Nazi Brisbane? Tell him he’s dreaming.

[Update (April 30) : In just two days fascists will be gathering to march in Brisbane in support of Golden Dawn. Already over 350 people on Facebook have indicated they will oppose their presence. An antifascist from Melbourne writes:

Antifascist Greetings,

I’m part of the anti-Golden Dawn collective in Melbourne, so I can’t make it to this but I just wanted to send my solidarity to you all.

I can tell you that from the point of view of Golden Dawn, how this march looks in Greece is very important to them. They want to convey to their supporters at home that they have support and sympathy around the world and disrupting that is paramount.

On the other hand, anti-fascists in Greece will also be watching and a failure for GD will further boost morale in their struggle.

The whole of Greece will be watching!

It appears that GD have outsourced the organisation of such rallies to AFP (Sydney and Brisbane being the “strongest” AFP support bases) for the time being. I believe they are wanting to organise something in Melbourne after this. Again, a figurative bloodied nose can help stop this or any other escalation of their public presence.

Enough is enough.]

As noted previously, the Brisbane branch of the Australia First Party (AF) has organised a rally, march and picket in support of the Greek neo-Nazi organisation Golden Dawn (GD), which is currently the subject of a criminal investigation. “Of the party’s 16 MPs, 13 face charges of setting up a criminal organization and six of them, including party fuehrer Nikos Michaloliakos, are in pre-trial custody” (ekathimerini.com, April 25, 2014).

The Little Nuremberg rally is scheduled to begin at 11.30am on Friday, May 2 opposite The Greek Club in Musgrave Park and to include members of AF, GD, and various local nazis. Precisely how much support AF/GD have in Brisbane is unknown at this stage as the party has not held a public rally of this sort before. This may explain why AF spokesperson (and former One Nation Party candidate) Aaron Heaps has used the Stormfront website to implore every anti-Semite, neo-Nazi and White supremacist in Queensland to join him at Musgrave Park. Note that, according to a report recently released by the Southern Poverty Law Centre, “[n]early 100 people in the last five years have been murdered by active users of the leading racist website”.

Curiously, Musgrave Park is the site of the Brisbane Aboriginal-Sovereign Embassy; at the Invasion Day rally this year, a handful of AF members tried to disrupt proceedings. The choice of Musgrave Park as a rallying point — and the daft attempt to disrupt the Invasion Day march — suggest AF have few if any problems reminding local Indigenous peoples that this is (a) White Man’s Land

In any case, over 250 people have now indicated they may join a rally to counter the fascist mobilisation. A Community Organising Meeting Against Racism and Fascism is taking place at 6pm on Wednesday, April 30 to discuss how best to respond to the nazi march.

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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17 Responses to Nazi Brisbane? Tell him he’s dreaming.

