Blair Cottrell, Tony Abbott, Neo-Nazis, CPAC Australia & GiveSendGo

Posted on August 6, 2023 by @ndy

‘Hell hath no fury like a vested interest masquerading as a moral principle’

The Australian franchise of the Trumpist ‘Conservative Political Action Conference’ (CPAC) is meeting on August 19–20 at the Star Event Centre in Sydney. ‘One of Australia’s most technologically advanced venues’, the keynote speaker at Star also happens to be one of Australia’s leading public intellectuals: former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Making very good use of his annual $300,000+ pension, Tone Abet spoke at the first CPAC Australia in 2019, skipped 2020, and then popped up again last year. The former PM also took the opportunity in 2019 to praise Hungary’s far-right PM Viktor Orbán, arguing along with other leading political commentators that we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children. His foreign sojourn naturally earned him bouquets, brickbats and even a potential listing as a foreign agent.

(See also : Greg Sheridan, Australian conservatives flirt with Orban’s fascistic politics, Lucy Hamilton, Pearls & Irritations, July 29, 2023 | Viktor Orbán’s American apologists, John Ganz, The New Statesman, August 4, 2022: ‘The Hungarian prime minister’s recent address was labelled “pure Nazi speech”, so why do some conservative intellectuals continue to defend him?’.)

The rest of the cast at CPAC (see below) otherwise bears an uncanny resemblance to the regular line-up at Sky News (Australia’s Fox): a mixture of superannuated reactionaries and minor right-wing YouTube personalities. Mostly, it’s grifters, ranging from the fully professional to the aspiring amateur. All the speakers have great stories, though that associated with Jay Aeba — ‘the political head of a Japanese religious cult that promotes nationalism, xenophobia and the belief that its leader is the reincarnation of an alien from Venus who created life on earth millions of years ago’ — is possibly one of my favourites.

Still, whatever its other merits, CPAC does at least provide an opportunity to identify the major pre-occupations of the right in any given year. Thus, in 2023, in addition to the usual climate denialism and lamentations about the pernicious influence of the left on education, media, politics and public discourse generally, the focus this year is upon defeating the referendum on The Voice to parliament, continuing to oppose ‘political correctness’ — for which the American term ‘woke’ is now a substitute — and denouncing ‘trans rights’.

Of course, along with the usual political whining, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, CPAC also represents an important commercial opportunity and a chance to further cultivate the local Boomerwaffen market: one which is niche, affluent, and vewy, vewy angwy. Hence, in addition to The Mad Monk, Pauline ‘It’s OK To Be White’ Hanson and Moira ‘It’s Not OK To Be Trans’ Deeming, included on the guest list of Very Fine People this year are the co-founders of Christian nationalist crowdfunding website GiveSendGo: Heather Wilson and Jacob Wells. You may remember GiveSendGo from its role in fundraising for the ‘Trucker Convoy’ in early 2022 in Canada (which is how their participation is being promoted), or maybe how a smol army of gay cowboys supported the effort. Or, perhaps, from when the site sprung a massive leak, one which revealed the identities of the thousands who made donations to the freedumb-loving ‘truckies’ (see also : Ottawa truckers’ convoy galvanizes far-right worldwide, Mark Scott, Politico, February 6, 2022).

Notably, GiveSendGo is a ‘gold sponsor’ of CPAC Australia and is currently helping to raise money in order to support local neo-Nazi organising.

Blair Cottrell ~vs~ Weight Supremacy

Last Saturday, July 29, members of the ‘European Australian Movement’ (EAM) / ‘National Socialist Network’ (NSN) held an event at their kamerad Tim Lutze’s ‘Legacy Boxing Gym’ in Industrial Drive, Sunshine West. The gathering occasioned protest and some media attention. On Sunday, July 30, the neo-Nazis gathered at Altona RSL in order to hear speeches by the gang’s leader, Thomas Sewell, its NSW organiser Jack Eltis and the cool and normel Joel Davis. Among other things, Sewell heaped praise upon war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith.

Very Fine People, in other words.

Over the course of the last twelve months, GiveSendGo has been raising funds for Sewell, Roberts and Cottrell.

