The Left in Melbourne today is shit. Why are we always marching towards parliament, petitioning their government? Why are we always trying to speak to a mainstream that exists only on television? When did we lose faith in ourselves to propose real alternatives to our rape-the-world social system? The social movements, the parties, the discussions we keep having again and again never seem to be able to see beyond the world as it is towards the world as it could be… should be… will be.
The first issue of Melbourne Black, a new, free, monthly anarchist zine, has just been released. The first issue contains an ‘Editorial’, ‘A Few Facts And A Lot of Stories About Black People’, ‘Interview With LASNET’, ‘Anarchy Is A Fag’, ‘Education Matters’ and ‘Anarchy V. Marxism’. Printed copies will be available in Melbourne from Barricade/Loophole, MARC, New International, Sticky and elsewhere within the next 2-3 days. Otherwise, you can download a PDF copy from the Melbourne Black site here. For contributions and letters: [email protected].
Only a group of atheists would start a convention at this un-Godly hour on a (Death Metal) Sunday.
More blah later, but in the meantime…
Stuart Bechman ***
Peter Singer *** 1/2
Ian Robinson **** 1/2
Kylie Sturgess ***
Robyn Williams ****
Jamie Kilstein ****
Dan Barker *** 1/2
Richard Dawkins ***
Stuart Bechman / Kyle Sturgess ** 1/2
Stuart Bechman. Lolcats. Atheist charity. Stuff.
Peter Singer made an occasionally amusing but otherwise fairly straightforward case for the possibility of an ‘Ethics without Religion’ (cf. Plato’s Euthyphro). Of note: Singer made reference to the idea that morality may be in some way ‘hardwired’ into human beings, and that this may also help to explain the persistence of xenophobic attitudes (or at least help to explain their origin). He also noted that proximity (in this case geographical) to suffering is an important factor in determining the likelihood of a ‘moral’ response. Otherwise, he failed to properly address the distinction between moral and political consciousness or to answer the question ‘Why act ethically?’ (a question also addressed in his MA thesis (1969)). Oh yeah: Singer referred to evolution which, for some reason — I think maybe ’cause he referenced Gould — prompted me to think of Kropotkin (see : Stephen Jay Gould, Kropotkin Was No Crackpot, Natural History, No.106, 1997).
Ian Robinson was — to my surprise — probably the best speaker and, despite noting that, as students, Singer was one year ahead of him in Philosophy @ unimelb, and joking that Singer was now, philosophically speaking, many years ahead of him, Robinson actually gave a more nuanced address on ‘Atheism as the Logical Conclusion to a Spiritual Quest’. He was much funnier, too. Oh, and I’m not sure, but I think it was Robinson what recommended The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power (1993) by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad and Feet of Clay: Saints, Sinners, and Madmen (1997) by Anthony Storr.
Kylie Sturgess presented the findings of an academic survey as ‘Sex and Skepticism: A Study of Belief in Australian Women’. An interesting subject, but a somewhat disjointed presentation.
Robyn Williams’ speech was titled ‘In-depth Musings on Existence and Atheism’, which was basically an entertaining journey through some anecdotes drawn from his many years working @ the ABC. As he spoke, I wished I was drinking port and smoking a cigar (after having consumed a rather large dinner).
Dan Barker was amusing and profane… but in a nice way. (Of course, both he Kilstein are going to Hell.) He also suggested, rather aptly, that fundamentalist Christians, to which category he once belonged, could best be approached by atheists by way of reference to Biblical teaching — to be precise, by way of its internal contradictions — within an overall context of sensitivity to their emotional and psychological sensibilities. Fun and useful in this context: Ken’s Guide to the Bible.
Richard Dawkins was Richard Dawkins. A Cartoon Character Buggering A Bald Transvestite. The Evolutionary Biologist. In the program, the title of his speech is given as being ‘How Do I Misunderstand Thee? Let Me Count the Ways’ (whatever that means) but I dunno if that is the speech he gave. My recollection is that he presented a paper giving his views on what might explain the emergence or (better) the persistence in religious belief — which is to say, the irrational belief in a divingDivine being — in terms of its function as an evolutionary mechanism — one which, in turn, was theorised as having something to do with the capacity of human beings to… um… bugger. Having had bugger-all sleep the night before, I was falling asleep at this point in the afternoon, and I’m still very tired, so maybe I’ll return to this subject… later. In any event, it had all the hallmarks of an address most suited to an academic conference on evolutionary biology, not a public conference on atheism. (He was, of course, given a standing ovation nonetheless.)
