Tagged with Mike ‘The Right Stuff’ Peinovich

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.)

antifa notes (september 28, 2018) : Anning, Coulter, Fortress, Palmer, Yaxley-Lennon, Yiannopoulos et. al.

1) More planeloads of racist dickheads on their way

Ann Coulter, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon & Milo Yiannopoulos

‘Australia’ was founded as a dumping-ground for the shit of British Empire. Over two centuries later, it’s now a lucrative market for other forms of animae viles. Thus, Milo Yiannopoulos returns to our shores in November, on this occasion bringing with him another wealthy right-wing blabbermouth, Ann Coulter. If all goes to plan, the pair will be accompanied by Senator Fraser ‘Final Solution’ Anning, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (assuming he’s not back in prison and/or in breach of his bail conditions by leaving E-E-England) and other speakers yet TBA.

The tour kicks off on the Gold Coast on November 29, followed by a ‘VIP Yacht Cruise’ on November 30, and then proceeds to Sydney on December 2, with another v xpnsv boat trip on December 3, and performances in Melbourne (December 5), Adelaide (December 8) and finally Perth (December 11).

The tour is being organised and underwritten by Queensland businessman Dan Spiller AKA ‘Future Now Australia’.

Until very recently, twice-convicted racist Neil Erikson was Mister Spiller’s gopher, which role included paying a nocturnal visit to the family home of sometime-rival Dave Pellowe AKA ‘Axiomatic Events’ (the mob responsible for bringing Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern Down Under).

Presumably, Spiller’s deranged acolyte will now have more time to devote to his various legal defences.

As for the luminaries Spiller will be hoping to turn a hefty profit from, Infowars-supplements salesman Milo has been having a somewhat difficult time of late, whining on Facebook about being uninvited from a conference in October and castigating his fans for failing to shovel enough money in his direction: I have lost everything standing up for the truth in America, spent all my savings, destroyed all my friendships, and ruined my whole life, Yiannopoulos wrote: At some point, you realize it’s occasionally better to spend the money on crabs and cocktails.

Fortunately for him, Facebook remains committed to facilitating his batshit, he receives the red-carpet treatment in Australia, and is celebrated by Newscorpse, including The Australian columnist Janet Albrechtsen. When she’s not enjoying Milo’s anti-Aboriginal diatribes (a sample from his talk in Perth is below), Albrechtsen may be found promoting the work of the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation (AIEF), where she serves as a brand ‘Ambassador’. Quite how Albrechtsen squares her support for Milo with her role as ambassador I don’t know: after I asked the AIEF for comment on Twitter, I was blocked.

Because newsflash [Aboriginal art] really is shit … Now Australians in this sort of bizarre form of middle-class guilt have decided to pay obeisance to a culture that failed to invent the wheel — and whose signature musical achievement is a big stick … The ugly truth that they don’t want you to say out loud is that history has winners and losers. The progressive left wants to turn Western countries into the only developed civilisations in the history of human society that shit on their own accomplishments in favour of vastly inferior civilisations for no apparent reason. Hence we’re confronted with the ugly spectacle of your own nation and ‘welcome to country’ … and the desperate, pathetic attempts to pretend that didgeridoos represent a beautiful and historic cultural achievement, and not a punchline to a joke. Now you might not know this, but there are absolutely no Aboriginal people left alive in Australia — the last ones died in the ’60s and ’70s, and since then George Soros has been shipping over Black Lives Matter activists, giving them tubs of white-out, and telling them to just daub themselves and make all the White people feel bad. Your politicians in a symbol of how intelligent they are have been falling for it for half-a-century.

So much for Milo. As for Coulter, while she’s been splashing about in the white nationalist pool for some years now, in April ‘Coulter gave a little more credence to those accusations [of white nationalist sympathies] by exposing her Twitter following of just under 2 million users to Mike ‘Enoch Peinovich’‘, a neo-Nazi blabbermouth from (((New York))).

