Tagged with Iron March

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.)

Who are Antipodean Resistance? (August 2018 Update)

If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention. ~ Heather Heyer (1985–2017)

Briefly:

‘Antipodean Resistance’ are a neo-Nazi grouplet which emerged out of the ‘United Patriots Front’ swamp in 2016. I wrote about the group in September 2017 and again in April 2018. Its members like to make a nuisance of themselves by covering skools, universities and synagogues in neo-Nazi propaganda and attending patriotik marches and rallies. RMIT University in Melbourne and the beachside suburb of Brighton have recently been blessed by their agitprop, which is regularly documented by the group via its account on the GAB social media platform (AKA ‘Twitter for Nazis’).

Most recently, members of the group were hired by Axiomatic Events in order to provide security for Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern during the course of their hate-speech tour. In doing so, the boys were joined by the members of another neo-Nazi grouplet, ‘The Lads Society’. Indeed, there is a strong cross-over in membership between the two groups, as future publications will detail. Thus last month, ‘The White Rose Society’ began publishing what will be an ongoing series of exposes of members of both Antipodean Resistance and The Lads Society. New entrants include Mathew Baston (L) and Nathaniel Anderson (R):

thewhiterosesociety blog is here and may be contacted via thewhiterosesociety[at]protonmail[dot]com.

While media reportage on neo-Nazis and fascists Down Under is generally poor, it’s a Good thing that independent anti-fascist researchers are active, and from what I can gather there’s a good deal more to come … 😉

antifa notes (march 21, 2018) : nazis, patriots, drama, murder … the usual

Yeesh: talk about drama.

Party for Freedom /// Neil Erikson

Nick Folkes’ micro-‘Party for Freedom’ (PFF) has undergone some settling of contents over the course of the last few months. Gone is George Jameson and Penny Louise/Tridgell, along with a number of PFF placards, which George has apparently refused to return to Nick. The placards made a brief appearance at a ‘True Blue Crew’ (TBC) anti-Muslim rally in Belmont on February 24. (Note that, in reality, it appears as though there is no application before the local council for the construction of a new mosque in the area.) Incensed by this traitorous act, Nick has been going off on Facebook, taking aim not only at George and Penny but also the TBC (in both NSW and VIC), the Australia First Party, its leader Dr Jim Saleam (who he accuses of playing spin-the-bottle), and one of Jim’s QLD-based flunkeys, Jim Perren (who notably helped organise the United Patriot Front’s (UPF’s) doomed party launch in Toowoomba in February 2016 — describing it as ‘a Nuremberg rally minus the swastikas’). Oh, he also accused Melbourne local Paul ‘Guru’ Franzi of drug abuse(!), and more besides. Further, Nick’s sidekick Toby Cook has recently gone full Nazi, and the day after the TBC rally in February attended Jura Books, where he and two others — Matt Lowe and Christopher Grantham — proceeded to make arses of themselves. To top it all off, Nick invited valour thief and serial pest Ralph Cerminara to act as mediator between the TBC methgoblins and whatever remains of the PFF in Sydney in order to arrange the return of the preciousss to Nick.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In any event, here’s a sampling of the sparkling prose coming from the patriotik camp:













Last week, serial pest Neil Erikson was in court again, on this occasion to be sentenced for contempt: see : Judge scolds far-right activist Neil Erikson as ‘childish’ for wearing uniform to court, Karen Percy, March 13, 2018 | You’re talking ‘rubbish’, judge tells far-right activist Neil Erikson, The Age (AAP), March 13, 2018. While sentencing has been reserved, Neil and his dickhead mates — Garry Hume, Ricky/Rikki Turner and Richard Whelan — are due back in court in June to face charges of riot, affray, assault etc arising from the MILO stoopid of last year.

Oh, Neil also acted stoopid outside Northcote Town Hall on election day in Batman and in the company of two other men later stalked Greens leader Samantha Ratnam.

True Blue Crew

Notwithstanding the angwy words with Folkes and Freedom, the TBC is making money thru selling memberships and merchandise — seemingly, with a plan to open a gym in Melton along the lines of their kameraden ‘The Lads Society’ in Cheltenham. Last month, the TBC’s number one fan, Phill Galea, was declared fit to stand trial for alleged terrorisms:

Anti-Islam extremist Phillip Galea to stand trial on alleged bomb plot
Tessa Akerman
The Australian
February 6, 2018

An anti-Islam extremist accused of plotting bomb attacks has been ruled fit to stand trial by the Victorian Supreme Court.

