Australia Asia Worker Links (AAWL) is holding a public meeting on Wednesday night to discuss ‘Fighting Fascism’. The meeting will include reports from recent anti-fascist actions.
When : 6:30pm, Wednesday, May 5 Where : Trades Hall, cnr Lygon & Victoria Sts, Carlton South
Police in San Francisco have charged two people with the crimes of assault with a deadly weapon, robbery, and conspiracy, after an altercation involving some anti-fascists and members of BANANAs, a white supremacist groupuscule. The BANANAs — two of whom have been identified as Andrew Yeoman and Parker Wilson — were participating in an anti-immigrant rally organised by Minuteman, and were allegedly assaulted by anti-fascists after leaving it.
Background
‘National anarchism’ is a recent development on the far right, having its origins in the 1990s (see : ‘Co-opting the Counter Culture: Troy Southgate and the National Revolutionary Faction’ by Graham D. Macklin, May 30, 2009). Andrew Yeoman established the ‘Bay Area National Anarchists’ — most commonly referred to as BANANAs — in 2007 (see : The New Right in The Public Eye, December 18, 2008). In September 2009, Yeoman visited Australia, where among other things he addressed a fascist gathering in Sydney. The ‘Sydney Forum’ was held at a local RSL club, and then at the headquarters of the ‘Australia First’ party in Tempe. Both the party and the property are owned by Dr James Saleam, a man convicted of fraud and of organising a shotgun assault upon the home of a representative of the African National Congress in 1989. Maybe it was something in the water, but a few months later, Yeoman declared that BANANAs had dissolved.
The two most prominent local ‘national anarchists’ are the German-born, Sydney-based 40-something businessman Welf Herfurth and the teenager Scott Harrison, a Geelong resident (and Deakin University student). Both Harrison and Herfurth are supporters of local neo-Nazi groups such as Blood & Honour, although Herfurth split from this group to help form rival bonehead gang Volksfront Australia in 2008 (see : Who’s who in the “national anarchist” zoo?, National Anarchist!; Local Anti-Racist Shot in Downtown Portland, April 2, 2010).
Felony Charges For Two Alleged Attackers of White Separatists
Lauren Smiley SF Weekly
May 3, 2010
Police have booked two people who allegedly attacked [BANANAs] at Saturday’s San Francisco immigration march. The pair have been hit with felony counts of assault with a deadly weapon, robbery, and conspiracy. The alleged attackers also were booked into jail on misdemeanor charges of interfering with free speech. The district attorney’s office has not yet made a charging decision in the case.
Donnell Allen, a 42-year-old black San Francisco resident, and Kelsey Musgrove, a 19-year-old white female from Pittsburgh, Penn., were arrested on Saturday after an alleged attack on four [BANANAs] while the [BANANAs] were leaving a counter-protest of the immigration reform rally in Civic Center Plaza. Police say the suspects were wearing all-black clothing.
This isn’t Allen’s first brush with the law. News reports indicate he was also arrested back in December during an attack on UC Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s campus residence.
John Hamasaki, the attorney for Musgrove, says she was in San Francisco checking out massage therapy schools. “She’s never been arrested, never been in trouble, she’s not one of these people that society needs to be worried about.”
A third suspect, anarchist theorist Andre Grubacic, a 34-year-old white San Francisco resident, was detained but released at the scene after the victims said he wasn’t part of attack. (The more common spelling of Grubacic’s first name is Andrej.) A fourth suspect, an unknown white male, pedaled away on a bicycle before the cops could catch him.
Plainclothes and uniformed police officers saw the group of [alleged] attackers follow the [BANANAs], who had broken off from the counter-demonstration around 3:15 p.m. Saturday. The group turned a corner around Polk and Van Ness, putting them out of the officers’ line of sight at the beginning of the physical attack. When police caught up with the brawl, they saw that the victims “tried to defend themselves,” said SFPD spokesperson Lyn Tomioka.
Cops recovered what they believe to be a mace can at the scene. The robbery charge stemmed from an attempt to take a backpack from one of the victims. The victim group — who was unidentified on the police report, but were identified to SF Weekly as BANANA members by founder Andrew Yeoman — were treated by paramedics at the scene but refused further medical assistance. One victim had bruising and redness to the left side of the face; one had head, neck and back injuries; one had a cut on the right side of the face and a red eye; and the fourth had no apparent injury. None of the injuries were life-threatening, but all BANANAs complained of extreme butthurt.
Yeoman, who has been penning credos about his anti-immigration views on extreme right websites, claims the attackers were [antifa], or [anti-fascists]. Meanwhile someone calling themselves “antifa” has posted an article on the attack on indybay entitled “Stop the Bay Area National Anarchists!”: “There is no place in the Bay area (or anywhere) for this fascist scum, no matter how they try to package themselves.”