Oh and finally: all the speeches were filmed, and will be released as a DVD at some point. They may also be released more widely, perhaps under a Creative Commons license. (But then again, maybe not.)
As noted, the Socialist Alliance (SA) held its seventh annual conference in January. Immediately prior to the conference, the Democratic Socialist Perspective (formerly known as the Democratic Socialist Party nee Socialist Workers Party nee Socialist Workers League nee Socialist Youth Alliance nee Resistance) dissolved itself into SA.
At the time of its formation in 2001, SA was indeed an alliance, an electoral alliance, of several socialist parties — principally the Democratic Socialist Party and the International Socialist Organisation (ISO), but also the Freedom Socialist Party, Socialist Alternative, Socialist Democracy, Workers Power, and a handful of other, even more obscure political formations (and the DSP’s yoof wing, Resistance). Currently, the ‘Alliance’ is what used to be called the DSP (and the DSP’s yoof wing, Resistance) — the other members having either abandoned it at some stage over the last nine years and/or having themselves dissolved.
The Revolutionary Socialist Party — which split from the DSP in May 2008 to form first the Leninist Party Faction and then the RSP — is not convinced by the reported success of SA’s seventh national conference. Splitter Doug Lorimer writes (‘New period of left unity launched’?, Direct Action, No.20, March 2010):
Several weeks after the GLW article [New period of left unity and struggle launched, Kerryn Williams, January 16, 2010] appeared, the minutes of the SA conference were posted onto the SA website. These reported that 11 people were elected by the conference to the SA’s national executive, all but one of whom had only three days earlier been members of the DSP — making it clear that claims that the SA has become “a true alliance of a very broad cross-section of views that are of the historic left” are either the product of self-delusion or deliberate and shameless puffery.
SA held its Victorian state conference in February and, inter alia, Margarita Windisch was preselected to be a Senate candidate. Windisch battled Labor in the Altona State by-election last month and achieved 1.6% and a minor miracle. Elsewhere, Ben Courtice will be contesting the seat of Gellibrand at the next Federal election, while Alex Bainbridge will be contesting the seat of Perth.
In South Australia, the Communist Alliance is standing Bob Briton in the seat of Lee in the State election on March 20; in the Tasmanian State election, also on March 20, SA is fielding two candidates, Melanie Barnes in Denison and Jenny Forward in Franklin. In 2006, SA also stood two candidates: Linda Seaborn in Denison and Matthew Holloway in Franklin. The results were not good: Seaborn got 257 votes (0.4%) while Holloway received 237 (0.4%). In 2002, SA stood six candidates, who collectively won 722 votes (0.2%).
The Socialist Equality Party, meanwhile, has denounced SA, Socialist Alternative and Solidarity as ‘petit-bourgeois’. In Leninist terminology, this is almost as bad as being called anarchist (something which the DSP denounced the International Socialist Organisation — the precursor organisation to Socialist Alternative and Solidarity — as being in the 1980s).
Under these conditions the role being played by the various petty-bourgeois tendencies (Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative and Solidarity) is critical. They are working to boost the credentials of the AEU. According to Socialist Alternative’s Tess Lee Ack, the AEU is preparing to lead a national boycott against the next round of NAPLAN tests that are due in May. The AEU is preparing nothing of the sort. Its bogus resolution, adopted at the AEU’s national conference in January, was aimed solely at heading-off growing anger among teachers toward Labor’s plans.
Lee Ack claims: “So the scene is set for a confrontation.” And the site of this “confrontation”? “The AEU executive will meet on 12 April to decide whether the boycott will go ahead”. In the meantime, advises Socialist Alternative, teachers should “familiarise themselves with the arguments against league tables” by… visiting the AEU web site, to which it provides a link. This is a recipe for preventing independent action by teachers and subordinating them to the very union organisations that are enforcing Rudd’s agenda.