Phillip Galea is charged with collecting or making documents to prepare for terrorist acts between 2015 and 2016.

Police allege Mr Galea talked about bombing the headquarters of Melbourne’s anarchists.

Mr Galea is currently represented by Legal Aid after he sacked his first law firm, which commissioned a psychiatric report that found he was unfit to stand trial.

Barrister Tim Marsh today told the Supreme Court two subsequent psychiatric reports found his client able to explain the role of judge and jury and the difference between pleas.

Justice Elizabeth Hollingworth said it appeared as though the author of the first report was trying to determine Mr Galea’s beliefs and whether they were “radical”.

The Magistrates Court has previously heard Mr Galea has links to anti-Islam groups and had allegedly made an order for potassium nitrate, which can be used to manufacture explosives.

Mr Marsh this morning said the additional reports covered whether Mr Galea would be able to participate in a trial, and he and the commonwealth prosecution were in agreement that Mr Galea was fit to stand trial.

Justice Hollingworth remitted the case back to the Magistrates Court, where Mr Galea’s case is listed for committal in April.

Otherwise, the methgoblins cancelled a proposed meeting in Tarneit to organise anti-African vigilantes, but on the plus side have declared that, in-between court dates, they’ll be having another flagwit parade in June in Melbourne (see : June 26, 2016 : True Blue Crew & Co ~versus~ Melbourne and Australian Pride /// Flagwit Rally, June 25, 2017 : Recap), and will be joined by dozens of racist gronks in Sydney and elsewhere.

Aryan Nations /// Antipodean Resistance

In Perth, Aryan Nations members Robert Wayne Edhouse and Melony Attwood were convicted of murdering Attwood’s partner, Alan Taylor, seemingly in order to obtain his life insurance. See : Robert Edhouse and Melony Attwood convicted of murder in Nazi ‘death squad’ killing of Alan Taylor, Tim Clarke, The West Australian, March 12, 2018 | Perth murder scene reveals desperate attempts to conceal what really happened, Phil Hickey, WA Today, March 13, 2018 | Melony Attwood made distressed triple-0 call over murder with Aryan Nations boyfriend, Joanna Menagh, ABC, March 15, 2018.

While this may suggest the end of Aryan Nations in Perth, at least some of the handful of boneheads associated with the brand have instead decided to re-badge as ‘Combat 18’. Oh, I should also add that the site of the murder was also the site of Blair Cottrell’s announcement in November 2015 that he would be forming a political party (‘Fortitude’); he and other members of the UPF Melbourne having been guests of the Aryan Nations’ murderers for that weekend’s ‘Reclaim Australia’ rally.

As for Antipodean Resistance, they’ve been carrying on chucking up posters and going for walks and doing some other stuff. Their kameraden in the US (Atomwaffen) and the UK (National Action) have also been making headlines, albeit for killing people and doing terrorisms. VICE UK has recently published a series of articles on the far-right under the collective title of ‘Hate Island’; it includes one examining ironmarch dot org, a/k/a ‘The Obscure Neo-Nazi Forum Linked to a Wave of Terror’ (James Poulter, March 12, 2018):

Ironmarch.org was not the kind of website to hang out on if you knew what was good for you. A swastika-plastered forum which took its users on a shared journey of extreme radicalisation, it kickstarted an international wave of Nazi terror.

Users of Ironmarch.org have attempted a mall shooting; murdered two young men; attempted to hack a Sikh dentist to death with a machete; and have been found to be in possession of illegal weapons and materials to make bombs, among other crimes. While these acts of violence mostly took place in North America, the forum had plenty of fans in the UK.

One of Ironmarch’s administrators founded the banned British Nazi terror group National Action (NA), while an infographic produced by the site lists NA among its “affiliated groups”, under the heading “Ironmarch members in the global fascist struggle”.

Curiously, along with National Action (banned by the UK government as a ‘terrorist’ organisation), Atomwaffen and Skydas (Lithuania), Antipodean Resistance is the only other group listed as an affiliate of IronMarch.

Meanwhile, antifa in Eugene, Oregon have been doing a bit of digging into Atomwaffen: Mr. and Mrs. Maci: The Atomwaffen Division Implodes (March 8, 2018).

