Joy of Fools!
Briefly:
• To the surprise of pundits and pollsters, the ruling Liberal-National Coalition won majority government at the 2019 Australian federal election, with a likely total of 77 seats in the 151-seat parliament. Rah rah rah! They’re going to smash the oiks!
• Many blame rural and regional Queenslanders, along with the good burghers of western Sydney, for Labor’s loss. In Queensland, Labor’s equivocal position on the Adani coal mine has been blamed for it obtaining an extraordinarily low primary vote; further, ‘Labor was decimated in Queensland, but an examination of the “Adani” coal mining seats of Dawson, Capricornia and Flynn for example show a negligible increase in the LNP primary vote but a collapse in Labor’s vote and subsequent increase in One Nation’s vote’ (Labor has a problem and its name is Pauline, Jody Fassina, The Sydney Morning Herald, May 28, 2019). In Sydney, ‘Labor bled votes in its heartland of western Sydney because aspirational voters feared its economic policies, while social conservatism was another factor cited by experts and insiders for the party’s loss of supporters’ (Why Labor bled votes in its Western Sydney ‘heartland’, Rashida Yosufzai, SBS, May 24, 2019). See also : It wasn’t Bob Brown who lost the election, it was the Labor Party, James Norman, ABC, May 26, 2019 | It’s a myth that Aussie battlers handed the Coalition its election victory, Shaun Ratcliff, The Guardian, May 24, 2019 | North Queensland is just at the sharp end of what’s happening across Australia, Jason Wilson, The Guardian, May 21, 2019.
• Preference flows from Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party (PHONy) and Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party (UAP) voters appear to have secured victory for the Coalition in a number of seats in Queensland, but the billionaire mining magnate failed to (again) get bumped into parliament, none of UAP’s candidate obtained more than a handful of votes, and while PHONy didn’t do too badly — its national primary vote doubled — it too failed to gain any further seats, with Senator Peter Georgiou (WA) out and Malcolm Roberts (QLD) in.
• Outside of PHONy and UAP, the right-wing micro-parties — Dr Jim Saleam’s Australia First Party (AFP), Fraser Anning’s Conservative National Party (FACNP), Rod Culleton’s The Great Australian Party (GAP), Kim Vuga’s Love Australia Or Leave (LAOL), Danny Nalliah’s Rise Up Australia Party (RUAP), Debbie Robinson’s Yellow Vest Australia (YVA) — fared poorly at the ballot box. Still: ‘Rising White Nationalism Was The Real Story Of Australia’s Elections’, according to James Muldoon, who argues that ‘It’s too early to obtain exact figures, but it looks like over 1,000,000 first preferences were directed towards right-wing minor parties – xenophobes were spoilt for choice.’ On the other hand, white nationalist Queensland Senator Fraser ‘Final Solution’ Anning — that dawg — failed in his attempt to retain his spot in the Senate, receiving less than 30,000 votes (about 1.3%), while in the Lower House, no FACNP candidate managed to break thru the magical 4% barrier, with most receiving 1 or 2% and generally being ranked last or near-last. And why did Anning and his party fail? According to the reject(ed) senator: ‘I think we got dudded at the counting stations. We’re investigating that now. But that’s what you’d come to expect from a socialist government.’ *Note that Max Towns, the over-enthusiastic fascist teenybopper and Anning fan who allegedly assaulted overly-critical journalists at the launch of FACNP’s campaign in Cronulla a month ago, pleaded not guilty at a hearing on May 17; he returns to court on June 27.
• See also : Australia’s Federal Elections and Far Right Normalisation, The White Rose Society, Hope Not Hate, May 17, 2019 | Labor’s election defeat reveals its continued inability to convince people it can make their lives better, Geoffrey Robinson, The Conversation, May 19, 2019 | Ten piping hot takes on Labor’s election defeat, The Banner Bright, May 21, 2019 | ACTU launches review of $25m election campaign after Labor defeat, Lisa Martin, The Guardian, May 24, 2019 | Shocked by the rise of the right? Then you weren’t paying attention, Gary Younge, The Guardian, May 24, 2019.
Swastika Cupcakes!