In 2007 Socialist Alternative and the entire middle class ex-left called for a Labor vote, claiming that a Rudd government would represent a “lesser evil” to the Liberals. According to the AEU, Labor’s election presented “an opportunity for a change in policy direction following more than a decade of systematic attack on public education and training”. Far from inaugurating a change in “policy direction,” Labor is enforcing a new wave of free-market reform, following on from those of the Hawke-Keating governments between 1983 and 1996. The chief role of groups like Socialist Alternative is to bolster the trade union bureaucracy and prevent a conscious political break by working people from Labor.
Across the Tasman, similar ideological failings on the part of the so-called ‘International Bolshevik Tendency’ have been detected by the ever-vigilant International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). Hate Trotskyism, Hate the Spatactist League, Hate Vajazzling. See : The BT on Haiti: Postscript to IGiocy: More Gas from the Swamp, Workers Vanguard, No.953, February 26, 2010.
Eleswhere, the Communist Workers’ Group of New Zealand/Aotearoa is committed to building a new communist international to lead workers to the revolutionary overthrow of global capitalism, and until recently was a member of the Internationalist Leninist/Trotskyist Fraction (IFLT). In an exciting new development with important implications for the construction of a new communist international to lead workers to the revolutionary overthrow of global capitalism, this month the CWG announced that it was in a Liaison Committee with the Humanist Workers for Socialist Revolution (US) (formerly known as Humanists for Revolutionary Socialism).
Humanist Workers for Revolutionary Socialism (HWRS) is an organization composed primarily of former members of the now-defunct Workers’ Voice organization… From July 2009 until early March 2010, HWRS was affiliated with the International Leninist Trotskyist Fraction (IFLT or FLTI). In March 2010, HWRS, together with the Communist Workers Group of New Zealand (CWG-NZ) split with the IFLT and formed a liaison committee…
I’m unsure what’s become of the Communist Party of Aotearoa, and I’m also unsure if the World Socialist Party of New Zealand is still meeting monthly or holding an annual conference, but fortunately “Comrades and supporters who miss [our radio] broadcasts or are outside our transmission area are welcome to send a blank C-60 cassette to the Party with a request for broadcasts to be dubbed on to it.” Socialist Aotearoa, on the other hand, after having split from Socialist Worker New Zealand, is still busy revolutionising social relations (as of course is Socialist Worker New Zealand); the Workers Party of New Zealand is also busy working, and the International Socialist Organisation organising.
With all this activity, I must say that the future is looking very red.
35 year-old comrade Lambros Foundas was murdered by cops on Wednesday morning in the suburb of Dafni (south Athens). The police claims that he was a “terrorist” and that he was shot while trying to steal a car, and that [he] was carrying firearms. Fountas was one of the over 500 anarchists arrested at the Polytechnic riots of 1995, in Athens. The flier above reads: “HONOR TO THE ANARCHIST LAMBROS FOUNDAS”.
Oh yeah: on March 9, police in Athens tear-gassed the 88-year-old Manolis Glezos. “On May 30 1941, in Nazi-occupied Athens, he and Apostolos Santas climbed up the Acropolis and tore down the Swastika – an action for which he was arrested and tortured the following year.”
Fascist bookseller Pedro Varela may be in trouble in Spain, but books for sale through the Australian neo-Nazi mail order 9 percent productions include autographed copies of Jewish Supremacism and My Awakening by former Klansman David Duke; The Turner Diaries by dead nutzi William Pierce; Imperium by dead nutzi Francis Parker Yockey and — of course — the nineteenth century Tsarist forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Note that 9 percent is the merchanding arm of Blood & Honour Australia and the Southern Cross Hammerskins, two neo-Nazi groups currently organising a birthday party for Adolf Hitler on the Gold Coast. (Hitler’s birthday is Tuesday, April 20; the gig is Friday, April 17.) Note also that a number of these titles were formerly available via Australian Protectionist Party (APP) member Martin Fletcher’s site Downunder Newslinks, but following a political re-alignment, these titles were removed (last year) and the party’s phobias, and hence Fletcher’s, are now Asians, Islam, and teh Left. In keeping with their current mania, you can still download a copy of the ‘controversial’ game Muslim Massacre from Fletcher’s site.
