Tagged with Mariam Veiszadeh

On Troll Hunting (Ginger Gorman)

Troll Hunting by Australian journalist Ginger Gorman is a new book which examines the world of online hate and its human fallout. Along with interviews with a small number of trolls and general reflections upon this hateful world, Gorman’s book includes a number of case studies of trolling, some of which are relatively well-known while others not: all make for disturbing reading. While it’s of general relevance, many of the characters and events which populate this world would be especially familiar to (Australian) readers, or at least those who take an interest in such matters: on the one hand, ‘GamerGate’, convicted terrorist Joshua Goldberg, Andrew Auernheimer (AKA ‘weev’) and GNAA; on the other hand, those subject to what Gorman calls ‘predator trolling’, including writer Van Badham and lawyers Josh Bornstein and Mariam Veiszadeh (among others). Gorman’s book is well-written and engaging, and weaves together the author’s own experience of being ‘trolled’ with those of others, along with some examples of ‘troll hunting’ and ‘troll hunters’, the latter category including journalist and lawyer Luke McMahon. As well as being of general interest, the text is of particular interest to me because of the ways in which the ‘world of online hate’ has been ‘weaponized’ by elements of the far right, a theme explored in more detail in the anthology Cyber Racism and Community Resilience: Strategies for Combating Online Race Hate (Palgrave, 2017). At a little over 250 pages long, the text includes endnotes, which are useful, but — rather annoyingly — no index.

Gorman’s book is divided into three parts: ‘Trolls’, ‘Targets’ and ‘Troll hunting’. The first part examines the evolution of online trolling, the emergence of ‘predator trolls’ in particular — which Gorman defines (p.18) as those who set out to do real-life harm — and details the author’s lengthy conversations and interactions with several of its enthusiastic practitioners. In the second part, Gorman provides case studies of predator trolling and investigates the ways in which law enforcement has responded, or more precisely failed to respond, to these activities. Gorman also explores how social media giants like Facebook and Twitter have dealt with trolling and cyberhate generally — which is argued to be less-than-adequate. The third and final part of the book explores how some trolls, including Goldberg, came unstuck. Throughout the text, Gorman reflects upon her journey into this ‘world of online hate’, and how her interactions with the creatures which inhabit it change her understanding of them, their world, and its relationship to broader social and technological trends, especially racism and misogyny and the central place of social media in everyday life.

‘Trolling’ IRL

While the second part reveals varying degrees of incompetency and indifference on the part of tech companies, after documenting the systemic failure of law enforcement to address cyberbullying, Gorman does detect a more hopeful sign (pp.119–120):

Some stories are emerging of more appropriate, and effective, responses to cyberbullying complaints. Take comedian and writer Catherine Deveny. After making controversial comments on Twitter and Facebook about Anzac Day in 2018 — describing it as ‘Bogan Halloween’ and a ‘fetishisation of war and violence’ — she was doxed multiple times. Her home address was posted all over the internet and she received an avalanche of credible rape and death threats. She was the focus of several facebook hate groups. One night, five men in a ute turned up to her house. One of them knocked on her door and videoed himself doing it.

Within forty-eight hours of Deveny’s original comments being posted — and the resultant blow-up of public vitriol — Victorian counter-terrorism police reached out to her. They got her statement and started investigating. Police patrolled outside her house and work events. An investigator from the Office of the Federal eSafety Commissioner also got in touch. In contrast to many who’d gone before her, Deveny received significant and appropriate support. After hearing so many dire stories, it’s great to hear one like this. Wouldn’t it be amazing if all predator-trolling victims could rely on getting this kind of assistance?

LOL.

For what it’s worth, I remember when this incident took place, and at the time made brief reference to it on the blog. In which context, a few things. First, those responsible for paying Deveny a nocturnal visit included right-wing activists Julian de Ross (AKA ‘Hugh Pearson’), Rino ‘Bluebeard’ Grgurovic and Ricky Turner. Secondly, whatever became of the intervention by Victorian counter-terrorism police and the Office of the Federal eSafety Commissioner, the boys carried on as before. Thus one month later, members of the same crew — on this occasion consisting of Paul Exley and Danny Peanna/Parkinson from Sydney, together with the Melbourne-based Grgurovic, Logan Spalding, and their ringleader Neil Erikson — filmed themselves disrupting a church service in Gosford; in June, Erikson, Turner and several others paid another nocturnal visit to a private address, on this occasion that of rival right-wing entrepreneur Dave Pellowe. While it’s unclear if those responsible for attending Deveny’s and Pellowe’s address faced any legal repercussions (it seems not), for his part in the disruption of the church service Erikson at least was later charged under an obscure law making it an offence to ‘obstruct a member of the clergy in the discharge of his or her duties’.

It’s possible, I suppose, to characterise this behaviour as ‘IRL trolling’ — but there’s certainly other interpretations. One critical difference is that, while it may be performed for teh lulz, unlike almost all of the examples of ‘trolling’ Gorman provides in her book, such actions are not really all that anonymous. In fact, while there’s occasionally some effort made to disguise the identities of those responsible, for the most part it’s very public — and by public I mean ‘filmed and then published by/on Facebook’. When de Ross, Grgurovic, Turner & Co. visited Deveny’s home; Exley, Peanna, Grgurovic, Spalding and Erikson disrupted a church service; and Erikson, Turner & Co. visited Pellowe’s home; these actions were undertaken precisely in order to be documented and distributed via Facebook. So too, the numerous other occasions upon which Erikson in particular has undertaken the role of a serial pest, from disrupting council meetings and various left and ‘multicultural’ events to stalking and abusing various public figures he happens to dislike. (Note that Grgurovic is due in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on February 26 over assault charges; Erikson, along with his kameraden Ricky Turner and Richard Whelan, have a date on May 13 over similar.)

