antifa notes (april 12, 2016) : hard times for patriots

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April 4 was the one-year anniversary of the first ‘Reclaim Australia’ rally. The occasion prompted me to write a few lines on my Facebook page (see below). Since then:

• The United Patriots Front (UPF) has engaged in another publicity stunt, unfurling a banner at the local AFL derby in Perth (April 9). See : United Patriots Front evicted from West Coast vs Fremantle game for anti-mosque banner, ABC, April 10, 2016.

• Several members and/or close associates of the UPF — Ralph Cerminara, Blair Cottrell and Neil Erikson — have been nominated to appear in the Magistrates Court in Maryborough on Thursday, April 14, to respond to an application for an intervention order by a former associate, Joelle Norris. Whether Cottrell & Co appear or not would seem to depend on several factors. One is whether or not it has any impact on his parole conditions (if any). If so, he will likely appear to contest the order. It’s equally possible that Cottrell hasn’t been served with a notice of the hearing — but far less likely to have failed to notice its appearance on Facebook. Given his history of family violence, Cottrell would presumably be savvy enough to understand that if he fails to attend the hearing it will almost certainly be granted in Norris’s favour, meaning it’s very much in his interests to attend and to contest. Who knows? Hopefully he doesn’t bring an axe or a tomahawk along with him

• Speaking of BFFs, Peter Grace has examined Cottrell’s views on ‘friendship’ here:

• Karen Street, the Tasmanian senatorial candidate for Kim Vuga’s ‘Australia Love or Leave’ party, did the same trick as the UPF at Bellerive Oval on Sunday, April 10. See : Hobart woman Karen Street stands by banner that got her ejected from Bellerive Oval, ABC, April 12, 2016.

• Also on April 10, around 20 or so flagwits belonging to Nick Folkes’ Party for Freedom gathered near the Halal Expo in Sydney. They shouted abusive slogans, waved placards for a while, and then went home.

• Dr Jim Saleam’s Australia First Party has lodged an application with the AEC to use the Eureka flag as its symbol on ballot papers (see : Australia First Party’s use of Eureka flag angers rebels’ descendants in Ballarat, Bridget Judd, ABC, April 12, 2016). The quest to appropriate the symbol is a long-running campaign of Dr Jim’s, dating back to the 1970s, and disputes over its status as an emblem of ‘left’ or ‘right’ has involved a wide range of historical and contemporary actors, from anarchist to neo-Nazi. Certainly, when the AFP joined fellow neo-Nazis from Golden Dawn at a public demonstration in Brisbane in May, 2014, they were rudely reminded that, as far as anti-fascist construction workers are concerned, the flag has no place in their hands. (Note that Jim Perren, one of the AFP dingbats present at the rally and co-author of the neo-Nazi ‘Whitelaw Towers’ blog, later helped arrange the UPF’s visit to Toowoomba in February.)

In any event …

As a mobilising force, Reclaim Australia seems to have more-or-less disappeared up its own bottom: — widely understood as an essentially racist and xenophobic movement, met with sometimes fierce opposition on the streets, riven by internal conflict among the handful of dumbs and mads who constituted its core organisers, and in other ways eclipsed by the emergence (or re-emergence) of various other, largely online anti-Muslim projects, chief among them the UPF, RA appears spent. If so, RA will have become just one more of the already innumerable anti-Muslim propaganda pages FB happily carries and promotes. Of course, this may be a temporary retreat, and RA once again be the broad umbrella under which a liquorice all-sorts of anti-Muslim prejudice takes to the streets. Who knows? Barring some dramatic development, it does seem doubtful it will again stir as many suburban keyboard warriors as it did in 2015.

