Dr Tim Anderson has some funny friends

[I stumbledupon this vid again the other day, courtesy of the scallywags of Anti Fascist Action Sydney (see : With Friends Like These… Tim Anderson & NSW’s Fascists, May 2, 2017), so I thought I may well as chuck it up here along with a few additional comments of my own.]

While it’s true that politics makes for odd bedfellows, it’s an unedifying spectacle to witness an ostensible leftist address a gathering of the extreme-right, in this instance University of Sydney academic Tim Anderson addressing the Leura Forum in November last year. In front of a banner reading ‘One People. One Destiny. One Flag.’, the brief vid below (the full vid is avail online elsewhere) begins with a very subtle dis of The Gay Mafia and a prayer for God Emperor Trump by the MC (dentist Dr Jim Sternhell), followed by a few words from Tim, interspersed with complaints about Jews from an audience member, Ross May.

Apart from anything else, the presence of geriatric neo-Nazi Ross ‘The Skull’ May in the front row of Tim’s audience brings to mind another academic from Sydney, Peter McGregor (1947–2008). An anarchist and a political activist in addition to being an academic, McGregor participated in numerous campaigns, groups and projects during his too-short life. This included participating in the campaign to free one Tim Anderson from jail after he was framed for the Hilton bombing (1978).

Peter’s activities, especially in the name of anti-racism, naturally antagonised fascists and the far right. Hence: ‘The Australian Nazi Party, ideologically aligned with apartheid, organised a brutal and cowardly assault on McGregor in 1971 which I witnessed. Its propagator, one Ross Lesley May (aka “The Skull”), subsequently served time; but the police more often than not acquiesced in Nazi violence and that of fellow racists and the more fanatical rugby fans, who were often inseparable.’

Note that the speaker who followed Tim, Dr Jim Saleam, was also a member of the Australian Nazi Party at this time, while the speaker who preceded him, Keith Windschuttle, has also had some interesting things to say about genocide, and history.

The situation is ironic, perhaps, but hardly a fitting tribute.

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

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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7 Responses to Dr Tim Anderson has some funny friends

  1. Nervous Norvous says:

    Keith Windschuttle is such a vacuous piece of shit.

  2. ablokeimet says:

    Keith Windschuttle wrote a good book once. A long time ago. I was very disappointed when I heard about him years later & discovered he’d moved over to what Gerard Henderson used to refer to as the Lunar Right.

  3. Futilitarian says:

    Tim Anderson is right about one thing: the ‘uprising’ in Syria is really a war of aggression by the United States and its Islamist proxies (minus ISIS) upon an independent state.

    The nut-cases and fantasists amongst sections of the Trotskyoid left here in Oz would have us believe that there’s something revolutionary going on there that’s worthy of our ‘support,’ and they’re not referring to Rojava, but, rather, the 57 varieties of Islamism lite (and not so lite) that are being aided by the U.S. Fortunately, the support that these comfortable, middle-class revolutionaries of Oz can offer consists of not a lot more than generating hot air at meetings and words on paper.

  4. Futilitarian says:

    … And, once the situation in Syria is ‘normalised’ – one way or another – it’s doubtful that democratic Rojava will be permitted to continue its very interesting little experiment. Proto-fascist Turkey will have something to say about that.

  5. Pingback: If saying it’s a bad idea to work with fascists makes you a pro-war neoliberal, then who was phone? More on red-brown alliances, smears and all that | Cautiously pessimistic

  6. Pingback: Is Alexander Reid Ross the CEO/dad of antifa?: On contagion, shades of grey, and the three-way fight | Cautiously pessimistic

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