A Current Affair, Tom Sewell, & Punching Nazis

[Update : 1) This evening VicPol issued a statement indicating that Jacob Hersant (21) and Tom Sewell (27) have been arrested. 2) Tom Tanuki has a h0ttt take. See/hear : A FASCIST GROOMER: ACA report & Sewell’s assault.]

Above : Tom Sewell, Jacob Hersant and other nazis with Sky News Australia’s Lauren ‘The Great Replacement’ Southern.

I don’t have much more to add really, but felt like I should at least take note of the fact that:

1) Last night, Channel 9’s tabloid TV show A Current Affair did a thing on the nazis who went hiking through the Grampians in January;
2) Unhappy at the prospect of what they presumed would be an unfair portrayal, two nazi leaders of the expedition — Tom Sewell and Jacob Hersant — attended the Channel 9 headquarters in Melbourne earlier that day in order to remonstrate with ACA;
3) While in the Channel 9 foyer, the dynamic duo attempted to film some agitprop for their Terrorgram channel, a security guard instructed them to leave, and the guard was then (allegedly) racially-abused by Hersant and assaulted by Sewell.

Otherwise:

4) If nothing else, ACA made it clear that Sewell & Co. are neo-Nazis;
5) As befits his status as a budding fuehrer, Sewell is unrepentant over his action, which he’s framed as self-defence and as constituting a legitimate form of confrontation with the (((media)));
6) Presumably, police may — at some point in the future — charge Sewell with assault, and there’s even an outside chance Hersant may also be charged with racial vilification;
7) Sewell’s insouciance makes sense because — if nothing else — the footage of him punching a black man in the face is xclnt meme fodder for the teenyboppers he desperately wants to join him on his quest for an Antipodean nazi Reich;
8) On the same episode, Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton declared that the Australian government intended to proscribe a neo-Nazi groupuscule called Sonnenkrieg Division;
9) Following the incident at Channel 9, Sewell was interviewed by a Canadian neo-Nazi called Brandon Martinez;
10) Martinez praised Sewell as his hero — though whether or not Sewell, like Adolf Hitler, eventually becomes An Hero is of course unknown at this stage.

See also : From Antipodean Resistance to the National Socialist Network (November 29, 2020).

Bonus!

• Sewell reckons he’s got nothing to hide … which I’m not sure is entirely correct.
• Tomorrow, Victorian parliamentary committee set to announce decision on banning Nazi symbols — which, it seems, may be ‘yes’. If so, exactly what this means in practice, in terms of law and enforcement, is going to be interesting to watch. In the article, I’m quoted as follows:

After going underground in the wake of the Christchurch massacre, experts say the extreme right is back — and bolder than ever. “The principal individuals in these groups have always had neo-Nazi politics. They just concealed them for pragmatic reasons,” said Andy Fleming, who runs the anti-fascist blog Slackbastard and has tracked the far right for several [16 or so] years. “For the most part, those pretences have been abandoned.”

This is certainly the case for the remnants of the ‘United Patriots Front’ (2015–2017), which went on to form ‘The Lads Society’ and then — along with the remnants of ‘Antipodean Resistance’ — to establish both the ‘European Australian Movement’ and the ‘National Socialist Network’. Further:

Andy Fleming agrees [with Dr Smith on the political impact of lockdown].

“It would be a surprise if they weren’t seeking to capitalise on the discontent over the past year,” he said.

On the subject of ‘banning Nazi symbols’:

On that question, Mr Fleming said he was ambivalent.

“We have experience with these sorts of measures being undertaken by various European states, along with the criminalisation of Holocaust denial. And that did put a brake on the development of [the] extreme and far right in places like Germany,” he said.

“However, it also meant those who would otherwise have been running around waving a swastika were forced to adapt. So they adopted new symbols.”

Dr Abramovich said failing to ban Nazi symbols would be a mistake.

Regarding the re-emergence of neo-Nazism in post-war Germany, see : The Beast Reawakens: Fascism’s Resurgence from Hitler’s Spymasters to Today’s Neo-Nazi Groups and Right-Wing Extremists, Martin A. Lee, Routledge, 2000. On the adaptation of the neo-Nazi movement in Germany to repressive legislation, see : When Nazis go Pop… New strategies of the extreme right in Germany (LFO DEMON, November 11, 2004):

In the good old times everything seemed to be easy: The symbols, clothes and ideology of the extreme right were quite easy to identify. This was the cliché of the right-wing version of skinhead outfit (“boneheads”). Since a few years there have been massive changes in the far-right in Germany. There is the strategy to adopt symbols and clothes of other youth cultures including the left one …

This is really an important point one should keep in mind: Germany has tough laws on demonstrations and on right-wing symbolism. Not only swastikas are banned but a growing list of symbols.