• Thomas Sewell is currently the leader of the EAM/NSN who earlier this week plead guilty to a violent attack on a group of hikers at a Victorian state park. Prior to this, in January, Sewell was found guilty of recklessly causing injury and affray after assaulting a security guard.

In the end, Wilson and Wells managed to raise over $20,000 for the Balwyn Gauleiter via their site.

• Jim Roberts is one of Sewell’s lieutenants and a fairly recent recruit to EAM/NSN. Roberts gained some minor degree of notoriety last year after he pleaded guilty to public nuisance for ‘attaching swastika stickers to the front of businesses, community organisations and the office of Caulfield MP David Southwick, who is Jewish, as well as onto poles in Caulfield Park’ in an act the presiding magistrate described as ‘one of the most disgusting, vile, repugnant acts of anti-Semitism and racial behaviour that I have ever seen’.

Later, after another incident at a pub, Roberts got into a fight and lost: about $8,000 was raised via GiveSendGo in order to aid in the nazi meathead’s recovery.

• Blair Cottrell is another, even more notorious neo-Nazi, not least because of the worshipful attitude the Christchurch killer adopted towards him. Last weekend, the convicted arsonist and stalker took part in the powerlifting competition at the gym in Sunshine West. Unfortunately, there Cottrell discovered the meaning of weight supremacy and, in attempting to show off to the other nazis, managed to do himself a mischief, viz, tear his pectoral muscle from the bone.

To date, GiveSendGo has helped to generate almost $5,000 to help The Frankston Fuehrer get back on his jack-booted feet.

See also : Australian Neo-Nazis Are Livestreaming Their Propaganda To YouTube, Eyes on the Right, May 23, 2023 | Update: Twitter placed ads for USA Today, National Women’s Soccer League, and other major brands on a terrorism-linked neo-Nazi account, Eric Hananoki, Media Matters For America, July 28, 2023.

Nazi Gold

Does any of this matter? Probably not. Or at least, not to CPAC and its corporate sponsors. That said, when — post-Christchurch massacre — sometime Sky News Australia commentator Lauren ‘The Great Replacement’ Southern was invited to speak at CPAC Australia in 2020, the stench emanating from her grisly body of work was eventually considered simply too powerful to overcome with a mere sprinkling of money. Thus, her invite was rescinded and it — like so much else — was consigned to The Memory Hole. Three years later, the fact that CPAC Australia’s Gold Sponsor is also helping to fund the activities of neo-Nazis — men who actually tried to recruit the killer before his murderous rampage took place, and who celebrate its occurence — is in some ways remarkable. In others, it simply re-confirms the increasing convergence of extreme-, radical- and far-right doctrines under the umbrella of supposed ‘conservatism’.

The World According to CPAC

Below is an incomplete list of the glittering array of talent that has performed or will be performing at the Australian franchise of CPAC.

2023

Tony Abbott • Jay Aeba • John Anderson • Alex Antic • Steve Baxter • Bronwyn Bishop • Matt Camenzuli • Nick Cater • Gordon Chang • Andrew Cooper • Bella d’Abrera • Rowan Dean • Moira Deeming • Sall Grover • Pauline Hanson • Gary Johns • Alan Jones • Barnaby Joyce • Sam Kennard • Michael Kroger • Bridget McKenzie • Tania Mihailuk • Tim Mitchell • Nyunggai Warren Mundine • Maurice Newman • Ted O’Brien • Michelle Pearse • Keith Pitt • Ian Plimer • Jacinta Nampijinpa Price • Matt Schlapp • Matthew Sheahan • Amanda Stoker • Tal Tsfany • Chaim Tsibos [?] • Jacob Wells • Matthew Whitaker • Daniel Wild • Heather Wilson • Rachael Wong

2022

Tony Abbott • Jay Aeba • Jim Allan • Alex Antic • Ross Cameron • Matt Canavan • Nick Cater • Andrew Cooper • Daisy Cousens • Bella d’Abrera • Rowan Dean • Anthony Dillon • Kevin Donnelly • Nigel Farage • Topher Field • Alan Jones • Mark Latham • Johannes Leak • Zion Lights • Teena McQueen • Nataliya Melnyk • Jason Miller • James Morrow • Warren Mundine • Alfred Ngaro • Rita Panahi • Fred Pawle • Ian Plimer • Jacinta Price • Malcolm Roberts • Matt Schlapp • Michael Shellenberger • Amanda Stoker • Matthew Whitaker • Dan Wild • Zuby

