Tagged with Max Markson

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.)

Milo Yiannopoulos (Penthouse Florida) ~versus~ Damien Costas (Penthouse Australia)

Oh dear.

The last week has been a Bad one for the former billionaire’s sockpuppet Milo Hanrahan (AKA Milo Yiannopoulos / Milo Andreas Wagner). After the collapse and implosion of his tour Down Under with fellow right-wing blabbermouth Ann Coulter, tour organisers AE Media (AKA Ben and Dan Spiller) released a tranche of documents which detailed some of their correspondence with the falling star. Among other things, the d0x revealed that Hanrahan/Yiannopoulos/Wagner is $2 million in debt; Milo responded by claiming that he was in fact in $4 million in debt, and that this was a sure sign of his entrepreneurial brilliance.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As an alternative means of fleecing his flock, Milo then started a Patreon account — which was closed within 24 hours. Before it was shutdown, however, at least one amusing exchange did take place:

Given his financial situation, the pressure on Milo to return to Australia to milk some more money from his meatheaded Australian followers is rather high: it’s been claimed that over 12,000 tickets were sold for his 2017 tour, generating over $1 million in revenue. And while Milo can rely on Newscorpse to once again function as his PR company should he return, the d0x also reveal that relations with Damien Costas have deteriorated greatly since December 2017 (see below).

Hope Not Hate in the UK has also been trawling through the d0x, and you can read their reports here: Milo Yiannopoulos’ debt crisis (December 2, 2018); “Milo comes first, at all times” says Milo Yiannopoulos (December 3, 2018); Show me the money: detailing Milo’s debt (December 4, 2018). Apart from underlining the fact that the billionaire Mercers poured millions into Milo so that he could produce propaganda on their behalf (see also : Islamophobia Inc, Al Jazeera, May 14, 2018), it too draws attention to the mutual contempt in which Milo and Damien Costas hold each other. Thus:

… in leaked private WhatsApp messages, Yiannopoulos brands Damien Costas, publisher of Penthouse Australia, as “a criminal-adjacent, dishonest pornographer”. Elsewhere in an email he states:

“I was defrauded by Damien Costas. Neither he nor anyone else that works for him will have anything to do with running any tour of which I am a part. This is not negotiable”.

Evidently he has thought twice about his position, although it is unclear if he still stands by his words about Costas.

Apart from money, there’s also media. On his December 2017 tour, Milo was invited to federal parliament by proprietarian Senator David Leyonhjelm and onto the screens, pages and airwaves of various Newscorpse media properties (among others):

Of particular interest in this context is the close collaboration between Costas and said media properties in managing publicity for the current tour. Hence in October 2018, upon being informed that Yaxley-Lennon might be prevented from coming to Australia because of his legal situation, Costas wrote ‘I will inform Miranda Devine’. A week later, Costas arranged for news of the tour to be featured in The Daily Telegraph:



Of course, Andrew Bolt isn’t the only propagandist to fanboy over Milo. When in June he declared that killing journalists was a neat0 idea, for example, neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer applauded his political acumen:

Oh, Costas also describes the owners of the venues he’s booked for the tour (and to whom he’s paid $170,000 for the privilege) as a bunch of greedy “cunts”:

Speaking of greedy kvnts, Milo suggests in this message that, if the Spillers are having trouble, they should just go to their Mummy & Daddy and ask for another $200,000 to help them organise the tour (and meet Milo’s extravagant lifestyle expenses):

Managing and staffing the tour was another point of contention between the two sides, with Milo wanting to employ his mates, including Will Bracey (tour manager), Anthony Barlow (administration), Jessica Seebauer (administration), Brandon Ellyson (ticketing), Max Markson (venue booking), Caolan Robertson (marketing and promotions), Chadwick Moore (speech-writing) and Tom Packer (technical). Oddly, in correspondence dated October 10, Ben Spiller assures Milo that: ‘After chats with a couple of my project managers I’m confident that as we continue with what we had been planning (warehouses etc) we will be fine, and my guys are already on the Tank businesses payroll. They’re on it. If we do a deal with Penthouse, then we will use one of their project managers.’ (This obviously did not please Hanrahan, who responded: ‘Are you out of your mind?’.)

