Yeah well anyway, I thought I might just note in passing some of Avi Yemini’s fanbase among the extreme-right.
To begin with, unhappy with the media reportage of his hate rally on Sunday, Avi instead recommends everybody read the report on the ‘altright’ website ‘The Unshackled’ (2016–) by Tom Pirrone. According to Tom, ‘hundreds’ attended Avi’s shindig — which is about as accurate as most of the reportage on the site, which otherwise reflects the preoccupations of the Tory yoof which constitutes its audience.
The Unhinged editors of The Unshackled are Tim Wilms and Sukith Fernando (above). Like many other #altright yoof, Sukith is a card-carrying member of the Liberal Party, and it was while campaigning for student elections that Sukith got into some hot water at the University of Sydney last week. Thus according to Honi Soit (Holocaust denying student confronted on campus, Kishor Napier-Raman and Aidan Molins, September 15, 2017): ‘Fernando was confronted on Eastern Avenue by members of both Stand Up (Labor) and Switch (Grassroots/independents) who questioned him about his beliefs. Fernando repeatedly claimed that he “didn’t know” whether the Holocaust happened.’ He is also reportedly a member of multiple right-wing Facebook groups, including one called ‘Holocaust Revisionism’.
As was the case with University of Queensland student David Hilton (‘Moses Apostaticus’), being an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier is no barrier to being adopted by more mainstream publications, including The Spectator. Thus in July Sukith contributed a sterling essay to the site (Goodbye Yassmin and #PrayForLondon, July 13, 2017) celebrating Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s decision to leave Australia for London, while also deriding her for her alleged apostasy and racism. For its part, the Liberal yoof who’ve assembled behind the ‘Vanguard’ banner to contest the election have denounced Sukith for his public expressions of racism, anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial and informed the world that, if elected, Sukith will not hold office. On the other hand, Sukith’s brave stand against The Jew at his university did at least win the approval of neo-Nazi and former Grand Poobah of the KKK, David Duke, so that’s something eh.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Leaving aside Sukith, as noted previously, the main body of supporters at Avi’s rally on Sunday were drawn from pre-existing extreme-right street gangs, especially the Soldiers of Odin and True Blue Crew. Funnily enough, apart from ignoring actually-existing laws and legal processes, the implementation of the rally’s demands — minimum sentencing for violent offenders (including minors), no bail for persons charged with violent offences, no parole for those convicted for violent offences, minors to be incarcerated in adult jails and the deportation of immigrants convicted of violent offences — would actually decimate his support base.
Last weekend, a small group of neo-Nazi geeks, White supremacist nerds, and extreme-right yoof met-up in Sydney to talk shop. Called ‘DingoCon’ and organised under the auspices of #DingoTwitter, the only person to have publicly confessed to having paid their $88 (fnarr fnarr) entrance fee is Melbourne-based neo-Nazi Blair Cottrell, the putative leader of the now defunct Facebook page ‘United Patriots Front’ (UPF). One person who definitely did not attend — and whose presence would apparently have been unwelcome — was Dr Jim Saleam of the Australia First Party: Everyone Wants To Be Fuehrer, but it would seem that the nü gen of Fashy Goys are keen to keep some distance from the fascists in cardigans.
Above : George Christensen poses with Kane Miller, lvl boss of the ‘True Blue Crew’.
The Dingoes
While Buzzfeed buzzed about The Dingoes back in October, to date the most publicity The Dingoes mob has received has likely come courtesy of Federal MP George Christensen, who was a guest on their podcast in February. A few months later — after having made the Columbus-like discovery that he’d been chatting to neo-Nazi yoof — Christensen declared that he’d stumbled onto the podcast entirely by mistake, was really sorry about the whole thing, and vowed to stop US neo-Nazi Mike Peinovich from coming to Australia in order to address the conference his erstwhile kameraden had organised for July. (Christensen’s sudden rise and very slow fall from Dingo grace is most-usefully examined by Richard Cooke in the July, 2017 edition of The Monthly.)*
Christensen’s decision to consort with anti-Semites angered some at the time, and Jenna Price may be correct to claim that ‘[o]nly Buzzfeed’s Mark di Stefano thought it wasn’t the best use of a politician’s time’, but as Jason Wilson wrote in February, Christensen is not the only political figure to have embraced The Dingoes:
Last week, for the second time, former Labor leader Mark Latham appeared on The Convict Report, aka The Dingoes, an Australian “alt-right” podcast. It’s part of the network of podcasts hosted by The Right Stuff, a major international far right hub. That’s the same website whose major players have been recently doxxed by the left, and whose unmasking as promoters of fascist ideology has, in some cases, brought suitably ruinous consequences.