2020

Eric Abetz • David Adler • Alex Antic • Bettina Arndt • Ross Cameron • Andrew Cooper • Rowan Dean • Emma Eros • Alan Jones • Craig Kelly • Mark Latham • Teena McQueen • Warren Mundine • Jacinta Price • John Ruddick • Tom Switzer • Daniel Wild

2019

Tony Abbott • Janet Albrechtsen • Peta Credlin • Nigel Farage • Raheem Kassam • Mark Meadows • Jeanine Pirro • Matt Schlapp

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antifa notes (july 31, 2023) : nazis in Sunshine West +++

Posted on July 31, 2023 by @ndy

[Update (August 5, 2023) : Among other things, the location of the neo-Nazi gathering on the Sunday has been revealed as being Altona RSL. See : ‘Heil Ben’: Neo-Nazi Thomas Sewell praises war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith, David Estcourt, The Age, August 4, 2023.

(August 1, 2023) : Tom Sewell and Jacob Hersant today plead guilty to violent disorder in the County Court. ‘County Court Judge Kellie Blair ordered both Sewell and Hersant undergo pre-sentence reports before returning to court in September. Violent disorder carries a maximum sentence of six months’ jail. Both men remain on bail.’ See : Neo-Nazi leader pleads guilty to attack on hikers, Erin Pearson, The Age, August 1, 2023.]

On Saturday, July 29, a march and rally in opposition to a neo-Nazi gathering, organised by the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism, was held in Sunshine West. Assembling outside a local supermarket in the early afternoon, the rally marched to Legacy Boxing Gym in Industrial Drive, the site of the gathering, to scream and shout at the neo-Nazis hidden inside the gym (and behind lines of police).

According to Marta Pascual Juanola, ‘Police stopped anti-fascism protesters from clashing with a group of neo-Nazis holding a “white powerlifting competition” at a boxing gym in Melbourne’s west on Saturday’ (Anti-fascist protesters rally outside neo-Nazi weightlifting event, The Age, July 29, 2023) while news dot com dot au reports that ‘A gym in Melbourne has been swarmed by Aussies wanting to send a message about a twisted event that was being hosted there’ (‘Never again’: Protest at Melbourne neo-Nazi powerlifting event, July 30, 2023); CARF’s Jasmine Duff reckons ‘Yesterday’s protest showed that the left in Melbourne is prepared to confidently take a stand against these fascists on their own turf’ (The day the left marched on Melbourne’s neo-Nazi gym, Red Flag, July 30, 2023).

The march and rally attracted an estimated 300 or so people and is the second such rally to have been organised by CARF, the first having taken place on February 25. Both events helped to generate further attention on the status of the gym as the organising and training centre for members of the neo-Nazi organisations ‘European Australian Movement’ (EAM)/’National Socialist Network’ (NSN) in Melbourne, but were obviously radically insufficient to remove it from Industrial Drive. Note that in response to the rally in February, and addressing concerns over ‘alleged fascist activity’, Brimbank Mayor Bruce Lancashire stated that ‘There is no place for racism in Brimbank’ but ‘Council does not have the power to revoke or cancel a planning permit under the Planning and Environment Act 1989’.

A two-day event, on Sunday the neo-Nazis gathered elsewhere to hear Sydney-BASED HVAC Guy Jack Eltis, Twitter nazi Joel Davis and Balwyn Gauleiter and EAM/NSN lvl boss Tom Sewell talk to a smol selection of The Master Race. Of Eltis, Nick McKenzie (Soldiers of hate: Army investigates neo-Nazis in its ranks, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 23, 2023) writes:

The NSN’s New South Wales cell leader is Jack Eltis, a tradesman who has conducted training events for neo-Nazis in NSW. The NSN has nominated him to fill any national leadership vacuum if the group’s most prominent member, Melbourne man Tom Sewell, is jailed in connection to aggravated burglary charges. Sewell has been charged but is yet to face a committal hearing in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court.

