Free the Urewera 17 (We Can’t Be Beaten)

Posted on October 30, 2007 by @ndy

    Above : Photo by John Squirrel of folks protesting in Auckland on the Global Day of Action, October 27, 2007. By the looks of ’em, they’re Not. Happy. Helen. (In the background is an @ banner reading ‘State terrorists kidnapped our friends’.)

Police in Aotearoa / New Zealand today applied to the Solicitor-General to bring terrorism charges against the Urewera 17. According to the NZPA (Solicitor-General to decide on terror charges, October 29, 2007):

Evidence about the operation leading up to this month’s police raids is now in the hands of the Solicitor-General for a decision on whether charges can proceed under the Terrorism Suppression Act. Seventeen people were arrested on October 15 following raids in Auckland, Wellington, Palmerston North, Hamilton, Christchurch, Whakatane and Ruatoki, 20km south of Whakatane. The raids were the culmination of a year-long investigation into weapons training camps alleged to have been held in the Urewera country and netted a haul of weapons. Among those arrested was Maori activist Tame Iti. Police deputy commissioner Rob Pope said police had reviewed the evidence collected over the course of the investigation. It has today been referred to the Solicitor-General for consideration whether consent will be given to charges under the Terrorism Suppression Act…

Some facts about the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002:

The law makes it a criminal offence to take part in, finance or recruit for a terrorist organisation or terrorist act;
Planning a terrorist act, or making a “credible threat”, is also illegal even if it is not carried out;
Unlike other countries the law does not give police additional powers of arrest or detainment;
The Attorney-General must give the green light to any prosecutions under the Act, but Michael Cullen has delegated this responsibility to Solicitor-General David Collins;
Under the Act groups can be listed as a designated terrorist entity, but so far no local groups have been designated. Those that have been listed are United Nations designated groups.

The troublemakers associated with Global Peace & Justice Auckland, in a shocking display of hatred for Big Brother, have issued a statement in response to the police referral, claiming it’s ‘politically-motivated’ — that is:

Behind this decision is the deeply political need to justify the huge extra resources and wide legislative powers the police and Security Intelligence Service have been given since 2001. They have to find terrorists. Uncovering criminal activity is not enough for these “wannabe terrorist fighters”.

What the police are now doing is charging political activists under a law which would have made many of the civil disobedience protests from 1981 into “terrorist activities”. Activities such as the 40 people sitting on Rotorua airport runway, the invasion of the pitch in Hamilton and the blocking of the Harbour Bridge could all qualify…

Of the 17, only six (by my count) have had their names publicly released by the courts, the sixth person — Marama Mayrick — having her name and person released on bail today. (The other five are Omar Hamed, Rongomai Bailey, Rawiri Iti, Jamie Lockett and Tame Iti. Bail granted and name suppression lifted for terror suspect, Radio New Zealand, October 29, 2007.)

See also : Civil Rights Defense

Posted in State / Politics, War on Terror | 1 Comment

Anarchist statement on New Right (cont.)

Posted on October 29, 2007 by @ndy

Cool.

Since publishing the statement last week (October 21), both the Melbourne Anarchist Club and now Jura Books have added their names. You can read the statement here and also (with one spelling error) on @-Infos.

In this context, also of note is the latest scribbling by the New Right’s Führer Welf Herfurth, titled ‘The Strategy of Tension’ (October 25, 2007). In it, among other things, Welf disavows the label ‘neo-Nazi’ and identifies ‘Communists’ as the groupuscule’s main enemies, barrier to popular acceptance and the ushering in of a New Dawn for Australia (and er, New Zealand). Mixing banality with gibberish, the main point is that Welf is encouraging his followers to attend left-wing meetings (“…it is advisable that nationalists go out and attend as many political meetings as possible: lectures on Lenin, Trotsky, Chavez, etc., delivered by Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative, Resistance”).

Ho-hum.

