Who’s Who in the Fascist Zoo? (Mid-2018)

Well, well, well, here we are again. Having to shine a light on all the racist, fascist scum running around Narrm (so-called Melbourne). Y’know what? We don’t want to do this. We don’t want to spend our time researching and tracking these knuckle-dragging scum bags. We’d all much prefer building a society we think we deserve. Based on equality, sustainability and mutual aid. But as long as there are fascists on the streets, there needs to be anti-fascists to stop them.

Anti-fascism is more than punching Nazis (although, it’s also punching Nazis). It’s about understanding who they are, how fascists organise and making sure we educate the community about their activities before they have a chance to spread their bullshit ideology. An ideology based on scapegoating minorities to obtain authoritarian power. We know this though, right? So let’s know who we’re fighting.

This is not an exhaustive list, by any stretch of the imagination. SlackBastard provided a rundown back in December 2016 from across so-called Australia here. We’re gonna focus on what’s happening in Narrm at the moment. So here we go. Let’s dive into the sewers of the far right organising.

The Lads Society

Basically, Blair ‘hang a picture of Hitler in every class room’ Cottrell and his old UPF mate Tom Sewell have had enough of pretending to be ‘civic’ nationalists (the fuck does that even mean?) and are happy to openly embrace their ideology of ethno-nationalism through their Nazi Club House in Cheltenham. Check out the great work by South East Community Action outlining their bullshit Nazi ideologies. Here’s their ‘crew’ photo, know some? Let us know

Blair Cottrell
I’m sure we all now Mr. Roid, Blair Cottrell, he’s the ego-maniac who can’t pass up an opportunity to get in front of a camera and spew his toxic ideology. We’d write about how he thinks a copy of Mein Kampf should be given to every school kid, or how Hitler’s photo should be hung in every classroom, or how he stalked his ex-partner’s new boyfriend with a weapon, or how he tried to burn down his house but this has already all been written about (here and while he was in prison). He’s at the centre of the Lads Society because his ego dictates he has to be. Where they will be, he will be.

Tom Sewell
Blair’s 2IC, Tommy Sewell, seems to be putting in a fair bit of work behind the scenes at the Lads Society. They posted a photo of ‘essential’ reading, including Mein Kamfp. Him and Blair were celebrating Hitler’s Birthday at a German pub back in 2017, classy fellas:

Also, here’s Tommy talking about having to cleanse Australia of non-white’s on The Young Conservative’s post about the Alt-Right (more of this 19-year-old boy later…)

If you ask us, this is Tommy Sewell calling for the ethnic cleansing of non-whites, while trying to avoid the ‘historical worship’ to Nazism, as it isn’t ‘productive’.

Stuart Von Moger
Stuart has been hanging around with the ‘Lads’ for a while now, here’s a photo from the Milo event in December 2017:

He has given a ‘workshop’ to the other Lads about the ‘Security Industry’ and should be expected at most events the other knuckle-draggers attend.

Jacob Hersant

This ‘Lad’ has been hanging out at the KKKlub House and is also one of those Antipodean Resistance National Socialists. We’ve seen him posting around on facebook asking people in interracial relationships how they feel about their kids not looking like them. We’re putting his details here because SlackBastard has done the work to explicitly highlight his connection to the Lads Society. He’s there on the right of this photo at the Lad’s Society clubhouse.

We should also talk about the flag Swastika bois…

Antipodean Resistance

I think most of us are aware of these guys, right? They poster disgusting propaganda around in the shadows of the night after being birthed from the absolute bottom dregs of the internet (AKA the now-defunct Iron March Forums). Listen, you can read about them in a bunch of places (see below), but what you should know is that they are mates with all of the groups that try to present themselves as ‘patriots’ (see Jacob Hersant / Lads Society above). They were birthed from fascist mobilisations on the streets of Melbourne and radicalised through the internet with involvement with the terrorist-labelled National Action from the UK (who planned to murder a Labour MP), the Nordic Resistance Movement (who bombed a refugee centre) and Atomwaffen in the U.S who are linked to the murder of 5 people. Their violent ideology is out in the open, it’s about time the people behind it are, too.

More reading:
SlackBastard
ABC Ethics and Religion
Sydney Criminal Lawyers

Cooks Convicts / Nationalist Uprising / Future Now Neil Erikson

Neil Erikson
If someone can help us keep up with serial pest Neil Erikson’s milieu of Facebook pages hit us up. Neil is a mess, he was a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi back in the day, was convicted for stalking and demanding money from a Rabbi, rolled through Reclaim Australia, United Patriots Front, Nationalists Uprising and now spends other peoples money being a racist gronk. Basically, he thinks he’s funny (he’s not), thinks he isn’t racist (he is) and as a recent judge commented has a “tenuous relationship with the truth“.

