Blood & Honour in Holland (and Australia)

In a noteworthy development sure to bring a tear to the eyes of local neo-Nazi supporters of Blood & Honour Australia — among them Welf Herfurth, David Innes, Paul Innes, James Newman, Douglas Schott and Ben Weerheym — members of the Dutch Parliament have announced their intention to outlaw the neo-Nazi group Blood & Honour in that country. Locally, while some few pseudo-‘punks’ clap and cheer Gary and B&H venue The Birmy, Yarra Council continues to do nothing regarding the presence of a fascist watering-hole in Fitzroy: — this despite the fact that a (black) woman was assaulted by boneheads on the night of their last shindig in September, 2006.

How ‘progressive’.

In the meantime, don’t be a scab, and ‘Boycott the Birmy’.

Parliament wants ban on Blood & Honour
Expatica
March 30, 2007

AMSTERDAM – A majority in Parliament, including the Christian Democrat CDA, the Socialist SP and the Freedom Party PVV, wants a ban on the extreme right-wing organisation Blood & Honour.

CDA MP Mirjam Sterk announced to Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin that her party would be submitting a motion for a ban. “As far as we are concerned it is an extremely dangerous organisation that must be banned,” she said on the current affairs programme EénVandaag [Video (Dutch)]. The SP supports the call for a ban but first wants to examine the legal possibilities for banning the group.

Blood & Honour is an international organisation of right-wing extremists [founded by Ian Stuart Donaldson]. Blood & Honour is thought to have about 200 members in the Netherlands.

The group organises white power concerts and neo-Nazi demonstrations. Germany was the first to prohibit the organisation in 2000 and Spanish authorities followed suit in 2006. Recent Belgian attempts to have the group banned have not yielded success so far.

In Australia, B&H is a tiny presence on the far right. Its growth in Holland and other parts of Europe, however, especially among white youth, has been greatly facilitated by the general climate of increased xenophobia. As noted by the MUA, a similar trend is evident in Australia, and — as also noted by the MUA in relation to the now-defunct youth wing of the fascist Australia First Party, the Patriotic Youth League — vigilance in combating the extreme right is called for.

    Oh, and speaking of which, and to conclude on a !cinataS note, a handful of youthful meatheads on Stormfront recently declared their intention to attend ‘Marxism Today’, a Socialist Alternative conference held this weekend at Trades Hall. As it happens, the Master Race was only able to assemble approximately 1 1/2 of its members to combat the rising tide of “skinny gooks” and “red scum” (etcetera, etcetera, etcetera), one teenage fascist impotently waving a flag in anger at the communist menace.
Posted in Anti-fascism, Music, State / Politics | 2 Comments

Human freedom versus ‘trade’: the hypocrisy and the stoopid

Some 231-year-old Yanqui imperialist running-dog reckons that something called ‘free trade’ is good, and something called ‘liberalism’ is bad: mmmkay? While in that tiny corner of the imaginary world neo-conservative bloggers inhabit such rhetoric is standard, what caught my attention is the following citation, sourced from some weird-arse site called ‘Discover the Networks’ (which appears to be some kinda side-project of the neo-con Frontpage online zine, the publication of crazed ex-Trotskyite businessman David Horowitz):

“Food Not Bombs” is an anti-war organization composed of more than 200 independent chapters… Since the 9/11 attacks, Food Not Bombs has denounced all U.S. military actions aimed at stopping the global threat of terrorism. The group condemns the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and impugns the United States for bringing about “the globalization of the economy,” imposing “restrictions to the movements of people,” and contributing to “the destruction of the earth.” …FNB works in coalition with such groups as Earth First[!]; the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee; and the Anarchist Black Cross, which seeks to abolish the penal system and has called for “direct resistance to achieve a stateless and classless society.” FNB also has ties to the Communist organization Industrial Workers Of The World, a neo-Marxist group that embraces a radical form of socioeconomic anarchism. The Rochester, New York chapter of Food Not Bombs was a signatory to a May 30, 2000 document denouncing globalization and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The reality, of course, is a little different to the garbled account given above.

1) Food Not Bombs may be ‘anti-war’, but its principal activity is fairly straightforward, and that is the provision of free vegan food; which, it is argued, is preferable to blowing people up with bombs. (Neo-cons have often been known to dispute this.) And as noted, the 200+ ‘chapters’ of the group are autonomous (look it up in the dictionary), both structurally and politically. Further, the idea that “since 9/11” all the 200+ FNB groups in the world have “denounced all U.S. military actions aimed at stopping the global threat of terrorism” would, in reality — and minus the appellation “aimed at stopping the global threat of terrorism” — merely be in keeping with the general political tendency of the network. That is, ‘yes’ to food, ‘no’ to bombs: since about 1980. At the very least, that the US military machine’s objective is to ‘end terrorism’ is a matter for debate. (Hint: it’s not.)

As for the US state’s role in extending corporate globalisation, restricting human movement across state boundaries and destroying the world’s ecology, this is a matter of ongoing state policy and public record. With the exception of ecological destruction, it’s a remarkably stoopid thing to contradict what the US state itself loudly proclaims as being its objectives.

2) How exactly FNB works in ‘coalition’ with groups such as Earth First!, the LPDC or the ABC is carefully left unenunciated. In reality, and in addition to its regular street stalls, FNB provides food at events organised by a vast range of ‘progressive’ organisations, including but not limited to the above, and on the basis of the decisions made by the 200+ autonomous groups which compose the network.

    Note that the ABC, too, is a network of autonomous groups. (In the US, there is a division between two tendencies, the Federation and the Network, presumably concerning the proper focus of their work.) Its history — to the extent that contemporary formations may be linked to these earlier ones — dates back to the early 1900s, when it was known as the Anarchist Red Cross; a break-away faction of the Political Red Cross formed when it was discovered that the latter group was neglecting to provide material support to anarchist prisoners. The repression of anarchists in Russia by the Bolsheviks during and in the years following their assumption of state power in 1917 was a principal focus of the group’s work. Given the success of the Bolsheviks in destroying the anarchist movement in the territories under its control — alongside of the successful repression of anarchist movements elsewhere — the ABC went into decline. Its revival was triggered by the re-emergence of a new generation in the 1960s, and this new generation’s activities centred on assisting anarchists in Francoist Spain. For more on the ABC, see Albert Meltzer, I couldn’t paint golden angels, Chapter XIII.

