Yeah Nah Pasaran! #026 w Nina Jankowicz on Information Wars : July 9, 2020

Posted on July 7, 2020 by @ndy

On this week’s episode of Yeah Nah, we talk to Nina Jankowicz [Twitter], the disinformation fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Centre for Scholars and the author of a new book out this week, How To Lose The Information War (I.B. Tauris, 2020):

Since the start of the Trump era, the United States and the Western world has finally begun to wake up to the threat of online warfare and the attacks from Russia. The question no one seems to be able to answer is: what can the West do about it?

Central and Eastern European states, however, have been aware of the threat for years. Nina Jankowicz has advised these governments on the front lines of the information war. The lessons she learnt from that fight, and from her attempts to get US congress to act, make for essential reading.

Nina also recently had published Facebook Groups Are Destroying America (‘They’re built for privacy and community—and that’s what makes them dangerous’), Wired, June 17, 2020.

See also : Anatomy of a Russian ‘Troll Factory’ News Site, Aric Toler, bellingcat, June 8, 2018 | News from Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900–1945, Heidi Tworek, Harvard University Press, 2019.

4.30pm, Thursday, July 9, 2020 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website

• We also have a Facebook page for the show, which you’re invited to ‘Like’ and to ‘Follow’.
• I have a Patreon account which youse are also invited to support.

Posted in Anti-fascism, History, Media, State / Politics, That's Capitalism!, War on Terror | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

A Brief Guide To The Australian Far Right (July 2020 Edition)

Posted on July 3, 2020 by @ndy

[Update : Huh. I did not know this, but a commentator drew my attention to the fact that ‘In June 2014, [disgraced Labor MP Adem] Somyurek inaugurated the Grey Wolves’ offices in Melbourne, as revealed in a report by Greek-Australian newspaper Neos Kosmos, which wrote: The (illegal branch) registrations took place last year mainly in the southeastern suburbs of Melbourne, where the offices of the Victorian Grey Wolves are located.‘ The Moar You Know! See also : The Rise and Rise and Fall of Adem Somyurek, Guy Rundle, Jacobin, June 2020.]

Above : ‘… and I just did that so the lefties can get their little screen grab.’ Tom Sewell explains the virtues of National Socialism & White Supremacy to a rapt YouTube audience including David Hiscox (XYZ, The Cuckables, Soundworks Music Studio) & Mark Moncrieff (Melbourne Traditionalists), June 29, 2020.

In June 2015, December 2016 and April 2019 I published brief guides to the contemporary Australian far right. These were intended to provide a brief survey of some of the more prominent groupings and projects, and came with various provisos; not least that the lists were non-exhaustive, formal groupings typically draw from informal networks, and the milieu is dynamic. In any case, the massacre committed by a far right militant in Christchurch in March 2019 has had some effect upon the contents of this guide and resulted in a number of scratchings. In other respects, however, the song remains much the same. I wrote last time that:

… in media reportage on the killer’s situation within the Australian far right milieu, much attention has been drawn to three organisations in particular: ‘Antipodean Resistance’ (AR), ‘The Lads Society’ (TLS) and the ‘United Patriots Front’ (UPF). In this context, it’s important to note that, first, while there are critical differences between them, and only AR openly espouses neo-Nazism, all three are the natural outgrowth of the wave of public organising undertaken by the far-right under the umbrella of ‘Reclaim Australia’ (2015–). Secondly, members of all three groups remain politically active and, finally, all can be read as particular expressions of much (much) larger political and social networks, for which the dominant social media and publishing platforms — Facebook, Twitter and YouTube — have provided and will continue to provide a critical part of their organisational framework.

The social media giants continue to play this role, and to facilitate the growth of the far right. That said, problematic content linked to death and destruction is subject to periodic crackdowns, typically as and when public outcry or political pressure forces the corporate sector to adopt measures to avoid legal and/or financial penalty. Thus the UPF lived and died on Facebook, and the hundreds of boys who flocked to its banner while Facebook gave it licence (2015–2017) have either grown up, found other things to do/abuse and/or joined The Lads Society and its political extension, the National Socialist Network (NSN). The NSN is an exciting NEW! entry to the guide, and represents an interesting if provocative (and problematic) development in the fortunes of the UPF/TLS and its fellow travellers.

By the same token, the True Blue Crew, which emerged in Melbourne at about the same time as the UPF, has been purged from Facebook, and the methgoblins who bought lvl boss Kane Miller’s merch have not marched since June 2018. (Like the dregs of the UPF, however, Miller and a number of his flunkys did attend Final Solution’s St Kilda rally in January last year.) The same applies broadly to the Proud Boys, and to much of the Reclaim Australia network. The unreliable nature of Facebook’s support for racial hatred and xenophobia has meant that many on the far right have been forced to adopt other platforms: principally Twitter-For-Nazis (AKA Gab), and BitChute rather than YouTube, but also Minds, Telegram and others. The former ‘face’ of Reclaim Australia, Shermon Burgess — having gone (like many others) ‘full nazi’ — can now be found on TikTok, but not FB, YT or even Gab. The same drift into open espousal of neo-Nazi doctrine has claimed The Lads and various other ‘personalities’ on the right. The Coronavirus and the rapid spread of that other virus, QAnon, has also resulted in some apparent ‘radicalisation’, with various forms of antisemitic conspiracy theory waiting, as always, in the wings …

So, for what it’s worth, here’s a guide to some of the more noteworthy groupuscules on the Australian far right, followed by a list of scratchings. NB. There’s a plethora of neo-Nazi, White nationalist and radical right-wing pages and groups on Facebook and other social media, mostly dedicated to circulating dank memes and shitty propaganda. They come and go, as interest rises and falls and as publishers respond to public complaints, legal complications and political pressures, but this material is now a permanent and often very profitable fixture of the media landscape, often dedicated to worshipping Trump and other authoritarian figures, from the world-famous to the rather obscure. Of late, many have incorporated or revolve around QAnon and other conspiracy theories.

Adelaide Institute
The Institute carries on doing its Holocaust denial thing. Ho-hum. Update : The Institute will have to carry on its vital werk without the assistance of its founder, Fred Toben, who’s now joined his An Hero in Hel.