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

See also : When Mormons Aspired to Be a ‘White and Delightsome’ People, Emma Green, The Atlantic, September 18, 2017 (‘An historian looks at the legacy of racism in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’).

Fraser Anning (and Clive Palmer)

Since his unexpected elevation to the Australian Senate following the disqualification of crazed pixie Malcolm ‘Jew World Order’ Roberts, Fraser ‘Final Solution’ Anning has been furiously competing with Pauline Hanson for the title of ‘Most AltRight 2018’. Thus his political obsessions have run in rough parallel with those of the baying KKKrowd, from the plight of White South African farmers to the dastardly conspiracy to commit White Genocide™, calling for the forcible eradication of Islam from Australian shores, Putin fanboydom and climate change denial. Recently, however, there’s emerged another contender: billionaire Clive Palmer. See : Alt-Right Memes and Clive Palmer’s Return to Politics, Jordan McSwiney, POP POLITICS AUS, September 27, 2018. Chumbawamba, however, are not down with the bloated idiot. See : Chumbawamba knock down ‘Trump-lite’ Clive Palmer over song use, Naaman Zhou, The Guardian, August 31, 2018.

*Anning’s Facebook page has been (temporarily?) DELed. See : Facebook Deletes Fraser Anning Over ‘Hate Speech’ Complaint, Josh Butler, ten daily, September 28, 2018 | Fraser Anning Has Been Banned From Facebook For Hate Speech, Sam Langford, Junkee, September 28, 2018 | Fraser Anning’s public Facebook page removed for reported hate speech, Jake Evans, ABC, September 28, 2018.

**Anning, along with Avi Yeminem (Australian Liberty Alliance), is scheduled to appear at a rally in Melbourne on October 6 in order to protest censorship by Facebook.

Gavin McInnes

Also touring Down Under is ‘Proud Boys’ founder Gavin McInnes. The chinless wonder is scheduled to be speaking in Melbourne (November 2), Perth (November 4), Adelaide (November 7), Gold Coast (November 8) and Sydney (November 11).

Recently, after declaring his appreciation for NYHC band ‘Sheer Terror’, only to be rebuffed by the boys, McInnes’s followers have rather foolishly declared WAR! on skinheads, in particular RASH and SHARP (See : Hardcore Legends Sheer Terror Take the Proud Boys Down a Notch, Landon Shroder, rvamag, September 26, 2018).

McInnes is proudly-sponsored by Penthouse magazine and publisher Damien Costas, who in September was responsible for arranging Nigel Farage‘s tour of the colonies, and in December 2017 that of Milo Yiannopoulos. Following Milo’s tour, Victoria Police made noises about issuing an invoice to Costas for $50,000 for costs associated with their policing his tour but a savvy Costas told them to bugger off and, happily enough for him, they did.

See also : Rose City Antifa on Proud Boys | Alternative Influence: Broadcasting the Reactionary Right on YouTube, Rebecca Lewis, Data & Society, September 18, 2018 | Nostalgia for the empire and ‘identity politics’ for white people: Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern in Sydney, A Communist At Large (James Robb), August 2, 2018.

2) Brisbane nazi punks f*ck off

Speaking of nazi punks, one, ‘Angel Montague’, is currently running a Facebook page called ‘Brisbane city punks’. Allegedly, Montague has been banned from the pubs The Back Room (Chardons Hotel) in Annerley and The Jubilee in Fortitude Valley and possibly one or two others for drunken violence. Still, by most accounts Brisbane punx give short shrift to neo-Nazi shenanigans, so it would make sense if Montague and her handful of neo-Nazi mates were continued to be shown the door.

3) Fortress (Australia)

Pioneering Aussie reich ‘n’ rollers Fortress have recorded a new album: ‘Brothers of the Storm’. The release comes in the wake of renewed touring by the band in Europe, with the boys playing a Hammerskins event in Frankreich (FRA) on March 18 last year, the annual memorial to Skrewydriver Ian Stuart Donaldson in Melbourne (AUS) on October 14, 2017 and another bonehead gig in Queensland on July 21, 2018.