Posted in Anarchism, Anti-fascism, Media | Leave a comment

Tommy On Tour

Posted on October 29, 2007 by @ndy

    Tommy gun — you ain’t happy ‘less you got one
    Tommy gun — ain’t gonna shoot the place up just for fun
    Maybe he wants to die for the money
    Maybe he wants to kill for his country
    Whatever he wants, he’s gonna get it

    Tommy gun — you better strip it down for a customs run
    Tommy gun — waiting at the airport ‘til Kingdom Come
    An’ we can watch you make it on the nine o’clock news
    Standing there in Palestine lighting the fuse
    Whatever you want, you’re gonna get it

    Tommy gun
    Tommy gun

    Tommy gun — a-you’ll be dead when your war is won
    Tommy gun — but did you have to gun down everyone?
    I can see it’s kill or be killed
    A nation of destiny has got to be fulfilled
    Whatever you want, you’re gonna get it

    Tommy gun — a-you can be hero in an age of none
    Tommy gun — I’m cutting out your picture from page one
    I’m gonna a get a jacket just like yours
    An’ give my false support to your cause
    Whatever you want, you’re gonna get it
    All right!

    Okay, so let’s agree about the price
    An’ make it one jet airliner for ten prisoners

    Boats and tanks and planes, it’s your game
    Kings and queens and generals, learn your name
    I see all the innocents, the human sacrifice
    And if death comes so cheap, then the same goes for life

Posted in Anti-fascism, Music | 47 Comments

Neo-Nazis split Croat community

Posted on October 27, 2007 by @ndy

Neo-Nazis split Croat community
Greg Roberts
The Australian
October 27, 2007

MELBOURNE’S Croatian community is under fire for hosting a rock concert for neo-Nazi skinheads, publishing anti-Semitic material on the internet and naming a building after fascist Croatian dictator Ante Pavelic.

The Melbourne Knights Soccer Club yesterday launched an extraordinary attack on its social arm, the Croatia Social Club, for hosting the October 13 concert by groups that incite violence and attacks against Jews and other minorities. “I am deeply disturbed that the good reputation of our football club has been tarnished by the social club’s incompetence,” Knights chairman Matt Tomas said.

The concert at the Knights’ North Sunshine complex was headlined by US neo-Nazi band Final War. The band describes itself as “defenders of the Reich”, and its songs boast: “We fight Jews”.

Australian skinhead band Fortress also played. Its song, Parasites, urges repatriation of immigrants: “If they don’t f..king like it, it’ll be in body bags”.

The concert was organised by the Australian chapters of neo-Nazi skinhead groups Blood and Honour and Southern Cross Hammer Skins. Group members in the US and Europe have been convicted of assaults, bombings and murders.

Anti-Semitic messages from the Knights’ Croatian fans are posted on the Knights Army Forum website. One posting says Jews would “sell their mothers for a dollar”.*

Melbourne campaigner Cam Smith said anti-racism activists alerted the Knights to the nature of the concert several hours before it started. “As soon as we found out, we contacted whoever we could at the Knights through phone numbers on their website,” Mr Smith said. “They weren’t interested. One of their people asked one of our people if he was a dirty Jew.”

Mr Tomas said he did not know who was attending the concert, but he would investigate Mr Smith’s claim that Knights members were contacted, adding: “I don’t associate with that sort of scum. I’m utterly disgusted about this.”

Mr Tomas said the concert was approved by the Croatia Social Club, a separate legal entity to the football club.

Contacted by The Weekend Australian, social club manager Catarina Malacic denied the event was held. “There was nothing on at the venue that night,” she said.

Later, club committee member Ivan Skunca confirmed the premises were booked for a concert, but said the club did not know who made the booking. “It was a mistake. Perhaps we had an obligation to check these people out and we didn’t. We apologise for that.”

B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission director Manny Waks said he was disturbed the concert was held in view of links between the Croatian community and neo-Nazi elements.

Mr Waks said the Croatia Club — a separate entity to the Knights’ social club — had ignored Jewish protests against the naming of its Footscray hall after Ustashi Nazi collaborator Ante Pavelic, who was responsible for the slaughter of 700,000 Serbs, Jews and Gypsies.

