Australian Protectionist Party officially endorses mass murder of asylum seekers… or does it?

Posted on June 13, 2012 by @ndy

For those who’ve come across the sea
We’ve boundless plains to share

In one of the more bizarre chapters in the annals of local far-right politicking, in late May Darrin Hodges and Nicholas Hunter-Folkes — two of the leading, Sydney-based members of the NSW branch of the ‘Australian Protectionist Party’ — declared on Facebook that they would be attempting to disrupt a gathering of people they described as ‘refugee lovers’ on World Refugee Day (Saturday, June 23). Bad enough, perhaps, that the pair and their handful of supporters might try to spoil an otherwise innocuous party. But Darrin and Nicholas decided to add further insult by declaring that, not only would they oppose attempts to welcome refugees to Australia, they would do so by organising a counter-rally, one which would publicly demand that the Australian government ‘Torpedo the boats’ upon which some asylum seekers have attempted to enter the country.

As well as possibly being contrary to state and federal laws regarding racial and religious vilification, this public demand for the mass murder of numerous men, women and children naturally attracted to the Facebook event page a range of quite sordid discussion regarding the allegedly sub-human characteristics of those seeking asylum in Australia, supplemented by dark mutterings regarding the traitorous elements deemed responsible for allowing some small fraction of refugees to find asylum on our shores. In the name of the APP, Darrin and Nicholas appealed to Facebook users to:

…come out in support of your future, your children’s future and your country and send the message to the refo huggers, Labor and the other socialist s-bend intellectuals, hand-wringers and assorted bed-wetters, that we don’t want their pets in our country:

TORPEDO THE BOATS!

Such brazen appeals to the murderous hatred some sociopaths feel for asylum seekers is rather disturbing if taken seriously, and so I was somewhat surprised to learn that Darrin and Nicholas claimed that the rally had actually been endorsed by their party. Oddly, the party’s official website [http://www.protectionist.net/], which is routinely used to publicise the party and its activities, contains no reference to the event. So I thought it would be wise to put it to the party via another mechanism: Twitter. The first response I received (June 9) denied that the party endorsed the rally:

Perplexed — after all, both claims (the rally has been endorsed by the APP/the rally has not been endorsed by the APP) could not be correct — I again asked Darrin if the ‘Torpedo The Boats’ rally had received his party’s support, adding that I’d received a denial via the party’s Twitter account. Again, Darrin replied in the affirmative. And so I again put it to the party that somebody was lying. The response I received (June 13) again contradicted Darrin, the party denying any official endorsement.

Apart from having clarified the fact that, while APP National Chairman Andrew Phillips endorses the contents of a Twitter account he does not in fact read, the back-and-forth between the party and its two leading members suggests that the APP is in reality divided on the subject of the mass murder of asylum seekers. Further, that the possibility of anybody taking the party seriously is almost zero while it maintains such a bizarre and frankly psychotic public image. Finally, that while Darrin’s political career first came to the attention of the public via his participation in White supremacist forum Stormfront, it’s fitting that it should end, at least for the time being, in further appeals for political violence. Over six years ago, following the Cronulla riots, Joe Hildebrand (White supremacists casting a black cloud’, The Daily Telegraph, December 20, 2005) wrote:

Via a series of electronic footprints, anti-Nazi campaigner Mat Henderson-Hau has linked [Stormfront user] “Infidel” to Engadine local Darrin Hodges.

Hodges, who runs a website for a sex toy distributor, yesterday admitted to being a member of the racist Australia First Party but denied being a member of any white nationalist groups or a contributor to Stormfront.

His alleged alter ego is not so shy.

“Friends, today was an historic day, the day Australians stood up against state-imposed multiculturalism,” he wrote on the night of the Cronulla riots.

Accompanying his posting is a series of photographs he took at Cronulla that day, including one of a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “wog free zone” and another of a sign offering free sausages to the crowd, with “no tabouli”.

Infidel also speaks of footage he filmed on the day which Henderson-Hau believes was used in a video released over the weekend that glorifies a mob of rioters bashing various non-whites at Cronulla.

Posted on Saturday, it had been downloaded around 400 times by yesterday afternoon.

It follows an earlier video credited to “White Nationalist TV” and dubbed “The Battle For Cronulla”, which was released on the Stormfront website on the night of the riots and has since been downloaded 1700 times.