See also : YouTube Belatedly Bans Neo-Nazi Group Atomwaffen, Melanie Ehrenkranz, Gizmodo, March 2, 2018 | Read the Chilling Texts of Nazis Celebrating the Murder of a Jewish Teen, A.C. Thompson, Ali Winston and Jake Hanrahan, Mother Jones, March 1, 2018 (‘When Samuel Woodward was charged with killing Blaze Bernstein last month, other Atomwaffen members cheered the death’).

Jordan Peterson

Kermit The Flog was in town recently. The following reviewers give his latest tome on 12 Rules For Life Big Ups:

Postmodernism Did Not Take Place: On Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, Shuja Haider, Viewpoint, January 23, 2018 | A Messiah-cum-Surrogate-Dad for Gormless Dimwits: On Jordan B. Peterson’s “12 Rules for Life”, Houman Barekat, LA Review of Books, March 11, 2018 | The Intellectual We Deserve, Nathan J Robinson, Current Affairs, March 14, 2018 | Jordan Peterson & Fascist Mysticism, Pankaj Mishra, The New York Review of Books, March 19, 2018.

*US propagandist Daniel Pipes was also recently in the cuntry: see : Daniel Pipes Comes to Melbourne: Are Australian Muslims Right to be Outraged?, Chloe Patton, ABC Religion and Ethics, March 8, 2018.

Mr Potato Head

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has extended the white hand of friendship to white farmers in South Africa and informed them that STRAYA has indeed ‘boundless plains to share’ (with white men). According to Jason Wilson, Peter Dutton’s offer to white South African farmers started on the far right (The Guardian, March 16, 2018) — which seems about right. According to Jon Piccini, Peter Dutton’s ‘fast track’ for white South African farmers is a throwback to a long, racist history (The Conversation, March 19, 2018) … which again, seems about reich. (See also : Drawing The Global Colour Line, Henry Reynolds, Marilyn Lake, Melbourne University Press, 2008.)

Dutton’s kamerad, the Very Ethical Jim Molan, was angwy and upset (presumably) when Little Britain First leaders Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen were jailed for hate crimes a few weeks ago; worse yet, the hate criminals had their Facebook page deleted. Oh, and Golding was attacked in prison and had his nose broken last week.

See also : Debunking a Myth: The Irish Were Not Slaves Too, Liam Stack, The New York Times, March 17, 2017.

terrorisms

In Germany, a number of neo-Nazis have been jailed for attacks upon refugees: see : Germany: Far-right ‘terrorists’ jailed for attacks on refugees, Al Jazeera, March 8, 2018 (‘Dresden’s high court sentences seven members of the Freital Group to between five and 10 years for attempted murder’).

In Greece, alleged members of neo-Nazi group ‘Combat 18’ got arrest: see : Greek counter-terrorism squad arrests five suspected of neo-Nazi group involvement, Neos Kosmos, March 7, 2018 (‘The men are alleged members of far-right criminal group, Combat 18, and suspected of involvement in a series of arson attacks and explosions’).

anTEEfa

Arsenal Pulp Press in Canuckistan is publishing a cartoon guide: The Antifa Comic Book: 100 Years of Fascism and Antifa Movements Around the World by Gord Hill.

In Russia, police in St Petersburg have arrested a man allegedly responsible for organising the murder of antifascist Timur Kacharava in 2005 (St. Petersburg: Police arrests man behind antifa activist Timur Kacharava’s assassination, Crime Russia, February 23, 2018). Elsewhere, Russian authorities have been keeping busy repressing anarchists and anti-fascists; a useful summary of recent bastardy is available via avtonom dot org: Review of repressions against anarchists in Russia – 2017 and first months of 2018. In Sydney on the weekend, local anti-fascists held a smol rally outside the Russian consulate in solidarity with compañerxs in Russia.

Finally, two four recent articles examine the impact anti-fascist action has had on fascist organising in the US: Is Antifa Counterproductive? White Nationalist Richard Spencer Would Beg to Differ., Natasha Lennard, The Intercept, March 17, 2018 | The alt-right is in decline. Has antifascist activism worked?, Jason Wilson, The Guardian, March 18, 2018 | How Antifa uses no-platforming successfully to fight white supremacy, David Griscom, New Statesman, March 19, 2018 | Antifa Has Richard Spencer on the Run. Does That Vindicate Its Tactics?, Joshua Holland, The Nation, March 22, 2018 (‘There’s good reason to believe that antifa’s success has come despite violent tactics, not because of them’).

