Phillip Galea : Y U No Like The Left?

Briefly, Phillip Galea appeared in court again today where, inter alia, police reaffirmed that he allegedly planned on doing harm to leftists. See :

• Victorian extremist Phillip Galea planned to bomb leftwing premises, police say (AAP/The Guardian)
• ‘Patriot’ accused of bomb plans, rewriting terror guide, assures judge of sanity (Adam Cooper, The Age)

The Age article contains a Channel 7 News report which states that Galea attended the May 31, 2015 United Patriots Front (UPF) anti-leftist rally in Richmond armed with a 25cm kitchen knife; ‘according to Federal police that was just the beginning of his violent plan’. (Incidentally, the protest was a bizarre attempt to remove Yarra councillor and socialist Stephen Jolly from office. Happily enough, Jolly was re-elected to his position on the weekend.)

Galea is scheduled to be back in court on December 19.

A few points:

In addition to being linked to Reclaim Australia (Galea attended their protests and claimed to have been an admin on one of their Facebook pages; he also appears to have helped establish the RA Media website and ‘RA media newsgroupe’ Facebook page), the True Blue Crew (TBC) and UPF (Galea attended various of their functions, both public rallies and more private meetings), it’s alleged that he had an association with neo-Nazi grouplet ‘Combat 18’, which has maintained a shadowy presence in STRAYA for some years. A few years ago (2010), several C18 members were convicted of having shot at a mosque in Perth, while in Melbourne it’s more closely associated with Creatard bonehead Patrick O’Sullivan, though others have also claimed an association and have attended various public protests organised by the TBC and UPF, including in Coburg in May and the ‘Blue Lives Matter’ demonstration in the CBD in July. Note that Galea also attended a farcical anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rally in Melbourne organised by the ‘Australian Defence League’ back in April 2010.

Above : Galea with comrades at the United Patriots Front rally in Bendigo, October 10, 2015. L to R : Galea, Chris Shortis, Linden Watson and Ralph Cerminara.

Above: Galea chillin’ like a gangster with the True Blue Crew.

Otherwise:

The True Blue Crew will be hopping on a bus from Bendigo and Melton to Eltham on November 5 in order to attend a protest organised by the Sydney-based Party for Freedom (PFF). The PFF maintain that the decision by St Vincent’s Care Services to temporarily house 100 or so refugees from Iraq and Syria at its site is tantamount to rape and murder. Then again, the PFF has also floated the idea that peoples in the Third World require sterilisation, so we’re not really talking about rational political actors. The boys from Sydney, Bendigo and Melton will be joined by the Soldiers of Odin, who were the subject of a recent column by Jason Wilson: Fear and loathing on the streets: the Soldiers of Odin and the rise of anti-refugee vigilantes (The Guardian, October 28, 2016): ‘Far right groups are gaining a global foothold because they echo mainstream discourse which has shrunk the political horizon to issues of border paranoia, terror, and security.’

In response to the fascist protest, Diamond Yarra Valley Resistance Solidarity (DYVRS) has organised some alternative activities: SAFE – Stand Against Fascism in Eltham.