Who Are The Lads Society, Why Do They Have Guns, & Why Have They Invaded Rowville? (June 2020 Update)

Posted on June 26, 2020 by @ndy

[This post was brought to you courtesy of the letters A, F, J, N, P & S.]

Above (L to R) : John Athanasiadis, Jacob Hersant, Mark Hootsen, Sam Hudson, Ulf Lindfors, ‘Darcy’, Tom Sewell, James Buckle and Stuart von Moger.

The Melbourne-based neo-Nazi groupuscule ‘The Lads Society’ (TLS) was established in late 2017 following the collapse of the ‘United Patriots Front’ (UPF). In 2015 the UPF, comprising Christian fundamentalists and neo-Nazis, had constituted itself as the political vanguard of ‘Reclaim Australia’; as a result, thousands of Ordinary Mums & Dads™ became their gormless followers.

Initially, The Lads’ two leading spokesmen were former UPF leaders Blair Cottrell and Thomas (Tom) Sewell. According to reports, however, in 2019 Cottrell exited the organisation, and Sewell emerged as its Grand Poobah. TLS has many dozens of members, principally in Melbourne and Sydney, but also in Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth. Along with the UPF, TLS has attracted participation from former members of Antipodean Resistance, Nationalist Alternative (NAlt), and a range of other groupsucules on the far-right.

Since its founding, TLS has leased a series of warehouses in order to host the group’s activities and to encourage recruitment to its goal of establishing a White ethno-state … but like, a really, really small one … in the suburbs (see also : Pioneer Little Europe). Thus for over a year, the group had a centre in Cheltenham and one in Ashfield in Sydney.

In terms of public activity, inter alia, members attended the Fraser Anning rally in January 2019 in St Kilda and more recently protested outside Box Hill police station (October 2019). Prior to this, in June 2018, TLS was hired by Dave Pellowe and Axiomatic Events to provide security for Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern during their Australian tour. Molyneux and Southern’s central thesis revolved around the destruction of Western Civilisation by way of ‘The Great Replacement’ of Whites by non-White immigrants. Naturally, their argument was celebrated by their fans at NewsCorpse, but mainstream endorsement by the likes of trollumnist Andrew Bolt was rendered problematic after the Christchurch killer put the theory into practice in March 2019.

Tom Sewell, the leader of The Lads, was referenced in media reportage in the aftermath of the massacre. The convicted killer, Brenton Tarrant, was invited to join TLS; the Killer also described Cottrell as his ‘Emperor’. Publicity surrounding the massacre, and the links Tarrant had to the Australian far-right milieu, has brought further, unwelcome scrutiny to The Lads and, following the forced closure of their Cheltenham headquarters, TLS have sought a lower public profile. (Oddly, according to reports, along with his family a much younger Sewell flew here from Aotearoa/New Zealand.)

As noted previously, after being chucked out of Cheltenham (but not before Channel 7 celebrated their endeavours), TLS has obtained a new HQ in Melbourne: 1/10 Hi-Tech Place, Rowville (a suburb of Melbourne 27 km south-east of Melbourne’s CBD). The space was leased to TLS in July 2019, seemingly on the basis that it would host a commercial gym.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In addition to Tom Sewell, James Buckle and Jason Hersant (see below), the following men have joined the neo-Nazi network in Melbourne. Note that this list is representative, not exhaustive, and some further details have been withheld.

John Athanasiadis

Athanasiadis, a gun owner, is in his late 20s and has served as Treasurer for The Lads.

James Buckle

Buckle is the former President of gun lobby group Firearm Owners United. Like Sewell, he is reportedly ex-Army and, like Lindfors-Beswick, a licenced security agent (88351350S). See also : Pro-gun group claims shotgun rampage shows our gun laws are ‘utterly failing’, Ben Graham, news.com.au, October 2, 2019.

Troy (Eric) Crockett (AKA Troy/Trey Blackstone/Bloodstone/Targaryen)

Above : Crockett, surrounded by other Lads, is second from L. Photo from Melbourne leg of Southern’s tour.

Crockett (b.1984) has been kicking it with the boys for some time. In June 2015, he joined the UPF outside the ABC’s offices in Melbourne to protest the appearance of Zaky Mallah on Q&A. Crockett was also one of a dozen men Victoria Police gave permission to force Dandyman to leave Fed Square after the True Blue Crew flagwit parade in June 2018. Crockett is ex-Army Reserve and like other Lads a (former?) member of NAlt.

