Introduction
Recent events in the Sydney suburb of Chippendale have sparked public protest and widespread expressions of concern from local residents; the issues raised by these events have received coverage in independent media (2SER, Indymedia and elsewhere) as well as in the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald.
Thus far, there have been two public protests — on October 2 and November 6 — and in addition criticism from locals regarding the distribution of ‘racist’ propaganda in the area. Much of this concern has centred upon the use of Humanist House (10 Shepherd St, Chippendale) by one fascist group in particular: ‘Klub Naziya’.
Sadly, the presence of members of ‘Klub Naziya’ at the House appears to have emboldened local racists, and according to one local blogger “neo-Nazis seem to be taking a shine to our area” (Steve Noble, ‘Life in Chippendale’, November 10, 2009).
This text has been produced by the anti-racist network ‘Fightdemback!’ in order to address these concerns, and to provide greater insight into the means by which members of Sydney’s far right have been able to utilise Humanist House and the NSW Humanist Society in order to pursue their political agenda.
The ‘Humanist Society of New South Wales’ (Inc.) & Klub Naziya
Established in 1960, the ‘Humanist Society of New South Wales’ (Inc.) is a secular organisation dedicated to the promotion of humanism. In keeping with this aim, the Society declares that its members “believe that reason and scientific enquiry provide the only real path” to solving social problems.
The Society’s motto is ‘Rational Humaneness’.
In addition to its other activities, the Society owns and manages a building in Chippendale, dubbed ‘Humanist House’, which it uses to host meetings. These meetings are organised both by the Society and other groups, who hire the hall from the Society for that purpose.
One of the groups which has been meeting at Humanist House is known as ‘Klub Naziya’. According to Society spokesperson David Duffy, ‘Klub Naziya’ has been meeting at the House for the last eight years (‘Jeering crowd blocks meeting of extreme right’, Leesha McKenny, The Sydney Morning Herald, November 15, 2009). In October and November 2009, however, meetings of ‘Klub Naziya’ have been accompanied by public protest.
Public opposition to ‘Klub Naziya’ centres upon claims by critics that the group promotes racist and fascist viewpoints. If correct, the continued presence of ‘Klub Naziya’ at Humanist House would appear to undermine claims by the Society to be dedicated to encouraging “respect for the universal human rights of men and women free from discrimination on the basis of race, class, disability, gender, age, nationality or sexual orientation”.
Fightdemback! shares the concerns raised by local residents with regards ‘Klub Naziya’, and further understands ‘Klub Naziya’ to be an expression of a broader project of fascist infiltration of the Society. This attempt to infiltrate and subvert the Society has reached the stage where, following the Society’s AGM of August, 2009, known fascists and fascist sympathisers now sit upon its Committee of Management. These include Ken Cratchley, David McBryde, Mark Pavic and Andrew Wilson.
Who and what is ‘Klub Naziya’?
In essence, ‘Klub Naziya’ — sometimes also referred to as ‘Klub Nation’ — is a regular gathering of members of Sydney’s far right. According to David Duffy — who is the person responsible for arranging the hiring of Humanist House — the group associated with ‘KN’ has been meeting at the House for the last eight years; that is, since 2001.
Among the more prominent members of KN are Jason Rafty and David Palmer.
David Palmer is a well-known, indeed infamous, figure on the Australian far right. According to Jeremy Jones of the ‘Executive Council of Australian Jewry’ (‘Report on Antisemitism in Australia, October 1, 2007–September 30, 2008’ [PDF]): “David Palmer of Sydney, has claimed to be the leader of many organisations and movements over the past twenty years. The groups he has claimed to represent include the Ku Klux Klan, White Pride Coalition, the National Socialist Defence of Australia Party, Asgard and the Australian Nazi Party. He has been responsible for leafleting campaigns, hate mail and many media stories on the groups he has claimed to lead. He is always willing to appear in the media as Australia’s self-proclaimed Fuehrer.”
More recently, Palmer was featured — along with David Innes of ‘Stormfront’ and John Drew of the ‘Australia First Party’ (AF) — in the pages of Zoo magazine as being one of ‘The Most Dangerous Men in Australia’ (August 6, 2007).
Rafty is a more obscure figure but, like Palmer, he was also at one point a member of Stormfront (the world’s most popular white supremacist website). His account on Stormfront has been purged, but in 2007, Rafty claimed “Klub Nation is the only continuous meeting place for white Nationalists in Sydney since 2003… sponsored by the PIF Inc (Public Information Forum)… in essence [it] is a networking and social point for Nationalists…”.
As a venue for social networking among the far right, KN has served as a meeting point for members of the ‘White Pride Coalition of Australia’ (WPCA): a coalition of the Australian Nationalists Movement (ANM), World Church of the Creator (WCOTC), Imperial Klans of Australia (IKA), New Zealand National Front (NZNF) and National Socialist Party of Australia (NSPA). Visitors to the WPCA site — which has been preserved by the National Library of Australia — are greeted with the following message: “Welcome, My White Comrades, to the White Pride Coalition Australia. Heil Hitler! Hail Woden! Sieg Heil! Stay White Comrades 88″.
Fascist infiltration of the ‘Humanist Society of New South Wales’ (Inc.)
Since the beginning of 2009, if not before, a large number of members of Sydney’s far right, numbering between 30 and 40, have been recruited in an apparent attempt to infiltrate the Society. In political science, this tactic is often referred to to as ‘entryism’. Currently, the fascist grouping within the Society is estimated to comprise approximately 1/4 to 1/5 of its entire membership.