As well as revealing his address in Doral, Florida, the d0x also name Milo’s husband, John McKinley-Campbell, a PhD student in social work at Florida International University (note: this infos has been circulating online for some time). Curiously, among the many debts Milo has accrued is one from the Four Seasons Hotel in Hawaii where the pair were married in September last year. In the d0x, Milo complains that he was in such financial straits that he had to return John’s $20,000 wedding-ring to Cartier; they also reveal that he owed over $52,000 to the hotel for the ceremony. On the bright side, the Spillers treated Milo to a holiday in Hawaii in June (to Turtle Bay Resort, not the Four Seasons, obviously), which seems to be when serious planning for the tour commenced. (Of course, being indebted doesn’t mean that one has to reduce one’s expenditure, does it?)

On a final note, Milo uploaded a video to YouTube (Australian tour news!, streamed live on November 28, 2018) to provide his side of the story. In addition to describing the Spillers in very unflattering terms (and without a word against his BFF Costas), Milo also manages to provide a screenshot of his WhatsApp. Included among his correspondents in the group is Evgeny Lebedev, son of the Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev and the media mogul who owns the Independent and the London Evening Standard. Lebedev met with Milo in London in November last year. ‘The meeting raises questions as to whether Lebedev is considering business opportunities with Yiannopoulos, who recently was exiled from US-based website Breitbart after an in-depth BuzzFeed News investigation exposing the ties between the British tech journalist, website chairman Steve Bannon, and the political alt-right’ (The Russian Owner Of The Independent And The Evening Standard Met Milo Yiannopoulos In London, Mark Di Stefano, Buzzfeed, November 23, 2017).

Gavin McInnes & Stephen Yaxley-Lennon

Finally, as far the other two racists Costas is (still) promoting as touring Australia in February 2019 are concerned, the former chief Piss Boy has also been experiencing some troubles of late. After having been denied a visa to enter the country, at the beginning of December McInnes joined Blaze Media, a new propaganda outlet that merges Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze and Mark Levin’s CRTV. About a week later, he was unceremoniously dumped. And more recently, YouTube has also kicked McInnes to the curb. Still:

The organiser of Gavin McInnes’ scuppered Australian tour is calling on police to investigate immigration authorities for allegedly informing media the right-wing commentator’s visa had been denied before the applicants were notified.

Penthouse Magazine publisher Damien Costas said this week he had instructed his legal team to refer the Home Affairs Department to the Australian Federal Police over “what can only be described as a blatant breach of privacy and policy”.

In the meantime, the legal dispute between Costas and publicist Max Markson has come to a head in a Sydney courtroom:

In this case, it’s hard to know who to feel sorry for.

Penthouse Magazine publisher Damien Costas is trying to stop celebrity publicist Max Markson from chasing him for $63,000 as payment for promoting Gucci-wearing “cultural libertarian” Milo Yiannopoulos and British politician Nigel Farage.

Costas’s company, now named Global Media & Entertainment but earlier known as Filthy Gorgeous Productions, reckons they’d come to an agreement to have the costs of the tour audited.

Too bad they couldn’t get the paperwork right.

And too bad they decided to go with Sydney barrister (and bankrupt) Charles Waterstreet.

Who else?

The matter was scheduled to be heard by Justice Guy Parker on Friday.

CBD is no stranger to filing right before deadline, but this one’s something else.

At 6.52pm on Thursday, well after the hard working servants of the Supreme Court had departed, Waterstreet emailed Parker’s associate to tell him, well actually, he wouldn’t be showing up.

“It is with my sincerest apologies I inform you I am unable to attend court tomorrow for this matter. I have another matter that I must appear for. I have been unable to secure a solicitor to stand in place for me,” Waterstreet wrote.

At least he’s polite.

But no joy for Costas, who had his move to quash the $63,000 claim thrown out on the spot.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As for Yaxley-Lennon, he and his zombie followers in UKIP held a rally in London on Sunday, instructing Theresa May to hurry up and get Britain outta the EU. Several thousand joined him on the day, but then so did many thousands more turn out in order to #StopTommyRobinson. See : #London: Inspiring day for anti fascists opposing ‘Tommy Robinson’ & UKIP, enough is enough, December 10, 2018 | Anti-racist marchers in London claim victory over far-right protest, Damien Gayle, The Guardian, December 10, 2018 (‘Brexit betrayal’ march led by Tommy Robinson heavily outnumbered by opponents) | Paedophilia, rape and ‘grooming gangs’: Why feminism, not the far right, is the answer, Plan C London, December 5, 2018.

It’s also been revealed recently that Yaxley-Lennon is one of numerous beneficiaries of the corporate propaganda supply-chain:

The British far-right activist Tommy Robinson is receiving financial, political and moral support from a broad array of non-British groups and individuals, including US thinktanks, rightwing Australians and Russian trolls, a Guardian investigation has discovered.