After several minutes of footage showing skinheads emblazoned with the iron cross and three-bladed swastika taking part in the Cronulla “gathering”, the video finishes with the words “Not white, not welcome in Cronulla”.

If there was any doubt as to what Infidel and his ilk stand for, consider one of his earlier posts on Stormfront in which he states: “I’m more interested in the purer form of fascism… and while I don’t subscribe to the whole ‘worship Hitler’ thing, his comments on multiculturalism and politics in general are still just as relevant today as they were 70-odd years ago.”

See also : Oh, Darrin! (2008 profile on Hodges by English blogger Denise G) | Your Mission Australia, if you choose to accept it, is: Torpedo the Boats! (June 6, 2012).

Posted in !nataS, Anti-fascism, Broken Windows, Death, State / Politics, That's Capitalism!, War on Terror | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Your Mission Australia, if you choose to accept it, is: Torpedo the Boats!

Posted on June 6, 2012 by @ndy

Further Update (June 13): On Facebook, rally organiser Darrin Hodges claims that the event is officially endorsed by the APP, making its National Chairman, Andrew Phillips, a liar (below).

Update: The APP has denied endorsing Darrin and Nicholas’ protest, as well as the effects of torpedoing boats.

LOL.

Credit where it’s due: the two leading members of the Sydney-based ‘Australian Protectionist Party’ — Darrin Hodges and Nicholas Hunter-Folkes — have seized upon one of the latest controversies surrounding “Smugglers’ Paradise – Australia” and declared that on Saturday, June 23, they’ll be rallying Australians to demand that the government

Torpedo the boats!

The dynamic duo’s publicity stunt feeds on the publicity stunt spearheaded by ‘Mission Australia’, which has declared June 23 to be a Day upon which Australians should assemble and declare ‘Welcome to Australia’. Their Mission in this instance is

Cultivating a culture of welcome in Australia. Providing practical opportunities for everyday Aussies to give asylum seekers, refugees and other new arrivals a warm, positive and dignified welcome to Australia. Obtaining millions in government subsidies for tax-exempt religious institutions to micro-discipline the poor…

Formed by disgruntled former Australia First party members, disillusioned Tories and those seeking to emulate the once-successful BNP, the microscopic forces of the APP have two main selling points: hatred of Muslims and hatred of refugees. Included among its recruits (of which, at least on paper, there are over 500) is Joel Buckley. Joel is (or was) a very proud member of the Australian Navy, and would presumably be appointed captain of whichever Acheron-class torpedo boat the Australian government assigns the APP should its campaign succeed. Also certain to be there on The Day is Martin Fletcher, whose re-publication of the video game Muslim Massacre and the board game Cronulla 2230 (as well as Nazi cartoons) was indeed memorable but since supplemented by Darrin Hodge’s Refo Invaders.

Silly games aside, since its establishment in 2007, the APP’s success has been severely limited, partly because of the calibre of their cadre, mostly because xenophobia is an over-saturated market. Thus voting tallies have been feeble and public support minimal. Where the APP have been able to assemble more than a handful of (radically inarticulate) dissidents, it’s been because of a temporary alliance with similarly microscopic groups such as the quasi-mythical ‘Australian Defence League’. In summary, I haven’t been paying much attention to the antics of the APP of late: they’re non-existent in Melbourne, and elsewhere there’s been little activity of real interest to comment on. (Well, until now.) That said, the observations I made about them (and their rivals in AF) back in February still seem accurate, and unless a local mentalist commits an atrocity, I can’t see much changing.

In any event, the Facebook page promoting the mass murder of asylum seekers is Troll City, so as Rambo might say, go for it.

Posted in !nataS, Anti-fascism, Death, State / Politics, That's Capitalism! | Tagged , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Victorian Skools and Domino’s Pizza

Posted on June 6, 2012 by @ndy

Members of the ‘Australian Education Union’ (AEU) are going on a 24-hour strike tomorrow (Thursday, June 9) and taking an excursion to the city. The strike’s been triggered by the failure of the Victorian state government (boo! hiss!) to agree to a 30% wage increase for teachers, instead offering a mere 2.5% increase (yadda yadda yadda) — despite (gasp!) the Premiers’ apparent promise to make Victorian teachers ‘the best paid in the country’ (yadda yadda yadda) at the previous state election (a promise broken in March 2011).