The UPF, which constituted itself as the vanguard of RA, is also barely a year old, and has obviously undergone some settling of contents during transit. As well as, first, the departure of Shermon Burgess and Neil Erikson from the UPF and, secondly, their denunciation of it as a ‘Nazi’ organisation, most recently Perth flunkey Dennis Huts declared that he was leaving the UPF — as much a man of his word, and his criminal convictions, as his fuehrer, he’s now back — while fellow sandgroper Nic Genovese has also elected to leave. Others to have ostensibly left the group’s inner circle include Kris0 Richardson, Linden Watson and John ‘Farma John’ Wilkinson. In any case, the UPF is now very much a vehicle for the political ambitions of local neo-Nazi Blair Cottrell and his sidekick Thomas Sewell (the football-hating, Hitler-loving pair carried the UPF banner at the Collingwood-Richmond match last week), with the financial support of Christian fundamentalist Chris Shortis, largely moral support from fellow Bible-basher Scott Moerland, and G*d knows what from the crazy, mixed-up Kevin Coombes (aka ‘Elijah Jacobson’ aka ‘Abdullah Islam’; Coombes was first a born-again Christian, then a Muslim, and is now a neo-Nazi sycophant).

Such, at least, is the UPF leadership. Around it has gathered a very small base of (generally quite demented) fanboys, chiefly from Bendigo, Melbourne and Perth, but also including a handful of neo-Nazis and other White supremacists from Queensland and elsewhere; Jim Perren of Whitelaw Towers/Anti-Antifa blog being one. While some have a developed political perspective, an emotional attachment to flags and other nationalist symbols, combined with a visceral hatred of Muslims and other racialised elements, typically eclipses any thoughtful or genuine political commitment. They are thus easily manipulated, lied to, and used — and are. Further, their commitment is just as often fleeting: — their naivete about politics, society and social change leading them to mistakenly believe both that their views are more popular than they are in reality and that acting like a racist dickhead in public is a surefire way to win friends and influence people.

(I should add that the UPF has little support in Sydney partly because its leadership is based in Melbourne but also because Sydney’s far right has already been colonised by Dr Jim Saleam’s Australia First Party on the one hand and Nick Folkes’ Party for Freedom on the other. The UPF has sought counsel from AFP but has not explicitly allied itself to it; Shortis has recently been playing with the PFF in Sydney but was noticeably absent — as was the UPF as a whole — from the PFF’s rare Melbourne excursion last weekend. Sydney is of course also home to Ralph Cerminara, an Australian Defence League activist and serial pest who was previously aligned with Shermon Burgess but is now singing from the UPF hymnbook. Now BFFs, the fact that Cottrell memorably described Cerminara as a ‘cancer’ — and late last year expressed a desire to travel to NSW in order to break the cancer’s jaw for some infraction — gives some insight into the highly unstable nature of the boys’ relationships.)

Of course, in addition to being a ‘street movement’, the UPF also fancies itself as a political party: ‘Fortitude’. Announced with much fanfare late last year in Perth, the UPF embarked upon an east coast tour to promote the fledgling party in February. The tour was not especially successful. Barely 40 or so attended its meeting in Orange, NSW, perhaps twice as many in Toowoomba, QLD (where organisation of the meeting was left in the hands of Catholic relief teacher Liz Carlsen, Perren, and a handful of QLD-based neo-Nazis), and several hundred in Bendigo. The attendance in Bendigo was the largest by far, but still far less than the UPF managed to attract at its peak, which in October last year was somewhere between 500 and 1,000. Further, despite now having over 40,000 likes on FB, it seems as though the UPF/Fortitude is still struggling to obtain the 500+ signatures required in order to register with the AEC (and, crucially, to contest elections under its own name on the ballot). The proximity of the next federal election also means that it’s now almost impossible for the party to do so — even if it did manage to collect the requisite total.

That’s not the only or biggest problem Fortitude faces, for it enters a field already crowded with radical and populist right-wing electoral alternatives, most notably the Australian Liberty Alliance and One Nation. The ALA in particular is a far slicker, well-funded, well-organised and generally palatable option for the anti-Muslim crowd than Fortitude, with its neo-Nazi leadership, criminal history, white nationalism and crude, racist outpourings. It seems possible that even if it does register, Fortitude will likely crash soon after launch, and the boys again be reduced to orchestrating publicity stunts and conducting closely chaperoned (and very small) police rallies. It will then find itself in a position to produce more characters like Phill Galea and Nathan Davidson: — and John Wilkinson’s public exhortation to ‘stop the mosques’ by burning them down will become a much more attractive proposition for its violent fanbase.