Damien de Pyle

A twenty-something Lad, de Pyle has served with the Australian Army. He’s also a former member of ‘Australian Nationalist Youth’, and has allegedly helped train (other) Lads in combat, but his current membership status is uncertain, and he may have junked nazism for religious doctrine.

Jacob Hersant

Above : Hersant practicing his aim for the coming race-war.

Hersant has been active in a number of groups, from Antipodean Resistance to Iron March to the National Socialist Network, but remains a very naughty boy.

Mark Hootsen

Hootsen is a leading member of Nationalist Alternative. In 2014, he was exposed as such by his former kamerad Neil Erikson.

Sam Hudson

Hudson is Treasurer for The Lads, is very close to Lindfors-Bewsick (below), and like Hootsen is (was) a member of NAlt.

Oscar Izard (AKA Oscar Iseult/Oscar Oldham-Bradford)

Above : Oscar complains that The Lads should stop leaving copies of The Turner Diaries (the nazi tract that inspired Timothy McVeigh to commit mass murder in April 1995) lying around.

Izard, like Hersant, is (was) a member of Antipodean Resistance. He briefly gained some online notoriety in January 2016 when he published a petition demanding that British actress Emma Watson spend a week in a migrant camp in Calais.

Ryan Ulf Lindfors-Beswick (AKA Ryan Lindfors/Ulf Lindfors/Ulf Lehmuskoski)

Above : A Terrible photo of Ulf on L & another attending Final Solution’s anti-African rally in St. Kilda on R.

Lindfors-Beswick (b.1990) is a licensed security guard (91077690S), the owner of the business — Aus Get Fit Pty Ltd (ABN: 57 634 618 465) — through which the lease to the property in Rowville was obtained, and serves as the Sgt-At-Arms for The Lads. Of Finnish descent, Lindfors-Beswick sports a Solar Cross and Helm of Awe tattoo on his right forearm and an Irminsul on his left. Lindfors-Beswick also owns guns and has trained other Lads in their use. Currently, Ulf is employed by MSS Security on University campuses, and as Ryan Lindfors-Beswick would appear to have been, along with Nicole Bourman, the Shooters/Fishers/Farmers candidate for the Southern Metro region at the 2018 Victorian state election.

Will Schlecht

Schlecht (b.1992), along with de Pyle, is a former member of the short-lived groupuscule ‘Australian Nationalist Youth’.

Matt Trihey (AKA Matthew Raine)

Trihey (b.1963) is a former boxer, MMA fighter and builder. Trihey teaches The Lads how to fight (which is mighty White of him) and also occasionally provides them employment via his building company. Trihey doesn’t like Jews much, and laments the fact that Albert Speer never got an opportunity to enact Hitler’s vision for Germania.

From Reclaim Australia to the United Patriots Front to The Lads Society to The European Australian Movement with Bonus! National Socialist Network

For a brief period of time after the establishment of its new bunker in Rowville, TLS engaged in a discussion about establishing a front group. Thus at the start of 2020 TLS rebranded itself as the ‘European Australian Movement’, and even managed to obtain a website for the projekt. Curiously, the EAM was to have a ladies division (for which a very good friend of Tom’s called Rosie had been nominated to do the heavy lifting).

For reasons, EAM was junked in favour of a more straight-forwardly nazi project: the NSN. This is an interesting development insofar as The Lads are no longer pretending not to be what they are: neo-Nazis. This also has the benefit of making it a little more difficult for members of the commentariat to pretend otherwise (though they will of course try). Beyond this, in being more honest about their politics, The Lads have abandoned any real attempt to ‘go mainstream’ while wrapped in the national flag, and the semi-mythical Ordinary Mums & Dads™ have similarly been abandoned in favour of recruiting from among Angry Young Men. The explicit embrace of neo-Nazism also seeks to draw upon the teenyboppers who’ve been radicalised by way of Iron March, Fascist Forge and other, more obscure forums; nonetheless, Facebook and YouTube remain important platforms for agitation and propaganda. Thus, on Monday, June 29 Sewell is scheduled to join David Hiscox and Matthew Roebuck of XYZ blog and Timmeh! Wilms (of The Unhinged blog — pictured above in his vewy special ‘Right Wing Death Squads’ tee) to discuss ways forward for white nationalism. Ironically, despite spreading antisemitic and other racist muck on Facebook for years, just a few days ago Hiscox, Roebuck and XYZ were kicked off the platform after subjecting TV personality Waleed Aly to one of their regular batshit diatribes. In further Bad News for the nazi milieu, the NSN website lost its website after the Anti Defamation Committee complained to its host.