Even if some symbols are not banned, local authorities usually make strict requirements on right-wing demonstrations for their use. E.g. it´s quite often prohibited to use the number “88” (meaning “Heil Hitler” for the 8th letter in the alphabet), which was invented by the right to bypass the ban of “Heil Hitler” in Germany.

This seems to be an endless battle of repression-innovation of new codes-repression. Evaluating the results there are 2 points: on the one hand it´s good that the far-right is put under pressure. They have to deal with court decisions which costs time, money and nerves. On the other hand this stimulates their creativity in evolving new tactics all the time which also has some risks. So there are less racists and nationalists speaking out in public but hiding their intentions and trying to deliver them with unobtrusive codes not directly linked with right-wing ideology …

Posted in Anti-fascism, Broken Windows, History, Media, State / Politics, Student movement, Television, That's Capitalism!, War on Terror | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Where have all the second-hand bookshops in regional Victoria gone?

A few years ago I asked What happened to Melbourne’s second-hand bookshops?. I gotta update that list, but in the meantime here’s another (I presume incomplete) list of second-hand bookshops in ‘regional’ Victoria.

Albury*
Books on Dean ‘Our bookshop is located next to the Cinema Centre, at the railway end of Dean Street, in Albury’ (NSW).

Bacchus Marsh
Forge Bookbarn : 100 Main Street

Ballarat
Minerva’s Books & Ideas ‘Formerly a secondhand bookshop at the front of the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute in Ballarat and now selling books online and producing creative media about the lives of books and the ideas they ignite.’
• Sothis Books and Sartorial [Facebook] : 121 Sturt Street
• The Known World Bookshop [Facebook] : 28 Main Road

Beechworth
Quercus : 26-30 Ford Street

Belgrave
Through the Looking Glass : 1669 Burwood Highway

Benalla
Good Reading : 45 Church Street : ‘Visitors to our Benalla shop, please note that our hours are irregular.’

Bendigo
Benjamin Jay Books : Plumes Emporium, 284-288 High Street
• Book Mark [Facebook] : 24 High Street
Book Now : 1 Farmers Lane

Campbell’s Creek
Book Heaven : 47 Main Road

Castlemaine
Mount of Alex : 273 Barker Street
• Soldier & Scholar : 215 Barker Street

Clunes is Booktown
Huc & Gabet: Books of Interest : ‘The Bookatorium is a small book shop hidden away close to the centre of Clunes … only open by appointment. If you’re here in town call us and if we are available, we can open in a few minutes … don’t be shy, call us.’
• Index on Literature : 102 Bailey Street
Orpheus
The Book Fossicker : 55 Fraser Street [Scratched?]

Daylesford
Paradise Bookshop [Facebook] : 46 Vincent Street

Eaglehawk
Trash Cult : 15 High Street

Echuca
Read Heeler [Facebook] : 580 High Street

Euroa
Already Read : 78 Binney Street

Geelong
Books Around [Facebook] : 24 James Street
Read Heeler : 192 Moorabool Street

Kyneton
Aesop’s Attic : 70 High Street
Long Story Short : Upstairs 58-60 Piper Street

Port Fairy
Blarney Books & Art : 37 James Street

Portland
Paper Nautilus Bookstore : 65/67 Bentinck Street

Rutherglen
Tapsell’s Books and Music : 77 Main Street

Talbot
Slightly Bent Books : 49 Scandinavian Crescent

Warrandyte
Yarra Cottage Books : 189 Yarra Street

Wonthaggi
Ramalama Book Exchange [Facebook] : 1 McBride Avenue

Woodend
Woodend Bookshop : 104 High Street

Yarck
Books At Yarck : 6591 Maroondah Highway

Posted in Art, Broken Windows, Death, History, Media, Poetry, State / Politics, That's Capitalism! | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Oh noes! A cwankypants made me remove some tweets!

I could be wrogn, but it looks like I’ve made some body mAd!






