Nationalist Alternative : “just a bunch of students from Melbourne”

Dung is a great supporter of mushrooms. The dung heap known as White Nationalism has thrown up another: ‘Nationalist Alternative’.

Group blames students over rent crisis
Damien Murphy
Sydney Morning Herald
July 8, 2009

A NEW group opposing immigration from Asia and the Middle East has jumped on the controversy surrounding Indian students in Australia, blaming Sydney’s inner-city rental crisis on the overseas student industry.

The Nationalist Alternative has left leaflets around Sydney University and other city campuses offering a “pro-Aussie movement” assistance in obtaining a lease on inner-city digs, and arranging collective houses to break free of real estate agents renting to the highest bidder.

“Local students are totally marginalised in the struggle for increasingly scarce resources, including accommodation and casual work,” said the group’s spokeswoman, Carla O’Hara.

“This effectively means they are being forced out of their traditional living space in the pursuit of Australia’s third-largest export: education. This is the white elephant standing in the room no one is willing to address.”

The group’s campaign comes as a top-level delegation from Australia visits India to mitigate the controversy that threatens to take a heavy toll on Australia’s education business.

Ms O’Hara said the Nationalist Alternative wanted to secure leases on behalf of students to cut out real estate agents and reduce costs to inner-city landlords and tenants.

“Many Aussies are increasingly finding themselves outmanoeuvred and ousted from an ultra competitive, inner-city rental market. Forced into unsuitable accommodation, including squats, the idea of plentiful, cheap, and geographically close student accommodation is as dead in the water as a free university education,” she said.

The University of Sydney was unaware of any extraordinary crisis facing students seeking accommodation. University authorities had not received any complaints about the leaflets.

However, Olivier Pollet, a Frenchman studying journalism at the University of Technology, said it was rubbish to blame the accommodation crisis, if one exists, on foreign students.

“This is actually the opposite of how the system of real estate works. I can assure you that coming from overseas makes it much harder to find a place, as you always need to show references, which you do not necessarily have in Australia, in order to find a tenancy,” he said.

Last year the Australia First Party’s [sic] campaigned unsuccessfully to send overseas students home. The party’s Jim Saleam criticised his new rivals, the Nationalist Alternative, saying they were “just a bunch of students from Melbourne”.

The Nationalist Alternative started a Sydney branch two weeks ago. Its members said the campaign would move to Melbourne and other Australian cities.

In the past few days the Nationalist Alternative’s Sydney leaflet campaign had been given large play on websites bearing words like “white pride world wide” and “Aryan pride”.

A few points.

1. The reference to ‘websites bearing words like “white pride world wide” and “Aryan pride”‘ is presumably a reference to sites like Stormfront, New Right, Skadi and enresist. On June 14, ‘White_Australian’ excitedly announced the group’s existence to the anti-Semites on SF, noting that “They seem to have some interesting articles and stickers/posters [and] images. It also appears they are happy to employ the black-bloc look employed by Autonomous Nationalists around Europe, particularly in Germany.” On May Day 2009, ‘Autonomous Nationalists’ in Hamburg — with a little help from German police — attacked a trade union rally.

2. The site was established on January 3, 2009.

3. The natalt.org site is down for the time being, but on July 1 it published an article titled ‘Can’t get a lease on an inner city place?’ by ‘Carla O’Hara’ and ‘Brian Hudson’. It is from this article that Damien Murphy quotes (“The Sydney branch of Nationalist Alternative is currently engaging in a campaign to reach out to help young Australians in the dire predicament of finding and securing a lease on inner city accommodation…”).

4. On June 26 the numpties published ‘Localised Failure of Liberal Democracy and opposition to the Newport Mosque’, outlining their activities in opposition to the construction of a mosque in the Melbourne suburb of Newport:

Nationalist Alternative attended meetings, donated funds towards hiring legal representation for the [Newport West Action Group] and spent evenings volunteering services for the resident activist groups [sic], including distributing their leaflets, advertising their meetings, and collecting signatures and donations and providing moral support.

NatAlt was able to build good relations with the group and with certain key members. As many of the residents are politically inexperienced and often don’t appreciate the deeper underlying issues, it was encouraging to hear people express their thoughts and show us that people are not apathetic and do have an awareness of changes occurring within their community.