BONUS!

In April last year a page called “Slackc-nt” appeared on Facebook. It’s now been publicly disclosed that the author of the page is a man by the name of Andrew Wallis — AKA Drew Smith, Tommo Oro, et. al.. Wallis was also one of the five UPF meatheads — along with Blair Cottrell, Neil Erikson, Chris Shortis and Linden Watson — who paid a visit to 3CR Community Radio and the Melbourne Anarchist Club in November last year.

naughtydrew
DrewandRalph

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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9 Responses to antifa notes (april 12, 2016) : hard times for patriots

  1. ablokeimet says:

    “It will then find itself in a position to produce more characters like Phill Galea and Nathan Davidson: — and John Wilkinson’s public exhortation to ‘stop the mosques’ by burning them down will become a much more attractive proposition for its violent fanbase.”

    That has obviously been the UPF’s end game on the mosque question. When legal challenges fail and the mosque gets built anyway, the UPF steps up with its solution. This is far from fanciful – a number of refugee centres have been torched in Germany in the last year or two.

  2. Sossle says:

    Lol yeah, that violent UPF bunch that may possibly attack a mosque in the future that hasn’t been built yet…

    Those guys that violently attack peaceful protests, assault people with weapons in the street because they disagree with their viewpoint. Advocate the burning of the Australian flag and the downfall of the Australian way of life. Oh wait a sec… That’s not the UPF.

    Can you say distorted viewpoint?

    Germany has seen some vandalised refugee centres true. Some refugees even report being woken up at night and of being afraid of attacks.

    Though its worth noting:

    Germany has also needed to introduce gender-segregated trains due to violent sex attacks on women.
    German Schwimmbad (swimming centres) are banning male refugees due to a number of inappropriate incidents.
    In Germany there have been a number of cases where refugees have burned down their own premises given to them at taxpayers expense. One housed 20 refugees when it was set on fire by a fellow refugee.
    A Cologne imam has said the victims of the New Years Eve mob sex attacks had themselves to blame because they wore perfume. Some great wisdom here that one can learn at a mosque. There are plenty of times when rape or violent abuse or murder of women is okay according to Islamic “faith”.

    April 19th a truck bomb was detonated in Kabul by Taliban forces killing around 70 people. Taliban are currently making a significant resurgence and around 10,000 people each year are killed or injured by Taliban forces.

    Muslims in Brussels danced in the streets after the terrorist attacks killed 32 innocent people.

    and,

    UPF may attack a mosque that isn’t even built yet. Quick get to the chopper fellow anarchists and defenders of “justice”.

    You guys are real heroes, lol. I guess when you are using something sheerly as a political vehicle you can twist the facts to reflect whatever you want. People should be against the UPF because they might attack a mosque that hasn’t even been built yet?

    Hope you guys enjoy the Victoristan province you are helping to lay the foundations for.

    And I can see you guys obviously have an issue with mixing violence and politics shown by your romance with ANTIFA. Who firmly believe in “freedom” through brutality and prejudice.

    “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

    Guess this quote is lost on Antifa.

  3. @ndy says:

    Briefly:

    Germany has also needed to introduce gender-segregated trains due to violent sex attacks on women.

    One company has announced that one line would introduce a women-only carriage. ‘The Regiobahn line between Leipzig and Chemnitz will introduce the carriages to increase security for women … But the railway has said the measure is not a direct reaction to the Cologne incidents but is about increasing security generally.’ German train operator introduces women-only carriages amid fears over ‘migrant sex attacks’, Richard Wheatstone, Mirror, March 28, 2016.

    Women-only passenger cars are ‘offered on some trains in Israel, Japan, India, Egypt, Iran, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates, while passengers in some other countries have demanded their introduction’ (Wikipedia). The problem is men’s violence towards women: a phenomenon that is global.

    German Schwimmbad (swimming centres) are banning male refugees due to a number of inappropriate incidents.