All of these acts have been performed publicly and for the benefit of his Facebook audience, the corporation having granted Erikson permission to do so for at least the last four years. Thus, it was only in the space of the last few days that Facebook, for unknown reasons, banned a number of Erikson’s accounts. (It’s possible that the pest may have come unstuck upon announcing the re-launch of the ‘United Patriots Front’ by creating an event page for a February 16 rally at Federation Square — the UPF collapsed after Facebook banned its page in May 2017.) Still, there are hundreds if not thousands of very similar pages on the site, and it remains the critical tool for far-right organising in Australia and elsewhere. (See, for example, Fraser Anning’s Neo-Nazi connections (The White Rose Society, January 11, 2019) and Facebook Fueled Anti-Refugee Attacks in Germany, New Research Suggests (Amanda Taub and Max Fisher, The New York Times, August 21, 2018) for two among innumerable other instances.)

More broadly, while Gorman makes fairly short work of the corporate pablum spewed by Facebook and Twitter concerning their commitment to combating trolling and ‘hate speech’, if Facebook in particular is understood as being a massive private data-collection agency — one which derives a substantial proportion of its profits from selling this information to advertisers (and whoever else can pay for it) — it’s possible to cut through this nonsense fairly easily. Further, like corporations generally, Facebook is able to use the enormous financial and political power at its disposal to ensure the forms of regulation which might inhibit its continued growth and profitability are kept at bay. And while YouTube/Google doesn’t feature in Gorman’s account, its role in promoting racist and fascist propaganda, along with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, rivals that of Facebook, and has long been understood as a key node in the distribution and promotion of race-hate and other forms of hate speech (see, for example, ‘Fiction is outperforming reality’: how YouTube’s algorithm distorts truth, Paul Lewis, The Guardian, February 2, 2018 and ‘Alternative Influence: Broadcasting the Reactionary Right on YouTube’, Rebecca Lewis, Data & Society, September 9, 2018).

In any case, to return to Goldberg and Veiszadeh (pp.218–219):

Towards the end of 2014, [Veiszadeh] publicly voiced her outrage that a Woolworths supermarket in Cairns was selling singlets printed with the Australian flag alongside the tagline,’If you don’t love it, LEAVE’.

Three months after her tweet, the far right anti-Islam group The Australian Defence League posted her tweet to their Facebook page. From there, it was picked up by the alt-right Daily Stormer website. Chillingly, The Daily Stormer post about Veiszadeh, written under the byline Michael Slay, demanded of its thousands of followers: ‘Stormer Troll Army … assemble!’ ‘We need to flood this towelhead subhuman vermin with as much racial and religious abuse as we possibly can,” the spite-filled post reads …’

(Note that a few weeks ago the former ‘President’ of the ADL, Ralph Cerminara, was found ‘guilty of two counts of intimidation and one count of common assault’ after attacking his neighbour in Sydney.)

In addition to being attacked on The Daily Stormer, Veiszadeh’s tweet also triggered a Queensland woman, Jay-Leighsha Bauman, to send Veiszadeh messages calling her a “whore”, a “rag-head” and [telling] her to return to her own “sand dune country” — Bauman was later sentenced to 180 hours of community service for the crime. A few months later, an Ordinary Mum™ and Reclaim Australia supporter was charged with threatening to slit Veiszadeh’s throat. On these and other occasions, it seems the chief fault of those charged was not bothering to anonymise their threats; the fact that Bauman’s threats were reported on by both the BBC and CNN may also have prompted authorities to take a closer look. That said:

Later in 2015, Luke McMahon and Elise Potaka reported in Fairfax newspapers that Michael Slay turned out to be not one person, but two. One of those two men was Joshua Goldberg, whose main trolling preoccupation was preserving freedom of speech. As the troll hunter explained earlier, this was how he ended up choosing targets such as Josh Bornstein.

Nathaniel Jacob Sassoon Sykes

The ‘other’ Michael Slay was of course Jewish neo-Nazi and toy-doll enthusiast Nathaniel Jacob Sassoon Sykes, who was exposed by McMahon in April 2017. Like Goldberg, Sykes contributed scores of articles to The Daily Stormer, inter alia attacking Veiszadeh along with Badham, Bornstein, Dr Tim Soutphommasane and yours truly. Currently, Sykes is the chief writer for the ‘United Nationalists of Australia’ blog, the online shitsheet of the ‘Australia First Party’. In that capacity, Sykes attacks the various enemies of the AFP on the left as well as the right. Sometimes, this creates legal difficulties. Hence, after publishing an article in June 2017 by party leader Dr Jim Saleam which detailed alleged crimes committed by members of rival fascist groupuscule ‘Klub Nation’, in May 2018 legal action against Saleam and the blog was apparently taken by various persons associated with KN. (Member of this radical right-wing network are also implicated in an attempt to infiltrate the Young Nationals in NSW last year.) Beyond this, members of the neo-Nazi ‘Lads Society’ and, more recently, a man called Michael Freshwater, have also been attacked by Sykes on the UNA blog. While Sykes was dismissed by ex-UPF and Lads Society organiser Tom Sewell as a ‘divisive little Jew’, Freshwater, it’s alleged, has been part of a conspiracy to undermine AFP, embracing elements of the Liberal Party as well as neo-Nazis like Mark McDonald, the leader of the Lads Society in Sydney and former leader of neo-Nazi groupuscule ‘Squadron 88’.