5. NatAlt further participated in the local council election following the council’s decision to support the application to construct the mosque (at 21–31 Bleinheim Rd). (See : ‘Council yes to Newport mosque’, Hobsons Bay Leader, Stella Tzobanakis, October 21, 2008):

In response to this, NatAlt chose to lend support to one resident from a[n] action group who chose to be a candidate. NatAlt distributed a flyer advertising the council[‘]s decision and detailing how the council appeared committed to approving the mosque regardless of the resident[‘]s wishes, or [sic] without any concern [as] to how this would impact the area. Not only was the flyer one to inform residents, it was a call to kick the incumbents out and an endorsement of the community activist who was running for council.

Despite the sensitivity of the issue and the propensity for people to be critical of community members who express concern over such developments, NatAlt recieved [sic] negligible opposition to our efforts. We will continue to play an active role in this issue and help represent the understated and often ignored wishes and concerns of the local community.

Assuming the story to be true, NatAlt gave its support to one of the several dozen losing candidates for election to Hobsons Bay City Council. This may well have been Barbara Johnstone, who contested the Williamstown North Ward on behalf of the ‘Newport West Action Group’, gaining 705 votes and third place. (“Submitters (117 individual submitters) identifying themselves as part of Newport West Action Group (NWAG) represented by Mr Chris Taylor of Planning & Property Partners Pty Ltd and Ms Rebecca Parry” appeared at a Panel hearing into the mosque in June/July 2008. See : Hobsons Bay Planning Scheme Amendment C58 and Permit Application PA0613422, September 2008 [PDF]; Mosque plan flicked on, Hamish Heard, Star, May 20, 2008.)

Unlike similar campaigns in Sydney, the campaign to Stop the Mosque! in Newport does not appear to have generated much heat; that said, according to the Leader article, it did provide an opportunity for the Australian Protectionist Party to leaflet the area in an attempt to drum up anti-Islamic feeling (and a little publicity). The APP’s most recent brush with fame came courtesy of racist dingbat and former DJ Terrie-Anne Verney. APP also participated in a successful campaign to block the construction of an Islamic skool in Camden (NSW). The campaign served as the launching pad for the presumably rather brief political career of local Kate McCulloch, who after having her head displayed prominently on TV has opted to join the train-wreck known as the ‘One Nation Party’.

6. NatAlt drew lessons from their participation in this failed campaign, as the following mangled sentence suggests: “We could have attended and simply hit the area with purely abstract political material, replete with esoteric political though[t] straight out of a European think-tank and dressed in the black bloc look of our fellow nationalists in Europe from where we in Australia adapt the look.” This is by way of contrast to when the seven or eight NatAlts decided (‘Westgate Bridge Clean Up’, May 21, 2009) to do what nutzis in the US have done and done a little roadside cleaning (see : Road cleaned by neo-Nazis may be named for rabbi, Maria Sudekum Fisher, AP, June 21, 2009: “KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The state’s litter prevention program got an unusual ally last year: A neo-Nazi group adopted a half-mile section of highway in Springfield and picked up the trash…”).

7. Finally, NatAlt make reference to the fact that “In 2009 [sic], Melbourne University students with no alternatives for accommodation resorted to squatting, only to be faced with eviction [that is, were evicted] by the university“.

Arf arf.

8. Like their comrades the ‘national anarchists’, the ‘Nationalist Alternative’ are hereby invited to wish in one hand, to shit in the other — and to see which one fills up first.

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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27 Responses to Nationalist Alternative : “just a bunch of students from Melbourne”

  1. Social Retard says:

    AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! NAZIS!!!!!

    we’re all fucked

  2. Run to Paradise says:

    NatAlt – Three fattys and four virgins – the results of an atomized society.

  3. Liam says:

    As a sydney student and squatter i can assure you that no sydney squatters that i know (and i know alot) blame international students for the rental crisis. Look at who benefits from excessive rents and few vacancies, i’ll give you a hint; it’s not international students.

  4. Ferox says:

    The appropriation continues. The National Anarchists seem to think highly of this lot, perhaps they’re exchanging membership?

  5. dean x says:

    cheers bloke, for the info…love your work!