UPDATE At 4:30 p.m., 5/3: John Hamasaki, a private defense attorney who is representing Kelsey Musgrove pro bono, disputes Yeoman’s earlier account of the fight. After talking to witnesses of the fight, Hamasaki says “It was the BANANA people who had a baton, and one of them had brass knuckles and tried to blame it on the other kids.” He says Musgrove “was struck first, she didn’t instigate any fights. I’ve heard that from more than one person.” He says […] one witness says a BANANA member had yelled before the scuffle: “This is my city and I’m taking it back for the white people.”
Hamasaki says his client is still in jail awaiting arraignment, but expects the felony charges to be lowered to misdemeanors.
To clarify, police spokeswoman Lyn Tomioka said the police didn’t recover any brass knuckles at the scene.
The Capital and the May Day Riots | People & Politics:
“On May 1, the whole of Germany’s eyes will be on the district of Kreuzberg, traditionally the center of the annual May Day riots. This year, left-wing activists have threatened violence in response to planned Neo-Nazi demonstrations, and the police are concerned the clashes might even result in deaths. Politicians are alarmed by the rise in left-wing violence, and sociologists are at a loss to explain what’s behind it.”
In the event, 7,000 police protected neo-Nazis and property on the Day, and something like 500 disobedients were arrested (in Berlin and Hamburg). On a spotterly note, I could swear that the voice of Police Union rep Konrad Freiberg is Wallace Shawn, also known for his participation in readings from Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States.
A handful of BANANAs have expressed much butthurt after being confronted by a group of anti-racists. The BANANAs were rallying alongside their Minuteman comrades in support of Arizona’s new anti-immigrant laws. On the upside, the BANANAs may now understand why May Day is known as ‘international workers’ day’; on the downside, two individuals have been arrested by police and apparently charged with felonies following the BANANA’s brief history lesson. For moaron the BANANAs, see the National Anarchist!blog.
Melbourne
The rally organised by Trades Hall took place on Sunday, May 2 (the celebration of May Day on the first Sunday of the month is a relatively recent tradition — but that’s another history). All the usual suspects were present — CPA / CPA-ML / MAC-G / RSP / SA / SAlt / SL / Solidarity / SP — but so too the ILPS, the Worker-communist Party of Kurdistan and some other groups. My failure to spot moar on the march was the result of being transported to a galaxy far far away by the noise emanating from the SAlt marching shouting band. By its end, their constant — and I do mean constant — noise had rendered my already fragile state-of-mind capable of descending into Rain Man territory.
Everything old is new again. Moar blah blah blah by David Wroe here.
Reading Joe Stack’s manifesto and a great deal more like it, I find myself recovering childhood memories and much more that I did not then understand. The Weimar Republic was the peak of western civilization in the sciences and the arts, also regarded as a model of democracy. Through the 1920s, the traditional liberal and conservative parties entered into inexorable decline, well before the process was intensified by the Great Depression. The coalition that elected General Hindenburg in 1925 was not very different from the mass base that swept Hitler into office eight years later, compelling the aristocratic Hindenburg to select as chancellor the “little corporal” he despised. As late as 1928, the Nazis had less than 3 percent of the vote. Two years later, the most respectable Berlin press was lamenting the sight of the many millions in this “highly civilized country” who had “given their vote to the commonest, hollowest and crudest charlatanism.” The public was becoming disgusted with the incessant wrangling of Weimar politics, the service of the traditional parties to powerful interests and their failure to deal with popular grievances. They were drawn to forces dedicated to upholding the greatness of the nation and defending it against invented threats in a revitalized, armed and unified state, marching to a glorious future, led by the charismatic figure who was carrying out “the will of eternal Providence, the Creator of the universe,” as he orated to the mesmerized masses. By May 1933, the Nazis had largely destroyed not only the traditional ruling parties, but even the huge working-class parties, the Social Democrats and Communists, along with their very powerful associations. The Nazis declared May Day 1933 to be a workers holiday, something the left parties had never been able to achieve. Many working people took part in the enormous patriotic demonstrations, with more than a million people at the heart of Red Berlin, joining farmers, artisans, shopkeepers, paramilitary forces, Christian organizations, athletic and riflery clubs, and the rest of the coalition that was taking shape as the center collapsed. By the onset of the war, perhaps 90 percent of Germans were marching with the brown shirts.