Robinson, an anti-Islam campaigner who is leading a “Brexit betrayal” march in London on Sunday, has received funding from a US tech billionaire and a thinktank based in Philadelphia.

Two other US thinktanks, part-funded by some of the biggest names in rightwing funding, have published a succession of articles in support of Robinson, who has become a cause célèbre among the American far right since he was jailed in May for two months …

See : Revealed: the hidden global network behind Tommy Robinson, Josh Halliday, Lois Beckett, Caelainn Barr, The Guardian, December 8, 2018 | How US billionaires are fuelling the hard-right cause in Britain, George Monbiot, The Guardian, December 7, 2018 | Revealed: US Oil Billionaire Charles Koch Funds UK Anti-Environment Spiked Network, Mike Small, desmoguk, December 6, 2018 | RCP/LM watch : Keeping an eye on the RCP/LM and its fronts.

See also : On Right-Wing Trolls Touring Australia in 2018 (December 1, 2018) | Politics, protests and profit – next stop Australia for the far-right, Dino Vlachos, The Citizen, December 10, 2018.

Damien Costas Presents : Gavin McInnes & Tommy Robinson Live in Australia (December 2018)

Update (November 30, 2018) : McInnes has been denied a visa. See : Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes denied visa to tour Australia, Matthew Doran, ABC, November 30, 2018. In other news, Costas has added Milo Yiannopoulos to the bill.

Update (November 29, 2018) : Damien Costas has elected to delay the tour until February 2019.

Update (November 22, 2018) : The shepherd has abandoned his flock. See : Proud Boys Founder Gavin McInnes Claims He’s Quitting Far-Right Group, Will Sommer, The Daily Beast, November 22, 2018 | Proud Boys Founder Gavin McInnes Quits Group A Day After FBI Calls It ‘Extremist’, David Moye, The Huffington Post, November 22, 2018 (“I’m told by my legal team and law enforcement that this gesture could help alleviate their sentencing” McInnes said in a 36-minute YouTube video.) | Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes ‘reluctantly’ quits the group in the wake of news that FBI considers them ‘extremists’, Noor Al-Sibai, Raw Story, November 21, 2018.

In the meantime, professional Pommy whinger Stephen Yaxley-Lennon has announced that he’ll be attending a pro-Brexit rally in London on December 9, slap-bang in the middle of his tour of The Colonies …

    ************************************************************************

“We will kill you. That’s the Proud Boys in a nutshell.” “Can you call for violence generally? ‘Cause I am. Fighting solves everything. We need more violence from the Trump people. Get a fuckin’ gun. Get ready to blow someone’s fuckin’ head off.” ~ Gavin McInnes


img via Aussie Anarchist Meme Squat c/o Aussie Violent Leftie Memes for Authoritarian Terrorist Teens

Mouthy little Pommy gobshite Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (AKA Tommy Robinson AKA Andrew McMaster AKA Paul Harris) and Proud Boys founder Gavin ‘Chinless’ McInnes are touring The Colonies next month. The tour kicks off in Adelaide in two weeks time, with the Melbourne leg a week later. While venues will not be announced until 24 hours prior to the two racist meatheads taking to the stage, previous venues are shown (below):

• ADELAIDE : WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 5 (Festival Functions in Findon)
• PERTH : FRIDAY DECEMBER 7 (Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre)
• MELBOURNE : TUESDAY DECEMBER 11 (Melbourne Pavilion in Flemington/La Mirage in Somerton)
• GOLD COAST : THURSDAY DECEMBER 13 (Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre)
• SYDNEY : SUNDAY DECEMBER 16 (Le Montage/International Convention Centre Sydney)

The tour is being organised by Damien Costas under the umbrella of Penthouse Australia.

Costas is a savvy profiteer, having instructed Victoria Police to go fuck themselves when presented with an invoice for services rendered following the MILO tour of December 2017, and presumably his legal battle with publicist Max Markson is going well, even if:

… the “bromance” is over amid wild accusations on both sides and a trail of debt, with Mr Markson claiming Mr Costas owes him $90,000.

Mr Markson and Mr Costas are also at war over hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid bills from the tour, with money owed to everyone from venue operators to security guards, Yiannopoulos and the family of one of Australia’s biggest drug smugglers.

Mr Costas confirmed Yiannopoulos was still owed money from the tour, but he wasn’t the one owing it. Mr Markson said Yiannopoulos, who agreed to do the tour in return for a $250,000 fee, was still owed several thousand dollars, but denied he was responsible.

On Thursday Mr Markson called Mr Costas a “lying conman”. Mr Costas, the publisher of Penthouse Australia and owning a company alongside one of Australia’s biggest drug dealers, convicted ice importer Sean Dolman, retaliated by calling Mr Markson “a very naughty boy” who “had his finger in the till”.