Last week, in a joint investigation by the ABC and 9/Fairfax, several articles were published about a Canberra-based neo-Nazi couple, Justin Beulah and Lisa Sandford. You may remember Beulah and Sandford from the failed attempt to infiltrate the NSW Young Nationals late last year — or perhaps as some of the voices on AltRight podcast ‘The Convict Report’.
‘Swastika cupcakes’: private chats of neo-Nazis who stacked Young Nats, Patrick Begley, The Sydney Morning Herald, May 23, 2019:
Secret conversations between neo-Nazis who tried to take over the NSW Young Nationals have been uncovered in a leak of online chat logs that also reveal contact with a leading US alt-right figure.
A joint Herald-ABC investigation has identified several Australians within a previously hidden online world, where racists post memes, share gun pictures and discuss real-life meetings …
…. a fascist Australian couple … courted each other online with talk of “swastika cupcakes” and “jokes” about killing non-white people.
Justin Beulah was a Young Liberal university student at the time of the 2017 messages. He and his now wife Lisa Sandford, a former One Nation member, then joined a far-right attempt to branch stack the NSW Young Nationals last year.
The couple say they have now abandoned the “toxic” white supremacy movement and urge others to do the same.
Married to the alt-right, Elise Worthington, ABC, May 23, 2019:
The clandestine activities of an Australian neo-Nazi couple and their network have been exposed in a leak of hundreds of thousands of secret messages from a forum used by American white supremacists.
A joint investigation by ABC News and The Sydney Morning Herald reveals the pair also tried to recruit others to their cause and spread their views to mainstream political parties.
The messages, which date back from 2017, show that they engaged in racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic slurs, as they conversed in a closed community of like-minded zealots.
The investigation identified the couple as Canberra newlyweds Lisa Beulah (née Sandford) and her husband, Justin, who say they have now renounced their former lives.
For what it’s worth, I don’t believe that Beulah and Sandford have had a genuine change of heart, nor that this supposed shift took place post-Charlottesville (August 2017) as they claim. Thus in reality, both celebrated Heather Heyer’s murder. Sandford:
Sandford’s account of how she drifted from ‘anti-feminism’ to antisemitism/white supremacy/neo-Nazism is also contradicted by the biographical one she provides on Discord, in which she attributes responsibility for her adult worldview to her father, a bonehead, who fed her a steady diet of war propaganda growing up:
There’s numerous other problems with Beulah and Sandford’s account, but I’ll leave it up to the reader to detect them. As I see it, the story is really one in which, under media scrutiny, a newly-married (February 2019) couple has decided that distancing themselves from their neo-Nazi beliefs is probably A Very Good Idea. Thus while claiming to have abandoned the “toxic” white supremacy movement, when contacted by media about her views and opinions, Lisa sought counsel from leading Melbourne neo-Nazi Blair Cottrell (whose trial for religious vilification fangirl Lisa attended). In any case, anybody interested in reading the thousands of comments the couple made on Discord should consult Unicorn Riot’s logs. See : MsNatSocialist (Discord ID: 279874893846413313) and Brad Small (Discord ID: 211098280761884672). *Note that Clifford Jennings (‘The Dingoes’) was also active as ARA1788.
Serial Pests!
1) E r i k s o n
A few months ago, Melbourne’s premiere neo-Nazi serial pest, Neil Erikson, made a number of claims about meeting and organising with several Coalition MPs, viz, Andrew Hastie and Ian Goodenough in Perth: Hastie denied all knowledge. Erikson later claimed to have attended, along with his mate Ricky Turner and FACNP candidate and Erikson’s former ‘United Patriots Front’ comrade Scott Moerland, another meeting on the Gold Coast last year, organised by Liberal Party hacks in order to discuss how-to stack a branch with ‘conservatives’. (Moerland ran for Pauline Hanson’s former seat of Oxley, and received a little over 1,400 votes (1.6%) for his troubles — as a RUAP candidate in 2013, Moerland got just 400 votes, so well done Scott.)
Guest speakers at the Queensland recruitment drive included David Goodwin – a former LNP Senate candidate and former president of the Young Nationals and the Young LNP – and Victorian conservative Elliot Watson.
At the function, which is understood to have been held at a private residence, Goodwin and Watson both spoke about the need to recruit more conservatives into the party.