Australia First Party (AFP)
AFP remains the central avenue for White nationalism in party-political form, and has recently benefited from the absorption of the remains of (one version of) the British Israel World Federation and the estates of some (other) dead supporters. The chief difficulty facing the AFP and its fuehrer, Dr Jim Saleam, is their seeming inability to lower the demographic and to attract the support of Aussie yoof, meaning its main body of supporters continues to consist of middle-aged blokes and old-age pensioners. Thus the AFP has failed to win over the racist yoof who’ve instead been terribly excited by the antics of the UPF, the Lads and the NSN and, after some initial collaboration, the party has instead opted to denounce these unruly elements as uneducated and un-Australian. (To its credit, AFP did manage to win the support of former UPF leader Chris Shortis, though he now appears to have distanced himself from the party and resumed banging on about his particular interpretation of Christian doctrine.) Otherwise, the party remains firmly ensconced in the Tempe HQ belonging to Saleam, with his political scheming and the party’s attempts to reinvigorate old skool labourism having borne little political fruit to date.

Australian Council of Nationalists (ACON)
The ACON is the successor organisation to the Australian Coalition of Nationalists, and was formed in late 2019 as a grouping comprising the AFP, British Israel World Federation, Love Australia Or Leave and several blogs (Ironbark Resources, National Independent and New Australian Bulletin). A notable departure is Nationalist Alternative (NAlt), which has instead been incorporated into TLS/NSN. Thus the Coalition of Nationalists, announced in October 2016, consisted of the AFP, Australian Protectionist Party and NAlt; the Eureka Youth League and the Hellenic Nationalists of Australia (AKA Golden Dawn in Australia) were considered ‘associate’ groups.

Australian League of Rights (ALOR)
The cranky and somewhat daggy uncles of the far right. “God, Queen & Country!”
*But please, none of (((Them))).

*Australian Natives Association (ANA)
I got an angrwy email from Some Guy castigating me for not including the ANA — Matthew Grant’s new project after the EYL collapsed — and so here it is. (It’s also part of ACON.)

(The) Australian Vanguard
Very cranky, but I thought I may as well give a shout-out to Raymond Foster. Armed with a terrific beard and a devotion to nazi politics, Foster would also appear to be quite dedicated to building a small White kvlt by way of merch.

Blood & Honour (B&H)
The neo-Nazi muzak network is still carrying on … and on. Tightly-bound to the Southern Cross Hammerskins, this dynamic duo organises a gig every year in Melbourne to commemorate the good nazi Ian Stuart Donaldson. Last year’s gig got some attention in the media, and an article in The Age declared, somewhat bizarrely, it never happened (but it did). See also : 9% Productions.

British Israel World Federation
Another crankypants organisation whose heyday was back in the early 1900s. tl;dr : ‘The people of the British Isles are “genetically, racially, and linguistically the direct descendants” of the Ten Lost Tribes of ancient Israel.’ Apparently, there’s a bloke in Victoria and another in Queensland what believes this stuff.

Christian Identity (CI)
Obscure religious cranks what I assume are still kicking, but could possibly be scratched. It seems to be more of a thing in the US, where according to the Southern Poverty Law Centre, CI is ‘a unique antisemitic and racist theology that rose to a position of commanding influence on the racist right in the 1980s’. According to Mears, ‘… the Kingdom of Heaven ministry, a branch of the Christian Identity movement … bases their views on Eve as seen through the ‘Seed Theory’, a racist doctrine that claims only white humanity was created by the union of Adam and Eve.’

Christian Separatist
(AKA Ken Cratchley, a Lads supporter in Sydney, who AFAIK is not dead.) Obscure religious cranks what I assume are still kicking, but could possibly be scratched.

Citizens Electoral Council (CEC)
The name given to the local branch of the La Rouche kvlt, the CEC recently changed the name of its electoral vehicle to the ‘Australian Citizens Party’. Largely confined to Melbourne, and with a spot on Channel 31, the CEC reckons The Queen sells drugs and very fast trains are ace. Or something.

Combat 18 (C18)

More a label than a formal grouping, C18 is responsible for distroing shitty quality B&W stickers around Melbourne town, as it has for umpteen years now. Occasionally, the racist nature of the stickers attracts media attention and more recently one of its members, Dan Newman (above), allegedly threatened some not-White-enuff-for-his-tastes women outside a stupormarket in Footscray.

Creativity
AKA a bloke in Adelaide called Cailen Cambeul, who’s ‘presently single and lives alone with his dog, N*gg*r’, along with one or two other losers. Creativity in Australia was once repped by Patrick O’Sullivan, but he’s C18 now apparently, and Cailen and Patrick are no longer frens. Oddly, when Pontifex Maximus Matt Hale was in trouble with the law in the US, Glenn Greenwald was his lawyer.

Expel the Parasite
South Australian Brett Light continues to pump out nazi propaganda of the entertainingly batshit variety.

Golden Dawn Australia (GD)
Like its Daddy in Greece, GD in Australia continues to eke out an existence, but is much reduced (unlike the real-estate fortunes of lvl boss Gavrilidis). GD’s local branch can sometimes be found distributing their nazi propaganda in Sydney, and has won some support among other Greek communities, but is reportedly somewhat divided as not everybody is happy with Iggy’s grandstanding. It also appears to have abandoned its attempt to form a political coalition with the AFP, and most of its political energy is directed at assisting fascist organising back home.

The Lads Society (TLS)
Following the collapse of Fraser Anning’s CNP, in organisational terms The Lads are more-or-less the logical culmination of Reclaim Australia and the UPF. You can read more about TLS here and here. As of this date they’ve got a social centre in Rowville in Melbourne, but are reportedly up to other shenanigans in other cities. Its leading figure is ex-UPF leader Tom Sewell. Tommeh! used to be content with being ‘Emperor’ Blair Cottrell‘s sidekick, but after some initial involvement Cottrell was excluded from the group (he still continues to cater to his ego and his fanboys on Gab and Telegram). Below, in November 2018, following some unsatisfactory media reportage, Cottrell outlined a cunning legal strategy that was guaranteed* to bring the boys fuckin’ millions of dollars!1!. See also : Blair Cottrell Has Lost His Appeal (December 20, 2019).

Love Australia Or Leave (LAOL)
Give a girl a gig on SBS, and this is what you get. Somewhat unusually, Kim Vuga has proven to be a stayer, and her course has now naturally brought her (and her hundreds of dingbat followers) fully into the orbit of White nationalism by way of ACON.

Nationalist Alternative (NAlt)
Another Melbourne-based groupuscule, NAlt is one of the more enduring fixtures on the far right, and produced Cottrell, Sewell and various other personalities. NAlt’s leader, Mark Hootsen, is also a member of TLS (and has his pretty White fingers in a number of other pies as well).