Eltis has posted on encrypted chat groups, reviewed by this masthead, about how the “tyrannical Jewish system and its police and security apparatus are attempting to convict Thomas Sewell with overreaching charges”.

In the posts, Eltis attacks counter-terrorism authorities who have charged NSN members in Victoria, NSW and South Australia with “ludicrous fabricated terrorism charges”.

“The men in our organisation know that no temporary sacrifice is too great for the future of the white race,” he says.

When contacted by this masthead, Eltis was unapologetic about his leadership role in the NSN and attacked the media and counter-terror agencies for what he claimed was the harassment of his organisation. He confirmed he believed there was “no pathway for political change via the current Western liberal democratic framework” but said the NSN rejected the use of violence.

Uh-huh.

Prior to their gathering at Lutze’s gym, the EAM/NSN staged a photo shoot in Geelong, first outside the Town Hall and later the local CFMEU office. As reported by Mark Murray (CFMEU boss John Setka responds to recent neo-Nazi stunt at Geelong headquarters, The Geelong Advertiser, July 27, 2023), Setka’s response came ‘after the NSN distributed a message on mobile messaging app Telegram, seen by the Geelong Advertiser, that read: “West Melbourne activists broadcasted a message directly to the cowardly CFMEU”’. Elsewhere on Telegram, NSN member Stefan Eracleous (pictured above) joined in the chorus, declaring Setka ‘a corrupt individual’ who is ‘hated by thousands of your own members who [Setka] compelled to get vaccinated in order to work’ and whose support for maintaining a ‘diverse’ union membership (ie, as opposed to the CFMEU being a Whites-only institution as Eracleous wants) betrays the union’s traditions. He concludes that ‘You literally hate your own members. Well guess what they also hate you for not doing right by them and being psychopant [sic] for Daniel Andrews.’

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

For more on Eracleous, see : Neo-Nazi unmasked as former Young Liberal, Nick McKenzie, The Age, February 12, 2022 and Misogynist rants from Young Libs, Henrietta Cook and Farrah Tomazin, August 10, 2014. See also : #CFMEUForever : COVID-19, Construction & COVIDIOTs (October 14, 2021).

In any event, while the EAM/NSN’s declaration of “WAR!” on the CFMEU is unlikely to win the boys many frens among unionists, the neo-Nazis did manage to find an ally in The Richest Man in the World, Elon Musk. In November 2022, the filthy-rich idiot opened the floodgates on nazis on Twitter (along with child pr0n and animal abuse) but it was only this week that the restored NSN account was again removed after media reportage. Hence according to Eric Hananoki (Update: Twitter placed ads for USA Today, National Women’s Soccer League, and other major brands on a terrorism-linked neo-Nazi account, Media Matters for America, July 28, 2023), Twitter, the micro-blogging site Emerald Mine Guy bought on a whim for US $44 billion last year:

… placed ads for brands like Honeywell, Discovery, National Women’s Soccer League, the Pittsburgh Steelers, USA Today, and Manchester City on the verified account of the National Socialist Network, a leading neo-Nazi group that engages in violence, has connections to terrorism, and uses Elon Musk’s platform to recruit new members. Twitter’s actions are reminder to advertisers that despite rebranding efforts by Musk and Linda Yaccarino, Twitter (now called X) remains a toxic environment for companies.

Curiously, former children’s music teacher and UniMelb liberal turned NSN member David Hiscox has also lost his account, though numerous other members of the NSN and Over 9,000 other nazi accounts remain at liberty to propagate genocidal doctrines. Of the event itself, more infos will no doubt be obtained in the future but in the meantime see also : Fascism will fall when action speaks louder than words, Tom Tanuki, Independent Australia, July 29, 2023.

Finally:

• The ding-dong battle for the hearts and minds of White nationalist male yoof being fought by the EAM/NSN and Dr Jim Saleam’s Sydney-BASED ‘Australia First Party’ is currently being won by the former. Hence the Canberra-BASED sometime esoteric racial Presbyerian Matthew Grant, formerly of the defunct AFP yoof wing ‘Eureka Youth League’, has taken his bat and ball (AKA the ‘Australian Natives Association’), gone home to Sewell, and seemingly embraced ‘1488 not 1788’. Or at least, that’s what one of Dr Jim’s flunkeys reckons. Hence, according to the bizarr0 Nathan Sykes, Grant is now a treacherous Millennial, while his podcast partner Joel Davis is a ‘state plant'(!).