Notes

• Joshua Goldberg (as ‘Moon Metropolis’) published a statement on Medium on December 28, 2018 which provides a defence of sorts to his actions: ‘It was always my intention to infiltrate online jihadist spheres so that I could eventually become either a journalist, an FBI agent, or both.’ The statement also refers to … when I got Milo Yiannopoulos to publish that “expose” on Shaun King, I did it purely to see the shitstorm that I knew it would create, not because I actually care in the least about anything involving either Shaun King or Milo Yiannopoulos (both of those people are complete and utter clowns as far as I’m concerned). The article, ‘Did Black Lives Matter Organizer Shaun King Mislead Oprah Winfrey By Pretending To Be Biracial?’ (Breitbart, August 19, 2015), is dissected in this blogpost on Internet Famous Angry Men. Yiannopoulos is of course a very well-known troll who for several years was able to translate his trolling activities into sponsorship by wealthy right-wing reactionaries and sought to acquire more filthy lucre by conducting (semi-)lucrative tours. In fact, Yiannopoulos, along with Gavin McInnes and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, are supposedly being brought to Australia by Penthouse Australia publisher Damien Costas next month (March 9–14) for a speaking tour. For his part, Costas is currently embroiled in a legal battle with publicist Max Markson regarding alleged unpaid debts; there’s also allegedly been some fisticuffs. See also : Here’s How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled White Nationalism Into The Mainstream, Joseph Bernstein, BuzzFeed, October 5, 2017 (A cache of documents obtained by BuzzFeed News reveals the truth about Steve Bannon’s alt-right “killing machine.”).

• Gorman makes reference (pp.199-200) to a category of trolling known as ‘media fuckery’, and cites US academic Whitney Phillips who defines it as ‘the ability to turn the media against itself … by either amplifying or outright inventing a news item too sensational for media outlets to pass up’. This brought to mind two things. First, a recent example of ‘media fuckery’ in which a fake Facebook page titled ‘Melbourne Antifa’ applauded the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. This later featured in an article in The Daily Mail by Stephen Johnson (‘Melbourne Antifa extremists praise Las Vegas shooter’, October 2, 2017), was fact-checked by FactCheck.Org and Snopes and in May 2018 also triggered a bizarre interaction between myself and a right-wing blogger in the US. Secondly, the phrase immediately brought to mind similar terms such as ‘culture-jamming’ and ‘subvertising’, political practices which pre-date both ‘media fuckery’ and teh intarwebs as a whole. See : How To Make Trouble And Influence People.

• Gorman also makes reference (p.47) to local neo-Nazi activist Blair Cottrell in the context of a discussion regarding ‘hate leaching into the mainstream’ and Cottrell’s appearance as a very special guest on Adam Giles’ show on Sky News in August last year. As noted elsewhere, Cottrell – following an appearance on Sky News – told his 25,000 Twitter followers he might as well have raped presenter Laura Jayes on air because “not only would she have been happier with that but the reaction would’ve been the same”. In which context, a few things: first, while Facebook has banned the UPF and Cottrell, such commentary is considered acceptable by Twitter (to which platform Cotrell shifted after being kicked off Facebook). Secondly, his kamerad Neil Erikson made a similar remark directed at another female journalist, Jodi Lee, in November last year: ‘Jodie [sic] Lee acted like I had raped her on live TV….. She wishes!’ Thirdly, Cottrell has an extensive criminal record, mostly revolving around his stalking of an ex-girlfriend. Finally, Cotrell, Erikson and fellow white nationalist Chris Shortis were convicted in September 2017 of inciting hatred for Muslims; Cottrell is appealing the conviction on the grounds that the Victorian Act under which he was convicted (The Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001) is in fact un-Constitutional, and will be appearing in the County Court in Victoria on February 19.

• While Gorman devotes relatively little space to d0xing, it’s relevant in several instances. In her chapter on weev, ‘A Professional Racist’, for example, Gorman notes (p.232) that weev appeared on a neo-Nazi podcast with Mike Enoch and Christopher ‘Crying Nazi’ Cantwell. Later in the chapter (p.236), Gorman also refers to ‘Azzmador’, who along with Daily Stormer publisher Andrew Anglin wrote a post for the site encouraging their fellow neo-Nazis to attend the murderous ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville in August 2017. As it happens, Mike Enoch is in fact Mike Peinovich, who got d0xxed in January 2017, while ‘Azzmador’ is Robert Warren Ray. (According to a November 2018 report, Ray is currently a fugitive after being charged with a felony allegedly committed at the rally.) As for Cantwell, late last year he voiced an audio version of local neo-Nazi Ryan Fletcher’s tract ‘From HEMP to Hitler’, which has been promoted on David Hiscox’s AltRight website XYZ. See also : The far right, the “White Replacement” myth and the “Race War” brewing, Julie Nathan, ABC (Religion & Ethics), February 12, 2019:

The potential for violence which such online posts portend was graphically demonstrated in the United States in October 2018 by Robert Bowers, who wrote on Gab, a Twitter-like platform which is a haven for extremists and racists, “Screw your optics, I’m going in.” Shortly afterwards, he entered the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and murdered eleven Jews. Afterwards, Bowers told police that he was motivated by his belief that “the Jews” were “committing genocide to my people.”

