It’s election time in Sweden, and the far right, in the shape of the ‘Sweden Democrats’, appears to be on the rise. The party apparently has its origins in a far-right groupuscule/campaign titled ‘Keep Sweden Swedish’, sentiment echoed by former British PM Gordon Brown in his ‘British Jobs for British Workers’, delivered by the Scot at the 2007 Labour Party conference. Presumably, it won’t be very long before the same slogan is adopted by one of the major parties in Australia.
The Swedish election brings with it some faint echoes of the recent Australian election, at least insofar as the two major blocs — the ruling centre-right coalition and the opposition Red-Green bloc — are evenly divided in popularity, as were the ruling centre-right Labor and the Coalition in Australia. In Sweden, immigration and Islam appear to be issues of slightly greater concern to a larger and more significant minority; certainly, the ‘Sweden Democrats’ are hoping to capitalise upon anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic feeling. In Australia, on the other hand, the demise of Hansonism, and the successful absorption of much xenophobic sentiment by the major parties, has provided a significant obstacle to the (re-)emergence of far-right populism; rather, a progressive challenge has crystallised in the shape of the Greens.
The “crunch point” of Sunday’s election though, according to Karlsson, is denying the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats a kingmaker role.
Immigrants make up 14 percent of the country’s 9.4 million population. The largest immigrant group is from neighbouring Finland, followed by people from Iraq, the former Yugoslavia and Poland.
The Sweden Democrats maintain that immigration has been ignored as an issue in Swedish politics.
The party has traditionally viewed immigration an economic burden, draining the welfare system and channelling jobs to newcomers who work for lower wages.
According to Karlsson, over the past few years, the party has managed to widen its appeal. “This used to be seen as a party for skinheads,” said Karlsson. “But now they seem to be men in suits. Party leader Jimme Akesson has been credited for toning down their arguments and their language and he’s also thrown out some of the more radical elements from the party,” said Karlsson.
Anyway. Here’s the vid (click on the CC button for English translation):
The annual ‘Sydney Forum’ — Australia’s premiere fascist gathering — is taking place again this weekend.
Somewhere in Sydney, of all places.
The Forum brings together the dregs of the local fascist movement: members of the Australia First Party/Eureka Youth League, Blood & Honour, New Right/‘national anarchists’, One Nation Party, Volksfront, and various other racist kooks belonging to other, even tinier fascist groupuscules, or operating as independent loons.
The event takes place in two separate venues, neither of which are publicly identified as such — presumably in order to avoid The Bear Jew making trouble for the assembled patriots. In previous years, the second day’s events have taken place at AF Party headquarters in Tempe. Otherwise, last year’s Forum was kindly made possible by the Returned Services League branch @ Petersham; in 2008, there was no Forum, while in 2007, Eastwood RSL were the proud hosts. In 2006, Estonian House provided a temporary home to the fascists, while in 2005 the Russian Social Club said nyet to the neo-Nazis. In 2004 it was Bexley RSL’s opportunity to Throw The Jew Down The Well of Australian history.
And so on and so forth.
Last year’s Forum was a triumph, apparently, not least because, according to Dr James Saleam, as a result of a small group of protesters attending the first day’s proceedings: “One significant ‘plus’ out of this nuisance was that a key libeller and inciter of violence against patriotic people, Andy Moran, a Melbourne-based leftist, was identified and photographed for the first time…”
Of course, in reality, I was safely tucked away in a black helicopter many miles above the Forum, where I shall be again this year, and from which vantage point I shall once again be employing highly-sophisticated, Israeli technology to eavesdrop upon the inner-most thoughts of those careless enough not to attend the Forum without the appropriate headgear.
The fools!
The speakers whose thoughts I will be monitoring from on high include Canadian Holocaust denialist Paul Fromm, John McGrath (seemingly a former candidate for Australians Against Further Immigration in 2007 and the Progressive Conservative Party in 1980) and Rob McIntyre, a man dedicated to Better Living Resources. (According to its website, “Better Living Resources proudly supports Eagle House – a vision for the transformation for women and their children”. Eagle House is in turn a project of ‘GHS Ministries’ and the ‘Hope Foundation’.) McIntyre addressed the Inverell Forum in 2006–2009, in 2007 along with MC Welf Herfurth. Other speakers are Rob Halford — who apparently embodies the Voice of Reason but not, disappointingly, that of Judas Priest — and of course Dr James Saleam.
Brendon O’Connell and Peter Spencer have cancelled their appearances.