Speaking of which …

Heimbach, Spencer, & The Yanqui AltReich

Recently, in Michigan, both Richard Spencer and Matt Heimbach had A Very Bad Time: see : After Fights And Arrests, Richard Spencer Speaks To Tiny Crowd At Michigan State, Christopher Mathias, Huffington Post, March 6, 2018 (‘Spencer and his white supremacist buddies had a miserable two days in Michigan. Everywhere they went, anti-fascist protesters were waiting’). Worse was to come for Heimbach, after he was caught fucking his father-in-law’s (Matt Parrott’s) wife; Parrott also being the other key leader of the neo-Nazi groupuscule ‘Traditionalist Worker Party’. See : How a white nationalist’s family came to blows over a trailer tryst, Marwa Eltagouri and Avi Selk, The Washington Post, March 14, 2018 | Neo-Nazi Group Implodes Over Love Triangle Turned Trailer Brawl, Kelly Weill, The Daily Beast, March 14, 2018 (‘Matthew Heimbach and his spokesman came to blows after Heimbach was caught sleeping with the spokesman’s wife. What’s more, Heimbach is married to the spokesman’s stepdaughter’).

M A S T E R R A C E.

See also : Alex Jones is a menace to society. I’m suing him., Brennan Gilmore, The Washington Post, March 14, 2018.

Who are Antipodean Resistance?

The name ‘Antipodean Resistance’ (AR) has been in the news again recently, both on account of its conducting so-called ‘training camps’ in Victoria and Queensland but also as a result of it spreading homophobic propaganda at the University of Tasmania. Most of the reportage on the group has slotted into the “SHOCK! HORROR!” category, and revealed bugger-all about its origins, membership, or relation to the broader milieu from which it emerged.

This is par for the course when it comes to media reportage on the antics of the far-right in Australia, and is to be expected. To cite one example, ‘What is Australia’s white supremacist group, Antipodean Resistance?’ (Olivia Lambert, news.com.au, September 7, 2017): ‘AUSTRALIA’S secret collective of neo-Nazis is spreading shocking messages of hate, yet chillingly claims its members are growing in number.’ Further:

The Daily Telegraph reports the neo-Nazis are now being monitored by the ASIO out of fear the extremist group could turn violent.

“Members of these groups are diverse and have different agendas, including extreme right-wing and extreme left-wing ideologies,” ASIO said to a parliamentary review into the expenditure of security agencies.

In other words: ASIO is undertaking the work it always has.

A few more preliminary remarks are in order:

First, AR is not unique, and neo-Nazism isn’t ‘new’ (in this sense): there have been neo-Nazis running about the place since Hitler killed Hitler, and there likely always will be. One of its contemporary expressions may be found in the AltRight; The Beast Reawakens by Martin A. Lee (Little, Brown and Co., 1997) explores the re-emergence of Nazism in Germany in the aftermath of WWII and its renaissance in various territories in Europe, the United States and elsewhere: you can read the introduction to Lee’s 1997 work here; of related interest is David Bird’s Nazi Dreamtime, ‘the ground-breaking story of extreme-right, ultra-nationalist thought and practice in Australia in the period immediately before and during the Second World War. It focuses on those native-born Australians who were attracted to the ideology of Nazism in Germany from 1933.’

Secondly, much of the reportage on the group fails to recognise that its shitty propaganda campaigns are aimed at generating precisely the SHOCK! HORROR! headlines it craves. While the report is in some ways quite valuable, the headline ‘Antipodean Resistance Neo-Nazi group trying to sway Australia’s same-sex marriage postal vote’ (Danny Tran, ABC, September 5, 2017) is misleading: the Hitler fanboys of AR aren’t trying to ‘sway’ opinion; they’re trying to reach as wide an audience as possible with a view to potentially recruiting that segment of the population for whom their rank prejudice appeals. (See also : Follow the lede: Danny Tran on the neo-Nazi propaganda in the same-sex marriage debate, ABC Overnights, September 18, 2017.)