Just a few months ago (Senior neo-Nazi slips out of Australia hoping to fight Russian army, Nick McKenzie and Anthony Galloway, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 23, 2023) ‘Grant stressed he was opposed to neo-Nazism as a “foreign ideology” and that the Australian Natives Association was not an extremist group but rather an organisation that “believes in a white Australia on social and economic grounds”’. Further, ‘Asked whether it was appropriate for Australian Natives Association members to hold gun licences or an approved hunting organisation registration, NSW Police said it would not comment on specific investigations, individuals, or groups but was monitoring the activities and rhetoric of racist and extremist groups’.

Plus ça change.

For those of you coming in late, in February 2022 Sykes was found guilty of threatening a journalist, and got a slap on the wrist (a 19-month intensive corrections order and 150 hours of community service) as a result. Nick McKenzie (Far-right extremist troll pleads guilty to threatening journalist, The Sydney Morning Herald, February 24, 2022):

The charges relate to repeated threats he made in March 2018 against freelance journalist Luke McMahon, who had written an article exposing Mr Sykes as a notorious online troll. In one of the threatening recordings from March 2018, Mr Sykes allegedly threatened to “stamp your [journalist Luke McMahon’s] f—ing teeth into the sidewalk” and send associates to Mr McMahon’s house.

“I’m going to torture you to an absolute delight little Lukey Luke. Absolute delight. And I have people looking at you right now staring at you from across the f—ing street from where you live, enjoy this mother-f—er,” Mr Sykes was allegedly recorded saying.

“You’re dead, and baby, I’m catching up with you.”

Another threat issued by Mr Sykes said: “Pity you weren’t home, but at least we know where you live so, we’ll be saying ‘G’day’.”

• Seemingly TRIGGERED by the prospect of CARF’s rally, the EAM/NSN made minor nuisances of themselves ahead of the rally, with one member posing for a photograph outside the home of local comedian Sean Bedlam. This was apparently done in order to intimidate Sean, who is currently battling cancer, but whose major crime was YARDing at the boys at their demo to demand Lebensraum in May.

• Today, Simone Fox Koob and Ben Schneiders wrote about Croatian sporting clubs with fascist links promised millions in public money (The Age, July 31, 2023).

• John HoWARd has done the country proud again in the pages of The New York Times, with his batshit claim that Colonization Was the ‘Luckiest Thing’ to Happen to Australia (Natasha Frost, July 26, 2023). The former Prime Minister’s Boomerwaffen historical analysis has naturally been the subject of some derision but, in fairness to the warmonger, it could just as easily be recognised as the bedrock of Australian conservatism.

In its current mode, this ideology is reflected in the program of the Australian franchise of the Trumpist ‘Conservative Political Action Conference’, set to take place at Star Event Centre in Sydney next month, when it will be addressed by another former PM, Tony Abbott, who will be giving the keynote speech. Joining The Mad Monk at the carnival of reactionary stoopid will be the founders of Christian nationalist crowdfunding site GiveSendGo, which has happily raised tens of thousands of dollars for the NSN …

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Yeah Nah Pasaran! #171 w Max Kaiser on Jewish Antifascism and the False Promise of Settler Colonialism : July 27, 2023

Posted on July 26, 2023 by @ndy

This week on Yeah Nah Pasaran! we talk to Max Kaiser [Twitter] about Jewish Antifascism and the False Promise of Settler Colonialism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) which:

takes a timely look at histories of radical Jewish movements, their modes of Holocaust memorialisation, and their relationships with broader anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles. Its primary focus is Australia, where Jewish antifascism was a major political and cultural force in Jewish communities in the 1940s and early 1950s. This cultural and intellectual history of Jewish antifascism utilises a transnational lens to provide an exploration of a Jewish antifascist ideology that took hold in the middle of the twentieth century across Jewish communities worldwide. It argues that Jewish antifascism offered an alternate path for Jewish politics that was foreclosed by mutually reinforcing ideologies of settler colonialism, both in Palestine and Australia.

