- Update : Two further articles have appeared regarding the KKK in Australia. As well as being dead easy to join, the sheet-wearers are apparently raising their pointy hooded heads in Geelong in Victoria as well.
Race-hate Klan spreads ‘poison’, Kerri-Ann Hobbs, Geelong Advertiser, July 6, 2007: “WHITE supremacists in Geelong have joined a national recruitment drive by extremist group the Ku Klux Klan. Their emergence has outraged community leaders who labelled them racists and cowards who hid behind robes of anonymity. Yet the group was not motivated by racial hate but was about empowering white Christian Australians, the Victorian president known as the Exalted Cyclops Bwian told the Geelong Advertiser… Geelong MP John Eren, who migrated to Australia from Turkey as a boy, warned there was no room in the city for extreme racist groups. “I think if they’re not afraid of what organisation they belong to and what beliefs they hold they should come out instead of hiding behind these frocks,” Mr Eren said…”
KKK: easy as ABC, Liz McKinnon, Townsville Bulletin, July 6, 2007: “JOINING the Ku Klux Klan is as easy as sending an email to the group, filling out a basic form and purchasing a custom-tailored robe. To climb the ranks as a cell leader, all you need is two mates as klansmen to nominate you… One Melbourne reader wrote that he had been following the White Legion Knights [since their inception]. He revealed the Aboriginal community had nothing to worry about. “Across the entire state of Queensland they wouldn’t have more than 10 members,” he wrote. “And if what rival Klan leaders tell me is true, they’re not exactly the cream of the crop — apparently they’re mostly unemployed and thick as bricks.”
Local haberdashery reports minor spike in sales…
See also : The KKK took my perspective away (March 14) | White Loser Knights and Australia First (March 6) | KKK is the Australian Way?!? (February 5) | KKK is not a force in Toowoomba (Catholic News, March 9) | Qld row over Hurley trial (SBS, June 21) | Ex-KKK man guilty of 1964 murder of black teenagers (Ed Pilkington, Guardian Unlimited, June 15, 2007) | No sell out
Fear of KKK cell
Liz McKinnon
Townsville Bulletin
July 5, 2007
A KU Klux Klan cell is rumoured to be operating in Townsville.
A group is reported to be operating from a Castle Hill address, sparking fear within Townsville’s Aboriginal community. It follows reports there is a recruitment drive occurring for the white supremacist group across the state.
A Cairns-based KKK member went public on national television yesterday revealing the White Legion Knights group was operating in the city and in other parts of the State. The man appeared via phone with his voice digitally distorted but photographs were shown illustrating the group with an Australian flag.
The Townsville Bulletin discovered later in the day that a separate body known as Stormfront was allegedly meeting at a Townsville address in the upmarket Castle Hill area. It follows reports earlier this year the group was handing out leaflets across the state and that Townsville had been targeted along with Toowoomba, Rockhampton and Cairns.
The group runs under the tag `White Pride World Wide’.
Currajong Aboriginal woman Pauline Geary said it was old news and stories had been circling for a long time that they were meeting somewhere in Castle Hill. The grandmother of four said her community felt threatened by the recent rise of the group. “We want respect in our own country and we are not getting it,” Mrs Geary said. “There is not enough happening on stamping it out. I don’t have faith in the police but this is an illegal operation, isn’t it?”
Aboriginal activist Gracelyn Smallwood also wasn’t surprised by the news and revealed she was happy it had publicly come out. She argued it would bring international attention, like the Hurley case, and show that Townsville and Australia was racist. “This is what I have been fighting for 40 years, my father for 50 and the grandparents before him. It’s a 220-year fight for the very issue of racism,” Ms Smallwood said. “The thing is now what are we going to do about it? It’s not what the Aboriginal community is going to do, it’s what are non-indigenous people going to do about it? This is a positive for the black community. At least the whole world will find out what is really going on in this country.”
The racism debate is not new to Townsville.
Only last month the city was labelled the KKK capital of Australia by activist Murrandoo Yann[e]r in the wake of Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley being cleared of the manslaughter of Palm Island man Mulrunji Doomadgee. In 2000, a photograph of soldiers at Lavarack Barracks dressed as members of the KKK to humiliate their black comrades made national headlines.*
Catholic Bishop Michael Putney said he had never heard of a Townsville link and he hoped people would have more sense than to get involved. “To get tied up with something that kind of carries the name of a group that did such terrible things in the United States, it wouldn’t make sense that anyone would identify with a group with that name,” Bishop Putney said. “I find it very hard to think anyone would be so foolish. It would be very sad people who do that.” He said the track record of the group was `pure evil’.
Townsville Police Crime Co-ordinator Detective Inspector Warren Webber said he had never heard of the group and at this stage was not making any investigations. Townsville Mayor Tony Mooney and Thuringowa Mayor Les Tyrell both refused to comment on the rumoured branch.
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* ‘Extremists can serve in forces: defence chief’, The Age, December, 20, 2000
Australia’s Defence Force chief yesterday defended the rights of soldiers to support neo-Nazism and other forms of political extremism, saying they should not be expelled over their beliefs. Admiral Chris Barrie said the community would be affronted if the forces had a system to weed out people on the basis of their political views.
His comments followed revelations that three former members of an elite army regiment were in a hard-rock neo-Nazi band, Blood Oath. Admiral Barrie said two of the band members had left the elite 3rd Battalion of the army’s Royal Australian Regiment while the third was no longer in the army.
He said the ADF was apolitical. ”We don’t make a statement about people’s political beliefs. Australia is a country that’s recognised throughout the world for its freedom of belief and the freedoms we give our ordinary people.”