Speaking of APP, it declared in its February newsletter that it had obtained 500 members — enough to register with the AEC as a political party. Its chief rival in Australia First declared it had reached this milestone in July 2009, but it is apparently experiencing some technical difficulties achieving its goal. In any case, under the wise leadership of Dr James Saleam, AF will — with the assistance of a number of decrepit members of allied and now largely defunct groups such as Australians Against Further Immigration and One Nation — soon be joining the far left and numerous independents as they battle for last place at the polls.
Of course, like his Leninist rivals — from whom Saleam & Co. draw much of their inspiration — Herr Doktor understands that, given the extremely unlikely possibility of actual victory, participation in electoral contests conducted by the liberal democratic state is a means to an end. For Saleam — bizarrely, a White supremacist of non-White descent — that means assembling a fascist cadre, a project he has spent the last four decades pursuing, with various degrees of success (and occasionally ending in bloodshed). Like a mid-career rock ‘n’ roll or pop band, this also means being able to lower the demographic. In other words, to attract yoof to the cause. Saleam made an abortive attempt at this via a short-lived group called the ‘Patriotik Yoof League’ (PYL). It attracted a small number of racist meatheads before collapsing in a heap. Indicative of the farcical nature of many of the Australian far right’s construction projects, the PYL ended its life while having as its sole member a middle-aged man from Queensland named John Drew, later expelled from AF ostensibly for advocating a vote for the Greens.
Since the disappearance of the PYL, a small number of yoof, alienated from the cardigan-wearing membership of AF, have, like their racist European and North American cousins, been attracted to some of the more contemporary re-workings of fascist ideology, in particular those which attempt to mimic anarchist and radical, ‘autonomous’, left-wing movements. The two can happily work together, it seems, and at least as far as the Hacks @ JJJ are concerned, are more-or-less twins (hear : Hack, Thursday, March 4, 2010).
In the meantime, a brief introduction to some of the newer permutations on/of the far right.
National Anarchism
National Anarchism is an oxymoron, and as such tends to attracts morons: White supremacists.
Originating in the UK, ‘national anarchism’ was introduced into Australia by the Sydney-based fascist Welf Herfurth. Born in Germany, but emigrating to Australia in the late 1980s, Herfurth has been a member of a string of racist, right-wing organisations, from the German NPD through to the Australian Friends of the BNP and the One Nation Party. In the few years he has been attempting to cultivate the ideology on Australian soil, Herfurth has gathered around him a small clutch of like-minded souls, most of whom appear to be teenage boys or men in their early 20s, and almost all of whom were attracted to Herfurth (and national anarchism) by way of the US-based White supremacist (and virulently anti-Semitic) website Stormfront.
The national anarchists made their political debut on the Australian political stage in September 2007, when a small group of approximately 20–30 dressed in anarchist drag and formed a short-lived and stationary ‘black bloc’ at an APEC protest rally. (One of the ‘anarchists’ present was NSW APP spokesperson Darrin Hodges.) Although a handful of members have staged a few other rallies since then, in terms of its public presence, this has been the highpoint for national anarchism thus far.
In Melbourne, the national anarchist banner has been taken up by Geelong-based Scott Harrison. Harrison, like Herfurth, has been involved in a string of fascist groups and projects, of which, along with anti-fluoridation, national anarchism is but the most recent. In his capacity as a ‘national anarchist’, Harrison attempted, along with a tiny handful of other national anarchists, to join a May Day rally in 2008, and an anti-censorship rally that December. On both occasions, the fascists were told to go forth and multiply.
Nationalist Alternative (NA) is a new group on the far right that was established in Melbourne in late 2008. In some ways, NA may be regarded as being national anarchism for grown-ups — if those grown-ups are 20-something fascist University students. Like the national anarchists, NA attempts to adapt progressive or radical chic to its own ends, in this case by mimicking the style of ‘Socialist Alternative’, a left-wing party which has been reasonably successful at recruiting University students. (Like the national anarchists, NA is also inspired by similar developments on the European far right, especially in Germany: a recent essay published by NA analyses the prospects for the German far right, advocating, inter alia, the abandonment of obvious signs of Nazism.)