Finally, it’s sometimes remarked that the Christchurch massacre was a pivotal moment in the history of the Australian far-right with many — not least ASIO — subsequently issuing statements identifying its partisans as constituting a potential ‘terrorist’ threat. One enthusiast, Phillip Galea, has since been convicted of terrorisms, and is awaiting sentence. Last week, another 100% Dinky-Di Aussie Patriot, Cormac Rothsey, was ‘jailed over anti-Muslim social media posts, threat to kill Jacinda Ardern’ (Liz Farquhar, ABC, June 19, 2020), while in March three men on the south coast of News South Wales were arrested in connection to an alleged plot. Police also alleged that one of the accused, Joshua Lucas, ‘is a far-right extremist. “What we know is this person had anti-government sentiment, he was anti-Semitic, he has neo-Nazi interests and he has anti-Indigenous interests,” NSW Police Force assistant commissioner Mark Walton said’ (Right-wing terrorism on the rise in Australia, Drew Rooke, The Saturday Paper, March 21, 2020). Still, while the NSN may have adopted the name their English brothers in the now-proscribed groupuscule ‘National Action’ assumed after it was declared an unlawful association, and while they may continue to draw inspiration from NA and recruit from the same milieu, the espousal of neo-Nazi doctrine is lawful in Australia, as is establishing a party to advocate Nazi doctrines, and leasing a property to organise and train a fascist cadre.

All this being the case, it remains up to the general public to Do Something about these meatheads.

A. Shut ‘Em Down

TO BE CONTINUED …

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Yeah Nah Pasaran! #024 w Charlotte Mears on history, women & the far-right : June 25, 2020

Posted on June 24, 2020 by @ndy

NB. 3CR is conducting a June Station Appeal. Please donate if you can.

On this week’s episode of Yeah Nah, we talk to Charlotte Mears [Twitter], an academic researcher whose research interests ‘primarily focus on the Holocaust, women’s roles in far right ideology and how these ideas are represented within popular culture’. Charlotte contributed an essay to Far-Right Revisionism and the End of History: Alt/Histories (edited by Louie Dean Valencia-García, Routledge, 2020) on ‘The Far Right and Women’s History’ and discusses Nazis and comix here.

4.30pm, Thursday, June 25, 2020 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website

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The Rowville Reich : nazi groupuscule The Lads Society’s NEW! bunker in south-east Melbourne

Posted on June 22, 2020 by @ndy

For those of you coming in late, ‘The Lads Society’ is a nazi groupuscule established by members of the ‘United Patriots Front’ (UPF) following its collapse in 2017. Tom Sewell, the Society’s lvl boss, is former UPF fuehrer Blair Cottrell‘s ex-flunkey; under the umbrella of ‘The Lads’, over the last three years young Thomas has managed to gather around him several score of his fellow Hitler stans in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and elsewhere. You may remember Cottrell and Sewell from such headlines as Christchurch shooting accused Brenton Tarrant supports Australian far-right figure Blair Cottrell (Alex Mann, Kevin Nguyen and Katherine Gregory, Background Briefing, ABC, March 23, 2019) or New clues emerge of accused New Zealand gunman Tarrant’s ties to far right groups (Byron Kaye, Tom Allard, Reuters, April 4, 2019) or Threats from white extremist group that ‘tried to recruit Tarrant’ (Patrick Begley, The Sydney Morning Herald, May 2, 2019).

For about a-year-and-a-half, Sewell and his boys ran a space in Cheltenham, but then lost it after sustained community pressure. In Sydney, the NSW branch operated from a location in Ashfield, but it too fell over sometime after opening in 2018. Undeterred by hostile media reportage, community opposition and links to a mass murderer, Sewell and The Lads have soldiered on and last year opened up a NEW! space in Melbourne’s south-east:

Unit 1, 10 Hi-Tech Place, Rowville (a suburb of Melbourne 27 km south-east of Melbourne’s CBD)

The space was leased to The Lads by [Some Body] in July 2019 and falls within the remit of Knox City Council.

Apart from meeting, talking shop and lifting weights, The Lads have also recently launched a ‘political’ project: the ‘National Socialist Network’ (NSN). Under the wise guidance of Sewell and ex-‘Antipodean Resistance’ (AR) geek Jacob Hersant, the NSN has been busy doing nazi graff, distroing nazi agitprop and generated OMGWTF headlines in May, courtesy of the Herald Sun:

The Lads of the NSN naturally thrilled to the article, constituting as it did little more than free advertising for the budding génocidaires. On the other hand, their adoption of the name ‘National Socialist’ does at least render it that little bit more difficult for pundits to not name the Lads ‘neo-Nazi’.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

NB. ‘National Socialist Network’ was briefly the name given to the remnants of ‘National Action’ in the UK after it collapsed; AR was, of course, the fraternal organisation of NA; a few weeks ago, four of its members — including ‘Miss Hitler’ LOL — were jailed after being found guilty of belonging to NA, which was proscribed as a ‘terrorist organisation’ in 2016.