We last spoke to Max in May 2020 about Jews against fascism (and prior to that in June 2017) and of course look forward to talking to him again in the future …

See also : For Australian Jews in the 1940s and 1950s, remembering the Holocaust meant fighting racism and colonialism, Max Kaiser, The Conversation, March 17, 2023 | How this part of Australia almost became Israel, Emma Brancatisano, SBS, July 21, 2023. On settler colonialism especially, see : ‘Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native’, Patrick Wolfe, Journal of Genocide Research, Vol.8, No.4 (2006) [PDF].

4.30pm, Thursday, July 27, 2023 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website

• This episode will be available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify and other platforms after broadcast.
• We also have a Facebook page for the show, which you’re invited to ‘Like’ and to ‘Follow’.
• I have a Patreon account which youse are also invited to support.

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antifa notes (july 24, 2023) : jock, sunshine, gyms, geelong, nazis …

Posted on July 24, 2023 by @ndy

1

Last week on Yeah Nah Pasaran! we spoke to Jock Palfreeman [Twitter] about the International Day of Solidarity with Anti-fascist Prisoners, July 25. Of particular note is the repression currently being faced by anarchists and anti-fascists in Belarus and Russia.

2

Following a neo-Nazi publicity stunt a few weeks ago, tomorrow (Tuesday, July 25) there will be a rally at Geelong Town Hall to denounce neo-Nazism and racism.

3

Local neo-Nazis belonging to Tom Sewell’s ‘National Socialist Network’ are holding a gathering this Saturday (July 29) at their headquarters at Legacy Boxing Gym in Sunshine. The nazis have been happily sieg-heiling at Tim Lutze‘s small business since December last year when its operations were exposed in The Age (Inside the Melbourne boxing gym with a neo-Nazi underbelly, David Escourt, December 24, 2022). The Campaign Against Racism and Fascism [Facebook/Twitter] have organised a rally to protest the latest nazi recruitment drive.

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Yeah Nah Pasaran! #169 w Ashley Mattheis on Atomwaffen, The Allen, Texas, Attack & More : July 13, 2023

Posted on July 12, 2023 by @ndy

Above: Tim Wilms (The Unhinged) and Jarrad Searby (Proud Boys/National Socialist Network/Finks/Melbourne Magistrates’ Court) pose for the camera. Wilms is wearing RWDS merch popularised by the Proud Boys and, more recently, mass murderer Mauricio Garcia.

This week on Yeah Nah Pasaran! we talk to Ashley Mattheis [Twitter]. Ashley has a PhD. in Communication, is a feminist and studies the material effects of cultural production and consumption, the use of web-based media, and online misogynies. She was a previous guest of ours in April 2021 when we talked about memes, Momfluencers, Shieldmaidens & moar. On this episode we spoke to Ashley about the ongoing legacy of the defunct Atomwaffen Division in its various guises and as part of a wider network of neo-Nazi terror; Mauricio Garcia, the Allen, Texas, mass shooting and the importance of applying an intersectional analytic framework to aid our understanding of such events.

See also : The Allen, Texas, Attack: Ideological Fuzziness and the Contemporary Nature of Far-Right Violence, Ashley A. Mattheis, Amarnath Amarasingam, Graham Macklin, Marc-André Argentino, CTC Sentinel, Vol.16, No.6, June 2023 | Atomwaffen Division and its Affiliates on Telegram: Variations, Practices, and Interconnections, Ashley Mattheis, RESOLVE Network, 2022. On Right Wing Death Squads as meme, see : Tracing the Odnoklassniki Profile of the Texas Mall Shooter, Aric Toler, Bellingcat, May 9, 2023 | How the Texas Shooter’s RWDS Patch Became a Meme, Zach D. Roberts, The Progressive, May 10, 2023.

4.30pm, Thursday, July 13, 2023 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website

• This episode will be available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify and other platforms after broadcast.
• We also have a Facebook page for the show, which you’re invited to ‘Like’ and to ‘Follow’.
• I have a Patreon account which youse are also invited to support.