After taking note of the fact that both Christensen and former Liberal turned Conservative Federal MP Bernardi were to be guests of The Q Society function in Melbourne in February (LOL), Wilson further writes that:
Bernardi also has other, perhaps even stranger connections. In particular, he has a long relationship with a group called the Sydney Traditionalist Forum. They describe themselves as “the first explicitly paleoconservative-leaning association in Australia”, and “the only local group that embraces the political currents of contemporary dissident reaction”. Their purpose is to provide “a forum where ideas once understood to be common sense can be exchanged, debated and discussed, unfettered and ungagged by modern liberal thought-control”.
The Sydney Traditionalists, as it happens, are also comrades of The Dingoes; which fact — together with their rejection of Dr Saleam — has apparently irked the authors of the United Nationalists of Australia (UNA) blog.
The Dingoes, Klub Naziya, Sydney Traditionalists, Liberals, United Nationalists and Australia First Party
Functioning largely as a forum for (Jewish?!) neo-Nazi and AFP member Nathan Sykes, but also occasionally featuring the musings of former UPF leader turned AFP member Chris Shortis, the UNA blog replaced the similarly batshit ‘Whitelaw Towers’, and frequently takes potshots at the various enemies and rivals of Saleam and the AFP. In keeping with this role, the blog has recently published an account of DingoCon and the nefarious forces allegedly pulling its strings.
According to UNA (‘DINGOES CONNED?’, July 6, 2017), Liberal and Leo Strauss aficionado David McBryde is ‘the man behind the curtain of DingoCon’. The logic governing the proposal is fairly convoluted but whatever its sketchy merits, it does reveal something of the fractious nature of the extreme-right in Sydney. Thus, in another post on the UNA blog authored by Saleam, McBryde is nominated as being one of a number of individuals — along with Steven Moore, Mark Pavic, Jason Rafty and Andrew Wilson — comprising the shadowy Klub Nation (AKA Klub Naziya), a bizarre group which, inter alia, organised meetings at Humanist House in Chippendale in the period 2005–2009 before staging an unsuccessful attempt to seize control of the group which owns it, the Humanist Society of NSW. KN is also alleged to have been involved in some dingbat investment scheme — the purchase of gold and silver — in which several investors allegedly lost some small sums of money. (For more on KN and Humanist House, see : Fascist infiltration of the ‘Humanist Society of New South Wales’ (Inc.), November 25, 2009.)
Above : Andrew Wilson with fellow members of (defunct) neo-Nazi skinhead gang Volksfront.
According to another source, Andrew Wilson is in fact one of the regular hosts of The Convict Report, where he podcasts under the name of ‘Aussie Tory’; certainly, Wilson once put the yoof in the Patriotik Yoof League (PYL) — the ill-fated attempt by Saleam’s Australia First Party to develop a yoof wing in the early noughties — and was one of the volk in the similarly short-lived neo-Nazi grouplet Volksfront. Since then, after various twists and turns, the PYL has been replaced by the imaginatively titled ‘Eureka Youth League’, AKA Canberra boy Matthew Grant. (You may remember Grant from such rallies as the UPF anti-Muslim rally in Bendigo in October, 2015.)