In other news…
One of the d00ds what came to Newtown last month to spread agitprop on behalf of the APP has been revealed as a member of the Australian Navy. Presumably, Joel Buckley looks forward to being posted up north, where he can show those “DIRTY, CAMEL FUCKING, RAG HEADED PIECES OF SHIT” that we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.
Onya mate.
Over the pond, Upper Hutt mother Lisa Marie Thompson has been exposed as a liar, as well as having bad taste in both license plates and politics. Thus:
A woman who claims that her personalised licence plate “ARYAN1” is the initial and surname of a former boyfriend has links to white supremacist groups and is backed by the National Front.
Upper Hutt mother Lisa Marie Thompson – who has references to neo-Nazi white-power organisation Blood & Honour on a personal webpage – has denied being racist.
She said she had no idea what “Aryan” meant and the apparent nod to Adolf Hitler’s “master” race actually referred to her former boyfriend – Andrew Ryan.
However, Ms Thompson, 32 – whose licence plate sparked a complaint to roading authorities – has links to white supremacist groups which appear active in Wellington.
The Facebook page of the body piercer, seamstress and mother of three includes “friends” posing before swastika flags and claiming allegiance to “white nationalist” skinhead groups such as Crew 38 and Hammerskin Nation…
I tells ya, this mob couldn’t lie straight in bed.
Noon
Chilean Consulate
Level 13, 390 St Kilda Road
Melbourne, Australia
In Chile, 32 Mapuche prisoners are on a hunger strike. Their protest, which began over two months ago, is intended to highlight the use by the Chilean government of Pinochet-era anti-terror legislation to criminalise Mapuche struggles for land rights and self-determination.
SANTIAGO – Two Mapuche Indian activists freed on bail by a judge in southern Chile’s Araucania region said they will continue the hunger strike they started 65 days ago with more than 30 still-jailed comrades.
Sergio Catrilao and Pablo Canio were released Tuesday after posting bail of roughly $2,000 each.
“We will go on with the (hunger) strike until the end,” Catrilao told reporters amid a crush of family members and supporters.
Canio and Catrilao are accused in last year’s burning of a bus in Temuco, the main urban center in Araucania, where Mapuches have been torching vehicles, highway toll booths and lumber shipments as part of a campaign to reclaim ancestral lands from agribusiness and forest products companies.
The Chilean government is currently holding 106 Mapuches – most of them awaiting trial – for politically motivated crimes against property.
They remain in custody under an anti-terrorism law imposed during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
The Mapuche prisoners on hunger strike demand the scrapping of the anti-terror act, which allows the state to hold people for up to two years without charges, to restrict defense attorneys’ access to evidence and to use testimony from anonymous witnesses…
The rally has been organised by the ‘Chilean Popular & Indigenous Solidarity Network’ and the ‘Latin American Solidarity Network’ (LASNET). Note that LASNET is holding a big fat conference/solidarity gathering on October 15, 16, 17 @ Trades Hall, with lots of great speakers from Latin America, Australia and the region, along with workshops on a divers range of subjects, ‘Building Bridges and Global Resistance against Multinational Corporations’.
July 1, 2009, the British Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld a complaint from 10 concerned citizens regarding:
An ad, which appeared in Delicious Magazine and Sainsbury’s Magazine, for Antonio Federici Gelato Italiano ice cream, [and] showed a priest and a nun looking as if they were about to kiss. The nun was in full habit and the priest was wearing rosary beads around his neck and holding a pot of ice cream in his hand. Text stated “KISS TEMPTATION”.
Over twelve months later (September 15, 2010), Antonio Federici Gelato Italiano ice cream done it again, with a similar complaint also being upheld by the ASA:
A magazine ad for Antonio Federici ice cream showed a heavily pregnant woman dressed as a nun standing in a church holding a tub of ice cream in one hand and a spoon in the other. Text stated “Immaculately Conceived … ICE CREAM IS OUR RELIGION”.
The Australian Army Counterinsurgency and Small Wars Reading Guide
edited by Jeffrey Grey
Land Warfare Studies Centre
Working Paper No.135
September 2009
[PDF]
Historical case studies
Insurgent or irregular warfare played a role in the wars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, though it was never the decisive element in its own right. During the American War of Independence, the Civil War, and Napoleon’s war in Spain, guerrilla or irregular forces were an important—even vital—adjunct to the operations of regular armies, and their contributions need to be understood in that context. The international anarchist movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the al-Qaeda of its time, given to spectacular acts of terrorism usually involving the assassination of crowned heads and other leading political figures of the established order. It provides a useful comparison for terrorist activities more recently.