Thirdly, all the reportage on AR thus far has failed to recognise its links to and origins within the so-called patriotic movement. Reclaim Australia — along with the United Patriots Front (UPF), True Blue Crew (TBC), and various other extreme-right satellites — has provided precisely the warm and nurturing environment in which an explicitly neo-Nazi grouplet like Antipodean Resistance has been able to gestate. Further, no reportage has noted that the group has publicly stated that it models itself upon relevant groups overseas: National Action (NA) in the UK and the Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) in Scandinavia in particular.

In this context, it’s worth noting that in December 2016 NA was proscribed in the UK as a ‘terrorist’ organisation, while most recently 11 suspected members of the neo-Nazi group have been arrested on suspicion of terror offences across England and Wales (National Action: 11 suspected members of banned neo-Nazi terror group arrested in England and Wales, Lizzie Dearden, The Independent, September 27, 2017). As for the NRM, in July three of its members were sentenced to jail for ‘carrying out bomb attacks on a left-wing bookstore and an asylum center and an attempted bombing of a second asylum center’; last year, another NRM member, ‘Jesse Torniainen, was sentenced to two years in jail for an aggravated assault that allegedly led to a man’s death at a Nordic Resistance Movement demonstration in Helsinki’, while Finnish police have applied to have the organisation proscribed in that country.

In Australia, the NRM’s kissing cousins, the ‘Soldiers of Odin’, are compared to the Guardian Angels by The Age.

Antipodean Resistance

The group has its origins on tumblr and on neo-Nazi website ‘Iron March’ (IM), with two young fellows from Melbourne, one using the handle ‘kehlsteinhaus’ (‘Eagle’s Nest’: a Nazi-era building erected atop the summit of the Kehlstein, a rocky outcrop that rises above the Obersalzberg near the town of Berchtesgaden), and the other ‘Xav’, forming its core.

kehlsteinhaus

On March 2, 2016, ‘kehlsteinhaus’ wrote by way of introduction to IM that he was 22yo, unemployed, and interested in creating an Australian version of NA. Originally from Perth, he now resides in Melbourne. ‘kehlsteinhaus’ also claims to have been a ‘communist’, a ‘democratic socialist’, to have attended meetings and rallies organised by Socialist Alternative, but most recently to have been involved with the UPF. And, like Blair Cottrell and Neil Erikson, he also claims to be a member or former member of the Melbourne-based neo-Nazi grouplet ‘Nationalist Alternative’ (NAlt). According to ‘kehlsteinhaus’, ‘Blair and Thomas [Sewell] are full 14/88. I’ve met and talked to them in person many times. They’ve recently converted [Chris] Shortis, who now thinks Hitler was right about pretty much everything. [Scott] Moreland [sic] is shit. [Dennis] Huts is a mixed bag.’

‘kehlsteinhaus’ also maintained several tumblrs, among them: antipodeansolutions, nedkellyofficial, the-kangaroos-nest and thesagesworld (now closed, but traces of which remain) and often skipped from one to the other. The launch of AR in late 2016 meant that he transferred his online activities from tumblr to IM and the grouplet’s own site (launched in November 2016) and Twitter account (created in February 2017). His parting message:

LOL.

In September 2016, ‘kehlsteinhaus’ also stated that he does volunteer work at a church and dreamed of being a politician, academic or teacher — or possibly a member of a right-wing death squad. Further, the aspiring acdemic and/or RWDS member claimed to have an uncle and a sister who are married to ‘Indians’ (with whom they — gasp! — have children), not to drive a car but to use public transport, being 5’10” or 5’11” and going to Wollongong in October 2016 in order to attend his cousin’s wedding.


The boys made their first step into LARPing as an organised grouplet in July 2016 at a tiny ‘Blue Lives Matter’ counter-rally in Melbourne, where they joined Blair Cottrell (cleverly disguised as ‘Bruce’) in order to hold a brief rally before being told to shoo by police. According to kehlsteinhaus:

I’m not fully certain on everyone, but some are ‘from’ the UPF, Ironmarch, [The Right Stuff], a uni group I know little about, and skinhead groups. There’s actually quite a lot of us, and I thoroughly recommend starting things in your city. We can’t do this all by ourselves. Two of the people there flew over from Adelaide for goodness’s sake. … I was carrying the GO HOME SOROS DRONES sign.