3) The IWW is neither Communist nor “a neo-Marxist group that embraces a radical form of socioeconomic anarchism”, as any literate 12-year-old could tell you. What it is is more or less what it says it is, a ‘union for all workers’. That is, a union which aims to organise all workers on the basis of industry, rather than trade, and which has as its overall objective the abolition of (global) capitalism. ‘Instead of the conservative motto, “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work”, we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, “Abolition of the wage system”.’ In short, a revolutionary industrial union.

The IWW also has a long history, which it is in fact possible to study. Unfortunately, to do so requires both the ability to read and the ability to think, neither of which abilities are in abundance among neo-cons. Filthy lucre, on the other hand…

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

Pickled brains, disembraining machines, and dead and imprisoned journalists

Brains. Pickled Brains.

Pickled brain to return to village
Malcolm Moore
Telegraph
March 29, 2007

The pickled brain of a 19th-century Italian anarchist, which has been on display in a glass jar in Rome since his death, is finally set to return home.

Giovanni Passannante, a cook, gained notoriety for lunging at Umberto I, the king of Italy, with a three-inch kitchen knife during a royal visit to Naples in 1878.

The then 28-year-old Passannante missed his target, and gouged the prime minister instead. He was arrested and sent to the prison island of Elba. After a decade of solitary confinement, he was judged to be insane and was transferred to an asylum.

When he died in 1910, his body was fed to pigs [thus, while simultaneously demonstrating the depravity of everyday life in penal Italy, also providing the inspiration for Mason Verger‘s failed attempt to feed Hannibal Lecter to the pigs in Hannibal (1999)] but his brain was preserved so that it could be studied for signs of innate criminality.

[Presumably along the squiggly lines established by the brilliant Italian scientician Cesare Lombroso, whose tract on ‘The Physiognomy of the Anarchists’ (1891) is a deadset classic of the genre. In Russia, Vlad the Impaler‘s brain was also preserved by ‘Soviet’ scienticians in the hope that placing the goo under the microscope might unlock the secrets to his own peculiar ‘genius’. (The study was also the subject of an acerbic poem, ‘Room 19’, by Jon Hillson.)]

The brain is currently on view at Rome’s crime museum, but will be transported to his home town of Savoia di Lucania, in the deep south of the country, on May 11.

However, the return of the brain is no guarantee that Passannante will rest in peace.

The local mayor, Rosina Ricciardi, wants to display the brain in its jar, rather than giving it a proper burial. She said it would be a boost for tourism. Francesco Rutelli, the culture minister, reprimanded her, asking her to find a “dignified” solution.

“I am convinced we must immediately give some peace to the mortal remains of Passannante,” he said.

In turn, his intervention has outraged Italy’s small group of hardcore monarchists.

Sergio Boschiero, their leader, said: “What does Rutelli want with these remains? Does this brain represent part of our cultural heritage?

“Do we want to make this man the equal of Padre Pio or Guglielmo Marconi? What sort of example does he set for the new generation, this man who tried to kill a head of state?”

Giuseppe Galzerano, the author of a biography of Passannante, also said the brain should not be buried.

“It would represent a brutal and uncivil attempt to wipe clean a page of our history,” he said.

“The brain should be kept on display as a permanent memory of the injustice undergone by one man at the hands of the royal family.”

Passannante wasn’t the only man to try to kill the King: another anarchist, Pietro Umberto Acciarito (1871–1943) also attempted to stab Umberto, on April 22, 1897. However, “When Umberto saw the weapon, he stood up and moved far enough away in the carriage that Acciarito could not reach him. Acciarito tried to stab Umberto anyway, but his knife struck harmlessly against the vehicle. Acciarito then proceeded to carve a letter A and a cross in the side of the carriage.” Three years later, Umberto I finally kicked his gold-and-diamond-encrusted bucket when another anarchist, Gaetano Bresci (1869–1901), taking advantage of modern technology, shot the bastard dead with a revolver.

Machines. Disembraining machines.

Speaking of brains, some punks got theirs pickled in jars; reportedly as a result of shoving their heads into the disembraining machines kindly provided for their enthusiastic use by the caring salesman of global corporate culture. Rather than gratefully receiving pats on the head from neo-Nazis, however, some punks fight back — and pay the price. In Mexico recently:

On the night of March 23, four young people associated with the anarchist punk fanzine Pensares Y Sentires were arbitrarily attacked, beaten and detained by police on the outskirts of Oaxaca City. The black-clad attackers, who repeatedly fired their pistols in the air to intimidate the youths, belonged to the municipal police force of Santa Lucia del Camino, the Oaxaca district where Indymedia [journalist] Brad Will was killed last year. The detainees were taken to the Santa Lucia del Camino jail, and released at 1:30 AM, charged with disorderly conduct. Two days earlier, they had [participated] in the ceremony and hunger strike to demand [that] Brad’s killers be brought to justice. The detained were also members of the local Somos Resistencia collective, part of the Anarkalactica youth culture network.

Journalists. Dead and imprisoned journalists.

In Barcelona, Spain, Martinus Hendrikus Tega, a former Dutch squatter, has been arrested and has allegedly confessed to the assassination in November 2005 of Dutch journalist Louis Sévèke, a killing which received barely a fraction of the attention paid to the murder in November 2004 of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, or that of fascist politician Pim Fortuyn in May 2002 (‘Confession and arrest in Sévèke murder’, DutchNews.nl, March 28, 2007). The report notes that Sévèke “was well-known in left-wing and squatter circles and a variety of reasons have been put forward for the shooting. Some suggest it may have been connected to his research into the secret service”. The alleged killer’s motive is claimed by police to have been revenge for Sévèke’s ‘outing’ of him as a police informant in the 1990s, a claim based on the alleged contents of Tega’s diaries, uncovered by police through their investigations into a number of armed robberies also allegedly committed by Tega. Family and friends of Sévèke dispute this claim.

Australian corporate/state media have been following Sévèke’s case as closely as they have that of imprisoned US journalist Josh Wolf, most recently taking note of the Committee to Protect Journalists‘s March 29 call for his release: ‘”We look at this issue from a global perspective,” noted CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. “If Wolf had been doing what he was doing in China, or Uzbekistan, or Zimbabwe instead of San Francisco there would be no question about his journalistic credentials.”‘

For a sample of their intensive coverage, see the links below:

Posted in !nataS, Anarchism, History, Media, Music, State / Politics, War on Terror | 1 Comment

You beauty!