* Note that, while the Forum administrators have recently deleted a thread dedicated to discussing the gig, another thread includes the following comments, made in reaction to reports in the Jewish press that at a concert in Zagreb by Croatian rock * Thompson, large numbers of his fans greeted him with the fascist salute (Jews slam Croatia’s failure to condemn ‘Nazi’ concert, EJP, June 17, 2007):

    1) cantona : “Dunno about you guys, but after reading that – it makes me wanna go to a [Thompson] concert and make fascist salutes even more! [Z]a dom!” (NB. The Ustaše greeting was “Za dom – spremni!”. Salute: Za dom! For home(land)! Reply: Spremni! (We are) ready!)
    2) Imocanka : ‘”Hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, anti-fascist Croatians, Gypsies and others were killed by the Ustasha in the Croatian concentration camps.” [S]o we get condemned for doing the world a favour. [Anyhow], how do they actually know what we yell out at our concerts? [T]hey don[‘]t understand, it[‘]s all speculation[.]’
    3) Bogdan Bonk : “Chelsea [Hajduk] are playing Caufield in this week[‘]s round. They are a [J]ewish club, so because of that they have to play on a Sunday. Every other game of the year is on [S]aturday, but because their [sic] Jewish, they play only on [S]undays. They want everything their own way! [H]itler = answer[.]”
    4) Falcon Freak : “And the Jews wonder why so many people hate them…”

In the meantime, Thompson (Marko Perkovic) is playing to packed houses in New York:

Marko Perkovic is taking the stage November 2nd to literally sing praises of the Holocaust. The Croatian rocker goes by the stage name Thompson (for the American-issued Thompson sub-machine gun he carried as a soldier in the Croatian war)—and sings about the Ustaše, the Croation pro-Nazi regime that sent Jews, Serbs and Gypsies to concentration camps during WWII. The folk-metal musician is often greeted by audiences with a Nazi salute. He’s been kicked out of Canada and the Netherlands for hate speech, only to be welcomed by Manhattan’s own Croatian Center in Midtown…

Many fans deny Thompson is a fascist creep. Melbourne Croatia Social Club manager Catarina Malacic denies a neo-Nazi gig was held at the MCSC on the night of October 13. Others — like Welf Herfurth of the neo-Nazi New Right — deny that there was a Holocaust / Shoah…

I say:

Croation [sic] Neo-Nazi Rocker To Perform in Midtown, Maria Luisa Tucker, The Village Voice, October 25, 2007 | Neo-Nazi Band Set To Play Amid Protests, Maruxa Relaño, New York Sun, October 24, 2007 | VPD looks into rock singer accused of hate crimes, Lloyd Dykk, Vancouver Sun, October 25, 2007 (“Croation Centre’s president defends ‘Thompson,’ saying things have been distorted”).

Posted in Anti-fascism, Music | 28 Comments

Racism row over hiring (of Knights Stadium by neo-Nazi groups)

Posted on October 26, 2007 by @ndy

Racism row over hiring
Mario Xureb
The Age
October 26, 2007

VICTORIAN soccer bosses have come under fire from anti-racism groups after neo-Nazis hired grounds used by the Melbourne Knights Soccer Club to hold a racist rock concert.

Members of the white supremacist Hammerskins and Blood and Honour groups held a concert at Knights Stadium in Sunshine on October 13.

The ground is home to the soccer club and the Melbourne Croatia Social Club, which owns the site and hired out the venue.

Anti-racism campaigners yesterday criticised the Melbourne Knights and Football Federation Victoria for allowing the staging of the concert, which commemorated a dead white supremacist.

Anti-racism campaigner Anthony Main said the concert included overseas white power and local [bonehead] music groups.

“It’s racist music to the extreme, but it’s also a way for those guys to network and to meet,” Mr Main said.

He called on Football Federation Victoria to ensure the venues used by its clubs were hired out diligently.

Football Federation Victoria and the Melbourne Knights distanced themselves from the concert, saying they did not book events for the venue.

Melbourne Knights chairman Matt Tomas said the social club operated separately from the soccer club. He apologised for the incident, saying it was regrettable.