Other individuals nominated as being in some way complicit in McBryde’s plotting to undo the (White) nationalist content of The Dingoes and to bring its handful of followers (back) into the Liberal fold are: Sydney Traditionalist, DingoCon organiser, aspiring academic and self-described ‘paleo-conservative’ Luke Torrisi; fellow Traditionalist, sometime Humanist and USYD activist Morgan Qasabian and finally; Clifford Jennings, described by Saleam as an ‘Alt-Right leader and the organizer of Dingo activity’ and a former Liberal: also an aspiring USYD student politician, and organiser of a ‘Pro-Trump Counter Protest’ in Sydney in January (‘Communists, Marxists, Globalists and Cucks are going to be protesting against the inauguration of the God Emperor Trump to the Presidency of the United States of America, please join me in a very merry counter protest. Please invite those who are truly pro-Trump.’).
In summary, it’s not without reason that Jason Wilson wrote that ‘The Dingoes attempt to produce the same edgy fare as The Right Stuff flagships like The Daily Shoah, but they sound a little too much like chinless Young Liberal nerds to bring any real menace’. Beyond that, while much media reportage on the ‘AltRight’ has been obsessed with the bells and whistles (haircuts and memes) attached to it, as a general rule it’s just the old anti-Semitic and fascist whine in new bottles.
* Conservative MPs accidentally-stumbling-into-fascist-and-anti-Semitic-groups has a long, colourful, and generally comedic history Down Under. STRAYA has also often been a safe space for Nazi war criminals, some few recruited by the intelligence agencies to better battle Communism while others, most notoriously Slovenian Nazi propagandist Ljenko Urbančič (1922–2006), pursuing careers within the Conservative parties themselves. Urbančič, who joined the NSW Liberal Party and exercised considerable influence upon it during the 1960s and 1970s via the ‘Uglies’ faction, also enjoyed Australian hospitality by organising campaigns in support of apartheid, White rule in Rhodesia, and against the influence of liberals within the Liberals. The political legacy of the ‘Little Goebbels’ of Ljubljana continues to be exercised and/or exorcised via his #BFF and NSW state MP David Clarke and Clarke’s former acolyte, federal MP Alex Hawke. For more infos on STRAYA as a safe space for Nazis and war criminals, see : Mark Aarons, War Criminals Welcome (Black Inc., 2001).
Sadly, Mike Peinovich (‘Mike Enoch’) did not attend DingoCon, instead electing to goto the Scandza Forum in Oslo, Norway on July 1. Erik Olson (Searchlight) writes: ‘Recently a small “volkisch” far-right group called Scandza Forum started making its presence felt publicly with calls for more international activity. Some minor events took place and then we learned from our inside sources that a major event was to take place in Oslo on 1 July 2017 under the Scandza banner heavily supported by Greg Johnson’s Counter-Currents.’ Note that Johnson was a guest of The Dingoes in September last year.
NB. I began writing this in mid-January, put it aside, and am only now returning to it. In the interim, the NSW Humanist Society/Humanist Society of NSW held a meeting on February 14, 2010, to elect a new Committee of Management, but I’m unaware of the results of this meeting (see below), and who now constitutes the Committee. The latest edition of the Society newsletter, however, states that the person previously responsible for letting the Hall (David Duffy) has been replaced, and those wishing to hire it will be more stringently vetted in future.
Introduction
As noted, John August, the President of the NSW Humanist Society/Humanist Society of NSW, has recently released a statement regarding the Society, Humanist House, and the ‘Public Information Forum’ (PIF), a fascist grouping whose meetings at the House in October and November 2009 were accompanied by protest. After detailing some recent history involving the Society’s relationship to and with the PIF (aka ‘Klub Nation’/’Klub Naziya’/’Mark Pavic Group’), as well as an attempt to introduce a statement in opposition to racism and xenophobia into the group’s Constitution, August notes that the Society’s last AGM:
…resulted in a committee which included many PIF members who had not previously attended social gatherings or committee meetings, contributed to the Humanist Viewpoints or otherwise taken an interest in the NSW Humanists. The election was itself problematic, with no scrutiny of candidates before the election, and confusion about preferential voting.