  6. brucek says:

    yeah, thanks – saw those leaflets in the street near the uni – f*kn idiots who need to have an eye kept on them – who is carla o? age? history? any info?

  7. The Mad Arab says:

    Dr Jim (James) Saleam – Australia’s premier non-white white supremacist, responsible for organising a shot-gun attack on a fellow non-white.

    saleam.blogspot.com

  8. @ndy says:

    The Mad Arab eh?

    I suppose the description is fitting: Jim’s certainly ga-ga for the colour White, and does appear to be of Arabic (Lebanese/Syrian) descent. And while it’s certainly unusual, it’s not unknown for ‘non-Whites’ to be (that is, to pass) as ‘White’ — Jim’s former nemesis Jack van Tongeren, for example, was known as ‘Java Jack’ on account of that being the birthplace of his father. On the other hand, Jim’s many years of service to, and support for, ‘White nationalism’, coupled with his opposition to the forces of ZOG, means that the hundreds of Whites who support his Party and activities are happy to allow Jim to ‘pass’.

    Everyone’s got a ‘Black’ skeleton in the closet anyway eh? Praise Jah!

  9. Sean Brock says:

    The reason it makes it hard for whites to find affordable leases in the city is because they need a room to themselves. For their own space and hygiene. Other cultures, such as those which were mentioned (Asian and Middle Eastern) do not seem to care about having 10 students living in a 3 bedroom apartment, sharing one bathroom and sleeping on lounges, etc.
    These people have a lower standard than white people, thus allowing them to live in conditions which are unsuitable for a modern white man or wom[a]n.
    One migrant will buy a 3 bedroom unit for example, charge his friends and family members extremely low rates which he uses to pay off his mortgage. He then ends up owning his apartment, and his brother or friend who was living there has saved enough money to buy his own. He follows the same pattern and has the same outcome.
    A white man buys a 3 bedroom apartment, shares his room with his partner and leases the other room out to a close friend at a reasonable rate. The other room is used for a spare room for friends and family to sometimes stay over if they travel through, plus it gives everyone a little more space around the house. It might take this guy 20 years to pay off his home, while the foreign people to Australia now have a whole neighbourhood that they have taken over and made just like their own country, where they trade with each other, leech off hard working Australian people[,]s taxes etc. This area is now a no go zone for whites because of gangs emerging, and just a general unfriendlyness [sic] to white people.

    The cycle continues and continues and no one does anything about it.

    I say good on Nat Alt and any other groups who try to lend a hand to make things easier for the young Aussie students who are struggling (the real future of Australia).

    Regards

    Sean

  10. @ndy says:

    I know exactly what you mean, Sean.

    A White Man, I made the mistake of allowing a brown-skinned woman from one of them foreign cultures to share my rental accommodation. Within five minutes of our signing a lease, her entire, extended family had joined her — her grandparents shared a cupboard!

    I tried to complain to our landlord, our real estate agent, and even The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT), but the forces of political correctness ensured that my arguments were never heard, let alone acted upon.

    It took me six months to be rid of that troublesome woman and her relatives, by which point she had managed to accumulate over $50,000 in fees.

    To my horror, I was then taken to The Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission (VEOHRC) and, because I refused to eat from the enormous bowl they used as a trough to feed themselves from, I was fined another $50,000. (The ‘judge’ in my case was a lesbian with a disability — coincidence?)

    Having secured $100,000 in funds in the space of just 9 months, this woman then applied to the National Australia Bank for a further, interest-free, loan.

    Using these ill-gotten gains, this same woman then bought my house, and I was evicted! I tried to find a house in the same suburb, but a gang of Lebanese Muslims harassed me whenever I appeared in the neighbourhood. I could not identify any of them to the police as, apart from being virtually indistinguishable in appearance, they wore Islamic dress (and even if I could, the man behind the counter informed me that the hands of the police were tied).

    To cut a long story short, this same woman now owns a chain of wheel-balancing centres, lives in a mansion in Toorak, and I have been reduced to mowing her lawns!

    The cycle continues and continues and no one does anything about it.

    I also say good on Nat Alt (especially that bloke in Williamstown what set up their website) and any other groups who try to lend a hand to make things easier for the young Aussie students who are struggling (the real future of Australia).

    Regards,

    @ndy.

  11. grumpy cat says:

    Now that – @ndy – was funny. I even chortled.

  12. @ndy says:

    You can laugh… but my poor ♥ was broken.

    Oh, and I should add that part of their (conspiratorial) strategy is to pollute the airwaves with noise that they call “music”. For example:

    Dub Inc is a reggae band from Saint-Étienne, France together since 1997. They combine a range of styles, including dancehall, dub, ska and even (!) rap and hip-hop. Their music is also influenced by African and Arab music with their songs being sung in a mixture of French and English and Arabic and Kabyle: Beware! Their cruisy rhythms are aimed @ undermining The White Man’s resolve to keep Australia British.

  13. Nick T says:

    What struck me first about that NatAlt leaflet (apart from their obvious fascist inclinations) was the leaflet’s imitation of the Socialist Alternative aesthetic (from their SAlt inspired name, to a near identical font and layout to SAlt leaflets, and the red, white and black colour-scheme).

    While SAlt can be a pretty obnoxious outfit much of the time, it looks like the neo-Nazi ‘Nationalist Alternative’ want to emulate Socialist Alternative’s periodic success in carving out something of a niche for themselves among radical uni students, and aim to do the same from the polar-opposite end of the political spectrum.

    Which should be frightening for anyone on the left, be they reformist, autonomist and/or revolutionary. History shows that when the likes of NatAlt are on the rise they target organised progressives and the labour movement (along with migrants) with their physical thuggery. Jim Saleam is clearly threatening violence against such groups (and anyone else he thinks is responsible for the decline of the ‘master-race’) when he says “We will see not only defence of identity but defence of jobs. If that spills over into reasonable-level confrontation, I would support that” (taken from peter chen’s weblink).

    PS Nice blog, but do you think it’s worth keeping ‘Sean Brock’s’ comments on this page? Surely if it’s about free-speech, he can go and exercise his free-speech elsewhere, rather than on a site such as this? Why bother giving these fuckers yet another platform (unless you put it up there yourselves as a means of justifying @ndy’s hilarious response?).

  14. @ndy says:

    (“Hi everybody!”)

    Hi (Doctor) Nick,

    Yeah. NatAlt are obviously attempting to appeal to (other) White, Australian students — their racism is less crude, and their arguments more sophisticated, than those generally to be found on the (margins of the) far right. As such, NatAlt draws inspiration from developments on the far right in Europe (cf. ‘national anarchism’) but should also be placed in the context of nativist traditions, as well as fascism as a whole. That is, NatAlt’s apparent mimicry of SAlt may well be intentional, or it may be attributable to other factors — I dunno. Certainly, the fact that SAlt is strongest in Melbourne, and NatAlt’s origins are in Melbourne, would seem to suggest some form of conscious appropriation may be taking place.

    With regards their potential popularity — obviously, fascist groupuscules like NatAlt thrive on whatever ethnic or racial inflexions there are to be found in the routine, or otherwise exceptional, ‘crises’ generated by contemporary capitalism: in this case, the presence of (middle class) foreign students, and their supposed responsibility for housing shortages. The argument is spurious, but very handy. Otherwise, their political perspective is more-or-less in accord with traditional fascist thinking. NatAlt’s participation in a campaign against the construction of a mosque in Newport is interesting, especially given that this was, on the one hand, seemingly welcomed by some local residents and, on the other, doesn’t appear to have generated anything like the heat such campaigns have in Sydney.

    Otherwise, I don’t think NatAlt is or should be considered to be especially frightening — I’m unaware of NatAlt making any threats of violence, and the group is in its infancy. Further, and on the whole, the organised far right is organisationally weak, especially in Melbourne, and the various forms of harassment sporadically engaged in by its adherents fairly minimal.

    Which is not, of course, to suggest that there is not potential for more serious disruption; rather, what I think is occurring is an attempt at ideological re-alignment the results of which, this project still being in its infancy, are unknown at this stage. (I should also add that the local ‘national anarchists’ are composed, quite literally, of a handful of racist teenagers, and a few older, fellow ex-Stormfront members.) I would advise leftist and progressive groups to keep an eye open and an ear out for these little creeps, and, fwiw, am happy to (continue to) share whatever info I have with them.