See also : Neo-Nazi militant group grooms teenagers, Daniel De Simone and Ali Winston, BBC, June 22, 2020 : ‘The Base is the latest underground organisation to emerge from an international neo-Nazi network originally generated by a now-defunct web forum called Iron March. Other organisations include the banned British groups National Action and the Sonnenkrieg Division, as well as the Atomwaffen Division in the USA, which has been dismantled by a nationwide FBI investigation.’

Oh, Iron March also gave birth to Antipodean Resistance. Which, with The Lads, has now morphed into NSN.

TO BE CONTINUED …

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Yeah Nah Pasaran! #022 w Spencer Sunshine on anti-fa, conspiracies, & uprisings in the US : June 11, 2020

Posted on June 10, 2020 by @ndy

On this week’s episode of Yeah Nah, we talk to writer and researcher Spencer Sunshine [Twitter] about El Presidente Trump’s declaration of WAR! on anti-fascism; the political function and history of this kind of rhetoric; conspiracies and antisemitism; and what role, if any, anti-fascists in the US are playing in the current revolts in the US.

I have been creating research and analysis about the Far Right in the United States for 15 years. It’s a hard, dirty, and dangerous job. And I’m asking for your support in order to continue this work. Most immediately, I need help to complete an in-depth investigation into neo-Nazi James Mason and his terrorist murder manual Siege. I have spent two years working on it, including extensive archival work; I’ve long run out of my savings, and still hope to complete it by early summer 2020.

Spencer’s most recent essays include ‘Blaming it on Antifa: Trump’s Crisis Scapegoats’, The Battleground, June 5, 2020 — Pundits are rehashing their same arguments about whether Antifa is good, bad, or terrorists. But the discussion is absurd to even have. Antifa is a red herring, which the president is dangling to distract attention from the pink elephant in the room. — and ‘Trump’s Antifa Conspiracy Theory Attempts to Erase Powerful Black-Led Organizing’, truthout, June 5, 2020.

See also : antifa notes (june 3, 2020) : notes on antifa (June 3, 2020) | Trump’s Threats to Antifa Are an Affront to Black Agency and a Risk to All Protest, Natasha Lennard, The Intercept, June 3, 2020 | Little evidence of antifa links in U.S. prosecutions of those charged in protest violence, Sarah N. Lynch, Mark Hosenball, Mica Rosenberg, Brad Heath, Reuters, June 8, 2020 | Donald Trump Amplified A Conspiracy Theory That Buffalo Protester Martin Gugino Was Trying To “Scan” The Police Before He Was Injured, Craig Silverman, Buzzfeed, June 9, 2020 | He Tweeted That He Was the Leader of Antifa. Then the FBI Asked Him to Be an Informant., Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept, June 10, 2020.

4.30pm, Thursday, June 11, 2020 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website

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antifa notes (june 3, 2020) : notes on antifa

Posted on June 3, 2020 by @ndy
    Anti-fascist action, more popularly known as “antifa”, can be best described as international socialism on amphetamines. ~ Dr Troy Whitford, Explainer: what is antifa, and where did it come from?, The Conversation, August 30, 2017

Gee whizz.

As part of a more general pants-shitting exercise, a few daze ago God Emperor Trump — who is, like, really smart, also a genius, and a very stable genius at that — tweeted ‘The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization’.

As others have indicated, there may be a few minor, technical issues with this proposal, not least:

a) there’s no ANTIFA Organization to designate as Terrorist;
b) anti-fascism =/= terrorism;
c) Cheet0 doesn’t have the legal authority to designate a domestic Organization ‘Terrorist’.

Of course, to assign some Legal Eagle status to Drumpf is absurd; the purpose of such statements lies elsewhere, in the political domain. In any case, his gaseous explosions are naturally the subject of much commentary, including by way of Australia’s leading Institute for the Propagation of Marxist-Leninist Doctrine, sometimes erroneously referred to as the ‘Australian Broadcasting Corporation’. Hence: Donald Trump has declared it a terrorist organisation but what is Antifa anyway?, Will Jackson, June 1, 2020, in which I’m quoted as follows:

… Australian writer and antifascist researcher Andy Fleming said it was difficult to say how involved Antifa was in the current protests in the US.