  1. Antis & Nazis is just a game among bored subcultures says:

    Why do you bother? If AF want to support Golden Dawn, so what? Who interferes in your activities? You, Andy (and unlike others I accept that you’re Andy, and not this other), make a point of being the go-to man for an agenda that isn’t even warranted. From your own comments elsewhere here you acknowledge that the ‘Nazi’ factor is completely negligible in Australian politics and communities. You also know very well that the machinery of established government, and indeed international forces, would never even allow such a movement to be in this country. And that’s where you kind of shed your ‘anarchist’ skin and become an agent FOR that government. It would be more radical to SUPPORT the absolute 1% of outsider ideologies than join in the great coalition of liberals (and that even includes Liberals, or conservatives, who have very little to discern them from the supposedly left). I say that it would be more radical ‘cos they’re never going to win anyway. Jim Saleam isn’t under any illusion that AFP is going to top any elections. I believe it’s just a silly game. You folks put on hats and like Mods and Rockers once fought, you do so in a similar manner; based not on your heartfelt moral or political beliefs but on a need to gravitate to an identity. I’ve posted on your blog many times and you call me a Nazi. Heh, I don’t mind, but it’s absolutely untrue. There is no way on EARTH I’d ever tolerate a centralized government that controlled every facet of my being: from what I read to who I fucked. For that reason I’m not about to be hoodwinked by the great ‘diversity directorate’ that has uniformly erased the parent culture of England, for but one example, and sweeps through the Western world with this mission to essentially supplant anything that is Caucasian and male. We are being constantly bombarded with projections of an ‘ageing population’, a narrative that apparently necessitates wide immigration. I find this line being toted in all of the supposedly ‘White countries’. And supposedly, on this empirically untested pretext, we must therefore pull in as many culturally and racially extraneous groups as we can to bolster national numbers regardless of housing shortages, unemployment, and environmental considerations. It is mission of accretion, NOT as that misleading word always has us try to believe, ‘assimilation’. Our countries are just gigantic Westfield shopping complexes interested only in the shifting of units and the adding of profits. This is a single-minded anti-cultural ‘system’. We are regaled with statistics ever[y] so often that remind us that Anglo Saxons, or whatever group of Caucasian you belong to, are set to become minorities. This is again touted as a necessary, desirable, and laudable outcome of immigration policies: the tacit message being that the White race is so vile that it must be diluted, corroded, and replaced. If this were said about Africans, who only just recently great liberal darling Al Gore has conceded are over-breeding to the detriment of the sustainability of Africa’s ecology and social infrastructure, there would be tub-thumping of the most hysterical order. A non-biased appraisal of a country like Sweden, that is committing cultural suicide in the name of some egalitarian progress that isn’t even thanked by those who they defer their own existence to should be enough to make any unsullied mind sharp to what is clearly, and has long been, a sustained program. Golden Dawn may have beaten up a few immigrants, but as long as they challenge the REAL NAZI in the room, they shall always have my support. And any real anarchist would support them, too, instead of coalescing with the usual state goons. There is NOTHING on the other side of Greek politics that isn’t sordid, corrupt, and hasn’t breached the tenets of democracy: GD are, after all, a democratically elected party.

  2. @ndy says:

    Why do you bother? If AF want to support Golden Dawn, so what? Who interferes in your activities?

    I don’t think the reasons are that obscure: GD are a neo-Nazi organisation which, with the support of the Greek state, has grown to become a real problem. I have comrades in Greece fighting GD and one of the few ways that I can support them is by trying to limit the effectiveness of GD in Australia.

    You, Andy (and unlike others I accept that you’re Andy, and not this other), make a point of being the go-to man for an agenda that isn’t even warranted. From your own comments elsewhere here you acknowledge that the ‘Nazi’ factor is completely negligible in Australian politics and communities.

    Kinda … my position as being any kind of authority on the subject of the far right in Australia has happened more-or-less by chance — or default: there are very few others examining the subject in a way that is accessible and/or popular. And I don’t know what you think The Agenda is, but judging by your following commentary I understand it to be something like the destruction of Western civilisation …

    As for the marginality of neo-Nazi politics in Australia, yes of course it’s a marginal phenomenon. On the other hand, it draws upon and expresses certain tendencies within Australian society that are similarly objectionable: principally, racism and xenophobia. To put it another way, neo-Nazism and the far right in general may be understood as symptoms of a broader disease.

    You also know very well that the machinery of established government, and indeed international forces, would never even allow such a movement to be in this country. And that’s where you kind of shed your ‘anarchist’ skin and become an agent FOR that government. It would be more radical to SUPPORT the absolute 1% of outsider ideologies than join in the great coalition of liberals (and that even includes Liberals, or conservatives, who have very little to discern them from the supposedly left). I say that it would be more radical ‘cos they’re never going to win anyway. Jim Saleam isn’t under any illusion that AFP is going to top any elections. I believe it’s just a silly game. You folks put on hats and like Mods and Rockers once fought, you do so in a similar manner; based not on your heartfelt moral or political beliefs but on a need to gravitate to an identity.

    I doubt very much that neo-Nazism will become any kind of political force in the short- to medium- term. Then again, some other species of right-wing nationalism may be able to accrue a certain amount of influence. And yes, it would be as the result of struggle — but then that’s life eh? But opposing neo-Nazism (or fascism, or racism, or ultra-right-wing nationalism) does not place me in the camp of government. I have my own ideas about social change which are antithetical to ‘government’. On the basis of this understanding it would not be ‘radical’ to ‘support’ neo-Nazism but quite stoopid.