    Finally, I’ll be contributing to a longer essay on the response of the Australian far right to the Global Financial Crisis shortly, so will hopefully provide further elaboration there.

    PS. Sean Brock’s comment was published not on the basis of any commitment on my part to some superficial notion of ‘freedom of speech’ (you are right — Sean can exercise his speech elsewhere if he wishes), but because it — and comments like his — provide me opportunity to engage in parody. In my view, ridicule is actually one of the more useful ways of undermining bigotry and teh stoopid. Further, I’m sometimes accused of making up the existence of these ‘fuckers’, and letting their commentary be published is a fairly straightforward means of establishing the existence of this and other forms of batshittery. More generally, there are a handful of commentators whose very special contributions I no longer publish: among these are a local using the handle ‘KinkyBoy’, whose anti-Semitic diatribes are genuinely pathological (he can now be found posting similar but even more vicious rants on Jim Perren’s blog ‘Whitelaw Towers’); a breathtakingly stupid racist from the UK called ‘Tony White’, who employed a vast array of pseudonyms and whom I finally decided to terminate following his rather impolite suggestion that I should indeed be killed; and an attention-starved teenage Stalinist-cum-Nazi from Warwick in Queensland named Peter Watson. There are others, just as there are other reasons for publishing nutty or offensive commentary, but these are more closely related to tracking the activities of individual fascists and/or their networks than they are providing opportunities for fuckers to spout their filth.

  15. Ben Courtice says:

    Letter to The Age

    This morning I hear ALP Left MP Kelvin Thompson calling for immigration to be cut, blaming it for increased use of water, food and land space. This afternoon I found a sticker on a telegraph pole from the far-right group “Nationalist Alternative” saying “Save water: cut immigration!” What has aligned together the soft left and the hard right? Could it be that neither wants to face the fact that Australia has the world’s highest per capita carbon emissions, and despite living on the driest continent we waste water like it’s going out of fashion? It’s shameful opportunism to blame new immigrants for that.

  16. @ndy says:

    You are wrong Ben: wrong wrong wrong.

    Just yesterday, I saw an immigrant.

    And do you know what he was doing Ben?

    Swimming.

    Yes, that’s right: swimming.

    In a public pool.

    Paid by OUR tax dollars.

    I estimate that the amount of water used by immigrants when swimming is equivalent to a pool the size of 10,000 MCGs.

    Why is the Left silent about this?

    I know why.

    Because the Left is in league with The Devil.

    That’s right: The Devil.

    I shall be moving a motion at the next meeting of my local ALP branch registering our opposition to this monstrous, water-guzzling pact.

    YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

  17. Liam says:

    “A white man buys a 3 bedroom apartment, shares his room with his partner and leases the other room out to a close friend at a reasonable rate. The other room is used for a spare room for friends and family to sometimes stay over if they travel through, plus it gives everyone a little more space around the house.”

    Hahahaha.

    Such a beautifully imagined scenario involving a white man, his partner and a close family friend all in the one house.

  18. @ndy says:

    I’m pretty sure I’ve seen at least one film along those lines. I don’t remember the title, but I’m pretty sure it was the 7th (in a series of indeterminate length).

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  20. Shane Brady says:

    I was sent here for a look by a guy I was arguing with about the futility of war. He seemed to come round to my point of view about who holds the REAL power in America, not the bloody government. Then he started on about the Jews, who I’m not very fond of, only because of what they are doing to Palestine, he started to blame them for everything, alarm bells!!! So, here I am, shit, wasn’t one Hitler enough!!! Fuckin’ nazis, no brain, sadly deluded, and these are our young people! I’m ashamed to be living in the same country as these sorry deadheads!!!

  21. @ndy says:

    NAlt are mos def nazis, but their leader ain’t Adolf. Otherwise: the US government is v powerful, while The Jews display an array of attitudes regarding the occupation of Palestine. In any case, US government support for Israeli policy is kinda crucial to its maintenance, while Australia too is occupied territory. And I see no reason to be ashamed: lotsa countries have swastika-lickers in ’em, unfortunately (even Israel!).

  22. Paul Justo says:

    Champion thread, Andy @ July 27, 2009 at 3:17 pm – I LOL’ed at that as well, had missed it first time around.

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