GO PIES!

Collingwood (12.10.82) v. Kangaroos (10.19.79)

Good old Collingwood forever,
They know how to play the game.
Side by side they stick together,
To uphold the Magpies’ name.

See the barrackers are shouting,
As all barrackers should.
Oh, the premiership’s a cakewalk,
For the good old Collingwood.

(Repeat one miilion times)

PS. Thanks Shannon!

Posted in Collingwood | 11 Comments

Ready, aim, fire!

Gee whiz, that didn’t take long.

Antifa is taking aim, says local neo-Nazi Welf Herfurth (National-Anarchist-Online, March 29, 2007):

“Well, I can live with it! It’s the typical antifa smear. A lot of the stuff is wrong, some is right, and you have the usual smear. I wish they would debate on logical terms.”

Bathtub full of power tools!

    One more thing I forgot to add: Udo Voigt wasn’t the last of Herfurth’s kameraden to be denied entry to Australia. In 2005, Sydney Forum organisers invited another neo-Nazi to lecture Australians on politics. His name was Gerd Finkenwirth; it was his job to talk to all them foreigners about NPD.

Some turkey named Flávio Gonçalves replies: “OMG, you go to [bonehead] gigs?”

Herr Herfurth, again: “Why not? I have a lot of good friends who are [boneheads]. They might not be [the] flavor of the month, but I can say that there are a hell of a lot of good people in there.”

Turkey, again: “Went to a couple, I no longer do that sort of thing. It’s only fun when you drink lots of beer. But I also went to a couple of Antifa concerts… it’s a funny story actually how that come about, me along with the SHARP and RASH crowd… I’ll tell it someday.”

Troy Southgate: “Oooh, I’m really scared now.”

No, just stupid.

As ever.

And speaking of the numerous “good people” who are boneheads:

‘Bonehead pair admit racist attack on teens’
Nelson Mail
March 28, 2007

Two men who police say are [boneheads] are being held in custody after admitting a racially-motivated attack on three Asian students in Nelson [New Zealand / Aotearoa].

Following the March 17 attack, 28-year-old Harry Shannon Dennis McCormack told police he did not like Asians and decided to stop outside the Nelson store where the assault happened because he wanted to hurt the students. Daniel Bryan Kitto, 20, told police he joined in the assault because he was trying to prove something to his mates, a court heard on Monday.

McCormack, a painter, and Kitto, a labourer, each admitted a charge of assault with intent to injure and two counts of assault when they appeared in the Nelson District Court.

Both Nelson men were convicted and remanded in custody until May 1 for sentencing…

Prosecutor Sergeant Chris Stringer said on the afternoon of March 17 Kitto and McCormack were in a car with three other people when they saw the three Asian victims, aged between 14 and 16, in Buxton Square.

The men yelled abuse and racial taunts at the Asians, telling them to “go home”, Mr Stringer said.

The Asian trio walked along Waimea Rd and sat outside the Night Owl store, when Kitto and McCormack came upon them again.

McCormack, who was driving the vehicle, stopped and got out, and as he approached the Asians somebody from the vehicle was heard to say “we’ve been looking for you”, Mr Stringer said…

Earlier last year:

Bonehead fights for life after jail attack
Emily Watt and Tim Hume
Sunday Star Times
June 4, 2006

A [bonehead] prisoner was last night on life support in Christchurch Hospital after being beaten up by Mongrel Mob members the day after being transferred from another jail.

The 33-year-old suffered a fractured skull after an apparent hit by the gang members at Christchurch Men’s Prison on Friday morning.

He had been transferred from Dunedin Prison the day before.

Police would not name the man, but said he had been serving a three-year sentence since 2004.

Prison sources said he was hit over the head with a blunt instrument in his cell about 9am. He was then rolled off the balcony on to a concrete floor. Witnesses believed he must have been unconscious when he was pushed off the balcony, as he landed on his head. At hospital he was given head and spinal x-rays and was last night in a serious but stable condition.

Prison sources speculated the attack must have been over an existing issue because the man had spent only one night in prison.

They said the man was affiliated with white supremacists.

And a week ago, another bonehead, James Burmeister, died. Burmeister had links to the now-defunct Church of the Creator (1973–1996) — which, after a court case, became the World Church of the Creator, until 2002, when it became known as the Creativity Movement — as well as the National Alliance (according to one source).

National Alliance was led by a good fascist named Dr. William Pierce (1933–2002). Upon his death, the NA disintegrated, and produced a splinter group, National Vanguard. Last week, on March 23, 2007, NV claimed it had been forced to close because of unspecified actions by the Commonwealth of Virginia. The reality, however, is a little different: “In the latest disaster to hit the American radical right, Kevin Alfred Strom, the founder of [NV] and a major neo-Nazi leader for nearly 20 years, has been arrested and charged with child pornography and witness tampering.”

Ooops.

But that’s not all

In Australia, the WCOTC was led by Melbourne resident and former National Action member Patrick O’Sullivan. O’Sullivan himself is no stranger to prison, having been convicted in August 2002 of stabbing a fellow bonehead at a party in Fitzroy in May 1999. In September 2006, the leader of O’Sullivan’s ‘Church’ — previous leaders having been imprisoned for various other crimes — also went to jail:

White Supremacist Sentenced for Sexual Assault in Michigan
ADL
September 25, 2006

Joel Nathan DuFresne, 28, of Northern Michigan, a “reverend” in the racist and anti-Semitic Creativity Movement, was sentenced to a prison term of 50 to 75 years for first degree criminal sexual conduct on September 22, 2006. He was also sentenced to a second term of 25 to 50 years for third degree criminal sexual conduct. DuFresne was convicted of these charges on August 18.

The first degree charge includes injury to the victim, who is in this case DuFresne’s former girlfriend and the mother of his son. In a statement to the court DuFresne declared, “If I would have known how this was going to turn out, I would have shot her.”

But back to Burmeister.

Oddly, Burmeister’s death wasn’t at the hands of one of his erstwhile comrades. In this case — a rare example — the bonehead died of ‘natural causes’, in a US prison.