National Socialist Network (NSN)

According to the AFP, which has been an occasional source of infos on the grouplet, the NSN is ‘comprised of gangly teens whose entire knowledge of the world comes from social media. Except for the one book they’ve almost all read more than halfway through, Mein Kampf.’ Unfair, in my opinion, as the teens have also read The Turner Diaries. Formed in late 2019/early 2020 by TLS after some internal debate over whether to go ‘full nazi’ or stick to pretending to being civil rights advocates for White dudes (see : ‘European Australian Movement’) and thereby maintain some relationship with Ordinary Mums & Dads/The Quiet Australians of tabloid/Tory myth, the NSN has been doing as you’d expect Hitler yoof generally to act. Thus they’ve issued bold declarations, posed in photos, distroed propaganda and trained for the any-day-nao RaHoWa! Intimately tied to Antipodean Resistance, NAlt and of course TLS, the NSN currently operates outta the TLS cubby-hut in Rowville, but claims members and supporters in other cities, in a pattern eerily reminiscent of AR. Whatever Jacob Hersant imagens, I don’t reckon the NSN will accomplish much more than get into trouble and then collapse — though hopefully this will happen before one or more of them goes postal. See also : Neo-Nazi graffiti sprayed at Cranbourne Golf Club in Melbourne’s south-east, Freya Michie, ABC, May 21, 2020.

New Australian Bulletin (NAB)
An online shitsheet for the AFP, the NAB blog replaced the now-defunct blog ‘United Nationalists Australia’. NAB regularly publishes cranky, tabloid-style treatments of subjects dear to its author(s) heart, and frequently takes aim at the AFP’s enimies on the far right, especially those belonging to a younger generation who’ve signally failed to appreciate Dr Jim Saleam’s political brilliance.

One Nation Party (PHONy)
See : Pauline Hanson. Along with former Labor Party leader Mark Latham and space pixie Malcolm Roberts, PHONy is a regular feature on tabloid media, and remains most popular in Queensland (with one member in the House of Representatives). Despite its fairly minimal support outside of The Sunshine State (two Senators in NSW and two in WA), PHONy plays a very important role in the Australian Senate, and is one of the key links in the chain of anti-environmental and reactionary politics in STRAYA.

Proud Boys (Australia)
The bastard children of Canuckistanian dingbat Gavin McInnes, the PBs were very soon imported to Australia, but seem to have largely subsided in the last year or two (McInnes tried and failed to mount a speaking tour of Australia several years ago). Given that the group’s presence on Facebook was recently Zucced, it’s unclear how much longer it will be before the Boys grow up, but in the US those who haven’t drifted off have typically drifted into more determinedly radical neo-Nazi and White supremacist groups.

Southern Cross Hammerskins (SCHS)
One of the only remaining bonehead crews still kicking, and of some longevity. Associated reich ‘n’ roll band Fortress periodically reforms to play shows in Australia and to much larger audiences in Europe.

The Unshackled
An AltLite/AltRight blog helmed by Timmeh! Wilms of Melbourne. Timmeh! enjoys long walks on the beach at sunset, interviewing right-wing losers, and celebrating right-wing death squads. Of late, Timmeh! has been joined by Kiwi Dieuwe de Boer in a regular feature called ‘Trans-Tasman Talk’. Read more in How the far-right found a home in the New Conservative Party, Byron Clark, Fightback, June 12, 2020. See also : ‘Dia Beltran’ (Claudia Benitez).

Women for Aryan Unity (WAU)
A tiny neo-Nazi groupuscule mostly consisting of the wives and girlfriends of boneheads belonging to SCHS. These lovely Aryan ladies publish a zine, maintain a website, and raise funds for neo-Nazis overseas, mostly the remnants of defunct US terrorist grouplet ‘The Order’.

XYZ
XYZ the blog was established several years ago as a political outlet for a handful of cranky local Tories AKA ‘Classical Liberals’. By 2020 it had developed into an antisemitic and White supremacist propaganda organ, featuring the incredible talents of editor David Hiscox, budding neo-Nazi terrorist Ryan ‘Only joking!’ Fletcher, failed journalist Matthew Roebuck and various other angry middle-aged losers. Years of racist and sexist invective on Facebook finally came to an end when Hiscox & Co. made the mistake of publishing some batshit ‘satire’ directed at beloved TV personality Waleed Aly, shortly after which its page finally got Zucced (June 23, 2020). YouTube, however, remains firmly in its corner.