Etc..

Note that in April, Queensland businessman Dan Spiller (AKA Future Now Australia AKA AE Media) announced that he’d be bringing McInnes Down Under. That effort immediately collapsed in a heap. Undeterred, a few months later Spiller announced that he’d mos def be bringing paedophile apologist Milo Yiannopoulos and wealthy blabbermouth Ann Coulter to Australia. That too quickly boarded the failboat, with gormless ticket-holders being told to go see McInnes and Yaxley-Lennon instead.

At this stage, it’s unclear if either McInnes or Yaxley-Lennon will be able to obtain a visa to enter Australia, the possibility of them doing so entirely dependent upon the whim of the Immigration Minister, David Coleman. Still, Melbourne lawyer Nyadol Nyuon has created a petition, calling upon the Minister to refuse the pair visas, a petition which has won the support of the Federation of Community Legal Centres and to date has been signed by over 53,000 people. For his part, the Shadow Immigration Minister, Shayne Neumann, has also written Coleman, requesting that McInnes be denied entry.

By the same token, a petition by ‘Tiny’ Avi Yemini — the Australian Liberty Alliance candidate for Southern Metropolitan Region at the upcoming Victorian state election — has attracted over 21,000 signatures, while another by Luke Chandler (AKA Luke Izaak) has garnered a mere 600.

As for the Piss Boys, today it was reported that the FBI now classifies far-right Proud Boys as ‘extremist group’, documents say (Jason Wilson, The Guardian, November 20, 2018):

The FBI now classifies the far-right Proud Boys as an “extremist group with ties to white nationalism”, according to a document produced by Washington state law enforcement.

The FBI’s 2018 designation of the self-confessed “western chauvinist group” as extremist has not been previously made public …

The document also says: “The FBI has warned local law enforcement agencies that the Proud Boys are actively recruiting in the Pacific north-west”, and: “Proud Boys members have contributed to the recent escalation of violence at political rallies held on college campuses, and in cities like Charlottesville, Virginia, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington.”

Of course, what impact this has on the Immigration Minister David Coleman is anybody’s guess.

In any case, on Saturday in Philadelphia, over a thousand anti-racists rallied against a small far-right rally of a few Proud Boys, 3% militia supporters, and others (Anti-Racist Crowd Overwhelms Small Far-Right Rally in Philly, Unicorn Riot, November 17, 2018). See also : The Gritty City Antifascist Committee, Michael Nolan, Splinter News, November 18, 2018 | WATCH: Right-wing Proud Boys forced to walk home from Philadelphia rally after taxi drivers refuse them, Bob Brigham, Raw Story, November 17, 2018. On the same date in Portland:

In other sad news, Comcast fires employee for alleged membership in the Proud Boys hate group (Elise Solé, Yahoo Lifestyle, November 17, 2018), while in New York, some other Proud Boys have gotten themselves into all sorts of legal difficulties. As noted previously, on October 12 McInnes was invited by the Metropolitan Republican Club to celebrate the anniversary of the assassination of Japanese socialist Inejiro Asanuma by a fascist teenybopper on that date in 1960; following the fuehrer’s blah, some of his meatheaded supporters attacked some folks in the streets. As a result:

The Proud Boys finally used up their copious spare lives after a brutal gang beatdown was caught on camera after a GOP-sponsored event in Manhattan. The Proud Boys’ leader and founder, Gavin McInnes, has gone on record saying explicitly that the Proud Boys are ‘a gang.’ It beggars belief that the Proud Boys are suddenly confused about facing gang assault charges. This is the latest in a sequence of nationwide violent incidents, and the Proud Boys might be pissing themselves (without even drinking it).

Those so far listed by First Vigil as facing charges are: David E Kuriakose; Douglas Lennan; Geoffrey B Young; Irvin Antillon; John W Kinsman and; Maxwell Hare.

Another sometime Proud Boy, Jeffrey Rafael Clark, Jr., is also experiencing some legal problems. First Vigil again:

Jeffrey Clark is the brother of the late Edward Clark, who allegedly killed himself hours after his Gab contact, Robert Bowers, allegedly murdered eleven people in a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Both Clark brothers were active in the DC alt-right scene, attended Unite the Right in Charlottesville, and were apparently close with organizer Jason Kessler. Jeffrey was charged with weapons charges after his family members contacted the FBI concerned about his social media posts.

