slackbastard

Turning Point Fortress Australia

Unsurprisingly, batshit right-wing Yanqui binfluencer (and mAAAd Trumpist) Candace Owens has been denied a visa to Australia, thus preventing her from entertaining the local Turning Point fanboys and other political bizarr0s who’d planned on attending her performances next month. With Cheet0 Mussolini even odds to RETVRN to the White House next week, I’m reminded of Owens’ incredible testimony at the House Judiciary Committee hearing into ‘Hate Crimes and the Rise of White Nationalism’ in April 2019, which included the classic line ‘If [the Democrats] actually were concerned about White nationalism, they would be holding hearings on Antifa, a far-left violent White gang’. That, and the fact that at the same event a funny statement she made at the launch of Turning Point UK in December 2018 was played:

I agree. I actually don’t have any problems at all with the word ‘nationalism’. I think that it gets — the definition gets poisoned by elitists that actually want globalism. Globalism is what I don’t want. So, when you think about whenever we say nationalism, the first thing people think about, at least in America, is Hitler. You know, he was a national socialist. But if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, okay, fine. The problem is, is that he wanted — he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalize. He wanted everybody to be German, everybody to be speaking German —

— and nobody likes a thinker. Still, like Daddy Trump, there’s no argument that Owens has the best words.

As the basis for his decision to deny her a visa, Immigration Minister Tony Burke has claimed that Owens ‘incite discord in almost every direction’ and that ‘Australia’s national interest is best served when Candace Owens is somewhere else’ (see : Conservative US commentator Candace Owens refused entry to Australia ahead of national speaking tour, Melissa Mackay, ABC, October 27, 2024 /// Australia rejects visa application by rightwing US pundit Candace Owens, Josh Butler, The Guardian, October 27, 2024). Further, ‘Burke told Nine newspapers in August that he had asked his department for a brief on her visit and consulted the federal antisemitism envoy, Jillian Segal’, though I’m unaware of exactly what Segal provided to him in way of response.

No doubt that there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of tour promoters Rocksman (George Zacharia) and Turning Point Australia (Joel Jammal).

Speaking of Turning Point, in the UK on the weekend Lawrence Fox was a no-show at the London rally for the patron saint of gammon, ‘Tommy Robinson’ (AKA Stephen Yaxley-Lennon). Former tanning-salon owner Yaxley-Lennon was also absent, having been remanded in custody for being a naughty boy. Still, along with a glittering array of local talent, ‘there were a number of international guests including Lutz Bachman from PEGIDA in Germany, Ezra Levant from Rebel Media in Canada and a group of speakers from the French Identitarian group Collectif Némésis’.

In other news, a very patriotic fellow (neo-Nazi) from Worcester by the name of Callum Parslow was convicted of the attempted murder an Eritrean man a few days ago. ‘Parslow said he “spent a lot of time on the internet”, while working night shifts and having no social life. “I would get angry seeing a lot of the articles that were online,” he said. “It just makes you angry.”’

‘Concerning.’

Sunshine Days

I recently read Vashti Fox’s PhD thesis “I believe in the sun. Even when it’s not shining:” Militant antifascism in Australia, 1970-2016 (UWA, 2024). It’s an interesting account, traversing many key moments in the recent history of anti-fascist political activism in Australia. We interviewed Vashti about anti-fascism in 1970s Melbourne & 1980s Perth in November 2021 (see/hear also : James Hogg on Greek & Yugoslavian Anti-Fascism in Melbourne’s “Long 1960s”, September 2024) for YNP! and I was one of a number of people Vashti interviewed as part of her research. On my reading:

The analysis applies a fairly conventional Marxist framework to the subject — one supplemented by the critical distinction between ‘liberal’ and ‘militant’ antifascism — in an attempt to formulate (the beginnings of) a localised (Australian) form of faschismustheorie: essentially, ‘how antifascist activists understand their opponents’. In this context, given that there’s been a relative paucity of scholarship on the subject, a focus upon the period 1970–2016 makes sense. And while I’d characterise ‘liberal antifascism’ as being a ‘natural’ (or inevitable) expression of hegemonic liberalism (including in its social democratic forms), ‘militant antifascism’ is further distinguished by Fox between its ‘anarchist’ and ‘socialist’ manifestations. This dynamic duo shares a rejection of the former, but according to Fox often diverges on questions of organisation and political strategy (and, to some extent, their understanding of ‘fascism’). This, at least, is the broad outline (Chapters One and Two) of the thesis, filled in by detailed examinations of particular events, mostly centred on Melbourne, in Chapters Three to Seven.

You can read some further reflections on Patreon.