FTR: ‘Kill The Poor’ (1980) is a Dead Kennedys song; I don’t remember who miamiaman is (their account deaded several years ago), but ‘kill all the jews’ is a potted summary of Uncle Adolf’s manifesto (1924); ‘Kill Whitey’ (1998) is the title of a Flesh Parade album; “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” is a line from William Shakespeare’s Henry VI (Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2); ‘Kill All The White Man’ (1992) is a NOFX song.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

See also : Oh noes! The slackbastard page got Zucced! (February 18, 2021).

Posted in !nataS, Broken Windows, Death, Media, State / Politics, That's Capitalism!, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Yeah Nah Pasaran! #057 w Vincent Bevins on The Jakarta Method : February 25, 2021

On this week’s episode of Yeah Nah, we talk to Vincent Bevins [Twitter]. Vincent is a journalist and the author of The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World (PublicAffairs, 2020).

The hidden story of the wanton slaughter — in Indonesia, Latin America, and around the world — backed by the United States.

In 1965, the U.S. government helped the Indonesian military kill approximately one million innocent civilians. This was one of the most important turning points of the twentieth century, eliminating the largest communist party outside China and the Soviet Union and inspiring copycat terror programs in faraway countries like Brazil and Chile. But these events remain widely overlooked, precisely because the CIA’s secret interventions were so successful.

In this bold and comprehensive new history, Vincent Bevins builds on his incisive reporting for the Washington Post, using recently declassified documents, archival research and eye-witness testimony collected across twelve countries to reveal a shocking legacy that spans the globe. For decades, it’s been believed that parts of the developing world passed peacefully into the U.S.-led capitalist system. The Jakarta Method demonstrates that the brutal extermination of unarmed leftists was a fundamental part of Washington’s final triumph in the Cold War.

See also : The True Story of Indonesia’s US-Backed Anti-Communist Bloodbath, Michael G. Vann, Jacobin, January 23, 2021 | Book Review: The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World by Vincent Bevin, Thomas Kingston, LSE Book Review, July 29, 2020 | Enduring Cold War Imperialism: On Vincent Bevins’s “The Jakarta Method”, Leo Schwartz, Los Angeles Review of Books, July 25, 2020 | The Jakarta Method Comes to Latin America (Review), Philip Luke Johnson, NACLA, May 27, 2020 | Island Off the Coast of Asia: Instruments of Statecraft in Australian Foreign Policy, Clinton Fernandes, Monash University Publishing, 2018 | The Political Economy of Human Rights, Volume I: The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, South End Press, 1979.

4.30pm, Thursday, February 25, 2021 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website

NB. The podcast version of the episode contains a longer discussion with Vincent.

• You can listen to the podcast on Apple, Spotify and other platforms.
• We also have a Facebook page for the show, which you’re invited to ‘Like’ and to ‘Follow’.
• I have a Patreon account which youse are also invited to support.

Posted in Anti-fascism, Death, History, State / Politics, That's Capitalism!, War on Terror | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Oh noes! The slackbastard page got Zucced!

Anyway.

You may/not have noticed, but as part of Zucc’s purge of AUS meeja — and as collateral dmg, I guess(?) — my Facebook page has been Zucced, meaning while I can still access it via admin, all content — regardless of source — is no longer publicly-accessible. As a result, I’ve revived the back-up page, Slackbastard2: please feel free to ‘like’ it, and to let others know it’s around and about.

The 2.0 page was originally published on March 6, 2015: My previous page has been suspended following a successful campaign by nazis. This page is either my new page or a temporary placeholder. At that stage, the 1.0 page was down for a few days, then re-published, then taken down again on May 30, 2015 — Oh hai! My principal page has been unpublished — again. *sadface* I don’t know why + FB offers no explanation so … it may be that I’ll be using this one from now on, who knows? — then unZucced on June 16, 2015 — Strewth Ruth — my original page is back up!?! — and has experienced various nazi storms since.

Also, the YNP! page is still functioning, even if 3CR, unfortunately, got Zucced.

I’ve obviously got No Idea how long this situ will last, and whether or not the OG page can be revived is unknown. We’ll see. (I also have a Twitter account if yr interested.) I suppose the only other thing to note is that the fake news industry is relatively unaffected, so Avi Yeminem, for example, remains at liberty to shitpost on behalf of his Canadian (not Australian) employer.