See also : A Brief History Of Neo-Nazi Music In Australia (December 2, 2010).

One neo-Nazi who probably won’t be making any more muzak is Marcel ‘Flubber’ Kuschela. Kuschela, who performed with ‘Kategorie C’, committed suicide in the German town of Moenchengladbach last week: ‘According to the German newspaper Bild and public broadcaster WDR, the victim is a known right-wing extremist and Hooligan who is part of the extreme right-wing band “Kategorie C” and co-founded a movement known as “Hooligans against Salafists” (Hogesa).’

4) Dick returns to MUFF

In an about-face that surprised no-one, Richard Wolstencroft has returned to the helm of the Melbourne Underground Film Festival (MUFF). This follows a brief moment last year when, after having made a stoopid homophobic statement, he ‘resigned’ as organiser and handballed responsibility for it to a flunkey. But in June he returned.

The fascist meathead’s festival does have its supporters, but such is the stench emanating from Wolstencroft he’s having some difficulty finding a venue to screen his shite. Hence ‘Club Voltaire’ in North Melbourne was on-board, and then not, and now the main venue is Top Secret.

LOL.

You can read more about Wolstencroft’s shitty fascist politics in this blog by Tony Goodfellow — Richard Wolstencroft’s relationship to holocaust denial and Nazis (November 17, 2017) — and you can peruse some unanswered ‘Questions for Richard Wolstencroft’ (June 30, 2018) by SF Lyons here.

See also : After His Show Was Canceled Due to Alleged Neo-Nazi Ties, Boyd Rice Claims ‘Offers Are Coming In’ to Restage It, Sarah Cascone, artnet, September 13, 2018.

5) local and/or general

In AUS, 4Corner’s recent interview with jet-setting fascist shitweasel Steve Bannon is examined by The Guardian writers Nesrine Malik in Indulging Steve Bannon is just a form of liberal narcissism (September 13, 2018) and by Jason Wilson in The consequences of Steve Bannon’s ideas need to be interrogated, not just his words (September 5, 2018); writer Laurie Penny has written a piece in response to the decision by The Economist to provide Bannon another platform in ‘No, I Will Not Debate You’ (September 18, 2018) … which could also be read in light of her earlier adventures with Milo. In BENdigo, meanwhile, anti-Muslim campaigner Julie Hoskin has been forced to resign her position on council after being declared bankrupt — seemingly, in no small thanks to the efforts of lawyer Robert Balzola. See : Bendigo councillor Julie Hoskin, the centre of anti-mosque protests, declared bankrupt and resigns, Peter Lenaghan and Mark Kearney, ABC, September 26, 2018 | Julie Hoskin declared bankrupt one day before sending councillor resignation to City of Greater Bendigo, Adam Holmes, The Bendigo Advertiser, September 26, 2018.

In FRA, two boneheads have been convicted of the murder of anti-fascist Clement Méric in 2013 (see : Two boneheads convicted over 2013 death of anti-fascist activist, The Guardian, September 15, 2018); in GER, Facebook Fueled Anti-Refugee Attacks in Germany, New Research Suggests (Amanda Taub and Max Fisher, The New York Times, August 21, 2018); in GRE, Kevin Ovenden has authored a ‘new study that documents the murderous activities of Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn’ (The terrorist activity of neonazi organisations in Europe – The case of Golden Dawn, jailgoldendawn, September 18, 2018); last week in ITA, an MEP, Eleonora Forenza, and their assistant were attacked by members of neo-Fascist organisation Casapound after attending an anti-racist rally (MEP and assistant attacked by Italian far-right group, Lili Bayer, politico.eu, September 22, 2018); in the USA, Hope Not Hate ventured ‘Inside America’s biggest anti-Muslim organisation’ (Charlie Prentice, September 16, 2018); also in the US, Derek Black, son of White supremacist and Stormfront founder Don Black, stars in Renouncing Hate: What Happens When a White Nationalist Repents (Wes Enzinna, The New York Times, September 10, 2018), while Media Matters examines some of the white nationalists who write for FOX News’ Tucker Carlson’s batshit website The Daily Caller in ‘The Daily Caller has published white supremacists, anti-Semites, and bigots. Here are the ones we know about.’ (September 5, 2018); Billy Briggs for The Ferret writes that ‘YouTube provides a network for far right extremists such as Scot Colin Robertson, aka Millennial Woes, to promote white supremacist views and radicalise people, according to a new report’ (Far-right Scots vlogger named in report on YouTube extremist networks, September 23, 2018); the report — ‘Alternative Influence: Broadcasting the Reactionary Right on YouTube’ — by Rebecca Lewis for Data & Society (September 18, 2018), can be read here.