    Re what Saleam believes is possible, while he did once declare that he was going to snatch the seat of Cook from Morrison (and got 0.7% of the vote for his troubles), no I don’t believe he thinks Australia First is going to assume the commanding heights any time soon. That doesn’t mean he can’t be a pest though, as his considerable criminal and political record will attest.

    I’ve posted on your blog many times and you call me a Nazi. Heh, I don’t mind, but it’s absolutely untrue. There is no way on EARTH I’d ever tolerate a centralized government that controlled every facet of my being: from what I read to who I fucked. For that reason I’m not about to be hoodwinked by the great ‘diversity directorate’ that has uniformly erased the parent culture of England, for but one example, and sweeps through the Western world with this mission to essentially supplant anything that is Caucasian and male.

    I tend to adopt a hostile approach to rude critics, especially when they write in support of Saleam, AF and GD. My bad.

    The ‘parent culture’ of England erased? Complete nonsense. Australia is a constitutional monarchy FFS. (What this supposed erasure has to do with your alleged resistance to totalitarianism I dunno.) Presumably, you resent the fact that a sizeable minority of the Australian population is of non-Anglo-background. Certainly, you appear to read this fact as evidence of some kinda global conspiracy to “supplant anything that is Caucasian and male”, another ridiculous notion.

    We are being constantly bombarded with projections of an ‘ageing population’, a narrative that apparently necessitates wide immigration. I find this line being toted in all of the supposedly ‘White countries’. And supposedly, on this empirically untested pretext, we must therefore pull in as many culturally and racially extraneous groups as we can to bolster national numbers regardless of housing shortages, unemployment, and environmental considerations. It is mission of accretion, NOT as that misleading word always has us try to believe, ‘assimilation’. Our countries are just gigantic Westfield shopping complexes interested only in the shifting of units and the adding of profits. This is a single-minded anti-cultural ‘system’. We are regaled with statistics ever[y] so often that remind us that Anglo Saxons, or whatever group of Caucasian you belong to, are set to become minorities. This is again touted as a necessary, desirable, and laudable outcome of immigration policies: the tacit message being that the White race is so vile that it must be diluted, corroded, and replaced. If this were said about Africans, who only just recently great liberal darling Al Gore has conceded are over-breeding to the detriment of the sustainability of Africa’s ecology and social infrastructure, there would be tub-thumping of the most hysterical order. A non-biased appraisal of a country like Sweden, that is committing cultural suicide in the name of some egalitarian progress that isn’t even thanked by those who they defer their own existence to should be enough to make any unsullied mind sharp to what is clearly, and has long been, a sustained program.

    Strewth. Ever heard of paragraphs?

    Yes, the fact that Australia has an ageing population is often invoked by government, especially in order to justify a whole range of policies. It’s the economy, stupid, and the rhetoric of those assuming responsibility for managing capitalism. So yeah: nation-states are markets, for labour and any number of other commodities, and they’re administered in the interests of those institutions, principally corporations, which dominate the economy.

    Regarding demographic change, I disagree. I don’t think it’s the case that “We are regaled with statistics ever[y] so often that remind us that Anglo Saxons, or whatever group of Caucasian you belong to, are set to become minorities” etc. I especially don’t agree that “the tacit message [is] that the White race is so vile that it must be diluted, corroded, and replaced”. As well as evincing confusion about the status and meaning of ‘Anglo-Saxon’, ‘Caucasian’ and ‘White’ as descriptive terms, there’s no ‘message’ other than the one you read into such changes.

    Golden Dawn may have beaten up a few immigrants, but as long as they challenge the REAL NAZI in the room, they shall always have my support. And any real anarchist would support them, too, instead of coalescing with the usual state goons. There is NOTHING on the other side of Greek politics that isn’t sordid, corrupt, and hasn’t breached the tenets of democracy: GD are, after all, a democratically elected party.

    GD have done much more than “beaten up a few immigrants” and you would do well to examine their record as the enthusiastic lackeys of Greek business and government interests before you make such claims. Indeed, you’re completely ignorant of GD’s record and their role as a paramilitary force tasked with helping to repress political opposition in Greece. Naturally, anarchists in Greece, Australia, Canada, the United States and elsewhere oppose GD, and will continue to do so.