The Society zine (Humanist Viewpoints, Vol.48, No.4, October/November/December 2009) states that the:
2009 AGM was well attended and the new committee consists of John August (President), David Duffy and Waratah Rosemarie Gillespie (Vice Presidents), Victor Bien (Treasurer), Affie Adagio (Hon Sec/Editor) and Angela Drury (Assist. Sec). Ordinary committee members: Dylon Anderson, Ken Cratchley, Tony D’Angiolillo, Hugh Drewitz, Gillian Ellis, Fred Flatow, Robin Hall, Mark Pavic, Andrew Wilson, and John Wright.
The same number also welcomes the (‘White nationalist’) Australian Protectionist Party’s NSW spokesperson Darrin Hodges into the Humanist fold.
Protest
In relation to public protest at Humanist House, August has little new to add. There were two such protests — in October and November — timed to coincide with the meeting of the neo-Nazis. August reiterates the fact that he considered the protests violent (a Society member who witnessed one of the protests asserts that the protesters struck the building, and “a glass panel inside Humanist House was damaged around this time”) and therefore unwelcome, and that he remains at a loss as to the identities of those participating. August also complains that participants failed to contact the Society prior to the protests in order to communicate their concerns, and have not done so since. For their part, the neo-Nazis apparently accused August and the committee of collaborating with the protesters and, inter alia, “claimed that the police would be investigating the damage which resulted to Humanist House”. In summary: “The protester’s careless and ill-thought out actions exacerbated an already difficult and stressful situation. Great work, guys.”
Police
Again, not a great deal of new information. August spoke to Redfern police about the protests, who expressed knowledge of the involvement of participants in other political activity (“The protesters knew that the group went by the name “Klub Nation”… and it seems had been protesting elsewhere”).
Politics
In news just to hand:
I was intrigued to note that the Humanist Society of NSW was not an exhibitor at the Global Atheist Convention, an event at which one of its Patrons, Robyn Williams, was a guest speaker.
Pam Walker has authored an article — Anti-fascist protests at Humanist House, City Hub, March 17, 2010 — which states that Mark Pavic was elected Vice President of the Society at its February 14 meeting. If correct, then the fascists have not only not been removed from the Society but, seemingly, further cemented their place within it. Which is, of course, unfortunate: moaron that subject — and August’s understanding of the political issues raised by neo-Nazi infiltration of a Humanist association — later.
In the meantime, however, readers should note other events from Australian history — from 100 or more years ago. Humanists in particular should discuss the relevance of this history with other groups in civil society.
NB. The Melbourne Anarchist Club was formed on May 1, 1886 by members of the Australasian Secular Association. Anarchists played a key role in challenging Christian domination of the colonies, and in particular bourgeois opposition to participation by the working class in public life. In 1889, and the years following, anarchist and socialist agitators such as Chummy Fleming, Sam Rosa and John White participated in regular public protests demanding the opening of libraries and other civic institutions on Sundays.
Bonus History!
[Source : Radical Melbourne, Jill and Jeff Sparrow, Vulgar Press, 2001, pp.161–164.]
In 1883, The Argus published an article condemning the presence of the poor in the Public Library on Swanston Street:
A visitor to the library may test the matter first by his nose. He can smell vagrancy the moment he crosses the threshold. Using his eyes, he can see it right up and down the long hall; peering curiously about, he can find it in any of the alcoves, nicely sheltered and walled about with books. If he chooses to particularise, he may see an unmistakable specimen enter, shuffle up to a bookcase, select a volume of light literature, choose a seat, set up his elbows as supports to his head, and bend his eyes on the print. In a little while he spits. In an hour he will sleep; if he snores an attendant may disturb him; then he will read and spit again.
The Argus proposed two solutions – regulations forcing potential entrants to show a letter of introduction from a ‘respectable’ household or, failing that, the division of the building into distinct areas for different classes. By name, the library might have been ‘Public’ (or ‘Free’), but there was more than a suggestion from Melbourne’s elite that the building and its collection remained rather too good for the populace, since ‘the books . . . are handled, and soiled, and spoiled, and frequently mutilated, by creatures who would be better bestowed within Her Majesty’s gaols’.