More generally: ‘Far right’ groups may be diverse – but here’s what they all have in common, Daphne Halikiopoulou, The Conversation, September 27, 2018 | The Religion of Whiteness Becomes a Suicide Cult, Pankaj Mishra, The New York Times, August 30, 2018 (‘A wounded and swaggering identity geopolitics puts the world in grave danger.’) | Against mirror world: fascists were not socialists, Comrade Motopu, libcom, August 26, 2018.

Finally, str8 outta Moscow, RUS, comes …

A further note on Avi Yemini’s fascist and neo-Nazi friends …

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.

See also : TheDingoes.xyz /// The Convict Report /// DingoCon (July 8, 2017).

TheDingoes.xyz /// The Convict Report /// DingoCon

DingoCon

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.

See also : Are These Two Jewish Dudes The Aussie Voice Of The Alt-Right?, Leon Gettler, Forward, April 5, 2017 | The Dingoes claim to be ‘growing’ part of Australian alternative-right political scene, Victoria Craw, news.com.au, December 5, 2016 | Big Nazi on Campus: How Well Dressed Racists Are Coming to a College Near You, It’s Going Down, May 15, 2016 | Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment: The Frankfurt School as Scapegoat of the Lunatic Fringe, March 9, 2012.

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* 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.

The Q Society @ Victoria University : February 10, 2017

Update (February 14 2017) :

1) Kirralie Smith got a bit angwy:

2) Otherwise:

• On Monday the media pimps eventually reported the fact that Victoria University did indeed host The Q Society. See : Victoria University under fire for hosting Q Society fundraiser, Benjamin Millar, Star Weekly, February 13, 2017 | Q Society meeting: Victoria University apologises for ‘inadvertently’ hosting controversial group, Ben Knight, ABC, February 13, 2017 | Cory Bernardi and George Christensen’s Q Society event stirs anger at Victoria University, Tom McIlroy, The Sydney Morning Herald, February 13, 2017. Note that the SMH report incorrectly states that the ‘Q Society event attracted more than 100 anti-racism protesters outside Victoria University’s city convention centre’; the protest was actually in St Kilda (see below).

• Overland has published an open letter in which ‘We demand an apology from Victoria University’.

• The event attracted a glittering array of stars, from too-cray-cray-even-for-the-IPA Alan Moran to trollumnist for The Australian Jennifer Oriel to Kane ‘Smash cunts!’ Miller (below), putative leader of the now largely-defunct gang the ‘True Blue Crew’. See : How Reclaim Australia hid a ‘terrorist’, Martin McKenzie-Murray, The Saturday Paper, August 16, 2016.

Update (February 12, 2017) :

1) After being the subject of numerous complaints, VIC Uni has finally copped to having hosted The Q Society on Friday. It will be interesting to see what the response is from this point …

2) The Campaign Against Racism & Fascism (CARF) has published an open letter to Victoria University, republished below, detailing its concerns over VU’s decision to grant The Q Society use of its facilities to host the fund-raising dinner, and is urging concerned staff and students to add their names to it.