He said they could be providing legal support, bail funds, medical assistance, attending protests, producing reportage, publishing analyses and seeking to expose far-right attempts to infiltrate and capitalise on the protests.

“In general, anti-fascists are supportive of the protests against racist police brutality,” he said.

“[But] to characterise the protests as being constituted by or taking place at the instigation of anti-fascists is radically mistaken.

“These are genuinely popular mobilisations, in which African-Americans, whether or not they identify as ‘anti-fascist’, play a leading role.”

…

Mr Fleming said the legal dimension to Mr Trump’s declaration was less important than its political intention.

“Which I think revolves around solidifying his base ahead of the November election, recasting the protests as the work of ‘alien’ political forces, and licencing further police brutality,” he said.

“It could thus be read as a sign of political desperation.”

And while there’s obviously more I could add, I think the above are pretty reasonable observations. Note that in the wake of Trump’s tweetery, the ABC has also published several other pieces looking at anTEEfa: Donald Trump calls them terrorists, but many Antifa see themselves as ordinary citizens fighting oppression, racism and police brutality, Stephanie March (Four Corners, June 2, 2020) and Who are Antifa and are they terrorists? (ABC News Radio, June 2, 2020). The latter features Dr Mark Bray, ‘an historian of human rights, terrorism and politics at Rutgers University and the author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook‘ (MUP, 2017). To Mark’s comments on Australia, I would add that anti-fascists (‘ANTIFA’) have been a presence in this part of the worlde since the 1920s, especially among the Italian, Spanish and Jewish émigré communities. On the Italians, see : Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Italians in Australia 1922-1945, Gianfranco Cresciani, ANU Press, 1980 [PDF]; for Jewish anti-fascist histories, see Max Kaiser’s PhD thesis ‘Between Nationalism and Assimilation: Jewish Antifascism in Australia in the Late 1940s and Early 1950s’ & listen to Max Kaiser on Jews Against Fascism (Yeah Nah Pasaran!, 3CR, May 14, 2020).

Francesco Fantin may be gone, but he’s not forgotten!

See also : Anarchist Agency | Trump’s antifa tweet is right-wing catnip — with potentially troubling consequences, Shane Burley, NBC, June 3, 2020 | How ‘antifa’ became a Trump catch-all, Tina Nguyen, POLITICO, June 2, 2020 (‘Antifa doesn’t appear to have any organizing structure, but it has become a potent term for conservatives — a quick way to brand part of the opposition.’) | Trump’s Antifa Obsession Is an Unconstitutional Distraction, Emma Grey Ellis, WIRED, June 2, 2020 (‘The president says the US will designate antifa a terrorist organization. Can he do that? Probably not.’) | THIS IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT (WITHOUT GUITARS*), Hard Crackers, June 2, 2020.

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Yeah Nah Pasaran! #021 w Louie Dean Valencia-García on history & memory, yoof & resistance: June 4, 2020

Posted on June 3, 2020 by @ndy

On this week’s episode of Yeah Nah, we talk to Louie Dean Valencia-García. Louie [Twitter] is:

an Assistant Professor of Digital History at Texas State University. He is a Senior Fellow for the Centre for the Analysis of the Radical Right, and is Co-Chair of the Critical European Studies Research Network for the Council for European Studies at Columbia University. He also is a Research Editor for the CES’s monthly digital journal, EuropeNow. Dr. Valencia-García has served as a Lecturer on History and Literature at Harvard University.

He is an expert on Spain and its relationship to Europe and the rest of the world. Along with the history of print, media, and digital technologies, he studies the intersections of identity and community formation, and antifascism and fascism. His current work focuses on queer youth culture, and the role of history in the public sphere. He received his A.M. and Ph.D. in Early and Late Modern European History from Fordham University in New York City.

Louie’s first book, Antiauthoritarian Youth Culture in Francoist Spain: Clashing with Fascism, was published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2018 and he’s the editor of Far-Right Revisionism and the End of History: Alt/Histories (Routledge, 2020), in which historians, sociologists, neuroscientists, lawyers, cultural critics, and literary and media scholars come together to offer an interconnected and comparative collection for understanding how contemporary far-right, neo-fascist, Alt-Right, Identitarian and New Right movements have proposed revisions and counter-narratives to accepted understandings of history, fact and narrative.