Note that the premier’s decision proves that he does indeed stand for something.

The AEU — which is affiliated to the ALP — hasn’t been on strike in Victoria for some years, but in the last few it did manage to funnel many hundreds of thousands of dollars to the now-collapsed private recruitment agency WorkPartners. Fingers xed, the huge numbers of teachers recruited by WP will help to swell the masses of those who rally at Rod Laver Arena at 9.30am and Parliament at noon. In any case, the strike has been given overwhelming support by members: of the 28,605 employees declared eligible to vote by Fair Work Australia (FWA), almost 17,000 did so, of whom just under 16,000 voted ‘yes’ to taking “protected industrial action” in support of reaching an agreement with the government. Students at Melbourne Grammar won’t be affected by the action, however, so I’m not convinced the premier will be unduly worried by the Marxist rabble briefly taking to the streets.

On Saturday, June 11, supporters of Domino’s Pizza drivers will be picketing the Domino’s outlet @ 555 Flinders Street in the city from 7pm. The picket is in support of driver’s attempts to have their wages re-instated after the company slashed them by 19% earlier in the year. Why? Seemingly, on the basis that workers in other countries get paid less for performing the same task: a case study in the rhetoric (if not the reality) of what’s sometimes termed the global race to the bottom.

That, and because they could.

Word on the virtual street is that a date may soon be set for a hearing into the case at FWA; Domino’s management have asked FWA for a six-month extension. Domino’s drivers are represented in an agreement with the company by Australia’s biggest, bestest and (arguably) least competent union, the ‘Shop Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association’ (SDA). The Shoppies have been fighting tooth-and-nail for the interests of Domino’s drivers since 2001, when the workers were delivered holus bolus to the SDA from its rivals in the ‘Transport Workers’ Union’. In other words, the agreement has (apparently) not been re-negotiated since 2003/4, and the SDA was forced into applying for a termination of the agreement only a few weeks ago… What happens next will be interesting to see.

For more infos, see : Domino’s Pizza drivers’ wages were slashed by 19% overnight. Why? Hell, why not? (May 4, 2012). Otherwise, in May a proposal for a Brisbane Workers’ Assembly was made and a conference is being held on Ngunnawal country in Canberra at the Australian National University between July 13-15, 2012 titled EduFactory!, consisting “of three days of radical self-education, criticism and organisation intended to bring together students who seek a way out of the present crisis in university education”.

Posted in State / Politics, Student movement, That's Capitalism! | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

antifa notes (june 5, 2012)

Posted on June 5, 2012 by @ndy

Australia

Heavy metal band Vomitor, playing at the Evil Invaders Festival this weekend, have issued a statement denouncing racism, fascism and neo-Nazism. You can read more about that here. My reference (since removed) to the band in a previous post drew quite a lot of attention, especially from fans, and there’s a ding-dong battle going on in the commentary as a result. Among the many gems on offer is the following (from an obviously disgruntled reader): “I can see from the links to communist organisations here that you support mass murder, cultural destruction, enslavement, and a police state… Craven drivel from a brainwashed turkey fucker.”

On a related note, Jack/Gareth Sansom’s neo-Nazi promotion ‘White Noise Productions’ (WNP) seems to have disappeared and/or collapsed into his other projects (Waffenbrüder/War Doctrine) but retains the loyalty of at least one band, Perseverance (in which Jack also plays). For what it’s worth, I reckon they oughta do a split with Spear of Longinus or StarGazer or some shit. In any case, Gareth once thanked me for publicising his promotion, but I have a feeling Jack disagreed.

*shrugs*

Russia

Oh yeah. Speaking of Blood & Honour, it’s apparently been BANNED! in Russia (RAPSI) under laws prohibiting ‘extremism’. In practice, such laws are more generally used to repress critics of the Russian plutocracy. Also facing repression are Russian anti-fascists, and a call has been made for common days of actions in support of Alexey Olesinov, Alexey Sutuga ‘and all repressed antifascists’ from July 10–17.