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Yeah Nah Pasaran! #056 w Michael Colborne on The Azov Battalion : February 18, 2021

On this week’s episode of Yeah Nah, we talk to Michael Colborne [Twitter]. Michael is a journalist, a research fellow at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right and the author of a forthcoming book on the Azov Battalion in Ukraine. We spoke to him about Azov, Ukraine, Russia, Eastern Europe, ultra-nationalism and left and right.

See/hear : The Christchurch shooting, Eastern Europe’s far-right and a ‘cherry-picked reading of history’, Michael Colborne, ABC (Radio National), April 10, | The Azov movement and the Christchurch terror attack, (ABC Late Night Live), April 8, 2019.

See also : Putin’s patriots, Sean Nicholls, Jeanavive McGregor, Mary Fallon and Alex Palmer, ABC (Four Corners), February 15, 2021 | Five Australians free to return after fighting in Ukraine far-right ‘finishing school’ alongside Russian nationalist militia, Nino Bucci, ABC Investigations, April 23, 2019 | From Neo-Nazi to militant: The foreign fighters in Ukraine who Australia’s laws won’t stop, Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop, Suzanne Dredge, and Michael Workman, ABC Investigations, May 1, 2018.

4.30pm, Thursday, February 18, 2021 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website

NB. The podcast version of the episode contains a longer discussion with Michael.

• You can listen to the podcast on Apple, Spotify and other platforms.
• We also have a Facebook page for the show, which you’re invited to ‘Like’ and to ‘Follow’.
• I have a Patreon account which youse are also invited to support.

Posted in Anti-fascism, History, Media, State / Politics, That's Capitalism!, War on Terror | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Yeah Nah Pasaran! #055 w Ashton Kingdon on AI, alt-tech, & occult nazis : February 11, 2021

On this week’s episode of Yeah Nah, we talk to Ashton Kingdon [Twitter]. Ashton researches far right extremism, radicalisation, alt-tech, AI … aND TeH nazi 0CCuLt! … @ (among others) the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right:

Ashton is a PhD candidate in Web Science at the University of Southampton. Her research is interdisciplinary, combining criminology, history, and computer science to explore the ways in which right-wing extremists utilise technology for recruitment and radicalisation, whilst giving equal weight to the subcultural elements of the users of this technology. Additionally, her work examines the various ways that history is being manipulated and weaponised to fuel contemporary right-wing extremist narratives. In terms of technology, her work specifically focuses on the influence and impact of artificial intelligence and machine learning on the radicalisation process, and the increased need for ethical and explainable AI. The ultimate question being: can we really hold intelligent machines accountable for radicalisation?

See : False flags, paperclips, and super spies: the secret Nazi origins of the CIA, openDemocracy, June 9, 2020 | The Gift of the Gab: The Utilisation of COVID-19 for Neo-Nazi Recruitment, GNET, May 7, 2020.

4.30pm, Thursday, February 11, 2021 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website

NB. The podcast version of the episode contains a longer discussion with Ashton.

• You can listen to the podcast on Apple, Spotify and other platforms.
• We also have a Facebook page for the show, which you’re invited to ‘Like’ and to ‘Follow’.
• I have a Patreon account which youse are also invited to support.

Posted in !nataS, Anti-fascism, History, Media, State / Politics, That's Capitalism!, War on Terror | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

A note on the Proud Boys in Australia

[Update (February 11, 2021) : TLDR : In Albury-Wodonga, Jarrad Searby and a few other Boys paid a visit to some fella’s workplace and another fella’s home. Searby was mAd because they made Facebook comments he didn’t like. Neither were ‘antifa’. See : Australian Proud Boys filmed threatening critics at a business and a home, Michael McGowan, The Guardian, February 11, 2021 | Australian Proud Boys on the hunt for social media commenters and the elderly, Tom Tanuki, Independent Australia, February 12, 2021 | See also : proud-boy fascists make idiots of themselves in rural Australia, Yeah Nah, Teh YouTubes, February 10, 2021.]