In Melbourne, in response to the tour, both the Campaign Against Racism & Fascism (CARF) and new-ish project Stand Together Against Racism (STAR) have organised events. Thus on Friday, November 30 STAR has organised a rally, Nazis not Welcome – No Visas for Robinson & McInnes, outside the Immigration Department in the city. For its part, CARF have organised an action on December 11 (Protest British fascist Tommy Robinson + Proud Boy Gavin McInnes).

See also : The Proud Boys, the bizarre far-right street fighters behind violence in New York, explained, Jane Coaston, Vox, October 15, 2018 (‘They hate Muslims and refuse to masturbate: Meet the shock troops of the weirdo right’) | North America: violence comes from the right, Joel Bergman, marxism dot com, November 16, 2018.

Bonus Tommy!

With the prospect of being sent to jail (again) in temporary abeyance, last week ex-British National Party stooge Yaxley-Lennon was denied a visa to the United States, where he was expected to address Republican lawmakers at an anti-Muslim event in Washington organised by Daniel Pipes. (Pipes came to Australia earlier this year to talk the same shit as a guest of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) — see : The Pipes They Are A-Blowing: An Extremist Tour Down Under, Michael Brull, New Matilda, March 10, 2018.) On Sunday, the little shit and some hired goons made the mistake of attending a Luton Town match. For what happened next, see : When ‘Tommy’ came back to Luton Town, Football Lads and Lasses Against Fascism, November 20, 2018.

antifa notes (november 2, 2018) : milo & mcinnes; lads, proud boys & natzis

Update (November 3, 2018) : Nationals ban 22 members for life after investigation into neo-Nazi links, Michael Koziol, The Sydney Morning Herald, November 3, 2018.


Above : On L, alleged killer Robert Bowers announcing his intention to GTKRWN; on R, Brisbane-based neo-Nazi and member of The Lads Society Beau Maverick. Neither man cares greatly for ‘optics’.

* The massacre at the synagogue in Pittsburgh on October 27 was reportedly the worst such event in US history. Unfortunately, given current political trends, that record may not last very long. In any case, Julie Nathan of the ECAJ has written ‘As the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre shows, fears of “White Genocide” are incitement to murder’ (ABC Religion & Ethics, October 29/31, 2018), while CEO Alex Ryvchin reckons ‘Synagogue slayings not a shot in the culture wars’ (October 31, 2018 — for a contrary view, see : Jews Against Fascism).

I may add some more thoughts at a later date, but in the meantime I think it worthwhile highlighting the fact that the rehabilitation of anti-Semitism and its increasing centrality to extreme-right perspectives in the United States is echoed Down Under as an increasingly larger segment of younger right-wing activists not only adopt a fascist outlook but place anti-Semitic conspiracy theories at the heart of their worldview. By way of example, the AltRight media platforms ‘XYZ’ and ‘The Unshackled’ (AKA ‘The Unhinged’ — which, to its credit, has been authorised by Google as a trusted media source) have drifted over the course of the last year or two from fairly conventional arch-Toryism to an open embrace of white nationalism. Leaving aside David Hilton (‘Moses Apostaticus’), fellow XYZ contributor Ryan Fletcher has accounted for this shift in an essay titled ‘Trading HEMP for Hitler’ (a text which comes highly recommended by editor David Hiscox). Fletcher is also a YUGE fan of James Mason’s Siege — required reading for members of local neo-Nazi grouplet Antipodean Resistance.


Above : Tim Wilms of The Unhinged wearing his Proud Boys ‘Pinochet Did Nothing Wrong’ shirt. Note that the arm reads RWDS (‘Right Wing Death Squad’). Under the Pinochet dictatorship (1973–1990), tens of thousands of Chileans were raped, tortured, murdered and forced into exile by his death squads. (Coincidentally, this weekend, LASNET has organised a gathering on Autonomy & Resistance at Trades Hall in Melbourne.)

See also : Pittsburgh shooting extends wave of conspiracy-minded rightwing violence, Jason Wilson, The Guardian, October 27, 2018 | George Soros: Why Are Australians Flirting With This American Conspiracy Theory?, Alex Bruce-Smith, 10 Daily, October 31, 2018 | Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment: The Frankfurt School as Scapegoat of the Lunatic Fringe (March 9, 2012).