…by way of three way fight, nomattimen: an algonquian (native american) word meaning ‘we are brothers’…
Serbia
Goran Davidović, Führer of Nacionalni Stroj (National Alignment/Formation), a Serbian neo-Nazi group, has been arrested in Germany, 10 months after a court in Novi Sad issued a warrant for his arrest and he fled to Italy (and his wife). AP:
Authorities say a Serbian neo-Nazi leader who fled his homeland after being convicted of inciting hatred has been arrested in Germany. Goran Davidovic was arrested Tuesday aboard a train near the Austrian border, said Alfons Obermeier, a spokesman for prosecutors in Munich. He said Davidovic was arrested under a Serbian warrant and now faces extradition. Davidovic was convicted in Serbia of inciting national, ethnic and religious hatred for infiltrating an anti-fascist rally in 2005. He was sentenced to one year in prison but fled to Italy.
A small group of Serbian pointyheads have previously drawn attention to the rather lax attitude of Serbian authorities towards fascist groups such as Nacionalni Stroj:
We live in a state where there is no guarantee that a person will be prosecuted for his or her promotion of racial, religious and national hatred. In all these years, members of the [clerico]-fascist organisation Obraz (operating without problems since 1993) and the Serbian nationalist movement 1389 (which presents itself as “patriotic” while maintaining close contacts with Russian fascist organizations) have not been held criminally responsible for their acts which involved threats against the LGBT population and numerous attacks and beatings of their members! The leader of a nazi organization “Nacionalni stroj”, Goran Davidović, (“Fuehrer”) was allowed to openly mock the legal system of Republic of Serbia, when he succeeded in his complaint against the guilty verdict in his case, basing it on the fact that documents of the trial were written in Latin letters.
Such attitudes may also be usefully contrasted with that adopted by the Serbian state towards its anarchist opposition. Thus The Anarchists Currently Known As The Belgrade Six face up to 15 years in prison if found guilty of the dastardly act of vandalising the Greek Embassy in Belgrade, aka “international terrorism”. Note that “According to the prosecution documents, the total amount of damage done to the Greek Embassy in the August vandalism incident amounted to 18 euros.”
Russia (For Dion)
Sky News, by way of Amanda Walker, has sit up and taken notice of the fact that there are neo-Nazis in Russia, and they’re killing people. Apparently, “The chilling face of extremism was revealed when another neo-nazi group calling themselves “the warriors of the white revolution” unveiled their video message of the attack on Ghanaian Solomon Attengo Gwa-jio in St Petersburg. They described the footage as “a new year gift” as they pledged further acts of terror. No one has been arrested for the December attack, during which the victim was stabbed 20 times.”
In conjunction with the routine murders committed by neo-Nazis and other racists, Russian authorities are also encouraging the destruction of alternative spaces, as Russians Rally Around a Falling Enclave (Michael Schwirtz, The New York Times, February 1, 2010). Chronic economic dysfunction, social barbarism, and widespread, and occasionally murderous, political repression may be generating stronger opposition, however. Thus ‘Kremlin shocked as Kaliningrad stages huge anti-government protest’: “Special envoy sent to Russia’s western exclave as thousands take to streets in biggest protest since Soviet Union fell” (Luke Harding, The Guardian, February 2, 2010).
“On average, two to three far-right-motivated violent crimes are committed in Germany each day. And there are around three to four anti-Semitic violent crimes each month,” says Jörg Ziercke, president of the BKA. “There’s a real danger to people’s lives because far-right attacks tend to be very spontaneous, brutal and violent.” Right-wing radicals have become increasingly brazen too, carrying out attacks in public places such as train stations, bus stops and outside bars and restaurants. In addition to el-Sherbini’s murder, Ziercke says, there were five politically or racially motivated attempted murders by the far right in 2009.
According to the latest statistics from Germany’s Federal Crime Office, the number of acts of violence perpetrated by far-left groupings in 2009 went up by almost 50 percent over the previous year.
Left-wing anarchist groups, which have been active particularly in Berlin and Hamburg, have recruited new members. Counter-intelligence agencies put the current total number of anarchists in Germany at around 6,600.