(Next week we hope to be speaking to some US anti-fascists about Cheet0’s recent anti-antifa cray-cray in the context of the uprisings.)

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4.30pm, Thursday, June 4, 2020 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website

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Yeah Nah Pasaran! #020 w Tom Tanuki on conspiracies, lockdowns, protests & Coronavirus : May 28, 2020

Posted on May 27, 2020 by @ndy

On this week’s episode of Yeah Nah, we talk to Tom Tanuki. You may remember Tom from such comedic moments as the Million Flag Patriots (still the most prestigious, unbashable & patrioty neo-patriot group in Australia) or when he was Yelling At Racist Dogs. More recently, Major Tom has launched a podcast, The Poor Can Feed The Birds, and of late has taken a big breath, cashed his cheque from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and on behalf of The Vril Society gone on a deep dive into The Wonderful Worlde of Conspiracy …

• Note that the podcast version of this episode is longer than the broadcast one, and reveals the troof about Tom’s role as an emissary for the Gates Foundation, Cam’s vision of the world as seen through Lucifer’s Telescope, my own love of Spirit Cooking, and much, much moar. Educate yourself, sheeple!
• Note also that this Saturday, May 30, there will be further anti-lockdown protests in Melbourne and elsewhere across the country. The last such event in Melbourne gathered something in the order of 100 (or more — some suggest 2 or 3) individuals and 10 arrests. Since then, police have issued a number of fines to participants.

Arrest Bill Gates! Arrest Bill Gates!

• Much more can be learned about this particular plot in bizarr0 land by listening to the QAnon Anonymous podcast and via Cam’s Hypothetical Institute, especially Episode 122: Coronavirus, Episode 124: Good Heavens Pete Evans & Episode 125: Lockdown, Plandemic & Lucifer’s Telescope.

No Consent! No Consent!

• Our radio show/podcast is featured in the latest 3CR newsletter, CRAM Guide: ‘The CRAM Guide is 3CR’s annual magazine printed each year in May. It includes news, program profiles, station updates and the latest program guide’.
• Cam and Tom have been following The Adventures of the Anti-Lockdown Gang reasonably closely: follow Cam on the tweets for moar and watch Tom on the Youtubes.
• Paleo Pete Evans has jumped on the conspiracist bandwagon, and to that end the scientician has agreed to be interviewed by right-wing YouTube e-celeb Claudia Benitez (‘Dia Beltran’). The Grauniad (May 24, 2020):

As my colleague Elias Visontay mentioned earlier, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners has taken a swipe at radio broadcasters Kyle and Jackie O for their interview with Pete Evans today.

Evans, we know, has some, erm, non-mainstream views about, well, a lot of things.

But the (former?) celebrity chef isn’t so high and mighty that he’ll only appear on the big commercial radio stations.

Dia Beltran, an anti-abortion, far-right personality with links to former United Patriots Front members Neil Erikson and Blair Cottrell, is also spruiking an interview with him this coming Wednesday. According to Beltran, Evans will appear on her show on the same day as the hard-right Russian nationalist Alexander Dugin.

We can only assume that Evans plans to denounce the far-right and offer some tips on avocado preparation, but still, it’s quite a line-up.

(Thanks to Cam Smith for the heads-up on this).

You may remember Benitez from such church invasions as that which took place at the ‘f*ggot’ church in Hawthorn in May last year (following which, sadly, she lost her jerb). Benitez was joined on that occasion by neo-Nazi serial pest Neil Erikson. While Benitez ESCed charges over the matter, Erikson heads to court in November, seemingly for that incident but also for disrupting a Muslim prayer service in Fed Square a month earlier. If convicted, the most likely outcome is that he’ll get another slap on the wrist and Carry On LARPing.

See also : Why Are Australians Chanting “Arrest Bill Gates” At Protests? This Wild Facebook Group Has The Answers, Cameron Wilson, Buzzfeed, May 11, 2020 | Former TV Chef Behind Australia’s Anti-Lockdown Uprising, Josh Butler, 10Daily, May 12, 2020 | Why are Australians smashing their TVs? And what does it have to do with 5G and coronavirus?, The Guardian, Josh Taylor & Steph Harmon, May 13, 2020 | Under financial pressure and slipping into conspiracies, why Instagram influencers promote coronavirus lockdown protests, Oliver Gordon, ABC (PM), May 15, 2020 | The Prophecies of Q: American conspiracy theories are entering a dangerous new phase, Adrienne LaFrance, The Atlantic, June 2020.

