[Update (March 26, 2024) : Self-described ‘nationalist’ speaks at anti-trans rights rally on Victoria parliament steps, Benita Kolovos, The Guardian, March 26, 2024. TLDR : Mr Trihey denies being a neo-Nazi and apologises for drawing undue attention to his presence on the day.]
Matt Trihey of the ‘National Workers Alliance’ addresses the ‘Women Will Speak’ anti-trans rally, Naarm/Melbourne, March 23, 2024.
Yeah so anyway, Michelle Uriarau (AKA the co-founder of the ‘Women’s Action Group’ and ‘Mana Wāhine Kōrero’) organised an anti-trans rally on Saturday on the steps of the Victorian state parliament. Scheduled to coincide with the first anniversary of the 2023 stoopid and titled ‘Women Will Speak’ — M’lady’s publicity stunt was titled ‘Let Women Speak’ — the rally was, predictably, a somewhat farcical affair, and produced pretty much what you’d expect it would: a smol gathering of TERFs, sympathisers, a large number of supportive cookers, and a handful of known neo-Nazis and other ‘interesting’ Volk.
Along, of course, with a shedload of police and a mildly-rowdy, quite-noisy and somewhat-disruptive counter-rally.
(Note that police arrested two attendees for wandering in the direction of the rally while shouting for nazis to go away. These scenes of incredible carnage naturally triggered calls by various members of the commentariat for more police and more police powers.)
The most prominent neo-Nazis to attend Uriarau’s event were a bloke called Matt Trihey and another known as ‘Philfy’. Herr Trihey is currently the lvl boss of a NEW! neo-Nazi groupuscule called the ‘National Workers Alliance’ (NWA). It shares the anxieties of others with regards the subversion of the gendered order by unruly members of various LGBTQIA+ communities and it was in this capacity that, in order to ensure that he and other supporters of ‘Women Will Speak’ could be heard over the protestations of the counter-rally, Trihey kindly provided his PA to a grateful Urirarau. Beyond this, Mr. Trihey is also a former MMA and member of the defunct neo-Nazi groupuscule ‘The Lads Society’ (for whom he provided some martial arts training). In the last few years, however, Trihey’s played a more prominent role in local cooker organising, whose weekly tramps through the city on a Saturday condemning #DictatorDan and proclaiming their commitment to freedumbs from Big Pharma often end at the steps of parliament and its environs.
As for The Lads Society, it was established on the ruins of the ‘United Patriots Front’ and dissolved towards the end of 2019 following the collapse of its ‘social club’ in Cheltenham. From the ashes of The Lads, its lvl boss Tom Sewell then created the European Australian Movement/National Socialist Network, which also incorporated members of the similarly defunct ‘Antipodean Resistance’ and various other tiny neo-Nazi fractions. Both Sewell and The Lads gained some smol notoriety for trying to recruit the Christchurch killer, and while that event has largely been forgotten in Australia, its fifth anniversary was just a week ago. In any case, like Trihey & Co. this year, Sewell and the EAM/NSN attended Lady Parker’s publicity stunt last year both in order to help women speak but also to get their very important message across (albeit rather more crudely than other attendees):
More generally, while Victorian state MP David Limbrick was present, fellow MP (and anti-abortion activist) Moira Deeming was absent this year. Of course, Deeming is suing Victorian Liberals lvl boss John Pesutto for defamation for allegedly calling her a ‘nazi’, so this was probably for the best. Still, in this context, it’s worth considering Deeming’s address to Warren Mundine’s ‘Conservative Political Action Conference’ last year, because:
a) Lady Parker obtained support from CPAC for the tour (see also : Dave Pellowe/Church And State);
b) Despite their attendance at and support for Parker’s event, Deeming took the opportunity at CPAC to declare that the NSN are ‘socialists’ and therefore indistinguishable from the other ‘socialists’ who opposed their presence on the day. For intellectual support for this position see also Peter van Onselen, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells and Over 9,000 right-wing bloggers. For a refutation by people who can read, see Nazism, socialism and the falsification of history (Matt Fitzpatrick and A. Dirk Moses, ABC Religion & Ethics, August 20, 2018);
c) The conference she spoke at was sponsored by Christian nationalist crowdfunder ‘Give Send Go’, which the NSN has used to raise tens of thousands of dollars to support these and other actions (see, for example, Prosecutor seeks jail for neo-Nazis who attacked hikers in Victorian bush, Kristian Silva, ABC, March 22, 2024 and Nazis in Sydney : Groundhog Day, January 30, 2024).
In my view, last year’s anti-trans stoopid outside the Victorian parliament helped to reinforce a real split between ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’ within the Victorian Liberals, and seems to have played no small role in accelerating a decline in the party’s fortunes (as well as creating a lawyer’s picnic).
And oh yeah.
Phillip Simpson (AKA ‘Philfy’) is a batshit nazi from Queensland, whom I last recall from threatening to arrange for local (?!) members of the Ukrainian Azov Assault Brigade to destroy an anti-fascist gig in Naarm last year. (Reader, they did not attend.) You may also remember Philfy from such headlines as Video: Watch the moment a Logan man live streams own arrest outside shopping centre (Danielle Buckley, The Courier Mail, July 1, 2021).
On the day, Philfy wore a tee that proclaimed that he was a ‘Real Woman’ on the front and a member of a ‘Right Wing Death Squad’ on the back. Oddly, besides dictators like Augusto Pinochet and mass murderers like Mauricio Garcia, another fan of RWDS is Timmeh! Wilms of far-right propaganda network The UnHinged. Timmeh! once hosted a vodcast with cooker, ex-Proud Boy, ex-NSN member, sometime-rapper and now (?) Fink Jarrad ‘Jaz’ Searby, but also, happily enough, was afforded the opportunity to interview Deeming about the ‘March for the Babies’ a few years ago (another right-wing rally to attract the participation and support of neo-Nazis, White supremacists and other fascist bizarr0s).
Finally, also in attendance (and attracting some negative attention from elements of the counter-rally) was Shayne W, better known as the cooker/livestreamer ‘Auditing Australia’.
More later …
See/hear also : Clashes, anger and arrests in Melbourne as ‘neo-Nazis’ allegedly show up at gender-critical rally, Hilary Mitchell, Pink News, March 23, 2024 /// Police defend using pepper spray at #WomenWillSpeak rally on Victoria parliament steps, Benita Kolovos, The Guardian, March 24, 2024 | The right-wing ‘union’ bringing anti-trans activists to Australia, Parker McKenzie, The New Daily, February 13, 2024 and, on a related note : Taking White Supremacist Talking Points Mainstream, Matt McManus and Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs, September 2, 2022 | Yeah Nah Pasaran! #160 w Alex Hinton on 2023 CPAC, anti-trans politics, genocide and justice : May 4, 2023 /// Yeah Nah Pasaran! #122 w Heron Greenesmith on the right & anti-LGBTQI politics in the United States : June 30, 2022.