Note that there were apparently four bands performing on the night of the gig, three Australian, and one from the United States. The three Australian bands performing were Bail Up!, Fortress and Quick and the Dead. The band from the US (Orange County, California) was Final War. Here’s a sample of their lyrics:

    Final War – ‘Defenders Of The Reich’:

    Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows
    Everything that’s wonderful is what I feel when we’re together
    Brighter than a lucky penny
    When you’re near the rain cloud disappears, dear
    And I feel so fine just to know that you are mine

    My life is sunshine, lollipops and rainbows
    That’s how this refrain goes, so come on, join in everybody!

Whoops. Sorry. I meant:

    Walking down the street with your head held high
    People know you’re full of pride as you pass by
    Boots and braces, short cropped hair
    Fuck with us if you dare
    Skinhead’s not a fashion, it’s a way of life
    A way of life, living on the edge of a knife
    Our flags fly high and our banners are unfurled
    White power skinheads take the world

    Skinheads – Defenders of the reich
    Skinheads – We wage this nation’s fight
    Skinheads – Standing proud and true
    Skinheads – We fight the Jew

    When the reds see us comin’, they cower in fear
    ‘Cause they know their end is near
    Won’t be long until they fall
    Fighting for our race and nation, fighting for our land
    And we fight with the winning hand
    A glorious battle it will be
    A shining bright, white victory

Taken from the album Glory Unending (2002). That same year, Final War contributed a song to a compilation CD designed to raise money for Ken Mieske, a Portland bonehead imprisoned since 1988 for the brutal murder of an Ethiopian immigrant. Note that Portland was the location for the recent Hammerfest music festival organised by Hammerkins in the US, and which local Australian band Blood Red Eagle (Newcastle, NSW) traveled to in order to perform for their Yanqui brothers. Upon discovering that a neo-Nazi gig was taking place at their facilities, the Elks Lodge pulled the plug on the gig. The MCSC, on the other hand, not only refused to investigate the gig on the night of its occurrence, but has since lyingly claimed it never took place!

Posted in Anti-fascism, Media | Leave a comment

Exploring the case for armed struggle? Re-framing the Urewera 17

Posted on October 25, 2007 by @ndy

Update : Open Letter from John Minto to Chris Trotter, October 30, 2007 | Len Richards, Backwoods terror?, October 29, 2007

If an [armed] uprising is being considered in New Zealand, what are the reasons and what will it mean, asks CHRIS TROTTER.

    “MURKY PEDIGREE: History is littered with groups who have taken up arms in an attempt to bring about their political or anarchic claims.”

Uh-huh.

At least, so says the caption accompanying the above graphic in Chris Trotter’s recent article in the Independent Financial Review (Exploring the case for armed struggle, October 24, 2007). In this context, note that history is also littered with journalists who have taken up a tendentious line of argument in an attempt to bring about their personal monetary gain: Trotter’s article is a classic example; the text below is a response.

In essence, Trotter’s argument is that there’s a widening gulf between (bad) radicals and (good) moderates on the New Zealand left, and that the chief significance of the recent police raids lies not in the personal and political ramifications for those arrested, but in the role of the raids in exposing and entrenching this rift. Apparently, this is largely because the raids force individuals to pick a side:

    Police raids. Terrorism. Yes or no?

No, not a very sophisticated analysis, but yes, one which does have the virtue of allowing Trotter to trot out references to the ANC, the Provos, the Weathermen, Baader-Meinhof and (one of my personal favourites) the Symbionese Liberation Army:

“Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people!”

(Ahem.)

Note that Trotter invokes these disparate (non-state terrorist/armed struggle) groups in the context of a number of alleged firearms offences, committed by a group dubbed the Urewera 17. Further, that today police raided a house belonging to an elderly trade unionist named Jimmy O’Dea, apparently searching for a knife and — Eeek! — trousers (see Maori Yesterday: Trade Unions Today?). Which assault prompts what is for me another, equally obvious — and equally pressing — question:

If an armed uprising is being considered in New Zealand, what kind of trousers will the terrorists wear and what will it mean, asks SLACKBASTARD.