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Yeah Nah Pasaran! #168 w Isabella Currie on The Wagner Group : July 6, 2023

Posted on July 4, 2023 by @ndy
    Thank you to everybody who donated to 3CR during Radiothon. With your help YNP! managed to raise just over $7,000 for the station in order to stay radical and continue to ‘provide a vital platform for the issues that get left behind, and the voices that get silenced’. You rock!

This week on Yeah Nah Pasaran! we talk to Isabella Currie [Twitter] about The Wagner Group. Isabella is a PhD student @ La Trobe and her research revolves around the Wagner Group’s role in international relations. We spoke to her about the Group, its operations in Africa and Ukraine, its role in Russian politics, and about its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and his relationship to Putin and his regime.

See also : Exporting Autocracy: Evgenii Prigozhin, the Wagner Group and the Putin Regime’s Scramble for Africa | The rise of Yevgeny Prigozhin: how a one-time food caterer became Vladimir Putin’s biggest threat, Robert Horvath and Isabella Currie, The Conversation, June 26, 2023.

4.30pm, Thursday, July 6, 2023 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website

• This episode will be available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify and other platforms after broadcast.
• We also have a Facebook page for the show, which you’re invited to ‘Like’ and to ‘Follow’.
• I have a Patreon account which youse are also invited to support.

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Yeah Nah Pasaran! #167 w Elise Thomas on anti-drag activism, Putin & Prigozhin : June 29, 2023

Posted on June 28, 2023 by @ndy
    The 3CR Radiothon is almost over. Thus far, we’ve managed to raise over $2,000 in donations: thank you so much to all who’ve contributed to help keep radical radio on the air! If you’d like to join them, please see our fundraiser.

This week on Yeah Nah Pasaran! we talk to Elise Thomas [Twitter]. Elise is a senior OSINT analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), an investigator at the Centre for Information Resilience and in June 2020 was a previous guest of the show (on QAnon and conspiracy). On this episode we spoke to Elise about a new ISD report, A Year of Hate: Understanding Threats and Harassment Targeting Drag Shows and the LGBTQ+ Community, which ‘analyses the narratives, themes, actors and tactics involved in anti-drag activism in the US, UK, Australia and France’ between May 2022 and May 2023. We also spoke to her about Prigozhin versus Putin. (The report includes an interesting definition of ‘extremism’: ‘the advocacy of a system of belief that claims the superiority and dominance of one identity-based ‘in-group’ over all ‘out-groups.’ It propagates a dehumanising ‘othering’ mind-set that is antithetical to pluralism and the universal application of human rights.’)

See also : Illawarra community rallies in support of Rainbow Storytime event amid far-right protests, Ainslie Drewitt-Smith and Nick McLaren, ABC, June 25, 2023 | ‘Wall of gay’ defends drag story time, Petrina Harley, Green Left Weekly, June 13, 2023 | Why Prigozhin’s march on Moscow was not a coup, William Partlett, University of Melbourne, June 26, 2023 | ‘Putin needed to do this’: ‘Aussie Cossack’ finds method in Russia’s madness, Perry Duffin, The Age, June 25, 2023.

4.30pm, Thursday, June 29, 2023 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website

• This episode will be available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify and other platforms after broadcast.
• We also have a Facebook page for the show, which you’re invited to ‘Like’ and to ‘Follow’.
• I have a Patreon account which youse are also invited to support.

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Yeah Nah Pasaran! #166 w Bill Peel on Black Metal, Red Politics : June 22, 2023

Posted on June 21, 2023 by @ndy
    June is Radiothon Month at Melbourne community radio station 3CR. We’ve published a fundraiser on GiveNow to which you’re welcome to contribute and help keep community radio on the air.

This week on Yeah Nah Pasaran! we talk to Bill Peel, author of Tonight It’s a World We Bury: Black Metal, Red Politics (Repeater Books, 2023) ‘a radical re-writing of the history and politics of black metal music’.