NA announced its presence in 2008 by participating in a campaign to stop the construction of a mosque in Newport, partly by way of supporting an unsuccessful campaign to elect a candidate (Barbara Johnstone) from a local community group (Newport West Action Group) to local council. Since then, it has attempted to garner publicity by focusing upon education and housing issues, producing propaganda specifically targeting University students, blaming the presence of foreigners in Australia for educational and housing shortages, and placing these issues within a broader context of the political agenda of a global elite intent upon deracination and the destruction of the Australian nation.
NA made a minor splash on Saturday, March 6, 2010 when a handful of Aryans — ostensibly Angry @ the Federal Government’s imposition of a filtering system on local Internet access — attended a protest rally in Perth. From a balcony above the speakers’ platform, the fascists unleashed a banner reading ‘Save Water Cut Immigration’. A short while later, a few anti-racists at the rally informed NA that they were not welcome and should leave, which they duly did. “Stop the Filter organiser Trish Zanetti told iTnews that the rally continued as planned after the Nationalist Alternative group left” (Not all welcome at Perth anti-filter rally, Liz Tay, iTnews.com.au, March 8, 2010).
In relation to both the ‘national anarchists’ and NA, the main points worth reiterating are: a) they are fascist in political orientation; b) they attempt to recruit yoof and, in the case of NA, tertiary students in particular; c) they are relatively inexperienced, but receive political guidance from more seasoned right-wing activists; d) they attempt to appropriate anarchist or radical, left-wing motifs; e) generally lacking the capacity to stage their own public demonstrations (like the far right as a whole), they are eager to attach themselves to whichever political project will tolerate their being in its orbit.
New Right
The common denominator linking the national anarchists and NA is the New Right, an ideological trend most commonly associated with the French fascist intellectual Alain de Benoist. In the 1970s and 1980s, de Benoist and fellow thinkers attempted to modernise post-WWII fascist thought, and to chart a new course for fascist movements in the contemporary world. Other key influences on post-WWII fascist thinking include Pierre Krebs, Michael Walker, Armin Mohler and also Carl Schmitt (whose writings have also been championed by the critical bizarros @ Telos Press).
White Pride World Wide Day: March 21, 2010
March 21 is of course International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination White Pride World Wide Day. In Australia, Perth plasterer Paul Innes, the moderator of Stormfront Down Under, will presumably be plastering the town White with posters proclaiming White racial supremacy — or, at the very least, advocating a run to the hills, and a project of intensive inbreeding.
In Aoteroa/New Zealand, the fascists belonging to Right Wing Resistance New Zealand (RWRNZ) and the New Zealand National Front (NZNF) are expected to jackboot about, presumably with Kyle Chapman — who “retired” from politics last year — to be in the vanguard.
In Canada, the ‘White Nationalist Front’, ‘Western European Bloodline’, ‘Aryan Guard’, ‘Aryan Nations’ and the KKK will be holdng hands in Calgary, and proclaiming their solidarity with other racist, batshit-crazy, swastika-licking Whites everywhere. Announcing the event on Stormfront, Kevin Goudreau writes that the assorted racist and fascists “will be united even if it[‘]s just for 1 day it will happen and everyone can go back to infighting l88r. WPWW 14 wordSS!”
Truly inspiring stuff.
The Canadian schmucks have been busy informing on, threatening to kill, and actually trying to blow one another up in recent months, so it seems likely that their training in brick-dodging has been somewhat curtailed, resulting in fewer and slower targets for competitors in the 2010 Antifa Winter Olympics.
(Elsewhere in North AmeriKKKa, there will be rallies in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Well, according to the members of the North East White Pride forum.)
Oh yeah. In Melbourne, Hobbit — the short Klansman with hairy feet who “walk[s] around often wearing my Klan tshirt through the jew suburbs of Melbourne” — having been spurned by the racist yoof belonging to the Southern Cross Soldiers, is also being shunned by the boneheads belonging to Blood & Honour and the students of Nationalist Alternative.
Today is the 9th of March,there has been over 1,000 views yet NO ONE has come foward [sic] to suggest anything.We have Blood&Honour,HammerSkins and National Alternitive [sic] members in Melbourne yet not one of them has come foward [sic] to say..Yeah I want to help out on White Pride day.I don[‘]t care if you lot hate me,this is about WHITE PRIDE DAY not me or you,it[‘]s about our survival as a RACE.I don[‘]t know what will happen around the country but here in Melbourne I will be in town all day promoting OUR WHITE RACE,anyone who wants to join me is more than welcome.