Scratched

1) A26A : Memorably described as ‘a pack of arseholes run by a wannabe SAS patriot G.I. Joe type … all skulls, fake bikie shit, ‘TRAIN YOURSELF BE READY FOR FKN WAR ON ISLAMS’, Monster cans, estranged families, jail stints, Christian crusader ‘chic’ and so on’, A26A was the bRanes-child of Daniel Purton.
2) Anti-Antifa Australia : Moribund nazi blog. It was resurrected and had a half-life on Facebook, then sadly deaded, with the anti-antifa slack being taken up by NAB, The Unshackled, XYZ and various other, even more obscure blogs and YouTube channels.
3) Antipodean Resistance : Inspired by Cottrell & the UPF, but born on Iron March and Made In Melbourne, AR has been reborn within the womb of TLS as the NSN.
4) Aryan Nations : Proud hosts of the launch party for the UPF’s short-lived political party ‘Fortitude’, AN ended in murder & prison.
5) Australian Coalition of Nationalists : An AFP project, ACON collapsed to be reborn as ACON.
6) Australian Defence League : A failed attempt to establish a local EDL franchise, the ADL was eclipsed by Reclaim, the UPF and associated satellites. Its one-time leaders included Shermon Burgess and Ralph Cerminara. The courts gave Cerminara several slaps on the wrist for being a naughty boy last year, and Burgess notably accused Cerminara of being a drunkard and a spousal abuser.
7) Australian Liberty Alliance : Dead but reborn as Yellow Vest Australia. Perth socialite and semi-pro Islamophobe Debbie Robinson remains at the helm.
8) Australian Protectionist Party : AKA Taswegian Andrew Phillips, basically.
9) Australian Settlers Rebellion : One of Neil Erikson’s dozens of Big Ideas.
10) Australians Resistance Network : One of hundreds of shitty fashy Facebook pages, ARN continues to shitpost, but should otherwise be considered moribund.
11) Battalion88 : One of dozens of short-lived neo-Nazi groupuscules, still deaded.
12) Fraser Anning’s Conservative National Party : A failed vehicle for ‘Final Solution’, the party has more-or-less collapsed after the brave ANZAC lost his comfy Senate seat (May 2019), pissed off to the USA, and was declared bankrupt (March 2020). Likely to be remembered mostly for the Tramadol farmer being egged and thereby creating a most xclnt meme.
13) The Dingoes : These Racist Dogs produced a podcast called ‘The Convict Report’, helped to organise a hostile but unsuccessful takeover of the Young Nationals in NSW, and were then put down. See also : Soldier alleged to have traded military information was leader of white nationalist group, Florence Kerr and Thomas Manch, stuff.co.nz, January 22, 2020.
14) Eureka Youth League : An unsuccessful attempt by the AFP to attract yoof, it ended up in the capable hands of Matthew Grant in Canberra, then died.
15) European Australian Civil Rights League : See ASR.
16) Full Blooded Skips : Still deaded.
17) Klub Nation/Klub Naziya : Deaded. Or possibly another zombie, who knows?
18) Ku Klux Klan : Still capable of getting a guernsey in the media, but more-or-less a political zombie.
19) National Democratic Party of Australia : Another Cottrell failboat.
20) Nationalist Republican Guard : See ASR.
21) The New Guard : One of numerous Facebook umbrellas under which fashy boys of the late 2010s took shelter, the network dissolved and reformed under other names after the Young Nationals debacle.
22) New Right (/National Anarchists) : AKA wealthy gadabout Welf Herfurth. Herfurth is still having a crack, but without much support and little coherence.
23) Party for Freedom : After a brief but hectic existence (2012–2018), now deaded. Following a brush with cancer, its leader, Nick Folkes, discovered The Bible, Hitler and veganism, and can be found around the traps enthusiastically promoting this new Holy Trinity.
24) Patriotic Youth League : Predecessor to EYL. Amusingly, a parody group, the Patriotik Yoof League, found its way into an academic paper.
25) Patriots Defence League of Australia : Dead, but eking out a zombie-like existence as several dozen Facebook pages.
26) Q Society : Mostly inactive, but still subject to revival.
27) Reclaim Australia : Like the above, sustained via Facebook as a fount of batshit propaganda (though under different labels).
28) Restore Australia : AKA Mike Holt, a YUGE fan of convicted terrorist Phil Galea. Holt is indefatigable, and a Facebook partisan who employs various banners for his tedious bullshit.
29) Right Wing Resistance Australia : Deaded, after various brushes with the law and media.
30) Rise Up Australia Party : Deaded, but possibly subject to resurrection (if leader Danny Nalliah receives another direct message from God).
31) Soldiers of Odin : The wannabe bikies tried, but failed.
32) Southern Cross Soldiers : Yeah nah.
33) Squadron 88 : Dead, but partially restored by way of The Lads Society in Sydney. (S88’s leader, along with other Lads, attended Final Solution’s rally in St Kilda in January 2019.)
34) True Blue Crew : The TBC methgoblins fell apart amid allegations of abuse, corruption and several criminal convictions. (The fact that the Christchurch killer was a fan probably didn’t help matters much either.) *TBC is still cracking on in Queensland, where they organise BBQs to eet burnt snags, drink beer, and sing off-key versions of ‘Advance Australia’, ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and ‘Livin’ On A Prayer’ (probably).
35) United Australian Front : Still deaded.
36) United Patriots Front : Ultimately, the UPF lived and died on Facebook (2015–2017), while its leading members have gone on to form other groups and projects.
37) United Nationalists Australia : An online shit-sheet for the AFP, UNA died and was then reborn as NAB.
38) Volksfront : The people spoke, and the front remains inert.
39) White Pride Coalition of Australia : Another historical curio.
40) Whitelaw Towers : Defunct nazi blog, whose authors made their way to and from the AFP, the UPF and related groups and activities.

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Yeah Nah Pasaran! #025 w Jason Wilson on boogaloo America : July 2, 2020

Posted on June 30, 2020 by @ndy

On this week’s episode of Yeah Nah, Jason Wilson — who we interviewed in April (#13) and January (#3) — returns to talk more about Trump, the far-right and the boogaloo. His recent published work includes The Boogaloo Movement Is Not What You Think, Bellingcat, May 27, 2020 (with Robert Evans), Violence by far-right is among US’s most dangerous terrorist threats, study finds (The Guardian, June 27, 2020) & What is antifa and why is Donald Trump targeting it? (The Guardian, June 6, 2020).

NB. The podcast version of this episode will be a little longer than that broadcast.

4.30pm, Thursday, July 2, 2020 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website

• We also have a Facebook page for the show, which you’re invited to ‘Like’ and to ‘Follow’.
• I have a Patreon account which youse are also invited to support.

Posted in Anti-fascism, Broken Windows, Media, State / Politics, That's Capitalism!, War on Terror | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Who Are The Lads Society, Why Do They Have Guns, & Why Have They Invaded Rowville? (June 2020 Update)

Posted on June 26, 2020 by @ndy

[This post was brought to you courtesy of the letters A, F, J, N, P & S.]

Above (L to R) : John Athanasiadis, Jacob Hersant, Mark Hootsen, Sam Hudson, Ulf Lindfors, ‘Darcy’, Tom Sewell, James Buckle and Stuart von Moger.

The Melbourne-based neo-Nazi groupuscule ‘The Lads Society’ (TLS) was established in late 2017 following the collapse of the ‘United Patriots Front’ (UPF). In 2015 the UPF, comprising Christian fundamentalists and neo-Nazis, had constituted itself as the political vanguard of ‘Reclaim Australia’; as a result, thousands of Ordinary Mums & Dads™ became their gormless followers.

Initially, The Lads’ two leading spokesmen were former UPF leaders Blair Cottrell and Thomas (Tom) Sewell. According to reports, however, in 2019 Cottrell exited the organisation, and Sewell emerged as its Grand Poobah. TLS has many dozens of members, principally in Melbourne and Sydney, but also in Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth. Along with the UPF, TLS has attracted participation from former members of Antipodean Resistance, Nationalist Alternative (NAlt), and a range of other groupsucules on the far-right.

Since its founding, TLS has leased a series of warehouses in order to host the group’s activities and to encourage recruitment to its goal of establishing a White ethno-state … but like, a really, really small one … in the suburbs (see also : Pioneer Little Europe). Thus for over a year, the group had a centre in Cheltenham and one in Ashfield in Sydney.