See/hear also : Disgrace To The Corpse Of Sid & Unhindered By Talent | Black Metal Rainbows, Daniel Lukes and Stanimir Panayotov (eds), PM Press, 2023 | Darkthrone’s A Blaze in the Northern Sky, Ross Hagen, Bloomsbury Academic, 2020 | Girls Against God, Jenny Hval, Verso Books, 2023 | ‘How black is black metal?’, Kevin Coogan, HITLIST, February/March 1999 | 666 International by Dodheimsgard /// Aesthethica by Liturgy /// Dead as Dreams by Weakling /// Transilvanian Hunger by Darkthrone /// Excalibur by Bad News /// Two Hunters by Wolves In The Throne Room.

4.30pm, Thursday, June 22, 2023 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website

• This episode will be available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify and other platforms after broadcast.
• We also have a Facebook page for the show, which you’re invited to ‘Like’ and to ‘Follow’.
• I have a Patreon account which youse are also invited to support.

Posted in !nataS, Anarchism, Anti-fascism, Art, Broken Windows, Cats, Death, History, Media, Music, Poetry, Sex & Sexuality, State / Politics, That's Capitalism!, Uncategorized, War on Terror | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Yeah Nah Pasaran! #165 w Molly Conger on Charlottesville, courts, justice and crying nazis : June 8, 2023

Posted on June 6, 2023 by @ndy
    June is Radiothon Month at Melbourne community radio station 3CR.

    The station needs your help to ‘Stay Radical’ and provide a vital platform for the issues that get left behind, and the voices that get silenced. We need the community to ‘Stay Tuned’ to diverse voices and alternative perspectives in order to create meaningful social change. Please help the station to build and expand this critical media outlet, and encourage others to ‘Stay Tuned, Stay Radical’.

    You can help YNP! and 3CR stay radikal on the air by making a donation.

This week on Yeah Nah Pasaran! we talk to Molly Conger [Twitter]. Molly is a Socialist Dog Mom and the publisher of The Devil’s Advocates. Currently, Molly is examining the burning hate that’s coursed through Charlottesville and the United States in the last few years and how the courts judge the men responsible for carrying the torch.

4.30pm, Thursday, June 8, 2023 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website

• This episode will be available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify and other platforms after broadcast.
• We also have a Facebook page for the show, which you’re invited to ‘Like’ and to ‘Follow’.
• I have a Patreon account which youse are also invited to support.

Posted in Anti-fascism, Broken Windows, Death, History, Media, Sex & Sexuality, State / Politics, Student movement, Television, That's Capitalism!, War on Terror | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Yeah Nah Pasaran! #164 w Siân Norris on Bodies Under Siege: How the Far–Right Attack on Reproductive Rights Went Global : June 1, 2023

Posted on May 31, 2023 by @ndy

This week on Yeah Nah Pasaran! we talk to Siân Norris [Twitter]. Siân is a writer and the author of Bodies Under Siege: How the Far–Right Attack on Reproductive Rights Went Global (Verso, 2023):

Think today’s anti-abortion ideas are rooted in religious prohibitions or arguments about where life begins? Wrong: today’s anti-abortion movements [are] largely financed and planned by far-right extremists. Many of them are avowedly fascist and white supremacist, afraid of a “great replacement” of the world’s white population by other races, who are working hard to reshape governments and policies across Europe, North America and around the world. Much of this far-right organizing and funding network, however, has been overlooked by today’s feminist and left movements.

As investigative journalist Sian Norris uncovers here, it is through attacking abortion rights that fascist ideas from the dark web, incel chat boards, and fringe organizations comes to enter mainstream debate — and to then shape governmental policy across Europe, from authoritarian regimes like Hungary’s to liberal democracies like Britain. As Norris goes undercover at anti-abortion activist meetings, and pieces together the money trail linking American think tanks to far-right fascist groups, she maps out the pipeline by which fascism has become respectable across the Global North by taking away women’s reproductive rights and autonomy.

You can read more of Siân’s work at Byline Times, The Guardian and elsewhere.

4.30pm, Thursday, June 1, 2023 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website

• This episode will be available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify and other platforms after broadcast.
• We also have a Facebook page for the show, which you’re invited to ‘Like’ and to ‘Follow’.
• I have a Patreon account which youse are also invited to support.

Posted in Anti-fascism, Death, History, Media, Sex & Sexuality, State / Politics, Student movement, That's Capitalism!, War on Terror | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment