No-Go Germany?

No-Go Germany
By MARIAM LAU
June 8, 2006
The Wall Street Journal

BERLIN — The history of global sporting events hosted by Germany brings up some dark memories. There were the Munich Olympic Games of 1972, at which a Palestinian terror squad killed 11 Israeli athletes. And of course there were the notorious Berlin Games of 1936, when the Nazis hosted the world. As organizer of this summer’s football World Cup, Germany seems set on improving its record with the motto “a time to make friends.”

With only one day to go until kickoff, though, many Germans are worried that the slogan may promise too much. A remark by former government spokesman Uwe-Karsten Heye has set off a debate about an ugly resurgence of racism in the former East Germany, in the form of prowling violent gangs.

“There are areas in Brandenburg and other parts of the East,” Mr. Heye said, “where dark-skinned foreigners might not make it out alive.” Just a couple of weeks ago, an Ethiopian-born engineer in Potsdam had his skull smashed at a bus stop when he got into a shouting match with two youngsters. The refugee organization Afrikarat, meanwhile, has promised to provide football fans from abroad with a map of “no-go areas.”

While Mr. Heye was at first shouted down by local politicians from all major parties for gross exaggeration, the annual criminal statistics published the very next day confirmed the basic trend: Violent hate crimes were up 24% in 2005 — to 1,034 from 832 — and continued to be most prevalent in the East. If you adjust for the lower number of immigrants in, say, rural Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a foreign-looking person is about 25 times as likely to be assaulted in the East as in the West, says University of Hannover criminologist Christian Pfeif[f]er.

“To me, ‘no-go’ is everywhere,” laments Moctar Kamara, head of Afrikarat. “In the seven minutes it takes me to walk from the refugee home to the station, I hear at least three racial slurs of the worst kind. I always look over my shoulder, in case someone sneaks up from behind. People spit at me even on the bus.”

Not everyone who disagrees with Mr. Heye’s big picture denies that extremism is present. Police spokesperson Berndt Fleischer from Cottbus in East Germany — also a place reportedly swarmed by hordes of neo-Nazis — acknowledges the problem, but thinks it is ridiculous to say that extremism is a mass phenomenon.

“These are isolated incidents, blown out of all proportion by sensationalist media,” he said. “This is not the Bronx, or South Central Los Angeles.” This is the stand taken by Chancellor Angela Merkel as well. Especially in Berlin and the surrounding state of Brandenburg, the numbers are actually declining, not least because police no longer treat xenophobic hate crimes as a negligeable misdemeanor. In Strausberg, another small town deemed to be “no-go,” a tightly knit network of church groups, ex-communists, anarchists and other grass-roots organizations make sure that the boys from “Märkischer Heimatschutz,” a neo-Nazi-group, can’t even give the local kindergarten a paint job. “This is the neo-Nazis’ latest strategy,” explains social worker Günter Laurenzius. “They move in every niche that is vacated by the state.” Similar to Hamas in the Palestinian territories, they provide social services, report grievances to the authorities and give a sense of value and shared identity, especially to the children of the former communist elite, who have seen their parents become “superfluous,” without jobs or influence of any kind. Cars passing through Cottbus in the morning have to make room for young men on bikes so drunk they can’t ride straight.

Although these incidents are by no means restricted to former East Germany, the politics of the past nevertheless accounts for their high frequency. The communist German Democratic Republic was built on the premise that Nazism had lingered on in West Germany in the form of capitalism, and that anti-Semitism was merely a secondary aspect of a much larger system of exploiting workers. Meanwhile, racism has been very much present in East Germany. The Vietnamese workers living in the GDR were considered a “gift” by their governments, which in exchange received development aid. They had to sign contracts forbidding them to “mingle” with Germans.

Today, postreunification issues play a role in the East’s xenophobia. New unemployment benefits make it unrewarding for many youngsters to look for work, or even move out of their parents’ homes. Those lucky enough to find work tend to move far away from depressed eastern regions as quickly as possible, particularly if they are young professional women.

Strangely enough, the few big corporations with plants in the East do not seem to be affected by the problem. Jens Ullmann, of the Brandenburg Chamber of Commerce, feels that “it is certainly an image problem for Germany, with its past and all, but not necessarily a reason not to invest here. That is much more the case with the riots in France.” Silke Appel of the consultancy IIC, which advises foreign investors in Germany, feels that in the information technology sector, which employs many Asians, racism might be a problem for the individual worker.