  3. Miss Delicious says:

    Αυτό υποστηρικτής της Χρυσής Αυγής είναι ηλίθιος και φασίστας.

  4. Doug says:

    Hey @ndy, that last paragraph reminded me of something an old timer said to me the other day, as far as you’re aware is there any truth in the stories about “Nazis” or “The Nazi Party” working with the cops rounding up/ beating up protestors at the anti Vietnam war rallies in Sydney in the early ’70’s?

  5. Ablokeimet says:

    Just a couple of points:

    1. A Fascist group is a standing conspiracy to murder. Andy notes above that participants in the Stormfront web site have murdered nearly 100 people in the last 5 years.

    2. The appropriate response to would-be murderers is not debate, but reasonable force in self defence.

  6. The SPLC lies says:

    The SPLC is NOT a trustworthy source, but the multi-million dollar vehicle of Morris Dees, that doesn’t do ANYTHING to address poverty. That figure regarding Stormfront is ludicrous. The majority of those supposed murders (77) included those killed by Anders Breivik, who posted about three or four times, and was banned. Breivik is NOT regarded as a White Nationalist. The management of SF distances itself from all maniacs, and the remainder were fringe-dwellers, who you can find named on SF, who posted three or four times. In one case the killer (I believe who shot some sub-continentals in the US) was a band member promoting his group. There is NO history of psychos being given coaching in murder at Stormfront. The rules are quite severe and the site’s owner, Don Black, is understandably anxious to keep such losers off the site. How many killers have there been on Facebook? Or Twitter? Do we keep stats on that? Is this an examination of ‘extremists’ or a reality of social media? Because it’s inevitable that fanatics and loons will be drawn to a site like Stormfront but it doesn’t mean that Stormfront wants them. The SPLC is an organisation with an agenda that has its own skeletons in its closet in regards to sneaky tricks, and dirty dealings. This is the mob that lists Ramzpaul as a White Supremacist, and he’s certainly not. When the SPLC released that hit piece, from which that figure was taken, it was picked up by news service after news service without a single journalist bothering to examine the source of those statistics: they just swallowed them whole.

  7. @ndy says:

    I suggest you read the report.

    On Breivik and Stormfront:

    Hours before he began his terror campaign, Breivik E-mailed a copy of his racist manifesto to two other influential Stormfront members, Billy Joe Roper (see related story, p. XX) and Timothy Gallaher Murdock, who runs the racist WhiteRabbitRadio.net. In his manifesto, Breivik claimed he was banned from Stormfront, though a search shows no suspension. Breivik later admitted he was not removed as a registered member.

    “I was never kicked out of Stormfront,” he said last September. “Instead, I attacked them in the compendium in order to protect them … [as] an army of leftist journalists otherwise would strike hard.”

    The remaining killers named — Buford O’Neil Furrow, Richard Scott Baumhammers, Ian Andrew Bishop, James “Yankee Jim” Leshkevich, Curtis Boone Maynard, Richard Andrew Poplawski, Jason Todd Ready, Luka Rocco Magnotta and Wade Michael Page — were not “fringe-dwellers” who posted “three or four times”, but often dedicated users of Stormfront and similar sites (VNN etc) and — in the case of Page — a member of a neo-Nazi group (Hammerskins) (or in your terminology “a band member promoting his group”).

    Stormfront attracts “too many (racist] sociopaths” wrote convicted terrorist and Stormfront owner Don Black after Breivik did his thing in Norway. Of course, Stormfront (ie Black and his cohorts) don’t want to become known as simply a virtual repository for White supremacist malcontents — unless, perhaps, those losers are willing to halp Black to generate the money he makes by maintaining his site.

  8. patrick says:

    I wonder what the Greeks think about the fact that Australia First is led by an Arab. What do the Greeks think of an Arab that tries to pass himself off as Greek so that WN forums accept him and his party of losers.
    What does it say about the Australian nazis that although they claim to be White Nationalists, they happily take orders from an Arab named Saleam.