Pre-20th Century
Walter Edgar, Partisans & Redcoats: The Southern Conflict That Turned the Tide of the American Revolution, William Morrow, New York, 2001
John Grenier, The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2005
Thomas Goodrich, Black Flag: Guerrilla Warfare on the Western Border, 1861–1865, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1995
Don W Alexander, Rod of Iron: French Counterinsurgency Policy in Aragon during the Peninsular War, Scholarly Resources Inc, Wilmington, 1985
Charles J Esdaile, Fighting Napoleon: Guerrillas, Bandits and Adventurers in Spain, 1808–1814, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2004
John Lawrence Tone, The Fatal Knot: The Guerrilla War in Navarre and the Defeat of Napoleon in Spain, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1994
Whitney Kassel, ‘Terrorism and the International Anarchist Movement of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol. 32, No. 3, March 2009
NB. The Land Warfare Studies Centre (LWSC) is the Army’s principal conceptual research institution. The LWSC supports the Chief of Army, Army Headquarters and the Army as a whole through a range of research, publication, conference and visiting fellow programs.
The Land Warfare Studies Centre is tasked to:
* Promote the wider understanding and appreciation of land warfare
* Provide an institutional focus for applied research into the study of land warfare, and
* Raise the level of professional and intellectual debate within the Australian Army
People Of Color Organize! is a new-ish (March 2010) blog edited by Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin and Ernesto Aguilar. Ernesto is described as being a “former anti-authoritarian”, a description which poses a rather awkward question. I dunno: maybe Ernesto was sick of taking shit from Black bloc advice guy? But anyway. Who Cares about the White Working Class?
Srsly.
Walter Benn Michaels reviews the book of that title (edited by Kjartan Páll Sveinsson, Runnymede Perspectives, 2009) in the London Review of Books, Vol.31, No.16, August 27, 2009.
left flank is another new-ish blog, “from two generations and three countries”. One of the main contributors is Elizabeth Humphrys, who’s recently composed a brief essay on the subject of ‘Our s11’ (Overland blog, September 11, 2010).
The latest # of Overland also contains an essay by Chris Graham on ‘Telling whites what they want to hear… Chris Graham on the trouble with Noel Pearson’. It’s a rather damning portrayal: “Born black but raised Lutheran, Pearson will never lead Cape York out of the darkness of welfare dependency until he learns to accept personal responsibility for his own ‘grievous failing’: a complete lack of authenticity in the eyes of his people.” You can read Pearson in The Australian.
Speaking of leftists, word on the street is that Insurgent Notes : Journal of Communist Theory and Practice — especially Loren Goldner’s essay on ‘The Historical Moment That Produced Us’ — is now required reading for all aspiring Red Green politicians. I can also exclusively reveal that, as a result of the tireless efforts of the SLACKBASTARD Investigations Unit, the Greens are on the verge of a split, with a majority of the party leadership formally seeking to join the Satanic Reds. A small but determined minority — the so-called ‘Lennonist Party Faction’ — is preparing to ditch Dr Bob Brown in favour of the impending Hippo Revolution. An even smaller grouping, inspired by their covert reading of the Theoretical Journal of the American Party of Labor, is preparing to re-launch the Hoxha-ite tradition in Australia. (See also : The Red Phoenix.)
Marxism-Leninism
“Hoxhaism” is a word sometimes used to describe the supporters of the line of Enver Hoxha, the Albanian leader who portrayed himself as a defender of Marxism-Leninism. Seeking to uphold Marxist-Leninist theory, Hoxha defended Stalin from revisionist attacks and expressed his disdain for Brezhnevism, Titoism, Eurocommunism, Maoism, “anti-dogmatic” movements and other covers for revisionism and social-democracy. “Hoxhaism,” then, is the defense of Marxist-Leninist theory and practice, and “Hoxhaists” refer to themselves as Marxist-Leninists.
“The book Lenin and the children belonged to the first readings of a Socialist childhood” writes somebody-or-other. My own encounter with the book in question came many years later, but I was still touched by its contents.
Of course, the replacement of Lenin by Stalin as head of the Russian state was an historical rupture of immense significance the consequences of which nobody-could-possibly-have-predicted-and-didn’t-and-anyway look behind you 14 imperialist armies!
Where was I?
Oh yeah.
