris loves his guns and stuff’ (August 11, 2017), which includes a photo of Phillips posing with a gun.

The pic of Phillips posing in his living room with what looks like slightly more than just an air rifle is also interesting; Phillips claims it is for “hunting nigglets”.

In fact, Mr Phillips has an entire account on the Russian version of Facebook that is littered with pics of him with guns, making threats against black people, his wife with guns and even the pair of them out Nazi saluting, because despite being a gun-toting Nazi fanatic, he is just an old romantic at heart.

See also : Business owner’s disgust as sick stickers and posters plastered around Armagh (‘Councillor asked to bring ‘hate crime’ to attention of PSNI’), armaghi.com, June 21, 2017.

It’s almost as if there’s some kind of pattern developing here, isn’t there?

RWRAU

As noted, RWRAU set-up shop in Australia within a few years of its emergence in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Seemingly since its beginning, its chief propagandist has been a bonehead from Newcastle called ‘Sammy Binz’ (‘Sammy Chelsea’). Sammy has been quite prolific on teh webs, with a blog on wixsite, YouTube channel, Pinterest and VK account, and so on.

Above : Deputy Mayor of Casey Council Rosalie Crestani with Sammy Chelsea, fuehrer of RWRAU, at Reclaim Australia rally, Sydney, January 2017.

Most of RWRAU’s activity in Australia has consisted of distributing hate propaganda. But members of the group have attended and flown the flag at a small number of public protests, including ‘Reclaim Australia’ rallies in Brisbane in 2015 and Sydney in 2017, and the ‘True Blue Crew’ rally in Melbourne later that year. Among those to have expressed support for the group is alleged terrorist Phillip Galea and another local bonehead, Aaron De Keulenaer.

Oh, and in 2016, in a video since deleted from her YouTube channel, Sammy paid a visit to the Clayton campus of Monash University.

OK, here we are, in Monash University. This is where, a girl with … [?], a Right Wing Resistance t-shirt, [with] ‘Auschwitz’ on her arm — uh-huh, a-ha … [?] gotta be careful. Monash University is home to slackbastard, who’s caused us white national-socialists quite a lot of grief over time. It’s also a hotbed of left-wing communists, and social-anarchists. And we are not gonna back down to this scum. And we are gonna have a little bit of fun, aren’t we? So, I’ve already started [puts RWR posters up] … So I better get moving, and get out of here before someone arrests me. The Nazi has entered the building! [puts RWR posters up] … This is bullshit what they teach the kids here. Like really. What is this. This is crap … [puts RWR posters up] Oh, looks like show’s over, Monash security is on its way. Look at that over there … We’ll risk one more, hey, and then we’ll get the Hell on out of here … That is how you piss off a whole University full of left-wing communist Marxist scum.

This one’s for you slackbastard.

Cheers Sammy.

Ethan Tilling

Above : Tilling (on far right) with chums from RWRAU.

Given the nature of the court proceedings, however, it’s somewhat surprising that the judgement seemingly contains no reference to the most widely-publicised media account involving RWRAU: the expedition to Ukraine of Ethan Tilling.

When Australian former Neo-Nazi and registered gun owner Ethan Tilling flew into Brisbane [in 2018], he was returning under the radar of Australian authorities with newfound combat experience from a brutal and forgotten war.

Mr Tilling, who was until recently a member of the Nazi group Right Wing Resistance, had spent the Australian spring in the bitter cold of Eastern Ukraine firing Kalashnikovs, rocket launchers and grenades at Russian-backed separatists …

See : From Neo-Nazi to militant: The foreign fighters in Ukraine who Australia’s laws won’t stop, Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop, Suzanne Dredge, and Michael Workman, ABC Investigations, May 7, 2018.

Finally, it would be remiss of me not to take particular note of paragraph 44 of the judgement, viz:

RWR was heavily reliant on the direction and initiative provided by Mr Chapman. He had actively engaged with the media, including social media. When Mr Chapman left, the visibility and degree of organisation meant that the activity of RWR has faded somewhat in the last few years. However, there are several individuals who keep elements of RWR alive in social media. One of those persons was the defendant who used the online pseudonym “slackbastard”.

This would appear to claim (I cannot think of any other reasonable interpretation) that, as far as The Honourable Justice Natalie Adams is concerned, I am in fact Ricky White.

Bizarre, no?

See also : Deranged but Dangerous- Right Wing extremists in Aotearoa and the dangers they pose., leftwin, December 6, 2015 | The Ice Bloc blog has lots of interesting and useful disco on far-right politics in Aotearoa/New Zealand, as does the socialist organisation Fightback.