  9. patrick says:

    If anyone was in doubt about the stupidity of Stormfront members, this post from Stormfront should tell you everything you wanted to know.

    Today, 04:07 AM #31
    AussieEarlTurner
    “Friend of Stormfront”
    Sustaining Member

    AussieEarlTurner’s Avatar

    Join Date: Oct 2011
    Posts: 320
    AussieEarlTurner
    Default Re: Golden Dawn Picket.

    More information on this CFMEU crew please. I spend my life on building sites and I will fix their little red wagon.

    Preferably the leader, looks, height, name if you have it. Any car rego ?

    All the info you have please.

    I tried to get off work early, but was unable to get there today..

    Yes these children are tough from the safety of their keyboards, but if anything happens to the union leader, the first person the police will be talking to is this idiot from SF. I am betting the first charge will be conspiracy.

  10. Pingback: Australia First / Golden Dawn defeated 1-0 by Antifa | slackbastard

  11. hello says:

    hello @ndy,

    I am not a fascist or far-right sympathiser, so it pains me to agree with one. But the first commenter had a point before he started rambling about racial conspiracies, and blogs like this and groups like FDB worry me almost as much as AF- maybe more, since they seem to be more organised and have more supporters, even if they’re not racist mouthbreathers.

    The far-right in Australia are pathetic. They have no support, no organization, and even though many Australians may at times express racist attitudes they have never (and certainly won’t in this day & age) countenanced support for political extremism. The far-right are a joke and exert zero influence on Australian politics.

    10 AF members turned up to the pro-GD demo. 10! That is nothing. Yet, 200+ antifa and unionists turned up to the counter-demo, which made it a much bigger deal, necessitating police, press, etc. Imagine if no antifa had turned up- the sight of 10 rather sad individuals marching down a street waving flags would have caused a few puzzled looks from passers-by at most, and I doubt whether it would have made any impression on the MSM or the general public. By focusing on these people so much, you are giving them oxygen. I suspect it really IS because it gives you an identity, a very visible enemy to ‘combat’, gives you something to DO. And the far-right love it too deep down, I’m sure, for the same reasons. People are actually paying attention to them! Wow! They have enemies to combat! Fun! The far-left and far-right feed off each other.

    After 1945, the Left in the UK found it was far more effective to ignore Mosley’s Union Movement than to actively oppose it, because it deprived it of press publicity completely, and the lack of excitement made being a fascist rather drab and boring- so their membership dropped off. Why not try to do the same? Surely you have bigger fish to fry- like corporate lobbyists and the Liberal-Labor duopoly, who I agree should be opposed? They have a far greater negative influence on our society.

    And finally, and this is a kicker- Australia is a democracy, although maybe you’d disagree. I’m sure as an anarchist you believe in some form of democracy, and even if Australia doesn’t measure up you can at least contend that our political system does allow people to exercise certain rights, even if not to the degree that you might like. The AF and other fringe groups have just as much right to hold marches in our society as SALT or other Left groups do to organise BDS protests or to demonstrate in front of detention centres. By focusing on these groups, by ‘combating’ them, you are suggesting you do not believe they have this right- that because they would deny rights to others or do not measure up to a certain progressive checklist, their own rights are invalidated. Not only does going down that route to me seem very dangerous (people could easily draw the same conclusions about groups on the hard Left), I really fail to see how it in any way measures up with your own professed interest in extending liberty. It’s like you are saying- “I want people to have more freedom- but only the kind that I approve of”. Very odd.

  12. patrick says:

    If Andy does not speak out about the Aus First Party and if no one else does, then they are free to continue to lie without anyone calling them out on their hypocritical bullshit.
    Over the last 5-6 years the Aus First Party have incorrectly identified Andy as being 5 different people, the result every time is that the far right goes hysterical in their rantings of tracking down said person and bashing them.
    The other year they set up a fake Facebook account and tried to paint a NSW school teacher as being a pedophile, so that he would be sacked and possibly jailed, just because this person had spoken out against them. That is the type of gutless despicable cowards they truly are and people need to be told the truth about them.
    As they say, all it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.
    Wouldn’t you want someone to speak up for you if you were being lied about and attempts were made by the Aus First Party and its friends to make you out to be a rock spider?

