BNP vs. Indymedia

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Lee Barnes (LLB Hons) — the BNP’s very own Lionel Hutz — has issued legal threats to Indymedia UK. According to Barnes (LLB Hons), who heads the BNP’s Legal Affairs Unit, Indymedia may be subject to legal action and/or have the names, addresses, contact and financial details of the persons running or hosting the Indymedia website collected and published by the BNP’s “internal investigations team”. The same team, presumably, what was involved in collecting data from a small number of dissident BNP members expelled in December 2007.

On the 21st November 08 Indymedia UK received an email from someone claiming to be a legal representative for the British National Party, threatening to take legal action on a number of counts for publishing information on BNP members.

After the hilarity of the “little Fuhrer”, Nick Griffin, running to the safety of the Human Rights Act to try to prevent the publication of members’ details, Britain’s fascist party has resorted to threats.

The letter sent to Indymedia by Lee John Barnes LLB (Hons), from the “BNP Legal Affairs Unit”, threatens to take legal action, on the basis of theft, data protection and contempt of court, unless the list of members is removed.

The “lawyer” also attempts to shoehorn his charges into the form of anti-terrorism legislation, “The use of this information we feel is being hosted on your site for use only to incite acts of harassment, incite violence and direct targeted attacks against our members in the Leeds area”. He then goes on to explain the sections of the Terrorism Act under which Indymedia would be charged.

Lee Barnes (LLB Hons) is silly. He also makes BNP Fuhrer Nick Griffin look silly for describing the leaking of the membership list as “fantastic”!

Funnily enough, I received a similar cease and desist letter from the bizarros at mathaba.net back in April 2008:

Direct Email: [email protected]
Our Ref: LT/AU/DQ/US/MNN/Cor8.1
April 9, 2008
URGENT
NOT FOR PUBLICATION
CONFIDENTIAL

Dear Sirs,

anarchobase.com

We wrote to you on this matter yesterday, and it was confirmed by telephone call to your offices that the letter had indeed been received. You are now obliged to answer us to avoid costs for delays in resolution of the issue which is urgent, and which is causing added stress and ill health to the target of this campaign.

Our research shows that you are providing services to anarchobase.com.

Our letter of yesterday put you on notice of the publication of articles on the above web site, which include but are not limited to, the one with the most serious allegations as it also deliberately names and targets the litigant and repeats false allegations which were the subject of the above mentioned litigation and which were quashed in the Royal Courts of England: http://slackbastard.anarchobase.com/?p=1099

Our letter of yesterday constituted notice to you of the above pursuant to Section 1 of the Defamation Act 1996 and other similar legislation in Australia, the United States, Canada and the many other countries where the Anarchobase publication has reached substantial audiences [my emphasis!], all of from which legal action can be therefore brought under the respective national legislations.

If you continue to provide services to the publisher of the above material or any future material in relation to this malicious campaign, whether that be hosting, Domain Names Services, registry services, or any other service you will bear liability for it.

Otherwise you must give the full name and contact details of the legal individual (legally registered legal entity such as company or registered association or individual person with full name and physical location of contact and presence) who is responsible for the publication of the defamatory articles…

Tricksy… very tricksy… although the several legal figures I consulted seemed to think that it wasn’t all that clever. (See : mathaba.net : last words, May 1, 2008.)

Both then and now, mathaba.net hosted the expert opinions of Nutzis Flavio Goncalves (Portugal) and Welf Herfurth (Australia), and members of the local branch of the New Right — another Nutzi groupuscule whose UK branch hosts regular London meetings organised by the Nutzi Troy Southgate — crowed online about their involvement in temporarily shutting down my blog.

    Above : Fredrick Töben (Adelaide Institute) and Welf Herfurth (ex-One Nation, ex-Australia First Party[?], mathaba.net) annexe Sydney using the MaGiCaL pOwErS invested in Horst Mahler‘s flag and on behalf of the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, January 27, 2005.

In summary: last month I got almost 15,000 visits.