In terms of public activity, inter alia, members attended the Fraser Anning rally in January 2019 in St Kilda and more recently protested outside Box Hill police station (October 2019). Prior to this, in June 2018, TLS was hired by Dave Pellowe and Axiomatic Events to provide security for Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern during their Australian tour. Molyneux and Southern’s central thesis revolved around the destruction of Western Civilisation by way of ‘The Great Replacement’ of Whites by non-White immigrants. Naturally, their argument was celebrated by their fans at NewsCorpse, but mainstream endorsement by the likes of trollumnist Andrew Bolt was rendered problematic after the Christchurch killer put the theory into practice in March 2019.

Tom Sewell, the leader of The Lads, was referenced in media reportage in the aftermath of the massacre. The convicted killer, Brenton Tarrant, was invited to join TLS; the Killer also described Cottrell as his ‘Emperor’. Publicity surrounding the massacre, and the links Tarrant had to the Australian far-right milieu, has brought further, unwelcome scrutiny to The Lads and, following the forced closure of their Cheltenham headquarters, TLS have sought a lower public profile. (Oddly, according to reports, along with his family a much younger Sewell flew here from Aotearoa/New Zealand.)

As noted previously, after being chucked out of Cheltenham (but not before Channel 7 celebrated their endeavours), TLS has obtained a new HQ in Melbourne: 1/10 Hi-Tech Place, Rowville (a suburb of Melbourne 27 km south-east of Melbourne’s CBD). The space was leased to TLS in July 2019, seemingly on the basis that it would host a commercial gym.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In addition to Tom Sewell, James Buckle and Jason Hersant (see below), the following men have joined the neo-Nazi network in Melbourne. Note that this list is representative, not exhaustive, and some further details have been withheld.

John Athanasiadis

Athanasiadis, a gun owner, is in his late 20s and has served as Treasurer for The Lads.

James Buckle

Buckle is the former President of gun lobby group Firearm Owners United. Like Sewell, he is reportedly ex-Army and, like Lindfors-Beswick, a licenced security agent (88351350S). See also : Pro-gun group claims shotgun rampage shows our gun laws are ‘utterly failing’, Ben Graham, news.com.au, October 2, 2019.

Troy (Eric) Crockett (AKA Troy/Trey Blackstone/Bloodstone/Targaryen)

Above : Crockett, surrounded by other Lads, is second from L. Photo from Melbourne leg of Southern’s tour.

Crockett (b.1984) has been kicking it with the boys for some time. In June 2015, he joined the UPF outside the ABC’s offices in Melbourne to protest the appearance of Zaky Mallah on Q&A. Crockett was also one of a dozen men Victoria Police gave permission to force Dandyman to leave Fed Square after the True Blue Crew flagwit parade in June 2018. Crockett is ex-Army Reserve and like other Lads a (former?) member of NAlt.

Damien de Pyle

A twenty-something Lad, de Pyle has served with the Australian Army. He’s also a former member of ‘Australian Nationalist Youth’, and has allegedly helped train (other) Lads in combat, but his current membership status is uncertain, and he may have junked nazism for religious doctrine.

Jacob Hersant

Above : Hersant practicing his aim for the coming race-war.

Hersant has been active in a number of groups, from Antipodean Resistance to Iron March to the National Socialist Network, but remains a very naughty boy.

Mark Hootsen

Hootsen is a leading member of Nationalist Alternative. In 2014, he was exposed as such by his former kamerad Neil Erikson.

Sam Hudson

Hudson is Treasurer for The Lads, is very close to Lindfors-Bewsick (below), and like Hootsen is (was) a member of NAlt.

Oscar Izard (AKA Oscar Iseult/Oscar Oldham-Bradford)

Above : Oscar complains that The Lads should stop leaving copies of The Turner Diaries (the nazi tract that inspired Timothy McVeigh to commit mass murder in April 1995) lying around.

Izard, like Hersant, is (was) a member of Antipodean Resistance. He briefly gained some online notoriety in January 2016 when he published a petition demanding that British actress Emma Watson spend a week in a migrant camp in Calais.

Ryan Ulf Lindfors-Beswick (AKA Ryan Lindfors/Ulf Lindfors/Ulf Lehmuskoski)

Above : A Terrible photo of Ulf on L & another attending Final Solution’s anti-African rally in St. Kilda on R.

Lindfors-Beswick (b.1990) is a licensed security guard (91077690S), the owner of the business — Aus Get Fit Pty Ltd (ABN: 57 634 618 465) — through which the lease to the property in Rowville was obtained, and serves as the Sgt-At-Arms for The Lads. Of Finnish descent, Lindfors-Beswick sports a Solar Cross and Helm of Awe tattoo on his right forearm and an Irminsul on his left. Lindfors-Beswick also owns guns and has trained other Lads in their use. Currently, Ulf is employed by MSS Security on University campuses, and as Ryan Lindfors-Beswick would appear to have been, along with Nicole Bourman, the Shooters/Fishers/Farmers candidate for the Southern Metro region at the 2018 Victorian state election.

Will Schlecht

Schlecht (b.1992), along with de Pyle, is a former member of the short-lived groupuscule ‘Australian Nationalist Youth’.

Matt Trihey (AKA Matthew Raine)

Trihey (b.1963) is a former boxer, MMA fighter and builder. Trihey teaches The Lads how to fight (which is mighty White of him) and also occasionally provides them employment via his building company. Trihey doesn’t like Jews much, and laments the fact that Albert Speer never got an opportunity to enact Hitler’s vision for Germania.

From Reclaim Australia to the United Patriots Front to The Lads Society to The European Australian Movement with Bonus! National Socialist Network

For a brief period of time after the establishment of its new bunker in Rowville, TLS engaged in a discussion about establishing a front group. Thus at the start of 2020 TLS rebranded itself as the ‘European Australian Movement’, and even managed to obtain a website for the projekt. Curiously, the EAM was to have a ladies division (for which a very good friend of Tom’s called Rosie had been nominated to do the heavy lifting).