Greece

In the birthplace of democracy, Golden Dawn have seemingly been quite active on the streets since their electoral success last month (May 6), working closely with Greek police in targeting immigrant communities. Inter alia, the group’s sudden rise in popularity has meant that Marcos is now a Greek Jew…

Neo-Nazi votes spur memories of Greece’s Holocaust
Roland Lloyd Parry (AFP)
May 31, 2012

ATHENS — Isaac Mizan, a Greek Jew, remembers seeing the flames of the furnaces. It was 1944, and the Nazis were burning bodies in the Auschwitz death camp.

The 16-year-old boy had been deported by train from his home town of Arta in western Greece, along with his parents and three sisters. Of those five, he only saw one sister again.

In Greece, few people talk about what happened to its tens of thousands of Jews in the years after 1941, when the Germans invaded and crushed the Greek and allied resistance.

Now the rise of a Greek neo-Nazi party, Golden Dawn, which won its first seats in parliament this month, has driven Jews here to speak out about their ordeal in World War II as a reminder.

“I lost sleep when I saw they got into parliament,” Mizan, now 85, told AFP.

A television interview by the party’s leader Nikos Mihaloliakos, in which he played down the extent of the Holocaust, prompted a rare public appearance on Tuesday by some of the very few Greek survivors.

Some 400 people crammed into a lecture hall at Athens University to hear Mizan and four other elderly survivors talk about their lives during the Nazi killings and deportations that almost wiped out Greece’s Jewish population.

“I remember seeing the flames of the crematoriums,” Mizan said.

“They would also throw people alive into lakes.”

The subject of the Holocaust in Greece only recently started being mentioned in school history books.

Four years of recession have raised anti-immigrant tension in some districts, fuelling Golden Dawn’s rise, but some also say a blindness to parts of history is to blame.

“It’s a small part of our book,” said Manos Roditakis, 20, a maths student at the university.

“It’s mentioned that there was a Holocaust in all of Europe and Greece too, but they don’t focus much on that,” he said.

“The focus is on the Greek resistance against the Germans and on the Battle of Crete and things like that,” he said, referring to the climax of the Nazi conquest in 1941.

In a televised interview this month, Mihaloliakos denied the existence of gas chambers in the Nazi death camps and suggested that to say six million Jews died in the Holocaust was an exaggeration.

“There were no ovens, no gas chambers, it’s a lie,” he insisted in the interview.

He said he had “read lots of books casting doubt on the number of six million Jews” who died in the Holocaust.

“Auschwitz, what Auschwitz? I didn’t go there. What happened there? Have you been there?” he asked.

At Tuesday’s event, Mizan rolled up the left sleeve of his suit to reveal the number the Nazis tattooed on his forearm in black ink at Auschwitz: 182641.

Of the five survivors at Tuesday’s event, he was the only one who went through the camps. The others managed to stay in Greece, hiding with the help of their countrymen.

Before World War II, a Jewish community had flourished for centuries in Greece, mainly around the northern city of Thessaloniki.

Jews in Greece are now estimated to number about 6,000. Since the war their presence has been scarcely visible, their story seldom told.

“This was the first time in Greece that such a big event took place, in terms of the audience, with young people and non-Jews, who came without being obliged to,” said Isaac Mizan’s son, Zozef.

Another Greek Holocaust survivor, Alexandros Simha, added: “There is a silence, an indifference among people in Greece. But now they are starting to dig a little into their past.”

Golden Dawn won 6.9 percent of the vote and 21 seats in the 300-member parliament in an inconclusive election on May 6.

“We are coming,” Michaloliakos said afterwards. “The time for fear has come for those who betrayed this homeland.”

A new election is scheduled on June 17. Opinion polls indicate Golden Dawn could see a dip in support but may still retain its presence in parliament.

Tuesday’s event was organised by Hagen Fleischer, a German history professor at Athens University, as a riposte to Mihaloliakos’s comments playing down the horror of the Holocaust.

“We must not forget the Holocaust”, said Simha.

“The serpent’s egg is still there, ready to hatch.”

Germany

Over the weekend (June 2), several thousand German police were enlisted to allow several hundred angry German Hamburgers to march thru the city. Police have protecting the nazis down to a fine art; a science, even. Liverpool Antifascists can has a collection of film clips here.