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SIGN ON TO THE OPEN LETTER BELOW – CONDEMN VICTORIA UNIVERSITY FOR ALLOWING THE RACIST Q SOCIETY TO MEET ON VU PROPERTY.

CARF urges both VU staff and other university students to sign onto the letter below. If you would like to – please Private Message the campaign group and we can organise to have your name added to the letter.

Melbourne, February 11, 2017

“Victory” not for VU students but far-right hate group Q Society

To Vice Chancellor Peter Dawkins and the Victoria University Council

It is with alarm and disappointment that we protest Victoria University’s decision to provide a platform to the far right anti Islam organisation Q Society.

On Friday February 10, the Q Society, hosted a fundraising dinner at Victoria University‘s city convention centre in Melbourne. The event, deceptively titled “defend freedom of speech”, was to raise funds for legal fees related to a defamation law suit by Mohamed El-Mouelhy, a Halal certifier. The Q Society is well known for associating Islam with terrorism and lobbying parliament to ban Halal certification.

In 2014 the Q Society toured far-right Dutch MP Geert Wilders, who advocates a total ban on Muslim migration. At the Q Society fundraising dinner held in Sydney on Thursday night, Larry Pickering, cartoonist and VIP guest said “Let’s be honest, I can’t stand Muslims.” Cory Bernardi, former Liberal Party senator, was a key note speaker at Friday night’s event in Melbourne. Bernardi has been a vocal opponent of Islam, opposes reproductive freedom for women and has linked same sex marriage to bestiality.

Victoria University has a very diverse student and staff population whose human rights and freedom to go about their daily lives are threatened by the repressive and reprehensible ideas of the Q Society.

Providing a venue for the Q Society contradicts the university’s vision of being “…open and excellent, creating exceptional value for any student from any background and uplifting the communities in which we operate.”

It also threatens Victoria University Safer Community strategy which is designed to foster an inclusive and safe environment for staff, students and the broader community.

Hosting the Q Society contravenes the University’s policy that clearly states that facilities will NOT be made available for:

a. Unlawful activities or activities that may be a breach of University policies.

b. Activities that are in conflict with or deemed incompatible with the University’s values or strategic direction.

We demand the university issue an apology and donate any money received from the Q Society or any affiliated institution to the Islamic Society of Victoria University or other related student and/or staff bodies.

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On Friday, February 10, 2017, Victoria University’s City Convention Centre played host to a fund-raising dinner, dubbed ‘Defending Freedom of Speech’, organised by The Q Society. According to reports, around 150 people attended the event, paying $150 each for the privilege. The event was intended to raise money to help Kirralie Smith of ‘Halal Choices’ and the Australian Liberty Alliance fight a defamation action brought against her by Mohamed El-Mouelhy of the Halal Certification Authority. The Society is reportedly hoping to raise $1 million to fund the defence — a gofundme campaign has to date raised over $75,000.

Speakers lending their support to the cause on this occasion were LNP MP George Christensen, former Tory now doublelplusConservative MP Cory Bernardi and Christian theologian Mark Durie. Christensen is a supporter of Reclaim Australia while in 2015 Bernardi spearheaded a rather farcical inquiry into food certification (see : Cory Bernardi’s anti-halal crusade unleashes torrent of hate, Adam Gartrell, The Sydney Morning Herald, June 20, 2015; Cory Bernardi And The Little Halal Truther Campaign That Couldn’t, Michael Brull, New Matilda, December 3, 2015).

The decision by VU to host The Q Society is a questionable one, not least because some of its staff have identified the risks associated with granting legitimacy to the far-right, and in particular to fringe discourses propounded by the likes of Q. Indeed, the article below explicitly identifies Reclaim Australia, the Australian Liberty Alliance and United Patriots Front as fringe actors whose ‘radical’ messages have received direct and indirect support from more ‘mainstream’ sources; a category which now includes their employer:

Anti-Muslim agenda drags discourse to political right
Mario Peucker and Debra Smith
June 16, 2016

Fringe parties that spread racist or anti-Muslim propaganda are subtly shifting public discourse to the political right in the lead up to the federal election, say two Victoria University researchers.