That said, according to Trotter, the central question dividing the Left (apart from trousers) is that old chestnut “Reform or revolution?“. Or to put it another way: “Do [the Left] see their society, and its manifold shortcomings, as being redeemable by the normal processes of constitutional government? Or, has New Zealand society passed beyond all hope of democratic redemption?” This question is given further impetus by the widespread belief, particularly among environmentalists, that humanity is fast approaching an ecological crisis of terminal proportions. Thus in both the Greens and the Maori Parties “…there is a potent strain of millenarian (and even apocalyptic) thinking: a conviction that we have entered or are about to enter a period of fundamental and irrevocable change, during which the institutions and patterns of thought and behaviour that have dominated people’s lives for centuries will pass away forever”.

And of course, a crisis of such proportions bolsters the argument that equally drastic solutions must be obtained: “Nothing less than wholesale systemic change will suffice”. Further “On the fringes of this millenarian grouping, Deep Green radicalism inevitably begins to shade into the darker hues of eco-anarchism“.

Eeek!

That being the case, it is entirely justifiable both ethically and politically to attack and seek to destroy the repressive society by which [the bad radicals] are persecuted and oppressed. More chillingly, they argue that none of those who, by their silence and inaction, are seen to endorse society’s evils should be deemed guiltless. And if everyone is guilty then everyone is a potential target.

Out of this dark green substance come the Urewera 17 — “Tuhoe separatists and eco-anarchists… in some sort of insurrectionary folie a deux“. This, supposedly, is the psychosocial dynamic that must have generated the 17, one which constitutes a basically psychotic response to the failure of their extreme demands for fundamental change to generate popular support, and to which, Trotter argues, the only alternative is “to abandon the fight and to sink back into passivity”. Further, the greater this failure to connect is, the more likely a violent response — terrorism — is going to be triggered: “This is the sort of thinking that spawned the Weathermen and the Baader-Meinhof terrorist organisations of the 1960s and 1970s”.

Well, kinda… but not really. Thus if you examine the actual list of targets ‘Baader-Meinhof’ — a/k/a the Red Arrmy Faction — compiled, it largely consisted of members of the military, industrial and political elite: generals, captains of industry and party leaders; not chaffeurs, factory workers, and nurses. Further, the emergence of both the RAF and the Weathermen owes a great deal more to the impact of Marxist-Leninist orthodoxies upon the New Left and 1960s counter-culture than it does, say, indigenous rights activism or a radical ecological sensibility (that is, the ideologies associated with those whom the police have targeted as ‘terrorists’).

Finally, while police, politicians and, it seems, Chris Trotter, have been happy to label those arrested as ‘terrorists’, police are yet to lay any charges for ‘terrorist’ offences. And of course, the laying of charges does not equal guilt. Further, given the seriousness of such charges — as in numerous other countries, specifically ‘anti-terrorist’ legislation was introduced to New Zealand following the attacks upon New York and Washington in 2001 (see Terrorism Suppression Act 2002 and Amendment Bill 2007) — a prosecutorial state is compelled, at least in theory, to produce very compelling evidence.

At the moment, however, it appears that the trousers simply don’t fit.

See also : Reading the Maps, The threat to your civil liberties – and your trousers, October 25, 2007 for some sensible disco…

Posted in !nataS, History, Media, State / Politics, War on Terror | 3 Comments

The War on Terrorism in Aotearoa

Posted on October 24, 2007 by @ndy

…goes on.

Word on the street is that Helen Clark may have bitten off a little more than she can chew by authorising the ‘anti-terrorism’ raids of last week.

To begin with, while the 300 or so police who conducted the raids were — especially in the case of the Tuhoe — expected to deliver their orders in Maori, they did not (although the exact reasons why remain a little obscure). And when Clark claimed that “she’d been informed of the raids in advance”, and evinced “surprise… at the scale and numbers of people involved”, she was actually attempting to minimise the extent of her own involvement, which apparently included her helping to prepare this strategy (NZ police raid military-style camps, AP, The Age, October 15, 2007).