1) Dan Spiller/Future Now Australia Presents: Milo Yiannopoulos & Ann Coulter

Queensland businessman Dan Spiller (AKA ‘Future Now Australia’ AKA ‘AE Events’) has recently announced the cancellation of the upcoming tour by Infowars-supplements salesman and paedophile apologist Milo Yiannopoulos (accompanied by fellow wealthy blabbermouth Ann Coulter). This is the second time Spiller has tried and failed to organise a tour by ‘foreign radicals’: back in April, Spiller announced that he’d be bringing both Yiannopoulos and ‘Proud Boys’ founder Gavin McInnes to Australia. That effort collapsed in a heap within a few days, but Spiller’s latest production took several months to fall apart … which I suppose could be considered either an improvement or a degeneration (depending on your perspective). In any (non-)event, the decision to cancel the tour has been compounded by Spiller’s decision not to refund buyers but instead offer them tickets to go and see two other ‘foreign radicals’ — Gavin McInnes and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon — when they tour in December.

Fingers crossed, Mr Spiller’s seemingly chronic inability to successfully profit from foreign hate-merchants will not deter him from attempting to do so and being similarly adept in future. The silver lining on this grey cloud of failure, however, is perhaps the new book by Milo, which is apparently All About Australia:


Above : An extract from Yiannopoulos’s upcoming book on Australia. It’s unclear at this stage if Janet Albrechtsen has accepted an invitation to write the foreword.

See also : Milo Yiannopoulos Fans Are Pissed His Aussie Tour Got Cancelled, And It’s Extremely Funny, Tom Clift, Junkee, November 1, 2018 | Milo Yiannopoulos’ Australian Tour Has Been Cancelled And Fans Want Refunds, Josh Butler, 10 Daily, October 31, 2018 | Milo Yiannopoulos’ Australian tour cancelled with no refunds, SBS, October 31, 2018 | Milo Yiannopoulos’ Aussie Tour Has Been Cancelled, Disappointing Dozens, Ben McLeay, pedestriantv, October 31, 2018 | Milo Yiannopoulos tour cancelled; Gavin McInnes visa debate continues, Kieran’s Review, October 30, 2018.

2) Gavin McInnes & Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (‘Tommy Robinson’)

Damien Costas, publisher of Penthouse Australia, is planning on bringing Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes and ex-BNP member and founder of the English Defence League Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (AKA ‘Andrew McMaster’/’Paul Harris’/’Tommy Robinson’) to Australia in December. As usual, venues will be made public 24 hours prior to the event, but it’s not unreasonable to expect previous venues, including Festival Functions in Findon (Adelaide), Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre, Melbourne Pavilion in Flemington/La Mirage in Somerton, Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre and Le Montage/International Convention Centre Sydney (ICC Sydney) to again provide a platform for race-hate. The dates for the tour are as follows:

• ADELAIDE : WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 5
• PERTH : FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7
• MELBOURNE : TUESDAY, DECEMBER 11
• GOLD COAST : THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13
• SYDNEY : SUNDAY, DECEMBER 16

Of course, the possibility of either McInnes or Yaxley-Lennon being able to enter the country is entirely dependent upon Mr Potato Head’s feels on the subject. On Robinson, and in particular his current legal troubles (which may also see him prevented from coming), see : David Renton and Barrister Blogger.

With regards McInnes, he and his ‘Boys’ have been getting into some bother of late. Just a few weeks ago (Friday, October 12) in New York, McInnes was invited by the Metropolitan Republican Club to celebrate the anniversary of the assassination of Japanese socialist Inejiro Asanuma on this date in 1960. Following the event, some of McInnes’s fanboys went on a bit of a rampage, and some got arrest. An awful lot of ink has been spilled on the subject of the event and its aftermath, but as ever New York City Antifa (Twitter) is an xclnt resource. See also : The Proud Boys, The GOP And ‘The Fascist Creep’, Christopher Mathias, Huffington Post, October 18, 2018 (‘Gavin McInnes spoke at a GOP club, then his followers violently attacked leftist protesters. Modern American fascism finds its foot soldiers’) | NYPD arrests 14 Jewish protesters outside Republican club where Proud Boys brawled, Rex Santus, Vice, October 31, 2018 (‘The protesters outside the Club on Tuesday were there to call on the Republican Party to denounce white nationalism after the Saturday shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue where 11 worshippers were murdered by a man who’d shared anti-Semitic and white supremacist comments online.’).

Closer to home, Melbourne lawyer Nyadol Nyuon has launched an online petition, calling on the Minister to deny McInnes a visa. For their part, both Facebook and Instagram appear to have removed a large number of (official and unofficial) Proud Boy accounts from their sites. ‘The crackdown came slightly more than two weeks after members of the group reportedly attacked and beat activists protesting at an event in Manhattan. It also follows the massacre of 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue — the worst anti-Semitic attack in recent US history.’ The gab.ai webshite (AKA ‘Twitter for nazis’) is also experiencing technical difficulties at the moment …


Above : Melbourne-based neo-Nazi Blair Cottrell tweets a dank meme about killing socialists. Note that Asanuma’s teenybopper assassin, Otoya Yamaguchi, killed himself a few weeks later.