My name is Hobbit, Knight of Klans,
Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
Bonus Nazi Lovin’!
it’s war vs zog reborn / with a rod for god / as a prop for a weak ego / that needs absolute white control / their pride is violated / their thoughts are cable regulated / they peddle their electric hate / contaminate state to state / they mourn for the death of a nation / their time spent perpetuating / the myth of a caucasian christ / to prove right the anaemic life / so get loaded up for penetration / proud man in their aryan nation / they play with superior toys / but their games are all for sick little boys / the grand dragon is a phallic name / they use to hide his impotent state / face masked by a secret shame / the real length of the snake / spread hate with genetic lies / castrate and sterilize / at the gates of a molecular hell / stands a reaper with a sickle cell / their ‘order’ is just a friendly metaphor / for club law and a .44 / and goosestepping with the nra / when they can feel their grip slipping away …
OK. After several weeks of bitterly hard-foughtcampaigning, I finally gots me 180 fans on Facebook… so I’m gonna start posting again. About what? Nazis, of course. In the United States, in Spain, in Russia (for Dion, of course!), in Canada, in Austria, and even in Australia.
Sheeeeee-it.
United States
The far right in the United States is full of RAGE! according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has just published a new issue of its Intelligence Report (No.137, Spring 2010). In his editorial, Mark Potok argues that the far right is ‘on fire’ in the US; similar claims have been made regarding the far right in Germany (see below).
“We are in the midst of one of the most significant right-wing populist rebellions in United States history,” Chip Berlet, a veteran analyst of the American radical right, wrote earlier this year. “We see around us a series of overlapping social and political movements populated by people [who are] angry, resentful, and full of anxiety. They are raging against the machinery of the federal bureaucracy and liberal government programs and policies including health care, reform of immigration and labor laws, abortion, and gay marriage.”
By way of example of RAGE!, a guest of David Irving’s on his recent speaking tour of the United States was so angry and upset he allegedly stabbed another listener — the assault possibly the result of an ongoing conflict between neo-Nazi groups the Hammerskins and Volksfront. (In Australia, the Hammerskins and Volksfront get on like a house on fire. No, really.)
It seems like a fairly straightforward case. On October 26, during a speech by Nazi historian David Irving at the Ritz-Carlton in Manalapan, a man named Christopher Nachtman invited another member of the audience, John Kopko, outside the banquet hall to settle a disagreement. Nachtman pulled a knife and stabbed Kopko, who barely survived.
Police recovered the knife. There were a bunch of witnesses, along with a living victim. Simple case, right?
Apparently not…
The report goes on to detail various to and fro involving the police, the fascists and their lawyers, and speculation concerning the reasons one fascist stabbed another.
For a group that likes to traffic in conspiracy theories, there are plenty to choose from. According to one plot line, Nachtman’s attack was an outgrowth of a rivalry between two white supremacist groups, the Hammerskins and Volksfront. An anti-fascist group hacked into the websites and email account of the event’s speaker, David Irving, revealing that he had invited Nachtman to the event personally, contrary to his claims to the Palm Beach Post…
Also in the United States, former Internet radio shock jock and FBI informant Hal Turner is back in court. Turner has received some support from his fellow racists, but it’s dwindled considerably since his exposure (by hackers) as an informant in January 2008. Arrested in June 2009, Turner currently awaits a verdict on charges of threatening to kill three Chicago judges while ranting on his show. “Turner’s lawyers have argued that Turner was an informant for the FBI and his mission was to draw in extremist groups that could then be monitored by the government.’ See also : Dennis McCormack ~versus~ Derrick MacThomas (July 25, 2009).
Barcelona – A Spanish court has sentenced a bookshop owner to two years and nine months in prison for spreading racist propaganda, justice officials said Monday. Pedro Varela [Geiss] spread ideas favourable to genocide that denigrated Jews, blacks and other groups, the court said.
He apparently did this through the books he sold at his Barcelona bookshop, and by organizing lectures.
Prosecutors had asked for a four-year prison sentence. Varela was also ordered to pay a fine of 2,880 euros (3,945 dollars).
His defence had argued that Varela belonged to no political party and that there were no banned books in Spain.
Varela had already been handed seven months in prison on similar charges, in 2008. At that time, he avoided being jailed, because he lacked a criminal record.
Pedro Varela is the former fuehrer of a nutzi mob called the Círculo Español de Amigos de Europa (Spanish Circle of Friends of Europe), who in the late ’70s decided to concentrate his energies upon Holocaust denial. It was in this capacity that Pedro invited fellow Jew-hating Holocaust denialist — and former Grand Poobah in the KKK — David Duke to Spain to talk shit about The Jew. Duke frequently tours Europe — he received a doctorate from a perfectly legitimate There’s none of that. That’s right out. I deny that completely. University in the Ukraine — and when he’s not being arrested in the Czech Republic for talking shit about The Jew may be found alongside of Don Operation Red Dog Black, milking the fascist cows on Stormfront.
In just three weeks, one Korean student lost his life and another nearly did so presumably by ultranationalists in Russia. Going further back, almost one Korean has been killed or injured by Russian neo-Nazis and other thugs every year since 2005, showing foreigners’ security in the former leader of the socialist bloc has reached a dangerous state.
Diplomats may be tempted to think the six Koreans are just part of the hundreds of victims stabbed, strangled or beaten to death by more than 70,000 skinheads belonging to about 20 ultra-right organizations in the socially and economically unstable country over the years.
Sunday’s incident shows, however, it might not be entirely incidental. Various circumstantial evidences indicate that the two assaulters seemed to carefully plan the crime, considering the victim, a 29-year-old cinema student-cum-TV cameraman, had taken part in producing a program on neo-Nazi skinheads not long ago. It also means Koreans have emerged as a group noticeable enough to become targets of premeditated attacks…
Last month in Aotearoa/New Zealand, a bonehead named Malcolm Chaston, 40, was charged with the murder of his former girlfriend Vanessa Pickering, as well as assaulting a minor and sexual violation. Chaston was a founding member, along with Hayden Brent McKenzie, of a bonehead prison gang named Fourth Reich. In December 2008, McKenzie was convicted of the murder of South Korean backpacker Jae Hyeon Kim in 2003. Another founding member, Leighton Wilding, was imprisoned for the murder of James John (Janis) Bamborough in 1999; Bamborough’s crime was being gay.
A far-right contender to become Austria’s head of state was forced to denounce the Nazis today, promising to uphold a national ban on denying the Holocaust after previously insisting that it was a matter of free speech.
Amid growing uproar over a tabloid campaign to make her president, Barbara Rosenkranz, a deputy leader of the far-right Freedom party, surprised the Austrian elite last week by announcing she would challenge the incumbent, Heinz Fischer, for the Austrian presidency next month.
Rosenkranz, a mother of 10 married to a man who was prominent on the Austrian neo-Nazi scene for two decades, has repeatedly criticised Austria’s laws criminalising denial of the Holocaust. Asked on national radio last week whether she believed the Nazis murdered millions of Jews in concentration camp gas chambers, she answered evasively, adding that freedom of expression also meant allowing “absurd, bizarre opinions”…
Across the border in Germany, at the same time as there is an apparent upsurge in support for neo-Nazism, racism and fascism (German anti-Nazi campaigners call for crisis meeting to fight far-right crime, Deutsche Welle, March 8, 2010), authorities are worried about and increasingly directing resources towards subverting Islamism and teh Left — whether in or out of Parliament.
“The activity of the soviet represented the organization of anarchy. Its existence and its subsequent development marked the consolidation of anarchy.” ~ Leon Trotsky
Awesome! In a stunning rejoinder to the followers of Juan Posadas, the Socialist Equality Party in Australia held its founding congress in Sydney on January 21-25, 2010 — almost fourteen years after it was formed.
What explains this historical anomaly? As Sherlock Holmes remarked in Sign of the Four (1890), “Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.” Having considered, and then eliminated, all the other factors, the only reasonable conclusion I can arrive at is this: The Marxist scienticians at the SEP have invented a Time Machine!