For reasons, EAM was junked in favour of a more straight-forwardly nazi project: the NSN. This is an interesting development insofar as The Lads are no longer pretending not to be what they are: neo-Nazis. This also has the benefit of making it a little more difficult for members of the commentariat to pretend otherwise (though they will of course try). Beyond this, in being more honest about their politics, The Lads have abandoned any real attempt to ‘go mainstream’ while wrapped in the national flag, and the semi-mythical Ordinary Mums & Dads™ have similarly been abandoned in favour of recruiting from among Angry Young Men. The explicit embrace of neo-Nazism also seeks to draw upon the teenyboppers who’ve been radicalised by way of Iron March, Fascist Forge and other, more obscure forums; nonetheless, Facebook and YouTube remain important platforms for agitation and propaganda. Thus, on Monday, June 29 Sewell is scheduled to join David Hiscox and Matthew Roebuck of XYZ blog and Timmeh! Wilms (of The Unhinged blog — pictured above in his vewy special ‘Right Wing Death Squads’ tee) to discuss ways forward for white nationalism. Ironically, despite spreading antisemitic and other racist muck on Facebook for years, just a few days ago Hiscox, Roebuck and XYZ were kicked off the platform after subjecting TV personality Waleed Aly to one of their regular batshit diatribes. In further Bad News for the nazi milieu, the NSN website lost its website after the Anti Defamation Committee complained to its host.

Finally, it’s sometimes remarked that the Christchurch massacre was a pivotal moment in the history of the Australian far-right with many — not least ASIO — subsequently issuing statements identifying its partisans as constituting a potential ‘terrorist’ threat. One enthusiast, Phillip Galea, has since been convicted of terrorisms, and is awaiting sentence. Last week, another 100% Dinky-Di Aussie Patriot, Cormac Rothsey, was ‘jailed over anti-Muslim social media posts, threat to kill Jacinda Ardern’ (Liz Farquhar, ABC, June 19, 2020), while in March three men on the south coast of News South Wales were arrested in connection to an alleged plot. Police also alleged that one of the accused, Joshua Lucas, is a far-right extremist. “What we know is this person had anti-government sentiment, he was anti-Semitic, he has neo-Nazi interests and he has anti-Indigenous interests,” NSW Police Force assistant commissioner Mark Walton said (Right-wing terrorism on the rise in Australia, Drew Rooke, The Saturday Paper, March 21, 2020). Still, while the NSN may have adopted the name their English brothers in the now-proscribed groupuscule ‘National Action’ assumed after it was declared an unlawful association, and while they may continue to draw inspiration from NA and recruit from the same milieu, the espousal of neo-Nazi doctrine is lawful in Australia, as is establishing a party to advocate Nazi doctrines, and leasing a property to organise and train a fascist cadre.

All this being the case, it remains up to the general public to Do Something about these meatheads.

A. Shut ‘Em Down

TO BE CONTINUED …

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Yeah Nah Pasaran! #024 w Charlotte Mears on history, women & the far-right : June 25, 2020

Posted on June 24, 2020 by @ndy

NB. 3CR is conducting a June Station Appeal. Please donate if you can.

On this week’s episode of Yeah Nah, we talk to Charlotte Mears [Twitter], an academic researcher whose research interests ‘primarily focus on the Holocaust, women’s roles in far right ideology and how these ideas are represented within popular culture’. Charlotte contributed an essay to Far-Right Revisionism and the End of History: Alt/Histories (edited by Louie Dean Valencia-García, Routledge, 2020) on ‘The Far Right and Women’s History’ and discusses Nazis and comix here.

4.30pm, Thursday, June 25, 2020 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website

• We also have a Facebook page for the show, which you’re invited to ‘Like’ and to ‘Follow’.
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The Rowville Reich : nazi groupuscule The Lads Society’s NEW! bunker in south-east Melbourne

Posted on June 22, 2020 by @ndy

For those of you coming in late, ‘The Lads Society’ is a nazi groupuscule established by members of the ‘United Patriots Front’ (UPF) following its collapse in 2017. Tom Sewell, the Society’s lvl boss, is former UPF fuehrer Blair Cottrell‘s ex-flunkey; under the umbrella of ‘The Lads’, over the last three years young Thomas has managed to gather around him several score of his fellow Hitler stans in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and elsewhere. You may remember Cottrell and Sewell from such headlines as Christchurch shooting accused Brenton Tarrant supports Australian far-right figure Blair Cottrell (Alex Mann, Kevin Nguyen and Katherine Gregory, Background Briefing, ABC, March 23, 2019) or New clues emerge of accused New Zealand gunman Tarrant’s ties to far right groups (Byron Kaye, Tom Allard, Reuters, April 4, 2019) or Threats from white extremist group that ‘tried to recruit Tarrant’ (Patrick Begley, The Sydney Morning Herald, May 2, 2019).

For about a-year-and-a-half, Sewell and his boys ran a space in Cheltenham, but then lost it after sustained community pressure. In Sydney, the NSW branch operated from a location in Ashfield, but it too fell over sometime after opening in 2018. Undeterred by hostile media reportage, community opposition and links to a mass murderer, Sewell and The Lads have soldiered on and last year opened up a NEW! space in Melbourne’s south-east:

Unit 1, 10 Hi-Tech Place, Rowville (a suburb of Melbourne 27 km south-east of Melbourne’s CBD)

The space was leased to The Lads by [Some Body] in July 2019 and falls within the remit of Knox City Council.

Apart from meeting, talking shop and lifting weights, The Lads have also recently launched a ‘political’ project: the ‘National Socialist Network’ (NSN). Under the wise guidance of Sewell and ex-‘Antipodean Resistance’ (AR) geek Jacob Hersant, the NSN has been busy doing nazi graff, distroing nazi agitprop and generated OMGWTF headlines in May, courtesy of the Herald Sun:

The Lads of the NSN naturally thrilled to the article, constituting as it did little more than free advertising for the budding génocidaires. On the other hand, their adoption of the name ‘National Socialist’ does at least render it that little bit more difficult for pundits to not name the Lads ‘neo-Nazi’.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

NB. ‘National Socialist Network’ was briefly the name given to the remnants of ‘National Action’ in the UK after it collapsed; AR was, of course, the fraternal organisation of NA; a few weeks ago, four of its members — including ‘Miss Hitler’ LOL — were jailed after being found guilty of belonging to NA, which was proscribed as a ‘terrorist organisation’ in 2016.

See also : Neo-Nazi militant group grooms teenagers, Daniel De Simone and Ali Winston, BBC, June 22, 2020 : ‘The Base is the latest underground organisation to emerge from an international neo-Nazi network originally generated by a now-defunct web forum called Iron March. Other organisations include the banned British groups National Action and the Sonnenkrieg Division, as well as the Atomwaffen Division in the USA, which has been dismantled by a nationwide FBI investigation.’