Chillingly, these words were echoed by another Gab user, an Australian named Ryan Fletcher, who wrote, “I think its [sic] about time to say ‘f*** your optics I’m going in’.” Fletcher has a dark history of calling for the murder of Jews in Australia and worldwide, and of posting images of Jews being killed, on his Gab account. Fletcher subscribes to the myth: “#White gentiles are waking up to the agenda of #ZOG (which is #WhiteGenocide).” “ZOG” stands for “Zionist Occupied Government,” a term used to insinuate that “the Jews” control the United States and other Western governments. Fletcher also writes articles for XYZ.

• Speaking of neo-Nazis, Gorman notes that inre her own experience of being trolled in 2013 (pp.10–11), Six days after Newton was sentenced in 2013 came the second frightening moment. Don found a photo of our family on the fascist social network Iron March. The now-defunct website carried the slogan ‘Gas the kikes’ on its homepage. Iron March was of course the birthplace of Australian neo-Nazi groupuscule ‘Antipodean Resistance’. Its British cousins, National Action, have been proscribed as a terrorist organisation (see : See Graham Macklin, ”Only Bullets will Stop Us!’: The banning of National Action’, Perspectives on Terrorism, Vol.12, No.6 (2018) [PDF]). See also : Extreme neo-Nazi ‘death cults’ drawing in children as young as 13, report warns, Lizzie Dearden, The Independent, February 17, 2019 (‘Exclusive: Children as young as 13 being drawn into ideologies ‘harder, darker and more committed than ever before’’).

Below : Nathaniel Jacob Sassoon Sykes (Australia First Party/United Nationalists (of) Australia; Jacob Hersant (Antipodean Resistance/The Lads Society):

See also : Online abuse of women in the media, Justine Landis-Hanley, The Saturday Paper, February 16, 2019 | Meet The Woman Giving A New Face To Troll Hunting, Jamila Rizvi, Future Women, February 2019 | The ‘Canary In The Coalmine’ Link Between Terrorism And Trolling, Alex Bruce-Smith, Ten Daily, February 5, 2019 | Internet trolls are not who I thought — they’re even scarier, Ginger Gorman, ABC, February 2, 2019 | Troll hunting: a journey to the dark side, Karen Hardy, The Canberra Times, February 2, 2019 | Twitter, the barbarian country, or how I learned to love the block button, Van Badham, The Guardian, January 31, 2019 | Troll Hunting review: Ginger Gorman goes in search of the online bullies, Jonathan Green, The Sydney Morning Herald, January 18, 2019 | Staring down the trolls: Mute, block or resort to ‘digilantism’?, Ginger Gorman, The Sydney Morning Herald, June 16, 2017 | Cyberhate With Tara Moss, ABC, 2017 | Misogyny Online: A Short (and Brutish) History, Emma A Jane, SAGE (2017) | Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous, Gabriella Coleman, Verso (2014). As well as providing some further detail regarding weev’s activities prior to his going full nazi as an editor for The Daily Stormer, Coleman’s book also contains important background on the various (sub-)cultural contexts from which the ‘predator troll’ emerged. (Note also that, in conversation with weev in August 2010, Coleman writes (p.22): ‘His denunciation of “the repulsive order of the financiers” had the ring of truth, given the recent financial mess their recklessness has engendered, so I found myself, only minutes into my first bona fide conversation with a world famous troll, in agreement with him.’ LOL.)

antifa notes (may 10, 2017) : United Patriots Front kicked off Facebook &c

United Patriots Front ~versus~ Zuckerberg

The keyboard warriors of the United Patriots Front (UPF) have been experiencing some technical difficulties on Facebook of late.

Ruh-roh. Poor old Facebook Patriots. Previously a ‘safe space’ for flag-waving twats, a few weeks ago the UPF Western Australia page was unpublished and then, a week or so ago, the UPF media page — which mostly published fanboy material and dank neo-Nazi memes — was unpublished. Finally, in the last day or two, the main UPF page, which had attracted over 120,000 ‘Likes’, has also been given the boot. Presumably, the UPF, which in terms of its public presentations has been reduced to two neo-Nazis in Melbourne (fuehrer Blair Cottrell and his sidekick Thomas Sewell) and one of their boofhead mates in Perth (Dennis Huts), will carry on as before, publishing new Facebook pages, and continuing to whinge and whine about bloody Muslims, rotten Communists, and African migrants. (Note that the UPF QLD page and UPF Bendigo pages remain up and running.)

As their principal means of communication with the Australian and, increasingly, American public, Facebook has been absolutely critical to the popularisation of the UPF and, moreover, its neo-Nazi leader Cottrell. Thus despite declaring, on more than one occasion, that accumulating Facebook ‘Likes’ was not the main goal of the UPF, after hitting peak derp in Bendigo in October 2015, its ‘Likes’ appear to have risen in inverse proportion to its ability to actually draw a crowd: the last UPF rally in Melbourne in November 2015 attracted barely a few dozen supporters, while the campaign to launch their political party ‘Fortitude’ in February 2016 was a complete fail. Since that time, most of their activity has been dedicated to circulating fake news and propaganda on Facebook, organising media and publicity stunts and, most recently, celebrating Hitler’s birthday at a local German restaurant.