The Roots of Stalin in the Tea Party Movement (Yasha Levine, AlterNet, April 17, 2010): “The Koch family, America’s biggest financial backers of the Tea Party, would not be the billionaires they are today were it not for the godless empire of the USSR.”
It’s a conspiracy!
Which fact reminds me of something…
jew on this is a blog by “unashamedly left-wing radical ratbags, diasporists, feminists, queerying gender and sexuality, anti-racist, embracing of nuance, working within the academic and activist worlds, bringing the humour and entertaining writing, and wanting to do it all from and within our jewishnesses”.
David Walsh writes (September 8, 2010) on behalf of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) regarding The Stieg Larsson phenomenon, and he detects several troublesome notes, including the fact that:
The books exhibit a type of left-wing or anarchist “vigilantism” that will not help anyone. Salander in particular is remorseless in exacting personal and painful revenge, and generally the reader feels urged to side with her. The books revel in Salander’s desire for retribution, including her childhood fantasy of setting her malevolent father on fire. Even her researching, i.e., computer hacking, has overtones of physical violence: “If there was any dirt to be dug up, she would home in on it like a cruise missile. … Her reports could be a catastrophe for the individual who landed in her radar.”
October 16 is International Day of Action for Jock Palfreeman. Jock is an Australian convicted of murder and attempted murder in Bulgaria, currently appealing a 20+ year sentence for the crimes, committed while attempting to defend himself from a fascist gang on the streets of Sofia.
It has been announced that Jock’s appeal trial will commence on Thursday 21st October 2010 in the Sofia Central Courthouse. The appeal is based on assessing the previous judge’s review and comments on the case rather than reassessing evidence and statements. The appeal court has already rejected three requests from Jock’s defence lawyer.
1) To review the remaining CCTV footage with a CCTV technology expert (showing partial evidence of the initial attack from Andrei Monov and his group on the two young boys);
2) Receive expert evidence on the extreme levels of Andrei Monov’s intoxication of 0.3% and the social implications (although the group with him all indicated “I did not see Andrei have a single alcoholic drink throughout the evening, most of us only had one or two but he did not drink”);
3) To review in detail key forensic evidence.
An event will be held in Sydney @ Circular Quay @ noon. There will be other events held throughout Europe, UK and the USA. For moar infos, please contact freejock[at]live[dot]com[dot]au.
Nicolas Cage once took magic mushrooms with his cat. And he thought his pet was his brother. How cool is that? (Nicolas Cage took drugs with cat, Reuters, July 17, 2010.)
Courtesy of Luke Buckmaster in Crikey and Richard Watts at ArtsHub, Richard Wolstencroft, the fascist director of the Melbourne Underground Film Festival, has lashed out at critics — and declared that some of his best friends are, indeed, black.
Richard Wolstencroft, director [of] the Melbourne Underground Film Festival (MUFF), has responded to a series of questions in relation to this blog post, which was originally published last Thursday (September 2) and focused on an online smear campaign against him conducted by an ex-MUFF volunteer with some heavy accusations and a big axe to grind. The original post is, unedited, below…
The Melbourne Underground Film Festival (MUFF), which closed on August 29 with a successful screening of the banned film L.A. Zombie by Canadian shock auteur Bruce LaBruce – the second screening of the film at the festival – has been the subject of a vituperative attack by an individual believed to be a MUFF ex-volunteer…
(NB. Luke also writes about film for Spookmag, one of the media sponsors of MUFF. ArtsHub, for which Richard writes, was established by The Dramatic Group P/L. The Group also established another MUFF sponsor: ScreenHub.)
Fascism
The blog at the centre of the controversy is titled Richard Wolstencroft’s Unconcealedness: “A collection of damning quotes from the “Aristocratic Fascist” and director of the Melbourne Underground Film Festival, taken from Facebook and elsewhere.” The (unauthorised) collection basically confirms what Richard has already repeatedly informed The World of regarding his political views: he’s a fascist. Only, the quotes express his enthusiasm for the subject rather more crudely than it has been elsewhere.
…the Nazis only wanted a united Europe like the EU, anyway, in essence. They were a little excesses [sic]. But that can be forgiven now given some historical distance. WW2 was a pointless civil war brought on by British arrogance. Hitler would have protected the British Empire and it would exist in a greater glory to this day if he had been allowed to. In the end England has lost everything and parts of London now resemble Afghanistan. Some [v]ictory!