Dr Mario Peucker and Dr Debra Smith say the process of ‘mainstreaming’ the far-right agenda is reaching new dimensions as a growing number of local and national politicians, directly or indirectly endorse the messages of groups such as Reclaim Australia, the Australian Liberty Alliance or even the United Patriot[s] Front.

“Most people disregard these groups as extremists who represent only a small and electorally marginal minority of Australians, but their radical messages are not as disconnected from some mainstream politicians and opinion leaders as we’d like to think,” says Dr Peucker.

He says the process of shifting discourse and moving social norms to the political right is most palpable in the public discourse around the place of Islam and Muslims in Australia.

Dr Peucker points to a recent Senate inquiry set up to investigate links between halal food certification as a conduit for funding terrorism.

Although the link was completely unfounded by the inquiry, Dr Peucker says it remains part of the “Islamaphobia tool kit” used not only by unelected extremist groups but also by elected politicians such as Cory Bernardi and Jacqui Lambi[e].

Recent conflicts about mosque-building in Bendigo and Narre Warren that involved local councillors taking up the cause of anti-Islam movements reflect a logic, according to the researchers, that Islam has an inherent problem that needs fixing to fit into Australia’s liberal society.

A very similar message was sent by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott when he called for “a Reformation, an Enlightenment” within Islam.

Fringe groups can gain a certain degree of legitimacy through these public statements of leading politicians, and by protesting in support of government policies such as off-shore detention centres, as evidenced by recent protests in Coburg, Dr Peucker points out.

“A dangerously self-reinforcing circle allows electorally marginal movements into a space from where their agenda around equality, multiculturalism and religious freedom doesn’t look so extreme anymore.”

As it happens, the dinner didn’t go very smoothly for the Society …

While the venue for the event was kept secret — or at least, the Society did its best to ensure this was the case — a number of attendees, around 40, were instructed to meet at St Kilda Marina at 5.30pm in order to catch a bus to the Convention Centre. As a result of obtaining this information, which was relayed to the public by the Campaign Against Racism & Fascism, a group of around 100 or so anti-racists assembled at the rendezvous point to protest Q. As the bus was elsewhere, the group marched the brief distance to where it was parked, on Marine Parade, a hundred or so metres away from the Marina entrance. The bus, chartered by Bayside Coaches, was then surrounded, and effectively prevented from leaving at its scheduled departure time (6pm).

In the end, the bus was delayed from leaving St Kilda for an hour, before being allowed to go on its way at 7pm: kick-off time for the fund-raiser. There was some minor argy-bargy when a handful of younger patrons tried and failed to make their way onto the bus, but the picket was otherwise uneventful, with many passing motorists expressing support for the action.

St Kilda is indeed a long way from Mackay.

See : Anti-Islam group Q Society dinner disrupted by protesters in Melbourne, ABC, February 10, 2017; Protesters obstruct people going to anti-Islam event attended by Bernardi, Christensen, SBS (AAP), February 10, 2017; Anti-racism protesters clash with far-right Q Society supporters at St Kilda Marina, Marika Dobbin Thomas, Bianca Hall, The Age, February 10, 2017.

The Q Society dinner in Melbourne on Friday was preceded by another in Sydney on Thursday night, at which the very special guest speakers included cartoonist Larry Pickering and former Tory MP Ross Cameron, now the host of a batshit show on Uncle Rupert’s Sky. Hosted by North Ryde RSL, The Sydney Morning Herald published an account of the speechifying which made a lot of people angry, as well as mildly embarrassed some of Cameron’s colleagues at Sky. Larry Pickering’s hilarious quip that, while he hatesss the nasssty Muslims, ‘They are not all bad, they do chuck pillow-biters off buildings’, both badly-tarnished the respectable face that Q hopes to present to the world but also brought to mind Australia’s history of murderous homophobia.