Why was he in prison?

Bonehead killer dies in federal prison
Paul Woolverton
The Fayetteville Observer
March 22, 2007

…[James] Burmeister, 31, shot to death… Michael James and James’ friend, Jackie Burden, during a [bonehead] initiation ritual in Fayetteville in December 1995.

Burmeister and another soldier were sentenced to life in prison for the murders. A third soldier involved was freed after he testified against the other two.

The murders brought the national spotlight to an ugly side of Fayetteville and Fort Bragg and prompted the Army to investigate the presence of racists, extremists, gangs and other such groups in its ranks…

[Read the July, 2006 SPLC Intelligence Project on the recruitment of neo-Nazis and other racist/fascist ‘extremists’ by the US Armed Forces here.]

In 1995, 20-year-old James Norman Burmeister II of Thompson, Pa., was a private in the 82nd Airborne Division [“All the Way!”] and involved with white supremacists. He and others had previously gone to black neighborhoods in Fayetteville to attack and harass black residents.

Shortly after midnight on Dec. 7, he and two other white soldiers — Spc. Randy Lee Meadows and Pvt. Malcolm Wright — went into a poor, mostly black neighborhood near downtown Fayetteville to kill someone. The venture was part of a [bonehead] initiation rite, prosecutors said…

The soldiers saw James and Burden walking on Hall Street, a dirt road off Campbell Avenue. While Meadows waited in the car nearby, Burmeister and Wright approached James and Burden.

Meadows heard six shots.

One grazed James’ forehead. Another hit him on the left side of his head, killing him instantly.

Burden, reaching for a small pocketknife in her pocket, tried to run. She got 10 feet before a bullet in her back knocked her down.

Burmeister shot her three more times: once on each side of her head and once on the top of her head.

All of the head shots were within 2 feet of the victims, investigators said.

Burmeister, Wright and Meadows were arrested over the next several days.

In 1997, juries found Burmeister and Wright guilty of first-degree murder. Burmeister’s jury deadlocked 11-1 on whether to sentence him to death. By law, he automatically received a life sentence. Wright’s jury voted for life. Neither man had any chance for parole…

In 1999, Burmeister was moved from the state to the federal prison system to protect him from retaliation for the murders. State officials said his reputation as a racist made him a target…

These are the kind of people Gary invites to The Birmy (with the support of a handful of local ‘punks’). One bonehead who won’t be able to make it is from Santiago in Chile:

Neo-Nazi Death Brings Chile’s Street Wars Back Into Focus
The Santiago Times
March 20, 2007

Marcos Briones, a 25-year-old neo-Nazi, was beaten to death March 10 by a group of Colo-Colo soccer fans who were awaiting public transportation at Santiago’s Plaza Italia, a transit hub that connects the rich Santiago boroughs with their poorer neighbors.

Local resident Héctor Escudero said he was woken by screams but thought they were nothing out of the ordinary – drunk soccer fans traditionally congregate in the plaza on game nights.

But the commotion went on for more than 40 minutes. Escudero went to his window and began filming the scene. “There was a person on the ground and another person was trying to protect him. The soccer fans were beating him with metal bars and bats,” said Escudero. “They were outnumbered, and the attackers started to hit with more intensity. The police were close, but they didn’t do anything.”

Police and medical teams intervened only after the soccer hooligans dispersed, but not before loud cries of “Heil Hitler!” were exchanged…

Weird scenes.

Posted in !nataS, Anti-fascism | 2 Comments

Neo-Nazis Go Marching

Al Jazeera carries a report (‘German neo-Nazis on the march’, Barnaby Phillips, March 27, 2007) on the apparent upswing in support for neo-Nazism in Germany, particularly in eastern (ex-Communist) Germany:

A report this week in the Tagesspiegel newspaper revealed that racist attacks committed by neo-Nazis and other far right groups had reached their highest levels since the reunification of Germany in 1990.

The crime rate rose by 14 per cent last year to 18,000 extremist offences according to the report, with 1,100 of those acts of violence, an eight per cent annual increase according to federal police figures.

In one of the most serious [?] incidents in July last year, far right supporters in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt burned the diary of Holocaust victim Anne Frank, causing outrage among German politicians and anti-racist groups.

In another incident in the state later in the year, teenagers forced a 16-year-old classmate to parade around school wearing a sign with an anti-Semitic, Nazi-era slogan…

However in the east of Berlin, the presentable face of the far-right can be found.

Udo Voigt has been the leader of the National Democratic Party (NDP) since 1996.

The party has been consistently labelled by successive German governments as descendants of the Nazis but that did not stop its candidates winning 12 seats in the state parliament of the eastern region of Saxony in 2004.

It followed that success by winning six of 71 regional parliamentary seats in another eastern state, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern last year…

The extent of neo-Nazi penetration of the state is illustrated not only by formal representation in the country’s parliaments, but also its police and security apparatus. Thus the bodyguards assigned to former Central Council of Jews in Germany Vice President Michel Friedman were recently revealed as being neo-Nazis, while expressions of surprise are apparently expected but not forthcoming at the revelation that the ranks of the German police may contain officers-who-aren’t-exactly kosher.

In Australia, the NDP/(NPD) is most ably represented by German-born, Sydney-based neo-Nazi Welf Herfurth: — a close political ally of Dr. James Saleam, co-founder and host (with Saleam) of the annual fascist gathering the Sydney Forum, and member of both the Australia First Party and Blood & Honour Australia. Herfurth is also a “good friend” of NPD Fuehrer Voigt, but was unable to extend a personal welcome to him when he was invited to address the Sydney Forum in 2003 because the Australian Government denied him a visa. The denial of a visa to Voigt was on the basis of ‘Public Interest Criterion 4003’, which states: “The applicant is determined by the Foreign Minister, or a person authorised by the Foreign Minister, to be a person whose presence in Australia – (a) is, or would be, prejudicial to relations between Australia and a foreign country, or, (b) may be directly or indirectly associated with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction”. Note that since 2006, part (a) has been changed to refusal where a person’s presence would be “contrary to Australia’s foreign policy interests”.