Secondly, the authorities have a list of approximately 60–70 or so individuals they wish to speak with in relation to the investigation, but are having some small difficulties in actually finding them, and so activists (of all sorts) can expect further raids on and searches of their properties. According to Tim Johnston of the International Herald Tribune (Anti-terror raids cause turmoil in New Zealand, October 22, 2007):

…According to the police, the investigation started in December of 2005, when two hunters in the remote Urewera mountains in northeastern New Zealand stumbled across a camp where armed men, some in balaclavas, were training. They reported what they saw to the police, and the camps were put under surveillance.

In the following months, the police logged 74 people passing through, although people who attended more than one gathering would have been counted every time. The police also intercepted telephone calls and monitored a number of computer accounts…

In addition, the raids involved the use of not only regular police, but paramilitary and military forces, including — supposedly — elements of the SAS, as well as having involved political and secret police forces in its planning (if not execution). Also included in the planning, in addition to the NZ PM, were the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) — a bunch of spooks created in 1977 by ex-NZ PM Robert ‘Piggy’ Muldoon — and the Security Intelligence Service (SIS). Naturally, so as to avoid overly-‘politicising’ the issue, Clark’s Government seeks to minimise not only her, own personal involvement in the ‘counter-insurgency’ operation, but that of the spooks too.

In other schnews, one of the seventeen (18?) accused, Rongomai Pero Pero Bailey of Auckland, a 28 year old unemployed filmmaker, was today granted bail by the courts. He’s been charged with four firearms offences. “Prosecutor Ross Burns said police had reason to believe Bailey had attended the alleged military-style training camps near Ruatoki three times in the past year and that there was a chance he would follow through with violence should he be released on bail.”

Fortunately for the filmmaker, the police claim didn’t wash with the judge. As a result, Bailey is the second person to be released on bail by Judge Bouchier, the first being James Lockett, whose release was overturned by a higher court (Man arrested in terror raids given bail, Kim Ruscoe, Fairfax Media, October 23, 2007).

So where to now for the state? Despite increasingly widespread criticism, both national and international (see, for example, Claims of Maori separatist plot begin to unravel, Kathy Marks, The Independent, October 23, 2007), it would be difficult to envisage Clark’s Government instructing the relevant authorities not to lay charges of terrorism against at least some of those arrested. Certainly, a failure to do so renders inadmissible much of the evidence police (and other agencies) claim to have collected over the last year or more. The spectre of such charges being laid is also a useful device to threaten vulnerable arrestees into collaborating with police, just as has been the case in the United States in the state’s ongoing campaign against radical activists there. At this point, however, and unlike at least one of the cases in the US, there is no suggestion that state agencies actually employed someone to entrap activists.

In the meantime, this Saturday, October 27, has been designated a Global Day of Action in solidarity with the accused. In Melbourne, a solidarity demonstration — possibly consisting of terrorist hordes currently hiding deep within the sacred Dandenongs — will be held in Federation Square, at 12 midday. In Sydney, a public meeting and demonstration is being held on Thursday, October 25, @ 5:30pm, outside the New Zealand Consulate-General, 55 Hunter St, City.

See also : Aziz Choudry, New Zealand Government Is Not Fit to Sit on UN Human Rights Council (A Highly Unsuitable Candidate), Dissident Voice, October 22, 2007 | Anti-terrorism raids continue to cop flak, Niu FM, October 23, 2007 | Paul Buchanan, Guantanamo On The Pacific?, October 23, 2007 (“The arrest and detention without bail of seventeen individuals on grounds that they were planning terrorist attacks against political targets in New Zealand represents a step towards the “Guantanomisation” of national security policy in this country, at least as it applies to political dissent…”) | Civil Rights Defence… Oh yeah. Apparently, there’s thirteen men rotting in Barwon Prison too. According to Kath Wilson: “ONE OF THE MOST extraordinary features of the Barwon 13 case was that an undercover agent had infiltrated the group and influenced the men’s activities. The Age reported that an agent provocateur “of Middle-Eastern heritage” befriended the group “by pretending he shared similar beliefs”. The agent allegedly showed the men how to use explosives…” Thought Crime and Punishment, Overland, No.186, Autumn 2007.