In other news, Antifa UK has joined who-knows-how-many-other-sites in publishing the BNP membership list. Handily, it’s available as a PDF, which means it’s easily searchable. If, for example, you wanted to discover whether any BNP members reside in Australia, all you have to do is pop the term ‘Australia’ into the Search function and — Voila! — Alex Trussler, Rick Smith, Benjamin Hugh Smith and a dozen other names are highlighted.

In further fallout from the “fantastic” leakage, a man in Belfast is Not. Happy. Nick.

Or so says the Belfast Telegraph (Union man who is behind the door about BNP membership, Ciaran McGuigan, November 30, 2008):

This is the outspoken BNP member who faces the boot from his frontline trade union role because of his hardline views. Right-wing activist Tim Clarke isn’t usually ‘behind-the-door’ about his opinions — but he’d kept his British National Party membership a secret from his colleagues in the Nipsa trade union [“NIPSA is the largest trade union in Northern Ireland representing 44,000 members across the civil and public service and the voluntary sector”].

But the Social Security Agency civil servant was outed along with thousands of supporters of the right-wing organisation when a disgruntled former member published their details on the internet.

Now Clarke’s union colleagues want him booted out of their trade union . . . and out of his civil service job. They’re understood to have complained to the union’s hierarchy about Clarke’s continuing role as a branch secretary in the public service union.

Nipsa’s general secretary John Corey yesterday confirmed that inquiries had been received from local union branches about the BNP membership issue. He said that the matter would be raised by the union’s general council. Said Mr Corey: “Across the UK, trade unions have made clear they consider BNP membership to be incompatible with trade union membership. “Trade unions stand for upholding the rights of every person, equality for all and against any forms of racism.”

[Continued…]

“Mr Griffin and Mr Irving have every right to be heard in a free society and students attending the debate have the right to listen without being subjected to irrational attacks by a bunch of far left thugs.

The real threat to our freedom today is neither a properly constituted political party (i.e the BNP) whose support is growing daily in the face of increasing dictatorship from Brussels and unsustainable population growth due to mass immigration, nor a controversial but generally misrepresented historian who has been gagged by the liberal media for doing his job when they don’t like the findings of his research.

The real threat to our civil liberties today comes from the multiculturalist and pro-globalisation liberal/left agenda which seeks to impose itself on every aspect of life in modern Britain. The BNP is the only real opposition to these sinister anti-democratic forces which are destroying the whole fabric of our society.”

~ Tim Clarke, Belfast, United Kingdom, A letter to The Times, November 26, 2007 inre ‘Rival students clash as Holocaust denier turns up for Oxford debate’

About @ndy

I live in Melbourne, Australia. I like anarchy. I don't like nazis. I enjoy eating pizza and drinking beer. I barrack for the greatest football team on Earth: Collingwood Magpies. The 2024 premiership's a cakewalk for the good old Collingwood.
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4 Responses to BNP vs. Indymedia

  1. Michael says:

    I disapprove of you publically posting the names and addresses of people who belong to BNP. Don’t you think people should be free to belong to whatever political party they like? Don’t you think people should be allowed to form political opinions of their own choosing, even if others find their views insane, ridiculous, grossly offensive, pernicious (etc)? Don’t you think people with unpopular views still have the same right to privacy as everyone else? Would you regard it as legitimate, if, say, anarchists or communists were monitored by the government, and Bill O’Reilly or Miranda Devine or some right wing hack found out and publically released their names and addresses?

  2. @ndy says:

    Michael,

    Alex Trussler and Ben Smith — along with Arthur Grice, Daniel Piechnick and Nigel Hamley — were named in The Australian on November 22.

    Arthur Grice, 59, a British citizen who has spent most of his life in Queensland, said he had been a BNP member for five years, without realising others lived within 15km of his Brisbane home.

    “I don’t mind my name getting out,” said Mr Grice, fleet manager for a transport firm. “I’m proud to be a BNP member and I wish there were more members in Australia because some of the same problems back in Britain are starting to happen here.

    “People build us up to be skinheads running around with machetes, but I don’t hate anybody. I’m just an ordinary bloke, a run-of-the mill Queenslander, who thinks it is important to defend British culture.”