4.30pm, Thursday, May 28, 2020 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website

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Yeah Nah Pasaran! #019 w Alana Lentin on Why Race Still Matters : May 21, 2020

Posted on May 19, 2020 by @ndy

On this week’s episode of Yeah Nah, we talk to Alana Lentin. Alana [Twitter] is a race critical scholar and Associate Professor in Cultural and Social Analysis at Western Sydney University who’s just had published a NEW! book titled Why Race Still Matters (Wiley, 2020):

Race critical scholar Alana Lentin argues that society is in urgent need of developing the skills of racial literacy, by jettisoning the idea that race is something and unveiling what race does as a key technology of modern rule, hidden in plain sight. Weaving together international examples, she eviscerates misconceptions such as reverse racism and the newfound acceptability of ‘race realism’, bursts the ‘I’m not racist, but’ justification, complicates the common criticisms of identity politics and warns against using concerns about antisemitism as a proxy for antiracism.

Dominant voices in society suggest we are talking too much about race. Lentin shows why we actually need to talk about it more and how in doing so we can act to make it matter less.

Along with numerous other books and articles, Alana also recently wrote about the coronavirus as the ultimate demonstration of the real-world impact of racism for The Guardian (May 12, 2020), and was until recently President of the Australian Critical Race And Whiteness Studies Association.

See also : Noel Ignatiev’s Long Fight Against Whiteness, Jay Caspian Kang, The New Yorker, November 15, 2019 | How To Be An Anti-Racist (Ibram X Kendi, One World, 2019) | “Race suicide” (January 1, 2011) | Anarchist Studies Network Reading List on Race & Ethnicity.

4.30pm, Thursday, May 21, 2020 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website

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Trot Guide May 2020 Update

Posted on May 15, 2020 by @ndy

… and they’re off!

For those of you coming in late, ‘Trot Guide’ is an overview of the current state-of-play on the Australian far-left. Thus it includes groupuscules that consider themselves Trotskyist (‘Trots’) as well as those who do not. I last reviewed the scene in April 2019 (and prior to that in September 2018). At that point, there were a number of promising developments in the political ecosystem, with the emergence of NEW! groupuscules Left Unity, the Stalin Society of Australia, Victorian Socialists and the Workers League (nee ML Group (MLG)). Sadly, Left Unity appears to have permanently stalled in May 2018 and failed to leave its home in Adelaide, while the Stalin Society has been inactive for a similar period — though local Uncle Joe fans come alive on Facebook. Meanwhile, the Workers League (by way of its publication ‘Redfire Online’) has elevated itself above the pack by denouncing the rest of the left for implicating themselves in a massive hoax perpetrated by the bosses. Thus the Coronavirus circus will go down as arguably the largest ruse ever perpetrated in history. Is Covid-19 highly infectious? Yes. Is Covid-19 highly dangerous? To a very small minority it might be, depending on a whole heap of variables… : mAd props!

As for the Victorian Socialists (VS), it performed reasonably well at the 2018 Victorian state election; in Northern Metro, where Steve Jolly ran, it was pipped at the post by preferences directed to Fiona Patten’s Reason. At the 2019 Australian federal election, VS ran three candidates: Jerome Small in Calwell, Kath Larkin in Cooper and Sue Bolton in Wills. In each case they came fourth behind the majors (Labor, Liberal, Green), gaining about 4.5%.

So far, so-so.

But in news just-to-hand, the Socialist Alliance (SAll), one of the two primary groups which formed VS, has announced it’s quitting:

While Victorian Socialists showed great potential when it was formed in early 2018 and ran two big and exciting socialist election campaigns, it has not lived up to its promise to build a more united left …

… we no longer feel that the Victorian Socialist project is capable of uniting broader layers of socialists in an alliance that has the dynamic to move beyond electoral politics.

Recent decisions have shown that Victorian Socialists is not open to allowing any groups of independents, for example, to develop its political life outside of elections …

Socialist Alternative’s preparedness to use its numbers to restrict the democratic participation of independents in the Victorian Socialists means that Socialist Alliance does not believe that our continued participation in the project can be effective …

This leaves Socialist Alternative (SAlt) in the somewhat odd position, given the history of its tradition, of having — along, of course, with other, non-aligned or independent members of VS — its own electoral vehicle. Still, VS won’t collapse, and its real challenge lies in its capacity to increase its vote at the next round of electoral contests:

Local council elections are taking place in October this year and Victorian Socialists will be standing candidates in councils across the Northern Metro. In the context of the unfolding health and economic crisis, it is more important than ever to win a series of elected Victorian Socialists representatives so they can use whatever platform we can get to give voice to resistance to attempts by government and bosses to make workers’ pay for the crisis.