“What we’ve witnessed in Berlin and other big German cities is that young people’s readiness to use violence has increased dramatically”, said Claudia Schmid from Berlin’s counter-intelligence department. “We’ve seen that, since last year’s May Day riots and the 2009 NATO summit in Strasbourg and Kehl, the level of brutality in the left-wing scene has gone up steadily”, she added.
Worse yet, while weaning wankers away from licking swastikas is possible (if sometimes difficult):
Opinions divided over exit program proposals
Some conservative Bavarian lawmakers have suggested that exit programs should be developed for young people wanting to turn their backs on radical Islamism or far left anarchism, similar to exit programs already in place for former far-right activists.
But senior intelligence officials are not convinced that this would be effective..
“Left-wing anarchists are highly unlikely to respond to any sort of contact by authorities. It seems easier in the case of radicalized far-right extremists who want to opt out”, says the president of Germany’s Federal Counter-Intelligence Agency, Heinz Fromm.
Free Speech and Fascism
a bunch of revo ratbags Mutiny
No.46, January 2010
[PDF]
In October and November 2009, two community protests took place outside the Humanist House building in Shepherd St Chippendale. Local residents had recently discovered that a group calling themselves KN (Klub Naziya) were meeting there each month – holding an open discussion and social group. The group exists as a coming-together space for nationalists, white supremacists, fascists and neo-Nazis.
The community demonstrations sought to shut down the meetings, with the aim of having KN kicked out of the space, as well as to draw attention to their presence. The neighbourhood was letterboxed, and postered, and the local community turned out to let this group know that they were unwelcome. Passers-by joined in, as did folks from the local pub. The demonstrations were a success, and in December, KN were kicked out of Humanist House. (In the process it was discovered that many of the far-right had infiltrated the Humanist Society and attempted to sell the $3 million building in order to use the money for an “education fund”).
In the process of these actions questions were raised by some as to whether these demonstrations were in themselves a form of fascism – advocating that everyone is entitled to free speech, and that by shutting down their meetings we were denying them this.
What follows is a discussion of the ideas around these questions. It’s not exhaustive, and we are not experts, but it goes someway to addressing the argument.
Why can we shut down summit meetings without question, but fascists somehow deserve to meet unhindered, under the auspices of freedom of speech?
Protests in Seattle, where communities realised their collective power by shutting down the 1999 WTO conference, were celebrated by the radical left throughout the world. Even in Australia, the shut-down of the World Economic Forum in 2000 is seen as the largest victory of the left in recent years. Blockading businesses, occupying offices, and shutting down pulp mills and coal mines are seen as standard actions for the left the world over. But suddenly when it comes to shutting down meetings of neo-Nazis, folks start worrying about their rights to “freedom of speech”. Summit conferences, pulp-mills, coal mines etc are shut down because of the dangerous activities in which they are engaged. But neo-Nazi groups aren’t sitting around debating how they can raise the most funds for the local homeless shelter. Their ideologies are specifically focused on causing harm to people who are non-white, homosexual, transgender, Jewish, Romani. These are folks who wear swastikas; have “88” tattoos (H is the eighth letter in the alphabet – the numerical equivalent of HH, or “Heil Hitler”); use “Heil Hitler” salutes; and actively celebrate Hitler’s birthday. They don’t do this as part of some cute anachronism, but as expressions of their politics, which are part of a continuous trajectory from 1930s Europe.
It’s these politics that mean that even if KN were a group of fascists gathering in Chippendale in order to raise money for the local homeless shelter, their act of gathering would still itself be a violent one. Before even a word is spoken between them, to be seen together: a strong group of neo-Nazis, their presence threatens those in the community they see as their enemies: non-white people, trans-people, queers; and adds backbone to the people in the area who may subscribe to aspects of their ideology.