    Again: one swimming centre, in Bornheim, near Cologne. This was announced in January. Subsequently, the ban was lifted (just a few days later). German town to allow male refugees pool access after ‘intensive discussions’, Deutsche Welle, January 18, 2016.

    In Germany there have been a number of cases where refugees have burned down their own premises given to them at taxpayers expense. One housed 20 refugees when it was set on fire by a fellow refugee.

    I’m aware of one case, reported last week in the Express:

    ‘Syrian refugee admits smearing swastikas and starting fire at asylum centre’ (April 12, 2016): ‘A SYRIAN refugee has admitted smearing swastikas and starting a fire at the asylum centre where he was staying because he wanted to be moved to a better location.’

    No doubt there are others, just as there are false reports of rape. And just as the tiny minority of such cases should not be used to obscure the bigger picture — but are, by misogynist creeps — so the tiny proportion of false reports of attacks upon refugees should not obscure the broader political reality. Thus, attacks against refugees and refugee centres are a staple of German political life, and have been since reunification. For example, the attacks on hostels in Rostock in 1992 received global attention. Der Spiegel (Twenty Years after Rostock: Racism and Xenophobia Still Prevalent in Germany, Charles Hawley and Daryl Lindsey, August 24, 2012) reports:

    ‘The attacks in Rostock marked the moment when any euphoria leftover from German reunification two years earlier evaporated completely. Hundreds of right-wing extremists and local thugs spent four days in late August of 1992 throwing rocks and firebombs at a building used to house asylum-seekers, most of them Sinti and Roma, in the outlying Lichtenhagen district. Thousands of others stood by and cheered on the attackers, shouting “foreigners out!” and other hateful slogans. The orgy of xenophobia ended when rioters set a neighboring building on fire housing dozens of workers from Vietnam and their families. With police and fire officials having retreated from the violent mob, victims — including small children — were forced to find their own way to safety by escaping onto the roof. Rostock was not an isolated event. The previous year saw similar attacks against a refugee hostel in Hoyerswerda, which resulted in 32 injuries. In November 1992, a neo-Nazi arson attack on the house of a Turkish family in Mölln killed three. A further five lost their lives in a similar arson attack in Solingen in 1993.’

    That’s just a *tiny* sample from a collection of thousands of such attacks, some lethal. One other example: ten people died in 1996 in an arson attack on a refugee hostel in Lübeck. No one was ever charged with the crime (’20 years after Lübeck, refugee hostels are burning again’, Deutsche Welle, January 18, 2016). In March 2016, ‘Hanover court jails neo-Nazi arsonists’ (Deutsche Welle, March 17, 2016): ‘Three arsonists convicted of firebombing a hostel housing refugees have been jailed for up to eight years. The Hanover court’s presiding judge rejected denials, saying the motive was neo-Nazi racism akin to Hitler.’

    While often committed by neo-Nazis and fascists, at various times they embrace a much wider cross-section of German society. (Attacks on refugee housing increased by a factor of five in 2015 compared to 2014, German media reported on Friday: ‘Report: Five times more attacks on refugee homes in Germany in 2015’, Deutsche Welle, January 29, 2016.) They’re often an effective means of pressuring government authorities and have a generally positive impact on government policy, with each wave typically being responded to by, inter alia, a further tightening of laws around asylum seekers.

    A Cologne imam has said the victims of the New Years Eve mob sex attacks had themselves to blame because they wore perfume. Some great wisdom here that one can learn at a mosque. There are plenty of times when rape or violent abuse or murder of women is okay according to Islamic “faith”.

    Yes: Salafist imam Sami Abu-Yusuf was reported to have blamed the victim of the assaults. That said:

    In a follow-up interview with local Cologne paper “Express,” the 42-year-old imam said his comments about the attacks had been “taken out of context.”

    “There were scantily clad women who were wearing perfume as they walked through the drunken crowd. For some North Africans, this was reason to grope the women,” Abu-Yusuf told “Express.”

    “That doesn’t mean that I think women shouldn’t be allowed to dress like that,” he added. “Everyone has to accept that. And if they don’t agree, they need to go to another country. That’s the truth.”