“If you feel unwelcome, or even threatened, you might just try a job elsewhere,” she said. “We certainly have to do something about this, even though not many of our clients have brought it up.”

Under these circumstances, it was somewhat puzzling when Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble of the Christian Democrats called Islamism the greatest challenge to his administration. While it is certainly true that Islamist organizations like Milli Görüs need
to be closely watched, they have not yet committed a single violent crime on German soil. At the same time, much of the support for antixenophobic initiatives granted under former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has been withdrawn. In fact, Germany may have to fight both battles with equal dedication.

[Lau is chief correspondent of the German daily Die Welt.]

— Courtesy: Ratbag

Posted in Anti-fascism, State / Politics | Leave a comment

Joke

The LAPD, the FBI and the CIA were all trying to prove that they were the best at apprehending criminals. The President decides to give them a test. He releases a rabbit into a forest and each of them has to catch it.

The CIA goes into the forest. They place animal informants throughout the forest. They question all plant and mineral witnesses. After three months of extensive investigations, they conclude that rabbits do not exist.

The FBI goes in. After two weeks with no leads they burn the forest, killing everything in it, including the rabbit and they make no apologies. The rabbit had it coming.

The LAPD goes in. They come out just two hours later with a badly beaten bear. The bear is yelling: “Okay, okay, I’m a rabbit, I’m a rabbit.”

John HoWARd hears about this and decides it’s a great idea. He releases a rabbit into a forest just outside Canberra, and gets some of Australia’s finest law-enforcement agencies to try and catch it.

The Victorian police go in. After 15 minutes they return with a koala, a kangaroo and a tree fern, all shot dead. “They all look like dangerous rabbits – we had to act in self defence” is their explanation.

The NSW police go in. Surveillance tapes later reveal top-ranking officers and rabbits dancing naked around a gum tree, stoned out of their brains.

The Queensland police go in. Two hours later, they are seen driving out in brand new Mercedes, scantily-clad young rabbitettes draped all over them. The Queensland premier congratulates them on maintaining traditional values.

ASIO go into the wrong forest…

[SirZubair]

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Yesterday and today

According to the Battle Creek Enquirer (June 3rd, 2006):

100 years ago today, 1906: Local detectives in Portland, Oregon, have learned of the existence there of a large body of Russian anarchists who allegedly have been plotting the assassination of President Theodore Roosevelt. The anarchists have been awaiting the arrival of enough money before sending a group to Washington to carry out their scheme to kill the president.

And today in the United States, we have the Green Scare:

The term Green Scare, alluding to the Red Scare of the 1940s-50s, is an expression used to refer to recent actions taken by the U.S. government against the radical environmentalist movement… an early 2006 sweep of arrests, convictions and grand jury indictments of alleged ELF/ALF activists on charges relating to acts of property damage, conspiracy, arson and use of destructive devices dubbed “Operation Backfire”.

To learn more, come to the Barricade film screening this Friday!

Posted in Anarchism, History, State / Politics, War on Terror | Leave a comment

‘Piss Off Brisbane’

Pies primed for payback time
Robert Walls
The Age
June 3, 2006

COLLINGWOOD last beat the Brisbane Lions in a qualifying final in 2003 at the MCG. Since that night at the MCG, the Lions have mauled the Pies in four games, including the 2003 grand final.

In that game, the Pies were embarrassed by a 50-point pounding.

This was the start of a two-year downward spiral in which Collingwood won only 13 of 44 games.

Tonight will be the start of “payback time” for Collingwood. Over the past five seasons, the Lions have felt superior to the Pies, physically and mentally.

But, crucially, never spiritually. And on Saturday, June 3rd, 2006, “NATHAN Buckley’s rebirth as a goalkicker speared Collingwood to a famous victory over its recent nemesis Brisbane in the round 10 AFL game at the MCG tonight.”

YES!

COLLINGWOOD MAGPIES 16.13 (109) def. brisbanefitzroybearslions 12.11 (83) before 54,820 fans.

Buckley’s bag leads Pies to victory; Buckley leads Pies to big win over Lions; Buckley kicks six to put Pies on path to victory; Malthouse praises gutsy effort, as injuries mount:

“Excellent win. Absolutely terrific win. A very, very good win under the circumstances. I think we’d lost our third player by the five-minute mark of the second quarter, or thereabouts, and under the circumstances, I thought the boys were just terrific. They’ve taken another step today,” the coach said.