  13. Felix Wilde says:

    @hello,
    Do you think that opposing someone’s actions necessarily means that you oppose their right to act? Or that supporting your opponents’ right to self expression means you must censor your own? The fash expressed themselves as is their right, and antifa responded in kind. Rather than dictatorship, this is democracy in action. That you think people of opposing viewpoints using their free speech to promote their views and criticise their opponents’ views in a public forum is somehow un- or anti-democratic is quite simply baffling.

    I refer you to this xkcd comic if the issue is somehow still escaping you.

  14. @ndy says:

    hello hello,

    … blogs like this and groups like FDB worry me almost as much as AF- maybe more, since they seem to be more organised and have more supporters, even if they’re not racist mouthbreathers.

    It’s a little difficult for me to respond to this as I’m not sure exactly why my blog and others like it (feel free to inform me what these blogs are — I’m honestly unaware of too many like mine) worry you so much. Presumably your concerns are of a nature similar to that expressed below.

    The far-right in Australia are pathetic. They have no support, no organization, and even though many Australians may at times express racist attitudes they have never (and certainly won’t in this day & age) countenanced support for political extremism. The far-right are a joke and exert zero influence on Australian politics.

    Yes. And no. How big and what influence the far right in Australia exerts obviously depends upon how you define it. Australia First is a minor political party. It has 500+ members and a base in Sydney — the same base (literally) as National Action once used. Its establishment by former Labor MP Graeme Campbell in 1996 was immediately eclipsed by the emergence of One Nation (which Campbell then joined), allowing it to eventually fall into the lap of Dr James Saleam.

    At its peak in 1998, ON won almost 1 in 4 votes in Queensland and 11 seats in the QLD parliament. Its last MP, Rosa Lee Long, lost her seat in 2009.

    The rise and fall of ON is another story, but I think its capacity to develop that level of support in such a short period of time demonstrates that political outsiders espousing some version of racist, right-wing populism can gain a not insignificant degree of political support and influence. I think this is the case not only in terms of the capacity of any one group (such as ON) to enter parliament but for these and other, similar political expressions to help shift the political terrain to the right. Hanson herself later complained that a number of her key policies (eg the abolition of ATSIC) were adopted by the ‘mainstream’. Whatever you think of ATSIC, I think this fact draws into question the relationship of the right (whether ‘populist’ or ‘extremist’) to the political mainstream, as well as suggest that the political stage is sometimes more unstable than is commonly accepted.

    In summary, while there’s certainly humour to be found in the sometimes witless excursions of the far right into political action (see AF’s dismal rally), the sentiments which animate them and which they express, however crudely, do resonate in ways that go beyond their immediate and short-term prospects of success. I would also add that while the problems the far right poses rarely impose themselves upon the political mainstream, they can have effects upon others (see National Action) in ways that are harmful, even murderous.

    10 AF members turned up to the pro-GD demo. 10! That is nothing. Yet, 200+ antifa and unionists turned up to the counter-demo, which made it a much bigger deal, necessitating police, press, etc. Imagine if no antifa had turned up- the sight of 10 rather sad individuals marching down a street waving flags would have caused a few puzzled looks from passers-by at most, and I doubt whether it would have made any impression on the MSM or the general public. By focusing on these people so much, you are giving them oxygen. I suspect it really IS because it gives you an identity, a very visible enemy to ‘combat’, gives you something to DO. And the far-right love it too deep down, I’m sure, for the same reasons. People are actually paying attention to them! Wow! They have enemies to combat! Fun! The far-left and far-right feed off each other.

    Kinda. There were slightly more than 10 individuals who came to Musgrave Park to support AF and GD. Further, a handful of boneheads arrived late and attempted to attach themselves to a union delegation; I imagine a handful of others came and then left before participating. Iggy Gavrilidis, the leader of GD in Australia, has posted a couple of photos, not taken at the rally, which include other supporters (though why none of these came to the rally is unexplained) …

    Be that as it may, I think the fact that the 10 or however many AF/GD supporters attended were considerably outnumbered by opponents is a Good thing. I also think it’s a Good thing that the nazis were unable to rally, march or to picket as a result of the action. I think the reasons for that are precisely because people organised themselves to take this action. Further, it was obviously unknown how many AF/GD supporters would attend prior to the event: AF had appealed to every nazi in QLD to come and join them. In this sense it was an experiment. By the same token, the audience for the event was both local and Greek. In Greece, GD is a serious problem (as well as being a neo-Nazi party that has experienced dramatic growth) and the action was undertaken in solidarity with antifascists in Greece.