Wolstencroft is no stranger to controversy, and actively cultivates it. In this sense, he’s a provocateur — one whose actions can readily be understood as having fairly crass, commercial, and therefore otherwise unremarkable motivations. Michelle Griffin writes (Bad reputation, The Age, June 26, 2004):
Wolstencroft, 35, has been infuriating Melburnians for more than a decade, since he founded The Hellfire Club, the fashionable S&M club, back in 1992, under his rather bland pseudonym, Richard Masters.
For years, he was the public face of the leather and lace-up crowd, generating headlines with calls to loosen pornography laws, and ill-advised plans for Nazi dress-up nights. (Ultimately cancelled after protests.)
Wolstencroft’s adherence to some form of revitalised fascism, however, does not seem to have been adopted simply for its effect but, rather, is the product of considered, and serious, reflection.
In 2003, the slogan for the festival, then in its fourth year, was ‘This time it’s political’. (See also : Scribblings: Richard’s Fascist Flirtation, The Review, August 2003.) Wolstencroft elaborated upon the meaning of ‘politics’ and his own perspective in his Director’s statement, declaring himself to be a ‘fascist’, albeit ‘transcendental’: “Transcendental fascism as a concept interests me because it is transcendental.” (Wolstencroft failed to add that transcendental fascism, as a giant hedgehog named Spiny Norman, scares him.)
Later, Wolstencroft declared that “I… have invented a political theory known as Transcendental Fascism, a non-racist regenerated form of fascism”.
A kinder, gentler fascism.
Well. Kinda…
Wolstencroft the New Inventor references the Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), who “subtly” — perhaps too subtly — “attempted to bring both the University and… the [Nazi] party under the umbrella of his thought”. According to Wolstencroft, Heidegger’s fascism was ‘transcendental’: non-racist, non-sexist and rational (and therefore well-equipped to fight metaphysical and religious quackery): Wolstencroft’s phantasy is of “a second Greek epoch”, not the sordid fascism “of Bush, Sharon, Blair” et. al.. Further:
A new conception of fascism will take into account the inherent paradoxes of its nature and dialogue and interact with other political philosophies worthy of integration like Anarchism, Socialism and conceptions of justice, equality, liberty and autonomy. One of my philosophy professors said this theory sounded nothing at all like fascism, and I replied “good”. But why the moniker fascism at all? What is that line from Salo, “We fascists are the only true anarchists” that haunts me? Well I believe fascism to be about the brute application of power and that all politics is inherently fascist in nature. Why transcendental then? Because in the name of Sex, I want to change and temper this brute fact but still retain the only force possible to truly fight the oppressive status quo! A paradox, of course, like the fact that there are beings rather than nothing.
Genius.
Festival
The 2003 MUFF program included a number of films emanating from the Institute for Historical Review/Noontide Press, a US-based group and publisher which specialises in Holocaust denial. The one which caused the most controversy featured British Nazi historian David Irving (1938–). Barred from entering Australia, his banning prompted the 1993 speech which forms the basis of the film. It’s described by MUFF as follows:
The Search for Truth in History
David Irving’s address, recorded in 1993 following his ban from visiting Australia, is his response to this outlandish state of affairs. This session will hopefully include a live post screening phone hook up with David Irving in the USA so he can speak directly with an Australian audience and answer questions. Stay tuned as we ‘go over the top’ and fight censorship for real.
And by the IHR:
Here is the famed British [h]istorian’s witty brilliant response to the Australian government’s 1993 order banning him from the country, and the organized Jewish campaign behind it. Irving is at his dynamic best here as he describes the world-wide efforts to prosecute, ban and censor him, and explains the evidence that convinced him that there were no “gassings” at Auschwitz. A moving testimony to a great historian’s commitment to historical truth and freedom of speech.
Wolstencroft arranged for the screening of three other films produced and distributed by IHR/Noontide at the 2003 MUFF, each edited versions of speeches delivered at one of a number of gatherings organised by the Institute. Aside from Irving, the speeches were by French Holocaust denialist Robert Faurisson, some bloke called Said Arikat (The Israel-Palestine Conflict: A Palestinian Perspective, from the 14th IHR Conference, 2002), and Akira Kawachi, a Japanese fella inspired by US Holocaust revisionists’ “dedication to objectivity and historical truth” to redress the presumed bias of US historians when it comes to examining the Japanese role in WWII and subsequent US occupation.