In addition to attending last year’s Ian Stuart is Dead Celebration at The (neo-Nazi) Birmy in Melbourne, Herfurth travelled to Perth in order to help (re-)establish a branch of the neo-Nazi music network in that city and — until recently — David Innes has also been of assistance in this regard. Herfurth and Innes are also responsible for establishing another neo-Nazi sect in Australia: ‘New Right’.

Established in the UK in January 2005 by the well-known fascist dingbat Troy Southgate (whose last Big Idea was something he called ‘National Anarchism’), New Right is an attempt to bring together what passes for a fascist intelligentsia… like, people what read books… ‘n’ that. An indication of how much smarts New Reich Australia has may be gained by reference to their awkward invitation to form a ‘black bloc’ to protest the “G20” meeting in Sydney this year!

While Southgate also plays neo-Nazi muzak (for a band called… H.E.R.R.!), in his career as a fascist, Southgate has skipped merrily from one bunch of losers to another: from the NF in the 1980s to the ‘International Third Position’ in the early 1990s to ‘National Anarchism’ by way of the ‘National Revolutionary Faction’ and before that the ‘English Nationalist Movement’. Lately, Southgate has been trying to form a rapprochement with the BNP, previously denigrated for their ‘electoralism’. And

    I’m gonna tell all you fascists you may be surprised / The people in this world are getting organised / You’re bound to lose you fascists, bound to lose

    Race hatred cannot stop us this one thing I know / Your poll tax and Jim Crow and greed have got to go / You’re bound to lose, you fascists bound to lose

    All of you fascists bound to lose / You fascists bound to lose / All of you fascists bound to lose / You’re bound to lose! / You fascists! / Bound to lose

    People of every colour marching side by side / Marching across those fields where a million fascists died / You’re bound to lose you fascists, bound to lose

    I’m going into this battle and take my union gun / We’ll end this world of slavery before this battle’s won / You’re bound to lose you fascists bound to lose

    ~ Woody Guthrie, 1942

Posted in Anti-fascism, State / Politics | 2 Comments

Trotsky versus technology

Yay! My favourite group of Trotskyites, the Spartacists (Hate Trotskyism! Hate the Spartacists!) have spat the dummy over Wikipedia. In a typically snarling polemic — ‘Wikipedia: A Million Monkeys Typing’, Workers’ Mop & Bucket, No.888, March 16, 2007 — the mad bastards denounce Wikipedia (motivated at least in part, I suspect, by their inability to control it). So, be warned comrades! Despite pretensions to the contrary: “…Wikipedia is no encyclopedia. A menace to historical knowledge, it is a New Age fraud that often provides a sanctuary for libel and character assassination”. Which, coming from the Sparts, reads like grounds for a demarcation dispute (see ‘Kronstadt 1921: Bolshevism vs. Counterrevolution’, Spartacist, No.59, Spring 2006, in which ‘Russian Archives Refute Anarchist Lies, Again’).

As Marxist materialists, our worldview is rooted in historical and scientific truth. Thus Workers’ Mop & Bucket has had a strict, years-long policy of not using Wikipedia as a factual source of any kind…

The Web is a powerful and useful tool. But it also has a lot of garbage. The New Yorker article Stacy Schiff [‘Can Wikipedia conquer expertise?’, July 31, 2006] remarked that Eric Raymond, the open-source software pioneer whose work inspired Wales, stated that “‘disaster’ is not too strong a word” for Wikipedia. A founding partner of Wikipedia who has since extracted himself described what he left behind as “difficult people, trolls, and their enablers.” What better habitat for the dregs of yesterday’s Spartacist-hating “Marxism” and “Trotskyism” Internet newsgroups, the kind of people who probably have not left their computers, bathed or seen sunlight in weeks? As for cyberspace frauds, we are reminded of David North’s Socialist Equality Party, an organization of dubious political bandits that years ago liquidated its paper in favor of the “World Socialist Web Site” — a medium through which it can rewrite its history when convenient.

The Web is often lauded as a means of mass participation and democracy. But neither facts nor scientific laws are determined by such methods, much less by an anonymous, multiplayer, fantasy computer game. Science is the product of hard work and a rigorous critical assimilation of the achievements of past cultures and epochs, and it is embodied in the work of authoritative figures and institutions. This does not suit the petty-bourgeois Wikipedia crowd, which is thriving in a period dominated ideologically by the bourgeoisie’s “death of communism” myth and the attendant growth of religious superstition. Wales himself is an Ayn Randist free marketeer. Whatever resentments Wikipedia’s fans have of the genuine ills of bourgeois academia have been twisted into a secular variant of George Bush’s faith-based idiocy.

In the period of its revolutionary ascent, the bourgeoisie fought for knowledge as crucial for economic progress and as a weapon against feudalist clerical tyranny. Diderot’s Encyclopedistes helped to ideologically arm the Great French Revolution of 1789-93. Today, capitalism in its death agony creates a barrier to the expansion of the means of production while dragging culture back into a new dark age. What quality education the U.S. bourgeoisie maintains is increasingly restricted to elite universities. The growth and influence of Wikipedia occurs in a period when public education is in tatters and masses of ghetto and barrio youth rot in today’s Bastilles.

Embracing science and the scientific method, we Marxists understand that only the revolutionary overthrow of the decaying bourgeois order by the proletariat will pave the way for the elimination of scarcity, making mankind’s great achievements and knowledge available to all.

Long Live Marxist Science As It Is Embodied In The Work Of Authoritative Figures And Institutions!

Down with Wikipedia And Its Million Typing Monkeys!

For The Defeat Of Ignorance Concerning The Spartacist League of Australia — From The Near East, To Ireland, The Caribbean And New Caledonia!

Rebuild The Spartacist-Trainspotting Tendency!

Break From The Bad Leadership!

For The World Part-ay Of Socialist Revolution!

Incidentally, at an earlier stage, the SWP (UK) had similar concerns regarding the ‘horizontal’ distribution of knowledge, as is revealed in a text distributed by it in August 1995 in relation to the ‘IS List’, republished by a Surrealist.

Posted in !nataS, Media, Trot Guide | 4 Comments

Andrew Bolt & the ‘anarchist/s’

In his latest column, tabloid hack and global climate change scientician Andrew Bolt has made another stunning revelation: Michael Duffy once called himself an anarchist! Which prompts the exclamatory remark: who the hell is Michael Duffy? Well, apparently he has a gig at another corporation, the ABC. Further, “The ABC’s token “conservative” turns out not only to be a former anarchist and admiring biographer of crazed Labor leader Mark Latham, but after a couple of years with the ABC has given his first-ever vote to — surprise! not! — the Greens”. Yes, further truthiness regarding the ABC’s role as Communist front.

