Notes on “the fight against antisemitism in Australia”

The fight against antisemitism in Australia has some odd features.

In the wake of October 7, one of these is its rediscovery by VIPs. Hence, former Labor MP Nova Peris — recently ‘elected a director of Hockey Australia weeks after sharing a post on X (formerly Twitter) from an anonymous account calling Muslims “Satan worshipping cockroaches that need to be eradicated”’ — has emerged as one of the faces of #StandUpToHate, joining other notable anti-racists (like, ah, Kyle Sandilands) in a corporate-media sponsored PR campaign to encourage other proud Aussies to ‘reject intolerance and restore the unity and respect that define our multicultural nation’.

Peris is also among those appearing at a conference on the Gold Coast in September titled ‘Australian Mayors Summit Against Antisemitism’, an event which has come under critical scrutiny by Wendy Bacon and Yaakov Aharon in “The Hebrew Hammer”: inside the Gold Coast’s antisemitism junket (Michael West Media, August 5, 2025).

The Gold Coast event is a local manifestation (with local allies) of the US-based ‘Combat Antisemitism Movement’ (CAM), ‘founded [in 2019] by Wichita oil baron Adam Beren, who donated $250,000 to Trump’s inauguration and $500,000 to the Republican National Committee in 2016′. Earlier this week, the CAM noticed hundreds of thousands of Australians march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge demanding an end to the Palestinian genocide and was prompted to write ‘Mass Sydney Anti-Israel Demonstration Rife With Antisemitic Slogans, Terror Glorification, and Incitement to Violence’. The CAM also apparently regards David Adler’s Australian Jewish Association (AJA) as a voice of authority on the subject of antisemitism in Australia … though whether or not they’ve asked the AJA about its brief love-affair with Lauren ‘The Great Replacement’ Southern and her neo-Nazi security detail is unknown.

As well as featuring Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism in Australia, Jillian Segal, as a keynote speaker, organisers have arranged for Jeff Schoep — a failed former fuehrer of the National Socialist Movement (NSM) from 1994 to 2019 — to impart his wisdom for the benefit of local burghers. Following Trump’s successful Presidential election campaign in 2016, Schoep and the NSM gained some notoriety for their role in organising the ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville in 2017. Indeed:

On Nov. 23, 2021, a federal court in Virginia found the National Socialist Movement and its former leader, Jeff Schoep, liable on charges of civil conspiracy theory in the Sines v. Kessler case against the organizers of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally. The jury allotted Schoep $500,000 in punitive damages and another $1,000,000 to NSM, now under the leadership of Burt Colucci.

The last few years have seen Schoep join the cottage industry of ‘former’ neo-Nazis who now proclaim expertise on the subject of ‘countering violent extremism’ and ‘deradicalisation’. Schoep first attempted this by way of Jesse Morton’s organisation Light Upon Light, but now does so via his own, Beyond Barriers.

As one of the highest-profile neonazis in U.S. history, in the 1990s, Schoep transformed his skinhead crew into a nationwide political organization, which he then led for 25 years. The NSM were often referred to as “Hollywood Nazis” for their brazen racism, including dressing in a “blackshirt” uniform with swastikas, using racial slurs, and preaching race war. Schoep sought out recruits with military training—he claimed 50 percent of their members were veterans—and NSM members have one of the longest rap sheets of racist violence in the movement. Schoep helped lead the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and became one of U.S. White nationalism’s loudest voices. But in 2019, he began presenting himself as a “former White nationalist,” first appearing on Picciolini’s MSNBC show and then working with the Washington, D.C.-based Light Upon Light. Within months, he was speaking at conferences as an expert on White nationalism, and offering “deradicalization” counseling. To Picciolini, it seemed disingenuous.

For more infos, please see : Can You Ever Trust a Former White Nationalist?, Shane Burley, The Public Eye, Winter 2022.

Beyond these figures, the assembled mayors will also have the opportunity to absorb learnings on antisemitism from a guy who once described Nasser Mashni of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network as being inspired by the notorious antisemitic tract and Tsarist forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Sadly, not all mayors have been convinced of the need to goto the Gold Coast for lessons: ‘Greater Dandenong and Casey councillors have turned down invitations to attend an Australian Mayors Summit Against Anti-Semitism to be held on the Gold Coast’. See also : Conference slammed as controversial ‘junket’ attracts Wollongong councillor, Zoe Cartwright, Region Illawarra, July 30, 2025.

Finally, in other news that seems to have ESCed the attention of many semi-professional anti-antisemites, Victoria will be hosting a national gathering of Tom Sewell’s EAM/NSN this weekend.

See also : Media reinvents neo-Nazism as post-7 October phenomenon, Tom Tanuki, Independent Australia, July 13, 2024.