United States

Bill White, My Favourite Hollywood Nazi — who was totally an anarchist at one point in his career — has apparently disappeared. Well, if not in a puff of smoke then at least as far as ZOG is concerned. Where will Bill’s crazy antics take him next? Bill’s comrade JT Ready ended his career in spectacular fashion last month, “All four people killed by a former neo-Nazi before he turned the gun on himself this month in a quiet Phoenix suburb were shot in the head, according to a police report released Tuesday that paints the clearest picture yet of the gruesome crime scene”. In Florida, the alleged plans of cheeky members of bonehead gang American Front to smash local skinheads apparently hasn’t deterred local RASH members and supporters from doing their thing, “When asked if they were concerned about the American Front members being out of jail and on bail for the moment, both John Brown and Krist Cooper said they will carry on with their regular social nights and concerts, but with the added precaution of increased security”.

Posted in Anti-fascism | Tagged | 1 Comment

Loophole closing?

Posted on June 1, 2012 by @ndy

Loophole Community Centre — “an umbrella organisation providing a home to a wide array of arts and humanities projects” — appears to be on the verge of closing. Well, perhaps only at its current location (670–672 High St, Northcote), having been served an eviction notice for June 11. As a result, Loophole is asking for halp:

LOOPHOLE NEEDS A PLACE TO MOVE INTO, so if you know of any empty spaces with a kind, reasonable and community spirited owner, especially if you are that owner, please contact us.
We are looking ASAP for an aspiring film-maker to shoot a documentary while these few weeks unfold.
In the interim, we are in dire need of STORAGE SPACES to temporarily house components of the centre (eg bike workshop, library, etc)
ALTERNATE SPACES where user groups can temporarily relocate, eg Food Not Bombs, Rad Play Group, Rad Choir, Sew Radical etc
Donations of HANDS and hearts to help with all aspects of MOVING
MONEY, stop in or donate online. Moving is expensive.
WRITE A LETTER, SIGN PETITION AND GET ON THE PHONE
COME TO OUR EXHIBITION on June 8th, buy rad art, get inspired and keep our Loophole open.
DROP IN, stop by, show us some love…

Thanks and blessings to all our volunteers, patrons and everyone who has supported and continues to support Loophole over the years. You made our community centre a castle.

Posted in Art, Broken Windows, Media, Music, Poetry, Sex & Sexuality, State / Politics, Student movement, That's Capitalism! | Tagged | 3 Comments

NB. Vomitor

Posted on May 29, 2012 by @ndy

‘Evil Invaders IV’ organiser Hushy today fwded me the following statement by Brisbane band Vomitor:

The impetuosity of youth can lend itself to an over-zealous desire to shock and offend for what end up being all the wrong reasons. To be categorical we are not in any way, shape or form racist/fascist/Nazi in thinking or action.

Vomitor were scheduled to play the ‘extreme metal’ festival in Sydney on June 9 but appear to have been withdrawn from the line-up since I made reference to them in a previous post (since amended). I may return to the topic in a future post, but in the absence of any other infos, I think the band should now be taken at their word. Finally, in case there was any confusion on this point, I do not claim that Evil Invaders is a ‘racist’ event or that its organisers in any way support racism; my apologies if any material on my blog was given any other interpretation.

Posted in !nataS, Anti-fascism, Music, State / Politics | Tagged , | 65 Comments

National Socialist Black Metalhead Bumped Into Parliament (Heil Hitler! Heil !nataS)

Posted on May 20, 2012 by @ndy


Giorgos Germenis

I reckon this has gotta be a first.

Among the 21 Golden Dawn candidates bumped into the Greek Parliament Last Thursday is ‘Kaiadas’ (Giorgos Germenis when he’s at home), bass player for Naer Mataron.

Germenis’ success gots me thinking: could there be room for local NSBM practitioners in the Australian Parliament?

Probably not.*

Still, if not the national parliament, why not local council?

The nearest political equivalent to GD in Australia is the Australia First Party. Admittedly, members of AF are more likely to be found wearing cardigans than they are leather jackets, but they do have a yoof wing: the Eureka League. And OK, the yoof wing leader is a middle-aged fella named Brendan Gidley, and yes, in its previous incarnation (the Patriotik Yoof Laegue), its leader was another middle-aged bloke named John Drew…

But still.

AF had its own Golden moment back in November 2006, when Bruce Preece was elected to local council in Adelaide. Preece appears to have exited the party not long after being elected, and has had his own share of problems since, but his triumph does provide evidence that a White nationalist can indeed win an electoral contest. Further, Peter Schuback recently (April 28) came third of four candidates aiming for a seat in Division 8 of the Fraser Coast Region in Queensland, scoring 1,002 votes or 19.11%.