Among those who have joined the Society in this period and who, following the Society’s Annual General Meeting in August, have been elected on to its Management Committee, are the following:
Ken Cratchley
Ken Cratchley is known for both his membership of and espousal of the views of the ‘Christian Separatist Church Society’ (PO Box 385, Gymea, NSW 2227) and his maintenance of a neo-Nazi music distribution service known as ‘Scythian Services’. Like Palmer and Rafty, Cratchley is also a member of Stormfront (joining it in November 2002), where he posts using the handle ‘Pastor Bullets’ (one of his email addresses is [email protected]).
The ‘Christian Separatist Church Society’ is a religious group that holds as a central tenet the belief that its members must all be Caucasian because they are uniquely blessed by God and must separate themselves from all non Caucasian persons. According to the Stephen Roth Institute’s Report on Antisemitism and Racism for Australia 2001/2, ‘The website of the Christian Separatist Church Society (CSCS) is militantly antisemitic, going so far as to ridicule overt anti-Jewish propagandists such as Frank Dowsett for being too moderate, and asserting that “British-Israeli is most often only a surname for Masonic mongrel-lover”‘.
In January 2007, ‘Pastor’ Ken Cratchley was interviewed about his Church by Australian neo-Nazi Carl D. Thompson for the radio show he produces on behalf of the US-based ‘National Socialist Movement’ (‘Muslims Recruiting Suicide Bombers to Attack’, Australia Calling, January 22, 2007: “…an interview with Pastor Bullets of Stormfront”).
Scythian Services, like other sites hosted by GeoCities, is no longer available online: its address was http://www.geocities.com/nazipunk1488 (it is, however, available for viewing on archive.org). Its contents, along with those of sites belonging to National Action, Blood & Honour Australia, The Adelaide Institute, White Pride Coalition Australia and the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC) Australia (among others), are examined by Gareth Norris, Robyn Lincoln and Paul Wilson in their research paper ‘Contemporary comment: An examination of Australian internet hate sites’ (Bond University, 2005) [PDF.
NB. A “Syd Cratchley” stood for AF in Ward B, Sutherland Shire (NSW) Council election in 2004. He is described by AF as follows: “Mr. Syd Cratchley is a professional-clerical worker. He has lived in ‘The Shire’ for his forty years. Mr. Cratchley is a target-shooter and has spoken up for firearm owners’ rights. He has had a life-long interest in Australian history and has taken the defence of this ethos to be of over-riding importance. Our candidate has a Christian commitment and finds in the multiculturalists’ defence of other incompatible religions in Australia, a chaos factor in Australian society. This is his first candidacy for public office.”
David McBryde
David McBryde is closely associated with Dr James Saleam, AF and in particular the Sydney Forum, the annual gathering in Sydney of the far right. McBryde established the Sydney Forum website, and is otherwise pre-occupied with the ideas of the German-American philosopher Leo Strauss, whose work assumes a controversial place within the development of contemporary neo-conservative thought. Since its inception in 2001, the Sydney Forum itself has played host to a range of racist and fascist speakers.
Mark Pavic
Mark Pavic, whom Dr James Saleam of AF describes as a “neo-Nazi”, came to notoriety in 1985, when he was convicted of his mother’s murder. (Saleam also claims Pavic was once a close associate of David Palmer.) According to sources within the Society, Pavic, along with Cratchley, plays the leading role within the fascist group.
[See : The Liberal Party’s ‘Nutzi Connection’ Revealed As The British-Israel World Federation $500,000 Takeover Plot Takes New Directions, ‘Inside The Kangaroo Reich’ (no date) http://home.alphalink.com.au/~radnat/kangarooreich/partten.html. Saleam writes: “[John] Boyle has travelled to meetings (Humanist House ‘Open Forum’ and the ‘Conservative Speakers’ Club’) with neo-[N]azi Mark Pavic, a man who served a prison sentence over the killing of his mother and the disposal of her body in Lake Burley Griffin, way back in 1985. Mr. Pavic has used Mr. Boyle’s office address as his residential address for various ‘legal’ purposes; and he keeps the whereabouts of his lodgings secret because of a ‘fear’ his sister will one day ‘pop him off’ for killing their mother. Mr. Pavic, whilst being an intimate of the Palmer group, also served as a secretary for the left-wing organization, ‘Politics In The Pub’…]
Andrew Wilson
In the years 2004–2005, Andrew Wilson was a member of, and the Sydney organiser for, the ‘Patriotic Youth League’, a botched attempt by AF to establish a youth wing. Like Palmer, Rafty and Cratchley, Wilson was also at one point a member of the Stormfront forum. The PYL lead a relatively brief existence, conducted campaigns against the presence of foreign students on University campuses and trade union support for foreign workers, and underwent a significant crisis when its Sydney branch was also discovered to be functioning as the contact point for the US-based neo-Nazi group ‘Volksfront’.
Conclusion
In response to the above, the Humanist Society has organised a ‘Special General Meeting’ to take place on Sunday, November 29. The SGM is intended to examine the infiltration of the Society by local fascists and their supporters, and to devise means of combating their influence. According to the Society’s President, John August, “at the recent AGM in August 2009, “Klub Nation” [a/k/a Klub Naziya] showed its hand. After the elections were over, we realised that PIF [a/k/a Klub Naziya] participants and their supporters dominated the management committee.”
Those who share Fightdemback!’s concern over the presence of neo-Nazis in Chippendale, their infiltration of the Society, and dominant position on its management committee, are invited to attend and to observe the SGM in order to ensure that the issue is properly dealt with. We understand that local and national media may also be present in order to provide coverage, and that Humanist associations elsewhere in Australia and indeed the world will be watching events as they unfold quite closely.
Finally, given the Society’s inadvertent introduction of ‘Klub Naziya’ into Chippendale, local residents are especially welcome, and to support those elements within the Society, such as its President, who remain committed to its original vision as a vehicle for the promotion of humanism and, as a consequence, against the propagation of irrational prejudice.