    Another Australian resident on the list is former One Nation candidate Daniel Piechnick, an Adelaide website designer. He said in an email: “I have no problems with being identified as having taken out a BNP membership for a year.” However, he added: “This kind of persecution and identification of members of the public, simply for their political views, is seriously wrong.”

    Alex Trussler, a plumber from Kensington in Sydney, said the exposure of his membership was “an obvious invasion of privacy but I don’t live in Britain any more so it doesn’t worry me”.

    A dual Australian and British citizen who has lived in Australia for about 15 years, Mr Trussler said he had remained a BNP member “to stay in touch with what’s going on back there”.

    “The immigration problems in Australia are still nowhere near as bad as in Europe, thank God,” said Mr Trussler, who argued that street violence in Britain could be “largely attributed” to migrants.

    Mr Grice and Mr Trussler denied they were politically active in Australia but Ben Smith, 24, a school swimming instructor from Engadine in Sydney, said he supported a group called the Australian Protectionist Party.

    An Australian with no direct ties to Britain, Mr Smith said he joined the BNP “because I care deeply about the survival of British culture and identity”.

    Two Australians are described on the BNP list as “activists” – Melbourne-based Nigel Hamley, a busy contributor of conservative political comments to discussion groups on British newspaper websites, and Mr Piechnick.

    I have not published anyone’s address — nor will I.

    Anyone is free to join the BNP — well, not quite anyone. BNP membership policy is as follows:

    The British National Party represents the collective National, Environmental, Political, Racial, Folkish, Social, Cultural, Religious and Economic interests of the indigenous Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Norse folk communities of Britain and those we regard as closely related and ethnically assimilated or assimilable aboriginal members of the European race also resident in Britain. Membership of the BNP is strictly defined within the terms of, and our members also self define themselves within, the legal ambit of a defined ‘racial group’ this being ‘Indigenous Caucasian’ and defined ‘ethnic groups’ emanating from that Race as specified in law in the House of Lords case of Mandla VDowell Lee (1983) 1 ALLER 1062, HL.

    Nobody needs or requests my permission to join a political party, or to hold insane, ridiculous, grossly offensive or pernicious views.

    “Would you regard it as legitimate, if, say, anarchists or communists were monitored by the government, and Bill O’Reilly or Miranda Devine or some right wing hack found out and publically released their names and addresses?”

    Legitimate in what sense? The Australian Government does indeed monitor the activities of groups it considers subversive — it says so itself, and considers such measures necessary in order to protect the liberal democratic state. The history of political surveillance in Australia is well-documented, and I’ve referred to this documentary history on a number of occasions. Recent revelations in The Age confirm that such efforts are ongoing, and include not only the compilation of public information and covert surveillance but also infiltration.

    This is entirely unsurprising, and I have little doubt that the responsible authorities know exactly who I am.

    My own (alleged) name has been published on numerous forums on numerous occasions. Late last year, Doug Smith of local band Bulldog Spirit published what he alleged was my work address on a public forum, and I have received numerous death threats (including and immediately following Doug’s publication of this information on the forum in question). On several occasions, fascists have attended public demonstrations seeking to obtain my photograph. A Kiwi comrade, Asher Goldman, has been subject to numerous forms of harassment, as have members of his immediate family.

    And so on and so forth.

    I doubt Bill O’Reilly would be especially interested in publishing the names and addresses of Australian anarchists and communists, or Miranda Devine for that matter. One person who has is Andrew Landeryou. He has even gone so far as to publish photographs of the houses un-patriotic Australians allegedly reside in.

    And?

    What has this to do with the contents of my post? The BNP membership list appears to have been leaked by a Party insider — not Bill O’Reilly or Miranda Devine or their left-wing equivalents. It is available for download from many, many sources.

  3. %9 nikalele says:

    the bnp are a joke, have you seen this? http://bnpbabes.co.uk/

  4. Paul Justo says:

    Wouldn’t matter if their names were published here, who is going to attack them, the toffs who are members of Socialist Alternative?

    Their Irish member’s details have been published on the website of the IRSP.

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