MUFF:
My Revisionist Method
[From the 13th IHR Conference, 2000]
The man who made revisionism a household word in his native France goes back to his own revisionist beginnings, and then to the frontiers of revisionism today, in this lecture. Professor Faurisson recounts how his youthful studies in Greek and Latin, followed by his celebrated deciphering of the meaning of such difficult modern poets as Rimbaud and Lautréaumont, guided him to his revisionist method: simple, “nuts and bolts,” free of pedantry, going to the centre of things.
Noontide:
The man who made revisionism a household word in his native France goes back to his own revisionist beginnings, and then to the frontiers of revisionism today, in this sparkling lecture. Professor Faurisson recounts how his youthful studies in Greek and Latin, followed by his celebrated deciphering of the meaning of such difficult modern poets as Rimbaud and Lautréaumont, guided him to his revisionist method: simple, “nuts and bolts,” free of pedantry, going to the center of things. Faurisson reveals how his “No holes, no Holocaust!” challenge springs directly from this method, shares amusing details from his conversation with Deborah Lipstadt, and updates on the Anne Frank “diary” in an unforgettable performance.
MUFF:
The Influence of America’s Postwar Occupation on Today’s Japan
[From the 10th IHR conference, October 1990]
Hiroshima survivor, career diplomat, and scholar of international affairs Akira Kawachi discusses the influence of America’s post war occupation on today’s Japan. With rare frankness, Professor Kawachi blasts the one-sided history of World War II imposed by the occupiers, and pays tribute to the spirit and search for objectivity and historical truth.
IHR:
The Influence of America’s Postwar Occupation on Today’s Japan
Hiroshima survivor, career diplomat, and scholar of international affairs Kohchi discusses the influence of America’s postwar occupation on today’s Japan. With rare frankness for a Japanese, Professor Kawachi blasts the one-sided history of World War II imposed by the occupiers, and pays tribute to American revisionists’ dedication to objectivity and historical truth.
In 2004, MUFF, against the wishes of the filmmakers, screened a Crass ‘double feature’ (@ FFour (F4), aka New Guernica) — presumably as a result of Wolstencroft’s being “driven to make a significant contribution to the cultural enrichment of the community by illustrating the vibrancy, vitality and enthusiasm of the free-thinking, alternative, independent filmmaking scene in Australia and overseas”.
Or maybe not.
(See also : Festival refuses to be MUFFled, Jake Wilson, The Age, August 21, 2009. Wilson reviews one of the films screened at MUFF XI, Lanfranchi’s Memorial Discotheque, here.)
Film
Apart from his role as director of MUFF and impresario of a kinky nightclub for yuppies, Wolstencroft has also made a few films: Bloodlust (1992), Pearls Before Swine (1999) and, most recently, The Beautiful and Damned (2008). Indeed, it was the exclusion of his 1999 film from the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) that prompted Wolstencroft to establish MUFF. I’m not sure precisely why MIFF decided not to program his film, but based on the handful of critical responses to it, it seems that it was because the film was shit.
Be that as it may, Wolstencroft’s swinish film *ed the US alt.noise merchant Boyd Rice in the role of ‘Daniel’, a hitman-of-wood. Like his director friend, Rice is a bit of a boofhead, whose flirtations with fascism have occasionally resulted in his experiencing some minor career difficulties, but which have otherwise proven to merely confirm — in the minds of his fans at least — his status as a courageous and iconoclastic artiste. Thus according to Mute, Rice is “one of the most consistently influential and contentious characters of the last 30 years of American counterculture”.
On fascism, see : George Orwell, ‘What is Fascism?’ (1944); Chip Berlet, ‘Fascism: An Essay’ (1992); Umberto Eco, ‘Ur-Fascism’ (1995); Roger Griffin, ‘The palingenetic core of generic fascist ideology’ (2003 PDF); | On post-WWII fascism, see : Kevin Coogan, Dreamer Of The Day: Francis Parker Yockey And The Post-War Fascist International (Autonomedia, 1999).
Bloody Michael is insisting that I take note of the fact that his (quote) “Favourite Band in the Whole World” (unquote) is playing @ The Corner tonight and tomorrow night. Apparently, Attack Attack! is bringing crabs to Australia for the benefit of its yoof.
Or something.
I dunno: Michael’s enthusiasm for crabcore makes me feel old. In any case, I’m prolly gonna sell him my copy of Take Action! Volume 1.
Two Greek anarchists are making molotov cocktails. One says to the other: "So who will we throw these at then?" The other replies: "What are you, some kind of fucking intellectual?"