Sadly, Schuback seems more interested in truck-driving than guitar-shredding.

Who then might AF attract to join its NSBM division?


Gareth/Jack Sansom

One obvious potential candidate is Melbourne metalhead Gareth/Jack Sansom. Sansom (as ‘Hyperborean’) plays bass for Waffenbrüder; more often he can be found shouting for Perseverance. Perseverance released its album on Sansom’s neo-Nazi White Noise label, while Waffenbrüder released its album via Sansom’s local neo-Nazi distro War Doctrine.

According to the band (in an interview with a Greek nazi zine), the name Waffenbrüder “was chosen to convey our ultimate purpose; armed insurrection”. Personally, I don’t think that the boys’ phantasy of national socialist revolution should exclude Sansom from a place on, say, Boroondara Council, especially given that, in the case of GD, a desire to ethnically cleanse the country of non-Greeks doesn’t mean that they haven’t a rightful place in the nation’s parliament.

Or maybe that’s just me.

[snip]

Posted in !nataS, Anti-fascism, History, Music, State / Politics, That's Capitalism! | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 45 Comments

…And Justice For All : Pies Get Revenge In Grand Final Rematch

Posted on May 19, 2012 by @ndy

Floreat Pica.

COLLINGWOOD 14.12 (96)
Geelong 11.18 (84)

With scores level and less than two minutes remaining, Collingwood’s Alex Fasolo marked on the wing and was handed a 50-metre penalty after he shaped to play on and was tackled by Josh Hunt.

“I knew Josh Hunt grabbed me and I just milked [the penalty] for all it was worth … I hope it was there,” Fasolo laughingly told Grandstand.

“Obviously [got a] 50-metre penalty and all the boys got around me … so I just went back and slotted it and gave it a fist and … come on the Mags.”

Posted in Collingwood, Poetry | Tagged , | Leave a comment

David North (ICFI) ~versus~ David Green (Grand River)

Posted on May 18, 2012 by @ndy

wsws.org is the online publication of the ICFI, the ‘International Committee of the Fourth International’. You may remember the ICFI from such rallies as took place in Melbourne in the early 1990s (when they were still known as the ‘Socialist Labour League’); the selling of their newspaper, Workers News, sometimes being accompanied by angry denunciations of anarchism.

Well, I do anyway.

In any case, the ICFI is one of umpteen FIs out there battling to maintain Brotsky’s Crotsky’s Drotsky’s Frotsky’s Trotsky’s legacy. For its part, the ICFI modestly describes itself as “the leadership of the world socialist movement… consist[ing] of Socialist Equality Party national sections throughout the world”. ‘The world’, in this instance, meaning Australia, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States and Sri Lanka, and ‘the leadership’ an American bloke named David North.

(The history of the FI (est.1938) is complicated, and there are many different international associations claiming descent. Wikipedia, for example, lists 20, of which four–CWI, ICFI, ICL and IST–have a noticeable presence Down Under. Their size ranges from the tiny (eg. IBT) to the very, very small.)

In its current incarnation the ICFI, aka the leadership of the world socialist movement, developed in the wake of a split in the I during the mid-1980s. Bob Gould:

…after several years of intense activity, including publishing a bi-weekly newpaper for some time, [the Australian SLL] imploded in 1985, about the same time that the British Workers Revolutionary Party collapsed. Bob Pitt’s thorough political biography of WRP leader Gerry Healy [The Rise And Fall of Gerry Healy] explains most of the reasons for the collapse of the SLL/WRP current. The remnants of the SLL were subsequently incorporated into the Socialist Equality Party, and the newspaper Workers News was closed and incorporated in the World Wide Socialist Website.

So much for Australia. As Bob Pitt puts it: “In February 1986 supporters of David North, led by Dave Hyland, were kicked out with all the WRP’s usual contempt for democratic procedure. Adopting the name of the International Communist Party, the Northites [in the UK] quickly relapsed into sectarian ultra-leftism, adopting the Bordigist position that the trade unions are no longer workers’ organisations having been entirely incorporated into the capitalist state.” Ten Years After, according to the SEP nee SLL:

In June 1996, the SLL held its 17th National Congress to begin the process of transforming itself into the Socialist Equality Party. A similar initiative was being undertaken in all the sections of the ICFI. This was not simply a change of name. It was based on the recognition of the new responsibilities posed to the party by the far-reaching changes in the fundamental historical context in which the party conducted its work. New forms of work were necessitated by the political realignment underway in the international working class.

As part of this transformation, the wsws site was launched wayback in 1998 (that is, three years after The Mid Atlantic Infoshop site). Strangely, despite being launched wayback when, the inaugural SEP conference was only held in January, 2010: many years after its supposed birth. Leaving aside the question of the ICFI’s access to time travel, the blast-off into cyberspace was not greeted with much enthusiasm by their comrades in the International Communist League, who of the historic occasion remarked (Bulletin Liquidated: Northite Pirates Run for Cyberspace, Workers Vanguard, No.687, March 27, 1996):

Contrary to the hostile buzzing of a small clot of petty-bourgeois losers and nerds who obviously have nothing better to do than clog up the Internet with sneers that the SL is “anti-technology,” we actually do believe that computers, and yes, even Web sites, are useful tools — for certain purposes. But that’s all they are. To pretend dumping some documents into cyberspace is any substitute for the hard fight — in the real world, among real people — to build a revolutionary workers party, only confirms the total depths of cynicism and humbug for which the Northites are infamous.

Humbug!

As well as providing incisive analysis of World-Historical Events (and film reviews), wsws also includes innumerable exhortations to join the ICFI, such calls almost invariably concluding ‘most any such analysis. Which makes perfect sense if the reader is committed to following the leadership* of the world** socialist movement.

Be that as it may, recently, while searching for critical materials on Drink-Soaked Ex-Trotskyite Popinjay for War Christopher Hitchens, I stumbledupon a rather unflattering portrayal of him on the ICFI site: Journalist, scoundrel Christopher Hitchens dies at 62 (David Walsh, December 17, 2011). The mournful response to his death on the part of The New York Times, Walsh argues, is on account of his exemplifying “a social type they admire”:

Taken from the widest angle, Hitchens’ trajectory resembled that followed by many of his contemporaries in the “protest generation.” His was an especially spectacular and filthy evolution, but the difference between a Hitchens and a great many left celebrities, including those who still maintain a pretense now and then of opposition to the existing order, is slight. What has characterized these middle class elements, above all, has been an immense unseriousness about the great life-and-death questions of our day.

And certainly, if a complete absence of humour regarding both Life and Death is your thing, then so too is the ICFI; revolution, like the ah, internets, is serious business. With regards Hitchens (Scoundrel time redux: Christopher Hitchens as a social type, David Walsh, February 13, 1999):

He takes positions… that draw attention to himself, allow him to stand out in a crowd, but don’t threaten his social position or standing. To get on in the world it helps sometimes to raise a few eyebrows. In some circles, a British accent, a little sauciness (but nothing too profound) will do the trick.

Maybe. But Hitchens wasn’t the only one to be tricky. The thing is, wayback in April 2007, the leader of the ICFI, David North, was exposed as being David Green, the CEO of a Michigan-based printing company (Grand River Printing and Imaging).

Well, kinda sorta.

When I blogged about it a year later (May 2008) one commenter described ex-SEP member Scott Solomon’s outing as “a pathetic effort to slander David North and the SEP”. Which again, may be so. But this didn’t actually answer the question: is David North, the leader of the world socialist movement aka the ICFI, also David Green, CEO of Grand River?

Dunno.

Solomon’s allegations caused something of a stir at the time, and another FI — the International Bolshevik Tendency (IBT) — was certainly happy to elaborate, first with Notes on the SEP/GRPI Puzzle (May 15, 2007) and then with Northites Inc.: Toeing the Bottom Line: Being Determines Consciousness (Bolshevik, No.30, 2008). Another FI — (Jan Norden’s) Internationalist Group — also makes reference to the seeming contradiction in Socialists in Bourgeois Electionland (The Internationalist, November 2008) and Where Were You, David North? (The Internationalist, July 2009).

Upon receiving a local business award (“Best Places to Work in Southeast Michigan”, an honour bestowed by Crain’s Detroit Business and IRI Consultants to Management) in 2003, David Green (David North?) remarked of his company that it “places heavy emphasis on what an employee has to deal with day to day, including personal and social responsibilities, and accommodates accordingly. The company firmly believes it and employees must work together to survive.”

