Brenner, BDS, ADL, APDM, APP… A storm in a chocolate mug?

Last month in Melbourne, a protest rally outside of a local Max Brenner outlet resulted in 19 arrests (further arrests took place weeks later). The protest was preceded in June by another in Sydney at which two protesters were arrested. In Brisbane on the weekend, another rally outside a Max Brenner outlet was organised. On this occasion, the rally was confronted with a counter-rally, composed of a number of Zionists (among them Logan City councillor Hajnal Black, who responds to critics here), Tory students and, notably, members of a local radical right-wing group known as the ‘Australian Patriots Defence Movement’ (see : Chocolate war gets messy, Ellen Lutton, Brisbane Times, August 28, 2011). The APDM had previously organised a rally on August 6 calling on Australian governments to ‘ban the burqa’.

Further rallies against Max Brenner in Melbourne and Sydney are being planned for Friday, September 9 and Saturday, September 10 (respectively). A counter-protest is being organised in Sydney by the Australian Protectionist Party and the Australian Defence League. The APP hope to scare away the “sandal wearing, mobile compost heap, muesli chewing, no dedorant [sic] mob of leftards” who will be outside the chocolate shop, while the ADL will be defending Brenner from Muslim occupation… or something.

The NSW leader of the APP, Darrin Hodges, is an ex-Stormfront forum member who once opined that “[Hitler] laid a foundation that we should build on” but who now identifies The Muslim rather than The Jew as being Public Enemy #1. Martin Brennan, the former leader of the ADL, was last month deported back to England as an illegal immigrant but looks forward to joining the EDL as they attempt to march through Tower Hamlets on September 3 (slight problem being police have banned the march). One of Brennan’s closest supporters was another foreigner named Roberta Moore, former leader of the EDL’s ‘Jewish Division’: on the one hand, Moore was unhappy with the number of ‘Nazis’ belonging to the group; on the other hand, the EDL was unhappy with Moore’s cultivating links with the ‘Jewish Task Force’.

Otherwise, the coming together of Zionists and the far right — whether in defence of Israeli businesses or as part of a broader political campaign — appears to be evolving here in a similar manner to that in which it’s unfolded on other islands. An account of this re-alignment on the part of the European far right is examined in ‘From Meta-Politics To Mass Murder – A New Right-Wing Extremism’ (anarkisterna.com, August 25, 2011) while in Australia an ‘Open Letter to Friends and Comrades on the Struggle against Racism amongst the Class’ addresses similar issues in a local context.

See also : Anti-Israel bullies’ hard-centre bites in chocolate shop campaign, Cameron Stewart, The Australian, August 20, 2011.

About @ndy

I live in Melbourne, Australia. I like anarchy. I don't like nazis. I enjoy eating pizza and drinking beer. I barrack for the greatest football team on Earth: Collingwood Magpies. The 2024 premiership's a cakewalk for the good old Collingwood.
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7 Responses to Brenner, BDS, ADL, APDM, APP… A storm in a chocolate mug?

  1. Shockadelic says:

    Somehow, even when “Nazis” defend Jews, you still have a problem.
    A lot of realignments have happened since 1945. Try catching up.

  2. @ndy says:

    Which book examining the history of the post-WWII European far right would you recommend I read Daryl?

  3. Shockadelic says:

    Unlike some people my mind doesn’t consist of copy-paste-copy-paste.
    I can actually think.

    I think you’ll find the Zoroastrian days of Grand Vision #1 battles Grand Vision #2 are over.
    It is an inevitable consequence of the information age and its personalisation.
    No Grand Vision ever really satisfied everyone, and certainly won’t today.

    It is not as odd as you think to find people forming alliances over one issue, while being opposed on another.
    The ADL can attract White nationalists, gays, Sikhs and Jews under one banner *because* it’s a single issue they can all rally behind. Their differences on other issues are technically irrelevant.
    In the ’70s we saw Christian fundamentalists and feminists link arms over pornography.
    Get out of your Light Side/Dark Side mentality, Andy. That only works in the movies.

    Recommended reading: The 33 Strategies of War, Robert Greene.

  4. @ndy says:

    I’ll take that as a ‘no’.

  5. Paul Justo says:

    Stoopid Aussie bogans could learn something from the MI5 former chief who decries the ‘war on terror’.

    Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller uses BBC lecture to criticise ‘unhelpful’ term, attack Iraq invasion and suggest al-Qaida talks

    Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, delivered a withering attack on the invasion of Iraq, decried the term “war on terror”, and held out the prospect of talks with al-Qaida.

    Recording her first BBC Reith lecture on the theme, Securing Freedom, she made clear she believed the UK and US governments had not sufficiently understood the resentment that had been building up among Arab people, which was only compounded by the war against Iraq.

    Before an audience which included Theresa May, the home secretary, she also said the 9/11 attacks were “a crime, not an act of war”. “So I never felt it helpful to refer to a war on terror”.

    Young Arabs, she said, had no opportunity to choose their own rulers. “For them an external enemy was a unifying way to address some of their frustrations.”They were also united by the plight of Palestinians, a view that the west was exploiting their oil and supporting dictators. “It was wrong to say all terrorists belonged to al-Qaida,” added Manningham-Buller.

    Pursuing a theme which some in the audience may have been astounded to hear from a former boss of MI5, she said terrorist campaigns ? she mentioned Northern Ireland as an example ? could not be solved militarily. She described the invasion of Iraq as a “distraction in the pursuit of al-Qaida”. She added: “Saddam Hussein was a ruthless dictator but neither he nor his regime had anything to do with 9/11.” The invasion, she said, “provided an arena for jihad”, spurring on UK citizens to resort to terror.

    September 11 was a “monstrous crime” but it needed a considered response, an appreciation of the causes and roots of terrorism, she said later in answers to questions. She said she hoped there were those ? she implied in western governments ? who were considering having “talks with al-Qaida”.

    Some way must be found of approaching them, she suggested, though she said she did not know how, at the moment, that could be done.

    Manningham-Buller, who retired in 2007, attacked the invasion of Iraq in an interview with the Guardian in 2009. However, she has never before expressed such antipathy towards the prevailing policies and rhetoric of the government which she had to endure when she was in office. The lecture is to be broadcast on Radio 4 on 6 September, and entitled Terror.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/sep/02/mi5-war-on-terror-criticism

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