“I was delighted with the way they went about it and rallied, backed each other up. We had a couple of blokes that were still pretty sore out there . . . I thought today we grew a bit more. We’re eight (wins) and two (losses) after 10 (games) and that’s a very, very good start in anyone’s language.”

And this is ‘A very, very good start.’ in what may possibly be your (other) language(s):

Een zeer, zeer goed begin. Très, début très bon. Sehr, sehr guter Anfang. Μια πολύ, πολύ καλή έναρξη. Molto, inizio molto buon. Muito, começo muito bom. Очень, очень хороший старт. Muy, comienzo muy bueno.

Woodsmen banish grim memory with big Bucks donation; Bucks flicks on the Pie power.

(Oh and ah, piss off Brisbane… go work on your tan or something.)

Posted in Art, Collingwood, History, Poetry | 3 Comments

Very Late News

The Age (May 1, 2006) gossip columnists Suzanne Carbone and Daniel Ziffer obviously have their finger on the pulse of Melbourne… and its Anarchist Club

In the mail

IT’S 120 years ago today that anarchists set up shop in Australia, founding the Melbourne Anarchist Club in a room above splendiferous Her Majesty’s Theatre. Freedom fighter Joe Toscano keeps the flame alight with his Anarchist Media Institute, but disorder is something he doesn’t want in the finances. With debt at $529.40, mainly from dispatching his weekly newsletter, Joe urges sympathisers to send in 50-cent stamps instead of money. “It’s cheaper than sending a cheque or money order,” he told Diary. The best thing about his system is depriving the banks of their fees.

Agreed.

Posted in Anarchism, Media | Leave a comment

Fascists arrested over redwatch

According to the Polish CIA, five people have been arrested in connection with the Blood and Honor redwatch site in Poland. Below is the CIA’s report, edited for clarity:

For months, Polish prosecutors have claimed to have been unable to take action because redwatch is hosted on a US server, DreamHost, and the site allegedly breaks no US laws. In reality, however, in California there are a range of laws criminalising “hate speech”, laws which redwatch — and DreamHost — may well be in breach of.

The fact that DreamHost has thus far refused to close down the site and the Polish Government has failed to take measures to block access to it is somewhat ironic given that, even in Polish high schools — where the new, far-right Minister of Education has had access to anarchist sites blocked — you can happily view its contents. Further, it was only after Poland’s chief rabbi was attacked on Sunday in Warsaw (by a person yelling “Poland for Poles”) that the Government rather suddenly announced that it would “take action” and, as a result, was apparently able to find the five people allegedly responsible for administering the site… in less than 48 hours.

…There are no legal solutions to fascist problems. Few anarchists appeal to the state for its assistance in the anti-fascist struggle, instead criticizing it for its complicity in providing a fertile political and social environment in which fascism may grow. Right now in Poland there are fascists in high-ranking positions, and many members of the Polish Government explicitly support — and even fund — far-right attacks; Government sponsorship of attacks on the gay parade being just one, recent, example…

See also : Skinheads assault Holocaust lecturer [14.03.06]: “Police in the north-eastern city of Białystok are investigating an incident involving an assault on a teacher who lectures on the Holocaust by a group of Polish neo-Nazis. The woman was not hurt but was scared into hiding…”

Yet another triumph for Blood and Honour, redwatch, DreamHost and “freedom of speech”.

Posted in Anti-fascism | Leave a comment

The Hun’s “War on Terror”

The corporate media is always eager to do its bit for the ‘war on terror’, on this occasion aiming its not-very-smart bombs on innocent civilians: the wives and children of 13 “allegedly ‘would-be’ terrorists”…

Families benefit as accused go to jail
By LINCOLN WRIGHT
28may06

AUSTRALIA’S 22 terror suspects and their families receive more than $1 million a year in taxpayer-funded welfare and legal aid.

“Tax-payer funded” eh? Gee, I always wondered where the money comes from…

And simply because the men were locked up, their families received a social security pay rise of as much as $1700 a year.

A fact which, as is revealed by Wright below, is perfectly unexceptional.

One of the jailed Melbourne men, Abdul Nacer Benbrika — leader of a radical group of Islamists — has been in Australia for 10 years and has never had a job.