Not content with having achieved the extremely difficult — some suggest impossible — task of travelling [backwards] in time, the party makes an even more ambitious boast: of being “indisputably” the only Trotskyist party in Australia. Socialist Equality Party (Australia) holds founding Congress, wsws.org, February 24, 2010:
Most essentially, Beams said, the past 25 years had clarified the role of the Pabloite opportunists who once claimed to represent genuine Trotskyism. In Australia, as in France, they were now seeking to establish “broad anti-capitalist parties” with non-revolutionary tendencies and had entirely repudiated Trotsky and the Fourth International. Unlike the previous period of mass radicalisation from 1968 to 1975, the SEP was now indisputably the sole Trotskyist party.
The Freedom Socialist Party, Revolutionary Socialist Party, Socialist Alternative, Socialist Party, Solidarity and Trotskyist Platform would surely beg to disagree.
Speaking of Trotsky, as already indicated, Robert Service’s new biography has really upset his contemporary followers. Peter Taaffe, general secretary of the Socialist Party (UK), refutes attacks on Leon Trotsky at one of the sessions of the Socialist Party’s ‘Socialism 2009’ conference:
In The great anti-poll tax victory (February 26, 2010), Taafe also has a crack at the anarchists who “occasionally latched onto and viciously attacked the organised anti-poll tax movement”. According to Taafe, “It remains an incontestable historical fact that it was neither the official leadership of the labour movement nor small left groups – without a feel for the real pulse and movement of the working class – that provided the leadership for the decisive poll tax victory. It was, instead, the vilified and persecuted forces of genuine Marxism gathered around the newspaper ‘Militant’ which played the crucial role.” Further, “Ultra-left sectarians and anarchists [following the London anti-Poll Tax rally of March 31, 1990]… accused Militant supporters of “collaborating with the police”. This was totally false. Tommy Sheridan and the other leaders were overwhelmingly re-elected to head the All-Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation.”
Taafe’s account may be usefully contrasted with Danny Burns’ Poll Tax Rebellion (AK Press/Attack International, 1992). After noting, inter alia, the fact that the gutter press joined police efforts to identify alleged rioters, Burns quotes Socialist Party nee Militant member and Secretary of the All Britain Anti Poll Tax Federation Steve Nally as stating that “We are going to hold our own internal inquiry which will go public and if necessary name names” (p.105). (Note that a similar campaign against protesters was mounted in Australia following the G20 protests in November 2006, the role of the gutter press this time being played by Fairfax and The Age.) The task of defending the accused was eventually taken up by an independent group, the Trafalgar Square Defendants Campaign, formed over and against the wishes of the leadership of the Federation.
Elsewhere, Taafe’s Communist Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) has issued a statement on the apparent split in rival international the International Marxist Tendency (IMT): Open letter to the members and former members of the IMT (March 2, 2010). The ideological leader of the IMT (which, sadly, has no section in Australia but, oddly enough, does in Aotearoa/New Zealand) is Alan Woods.
In Defence of Marxism An Attack Upon Bakunin Anarchism, Or: A Case of The Woods Seeing The Tree.
Woods provides a fairly orthodox Marxist / Leninist / Trotskyist critique of Bakunin, who is invested with the same status within the anarchist tradition as Marx is within Marxism. Wrong, but also routine.
Greece Braces for Deeper Spending Cuts The New York Times (AP)
March 3, 2010
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece will announce painful new spending cuts Wednesday to lift the country out of a major financial crisis, a day after Prime Minister George Papandreou said the country was in a “‘state of war” and was fighting for national survival…
Bonus!
Portraying the Poor, BBC4, February 28, 2010. “Paul Mason explores the image of poverty and the working class that has been created by writers. From Friedrich Engels’s reports on the Salford slums in the 1840s through to Raphael Selbourne’s story of a young Bangladeshi woman in present-day Wolverhampton, by way of George Orwell’s expeditions to Wigan and the hop fields of Kent, our picture of the poor has been painted by members of the middle class. Paul Mason asks if this outsider’s view gives us a full and fair account, or if it says more about the attitudes of the literary class than about the poor themselves. Interviewees include Orwell’s biographer DJ Taylor, Polly Toynbee (author of Hard Work: Life In Low-Pay Britain); Michael Collins (author of The Likes Of Us: A Biography Of The White Working Class) and Raphael Selbourne (author of Beauty).”
PS. Thanks to Glenn, I’ve discovered that Communists have infiltrated the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne and the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne (which held its own version of the Brecht Forum in September last year).
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?"