Posted in State / Politics, War on Terror | 6 Comments

Stamp out racism! Thursday, October 25

Posted on October 22, 2007 by @ndy

    Football Federation Victoria
    Darebin International Sports Centre
    Head Office : John Cain Memorial Park
    281 Darebin Rd, Thornbury, VIC, 3071
    Melway REF: 31A7

    Postal Address : P.O. Box 318, Fairfield, VIC, 3078
    Phone : (03) 9474-1800
    Fax : (03) 9474-1899
    E-mail : [email protected]

Posted in Uncategorized | 76 Comments

Student charged over Russian neo-Nazi execution video

Posted on October 22, 2007 by @ndy

Russian authorities get involved in “someone else’s bullshit”…

Student Charged Over Video
The Moscow Times
October 22, 2007

Prosecutors have charged a student with inciting ethnic hatred after he posted an execution video on the Internet.

The three-minute video, which appeared in August on several ultranationalist web sites, shows two men kneeling in the woods in front of a Nazi flag with their arms and legs bound and identified by a subtitle as “colonists from Tajikistan and Dagestan.” One of the men is shown being beheaded, and the other is shot in the head.

The video ends with two men in black masks and camouflage clothing giving Nazi salutes.

Police in Maikop, the capital of the southern republic of Adygeya, detained a student on Aug. 15. The suspect, identified by Kommersant on Saturday [?] as Viktor Milkov, 24, admitted to posting the video but maintained that he received it as an e-mail attachment from a stranger. Investigators have established that the e-mail came from a different region of the country.

Milkov, a self-described nationalist, was charged with inciting ethnic hatred, said Vasily Semyonov, the head of the Investigative Committee in the regional prosecutor’s office.

If convicted, Milkov could face up to four years in prison. A court has ordered him to remain in Maikop.

It was unclear whether authorities had made any progress in determining who made the video and, if it was authentic, who carried out the killings.

Given the more general reluctance of Russian authorities to investigate all the other violent activities associated with Russia’s burgeoning fascist movement, it’s unlikely they’ll make any progress in determining who made the video any time soon, unfortunately. As for its authenticity, if faked, it’s a remarkably accomplished one. In the meantime, non-Whites, punks and skinheads will continue being butchered by neo-Nazis. And of course, the student allegedly responsible for publishing the video can argue that doing so doesn’t necessarily mean they support its contents… does it? And anyway, the people who object to the literal butchery of individual members of groups of people neo-Nazis don’t like are just as bad as the Nazis, what happened to free speech, and anarchy is a fag.

Locally, ‘Bill’ reckons No Idea aren’t going to play any more gigs at local neo-Nazi venue The Birmy, “but will still drink and organise shows there” — which makes about as much sense as The Worst being selected to support DOA on the weekend (and which also, perhaps, helps to explain why relatively few people saw either). On the other hand, as time progresses, more people appear to be supporting the boycott of the venue, while those who continue to scab on it appear to grow more shrill.

Following Blood & Honour Australia’s and the Hammerskins departure from Fitzroy’s Birmy, the two neo-Nazi groupings have been offered shelter by Melbourne’s Croatian community; specifically, the Melbourne Croatia Social Club, located at the Melbourne Knights home ground in Sunshine. As a result, this Thursday there will be a rally outside of the headquarters of Football Federation Victoria, to demand that the Federation hold an investigation into exactly how club facilities came to be used to promote neo-Nazi organisations and beliefs of the kind that have their logical consequence in the murders in Russia.

WHEN : 12 midday, Thursday, October 25th
WHERE : Football Federation Victoria, 281 Darebin Road, Thornbury

Posted in Anti-fascism | 2 Comments

Anarchist statement on the New Right

Posted on October 21, 2007 by @ndy
    Below is the text of a collective statement by a small number of local anarchist groups on the subject of the New Right, a recently formed fascist groupuscule based in Sydney which made its first public appearance at the APEC demonstrations in that city in early September.