Sad!

*Ralph Cerminara‘s Facebook page ‘Left Wing Bigots & Extremists Exposed’ also appears to have been unpublished.
**Fuehrer Cottrell, along with ex-UPF members Chris Shortis (Australia First Party) and Neil Erikson, are due back in court on May 23 to face charges of serious religious vilification, defacing property, willful damage and behaving in an offensive manner in public following a UPF publicity stunt outside Bendigo council offices in October 2015.

Reclaim Australia ~versus~ True Blue Crew

True Blue Crew Reclaim Flag-waving

For reasons best known to themselves, the Sydney-based arm of ‘Reclaim Australia’ has cancelled its proposed rally in Melbourne on June 12. Undeterred, the True Blue Crew (TBC) has organised a flagwit rally in Melbourne on June 25. Last year’s flagwit rally attracted around 100 or so participants, the TBC busing in several score supporters from Bendigo and Melton, their numbers supplemented by Christian fundamentalists belonging to Catch The Fire Ministries (AKA ‘Rise Up Australia Party’), a small group of whom used the occasion to engage in the traditional Australian practice of a haka (presumably in honour of their Pope, Sri Lankan migrant Reverend Daniel Nalliah). Also joining the TBC on the day was one of their most vocal supporters, alleged ‘terrorist’ Phillip Galea. Appearing on April 28, Galea ‘told a court he won’t be using mental health as a defence’, and will be back in court sometime in August for a committal hearing.


Above : Phill Galea in happier times at the TBC flag rally, June 2016; just a few weeks later, he was arrested and charged with terrorisms.

Mastika ~versus~ Golden Dawn

“Mastika? We thought it said swastika!”



Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn (GD) is in all sorts of legal trouble in Greece, but in Australia is trying hard to move from the margins of Greek cultural and political life into its centre. Recently, a small group of GD members went on a publicity tour of Belmore in Sydney; the group then posted pictures of themselves distributing the Golden Dawn newspaper, including to two cafe workers at Mastika, who seemed quite happy to be receiving neo-Nazi propaganda. For its part, the cafe has disavowed any affiliation to or support for neo-Nazi politics. (It’s also closed its Facebook page.)

Nathaniel Jacob Sassoon Sykes ~versus~ Reality

“I’m not crazy! You’re the one that’s crazy!”

A few weeks ago, Nathaniel Jacob Sassoon Sykes was revealed as being a member of the (White) Australia First Party, Jewish, and a contributor to the world’s leading neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer. From this vantage point, Sykes tried his best to crank up The Internet Hate Machine and to direct it at various Australian public figures to whom he’d taken a particular dislike; a tricksy neo-Nazi, Sykes assumed the nom de guerre of ‘Hamish Patton’ while crafting his tasty insults. One of Sykes’ earliest targets was Muslim lawyer Mariam Veiszadeh, whom he lovingly described as a ‘towel-headed halal-harpy’ and a ‘country-shopping daughter of a goat-herding family of conniving peasant trash from the dunghills of Kabul’. Hurr hurr. In an article titled Waaambulance Please! Mariam Isn’t Happy! These Feels! and published on the Daily Stormer site on March 11, 2015, Sykes went into bat for a Queensland woman called Jay-Leighsha Bauman, who on that date appeared in Ipswich Magistrates Court ‘charged with using a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence’:

The charges stem from an alleged online hate campaign she directed at human rights activist Mariam Veiszadeh in early January [2015].

The allegedly expletive laden, anti-Islam campaign by Ms Bauman was unleashed on Ms Veiszadeh’s personal Facebook page, where police will allege she referred to the human rights activist as a whore, a prostitute and a rag-head and urged her to return to her “sand dune country”.

Later that month, Bauman was convicted and sentenced to 180 hours of community service.

Sykes’ Waaambulance article called upon the neo-Nazi readership of Daily Stormer to rally behind Bauman and boasted of the campaign’s success in being featured on ABC’s Lateline (Hate groups launch global attack on Muslim advocate, March 10, 2015). Perhaps wanting to avoid any legal repercussions for himself, however, at some point between March 11 and April 3, 2015, the authorship of the article was changed from ‘Nathan Sykes’ to ‘Hamish Patton’.

Before …


… & After.

The Daily Stormer’s neo-Nazi Nathan Sykes : ‘one of Australia’s worst online trolls’ (also: Jewish!)

Below : Nathaniel Jacob Sassoon Sykes (L) and Dr Jim Saleam (R), attending a Reclaim Australia rally in Sydney, 2015 (see also : The rise of the Australian far right, Late Night Live, Radio National, November 26, 2015).

File Under : TOP KEK.

Sydney resident and Australia First Party (AFP) member Nathan Sykes — AKA ‘Hamish Patton’, ‘Stanley Dangerfield’, ‘Michael Slay’, ‘Great Australian Bite’ et. al. — has been revealed as both ‘one of Australia’s worst online trolls’ … and as being of Jewish descent:

In a ramshackle inner Sydney boarding house, surrounded by his collection of Adolf Hitler dolls, a 48-year-old unemployed neo-Nazi plies his trade as one of Australia’s most aggressive online trolls.

