This week on Yeah Nah Pasaran! on 3CR we talk to Rae Jereza. Rae is a non-binary, Filipino-American anthropologist working in North America whose research is at the intersection of race, digital technologies, and digital labor in the U.S.. (They also can has two cool cats: Boopy and Christmas Boy.) We spoke to Rae about digital labour on the content farms of Meta, race, guns in the U.S., and more.
4.30pm, Thursday, February 22, 2024 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website
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In October and then again in November I gave brief consideration on the response of Australian unions to the war on Gaza. Months later, with the death toll (overwhelmingly civilian), officially having reached 29,000 (with the fate of many thousands of others unaccounted for but presumably also killed and buried under rubble), tens of thousands of others wounded, the Occupied Territory and its institutions — schools, hospitals, residences, places of worship and so on — pulverised, little has changed, nor is there any reasonable expectation that it will.
That said …
On Thursday in Melbourne, members of the Australian Services Union (organised via ASU 4 Palestine) have declared that they’ll be staging a walkout in order to pressure employers in the services and community sector to join them in calling for a ceasefire. The walkout takes place almost twelve months after hundreds of members of the Electrical Trades Union in Victoria walked off the job in order to protest a proposed ban on duck hunting. This walk-off formed part of a wider campaign, supported by the so-called BIG (Building Industrial Gorup) of unions: the AMWU, CFMMEU, ETU and PPTEU. The million-dollar public relations campaign was effective: the state government ignored the recommendations of the inquiry to institute a ban, and electricians, plumbers and others can continue to enjoy shooting ducks this year.
4.30pm, Thursday, February 15, 2024 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website
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4.30pm, Thursday, February 8, 2024 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website
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[Update (January 31, 2024) : Cameron Brodie-Hall, the leader of the Adelaide cell of the NSN, has plead not guilty to a charge of possessing extremist material: ‘A book outlining how to spark a Nazi revolution in Australia with bombings and the murder of ‘soft targets’ was found in the home of an alleged neo Nazi leader, a court has heard.’]
I wasn’t gonna bother but then I thought, what the Hell, may as well.
• Despite The Australian‘s (frankly idiotik) avowal to the contrary: Yes, Virginia, nazis exist. Both in Melbourne, Sydney and elsewhere.
• Just as fascist groupings first emerged in Australia in the 1920s, Nazi associations quickly followed in the 1930s. Following the end of the Second World War, and the collapse of Italian Fascism, German Nazism and other European fascist regimes and movements, local expressions were — unsurprisingly — rather subdued, and didn’t really start cracking again until the 1960s. That said, the Australian state, as part of a wider program by the victorious Anglo-American franchise, also rolled out the welcome mat for some select Nazi criminals along with other fascist migrants/refugees. Of particular note in this regard is the Ustasha, which continues to attract some degree of support from within the Croatian-Australian community and whose leader, Ante Pavelic, is still accorded a place of honour in a number of community centres. See also : Fascists in Exile: Post-War Displaced Persons in Australia, Jayne Persian (Routledge, 2024).
• Formal neo-Nazi associations such as Tom Sewell’s National Socialist Network (AKA European Australian Movement) are relatively rare. Thus, while Antipodean Resistance, Aryan Nations, Blood & Honour/Southern Cross Hammerskins, Creativity, Squadron 88 and other groupuscules have been in existence over a period of several decades, none have drawn the same degree of ‘mainstream’ attention as the NSN/EAM. See : A Brief Guide To The Australian Far Right (September 2021 Edition).
• The NSN/EAM did not fall from the sky. Rather, the grouping around Sewell evolved out of previous articulations of racist and fascist organising. Hence, prior to Sewell’s decision to Go Full Nazi — a tactical decision which his former kamerad Blair Cottrell eschewed, preferring his political perspective stayed in the closet – he organised with The Lads Society, which in turn emerged from the collapse of the United Patriots Front; itself the (rather self-)conscious ‘vanguard’ of Reclaim Australia. To put it simply, the NSN is the product of years of far-right and neo-Nazi organising and mobilisation: a culmination rather than, as it’s often framed, a ‘sudden’ explosion (and one helped along its way by sometimes quite favourable treatment by those who may now want to distance themselves from this specific projection). A useful account of important elements in this process is provided in The Rise of the Fascist Cadre: Shifts in Far-Right Organising in Australia, Jordan McSwiney, C-REX – Center for Research on Extremism, May 18, 2021.