Introduction

On Saturday, September 8, 2007, a small group of between 15-30 individuals assembled in Sydney under the banner of the New Right. They were there to attend the anti-APEC summit rally and protest, and did so while assembled in the manner of a black bloc (dressed in black uniforms and wearing masks to disguise their faces). Their propaganda proclaimed the group to be composed of ‘national anarchists’.

This statement is being issued by a number of anarchist groups in Australia and Aotearoa in order to unmask these impostors, to expose ‘national anarchism’ as being the fascist nonsense that it is, and to give notice, both to the ‘national anarchists’ and to the general public, that anarchists in Australia and Aotearoa will not tolerate fascist elements attempting to use anarchist rhetoric and imagery in order to pursue their goals. We do so on the basis of our support for the equality and freedom of all individuals, regardless of race or ethnicity, and in recognition of the role of fascist ideas, parties and movements in destroying the libertarian working class cultures and movements which anarchists promote and which we depend upon for our survival.

But what, exactly, is the ‘New Right’, and what is a ‘national anarchist’?

The New Right

In Australia, the New Right is a tiny grouping on the far right, established in late 2005, largely via the efforts of a German-born, Sydney-based businessman named Welf Herfurth. Herfurth has a long history of involvement in the German neo-Nazi movement, including the NPD, and more recently the Australian far right, including organisations and projects such as the Australia First Party, Blood & Honour, One Nation and the Inverell and Sydney Forums. According to Herfurth and the New Right, “National-Anarchism represents the political embodiment of the… New Right — it is the political wing”. In other words, while the New Right provides the ‘theory’, ‘national anarchism’ is the ‘practice’.

National anarchism

‘National anarchism’ has its origins in the UK, and is largely the brainchild of Troy Southgate, another individual with a long history of involvement in the British neo-Nazi movement, including organisations such as the National Front, the International Third Position, the English Nationalist Movement and the National Revolutionary Faction. Critic Graham D. Macklin notes that “When put into its wider context… ‘national-anarchism’ appears as one of many groupuscular responses to globalization, popular antipathy towards which Southgate sought to harness by aligning [his activities]… with the resurgence of anarchism whose heroes and slogans it arrogated, and whose sophisticated critiques of global capitalist institutions and state power it absorbed…”.* In essence, ‘national anarchism’ is an attempt to use anarchist rhetoric and imagery in order to better advance the cause of reactionary, racist and fascist politics.

Our response

As anarchists, we categorically reject this. We also categorically reject any and all attempts by the New Right (and any other group with politics similar to it) to align themselves in any way, shape or form with the contemporary anarchist movement in Australia and Aotearoa. The use of such tactics by the far right, including the formation of ‘black blocs’ such as the one in Sydney, has been witnessed in Europe for a number of years, and it now appears that an attempt, however minor, to do so in Australia is now being made. (In Germany, for example, some right-wing radicals even use the “Antifaschistische Aktion” logo (a circle with a red and black flag) but adorn it with the slogan “Nationale Sozialisten” (national socialists)!)

We consider the use of such tactics to be deliberately aimed at causing confusion among the broader public with regards the aims and methods of elements of the far right, and to confuse anarchism with the pursuit of ‘white, nationalist’ politics. Such tactics are also based upon a recognition by elements of the far right of the attractive nature of anarchist rhetoric and imagery to many young people, and a desire to win some of these individuals away from genuine attempts to create true anarchy; a society without rulers — of whatever colour, and of whatever supposed nationality.

As such, we, as anarchists: wish to make our opposition to the New Right and ‘national anarchism’ known; denounce their attempts to appropriate ‘anarchist’ rhetoric, imagery and symbology for their own, racist and fascist purposes; commit ourselves to ensuring, each in our own way, that any and all confusion be eliminated in the minds of both the ‘national anarchists’ and the broader public regarding the opposition between anarchism and the antics of groups such as the New Right.

Signed : Anarchist Direct Action, Barricade Books, Melbourne Anarchist Club (Melbourne); Jura Books (Sydney); Wildcat (Wellington)

    *Graham D. Macklin, Co-opting the counter culture: Troy Southgate and the National Revolutionary Faction, Patterns of Prejudice, Vol.39, No.3, 2005 [PDF]
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