Whatever. Apparently, as a recent graduate (1978) of Macquarie University, Duffy “joined an anarchist group”; much to the horror of his middle class parents (‘Right every time’, Debra Jopson, Sydney Morning Herald, July 5, 2003). Gerard ‘I’m-not-a-member-of-the-lunar-right, no-really’ Henderson claims elsewhere that “Writing in The Bulletin on July 20, 1999, Catharine Lumby commented that columnist and publisher Michael Duffy “once ran an anarchist bookshop in Sydney”‘ (‘The battle is not to be left behind’, The Age, December 24, 2002). If so, that would mean Duffy was once a member of either the Black Rose or — more likely, given the time-frame — Jura collectives, but I can find no independent verification for that claim. Duffy soon came to his middle class senses, in any case, and pissed off to pursue a career as a government bureaucrat, editor (Independent Monthly 1993–1996 (1989–1996)), failed publisher (Duffy & Snellgrove 1996–2004/5; as reason for its closure, one source cites poor sales, another the impact of the GST(?)), and most recently as an(other) opinionated yuppie.

Oddly, in the last few years, and as part of his ongoing polemic against the environmental movement (and The Greens in particular), Bolt has seized on the work of an anarchist historian, Peter Staudenmaier, in particular the book he co-authored with Janet Biehl (Murray Bookchin‘s partner), Ecofascism: Lessons From the German Experience (AK Press, 1996 and online):

The reappearance of fascism in many western countries threatens all the freedoms the left movements have managed to gain over the last half century. Equally disconcerting is the attempt by fascist ideologists and political groups to use ecology in the service of social reaction. This effort is not without long historical roots in Germany, both in its nineteenth-century romanticism and in the Third Reich in the present century. In order to preserve the liberatory aspects of ecology, the authors, as social ecologists, explore the German experience of fascism and derive from it historical lessons about the political use of ecology. Including two essay[s] — “Fascist Ideology: The Green Wing of the Nazi Party and its Historical Antecedents” and “Ecology and the Modernization of Fascism in the German Ultra-Right” — Ecofascism examines aspects of German fascism, past and present, in order to draw essential lessons from them for ecology movements both in Germany and elsewhere.

That Hitler was a ‘green’ is false (as is the more popular claim that Hitler was a vegetarian). Nevertheless, in a column published on July 17, 2003, Bolt cited Staudenmaier’s work as supporting his argument that the contemporary environmental movement is an expression of fascism; hence the jocular title: ‘Are green activists closet Nazis?’. Later that same year, Tory Senator George Brandis, inspired by Bolt’s genius, also cited Staudenmaier’s work, and, like Bolt:

The book that caught Senator Brandis’s attention is titled Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience. Along with my co-author Janet Biehl, I explore there the little-known legacy of right-wing ecology and its appropriation by one faction of the Nazi party in the 1930s. Our book says quite explicitly that there is no inherent connection between classical fascism and contemporary Green politics. What gave rise to the convergence of ecology and fascism seventy years ago was a specific set of historical circumstances and a specific version of ecological thinking, which our book examines in detail.

The excerpts which Senator Brandis presented to his colleagues ignored this crucial context, and thus failed to do justice both to the very grave history that the book recounts, as well as to the current relevance of these issues in today’s world.

Moreover, the concrete parallels that Brandis emphasized -– an ostensible excess of radical zeal on the part of some Australian Greens, as well as their supposedly cynical attitude toward democratic institutions -– are at best tangentially related to the ideological commonalities between environmentalism and fascism that my research reveals.

The Nazis certainly did not come to power because the predecessors of the Greens in Germany were too vocal in their opposition to the militarist and authoritarian tendencies of their day.

It is possible that the Australian Greens are indeed awash in mystical and antihumanist ideas, as Senator Brandis’s portrait would have it; to comment on that question exceeds my competence. If such is the case, however, it scarcely means that fascism is on its way.

Perhaps Brandis’s ill-considered invocation of the rise of Nazism will have a salutary effect after all, if it spurs his intended targets among the Greens to study this background further. For the present, however, it would seem that vociferous disagreement with the status quo -– even if its tenor is too strident for some -– represents a significant bulwark against political demagoguery, not a step toward dictatorship.

That Senator Brandis apparently confused this sort of vigorous dissent with the lack of dissent that allowed fascism to flourish in the first place indicates that we still have a lot to learn from the history of political shortsightedness…

See also : Brandis defends Greens-Nazis comments, Lateline, October 21, 2003

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

Anvils, Angry White Kids, & Veils

An Angry White Kid responds to a recent text, ‘No to racism & The veil’, by the Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group (MAC-G) here.

I’ll add my two cents later. Maybe.

(Hey, I’m slack.)

One cent:

The article on ‘The Veil’ to which Angry is responding is taken from the first issue of The Anvil, the newsletter of the MAC-G (January/February, 2007). It states that ‘The Veil’ — by which term is meant Islamic women’s dress as a whole — is both a symbol and an instrument of women’s oppression. According to the MAC-G, as physical instrument, the veil — of which the experience of a Guardian journalist wearing a niqab, a “strict” form of Islamic dress, is taken as being typical (Zaiba Malik, ‘Even other Muslims turn and look at me’, October 17, 2006) — is oppressive because it restricts freedom of movement and constricts the wearer’s ability to breathe, thereby rendering its wearer weak(er) and (more) physically vulnerable.

The second reason the veil is objectionable is because of its use as a means of patriarchal social control. That is, it is understood in Islamic societies that should a woman choose not to wear the veil, she is effectively granting men permission to sexually assault her. Such forms of control are, it is noted, not absent from Western societies such as Australia, but assume a different form. Thus under Western dress codes the wearing of the veil is not, in this sense, mandatory; but a woman who is condered to be exposing ‘too much’ of (parts of) her body, in many if not all contexts, also invites ‘unwanted’ sexual responses in men (and is assumed to be at least partly responsible for their occurence if she does). What distinguishes the use of the veil from Western dress codes, however, is its more apparent function within such (presumably Islamic) societies as gave rose to its use.