    Finally, I’m very familiar with the argument that the far right should be ignored (which is precisely what the vast majority of Australians do) and that left to their own devices they will simply run around in circles. There’s some truth to this proposition: the calibre of recruits to far right organisations is generally fairly low. However, and rather obviously, I think this approach is flawed. Assuming ignorance and laissez-faire approaches are not worthwhile, the real question then becomes what kind of response do these groups and ideologies merit in contemporary Australia?

    Individuals who belong on the far right may derive some twisted sense of validation from the fact that I happen to pay them some attention, but it’s my sense that in actual fact I’m loathed and detested and they wish someone would kill me or otherwise shut me up. I think that’s precisely because I (along with many others) have played a role in ensuring that they remain squawking on the political sidelines.

    And I think that, too, is a Good thing.

    After 1945, the Left in the UK found it was far more effective to ignore Mosley’s Union Movement than to actively oppose it, because it deprived it of press publicity completely, and the lack of excitement made being a fascist rather drab and boring- so their membership dropped off.

    I don’t believe this is correct. Whatever the activity of the Left in the UK as a whole during this period (a Big topic), opposition to Mosley and related groups was certainly undertaken by others, especially the 43 Group. They were a group of militant anti-fascist Jews who conducted a years-long campaign against re-emergent fascist and neo-Nazi tendencies — and by their own account a highly-successful one:

    With reference to the UK, a rough parallel may be drawn in reference to AFA and its activities in the 1980s and 1990s opposing the NF, BNP etc.

    Why not try to do the same? Surely you have bigger fish to fry- like corporate lobbyists and the Liberal-Labor duopoly, who I agree should be opposed? They have a far greater negative influence on our society.

    I write about a variety of subjects aside from the far right. This year, in addition to the far right, I have written (and spoken) about: the (boycott of the) Sydney Biennale (and attendant issues); the Sydney Anarchist Bookfair; a local anarchist zine; the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse; the civil war in the Ukraine; Napthine’s Silencing Act; reportage on the upcoming G20 meeting in Brisbane; the Wikileaks Party; ASIO (including interviewing the director of the recent documentary on the agency) and more besides. If you check my blog, in the course of making 3,351 posts over the last 8 1/2 years or so I’ve covered a large range of issues, many relating to “corporate lobbyists and the Liberal-Labor duopoly”.

    More later maybe.

  15. patrick says:

    @ The SPLC Lies, you state that Don Black is anxious to keep losers off his site.
    The only people Don really does not want on his site are those that ask certain embarrassing questions such as why does his wife work helping Cubans and African Americans? Why did he attempt to put a Negro into power when he was a Grand Dragon of the KKK? Why is he good friends with Jared Taylor, leader of American Renaissance, who claims Jews are White, which goes against everything Stormfront stands for? Don also bans anyone who asks where the donations truly go.
    Don will ban anyone who does not go along with his views, even though he is a hypocritical parasite that leeches off everyone. Ask Don why is it that while other far right leaders get thrown into jail in Europe, David Duke is allowed to move around at will.
    You say that the SPLC lies, Stormfront is no better. Try making a post proving that James Saleam is non white. You will be banned for telling the truth. Stormfront does not want to know the truth, it just wants its role playing members to hand over their money. Other than living off donations, what has Don Black ever done for a living?

  16. Barbara says:

    I know it has nothing to do with the article but… do they know that the symbol of the party is quite similar to the NIS (New Israeli Shekel) symbol?

  17. patrick says:

    @Barbara, they would not know or care. Your average nazi has no idea that the Swastika for example has been and is still used by many non white cultures. Why would the idiots supporting golden dawn be any different?

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