See : Inside the far-right Q Society’s explosive dinner, where Muslims are fair game, Jacqueline Maley, February 10, 2017; Ross Cameron defends claim New South Wales Liberal party is ‘basically a gay club’, Chistopher Knaus, The Guardian, February 10, 2017; Transcript: Ross Cameron’s full remarks at controversial Q Society dinner, Georgina Mitchell, The Sydney Morning Herald, February 10, 2017.

Bonus Latham!

In The Guardian, Jason Wilson writes (Australians are worried about Trump. But there’s a lot to be worried about at home, February 10, 2017):

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.

In previous episodes, the pseudonymous hosts of the show have aligned themselves with Richard Spencer and other alt-right figures.

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.

It’s significant, though, that Latham is prepared to go on their show more than once. Apparently, a show with previous episode titles like “I never want to see your race again”, which regularly spouts casual antisemitism and undergraduate race theory, and which has open fascist links, is not beyond the pale for a Sky News commentator. Despite the fact that disclaimers were offered about opinions not necessarily aligning, Latham was happy to be there.

As a former Labor leader turned trollumnist, Latham is obviously a bit of a wanker, but appearing on a neo-Nazi podcast suggests that he may have well and truly jumped the shark by this stage. As noted above, a number of podcast hosts on The Right Stuff (TRS) were recently doxed — seemingly in collaboration with some of the site’s critics on the far-right. (See : Meet Mike Enoch &/Or Mike Peinovich : They’ve got ‘The Right Stuff’, January 14, 2017.) Note that TRS obtained its semi-popularity on the AltRight, in part, by its willingness to address The Jewish Question, ie, to Name The Jew as being responsible for All The (Bad) Things. In any case, the revelation that the founder of TRS and host of The Daily Shoah, Mike Peinovich, was married to a Jewish woman caused some turmoil among its audience, with some podcasts — for example, Fash The Nation — being abandoned. (See : Pool Party’s Closed: A Timeline of The Right Stuff’s Meltdown, Eyes on the Right, January 18, 2017.) One neo-Nazi who did come out in defence of Peinovich was Andrew Anglin, founder of the Daily Stormer website. The latest issue of the SPLC’s Intelligence Report contains an essay on Anglin, and names his site as now being ‘the top hate site in America’, having recently eclipsed the veteran Stormfront:

On July 4, 2013, Anglin started what would become his main project, The Daily Stormer. The site took its name from Der Stürmer, an astoundingly vile and pornographic Nazi newspaper started by Julius Streicher and specializing in attacking Jews. Streicher was later hanged for war crimes at Nuremberg.

The new site, created from the ashes of Total Fascism, specialized in punchy, image-heavy stories that often rely heavily on quoted material. It used hyperbolic headlines — “All Intelligent People in History Disliked the Jews,” for instance, or “SS Auschwitz Guard Dies Days Before Scheduled Lynching by Kikes” — to grab readers’ attention, build up participation and shift people’s thinking.

Anglin relied heavily on the daily news, although it was news poisoned by his particular views, to drive his message home. “You make a very simple message, where you hit the same points over and over and over again and you repeat them,” he explained in a podcast on his site last year. “That’s been my style. That’s why I do the news. Because it can be new information all the time while still repeating the same points over and over again. … It’s about creating a gigantic spectacle — a media spectacle, which desensitizes people to these ideas.”

One of those who seems to have been “desensitized” to ideas like genocide and race war was Dylann Storm Roof, the young man who murdered nine black churchgoers in South Carolina in 2015 in a bid to start a race war. Posting under the moniker of AryanBlood1488 (the numbers are references to white supremacist slogans), Roof wrote about black-on-white crime — a central topic on The Daily Stormer and Roof’s self-described motive for mass murder.

See : Eye of the Stormer, February 9, 2017.