See also : Australia should be wary of the Proud Boys and their violent, alt-right views, Kaz Ross, The Conversation (ABC), October 30, 2018 | Proud Boys Founder Gavin McInnes: ‘We Need More Violence from the Trump People’, gritpost, October 18, 2018 | The New Nazis: How the meme-rich world of the internet is a threat in Australia, Kaz Ross, ABC, October 14, 2018.

3) Young Natzionals

The recent revelation that the Young Nationals in NSW have been targeted for infiltration by neo-Nazis and White supremacists created some mild embarrassment for the party over the course of the last few weeks. On Wednesday, it was announced that 15 members of the party — including Thomas Brasher, Michael Heaney, Clifford Jennings and Oscar Tuckfield — had resigned, while something like another 20 have had their membership status questioned, and may yet leave or be forced out of the party. See : Nationals members resign en masse amid investigation into neo-Nazi ties, Michael Koziol, The Age, October 31, 2018 | Young Nationals resign after after ABC investigation reveals alt-right push, Alex Mann, ABC, October 31, 2018.

On Monday the story — the origins of which may be traced back to some reportage in The Australian back in May, but which was given flesh by Alex Mann for the ABC — provoked the following front-page treatment in The Daily Telegraph:

Oddly enough Sharri’s father, Max Markson, has been doing his bit to promote racism and fascism in Australia by way of Penthouse and in his capacity as Milo’s Australian publicist. Sadly, the relationship between Costas and Markson has broken down in the wake of the paedophile apologist’s December 2017 tour: ‘ … Mr Markson called Mr Costas a “lying conman”. Mr Costas, the publisher of Penthouse Australia and owning a company alongside one of Australia’s biggest drug dealers, convicted ice importer Sean Dolman, retaliated by calling Mr Markson “a very naughty boy” who “had his finger in the till”‘ (Private Sydney: Markson sparks up in court in dispute with Penthouse publisher, Andrew Hornery, The Sydney Morning Herald, September 6, 2018).

See also : “I’ve had pictures of the Florida school shooter posted on my door”. UTAS’s Dr Kaz Ross says she has had death threats since exposing young Nationals alt-right supporters, On Mornings with Sarah Gillman, ABC, November 1, 2018 | NSW Nats clear key player in Nazi scandal, SBS (AAP), October 31, 2018 | White Nationalists Plan to Infiltrate Mainstream Australian Politics, Paul Gregoire, Sydney Criminal Lawyers, October 22, 2018.

4) The Lads Society

As noted a year ago, the neo-Nazi grouplet ‘The Lads Society’ has a clubhouse in the Melbourne suburb of Cheltenham. The nazis also have a training facility in Sydney, which is located at 34 Thomas Street, Ashfield. The Lads certainly have a sense of humour, with the lease on the property being signed with Colemon Property Group on Hitler’s birthday (April 20).

The chief organiser of ‘The Lads’ in Sydney is a Kiwi called ‘Mark McDonald’. Previously, Mark was the lvl boss of another short-lived neo-Nazi grouplet called ‘Squadron 88’. It attracted some media attention by way of stuffing letterboxes in Jewish areas of Sydney with anti-Semitic tracts. McDonald is also widely-believed to be responsible for the distribution of some racist posters in Sydney in mid-2017. Most recently, McDonald and several other Lads attended Adelaide barrister John Bolton’s batshit rally in Wiley Park:


Above : Partially-obscured, joining Cottrell on the right is Adelaide barrister John Bolton; standing between Cottrell and Tuckfield is Mark McDonald, founder of defunct neo-Nazi grouplet Squadron 88 and current lvl boss of The Lads Society in Sydney.

Finally, ladsleaks has published an interesting discussion drawn from The Lads’ private Facebook page. The list of participants in the discussion reads like a Who’s Who of neo-Nazism Down Under, including both founders Blair Cottrell and Tom Sewell, Mark McDonald (‘Tyler Winchester’) and Stuart Von Moger, David Hilton (‘Moses Apostaticus’), Jim Perren (Australia First Party/’Whitelaw Towers’/United Patriots Front), Welf Herfurth and more. Much of the discussion revolves around The Lads’ shared hatred for Jewish neo-Nazi Nathaniel Jacob Sassoon Sykes. Based in Sydney, Sykes was until a few years ago a prolific contributor to the world’s leading neo-Nazi webshite ‘The Daily Stormer’. A member of the Australia First Party, Sykes uses his blog ‘United Nationalists of Australia’ to take aim at the party’s rivals on the right — including, of course, The Lads.