As of this date, the name ‘David Green’ has been expunged from the Grand River website; Grand River remains a union-free workplace.

See also : On the Socialist Equality Party, The Partisan, April 6, 2010 | The Downward Spiral of the International Committee of the Fourth International, Alex Steiner, Permanent Revolution, November 2009. NB. This PR is to be confused with Permanent Revolution, the group that split from Workers’ Power aka the Fifth International, in 2006. Sadly, its five Australian members failed to keep the flame of the Fifth International-And-A-Half alive Down Under, their spark expiring a few short years later.

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#BobHawke trolls the ACTU : ‘Solidarity Forever’

Posted on May 17, 2012 by @ndy

*hic*

‘Solidarity Forever’ was written by Ralph Chaplin (1887–1961), a member of the ‘Industrial Workers of the World’ (IWW). In Australia, the IWW (‘Wobblies’) frequently battled the ALP for the hearts and minds of the working class. They lost, and the ALP won.

Burgmann:

Less than a quarter century before the appearance of the IWW, the Labor Party in New South Wales had vowed to ‘make and unmake social conditions’; the memory of this promise was still fresh in the mind of many workers, who had lived to see the undertaking woefully unfulfilled. Hughes acknowledged in federal parliament early in 1917 that the strength of the IWW represented ‘the revolt of the people against the chicanery of legislatures’, which had not relieved their suffering: ‘The best remedy for syndicalism is effective political action’. The IWW had decided that the reverse was the case: that the best remedy for ineffective political action was revolutionary industrial unionism. It expressed and reinforced the strong feelings of resentment felt by many militant workers towards their elected representatives. Accordingly, it was widely resented by Labor apologists for its ‘determination to make workers believe their representatives in Parliament are all unmitigated scoundrels’; concern was also expressed that the IWW was encouraging workers to avoid registration under the Commonwealth Electoral Act…

In Australia, with a comparatively democratic franchise and reasonably fair access to electoral registration, the IWW was more expressly and truly anti-political [than it was in the United States]. The Australian IWW’s determined rebuttal of political action was informed by the experience, peculiar to Australasia, of the duplicity of Labor, the betrayal of working-class interests by Labor governments. While many individual Wobblies may occasionally have voted in elections, the IWW itself was insistent that political action had nothing to offer: ‘The I.W.W. does not say that the workers must not vote at Parliamentary elections; but that such voting is of no use to the proletariat in the great class struggle.’ Direct Action explained: ‘Our members are not pledged to do one thing or the other on election day. They simply please themselves. They can vote if they wish, or they can “strike at the ballot box with an axe”. It matters not to the organisation.’

…The ballot, the IWW argued, was ‘the greatest fraud ever perpetrated upon a long-suffering and over-patient working class’. Hundreds of thousands of workers were living in a fool’s paradise because of ‘insidious teaching on the part of those whom the workers themselves have raised to positions of privilege and of others aspiring to such positions’. The best-known indigenous Wobbly creation was the song of the Labor MP, ‘Bump Me Into Parliament’, written by Bill Casey in Melbourne, to the tune of ‘Yankee Doodle’:

Come listen, all kind friends of mine,
I want to move a motion,
To make an El Dorado here,
I’ve got a bonza notion.

Chorus:
Bump me into Parliament,
Bounce me any way,
Bang me into Parliament,
On next election day.

Some very wealthy friends I know
Declare I am most clever,
While some can talk for an hour or so
Why, I can talk for ever.

I know the Arbitration Act
As a sailor knows his ‘riggins’,
So if you want a small advance,
I’ll talk to Justice Higgens.

Oh yes I am a Labor man,
And believe in revolution;
The quickest way to bring it on
Is talking constitution.

I’ve read my Bible ten times through,
And Jesus justifies me,
The man who does not vote for me,
By Christ he crucifies me.

So bump them into Parliament,
Bounce them any way,
Bung them into Parliament,
Don’t let the Court decay.

~ Verity Burgmann, Revolutionary Industrial Unionism: The Industrial Workers of the World in Australia, Cambridge University Press, 1995, Chapter 10: ‘Bump Me Into Parliament’: the Critique of Laborism, pp.143–145.

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