From The Department of Interesting Developments:

TORONTO (AP) — The Canadian government designated the Proud Boys group as a terrorist entity on Wednesday, noting they played a pivotal role in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

The Proud Boys have faced increased scrutiny after seizing on the former Trump administration’s policies and the group was a major agitator during earlier protests and the Capitol riot on Jan. 6. The Proud Boys is a far-right, male chauvinist extremist group known for engaging in violent clashes at political rallies. Canada is the first country to designate them as a terrorist entity …

By contrast, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, by way of 4 Corners, designated Proud Boys fuehrer (and FBI snitch) Enrique Tarrio ‘A Neat Interview Subject’ on the ‘riot’/insurrection his Boys conducted. Happily, a quick-witted Tarrio managed to avoid the clever trap journalist Sarah Ferguson set him …

Ferguson: Did you send members of the Proud Boys into the Capitol to lynch members of the government?
Tarrio:

Presumably, this may constitute a critical piece of evidence in any future prosecution of Tarrio and his flunkeys, though I’ve been reliably informed that investigative and prosecutorial authorities in Washington may well have other tricks up their sleeves.

See also : ‘4 Corners’ Is Being Slammed For Interviewing A Far-Right Extremist Again, Jared Richards, Junkee, February 2, 2021 | Platforming or reporting? Australian journalism has a problem with the far right, Kishor Napier-Raman, Crikey, February 3, 2021.

In Australia, the Proud Boys (PBs) also have a smol presence, claiming members in every state and territory. The Australian PB franchise was established not long after its North American cousin (2016–), just as the English Defence League (EDL) rapidly spawned an Australian Defence League (ADL). Two of the principal ADL activists were Shermon Burgess and Ralph Cerminara. Burgess later went on to help found first ‘Reclaim Australia’ then the ‘United Patriots Front’ (UPF) in 2015, before leaving the UPF after a fellow patriot made him cry and — eventually — deciding to Go Full Nazi. Of the pair, Cerminara was the more madcap, but after a criminal conviction for assault in 2019, he’s changed his name and gone a bit quiet.

Previously on slackbastard:

As of December 2016, the ADL was a moribund institution, and remains so in April 2019. While Burgess has gone on to embrace neo-Nazism, Flat Earth theory, Odinism, and whichever other crackpottery registers in his fevered bRanes, Cerminara has been in serious trouble with the law, and earlier this year was sentenced to jail for assaulting a neighbour. In good news for Cerminara, he was released on appeal, and — irony of ironies — has apparently successfully applied for legal support from the Aboriginal Legal Service in NSW to aid in his efforts to free himself from the politically-correct courts. (Note that there remains at least one ADL page on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/pg/AustralianDefenceLeagueOfficialAdlEst2009), one of thousands of similar pages pumping out an endless stream of anti-Muslim propaganda. Oddly, while three admins are based in Australia, two are in the UK and one in the US.)

On January 26 this year, a dozen or so PBs in Melbourne joined the plague rats in St Kilda to celebrate the founding of the British penal colony, though at least one PB — Andrew Paton — apparently failed to get the memo, and instead elected to remain in the city to troll the Invasion Day rally.

For his efforts, Paton was detained by police, and also lost his hat.

In 2020, a larger group of PBs attempted to troll the rally by assembling at Flinders Street station wearing merch inscribed with the slogan ‘Governor Arthur Phillip did nothing wrong’. Curiously, after having posed for photos, the PBs departed Flinders before the arrival of the march; certainly, it’s worth recalling that, in 2017, Canadian authorities were more than happy to readmit five PBs into the armed forces after they disrupted and were then ‘suspended after they crashed a 1 July protest in Halifax, Nova Scotia marking Canada’s history of atrocities against [I]ndigenous people’. Given that Tarrio was also recently charged with incinerating a ‘Black Lives Matter’ banner torn from a black church in Washington, it’s little wonder patriotik Aussie men are drawn to the PBs. “The conduct of the Proud Boys in Washington, DC on December 12, 2020, amounted to a new and dangerous chapter in the long and terrible history of white supremacist mob violence targeting Black houses of worship,” the church said in its filing.

Locally, in 2019 PBs also had a presence at various events organised by bankrupt former Senator and White supremacist Fraser ‘Final Solution’ Anning. Along with the dregs of Reclaim and the ‘True Blue Crew’, Tom Sewell and his neo-Nazi Lads, PBs thus attended Anning’s anti-African rally, again in St Kilda, along with a (very eggy) meeting in Moorabbin.

Sometime lvl boss of PBs Australia, Nick Stone, was of course thrilled to pose with Sky News Australia’s Lauren ‘The Great Replacement’ Southern during her tour Down Under in 2018, and tour organiser Dave Pellowe, along with fellow Christian fun-da-mentalist Lyle Shelton, were also Proud to pose with PBs in Brisbane.

Of course, one of the central tensions on the far-right is The JQ. So, while The Lads Pellowe hired to help safely conduct The Great Replacement’s 2018 tour have now openly and quite publicly proclaimed themselves to be neo-Nazis, the PBs typically equivocate on the subject. Hence, in the final episode of ‘The Cuckables’ — a joint effort by Timmeh! Wilms of ‘The Unhinged’ blog and semi-pro antisemites David Hiscox and Matthew Roebuck of XYZ blog — recent PB recruit Jarrad Searby confessed to never having heard of The JQ; a sad state-of-affairs which Hiscox and Roebuck both promised to quickly remedy.

Finally, the decision by the Canadian government to label the PBs a ‘terrorist’ organisation will presumably enter into and have some impact upon the government inquiry into ‘extremism’ announced last year by Mr Potato Head. So too the fact that the fourth level of initiation into the gang requires a member to shed blood for the cause: The final step involves “a major fight for the cause,” McInnes said. “You get beat up, kick the crap out of an antifa” and possibly get arrested.

Still … the same parliament that initially voted in favour of Pauline Hanson’s motion that #IOKTBW has today butchered a(nother), Labor motion, inter alia removing a passage condemning Craig Kelly and George Christensen for spreading conspiracy theories, and extending criticism of ‘extremism’ to Maoist guerillas hiding in the Dandenongs, Adelaide’s Brigate Rosse, and bloggers like me.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

See also : The Proud Boys and the Republican Party, Sarlacc Attack, LCRW, February 3, 2021 | The class composition of the Capitol rioters (First Cut), MR Online, January 20, 2021 | Aussie Aussie Aussie! Trump! Trump! Trump! (January 14, 2021) | Proud Boys Incidents 2016-2019 (Samantha Kutner) | Proud Boys (ADL) | Proud Boys (SPLC) | Proud Boys (It’s Going Down).

Posted in Anti-fascism, Broken Windows, Death, History, Media, State / Politics, That's Capitalism!, War on Terror | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Yeah Nah Pasaran! #054 w Sabine Volk on PEGIDA, Fortress Europe & populism : February 4, 2021

On this week’s episode of Yeah Nah, we talk to Sabine Volk [Twitter] about PEGIDA (‘Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Occident’) and right-wing populism in Europe. Sabine is a doctoral fellow of the Centre for the Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR) and a member of the Working Group on Memory and Populism associated with the Memory Studies Association (MSA), and has recently published:

• ‘Germany: Is the COVID-19 Pandemic Weakening the Far Right?’, in: Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic by the Radical Right: Scapegoating, Conspiracy Theories and New Narratives, ed. Tamir Bar-On & Bàrbara Molas;
‘‘Wir sind das Volk!’ Representative claim-making and populist style in the Pegida movement’s discourse’, in German Politics;
• ‘‘No borders, no nations’ or ‘Fortress Europe’? How European citizens remake European borders’, in European Studies and Europe: Twenty Years of Euroculture, ed. Janny de Jong, Marek Neuman, Senka Stanivukovic-Neuman, and Margriet van der Waal;
‘Commemoration at the Extremes: A Field Report from Dresden 2020’, in Cultures of History Forum.

See also : antifa notes (february 11, 2016) : PEGIDA, United Patriots Front, Aryan Nations, (February 11, 2016).

4.30pm, Thursday, February 4, 2021 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website

NB. The podcast version of the episode contains a longer discussion with Sabine.

• You can listen to the podcast on Apple, Spotify and other platforms.
• We also have a Facebook page for the show, which you’re invited to ‘Like’ and to ‘Follow’.
• I have a Patreon account which youse are also invited to support.

Posted in Anti-fascism, History, Media, State / Politics, That's Capitalism!, War on Terror | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Nazis Go Camping in The Grampians

Oh hai!

As you may have read, last weekend some neo-Nazis went camping in The Grampians.

See : Neo-Nazis go bush: Grampians gathering highlights rise of Australia’s far right, Nick McKenzie and Joel Tozer, The Age, January 27, 2021 | ‘We do not need to wait for a Christchurch’: Grampians cross burning spurs call for action, Nick McKenzie and Joel Tozer, The Age, January 28, 2021.