A racist website, Blood and Honor Australia, names the former military members of Blood Oath as Harry, Shane and Brain. The fourth member, a civilian, is Gideon McLean, revealed in 1998 as a member of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party. In an interview published on the website, the band members describe themselves as ”white power” musicians, while Mr McLean and Shane list Adolf Hitler as a hero.
Yeah and I would be fairly sure that these guys are not the only boneheads in the ADF. Most of the ppl i have met who serve in the ADF would not touch these clowns with a bargepole but I have also seen a couple with white power tattoos.
hey dj,
3RAR is generally assumed to be the worst offenders, not just for racism, but for being all-round bastards. More professional soldiers I know of regard themselves as… well… ‘professionals’, and view any strong ideological disposition (outside of adherence to some notion of patriotic fellow-feeling — especially as expressed thru loyalty to unit) as distasteful. Further, those who actually study military history would be well aware of the numerous instances of political considerations infringing upon military strategy. For example, no real military enthusiast could be an admirer of Hitler ‘cos Hitler was responsible for sabotaging the operations of probably the best-equipped, best-trained and most well-structured army of the mid-20th C, the Wehrmacht.
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Nazi accusations against members of 3RAR
The World Today Archive
Tuesday, 19 December, 2000
Reporter: John Stewart
COMPERE: You would be forgiven for thinking that the Army’s worst nightmare might be having insufficient resources to deal with several regional disasters and a potential invasion at the same time. But today a different kind of horrible reality is unfolding for our Defence Forces. Once again soldiers from the Third Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, 3RAR, are back in the headlines. This time it’s not bastardisation, death threats or sexist behaviour.
The latest outrage that the hero of East Timor, General Peter Cosgrove, does not seem to be able to get a discipline handle on is naked racism.
A website photograph for the world to see of the Neo-Nazi hate rock band ‘Blood Oath’ giving a Nazi salute. Three of the band being former soldiers in 3RAR.
As John Stewart reports, the photograph is the latest in a series of embarrassing revelations showing a darker side to life in the Australian Defence Forces.
JOHN STEWART: On a website called ‘Blood and Honour’ the independent voice of rock against communism, there’s a review of neo-Nazi bands, including one group called ‘Blood Oath’. The website contains photos of the band performing on stage, surrounded by swastikas and neo-Nazi flags. Music from the website can even be downloaded.
JOHN STEWART: ‘Blood Oath’ might never have made the front page of today’s newspapers and just remained an obscure right-wing band, but for three of its musicians being former soldiers.
The Australian Army today confirmed that three former members of the Third Battalion Regiment had been members of the band. However, an investigation into the soldiers musical taste found no evidence that the three soldiers were involved in actively recruiting other members of the regiment to the Neo-Nazi cause.
JOHN STEWART: The soldiers are no longer with 3RAR. The Army today confirmed that they’d been relocated for reasons not related to their involvement with ‘Blood Oath’. However, it’s unconfirmed whether the soldiers were linked to reports of bashings, bastardisation and illegal punishment dished out to 30 soldiers between 1997 and 98. A matter currently under investigation.
Despite the controversy surrounding the Regiment, 3RAR served in East Timor and basked in the glory of the welcome home parade in Sydney earlier this year.
JOHN STEWART: 3RAR has a long proud history. The paratrooping regiment is, by necessity, made up of young men trained to parachute into enemy territory. The band, ‘Blood Oath’, is also aware of the history of 3RAR. The website pays tribute to Adolf Hitler, the SS and veterans of the Kapyong Valley, a specific reference to the Third Battalion’s Regiment’s involvement in the Korean War.
The Army today emphasised that 3RAR has 600 in a constantly changing regiment. And that the unit has been cleaned up. But despite the inquiries and the reforms, the injuring image of 3RAR will not be paratroopers storming into East Timor to beat off the militias, but a group of soldiers giving a Nazi salute.
COMPERE: John Stewart.
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/stories/s225691.htm
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An unprecedented standdown of the Australian armed forces
James Conachy
March 9, 2001
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/mar2001/mili-m09.shtml
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What shall we do with a drunken sailor?
Sean Richardson (“spent 18 months as transport officer 3RAR and about 17 months on punishment as duty officer 3RAR, due to the amusingly inventive misbehaviour of his diggers. 3RAR is again bearing arms in a foreign land on behalf of, among others, whingeing journalists.”)
SMH
June 5, 2002
A few weeks ago the papers ran a story about the horror of several young enlisted lads from the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment (3RAR) being involved in drunken, but apparently voluntary, group sex.
Terrible, terrible behaviour. If the same was done in Martin Place by some purple-haired performance artists from Newtown the Herald would celebrate it as an exciting lifestyle choice, but no, damn it. These are private soldiers who should be providing the moral example.
Since when? The unofficial regimental song of 3RAR starts “We’re a pack of bastards” and ends “We’d rather f— than fight for li-ber-ty”. At least that last bit should be encouraging to journos and left-wing backbenchers who think soldiers should also be pacifists. But the point is, these guys aren’t priests – you know you’re not supposed to leave your teenage daughters in a room full of lagered-up diggers. Indeed, it is every young soldier’s right to find himself, at least once, running from a house with his pants around his ankles as an irate father rains blows upon him and a deluded daughter yells “Call me” as she rebuttons her blouse…
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/06/05/1022982701373.html
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Boys will be boys will be neo-Nazis I guess!
Pingback: Anonymous
Hello,
I know that these posts are old but i would like to say, i am a member in 3rar and the above comments “3rar members are RACISTS and BASTARDS” i would like to comment on them.
3rar are not bastards at all we are no different than any other Battalion BESIDE the fact we have something that most Battalions don’t have and WISH they did… WINGS!
If any soldiers or civies comment about 3rar members they either dont know us or they are just damn right JEALOUS!!!!!!
Have a nice day!