SFW? John HoWARd’s been Prime Minister for 10 years, an MP for 32, and consequently wouldn’t know an honest day’s work if it bit him on the arse. But I somehow doubt the fact that he’s been paid a small fortune to lie to the Australian public for that length of time will ever be breathlessly revealed in an article published by The Hun, do you?

Taxpayers provide his wife with almost $50,000 a year in welfare.

A Sunday Herald Sun investigation uncovered generous payments to the families of men charged with plotting terror in Australia.

Yes, the families of the 22 men charged; is The Hun suggesting that they too, should be on trial?

Obviously, yes.

By media.

As for Wright’s ‘investigatory’ (sic) skills, little other than access to Centrelink‘s website and knowledge of the composition of the men’s families is required in order to compose this particular kind of filler.

And that $50,000 is presumably intended to support not only that one woman, but her seven children as well.

What’s $50,000 divided by eight, Lincoln?

Adding tens of thousands of dollars in parenting payments, rent assistance and family tax benefits to the cost of legal services for the accused makes a total bill to taxpayers of more than $1 million.

Since November, 22 allegedly would-be terrorists have been arrested in Melbourne and Sydney under Operation Pendennis, a joint ASIO, AFP and state police forces operation.

Mr Benbrika was among 13 Melbourne men charged with belonging to a terrorist organisation.

Of Algerian descent, he has a Lebanese-born wife and seven children.

(OK, so that’s one million dollars divided between seven children, and two adults.)

Does the fact that Benbrika’s wife was born in Lebanon alter her entitlements?

No.

But it does reinforce the notion that, not only are the families of “would-be (sic) terrorists” profiting from terror — at the expense of the Australian tax-payer — they’re foreigners to boot!

Subtle as a brick.

Under Centrelink rules, she is entitled to almost $50,000 a year in welfare while her husband is in prison, awaiting trial.

As is customary in the extensive corporate media reportage of such cases, Wright is using figures drawn from Centrelink, not the family in question. Thus Benbrika’s wife’s entitlement is not necessarily the same as her actual income.

Ahmed Raad, another Melbourne suspect, has a child and his wife is entitled to about $21,500 a year, as are the wives of Ezzit Raad and Abdullah Merhi.

OK, so that’s one million dollars divided between eight adults and eight children.

The wife of another suspect, Hany Taha, who has three children, is entitled to up to $30,000 a year.

Which now makes it one million dollars divided between ten adults and eleven children.

Among nine Sydney suspects charged with conspiracy to carry out a terrorist attack was engineer Mohamed Ali Elomar, 40. He has five children and his wife is entitled to about $38,000 a year in taxpayer payments.

Let’s see… that’s one million dollars divided between twenty adults and sixteen children.

Omar Baladjam, a former actor on the ABC TV program Wildside, has two children.

Which brings our tally to twenty adults and eighteen children.

A Centrelink spokeswoman said the fact someone had been jailed for terrorist offences did not stop their spouse or children receiving welfare. The maximum parenting payment increases from $377.50 a fortnight to $444.20 when a spouse is in jail, she said.

I apologise for doubting Wright’s talents as an investigative journalist: he not only looked at the Centrelink website, he actually asked a Centrelink spokesperson their legal opinion. Still, as strenuous as Wright’s efforts have been to uncover important, one million dollar facts, and to place these before the Australian public for their intense critical scrutiny, I somehow doubt there’ll be a Walkley waiting for him at the end of it.

Two so-called “Anglo” terrorist suspects, Jack “Jihad” Thomas and Shane Kent, also have children and benefit from Centrelink payments.

“So-called”? By whom? Is Wright implying that the two men in question are not, in fact, of “Anglo” descent? Or is this merely intended to reinforce the notion that “Anglos” — unlike ‘foreigners’ — are incapable of “terrorism”?

Subtle… very subtle.

Mr Kent has two children, while Thomas, who is appealing against a conviction for receiving funds from a terrorist organisation, has three children.

Ooops. That’s one million dollars divided between twenty-two adults and twenty-three children.

Now, according to my calculations, one million dollars divided by forty-five is $22,222.20.

Not much of a headline really, is it?

Victims of crime groups expressed outrage at the payments.

Well, no surprises there then. And, I suspect, precisely why Wright bothered to contact them for their opinion in the first place.