Unsurprisingly, the incident has generated quite a lot of commentary, much of which has revolved around what might be an appropriate response to this news. The discussion has been given particular relevance in light of both the inability of police to take legal action and the recent announcement of a federal government inquiry into ‘extremism’. Hence, Greg Barton has argued that: ‘Now would be a good time for Australia to follow the lead of Five-Eyes partners such as Canada and formally proscribe far-right extremist groups such as the Proud Boys. Doing so would go some way to helping the police better do their job.’ Others have suggested that current laws, specifically counter-terrorism legislation, should be sufficient to address right-wing extremism and terrorism.

See also : ‘A wake-up call’: What’s being done to combat the rise of far-right extremism, Ahmed Yussuf, SBS (The Feed), January 29, 2021.

In either case, government policy is outta my league (and not my focus). Briefly, then:

• The camping trip was organised under the umbrella of the ‘European Australian Movement’ (EAM) and the ‘National Socialist Network’ (NSN).

• Officially, the EAM was launched on January 1, 2020, as a project of its parent group, ‘The Lads Society’ (TLS).

• TLS emerged in late 2017, following the collapse of the ‘United Patriots Front’ (UPF). At that stage, The Lads had (privately) announced the establishment of a social centre in Cheltenham. In January 2018, the fascist bunker was the site of a joint meeting between The Lads, members of the defunct racist groupuscule ‘True Blue Crew’ (TBC), and various other racist agitators. The meeting was intended to provide a forum for the organisation of white supremacist vigilantes to combat the ‘African gangs’ that Peter Dutton declared at the time were so terrifying that Melbournians were simply too scared to leave their homes.

• Sadly, after a community campaign, The Lads’ social centre in Cheltenham was forced to close, and the nazis had to find another organising space. This turned out to be located in Rowville. It too ended up being forced to close, not long after I disclosed its location. This was also the fate of the social centre in Ashfield, Sydney, that TLS established.

In general:

• The UPF emerged in 2015 as the militant vanguard of ‘Reclaim Australia’. TLS represented the consolidation of the support that the UPF had won between 2015–2017, principally by way of Facebook, but also supplemented by its occasional public excursions.

• As well as being present at Final Solution’s anti-African rally in St Kilda in January 2019, TLS organised a visit to Box Hill cop shop in late 2019 in order to join the tabloid chorus of disapproval at the fact that police had raised the Chinese flag to commemorate National Day of the People’s Republic of China. As Andrew Bolt wrote at the time (SURRENDER: VICTORIA POLICE RAISE THE FLAG OF COMMUNIST CHINA, Herald Sun, October 2, 2019): No need for communist China to invade. Victoria’s police have already raised the dictatorship’s flag over a police station in a heavily Chinese suburb. And guess who came to cut the cake to celebrate the dictatorship’s birthday? Why, it’s Gladys Liu, the Liberal MP tied to China’s propaganda arm. By the same token, Lads provided security for Stefan Molyneux and Bolt’s fellow SkyNews propagandist Lauren ‘The Great Replacement’ Southern for their 2018 tour.

• After some internal discussion, and more-or-less following the exclusion of Blair Cottrell, Tom Sewell emerged as spokes for TLS, and TLS — incorporating those elements of the short-lived neo-Nazi groupuscule ‘Antipodean Resistance’ that hadn’t already joined TLS — decided to launch itself as EAM and NSN. In other words, while TLS has been at pains to present itself as a fraternal organisation, EAM is basically an extension of TLS, and so too NSN.

• Like his (former) BFF Cottrell, Sewell got his start with the older neo-Nazi groupuscule ‘Nationalist Alternative’, which has its origins in anti-mosque agitation in Williamstown.

• In summary, the Hitler yoof who went hiking in the Grampians on the weekend are the end result of over a decade of agitation by local extreme-right actors. But whereas 10 years ago NAlt, for example, were extreme-ly reluctant to be accurately understood as a neo-Nazi formation, The Lads — by way of EAM and NSN — have thrown caution to the wind and are now happy to pose and strut as precisely who and what they are: neo-Nazis.

• No doubt much more can and will be said on the subject of TLS/EAM/NSN, ‘extremism’ and ‘terrorism’, but in the meantime, props to the good people of Gariwerd for: a) noticing and; b) documenting the excursion by these putative members of the Aryan Master Race.

See also : From Antipodean Resistance to the National Socialist Network (November 29, 2020) | A Brief Guide To The Australian Far Right (July 2020 Edition) (July 3, 2020).

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