Prior to this, he and his crew (above) also attended the TBC anti-leftist counter-rally in Coburg, for which he provided a terribly exciting account on his tumblr of how the TBC & Co beat to a pulp their anti-fascist opponents. On that occasion, most of the boys appear to have been wearing merch with the Wolfsangel (AKA the Dopplehaken or Wolf’s-Hook emblem). Old School bonehead and ‘Combat 18’ member Dan Newman (AKA Danny Krieger) was also in amongst the boys on that day, and has worn the fashionable ensemble on other occasions.

On his own or in the company of others, ‘kehlsteinhaus’ also attended: the UPF rally in Melbourne in November 2015 (‘I arrived early because I wanted to finally meet Blair, after following his progress since he began … I met Thomas Sewell, who I am a bit of a fan of … I doubt I made the best first impression on Thomas, who probably saw me as just another supporter (which I am determined not to be)’; the failed launch of ‘Fortitude’ in Bendigo in February 2016 and; the TBC flag rally in Melbourne in June 2016 (at which Blair ‘made his most moderate speech I’ve heard that was thematically all over the place, as well as containing yet more attempts at trying to look non racist in front of the media (for those not aware, Blair Cottrell is the leader of the group, and a National Socialist, which makes the whole thing quite frustrating)’. On most of these occasions ‘kehlsteinhaus’ was masked, but he did post one photo to tumblr in which he is not:

Perhaps someone out there recognises him? (Keeping in mind he may be 1/364th Aboriginal.)

Xav

The other key figure in AR is another young fellow who posts on IM as ‘Xav’. ‘Xav’ joined the IM forum in May 2015, describing himself as a 22yo national socialist of English and German descent, a Uni dropout who lives in Melbourne, and as someone who was, like many of the other AR boys, ‘radicalised’ online. His favourite authors are dead nazis William Pierce (author of The Turner Diaries) and George Lincoln Rockwell.

borderprotectionist

Another tumblr radical (his blog now also deleted), borderprotectionist is an older Melbourne resident who more closely approximates the Old School nazi stereotype: crudely racist and with shit tatts. He also has children, it appears, and likes to play and to pose with guns.


Arschschmerzwagen/terminalautist88/Vandal Nationalist

Another IM user, Vandal Nationalist joined in April 2016 and described himself at the time as a 17yo and of British and German descent. A self-described edgy, atheist and leftist gamer at 14:

I started playing a lot of Company of Heroes and that got me interested in World War 2. I always liked the Germans better since I have German heritage and was/still am learning German. I wanted to learn more so I started watching the good goy World War 2 documentaries on Youtube until I stumbled upon Adolf Hitler: the greatest story never told. I’ve been a bad goy ever since. I normally frequent 8ch.net/pol and therightstuff.biz forums but I decided to join the Iron March forum after listening to all of Fascism 101 videos on YouTube. They’re excellent but I wish there were more on there. I’m interested in joining any Fascist/National Socialist group in Melbourne.

Very oddly, ‘Vandal Nationalist’ posted several photos purporting to be of himself (which I won’t republish here) on IM.

J**** H******

Finally, earlier this year a geek was spotted chucking up AR stickers in Carlton and Fitzroy. This fine young fellow would appear to be J***** H****** — a very naughty boy, and someone whose parents do not share his love of Mister Hitler.

NB. I’ll probably be adding more detail to this post in time, but for various reasons — not least because a number of the geeks in question are young and their parents are not. happy. with their career choices — what this consists of is not entirely up to me.

See also : White supremacists claim postal survey sparked interest, Stephen Smiley, The World Today (ABC), September 5, 2017 | Australian neo-Nazi group peppers schools with racist fliers, Amanda Erickson, The Washington Post, August 16, 2017 | White supremacist posters targeting students placed at Melbourne high schools, Melissa Davey, The Guardian, August 16, 2017 | Anti-Chinese Posters at Melbourne Universities Are Tied To White Supremacists, Isabella Kwai and Xiuzhong Xu, The New York Times, July 25, 2017 | Offensive flyers targeting Chinese students found at Melbourne universities, Kathy Lord, ABC, July 25, 2017 | Nazi posters in Melbourne, Australian Jewish News, February 17, 2017 | Neo-Nazi posters at Melbourne Uni, Peter Kohn, Australian Jewish News, December 8, 2016.