Listen, we’re gonna give you a hot tip here… there’s gonna be a recurring theme of men needing to be the centre of attention and pretending they’re important and Neil is no exception. His goal is to stir up controversy and then try to use the publicity to get a few more ‘Likes’ on Facebook. He used to run around with legitimately violent gangs that nearly killed Vietnamese student Minh Duong. These days Neil is more likely to run away from a confrontation but his racist scapegoating ideology still festers a huge amount of racist hatred on his Facebook pages and is used as a constant base of violent beliefs.

Ricky Turner
So, Ricky Turner is officially ‘Cooks Convicts 2IC’ (that makes us sad just writing that, to be honest). From what we can tell that means that Ricky T can post incoherent videos from the Cooks Convicts Facebook page and gets pushed in to instigate violence at a rally. Ricky seems a bit more keen to get into a bit of biff than Erikson but we’re pretty sure he isn’t allowed out into the real world without Neil so expect them to be side by side, like when they were at court…

(L: Ricky Turner, R: Neil Erikson)

Rino ‘Bluebeard’ Grgurovic
If being Cooks Convicts 2IC was sad then we’re not sure what to say about Blue-beard. He generally follows Erikson and Turner around, sometimes films their racist stunts and is basically a third-tier bottom-feeder. You can find him pretty quickly because of his… blue beard…

We don’t want to trivialise the impact these racists can have because there’s plenty of people who believe every piece of bullshit they post but with their incoherent ideology (beyond racism) and their inclination to harassment we reckon it’s best to not to bite on their shitty antics and tell them to jog on.

True Blue Crew

Basically, the True Blew crew is Kane Miller and some like-minded racists from Melton and Bendigo that want to get into some biff and try to make a buck out of it. They formed as ‘security’ for fascist rallies in 2015 and sold $140 hoodies and astronomical membership fees. There’s been a fair bit written about what happened to this money, assuming most of it went directly into the pocket of Kano. These guys are pretty easy to spot, based on their ugly af $140 hoodies and $60 caps as displayed here by a guy from Melton walking through Eltham telling a man from Eltham what people in Eltham want…

As with all groups, most people hover around the self-proclaimed ‘leader’, in this case, it’s Kane Miller:

Luckily most of the time the True Blue Crew will be wearing their gear. If you see someone we would recommend to be wary to engage and only with extreme caution. The whole point of the group is to be a violent gang. Their former member, Philip Galea is also being charged with terrorism charges after allegedly plotting to bomb leftist building in Melbourne.

Avi Yemini / Australian Liberty Alliance

Avi Yemini has been pushing his anti-Muslim hatred to ride the racist wave of post-9/11 bigotry towards Muslims (or whoever they deem ‘looks Muslim’). Jews Against Fascism and the Australian Democratic Jewish Society have been monitoring the activities of Avi and calling him out on his bullshit. Avi doesn’t understand that the only reason he’s welcome in (some) far-right circles is that people feel like they can leverage anti-Muslim hatred to their goal of ethnic cleansing. This has resulted in Avi finding himself in abhorrent company, notably Nazis…

Affiliated with Israeli Defense Force (IDF) gyms around Australia, he’s sure to wear a Krav Maga shirt to a rally to front. But we hear he can’t actually fight and is a big baby. Still worth being careful around however.

Avi is going to run under the banner of the Australian Liberty Alliance for the Victorian Parliament later this year. So he’s currently touring the country trying to drum up as much support as possible. From the looks of it, his entire platform is based on scapegoating Muslims and African-Australians and trying to stir up as much controversy as possible so that people will care about him. Here he is making light of sexual assault with Sydney Watson…

If you see Avi about, he’s probably going to be hanging out with Daniel Jones (AKA Francis Castiglione from being normal on Facebook)

Daniel Jones will generally play dress ups as Avi’s ‘bodyguard’ and is largely performative (see below). But anyone that posts this kinda thing online and is a racist scumbag is obviously dangerous and could often be armed. In fact, this guy is. See in his tactical vest… That’s a tactical pen. He teaches people in facebook videos how to stab people in the face with them. Consider this one of the only fascists we know about that appears sufficiently trained in self-defense.

Chris Shortis / United Nationalists Australia

Shortis is the one who is most openly pushing his white nationalist agenda out of the scraps of what was once the United Patriots Front. After he was convicted (along with Blair and Erikson) for inciting serious contempt he’s spent his time writing horribly anti-semitic posts on his United Nationalists Australia blog and making equally as fucked videos through his (White) Australia First page.

Shortis likes to wear a suit (when he isn’t wearing that leather jacket of his) but never fear, this dapper middle-aged gentleman has for a long time been happy to stroll down the street with branded Nazis.

Shortis hasn’t been out and about lately, however, he’s been dunking on Avi (because Shortis is an anti-semitic Nazi scumbag) and the True Blue Crew have taken Shortis’ side, so he might raise his head this weekend for the Flagwit Rally.