This, then, is the basis on which the MAC-G argues that the use of the veil should be opposed, and that the societies in which its use predominates among women be altered such that the wearing of Islamic dress by women is no longer being coercively achieved through the threat of rape or sexual assault.

What then, is to be done (and to whom?), in order for these changes to occur?

Outlawing the use of Islamic dress, it is argued, somewhat mysteriously, won’t bring about these changes, and British Foreign Minister Jack Straw’s recent refusal to meet with women in Islamic dress is objectionable because it reproduces the same logic; that is, men should be in a position to impose dress codes upon women. Outlawing the veil is also objectionable — again, in reference to Western societies — because for some Islamic women it has a different symbolic content: the ‘defiant’ expression of a cultural difference. It is also acknowledged that the veil may be used by women as an instrument by which they may actually extend the scope of their freedom, especially in ‘negotiations’ with family and community members.

In essence, then, the most reasonable position to take for those opposed to women’s oppression is to defend a woman’s right to wear what she chooses without economic, legal, political or social penalty. In addition, “anti-Islamic racism” must be fought, and fought not only because it is wrong, but also because it reinforces the tendency of Islamic women to wear the veil as an assertion of ‘difference’.

Two cents:

Angry draws attention to a couple of potential faults in the MAC-G’s line of reasoning. First, the manner in which it conflates religion with race: Islam is a religion, not a racial category. Therefore, strictly speaking ‘anti-Islamic racism’ is a nonsensical category.

Secondly, he accuses the (white, Western, male) MAC-G of arrogance, arrogating to itself the right to recommend a course of action to a population of 500 million non-Western, Islamic, women. Further, this fault is compounded by the assumption that the experiences and understandings of such a vast category of people can easily be summarised in such a manner. In this way, the MAC-G perpetuates a colonialist mentality, one criticised by writers such as Chandra Talpade Mohanty, and described by her as embodying a “methodological universalism”. Such an approach robs women of their political agency.

Angry’s third criticism relates to the actual physical limitations the wearing of the veil imposes. The suggestion is that it would make more sense to cite the experience of women who wear the niqab frequently, rather than once, as in this case. And reading the article itself confirms that it is based, very much, on one woman’s experience, one who also claims that “The women I have met who have taken to wearing the niqab tell me that it gives them confidence. I find that it saps mine. Nobody has forced me to wear it but I feel like I have oppressed and isolated myself.” Malik also states that “I don’t understand the need to wear something as severe as the niqab, but I respect those who bear this endurance test — the staring, the swearing, the discomfort, the loss of identity”. For Malik, wearing the niqab is discomfiting and oppressive; for some other Muslim women, the niqab provides a sense of confidence and a confirmation of their identity as Muslim women.

It’s in this respect, I think, that the MAC-G’s failure to distinguish between the wearing of the niqab and the wearing of any form of Islamic dress by women becomes most apparent. In other words, the niqab is one of a number of forms of Islamic dress, not the only, and the wearing of it, its necessity and its significance, is contested. A recent article in Newsweek on the subject of the significance the wearing of the veil has for Europe’s Muslims, for example, reveals an array of different attitudes and approaches (Fareena Alam, ‘Beyond the Veil’, November 21, 2006).

The fourth criticism Angry has of the MAC-G’s analysis centres on “[t]he image of Muslim men as rapacious sex fiends”. I think that this criticism is probably mistaken, as it assumes that the MAC-G is making a normative statement with regards the essential nature of men’s sexuality in Islamic societies. As I see it, the argument that the MAC-G is making is in reference to Islamic religious doctrine, and its understanding of male sexuality — not that of Islamic men as a whole. Thus “[i]n societies where the veil is customary, the assumption is that women are sex objects and a man in the presence of an unveiled woman to whom he is not related cannot reasonably be expected to control himself and keep within the bounds of morality. Women who do not wear the veil are therefore seen as ‘asking for it’.” This raises an empirical question: how is sexuality understood “in societies where the veil is customary”? Further, is it true that there exists in such societies this assumption regarding the probable implications of the wearing of the veil (and its refusal)?

Finally, with regards the question of the symbolic meaning of the veil, it makes sense to fight against those cultural currents which seek to coerce Islamic women into wearing one: to the extent that ‘Islamophobia’ is one such current — and to the extent that the wearing of the veil is little other than a ‘defiant’ reaction to such prejudice — the removal or diminution of Islamophobia in Western societies will likely witness a concomitant decrease in the prevalence of the veil. However, I am unclear regarding the question of whether or not the MAC-G regards the veil to be objectionable beyond this basis. Given the identification of the niqab with Islamic women’s dress as a whole, it would appear that it might, and that consequently, the MAC-G actually seeks the abolition of Islamic dress codes (for women — and for men?) as a whole.

Three cents:

Um…

Posted in Anarchism, Sex & Sexuality, State / Politics | Leave a comment

Evil & Dangerous Woman (Rude Grrl) Outta Jail

“The most evil and dangerous woman in Germany”, a/k/a Brigitte Mohnhaupt, has been released from a German prison:

‘Ex-Member of Red Army Freed From Prison’
Geir Moulson
Washington Post [AP]
Sunday, March 25, 2007

BERLIN — A one-time leader [of] Germany’s Red Army Faction was released Sunday after a quarter-century in prison for her involvement in some of the radical left-wing group’s most notorious murders, a prison official said.

Brigitte Mohnhaupt, 57, was released from the Aichach prison in Bavaria, prison director Wolfgang Deuschl said. He said she was picked up by acquaintances and took personal belongings including some books, but did not give further details.

A Stuttgart court last month approved parole for Mohnhaupt, ruling that she could go free after serving the minimum 24 years. Combined with an earlier prison term, she has spent 29 years behind bars.

Her case — and that of Christian Klar, another Red Army prisoner whose bid for clemency President Horst Koehler is considering separately — have set off a debate about whether it is time to show mercy on imprisoned members of the group.

The two cases have brought back painful memories of the Red Army Faction’s heyday in the late 1970s, when the group left a trail of dead bodies in its struggle against what it considered capitalist exploitation of workers.

Mohnhaupt was arrested in 1982 and convicted of involvement in nine murders, including those of West German chief federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback, Dresdner Bank head Juergen Ponto, and Hanns-Martin Schleyer, the head of the country’s industry federation. She was given five life sentences for murder.

Mohnhaupt shot Ponto three times when he resisted a kidnapping attempt in 1977, according to her conviction.

In other cases, she was involved in planning killings and attacks — including a 1981 rocket-propelled grenade attack on the car of U.S. Gen. Frederick Kroesen, then the commander of U.S. forces in Europe. Both the general and his wife were injured.

The Stuttgart court, supported by prosecutors, last month decided Mohnhaupt no longer posed a threat.

In its decision, the Stuttgart court noted that Mohnhaupt was not willing to completely repudiate her violent past. But it added that Mohnhaupt, at a closed parole hearing, said the time for “armed struggle” was over and acknowledged inflicting suffering on the victims’ families.

Mohnhaupt had a job offer and an apartment lined up — in a place that the court did not disclose. She will be on supervised parole for five years and must report regularly to authorities.

Mohnhaupt was a top figure in what was sometimes called the Baader-Meinhof gang, after an earlier generation of leaders, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, who both killed themselves in prison.

[Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan Carl Raspe reportedly killed themselves on October 18, 1977 while being held in Stammheim Prison: Ensslin hanging herself and Baader and Raspe shooting themselves, Baader reportedly shooting himself in the back of the head! For these and many other reasons, some continue to believe that they were in fact murdered. The circumstances surrounding Meinhof’s death, on May 9, 1976, also in Stammheim, are also suspicious, and her death was followed by demonstrations throughout Europe…]

The middle-class leftists emerged from German student protests against the Vietnam War, launching a violent, 22-year campaign against what they considered U.S. imperialism and capitalist oppression of workers.

At its peak, West Germany was shaken by the Sept. 5, 1977, kidnapping of employers’ federation head Schleyer in an attempt to extort the release of Baader and others from prison.

When the government of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt did not free Baader, Arab supporters hijacked a Lufthansa jet to Mogadishu, Somalia. German commandos freed the hostages but the kidnappers killed Schleyer, whose body was found in the trunk of a car in Mulhouse, France. Baader and two other Red Army Faction members killed themselves in prison.

The organization killed 34 people and injured hundreds, some simply unlucky enough to be driving or accompanying their prominent targets. It declared itself disbanded in 1998, a decision Mohnhaupt said she agreed with.

The ‘real’ story of the RAF, of course, is a lot more complicated — and a lot more interesting — than is revealed in the above bastardised account. In April 1992, the RAF declared it had ceased attentats (political assassinations). A year later, in one of the RAF’s last major actions, the Commando Katharina Hammerschmidt blew up the Weiterstadt prison, declaring that:

…Weiterstadt prison is exemplary of how the state deals with the splintering and broadening contradictions: more and more people are faced with prison, prison, prison – and this prison was also supposed to act as a deportation prison as a part of the racist state refugee policy.
In its technological perfection of isolation and differentiation of imprisoned people, it was to be a model for the rest of Europe.
Weiterstadt, after Berlin-Ploetzenzee, was to be the second fully-conceived maximum-security prison for women, and it was being billed as “the most humane prison” in Germany. But behind this notion is hidden its scientifically further-developed concept of the isolation, differentiation, and total control of prisoners. It is the principle of reward and punishment in a high-tech form that forces prisoners to be disciplined and subordinate and which forces them, even if it means breaking them, to give their “cooperation”.
The electronic surveillance system was the most expensive and highly-developed in all of Europe, with which all aspects of the prison could be controlled and utilized for the psychological program of destroying all attempts at solidarity, friendship, and self-determined organization…

Commenting on the manner in which German society has been rattled by her release, Jeffrey Fleishman in the LA Times (March 26, 2007) opines that “Her case also has revealed that vestiges of extreme leftist politics still resonate among certain intellectuals who never realized their anarchist dreams”, which is kinda odd given that the RAF were a Marxist-Leninist organisation. Locally, similar ideological confusion is evident in Stuart Munckton’s review of Build it Now: Socialism for the Twenty-First Century (Monthly Review Press, 2006), in which he writes that:

However, [Michael A.] Lebowitz doesn’t argue that simply introducing a model involving workers’ management is enough to change society. He polemicises against the anarchist academic John Holloway, who argues against seeking to win state power to achieve change [Change the World Without Taking Power, Pluto / University of Michigan Press, 2002; also available online @ libcom]. Lebowitz points out that this argument “has been refuted in two clear ways”. First of all, looking at the experience of the Venezuelan revolution, he argues: “Can we even begin to imagine the changes that are occurring here now without the power of the state?” Lebowitz refers to Marx’s arguments on the need for workers to win state power to transform society, explaining that it needs to be a form of state power fundamentally different to the capitalist state, organised democratically as the self-government of working people.

‘Two, three, many Bolivarian revolutions!’, Green Left Weekly, No. 704, March 24, 2007

Blah blah blah, Lenin Lenin Lenin.

Other problem is, Screamin’ John Holloway, while he may be an academic, is not actually an anarchist. His text — despite its somewhat deceptive title — makes only a handful of dismissive references to anarchism, but is otherwise based very firmly in a (libertarian) Marxist analysis of society and political economy.

On Venezuela, see El Libert@rio, an anarchist periodical from Venezuela [English]; also Incendio, in particular an account of the Alternative Social Forum held in Caracas, January 23–29, 2006:

The objective of creating a week-long space fermenting dissidence against the Venezuelan government, the state-centric left, traditional political parties and Capital was achieved with success beyond expectation. The goal of spreading a multiplicity of political visions and strategies was achieved without the logistical support of the Venezuelan army and without any promotion or funding weighted with bureaucracy. The second objective, reconstructing a grassroots network of autonomous social movements, inspiring new ways of doing politics and building a transformational movement, is a project that transcends the time-span of a week. For this reason, each one of the organizations that convened at the ASF is moving forward with diverse programs at a variety of levels. The recovery of various movement agendas is critical: ecologists, students, neighborhood organizations, feminists, indigenous peoples’ movements, youth, citizens and campesinxs form an emancipatory challenge to our stagnant political system characterized by redundant electoral cycles and agendas imposed from above.

Posted in Anarchism, History, State / Politics, War on Terror | 2 Comments