Nathan Sykes – a former journalist and bankrupt – has spent much of the past few years under various pseudonyms harassing and baiting left-wingers and Muslim activists through social media, and writing anti-Semitic articles on neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer …

But what makes Nathaniel Jacob Sassoon Sykes particularly unusual is that, despite his neo-Nazi persona, he himself is a Jew.

Sykes was born in December 1968. Virtually everything else about his upbringing is shrouded in mystery and he has gone out of his way through pseudonyms to obscure his identity.

But Fairfax Media can now reveal that Sykes is part of an international network of trolls, and has been crucial in the campaigns to vilify a number of high-profile Australians, including Racial Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane, Muslim activist Mariam Veiszadeh and Guardian journalist and left-wing commentator Van Badham …

See : Revealing the secrets of one of Australia’s worst online trolls, Luke McMahon, The Age, April 16, 2017.

A few additional notes:

• As noted, this is not the first time that a Jewish man has been revealed as being a major contributor to Andrew Anglin‘s Daily Stormer website, ‘the best-read English language neo-Nazi website in the world’, which fact is rather … odd.

• As well as contributing articles to the Daily Stormer, Sykes was also a contributor to the now defunct neo-Nazi Whitelaw Towers (WLT) blog. The WLT blog was established over ten years ago by neo-Nazis Peter Campbell (NSW) and Jim Perren (QLD), both formerly members of the ‘White Pride Coalition of Australia’ (WPCA : 2002–2004), an online forum for neo-Nazis, Klan members, and assorted other White supremacists. Campbell deaded in August 2013, with Sykes seemingly joining Perren at some point thereafter; all three have been fulsome supporters of Dr Jim Saleam’s White nationalist AFP. In February 2016, Perren was also responsible for helping to organise the United Patriots Front (UPF) tour of Toowoomba in Queensland.

• Sykes has also been active on the neo-Nazi/White supremacist website Stormfront since December 2011 as ‘Great Australian Bite’, posting over 12,000 comments. His contributions to Daily Stormer number well over one-hundred-and-fifty separate articles.

• Sykes wrote a piece about me for Daily Stormer back in March 2015 (slackbastard ~versus~ Australia First Party, Daily Stormer, Reclaim Australia (etc.).) I could be wrogn, but I don’t believe he’s much of a fan.

• Sykes is a big fan of fellow AFP member Chris Shortis, one of three men currently facing charges as the result of a UPF stunt in Bendigo in October 2015. Sykes attended court last month in Melbourne, along with Dr Jim Saleam, to express support for Shortis. Looking rather stylish in his blue suit, Sykes was also sporting several rings, including one with a Golden Dawn symbol. Prior to this, in December 2016 in Sydney, Sykes attended a rally outside the Russian consulate, where he was joined by other AFP members (including Saleam), Golden Dawn members, and assorted other far-right elements. Oh, and University of Sydney academic Tim Anderson.

But that’s another story …

Above : (L to R) : Sykes (w camera); Tim Anderson, Simeon Boikov (Zabaikal Cossack Society of Australia), Dr Jim Saleam (AFP), Iggy Gavrilidis (Golden Dawn Australia).

Reclaim Australia, Shermon Burgess & violence …

UPDATE (August 6, 2015) : Police have charged a 38-year-old Moe man with threats to kill, threats to inflict serious injury and stalking related matters. The threats were allegedly made to Stephen Jolly (see below).

shoutyshermon

Yesterday news.com.au published a story about Shermon Burgess, AKA ‘The Great Aussie Patriot’, his role as the public face of ‘Reclaim Australia’ and, since May, of the ‘United Patriots Front’ (UPF). Also yesterday, Fairfax carries an item re alleged threats by a Reclaim Australia supporter to ‘slit the throat’ of Muslim lawyer Mariam Veiszadeh. See : ‘Some of us still have balls left’: Shermon Burgess claims to be standing up for Australia, but who is he?, August 4, 2015 | Reclaim Australia supporter charged with threatening to slit the throat of prominent lawyer, Rachel Olding, The Sydney Morning Herald, August 4, 2015.

It’s important to note that violent rhetoric has been Burgess’s stock-in-trade for some years now, first as an ‘Australian Defence League’ (ADL) member and then as a member of the God-awful studio band ‘Eureka Brigade’. news.com.au notes that Burgess ‘was a reputed member of the extreme-right Australian Defence League before becoming one of Reclaim Australia’s chief spokesmen’. In reality, Burgess’s membership of the ADL was not merely reputed but actual. Indeed, you can find a number of videos on YouTube uploaded to an ‘Australian Defence League’ account featuring both Burgess and Ralph Cerminara — sometime ‘President’ of the ADL and still one of Burgess’s closest comrades — doing their best to agitate Muslims and to attract support for the ADL’s campaign to rid Australia of their presence by distributing anti-Muslim propaganda at mosques.