“Opposing fascism in all its forms”
Some folks have expressed concern with the approach of shutting down neo-Nazi meetings/activities as a form of fascism in itself. Bound up in this concern is the possibility that it could be them doing it to “us”. In essence this is a classic conundrum of anarchist tendencies. What happens when the advocacy of freedom for all comes up against those who would deprive others of lives, safety, homes? But it becomes ridiculously obtuse to suggest that communities should stand by idly in the face of violence against people because of skin colour, ethnicity or sexuality, in order that they should not interfere with the freedoms of the perpetrators. Similarly, to suggest that shutting down neo-Nazi meetings through community demonstrations is necessarily fascist, seems a gross misunderstanding of the nature and extent of fascism.
Is freedom of speech something we even want to defend?
Freedom of speech refers to the freedom to speak without limitation. An often synonymous term, freedom of expression, refers to the act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used. Under capitalism, freedom of speech and freedom of expression do not exist for all, despite the rhetoric used by the ruling class. Ideas of freedom of speech are clothed in those of ‘democracy’. It serves to legitimize and consolidate liberal democracy by creating the illusion of freedom. The existing hierarchical class society ensures that it is only a few who have access to the various forms of media and the planning of what is taught in our schools – these are controlled by the government and rich. It follows, that it is the institutionalised racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia that is apparent in both the media and education systems which guarantees that a completely unobstructed access to voicing of opinions on the radio or in the newspapers, for example, is limited to the ruling class.
The idea of freedom of speech has long been associated with impartiality from the government, and as being somewhat of a beacon of truth and justice. However, we only need to look to the historical examples from the civil rights movement to see how freedom of speech is, and always has been, state sanctioned and state controlled. Clearly freedom of speech is related to a person’s right to vote, yet Aborigines have only had that ‘right’ for just over 40 years. Freedom of expression also has clear links to a person’s sexuality, yet it was only in 1984 in Hobart, Tasmania that the last gay man was arrested for having sex with another man on the side of the road in car – he was jailed for 8 months.
A more current example is around the war on terror and the subsequent rise of racism and hate towards Muslim communities. The rhetoric surrounding the war on terror has also ‘justified’ the introduction of new laws that highlight the role that the state plays in determining who does and who does not have the right to free speech. It is now the case that if you are a white, Christian, middle class person, you apparently have more of a right to free speech than, for example a Middle Eastern born Muslim now living in Australia. In anti-terrorism trials in Melbourne and Sydney Muslim men have received jail time for ‘radical talk’; whereas Alan Jones, the radio host who incited the Cronulla riot, received a $10,000 fine (less than a day’s pay).
There are a multitude of examples throughout history that reveal the central role that the state plays in sanctioning who is afforded the right of free speech.
Freedom of speech is not an abstract value that can exist in a bubble separate from everyday life, and relations of power; it is something that only exists in practice, and only insofar as societal relationships work to create it. Rather than unthinkingly defending these so-called “freedoms”, we need to adopt a critical relationship to these notions, in order to develop spaces of genuine freedom.
A ‘Final statement by John August, President Humanist Society of NSW, regarding Humanist House and the PIF’ has been published on Indymedia, dated January 8, 2010. It concerns the relationship between the Society and the ‘PIF’, or ‘Public Information Forum’, a small group which has been associated with the Society for the last decade or so, and which has been the subject of some controversy given its fascist political complexion.
In brief, the Society has announced that it will no longer be making its premises in Chippendale available to the innocuous-sounding PIF. (An aside: according to Martin Walker in his The National Front (1977), citing Rodney Legg, ‘NF Directorate meetings were always held in a public house booked in the name of the Anglo-Asian Friendship Society’ — arf arf.) This decision was made at some unspecified but recent point by an Executive appointed at a Special General Meeting late last year. Otherwise, August’s statement provides his account of events within the Society over the last few months, culminating in the SGM. Of note is the fact that a large number of Sydney-based racists and fascists have joined the Society, and a proportion of these elected to the Society’s Committee. The Executive is currently organising an AGM at which a new Committee will be elected; the composition of this Committee will reflect the relative strength of the racist and fascist contingent.
Finally, on a spotterly note: “While other hirers of [Humanist House] have a public identity and often a webpage (one example is the “Spartacist” group, a previous tenant, which have a regular publication, website and entry on Wikipedia), there is no similar such information available on PIF”.
Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.