I mean, he couldn’t actually ask the families of any victims now could he?

Posted in Media, War on Terror | 3 Comments

Two years later…

Almost exactly two years ago, on May 30, 2004, I decided to start blogging.

I’m still not sure why, exactly. Maybe just to give me an excuse to write about things I was interested in but which, for various reasons, I’d failed to find an appropriate outlet for.

In Australia, the anarchist press is almost — but not quite — non-existent, and radical scholarship tends to be either: a) operating within a ‘Marxist’ framework; b) produced by individuals completely uninterested in building radical social movements committed to struggling against capital, state and patriarchy or c) both.

(There are, of course, many exceptions to this rule, and a great deal of interesting scholarship is being produced on contemporary struggles. But I find most of it to be produced by folks with whom I feel little real political or personal affinity… Hell, maybe I just need to get out more?)

I suppose that one of the main problems I’ve been struggling with — apart from various health-related issues — is the fact that, if this situation is going to change, I really am going to have to do it myself. By myself. Which is fine, but still a daunting prospect. And, given that I already devote a considerable proportion of my time to other anarchist projects…

Well, I guess you could say that DIY is a double-edged sword.

Still, as far this blog’s concerned, I ‘ve really only started writing regularly since late December, 2005; that is, five months or so.

Is it worth the time and the trouble? I don’t know. What do you think?

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

DreamHosting a White Europe

POLAND ASKS U.S. TO HELP SHUT DOWN FAR-RIGHT WEBSITE
Associated Press

WARSAW, Poland (AP) – Poland has asked the U.S. government to help it shut down an American-based server [DreamHost] hosting a Web site run by a banned extreme right group, an official said Sunday.

Redwatch, allied with the far-right Blood and Honor movement, recently posted a list of journalists and activists they considered “anti-fascist” on the Web site, complete with details of where they can be found.

[NB. According to other reports, the site has been operational since January.]

One of the activists listed on the site was stabbed on a Warsaw street earlier this month, the knife narrowly missing his heart, the Reporters Without Borders organization said.

The Web site, an offshoot of a site run by Blood and Honor, is hosted by a server in the United States and Polish authorities cannot shut it down, said Konrad Ciesiolkiewicz, spokesman for Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz. He said he did not have specifics on which state the server was in.

[Huh?!? Well, the company’s offices are located in Brea, California. Maybe the authorities should consider asking them? After all, they do boast that “You can reach us any time – day or night!”

DreamHost Offices
DreamHost
PMB #257
417 Associated Rd.
Brea, CA 92821
USA
FAX: 714-990-2600]

“It’s a political gesture, we sent the request two days ago. We’ve also been in touch with the FBI,” he said.

Redwatch is an international far-right group based in Britain. Its Web site posts names, photos and addresses of human rights activists, gays and left-wing journalists under the slogan, “Remember places, traitors’ faces, they all pay for their crimes.”

[5/30/06]

Posted in Anti-fascism, Media, State / Politics | 6 Comments

Cowardly neo-Nazi THUGs on di attack? Balls to that!

Once upon a time, there was a proud white man by the name of Peter Campbell. So proud was Peter, he adopted a pseudonym: ‘Kromlek of Asgard’. Using this moniker, Peter — a middle-aged salesman living in Sydney — liked to inform others of his views. For example, in reference to Mat Henderson-Hau, spokesperson for Trans-Tasman anti-racist network Fightdemback, Campbell writes:

This Lefty maggot will sneer at us and laugh its fake tits off unopposed because WE cannot muster even a HANDFUL of people, FAIR DINKUM blokes with gonads swingin’ between their legs, to oppose him! What? You people want to bend over, grease up your ring piece and have this filth fuck you up the arse?

Um, thanks for that Peter… and ah, how are your gonads swingin’ these days? Still living in fear of Mat bending you over and…

Well, suffice it to say that Campbell certainly has a talent for purple prose, but what about his political analysis?

“Who are the REAL thugs?” asks diddums in one of his latest blog entries (this time employing the pseudonym ‘Victor Whitelaw’):

Once again Mathew Henderson-Hau and the FDB Marxist criminals have attempted to use the alleged attempted murder of an Antifa supporter in Poland to rally the thugs. [Notwithstanding] the fact that no one has been charged nor any claims… been proven to be true, the Left are shrieking for blood. No surprise, the Left and… Antifa are well known in Australia and around the World for their violent behaviour.

Well blow me (down) and call me Buster Gonad and admire my Unfeasibly Large Testicles as, gonads swingin’, we examine that statement a little more closely, shall we?

But first, a tune!

Who’s that dragging what looks like a pink sack of spanners down the road?
His swollen folly on a supermarket trolley to alleviate the load
Testicular tomfoolery
To the rescue of humanity
It looks a lot of balls to me

Fun and japes and merry frolics
With Buster Gonad’s bulbous bouncing . . .
Bags of fun with Buster
And his super scrotal cluster

Who’s that lad with his cobblers clad in a disguise of some form?
When the cosmic power of a meteorite shower made them swell beyond the norm
Now here he comes to save mankind
His enormous nuts not far behind
And they’re not the salted kind

He cures mutes and alcoholics
When they first see his bulbous bouncing . . .
Bags of fun with Buster
And his super scrotal cluster
There’s bags of fun with Buster
See them shine with evil lustre

Buster! Watch out for that revolving door
Ooh Buster! They look so incredibly sore
Buster! Especially as you drag them through that powerful
cleaning agent someone spilled upon the floor
Ooh Buster! why do you let your sack swing so low?

“Sax swing solo?” Yeah!

Fun and japes and merry frolics
With Buster Gonad’s bulbous bouncing . . .
Bags of fun with Buster
And his super scrotal cluster

Doctor Who could defeat the Daleks
if he had Buster’s swinging space age . . .
Bags of fun with Buster
And his double Sputnik thruster
Bags of fun with Buster
Just to stroke them would disgust her
Bags of fun with Buster
If she held them would you trust her?
Bags of fun with Buster
Loads more balls than General Custer
Bags of fun with Buster
Lots more scrots than you could muster

Ahem.

Campbell makes a number of claims with regards FDB:

i) it consists of ‘Marxists’ and ‘criminals’ and;
ii) the group is “using” the attempted knifing to death of Maciek, a Polish antifa, to “rally the thugs”.

This last ‘fact’, according to Campbell, is merely one (further) example of the Left’s (sic) general proclivity for “shrieking for blood”. Apparently, Campbell BELIEVES that everybody COMMUNICATES in the same manner he does:

But revenge, as the old adage goes, is a dish best served cold, and once I recovered from the initial shock and shame at having been so comprehensively outplayed by the Darpists through their superior skills in I.T. technology [those fiendish geeks!] I settled down to planning and scheming my ultimate revenge. And it will be so sweet as to be sickly. I have become consumed by a (some might say unhealthy) slow burning rage against this vile creature. I think of little else these days. But if it is true that one gets out of something what one… puts in then I am due to reap a bumper harvest indeed. I fully intend to prove to all that it has never been an idle boast when I have said that one does NOT want ME on their case! I can be so single minded, so focused, so motivated, so determined when it comes to the evening of scores. Most of my waking hours have been occupied with researching, writing letters, designing counter-propaganda etc. to combat the aforementioned maggots.

(Er, fair enough Peter: would you like to borrow my handkerchief so that you can wipe the spittle from your mouth?)

Thus this shrieking violent, being a keen-eyed STUDENT of HISTORY, can confidently proclaim that “shrieking for blood” is “no surprise” as “the Left and the [sic] Antifa are well known in Australia and around the [w]orld for their violent behaviour”.

Hmmm. Well, if nobody ever opened a book, Peter would probably be on safe territory. Unfortunately for Campbell (and, presumably, his gonads), this is not the case.

i) By any standard definition, a ‘Marxist’ is someone who is a follower of Karl Marx, while ‘Marxism’ is “the philosophy, social theory and political practice based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century German socialist philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary”. A ‘criminal’, on the other hand, is someone that has committed or been legally convicted of a crime.

By any standard definition, then, FDB is neither ‘Marxist’ nor ‘criminal’.

Still, for the purposes of his audience — that same audience that Campbell’s mentor, Adolf Hitler, disparaged as being of “limited receptivity”, whose “intelligence is small”, and whose “power of forgetting is enormous” — nonsense like this plays well. After all, those few sad losers who have the misfortune to find Campbell’s ideology attractive are presumably far too busy fiddling with their tinfoil helmets to bother peeking out from under them; thus saving themselves from having the opportunity to take a good look at the real world as it passes them by…

ii) In this instance, Campbell appears to be reacting — quite badly, by the sounds of it — to the news that his comrades in Blood & Honour (Poland), their site redwatch, and its host, DreamHost, may soon be experiencing some legal difficulties, courtesy of both Polish and US authorities. And who knows if the statements made by Victor Ashe, the US Ambassador to Poland, Polish Deputy Premier and Interior Minister Ludwik Dorn, or Konrad Ciesiolkiewicz, a spokesperson for the Polish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, are intended to be taken seriously?

Time will tell.

Of course, aside from presenting no evidence to support his claim that “the Left” is “shrieking for blood”, Campbell fails to note that:

a) the near-fatal assault upon Maciek (a Jew, according to the US Embassy in Poland) on May 16 was followed by another on Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, only a few weeks later.

b) Polish Jewish students have also been threatened. According to one source:

Two Jewish student leaders in Poland have received anti-Semitic messages on their telephones.

The threatening calls came during the run-up to Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Poland and during his stay there this week, JTA has learned. [T]he text messages received by the Jewish student in Warsaw threatens to blow up the synagogue and put Jews in concentration camps.

The police are trying to find out the source of the text messages, and the Polish Prime Minister’s Office is working to give the case top priority.

The calls come only a few weeks after the stabbing of an anti-fascist activist in Warsaw, allegedly by two [boneheads] who remain at large.

The stabbing victim’s contact information and picture had been listed on a xenophobic Web site that also lists Jews, gays and their supporters.

It is believed that the [bonehead] attack was connected to the Red Watch extremist Web site, which Polish authorities want to shut down.

Campbell’s world is a very small one, his Weltanschauung even smaller, and ignorance and bigotry mark its borders. Fortunately, he belongs to a very small minority of local (Australian) fascists, and, like them, is chronically incapable of understanding the Big Bad World outside of it. For example, the Council of Europe’s 2005 ‘Report on racism in Albania, Croatia, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom’ states:

In Poland, some measures have been taken in favour of the cultural and linguistic rights of national and ethnic minorities. However, there is still no comprehensive body of civil and administrative legislation prohibiting discrimination in all fields of life. ECRI is concerned that cases of racial hatred are rarely investigated and prosecuted while publications containing racist, and particularly antisemitic material are still available on the market.

Someone capable of interpreting the world, let alone changing it, might recognise in this statement a message from EU authorities to their Polish equivalents. Further, such a person might have some understanding of the importance of EU membership to Poland, and why Polish authorities might be keen to demonstrate to others that, while Poland may have hosted a number of extermination camps for European Jews during WWII, it no longer wishes to be perceived as a happy home to murderous anti-Semites (a privilege that is currently DreamHost’s).

Anyway, so much for Campbell’s ludicrous attack on FDB. The remainder of his diatribe consists of:

a) an account of a violent assault upon fascists associated with the German Republican Party by a group of masked assailants in April 1992 in Neukolln, Berlin;

b) the claim that “[i]n the 1970s [Campbell’s heyday] Australian Jews openly attacked and vandalized Australian Nationalists and their property”;

c) the reproduction of an article, ‘Website seeks net loss for net-Nazis’ (June 17, 2005) by Peter Kohn, profiling FDB for the benefit of readers of the Australian Jewish News and;

d) the reproduction of one of my own posts to the FDB Forum.

In response:

A) Campbell fails to provide the political background to the trial. From the same source:

Since 1990, fascists and racists have killed at least 75 people – immigrants, refugees, homeless, disabled and young anti-fascists – in Germany; thousands of attacks and firebombings have been aimed particularly at immigrants and refugees as well as against the small Jewish community. In 1991/1992 [for example], the pogrom in Hoyerswerda took place. Mete Eksi, a Turkish youth, was killed on the street by racists in Berlin. The situation was and has been escalated to a point where internationally known Jewish writer Ralf Giordano publicly called on all Jewish people and other victims of fascist terror to arm themselves, because they could not rely on the German state for protection.

I’ve been unable to discover the results of this particular trial online, but this provides some further detail.

What Campbell’s example — seemingly picked at random — has to do with FDB, I’ve no idea.

B) Campbell refers to four separate incidents to support his thesis. The first, allegedly reported in The Herald (January 31, 1971) concerns an attack upon two bikies, who were allegedly thrown into the Yarra River and had their bikes “destroyed” by “a large crowd of Antifa, egged on by Communist Jews”. The second, which occurred on the same day, involved an assault upon a man whose crime, according to Campbell, was that he “spoke with a European accent”. The third incident is a reference to a famed assault upon the Carlton headquarters of the National Socialist Party of Australia. The fourth and final incident Campbell claims occurred in 1972, when a group of Jews trashed the residence of another would-be Fuehrer, this time in St Albans.

Jews eh? ‘Can’t live with ’em, can’t oppress ’em without ’em fighting back.’

As for the incidents themselves…

In April 1972, sixteen sticks of gelignite exploded in the Communist Party’s Brisbane office, lifting the floor of the building almost six centimetres off the ground. Later the same evening, three rifle shots ricocheted through the Maoist East Wind bookshop…

The next month, the terror campaign returned to Melbourne with an attempt to set the Third World bookshop alight. A week later, the East Wind bookshop in Little Londsdale Street received a fire-bomb through the front door, while Molotov cocktails hit the Radical Action Movement’s headquarters in Palmerston Street, Carlton, the China Friendship Society, and the Source bookshop in Collins Street…

Many naturally suspected the NSPA of involvement in the bookshop attacks, since the Nazis had previously clashed with the Left. In January 1971, the NSPA announced a fascist rally to be held on Melbourne’s Yarra Bank. The Left and the Jewish community organised a counter-rally. When the Nazis did not appear, thousands streamed up to their headquarters in North Carlton. The party’s leader Cass Young later complained:

All this time we could hear a noise such as that at a football ground, getting louder. Looking outside, I saw that a huge crowd was coming down the street towards our headquarters.

Within minutes there were several thousand people, mostly reds and those of the chosen race, milling around outside. We closed all the doors and windows and I posted sentries at the back and on the roof. We hoisted the mighty flag of our race — the swastika — and the Eureka flag at the top front window. The crowd outside began throwing anything it could get its hands on: eggs, tomatoes, rocks and tins. Soon all the windows had been smashed by flying missiles.

In June 1972, the NSPA tried to hold its annual conference. The fascists kept the location secret. Protesters instead marched to a triple-fronted brick veneer in St. Albans, which served both as Young’s house and the new [neo-]Nazi HQ. To resounding chants of ‘Death to the Nazis’, they tore the building apart. Surveying the wreckage of his property, Young lost some of his enthusiasm for overt displays of Nazism, and the NSPA collapsed in a bout of internecine warfare, a process nicely captured in the title of David Harcourt’s study of Australian Nazism: Everyone Wants to Be Fuehrer.

Source : Jeff Sparrow and Jill Sparrow, Radical Melbourne 2 : The Enemy Within, The Vulgar Press, 2004, pp.149-150.

Again, quite what Campbell’s examples — seemingly picked on no other basis than his rampant Judeophobia — have to do with FDB, I’ve no idea.

C) And what an interesting article it is too. But its relevance seems, once again, to rely on Campbell’s hatred for Jews. Thus the moral of the tale is that “Jewish groups, [which] in the [1970s] carried out violent attacks against Patriots [sic] in Australia, now use stupid Goyim or Shabbos Goy ([Helpful] Gentiles) to push the[ir] violent agenda. The Jews who no longer want to get their hands dirty now use the “useful idiots” of groups like FDB as their Militant Henchmen.”

Further commentary is, I think, superfluous.

D) As Campbell simply reproduces this post, there’s really nothing for me to add. Presumably Campbell thinks it sufficient evidence of FDB’s perfidy that one of its members is an (gasp!) anarchist.

Finally, Campbell devotes the rest of his post to blathering on about Mat, FDB, and the various offences that Campbell — and Campbell alone, it seems — believes him to be guilty of, and concludes by ‘demanding’ that Australian authorities subscribe to his bizarre, neo-Nazi political program, one centred on combating the nefarious activities of FDB, Andrew Bartlett, the Democrats, the Greens, the AWU and Dr. John Casey.

And presumably, if the authorities decide to ignore Peter Campbell’s ‘demands’ — and call me a crazy anarchist who labours day and night “to destroy the nation and create some sort of sick Maoist society”, but I think that they might — this will be further proof of the political stranglehold the ZOG holds over Australian law enforcement.

The more things change

Posted in Anarchism, Anti-fascism, History, Media | 9 Comments