Active Front / Active Front Line

Basically, there’s a few reactionary soccer ‘hooligans’ that want to play tough-boys online and look for a bit of biff. Their page keeps getting shut down, they can’t seem to increase their reach beyond like, 80 people. One of their admins, Danijel Jakov, is a pretty regular troll online. As it’s the off-season for A-League it looks like some lads will make their way down to the True Blue Crew rally on Sunday 23rd June of June looking for a fight. We’ve got a number of tips about who these fellas are but haven’t confirmed them yet, however it’s a good reminder that it’s good to be safe as there’ll likely be small gangs roaming the city looking for fights.

The Young Conservative

Some 19-year-old private school boy who goes to Uni in Melbourne is trying to make a name for himself by being a young racist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, misogynistic jerk. You saw him get cornered by Tommy Sewell into effectively admitting he is a white nationalist and has the most confused ideology. Basically, he’s making short, scripted videos to get some attention and feel like he’s achieving something for himself by getting some likes on Facebook. I guess when your parents buy you an Audi as a teenager you might not really know what it’s like to do something purposeful so attacking minorities online to get some Facebook likes might stroke that fragile ego.

Old mate here tries to act tough online and gets ‘angry’ but we’d be surprised if he was a threatening IRL. His page attracts a bunch of Alt-Right, neo-nazis and disgusting comments. We reckon he should grow up, realise there’s more to life than trying to impress the big kids on the playground and get out of this downward spiral before he becomes full edge-lord endorsing ethnic cleansing like the rest of the /pol kids.

Soldiers of Odin

A couple of years ago there was a pretty comprehensive post about the Soldiers of Odin. You can read more about how they’re linked to the European SOO group who are expressly neo-Nazi on the link above, but what we want to stress here is that the Soldiers of Odin are a racist street gang that are regularly mobile at demonstrations. Luckily they generally wear their SOO gear so you can easily identify them and avoid them if need be.

Basically, any far-right rally will see at least a few of these racists parading their merch so always be vigilant and keep an eye out as they’ve been violent in the past and may attack anyone they deem to be vulnerable.

Infidel Brotherhood

Another Facebook group that flogs merch to people who want to be in a recreational racist street gang. They wear their uniform to try to impress people and there’ll generally be at least a few at most rallies.

Their logo is super distinct, and although they may not be actively looking for a fight like some other groups you definitely want to steer clear of them.

Media

An important part of the fascist media is their messaging and how it’s interpreted. We obviously have no faith in conservative or liberal media to do the research required to truly call out these violent ideologies for what they are. The Murdoch Press will largely report uncritically or draw a false equivalency to the left, however, there are also smaller ‘media’ outlets that work purely as a fascist mouthpiece for these groups. The Unshackled and XYZ are ones that are trying to provide a veneer of legitimacy to their bullshit ‘news’ and ‘reporting’.

The Unshackled

The Unshackled has run stories praising the Lads Society Nazi KKKlubhouse, fanboy Blair Cottrell, attend events with Antipodean Resistance members and are all ’round scumbags.

There’s nothing journalistic about this, it’s purely an attempt to collate and legitimise fascist and racist street groups. They held a poll for CIS-White Male of the Year and their readers voted David-fucking-Duke the ‘winner’… I mean, they chose to post this shit, what more do we need to say?

Well, what we do need to say is that if they show up at any event, all antifascists need to tell them to jog the fuck on. They are an extension of the fascists they praise, and there’s no benefit in giving them any leeway, they aren’t media, they aren’t reporters, they are racist, fascist propagandists and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near antifascists for our collective safety.

See these guys around (or someone else in Unshackled gear) make sure they don’t photograph / film antifascists.

XYZ

This is the Alt-Right, shit posting, anti-semitic hub of shitty fucking wanna-be Daily Stormer losers. XYZ have ‘hung out’ with the Dingoes who are the grossest cellar-dwellers on Australian’s Nazi-Twitter. Hosted by the Right Stuff, the worlds largest neo-Nazi podcast network, SlackBastard has written about them here.

We don’t necessarily expect them coming out to the street but this is another reminder, ‘photographers’, ‘journalists’ and ‘curious observers’ aren’t your mates unless you have antifascists vouching for them. If you wanna know why some people choose to mask up, read this account of awful harassment, so even if you choose not to mask up, that’s cool, but recognise that a lot of people have skepticism about anyone passing as a ‘journalist’ or ‘photographer’ and help out your fellow comrades by telling them they aren’t welcome to take photos and to respect the requests of others. They may be a ‘well-meaning’ photographer / journalist (who could still do a lot of damage) or they may be a fascist trying to profile activists.

Some random local fascists for good measure:

Jarolf Meekler (possible Antipodean Resistance):