Nationalists With Attitude ~versus~ Invasion Day in Melbourne/Naarm 2025

In 2025, 237 years after Captain Cook discovered Australia Captain Phillip & Co. — under the orders of and for the benefit of King George III — established a prison camp on Gadigal lands, January 26 discourse is once again thriving in the colony. Thus, with one eye on the forthcoming federal election, the date is currently being mashed into political pulp by aspirant Prime Minister Peter Dutton (AKA Mr Potato Head): an example of what the commentariat call ‘culture wars’. In doing so, the ex-Queensland police officer has offered his Tory base some red meat: a vow to Make Australia Great Again by forcing local councils to perform citizenship ceremonies on that date and to render January 26 a holy day of obligation for Australian nationalism.

Of course, bullying councils over January 26 is not an activity confined to ex-cops. In Victoria, neo-Nazis ‘attempted to disrupt an Indigenous mourning ceremony at Coburg Town Hall’ in 2023 and, in 2025, Matt Trihey’s grouplet Nationalists With Attitude (NWA) has announced that they’ll also be celebrating the day. In this case, by enlightening the tennis-going masses attending the Australian Open through squawking outside of Rod Laver Arena about the benefits of White Australia. As an added Bonus!, their mission has received the blessing of cucked Führer Blair Cottrell:

You may remember Blair from such convictions as arson, stalking and serious vilification. Or such events as Bernie Finn’s March for the Babies! and Damien Richardson‘s 2024 production We Will Not Be Silenced! In any case, having been displaced as leader of Australia’s neo-Nazi movement by his former sidekick Tom Sewell (and lacking the fortitude to challenge him for it), Cottrell now appears mostly contented with this subordinate position and, for understandable reasons, closer to Trihey’s NWA than to Sewell’s NSN.

Finally, while the NSN’s Tim Lutze is obviously excited at Cottrell’s endorsement of the NWA’s stunt, it’s unclear if Tom’s flunkeys will actually be joining Blair’s fans at the tennis. On the one hand, while the NSN has benefited from the flat-footed approach of Victoria Police towards its various publicity stunts in Melbourne, last year police in NSW adopted a much less tolerant approach to their attempt to parade through Sydney on January 26. On the other hand, post-October 7, government authorities and VIPs in the fields of media and politics have suddenly noticed the existence of antisemitism, and police are beginning to take a much dimmer view of groups dedicated to promoting it. Further, while demonising the trans community obviously enjoys a certain degree of popularity, messing with the public image of a multi-million dollar business like #AusOpen is not normally considered a recipe for success …

For those uninterested in joining a smol group of nazi weird0es whining at bewildered tennis fans, there’s many other opportunities to mark January 26. See, for example: Invasion Day 2025: Join your nearest protest /// Survival Day Events.

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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