C18 “terror machine” breaks down in Perth

OK, so I said I was taking a break, and I am, but before I do…

Three men have been arrested in Perth, two charged with “shooting at a Perth mosque” on February 4 of this year.

Two WA men arrested over mosque shooting
The Sydney Morning Herald (AAP)
May 25, 2010
Extremist group blamed for mosque shooting
ABC
May 25, 2010
‘Extremists’ charged over mosque shooting
Ronan O’Connell and AAP
The West Australian
May 25, 2010
Race hate group linked to mosque shooting
Chris Robinson
PerthNow
May 25, 2010

The angry Aryans are allegedly members of the Australian branch of ‘C18’ or ‘Combat 18’, a neo-Nazi organisation. C18 (18 = AH = Adolf Hitler) has its roots in the late 1980s, and the UK branch of ‘Blood & Honour’, another neo-Nazi network: one specialising in the production and distribution of neo-Nazi agitprop, especially muzak. (B&H takes its name from a Nazi-era slogan usually associated with the Hitler Yoof.) C18 itself was formed partly as a response to attacks by militant anti-fascists upon B&H activities in the UK, and in particular its organisation of gigs: one, perhaps final turning-point for B&H being the disruption of a major event in London in 1992 (see : Ian Stuart : Zero of the White Race, Skrewdriver, and “The Battle of Waterloo”, September 25, 2006). Effectively booted out of London, B&H has gone on to bigger and better things elsewhere, including in Australia, which can boast of being the first country outside of the UK to have a local franchise of the group.

The organisation — a network of like-minded individuals with a tiny membership, but global reach — has had many ups and downs over the ensuing decades, with various forms of mayhem, including murder, generally accompanying its sporadic activity. Currently, C18 is probably at its strongest in northern and eastern Europe. In Australia, in 2006, Peter Campbell (of the now-defunct ‘White Pride Coalition of Australia’) was responsible for distributing neo-Nazi agitprop sourced from a C18 magazine called The Stormer. (In 1997, English neo-Nazi Rob Gray was imprisoned for producing the magazine on behalf of West London C18: Der Stürmer (literally, “The Stormer”; or more accurately, “The Attacker”) was a weekly Nazi newspaper published by Julius Streicher from 1923 to 1945.) In the interim, C18 has apparently organised a few gigs (and other events), distributed neo-Nazi merch, and presumably engaged in all the other activities boneheads are known for.

Or at least, that’s what its website — http://www.terrormachine.net/ — claims (a site previously utilised by Swedish neo-Nazis; note that ‘terror machine’ is one of the nicknames given C18 by its supporters). The site was most recently registered to a Perth bloke named ‘Jake’. ‘Jake’, oddly enough, was also responsible for ensuring that ashes belonging to US nutzi criminal David Lane were scattered in Perth: see nutzis are W E I R D : David Lane’s Ashes (February 13, 2009). Local bands featured on the site are ‘Indigenous Hate’, ‘Southern Storm’ (sample lyric: “Niggers Jews and Communists / Look out scum you’re on our list!”) and, most recently, the site boasted of “our latest band the High Wycombe Hooligans”. Curiously, one of those arrested is reported to have been from the Perth suburb of High Wycombe.

(In Australia, B&H regularly organises gigs, the most recent being on the Gold Coast last month, the next being scheduled for Melbourne in September. The Victorian organiser for B&H is Justin O’Brien, who owns Hold Fast Body Art tattoo studio in Burwood.)

Given the publicity surrounding these arrests, and given also the rather more prolonged campaign engaged in by the neo-Nazis belonging to Jack Van Tongeren‘s ‘Australian Nationalists Movement’ or ‘ANM’ in the 1980s, it’s likely that the terrormachine site may be pulled.

Or maybe not: in these crazy, topsy-turvy times, who’s to say what’s right or wrong? In any event, the same merch — including the classic Freezer Full of Nigger Heads CD by Grinded Nig — is available for purchase from B&H by way of 9percent productions.

Probably the best published source on the origins of C18 is White Noise: inside the international nazi skinhead scene, edited by Nick Lowles and Steve Silver (Searchlight, 1998). A few tidbits:

Following the “debacle” at Waterloo, in 1991 Combat-18 was formed: “Its leader was Paul Sargent, Charlie to his mates, a man with a long history in the right wing and an even longer criminal record. Sargent had become active in the late 1970s, where he mixed football violence and drug dealing with a skinhead adolescence. A close friend for much of this period was Chris “Chubby” Henderson, lead singer of the right-wing band Combat 84 and a prominent figure in the notorious football gang, the Chelsea Headhunters. An even closer friend was Gary Hitchcock, formerly manager of the skinhead band 4-skins, and another Chelsea “face”.”

Steve “Jonesy” Jones, the lead singer of English Rose (now the lead singer of Tattooed Mother Fuckers) also gets a guernsey; the band were one of a number to eventually turn against C18, partly by aligning themselves with the British franchise of the Hammerskins. On C18, Jonesy wrote “There’s no room within our ranks for such pathetic fools, nor for the people who believe their lies and support their actions against racial brothers”.

In October 1996, Wilf “The Beast” Browning went to Sweden. Three months later, his Swedish comrade Thomas Nakaba posted letter bombs to an English TV personality, AFA and the third to the guitarist for Squadron. “The bombs never reached their targets. The police had infiltrated C18 to its very highest level, with its leader, Charlie Sargent, and possibly also his brother, Steve, tipping off police about the bombing campaign.”

100 Per Cent White — A Diverse Production for Channel 4. Filmed, produced and directed by Leo Regan — is an excellent (Geraldine Doogue:) “fascinating” documentary film, examining the lives of several boneheads (including Neil Parish) 10 years after the filmmaker first encountered them, at a time when they were each actively involved in C18 and allied groups.

See also : Blood and Honour vs. Blood and Honour (April 12, 2009) | Blood & Honour / C18 in Australia (February 26, 2008).

Bonus!