Burgess’s contribution to Eureka Brigade makes both his relationship to the ADL and his position on Islam crystal-clear: The song ‘Ralph Cerminara ADL Leader’ speaks of the band’s love of the ADL President, while ‘ADL Killing Machine’, ‘Border Patrol’ and ‘Shit On A Mosque’ spell out the band’s militant opposition to Islam, desire to exterminate Muslims and to eradicate any trace of Islam in Australia. Sample lyrics: Ralph Cerminara he’s our man/The Leader of the ADL klan … Punch us a Muslim/Have a good time/Ralph Cerminara will show you his might (‘Ralph Cerminara ADL Leader’). Warriors of the ADL/Heed the call now/No fucking surrender/Ralph Cerminara’s gonna send the Muzrats [sic] back to the Sahara … It’s time to join the ADL/Send the Muslims back to Hell … No sharia, no halal/Time to get the .50 cal … A towel is not a fucking hat ya fucking sandmonkeys/And the fucking burqa/You’re not ninjas/Fuck off/Cunt/Go back to Arabia/Fuck you/Dirty fucks (‘ADL Killing Machine’). The Navy is here/So have no bloody fear/Sink Islamic boats/It’s time to have a beer/Australian Navy/Oi oi oi/A Stinger missile is what we’ll deploy/Your boat will fucking sink/The sharks’ll get the rest/HMAS Aussie Pride is the fucking best … We’re sick of your sharia/Burn your fucking mosques/It’s time to show you Muslims/We’re the fucking boss/You thought you had it easy/But you surely lost/Cronulla was Australia’s Muslim Holocaust (‘Border Patrol’).

And so on and so on and so on. See also : Who Are The Australian Defence League?, New Matilda, January 29, 2014.

The weeks prior to and following the July 18/19 RA/UPF rallies also generated several stories regarding the allegedly violent intentions of its followers, from allegations that the UPF planned to bring arms with them to the rally in Melbourne, the re-appearance of RA organiser James Gilhome (armed with similar tales), the publication of a video by UPF Melbourne leader Neil Erikson celebrating the stabbing death of a teenage anti-fascist in Madrid, death threats sent to Yarra councillor Stephen Jolly and an alleged incident in which Burgess and some of his supporters assaulted at least two other individuals they identified as being ‘anti-fascists’. In this incident, which took place on July 18 in Melbourne, Burgess further alleges that he stole a student card from the unconscious body of one of his victims, with the card and the person’s name and photograph being prominently displayed in a video he later published proudly informing the public of his magnificent victory. In-between these events, Victoria Police managed to deploy pepper spray upon an estimated 100 counter-protesters in Melbourne (the effects of which rendered one man unconscious) in a move widely celebrated by Burgess and his followers. See also : Medics’ Statement on July 18 anti-racist/fascist Demonstration, Melbourne Street Medic Collective, July 18, 2015.

Beyond this, the UPF has indeed claimed ‘solidarity with the Greek Neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, which was founded by Holocaust denier Nikos Michaloliakos’ (news.com.au), as have Shermon Burgess and Eureka Brigade. By the same token, Iggy Gavrilidis, spokesperson for Golden Dawn in Australia, has expressed support for RA and the UPF (though numbers on the ground have been fairly thin). In any case, Holocaust denialism is present in the UPF by way of Erikson and Blair Cottrell, the leadership of the UPF in Melbourne. Both Erikson and Cottrell have, inter alia, expressed such denialism, with Erikson having attended the 2010 Australian tour by Canadian denialist Paul Fromm and Cottrell having outlined his views on ‘The Jews’ in a series of comments on YouTube and elsewhere (see : Quotations From Chairman Cottrell).

In summary, the ADL, RA and the UPF have been steeped in violent (and often quite demented) rhetoric, with each aiming to eradicate Islam and ‘the left’ from Australia. Obviously, the task they have set themselves is not something they have the capacity to accomplish. Thus it’s not very surprising that as the movement — such as it is — has developed, and as its activities have been successfully countered — in brief, as it has become evident that the movement is in fact failing — so a recourse to further such rhetoric and even actions becomes that much more likely. In addition, as Guy Rundle and others have noted, ‘Jew-hatred/anti-Semitism is on the march again in Australia … channelling all the obsessions of the last century.

Talk to bikies — not all bikies by any means — at a Reclaim Australia rally, and you’ll hear the old Jew-hatred, anti-Semitism, the “socialism of fools”, all the old tunes: how sneaky the Jews are, how they run things, how an ordinary bloke can’t get ahead, 9/11, Building 7, the works. Then ask them about Israel, and you’ll find they’re Zionists to a core. Why? Well anti-Semitic Zionism has a long history, but in this case it’s about plain sight. Israel is “the good Jews”, i.e. landed, nationalised and not a tribal presence in Christian society, who are the “bad Jews”.

As Reclaim Australia fades, one of the things it may leave in its wake is a revitalised radical, right-wing movement, one in which neo-Nazis play a critical role. And that story rarely ends well …

The pressure told and the Nazis turned on each other as deeply repressed suspicions and rivalries burst through to the surface. Everybody seemed to accuse everyone else of being police spies and sexual deviants. The final slide into ignoble collapse was marked by the gunshot murder of Wayne ‘Bovver’ Smith in [National Action’s] headquarters at Tempe a few years later. It was an almost perfect example of the hapless farce which so often attended the adventures of Sydney’s neo-Nazi elite in the 1980s. Bovver, twenty-five years old and already weighing 108 kilos thanks to the three or four stubbies of beer he’d consume for breakfast each morning, was shot eight times with a sawn-off .22 rifle by Perry Whitehouse, ten years his senior but less than half his size, during a drunken, confused and basically pointless argument. When Whitehouse blew him away, Bovver was wearing a singlet bearing the message: Say No To The New Gun Control Laws.

Bonus anti-racist lulz

How I Infiltrated a White Pride Facebook Group and Turned It into ‘LGBT Southerners for Michelle Obama’, Virgil Texas, Vice, August 3, 2015.

slackbastard ~versus~ Australia First Party, Daily Stormer, Reclaim Australia (etc.)