The post which triggered Tom can be read here — I’ll post other commentary from ladsleaks here laters.

5) … of note

• Guns, fascism, infighting and couch-surfing: Researcher Serena Tarr recounts a year studying the alt-right, Emma McClatchey, Little Village, October 8, 2018;
• Here Is a List of Far-Right Attackers Trump Inspired. Cesar Sayoc Wasn’t the First — and Won’t Be the Last., Mehdi Hasan, The Intercept, October 28, 2018;
• We Must Pressure Mainstream Forces to Stop Downplaying the Far Right, Spencer Sunshine, truthout, October 29, 2018;
• Three Months Inside Alt-Right New York, Jay Firestone, Commune, Fall 2018 (‘An undercover antifascist descends through all nine circles of the alt-right inferno.’);
• Twilight of the Racist Uncles: How Facebook is melting the minds of our elders, Ed Burmila, The Baffler, October 30, 2018;
• After Last Week, There’s No Hope That the Media Will Ever Abandon False Equivalencies With the Far Right, Natasha Lennard, The Intercept, October 31, 2018;
• Engedaw Berhanu Remembers His Nephew—Brought to Portland, Then Forever Lost, Jason Wilson, Willamette Week, October 31, 2018;
• Punching On With Patriots: How To Tackle Gavin McInnes And His Proud Boys’ Promise of Violence In Australia, Tom Tanuki, New Matilda, October 31, 2018.

Nigel Farage in Melbourne : Friday, September 7, 2018

See also : Nigel Farage colonizes Australia, Zoya Sheftalovich, politico, September 6, 2018 | Deplorables love in for Tony Abbott and Nigel Farage, Aaron Patrick, Australian Financial Review, September 7, 2018.

BEFORE

The final leg of Nigel Farage’s blitzkrieg tour Down under takes place at the Sofitel Hotel (25 Collins Street) later today.

The Campaign Against Racism & Fascism (CARF) has organised a protest outside the venue. For more details and to keep up-to-date with what’s up, see the Facebook event page here.

Victoria Police have declared the blocks surrounding the venue a designated area, granting them various additional powers.

To this point, ticket sales appear to be somewhat disappointing for organisers, with the original Sydney venue (September 6), the International Convention Centre (which previously played happy hosts to some barking-mad anti-Aboriginal hate-speech courtesy of Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern) being pulled and the event taking place at Doltone House instead. This parallels the experience in Adelaide — where it was marketed as being at the Town Hall but with attendees being directed to a smaller venue a short distance away — and so too Perth.

To add to the tour organiser’s woes, there’s been a falling out between Damien Costas and Max Markson, the dynamic duo responsible for bringing Nesquik to town in December last year. Thus:

… the party has suddenly come to a spectacular halt and the “bromance” is over amid wild accusations on both sides and a trail of debt, with Mr Markson claiming Mr Costas owes him $90,000.

Mr Markson and Mr Costas are also at war over hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid bills from the tour, with money owed to everyone from venue operators to security guards, Yiannopoulos and the family of one of Australia’s biggest drug smugglers.

Mr Costas confirmed Yiannopoulos was still owed money from the tour, but he wasn’t the one owing it. Mr Markson said Yiannopoulos, who agreed to do the tour in return for a $250,000 fee, was still owed several thousand dollars, but denied he was responsible.

See : Private Sydney: Markson sparks up in court in dispute with Penthouse publisher, Andrew Hornery, The Sydney Morning Herald, September 6, 2018. See also : Poor ticket sales force Nigel Farage to move Australian gig to smaller venue, Jonathon Read, The New European, September 6, 2018.

AFTER

Maybe 200 or so folks staged a rally outside the Sofitel; a handful were arrested. Cooked Convict Neil Erikson was detained by police, Rino ‘Bluebeard’ Grgurovic lost his MAGA hat, and their mate Andy Nolch (see : Anti-feminist charged over Eurydice Dixon graffiti has ‘no remorse’, court hears, Tammy Mills & Sarah Emery, The Age, September 8, 2018) was also there to be entertained by Farage.

See : Nigel Farage: Clashes break out at former UKIP leader’s Melbourne event, Joshua McDonald, ABC, September 8, 2018 | Arrests after hundreds rallied against right-wing Nigel Farage in Melbourne’s CBD, The New Daily/AAP, September 8, 2018.