• I could go on (and one day I hope to), but finally, it’s simply not possible to understand the antics of the boy from Balwyn and his flunkeys without first situating them in the recent history of far-right organising and the wider political context in which they find themselves and to which they respond. This also requires that particular attention is paid to the relationship of these ‘extreme’ political expressions and the altogether ‘mainstream’ obsessions of media and politics over borders and immigration, race and nation, xenophobia and Islamophobia. This necessarily includes examining, on the one hand, the parliamentary cretinism of PHONy (It’s OK to be White!), the anti-Indigenous racism associated with the failed ‘Voice’ campaign and the murderous brutality of the Australian border regime and, on the other hand, the deeper wells of ultra-nationalism, white supremacy and colonial-settlerism from which it draws and which form its foundations.
In essence: ‘Whoever is not prepared to talk about capitalism should also remain silent about fascism.’ ~ Max Horkheimer
True West explores myths of the West and how, if left unexamined, they distort the realities of the present and exacerbate polarizations. These misperceptions about land, politics, liberty, and self-determination threaten the wellbeing of western communities overrun by newcomers seeking a dream—and the country, unless America recognizes the dangers of building a national identity on illusion. Gaines Quammen interrogates it all by listening, carefully, to people from varying political and cultural perspectives as she seeks to reconcile the deep anger and broad misunderstandings that linger amid myths that define and impede the West and America.
4.30pm, Thursday, February 1, 2024 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website
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Tom Sewell’s ‘National Socialist Network’ held a gathering in Sydney this weekend, with approximately 60 or so members from Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania responding to the call.
Having assembled on Gadigal country on Invasion Day (January 26), the boys hopped on a train at Atarmon but were stopped by NSW police at North Sydney, removed and d0xxed. (While some wags have speculated that Tommeh! — noting the fuehrer’s previous boast that he was happy to hand over his members’ d0x to authorities in Victoria — is a federal informant, it’s far more likely that the simplest explanation is the right one: the boy from Balwyn is just a bit strategically inept.)
In any case, on International Holocaust Memorial Day (January 27), the boys then gathered at a scout hall in Turramurra North, where they were again subject to heavy manners by police.
Undeterred, today (January 28) Sewell & Co. tried to hold a picnic in a park — with by now predictable results.
No doubt more details regarding the composition of the little Nuremberg rally will be made public in future, but in the meantime, if I was to speculate on why the boys decided Sydney rather than Melbourne was the go this weekend, it’s because they may have decided that they’ve reached a limit in terms of recruitment in this city, and would very much like to revive things in the larger (see also : Neo-Nazi group ‘The Lads Society’ @ 34 Thomas Street, Ashfield, Sydney : Help shut it down!, November 19, 2018). Beyond that, some have asked why it appears that police in NSW appear to be rather less keen on nazi parades than their fellows in Victoria (who have a long record of facilitating such events). One partial explanation may be an understanding of the symbolism of a neo-Nazi assembly on the anniversary of the British Empire’s establishment of a penal colony in 1788, the potential mischief such a gathering may pose, and a desire to avoid it. Further, the powers granted by police to tell others to move on/bugger off under the terms of the Law Enforcement (Powers and Responsibilities) Act 2002 are extensive.
Look, for all the squawking: Which Melburnian hasn’t woken up one morning after a night on the tiles to find themselves facedown in a park in St Kilda at least once in their lives?
In any event, as in previous years, on January 26 there’s lots of stuff going on tomorrow.
This week on Yeah Nah Pasaran! on 3CR we talk to Crikey! It’s Cam Wilson! [X/Twitter]. Cam was a guest on the program in May 2022: in this episode, we spoke to him about some of his recent reportage on The Wonderful World of ‘Artificial Intelligence’, the alleged chanting of ‘Gas the Jews’ that took place at a rally at the Sydney Opera House in October, reporting on nazi weird0es, and Pete ‘My Sonnenrad Rules’ Evans.
Mr Wilson also announces that he’s working on a book dedicated to Australian conspiracy theorists. Scoop!
4.30pm, Thursday, January 25, 2024 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website
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4.30pm, Thursday, January 18, 2024 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website
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Two Greek anarchists are making molotov cocktails. One says to the other: "So who will we throw these at then?" The other replies: "What are you, some kind of fucking intellectual?"
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