Despite Brian Boyd‘s misgivings, Australia First has launched a successor to the Patriotik Yoof Leauge titled, imaginatively, the Eureka Youth League. The new kids on the racist block are being led by veteran fascist Brendan Gidley and, like the fascist groupuscule National Action (1982–late 1990s), have adopted the Eureka flag as their symbol. As for the grown-ups, AF has again declared (April 23, 2010) that the AEC has given initial approval to its registration as a Federal party. At some point in the near future, presumably, the AEC will advertise the application in the press and the Commonwealth Gazette to allow any person a period of one month in which to object to the registration.
The contemporary NA — Nationalist Alternative — has been busy alerting the local Jewish community to its existence, stickering the Muslim prayer room at LaTrobe University’s Bundoora campus, holding street stalls in Greensborough, and distroing agitprop at the University of Sydney (see : ‘Land of the fair go?’, Brendan Wong, The South Sydney Herald, April, 2010, PDF).
England
A fascist teenybopper and member of the ‘Aryan Strike Force’ has been convicted of terrorism.
On the one hand, authorities have outlawed a neo-Nazi group:
Russian court bans neo-Nazi group
AP
April 29, 2010
MOSCOW — The Moscow City Court says it has outlawed one of Russia’s largest ultranationalist group because it promoted neo-Nazi ideology.
The court said in a statement Wednesday the Slavic Union was banned for its extremism. The group’s Russian acronym, SS, copies the abbreviation for the feared Nazi paramilitary.
Four of the group’s activists were sentenced to life in prison for organizing a series of explosions, including a 2006 blast at a Moscow market that killed 14.
The group’s leader Dmitry Demushkin told The Associated Press it has tried to promote the far-right agenda legally, and warned the ban would further radicalize ultranationalists.
Slavic Union has since 1999 organized anti-migrant rallies and, Demushkin has said, cyber attacks against Muslim and Jewish websites.
On the other hand, the FSB — the successor to the KGB, and the stronghold of Putin and his cronies in the Russian kleptocracy — has been given legal license for its de facto suppression of critical voices in the Russian media (already being squeezed by the wonders of The Market):
The Committee to Protect Journalists urges members of Russia’s parliament to reject a sweeping new bill that would return censorship rights to Russia’s KGB successor, the Federal Security Service, if passed…
“BELGRADE — The leader of a neo-Nazi group has been extradited to Serbia from Germany today, it has been confirmed…”
The neo-Nazi in question is Goran Davidović, Führer of Nacionalni Stroj (National Alignment/Formation), and was arrested by German authorities in February. In October 2007, Davidović’s blog was closed by Google, a very rare fate for neo-Nazi blogs.
Anti-social researcher and commentator Slack Bastard was quick off the mark with his answers to newmatilda.com’s 20 Questions.
Dr Slack Bastard is a regular commentator on Australian anti-social trends on radio, in print, on television, and online. His most recent book, Eating the Rich: Food and Equality in Australia was not published by Black Inc. in 2008, despite many threatening letters and a subsequent court battle. He’s written extensively on Australian eating habits — but he hasn’t eaten anyone since 1992. He is the Director of Research at Dipsos and has taken over from Engelbert Humperdinck as the author of the Dipsos Humperdinck Report. We are reasonably certain he updates his own Facebook page, and that the growth in his fanbase will continue to outpace the RSP.
1. What’s the headline you’d most like to see on the front page of a daily newspaper?
“Slackbastard cleared on all charges.”
2. If you could oblige everyone in Australia to click through to one webpage, which one would it be? This one.
3. What is one thing you’ve always wondered about economics but were too afraid to ask?
Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
4. When did you last eat a meat pie?
Right after my last spam margarita.
5. What’s the oldest thing in your fridge?
My great-grandmother.
6. Has anyone got a climate change policy you agree with? Who?
My cat. Bübi?
7. When was the first time you changed your mind on something important?
Shortly after I took my first breath.
8. What’s the household chore you relish the most?
Inspecting the maids’ uniforms.
9. What sort of shoes do you wear to work?
Please explain?
10. What campaigning tactic do you most want to see in this year’s federal election?
Jelly wrestling.
11. Nominate a new public holiday.
Tuesday.
12. If you could go tomorrow anywhere in Australia for a holiday, where would you go?
April 30, 2110.
13. What’s your favourite YouTube video?
14. If you were given $5 million, what would you spend it on?
Commodities, on stolen land, some time prior to WWIII.
15. Who would you most like to sit next to on a long haul flight?
The co-pilot.
16. What trivia question/topic will you beat everyone else in the pub to the buzzer on?
Who’s had too much coffee?
17. Complete this sentence. I’d like to hear Kevin Rudd say “…”
We don’t need no water let the motherfucker burn / Burn motherfucker burn.
18. Name someone in Australian public life who deserves a promotion.
There’s life in the Australian public?
19. In 10 words or less, summarise your food philosophy.
Discarded pizza boxes are an inexpensive source of cheese.
20. What question should we ask our next interviewee?
Listen man, never mind who this is. We’ve got your wife…
BONUS QUESTION from our last interviewee: If Jonathan Holmes fell under a bus, who would you like to see hosting Media Watch?
The guy who pushed him.
First, the good news. Last weekend (April 17), scores of boneheads gathered on the Gold Coast. There they ate steak and attended a “younger persons’ music gig”, otherwise known as ‘Hammered’. While the boneheads were able to spend several hours drinking, talking and listening to songs like ‘Kill the Poofs’ and ‘Nigger Hunt’, not all was sweetness and light, as one anonymous bonehead on the B&H Australia site notes: “Unfortunately, prior to the Hammered festival, a great man that spent his life fighting for White rights in South Africa was murdered by black thugs. At this point in the night, a minute[‘]s silence was had to reflect upon Eugene Terre’Blanche of the AWB and his fight for white survival. RIP brother!”
Strangely, while tribute was paid to Eugene Terre’Blanche, no apparent notice was taken of the suicide of Belgian bonehead Dieter Samoy in January of this year. This is unusual as Samoy and his band Kill Baby Kill, under the sponsorship of B&H, toured Australia in 2008, and while in the country even managed to record some tracks with local bonehead Jesse, the vocalist for two of the bands (Death’s Head and Ravenous) who played at the fun-filled Festival.
White supremacist Shannon Brent Flewellen has been given a jail term of at least 16 years 3 months for the strangling of a South Korean tourist on the West Coast in 2003.
Flewellen, 30, says it was another West Coast white supremacist, Hayden McKenzie, who carried out the murder of the hitchhiker on a lonely road…
Flewellen confessed to Jae Hyeon Kim’s 2003 murder in the Christchurch High Court earlier this month. He stated that he had helped choke Kim and stomped on his neck until he died (White supremacist admits killing Korean tourist, Keith Lynch, The Press, April 1, 2010).
From the Lumpen Department of Another Life Cut Tragically Short comes news that Chilean neo-Nazi cult leader Paul Schäfer has died at the tender age of 89. Other good young men Schäfer will be joining in Heaven are former Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner, who died aged just 93, former Indonesian President Suharto (86) and former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet (91).
The great majority of the police, seemingly ever-patient and self-controlled, stood for hours as kids baited and yelled, shoved and provoked. A handful of officers used well-placed elbows while batons were raised only in response to the vandalism.
~ G20 protesters strike at London’s heart, Paola Totaro, The Age, April 2, 2009
one
The Peach case was a seminal moment and, like the deaths decades later of Stephen Lawrence and Jean Charles de Menezes, triggered a crisis in policing.
However, it was the death at the G20 protests in April of Ian Tomlinson, the only person since Peach to have died at a demonstration after being attacked by police, that compelled Stubbs to agree to a campaign run by Inquest, the group that advises families of people who die in police custody.
Tomlinson, a 47-year-old newspaper vendor, died of internal bleeding after being hit and shoved to the ground by an officer who has been questioned under caution for manslaughter. He was cremated at the same cemetery where Peach was buried.
“When I saw that footage [of the Tomlinson attack], I instantly drew comparisons,” said Stubbs, a former social worker. “Then I thought: aren’t police supposed to have changed? It was like history repeating itself. But in 30 years technology has changed everything. Suddenly there it was, on film. That would have changed everything in Blair Peach’s case. The parallels with Tomlinson make a public interest case for releasing the report.”
The anti-fascist protester Blair Peach was almost certainly killed by police at a demonstration in 1979, according to a secret report released today.
Documents published on the Metropolitan police’s website shed new light on the death of Peach, a 33-year-old teacher from New Zealand, whose death marked one of the most controversial events in modern policing history.
A campaigner against the far right, Peach died from a blow to the head during a demonstration against the National Front in Southall, west London.
The great majority of the police, seemingly ever-patient and self-controlled, stood for hours as kids baited and yelled, shoved and provoked. A handful of officers used well-placed elbows while batons were raised only in response to the vandalism.
As the title suggests, the story concerns three boneheads being beaten up by some hardcore fans. It originates with Examiner.com (Murphy’s Law Plays the Khyber: The Aftermath, Steven DiLodovico, April 23, 2010) but for unknown reasons the story has been removed some time during the interim. In any case, and as is the way of things, it’s been re-published elsewhere, including on OPP.
Two Greek anarchists are making molotov cocktails. One says to the other: "So who will we throw these at then?" The other replies: "What are you, some kind of fucking intellectual?"