So anyway, Sydney-based Australia First Party (AFP) member ‘Nathan Sykes’ has written an article for US-based neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer complaining about my blog.

stormerbastard

You may remember Daily Stormer from such online hate campaigns as that directed at Australian Muslim lawyer Mariam Veiszadeh — see : I will not be silenced: Australian Muslim fights Twitter ‘troll army’, Hilary Whiteman, CNN, February 28, 2015; NSW Police hate crimes unit ramps up its efforts to protect communities, Rachel Olding, The Sydney Morning Herald, February 19, 2015; Woman charged over online abuse of human rights activist Mariam Veiszadeh, The Guardian, February 18, 2015 — and Jewish Labor MP Luciana Berger (see : Neo-Nazi gave out internet abuse tips in campaign against Luciana Berger, Marcus Dysch, The Jewish Chronicle, October 30, 2014).

paw

Titled ‘Slackbastard AKA Andy Fleming: Portrait of an Antifa State Stooge’, the AFP member and Stormfront user (‘Great Australian Bite’) accuses me of all sorts of things, but the Jew-hating author is particularly upset that I’m able to operate a Facebook page, recommending that other neo-Nazis, fascists, and White supremacists do their utmost to shut me up. The anti-Semite also commends Shermon ‘The Great Aussie Patriot’ Burgess‘s flying monkeys for mass reporting my page in order for it to be removed. He further recommends the neo-Nazi ‘Whitelaw Towers’ (WLT) blog to other Jew-hating creeps as a good source of information on ‘slackbastard’.

It’s worth noting that the principal author of WLT is Peter Campbell. The Sydney-based neo-Nazi briefly came to public attention back in 2006:

Neo-Nazi ‘circulated bomb-making manual’
Greg Roberts
The Australian
September 15, 2006

A POLICE anti-terrorist taskforce is investigating detailed bomb-making instructions distributed to Australian [boneheads] by a prominent neo-Nazi.

The Victoria Police security intelligence group has been told the material was distributed by Peter Campbell, the national head of the White Pride Coalition of Australia.

Mr Campbell is a senior sales representative with Melbourne electrical parts group Heinemann Electric – the company at the centre of a row over the Howard Government’s workplace laws. Material given to police includes bomb-making instructions published in an article titled “How to build a David Copeland special”. Copeland, a white supremacist dubbed the Soho bomber, was responsible for a series of bombs in London in the late 1990s.

The instructions include advice to keep nails and other projectiles, which are packed in bombs, in horse manure so that “when embedded in the burnt flesh, the shit will poison the blood”.

The instructions recommend bombs be disguised by placing them in traffic cones.

Muslims are referred to in other material being examined by police.

One document includes this rallying call: “Kill, murder, burn and butcher our enemies and become a hero!”

Some of the documents under investigation by Victoria Police were used in the successful prosecutions in London last year of five neo-Nazi British men for inciting racial hatred.

Mr Campbell declined to comment when contacted by The Australian yesterday.

He sells installation products made by Heinemann subsidiary Slegers, a job that gives him access to items mentioned in the bomb-making instructions.

Mr Campbell uses the WPCA pseudonym of Kromlek of Asgard, which is derived from figures in Viking mythology.

Another alias he uses is ZyklonB, the poisonous gas used by Nazis to kill Jews in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

In a posting on a WPCA website, Mr Campbell referred to Jews when he said: “The sooner we White Men are rid of these vile, loathsome bloodsuckers, then the sooner we can get on with the task of re-establishing White homelands for our people that are free from contamination!” Mr Campbell said in another posting: “We White Nationalists must be physically armed as well as ideologically and spiritually prepared!”

Cam Smith, a campaigner with the anti-racism group Fight Dem Back, said the WPCA should be outlawed as a terrorist group.

“These are people who openly promote the use of violence against minority groups they don’t like,” he said. “Thugs like this should not be allowed to promote their messages of hate in a civilised society.”

The WPCA has been implicated in race-hate campaigns against Sudanese refugees in western Sydney and in the Darling Downs city of Toowoomba in Queensland.

Heinemann general manager Richard Ross said Mr Campbell was a good employee, and he knew nothing of his background that suggested he should not have been hired.

Heinemann is at the centre of a row over the federal Government’s industrial relations laws for docking a week’s pay from 46 workers who stopped working overtime.

The Australian revealed this week that WorkSafe Victoria has issued eight notices instructing Heinemann Electric to improve health and safety standards.

Three final points:

1) It’s quite possible that racists of one sort or another — anti-Semites, Islamophobes, neo-Nazis, fascists, White supremacists et al — will succeed in kicking me off Facebook, eventually. But I’ll continue to blog, to write and to tweet as I’m able.

2) In hopping into bed with anti-Semites and neo-Nazis — whether ‘Squadron 88’ (see : slackbastard | Online Hate Prevention Institute) in Sydney or ‘Nationalist Republican Guard’ in Melbourne — ‘The Great Aussie Patriot’ has exposed himself as a racist of the lowest rank.

3) Anti-Semites, Islamophobes, neo-Nazis, fascists and White supremacists have all flocked to the ‘Reclaim Australia’ banner and will be present alongside other ‘patriots’ on April 4. If you’re opposing these groups and individuals, as Jerry Springer says, please take care of yourselves … aaand each other.