Watson, who is reportedly one of a number of Mormons appointed as party delegates in the Victorian Liberal Party, is credited with playing a “leading role” in recruiting conservatives to the Victorian branch of the party.
The Victorian branch of the party has been riven by factional divisions, amid claims that an insurgent group led by hardliner Marcus Bastiaan is pushing the Liberals too far to the right.
At the time of the Gold Coast meeting in June 2018, Erikson had acquired some sugar-daddies: Queensland businessmen, failed political entrepreneurs and Mormons Ben and Dan Spiller (AKA ‘AE Media’ and ‘Future Now Australia’). Thus the meeting appears to have taken place at the same time that Erikson and Turner paid an unscheduled nocturnal visit to the private residence of David Pellowe, a sometime rival of the Spillers on the AltRight tour-circuit.
Erikson later claimed that he met with former Victorian Liberals leader Matthew Guy during the Victorian state election campaign of last year (a claim Guy strongly denies). For its part, Victoria Labor issued a statement (May 6, 2019) demanding that ‘Victorian Liberals Must Explain Extremist Links’. The saga to that date is summarised by Richard James in Here’s Everything We Know So Far About Far-Right Activist Neil Erikson’s Alleged Meetings With The Liberal Party (Buzzfeed, May 7, 2019), but under pressure and having already lost almost all of his Facebook and Twitter accounts, Erikson eventually closed his gab account too, along with his wesbshite (neilerikson dot com).
He still maintains a YouTube channel but. See also : Far-right activist admits: ‘I lied about meeting WA MPs Hastie, Goodenough’, Nathan Hondros, WA Today, May 21, 2019.
via Puf Pitchers
On May 12, the pest was it again, only this time in the company of AltRight chum Claudia Benitez (AKA ‘Dia Beltran’), who together decided it would be fun! to interrupt a church service at West Hawthorn Uniting Church, it having been selected by the pair on account of its queer-friendly status. To cut a long story short, it appears as though — apart from anything else — Benitez lost her job at a local orthodontic clinic as a result of her participation in the idiotic stunt.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Having disturbed a gathering of “faggots” on Sunday, on Monday Erikson was in court, along with Turner, to face charges arising from the Milo stoopid of December 2017. Erikson was later found guilty of affray & assault with a weapon, and received a 120-hour community corrections order as punishment; Turner accepted a plea deal of a $1,000 fine and a 12-month good-behaviour bond. (Last month, Erikson’s olde nazi chum Richard Whelan had his charges dropped, and earlier Dwayne McKenzie and Garry Hume received diversion orders, as did Soldier of Odin Garry Mattsson.)
Convicted racist Neil Erikson spared jail despite assault and affray conviction
Genevieve Alison
Herald Sun
May 16, 2019Convicted racist Neil Erikson has been spared prison for his role in a Right-wing riot after begging a magistrate not to jail him because he is soon to become a father.
After a two-day hearing, Erikson, 33, was this week found guilty of affray and assault with a weapon in a brawl during which hundreds of protesters clashed with police.
A charge of inciting riotous behaviour was dismissed.
Erikson’s lawyer, John Bolton, unsuccessfully argued his client had been acting in self-defence during a confrontation with a group protesting against a speaking appearance by Right-wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulos in Kensington on December 4, 2017.
Erikson told police he had been “in fear” and only stepped in to protect his friends because police “were nowhere”.
And Mr Bolton argued in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court that Erikson was forced into the confrontation and had been protecting his mates when he punched, kicked and hit protesters with a pole.
But after viewing hours of CCTV footage from news media and police bodycams, which showed dozens of riot squad officers rushing to break up the violence, magistrate Michael Smith said Erikson had entered the affray voluntarily.
“No one was attacking him at the time,” Mr Smith said.
“He’s standing on the edge and voluntarily entered the affray with his banner.”
Erikson told the court he regretted the incident and was “never looking for any trouble that day”.
He pleaded with Mr Smith not to lock him up, because he was about to become a father.
The far-Right activist said while he received a small income from making “political videos”, he had been jobless for some time after finding it difficult to get a job because of his “political history”.
Erikson is one of the first people in Victoria to have been charged under racial vilification laws.
In 2017, he and two others were convicted of inciting contempt for Muslims and fined $2000 after they filmed a video of themselves beheading a mannequin outside Bendigo council offices in 2015.