Oh, Iron March also gave birth to Antipodean Resistance. Which, with The Lads, has now morphed into NSN.

TO BE CONTINUED …

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Yeah Nah Pasaran! #022 w Spencer Sunshine on anti-fa, conspiracies, & uprisings in the US : June 11, 2020

Posted on June 10, 2020 by @ndy

On this week’s episode of Yeah Nah, we talk to writer and researcher Spencer Sunshine [Twitter] about El Presidente Trump’s declaration of WAR! on anti-fascism; the political function and history of this kind of rhetoric; conspiracies and antisemitism; and what role, if any, anti-fascists in the US are playing in the current revolts in the US.

I have been creating research and analysis about the Far Right in the United States for 15 years. It’s a hard, dirty, and dangerous job. And I’m asking for your support in order to continue this work. Most immediately, I need help to complete an in-depth investigation into neo-Nazi James Mason and his terrorist murder manual Siege. I have spent two years working on it, including extensive archival work; I’ve long run out of my savings, and still hope to complete it by early summer 2020.

Spencer’s most recent essays include ‘Blaming it on Antifa: Trump’s Crisis Scapegoats’, The Battleground, June 5, 2020 — Pundits are rehashing their same arguments about whether Antifa is good, bad, or terrorists. But the discussion is absurd to even have. Antifa is a red herring, which the president is dangling to distract attention from the pink elephant in the room. — and ‘Trump’s Antifa Conspiracy Theory Attempts to Erase Powerful Black-Led Organizing’, truthout, June 5, 2020.

See also : antifa notes (june 3, 2020) : notes on antifa (June 3, 2020) | Trump’s Threats to Antifa Are an Affront to Black Agency and a Risk to All Protest, Natasha Lennard, The Intercept, June 3, 2020 | Little evidence of antifa links in U.S. prosecutions of those charged in protest violence, Sarah N. Lynch, Mark Hosenball, Mica Rosenberg, Brad Heath, Reuters, June 8, 2020 | Donald Trump Amplified A Conspiracy Theory That Buffalo Protester Martin Gugino Was Trying To “Scan” The Police Before He Was Injured, Craig Silverman, Buzzfeed, June 9, 2020 | He Tweeted That He Was the Leader of Antifa. Then the FBI Asked Him to Be an Informant., Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept, June 10, 2020.

4.30pm, Thursday, June 11, 2020 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website

• We also have a Facebook page for the show, which you’re invited to ‘Like’ and to ‘Follow’.
• I have a Patreon account which youse are also invited to support.

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antifa notes (june 3, 2020) : notes on antifa

Posted on June 3, 2020 by @ndy
    Anti-fascist action, more popularly known as “antifa”, can be best described as international socialism on amphetamines. ~ Dr Troy Whitford, Explainer: what is antifa, and where did it come from?, The Conversation, August 30, 2017

Gee whizz.

As part of a more general pants-shitting exercise, a few daze ago God Emperor Trump — who is, like, really smart, also a genius, and a very stable genius at that — tweeted ‘The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization’.

As others have indicated, there may be a few minor, technical issues with this proposal, not least:

a) there’s no ANTIFA Organization to designate as Terrorist;
b) anti-fascism =/= terrorism;
c) Cheet0 doesn’t have the legal authority to designate a domestic Organization ‘Terrorist’.

Of course, to assign some Legal Eagle status to Drumpf is absurd; the purpose of such statements lies elsewhere, in the political domain. In any case, his gaseous explosions are naturally the subject of much commentary, including by way of Australia’s leading Institute for the Propagation of Marxist-Leninist Doctrine, sometimes erroneously referred to as the ‘Australian Broadcasting Corporation’. Hence: Donald Trump has declared it a terrorist organisation but what is Antifa anyway?, Will Jackson, June 1, 2020, in which I’m quoted as follows:

… Australian writer and antifascist researcher Andy Fleming said it was difficult to say how involved Antifa was in the current protests in the US.

He said they could be providing legal support, bail funds, medical assistance, attending protests, producing reportage, publishing analyses and seeking to expose far-right attempts to infiltrate and capitalise on the protests.

“In general, anti-fascists are supportive of the protests against racist police brutality,” he said.

“[But] to characterise the protests as being constituted by or taking place at the instigation of anti-fascists is radically mistaken.

“These are genuinely popular mobilisations, in which African-Americans, whether or not they identify as ‘anti-fascist’, play a leading role.”

…

Mr Fleming said the legal dimension to Mr Trump’s declaration was less important than its political intention.

“Which I think revolves around solidifying his base ahead of the November election, recasting the protests as the work of ‘alien’ political forces, and licencing further police brutality,” he said.

“It could thus be read as a sign of political desperation.”

And while there’s obviously more I could add, I think the above are pretty reasonable observations. Note that in the wake of Trump’s tweetery, the ABC has also published several other pieces looking at anTEEfa: Donald Trump calls them terrorists, but many Antifa see themselves as ordinary citizens fighting oppression, racism and police brutality, Stephanie March (Four Corners, June 2, 2020) and Who are Antifa and are they terrorists? (ABC News Radio, June 2, 2020). The latter features Dr Mark Bray, ‘an historian of human rights, terrorism and politics at Rutgers University and the author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook‘ (MUP, 2017). To Mark’s comments on Australia, I would add that anti-fascists (‘ANTIFA’) have been a presence in this part of the worlde since the 1920s, especially among the Italian, Spanish and Jewish émigré communities. On the Italians, see : Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Italians in Australia 1922-1945, Gianfranco Cresciani, ANU Press, 1980 [PDF]; for Jewish anti-fascist histories, see Max Kaiser’s PhD thesis ‘Between Nationalism and Assimilation: Jewish Antifascism in Australia in the Late 1940s and Early 1950s’ & listen to Max Kaiser on Jews Against Fascism (Yeah Nah Pasaran!, 3CR, May 14, 2020).

Francesco Fantin may be gone, but he’s not forgotten!

See also : Anarchist Agency | Trump’s antifa tweet is right-wing catnip — with potentially troubling consequences, Shane Burley, NBC, June 3, 2020 | How ‘antifa’ became a Trump catch-all, Tina Nguyen, POLITICO, June 2, 2020 (‘Antifa doesn’t appear to have any organizing structure, but it has become a potent term for conservatives — a quick way to brand part of the opposition.’) | Trump’s Antifa Obsession Is an Unconstitutional Distraction, Emma Grey Ellis, WIRED, June 2, 2020 (‘The president says the US will designate antifa a terrorist organization. Can he do that? Probably not.’) | THIS IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT (WITHOUT GUITARS*), Hard Crackers, June 2, 2020.