    Cologne imam: Women provoked sex attacks by ‘wearing perfume’ and being ‘half-naked’, Kate Brady, Deutsche Welle, January 21, 2016.

    Again: blaming women for the fact that men sexually assault them is a practice hardly confined to Salafist imams, Muslim men, or German immigrants.

  4. Sossle says:

    Nor is brutality, totalitarianism and suppression of human rights confined to right wing fascism.

    So you are interested in women’s rights?

    Equal rights: 10 best and worst countries for attitudes towards gender equality
    International Business Times
    November 12, 2015

    The Best Ten:
    Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Australia, Norway, France, Britain, Germany, US, China.

    Strangely not a single Muslim-majority nation?

    The Worst Ten:
    Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Tunisia, UAE, Lebanon, Malaysia.

    All are Muslim majority. Most with a population percentage higher than 98%.

    Coincidence? There are many sources for this type of data.

    A few other subjects where the statistics weigh pretty heavy:
    Honour killings
    Child brides
    Limited access to legal process or education systems for women
    Lack of basic fundamental medical support for women
    Female circumcision
    Stoning

    So while violence against women is a global issue, there are some very strong statistics that show where that violence does occur in a systemic fashion and in many cases is indoctrinated in the law of that country or at least ignored by the authorities.

    So we just turn a blind eye, is that the answer? Cultural differences… “Don’t be a racist!”… Are you suggesting the issue is just as large in Western countries? There is no connection with Islamic culture?

  5. Sossle says:

    Or;

    Should we look at countries where LGBT is punishable by death or incarceration?
    5 carry the death penalty, all Muslim-majority countries.
    Nearly 3 billion people live in a country where they face legal action including incarceration for being LGBT.

    What about countries that actively suppress religious freedoms?
    Top 6 for religious freedoms – not a single Muslim-majority country.
    Worst 6 – 3 out of the 6 are Muslim-majority.

    Any patterns in the data there?

  6. its science says:

    Daily reminder immigration is an act of class war by international bankers to destroy unity within working class populations. As evidenced by the higher levels of social welfare and income equality within European populations with few minorities and the difference between those with smaller minorities.

    remember you can’t be pro-immigration and anti-capitalist

  7. ablokeimet says:

    It’s science: “remember you can’t be pro-immigration and anti-capitalist”.

    Spoken like a true National Socialist.

    Real socialists (whether of the state or libertarian variety) are internationalists. We try to build solidarity between workers of different countries and, within countries, between native born workers and immigrants. Dividing the working class by race or nationality is a recipe for defeat. The capitalists have great experience in divide & rule tactics and a retreat to nationalism is a surrender to division.

  8. stalkeeblog says:

    You did not to update your report about the failed applications for the intervention orders piece. I’ll do it for you. Joelle Norris fucked off to Queensland prior to a directions hearing set down for Bendigo Court for May 18 2016. Ms Norris made false applications based on vexatious litigation, attention whoring and her deluded obsession with Blair Cottrell turning sour. The frivolous time and resource-wasting applications were struck out of the court by a very pissed-off magistrate whose court was misused by a tragic drama queen who was propped up by her dissident Antifa buddies. Ms Norris not only abused the IVO system which is meant for assisting people in real need in genuine circumstances where their personal safety is at risk, but your side supported and encouraged her to do so – and you all failed! I had no idea that “smash the system” actually meant abuse the system and distort it for your own degenerate purposes. Contempt of court, stating false testimony under oath in a courtroom and making false allegations to police are crimes. Fucking off from court proves the falsity of the claims and there is no way around it…Massive FAIL!

  9. ablokeimet says:

    Stalkeeblog: “Ms Norris not only abused the IVO system which is meant for assisting people in real need in genuine circumstances where their personal safety is at risk, but your side supported and encouraged her to do so.”

    What’s the evidence that Antifa encouraged her? We were interested observers, I admit, but I haven’t seen any evidence of more than that. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more to the non-appearance story than Stalkeeblog is letting on.

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