The film was meant as a protest against the construction of a local mosque.
And last year, he was found guilty of contempt of court for failing to observe orders that he take down social media posts of himself wearing a uniform of a former employer.
One of those posts showed him haranguing former senator Sam Dastyari in a pub.
Mr Smith sentenced Erikson to a 12-month Community Corrections Order.
2) Y e m i n e m
Also experiencing some legal difficulties at the moment is Erikson’s rival serial pest Avi Yeminem. (Note that Yeminem’s party, Yellow Vest Australia, held a fairly desultory rally in Melbourne on May 4: a few dozen attended, while at the federal election just under 1,800 (0.06%) voted for the party for the Senate in Victoria — a drop of 0.60% since 2016.)
Avi Yemini in court over assault, knife-throwing charges against woman
Jon Andrews
Caulfield Glen Eira Leader
May 2, 2019Activist and self-defence guru Avi Yemini has appeared in court facing charges that he injured, harassed and threw a knife at the face of a woman.
Mr Yemini, whose real first name is Avraham, pleaded not guilty to eight charges at Moorabbin Magistrates’ Court yesterday morning.
The 33-year-old’s case was adjourned until next month, with his lawyer saying he will contest the case.
Court documents released to the Leader state he has been charged with recklessly causing injury to a woman at a Caulfield North premises on March 18, 2016.
Police allege on the same day he also recklessly engaged in conduct by throwing a knife at the victim’s face that placed her in danger of serious injury.
They also believe in December 2015, three times in July 2017 and again in November last year he used a carriage service to harass her.
A summary of his alleged offending was not released.
The self-proclaimed “proud Ozraeli” promotes himself as someone who empowers women through self-defence classes.
A former Israel Defence Force soldier, he has a large Facebook following under his page Avi Yemini Unbanned and is an avid Twitter user, reaching out to his more than 43,000 fans.
His website states he is a voice for “issues relating to self-defence, counter-terrorism, being pro-Israel in Australia and the Jewish community in Melbourne”.
Considered as a far-right political activist, he failed in his bid last year to become an Upper House Victorian MP.
His lawyer, Deborah Mandie, told the court she believed the reckless cause injury charge was likely to be withdrawn, and the knife-throwing incident was disputed.
She said the defence needed statements regarding the carriage service to harass charges, which the police prosecution said they would be happy to provide.
Mr Yemini was bailed to his Berwick home on the condition he did not contact any witnesses.
He will appear in court again on June 13.
Balwyn Calling!
The Christchurch massacre continues to have some minor repercussions in the land of the alleged killer’s birth. Thus Tom Sewell, the fuehrer of neo-Nazi groupsucule The Lads Society, featured in ‘Threats from white extremist group that ‘tried to recruit Tarrant” (Patrick Begley, The Sydney Morning Herald, May 2, 2019), which details a sooky Sewell’s response to inquiries regarding the relationship between the Society and Brenton Tarrant.
“The difference between my organisation, myself and him [Tarrant], is simply that we believe, certainly at this stage, that there is a peaceful solution for us to create the society we want to live in,” Mr Sewell said.
“We want a peaceful alternative, we want to be treated with respect, we want to be left alone. If we are not given that opportunity, well, time will tell. I’m not going to give you any explicit threat but it’s pretty f–king obvious what’s going to happen.”
Mr Sewell said “we’re all gravy at the moment” because police were leaving his group alone but that people were “making the world burn, and they have names and addresses.”
At least The Lads don’t have access to firearms eh?
Bookface!
Facebook gonna Facebook, amirite? See : ‘Good PR but ultimately useless’: Facebook slammed over election ad transparency, Jennifer Duke, The Sydney Morning Herald, May 27, 2019 | Alt-right Facebook memes pushed anti-Labor message, Nigel Gladstone and Max Koslowski, The Sydney Morning Herald, May 26, 2019. See also : Minds, the ‘Anti-Facebook,’ Has No Idea What to Do About All the Neo-Nazis, Ben Makuch and Jordan Pearson, Vice, May 29, 2019 | Live Coverage Of A Disinformation Operation Against The 2019 EU Parliamentary Elections, Andy Patel, F-Secure, May 24, 2019.