As for SAll, with its nominally-independent yoof wing (‘Resistance’) having folded back into its parent party (to become ‘Resistance: Socialist Alliance’) in 2014, and largely inactive, I got worry for its long-term future. The party does still regularly produce Green Left Weekly, however, and boasts two local councillors.

NEW!

Disappointingly, Australia has not been blessed by an explosion of Maoism (Third-Worldism) blogs — the Global People’s War appears to have stalled in the Dandenongs sometime in the 1960s — and cannot even boast a Posadist venture. Still, you’ll find some older Maoists on teh intarwebs at blogs like C21st Left and Strange Times (nee Last Superpower). Happily though, there’s a spectral presence of Trots online, including:

Bolshevik-Leninist

We are a collection of individuals who see the need of a Marxist (i.e. Trotskyist) organisation in Australia. We defend the program of proletarian internationalism set by the Fourth International before it was destroyed by Pabloite liquidationism in the 1950s. As Marxists, we recognise that a workers’ revolution would entail liberation of all the oppressed of the world including workers, peasants, women, indigenous peoples, ethnic and religious minorities as well as lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people.

B-L is a new project allied with Revolutionary Regroupment in Brazil.

Class-Conscious

Class-Conscious exists to promote the unity of the international working class in the struggle for socialist revolution. Closely-aligned to the views and perspectives of the SEP/ICFI (International Committee of the Fourth International), CC is not a party as such, but moar like a project.

Revolution Australia

Seemingly a placeholder for the IMT (International Marxist Tendency), fingers crossed the IMT recruit at least one local member prepared to update their site with original material.

BONUS! The Internationalist Communists Oceania (ICO) have formed! Unfortunately, their website is down at the moment, but they have Facebooks and Twitters and several of their articles may be found online, including Breaking from Stalinism (Intransigence, November 2, 2018) and several writings on libcom.

OLDE!

Still having a crack :

1. (Alliance for) Workers’ Liberty
2. Australian Communist Party — A nü/olde entry, the ACP split from the CPA in 2019 ‘after analysing the marked inadequacy of the parties of the left and deciding on a new path in the movement for socialism in Australia’.
3. Communist League
4. Communist Party of Australia
5. Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)
6. Communist Workers Party of Australia — ‘Newspaper coming soon!’
7. Freedom Socialist Party
8. Progressive Labour Party [Facebook] — ‘With recent influx of new members we are re-launching during 2019 to expand our political impact. We invite all supporters to contact us on email to get involved in the re-launch.’ (Unlike the others on the list, the PLP is a non-Leninist grouping, and could be compared to the ‘Australian Workers Party’.)
9. Socialist Alliance
10. Socialist Alternative
11. Socialist Equality Party
12. Socialist Party — The Socialist Party has re-branded as ‘Socialist Action’. Previously a member of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) — which underwent a split in 2019 — SA has instead opted to join the ‘International Socialist Alternative’, which one side in the split created in February 2020.
13. Solidarity
14. Spartacist League of Australia
15. Trotskyist Platform
16. Workers League

Not still having a crack :

The Socialist — A recent derivation from The Socialist Party, ‘The Socialist’ appears to be moribund.

See also : Being Left-Wing in Australia: Identity, Culture and Politics After Socialism, Geoff Robinson, Australian Scholarly Publishers, 2019.

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Yeah Nah Pasaran! #018 w Max Kaiser on Jews against fascism (then & now) : May 14, 2020

Posted on May 13, 2020 by @ndy

On this week’s episode of Yeah Nah, we talk to Max Keiser Kaiser about Jews against fascism. Max recently completed his PhD at the University of Melbourne (Between nationalism and assimilation: Jewish antifascism in Australia in the late 1940s and Early 1950s) and is co-host of the New Books in Jewish Studies podcast. Max’s thesis argues ‘that Jewish antifascism was a major political and cultural force in Australian Jewish communities in the 1940s and early 1950s. It charts the emergence of a non-nationalist and anti-assimilationist Australian Jewish antifascist political subjectivity, and examines its ideological basis, cultural and political practice, and the circumstances of the rapid demise of its hegemony.’

See also : Australian Jewish Democratic Society : Statement against fascism and Milo Yiannopoulos in Kensington (December 10, 2017) | antifa notes (december 2, 2016) : jewsagainstfascism ~versus~ One Nation Party (December 2, 2016).

4.30pm, Thursday, May 14, 2020 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website

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