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Yeah Nah Pasaran! #021 w Louie Dean Valencia-García on history & memory, yoof & resistance: June 4, 2020

Posted on June 3, 2020 by @ndy

On this week’s episode of Yeah Nah, we talk to Louie Dean Valencia-García. Louie [Twitter] is:

an Assistant Professor of Digital History at Texas State University. He is a Senior Fellow for the Centre for the Analysis of the Radical Right, and is Co-Chair of the Critical European Studies Research Network for the Council for European Studies at Columbia University. He also is a Research Editor for the CES’s monthly digital journal, EuropeNow. Dr. Valencia-García has served as a Lecturer on History and Literature at Harvard University.

He is an expert on Spain and its relationship to Europe and the rest of the world. Along with the history of print, media, and digital technologies, he studies the intersections of identity and community formation, and antifascism and fascism. His current work focuses on queer youth culture, and the role of history in the public sphere. He received his A.M. and Ph.D. in Early and Late Modern European History from Fordham University in New York City.

Louie’s first book, Antiauthoritarian Youth Culture in Francoist Spain: Clashing with Fascism, was published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2018 and he’s the editor of Far-Right Revisionism and the End of History: Alt/Histories (Routledge, 2020), in which historians, sociologists, neuroscientists, lawyers, cultural critics, and literary and media scholars come together to offer an interconnected and comparative collection for understanding how contemporary far-right, neo-fascist, Alt-Right, Identitarian and New Right movements have proposed revisions and counter-narratives to accepted understandings of history, fact and narrative.

(Next week we hope to be speaking to some US anti-fascists about Cheet0’s recent anti-antifa cray-cray in the context of the uprisings.)

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4.30pm, Thursday, June 4, 2020 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website

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Yeah Nah Pasaran! #020 w Tom Tanuki on conspiracies, lockdowns, protests & Coronavirus : May 28, 2020

Posted on May 27, 2020 by @ndy

On this week’s episode of Yeah Nah, we talk to Tom Tanuki. You may remember Tom from such comedic moments as the Million Flag Patriots (still the most prestigious, unbashable & patrioty neo-patriot group in Australia) or when he was Yelling At Racist Dogs. More recently, Major Tom has launched a podcast, The Poor Can Feed The Birds, and of late has taken a big breath, cashed his cheque from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and on behalf of The Vril Society gone on a deep dive into The Wonderful Worlde of Conspiracy …

• Note that the podcast version of this episode is longer than the broadcast one, and reveals the troof about Tom’s role as an emissary for the Gates Foundation, Cam’s vision of the world as seen through Lucifer’s Telescope, my own love of Spirit Cooking, and much, much moar. Educate yourself, sheeple!
• Note also that this Saturday, May 30, there will be further anti-lockdown protests in Melbourne and elsewhere across the country. The last such event in Melbourne gathered something in the order of 100 (or more — some suggest 2 or 3) individuals and 10 arrests. Since then, police have issued a number of fines to participants.

Arrest Bill Gates! Arrest Bill Gates!

• Much more can be learned about this particular plot in bizarr0 land by listening to the QAnon Anonymous podcast and via Cam’s Hypothetical Institute, especially Episode 122: Coronavirus, Episode 124: Good Heavens Pete Evans & Episode 125: Lockdown, Plandemic & Lucifer’s Telescope.

No Consent! No Consent!

• Our radio show/podcast is featured in the latest 3CR newsletter, CRAM Guide: ‘The CRAM Guide is 3CR’s annual magazine printed each year in May. It includes news, program profiles, station updates and the latest program guide’.
• Cam and Tom have been following The Adventures of the Anti-Lockdown Gang reasonably closely: follow Cam on the tweets for moar and watch Tom on the Youtubes.
• Paleo Pete Evans has jumped on the conspiracist bandwagon, and to that end the scientician has agreed to be interviewed by right-wing YouTube e-celeb Claudia Benitez (‘Dia Beltran’). The Grauniad (May 24, 2020):

As my colleague Elias Visontay mentioned earlier, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners has taken a swipe at radio broadcasters Kyle and Jackie O for their interview with Pete Evans today.

Evans, we know, has some, erm, non-mainstream views about, well, a lot of things.

But the (former?) celebrity chef isn’t so high and mighty that he’ll only appear on the big commercial radio stations.

Dia Beltran, an anti-abortion, far-right personality with links to former United Patriots Front members Neil Erikson and Blair Cottrell, is also spruiking an interview with him this coming Wednesday. According to Beltran, Evans will appear on her show on the same day as the hard-right Russian nationalist Alexander Dugin.

We can only assume that Evans plans to denounce the far-right and offer some tips on avocado preparation, but still, it’s quite a line-up.

(Thanks to Cam Smith for the heads-up on this).

You may remember Benitez from such church invasions as that which took place at the ‘f*ggot’ church in Hawthorn in May last year (following which, sadly, she lost her jerb). Benitez was joined on that occasion by neo-Nazi serial pest Neil Erikson. While Benitez ESCed charges over the matter, Erikson heads to court in November, seemingly for that incident but also for disrupting a Muslim prayer service in Fed Square a month earlier. If convicted, the most likely outcome is that he’ll get another slap on the wrist and Carry On LARPing.

See also : Why Are Australians Chanting “Arrest Bill Gates” At Protests? This Wild Facebook Group Has The Answers, Cameron Wilson, Buzzfeed, May 11, 2020 | Former TV Chef Behind Australia’s Anti-Lockdown Uprising, Josh Butler, 10Daily, May 12, 2020 | Why are Australians smashing their TVs? And what does it have to do with 5G and coronavirus?, The Guardian, Josh Taylor & Steph Harmon, May 13, 2020 | Under financial pressure and slipping into conspiracies, why Instagram influencers promote coronavirus lockdown protests, Oliver Gordon, ABC (PM), May 15, 2020 | The Prophecies of Q: American conspiracy theories are entering a dangerous new phase, Adrienne LaFrance, The Atlantic, June 2020.

4.30pm, Thursday, May 28, 2020 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website

• We also have a Facebook page for the show, which you’re invited to ‘Like’ and to ‘Follow’.
• I have a Patreon account which youse are also invited to support.

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