Why have so many Americans turned against democracy? In this deeply reported book, Katherine Stewart takes us to conferences of conspiracy-mongers, backroom strategy gatherings, and services at extremist churches, and profiles the people who want to tear it all down. She introduces us to reactionary Catholic activists, atheist billionaires, pseudo-Platonist intellectuals, self-appointed apostles of Jesus, disciples of Ayn Rand, women-hating opponents of “the gynocracy,” pronatalists preoccupied with the dearth of white babies, Covid truthers, militia members masquerading as “concerned moms” and battalions of spirit warriors who appear to be inventing a new style of religion even as they set about attacking democracy at its foundations.
4.30pm, Thursday, February 13, 2025 /// 855AM, digital, streaming, Community Radio Plus
• 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’, although because the anti-social platform is bloody awful, chances are you’ll never notice it.
This week on Yeah Nah Pasaran! we talk to Lucy Hamilton [Bluesky]. Lucy is a ‘writer of explanatory journalism researching the transnational Right’s infiltration of Australian politics and society, especially religio-ethnonationalism’.
We previously spoke to Lucy in September last year about right-wing junk-tanks like the Atlas Network and their influence on Trumpism. On this occasion, we spoke to her about Trump’s re-ascension to the US throne and the political influence of similar junk-tanks in Australia.
4.30pm, Thursday, February 6, 2025 /// 855AM, digital, streaming, Community Radio Plus
• 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’, although because the anti-social platform is bloody awful, chances are you’ll never notice it.
This week on Yeah Nah Pasaran! we talk to our semi-regular US correspondent Jason Wilson [Bluesky]. Last time we spoke to Jason (October 2024) about the US Presidential election, fascism and eyeliner and, on this occasion … President Trump & His Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Cabinet!
4.30pm, Thursday, January 30, 2025 /// 855AM, digital, streaming, Community Radio Plus
• 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’, although because the anti-social platform is bloody awful, chances are you’ll never notice it.
This week on Yeah Nah Pasaran! we talk to Ashton Kingdon [Bluesky]. Ashton is a lecturer in Criminology at the University of Southampton, a previous guest of ours (February 2021), and the author of The World White Web: Uncovering the Hidden Meanings of Online Far-Right Propaganda (Palgrave, 2024), which:
provides an interdisciplinary analysis of far-right radicalisation in the digital age, drawing from criminology, history, and computer science to explore how technology and imagery accelerate extremist recruitment. The book examines 20,000 internet memes to reveal white supremacy’s deep historical roots. It demonstrates how far-right propagandists leverage historical narratives and symbols to influence modern-day recruitment, bridging fringe and mainstream ideas across diverse time periods, countries and contexts, amid technological and social changes. Topics include racism and xenophobia in Greek and Roman antiquity, antisemitism in the Middle Ages, anti-Black racism rooted in the Antebellum South, the weaponisation of the Reconquista in Spain, the memeification of the Rurik Dynasty in Russia, Crusader iconography in the United States, Australia and New Zealand, eco-fascist propaganda in the Balkans, neo-Nazi mythology in India, and Völkisch ideology in Germany and Austria. The book emphasises the importance of interdisciplinary, socio-technical and multi-stakeholder approaches to truly comprehend and address the contemporary manifestations and threats posed by the global interconnectedness of the far right online.
The book is Open Access, and available for download here.
4.30pm, Thursday, January 23, 2025 /// 855AM, digital, streaming, Community Radio Plus
• 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’, although because the anti-social platform is bloody awful, chances are you’ll never notice it.
In 2025, 237 years after Captain Cook discovered Australia Captain Phillip & Co. — under the orders of and for the benefit of King George III — established a prison camp on Gadigal lands, January 26 discourse is once again thriving in the colony. Thus, with one eye on the forthcoming federal election, the date is currently being mashed into political pulp by aspirant Prime Minister Peter Dutton (AKA Mr Potato Head): an example of what the commentariat call ‘culture wars’. In doing so, the ex-Queensland police officer has offered his Tory base some red meat: a vow to Make Australia Great Again by forcing local councils to perform citizenship ceremonies on that date and to render January 26 a holy day of obligation for Australian nationalism.
Of course, bullying councils over January 26 is not an activity confined to ex-cops. In Victoria, neo-Nazis ‘attempted to disrupt an Indigenous mourning ceremony at Coburg Town Hall’ in 2023 and, in 2025, Matt Trihey’s grouplet Nationalists With Attitude (NWA) has announced that they’ll also be celebrating the day. In this case, by enlightening the tennis-going masses attending the Australian Open through squawking outside of Rod Laver Arena about the benefits of White Australia. As an added Bonus!, their mission has received the blessing of cucked Führer Blair Cottrell:
You may remember Blair from such convictions as arson, stalking and serious vilification. Or such events as Bernie Finn’s March for the Babies! and Damien Richardson‘s 2024 production We Will Not Be Silenced! In any case, having been displaced as leader of Australia’s neo-Nazi movement by his former sidekick Tom Sewell (and lacking the fortitude to challenge him for it), Cottrell now appears mostly contented with this subordinate position and, for understandable reasons, closer to Trihey’s NWA than to Sewell’s NSN.
Finally, while the NSN’s Tim Lutze is obviously excited at Cottrell’s endorsement of the NWA’s stunt, it’s unclear if Tom’s flunkeys will actually be joining Blair’s fans at the tennis. On the one hand, while the NSN has benefited from the flat-footed approach of Victoria Police towards its various publicity stunts in Melbourne, last year police in NSW adopted a much less tolerant approach to their attempt to parade through Sydney on January 26. On the other hand, post-October 7, government authorities and VIPs in the fields of media and politics have suddenly noticed the existence of antisemitism, and police are beginning to take a much dimmer view of groups dedicated to promoting it. Further, while demonising the trans community obviously enjoys a certain degree of popularity, messing with the public image of a multi-million dollar business like #AusOpen is not normally considered a recipe for success …
It’s 2025 and nah yeah: Yeah Nah Pasaran! is back for another year — our sixth! — on Melbourne community radio 3CR.
Our first episode for 2025 features Bob From Brockley [Bluesky], a blogger, anti-fascist and left libertarian based in Sarf London. We talked to Bob about his two decades of writing on — and in opposition to — the far right in the UK: the movement’s history, evolution, contemporary forms, political influence and anti-fascist responses. We also discussed Syria, campism and more …
4.30pm, Thursday, January 16, 2025 /// 855AM, digital, streaming, Community Radio Plus
• 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’, although because the anti-social platform is bloody awful, chances are you’ll never notice it.
As in 2023, here’s a brief review of what appeared on the blog in 2024.*
In January, I wrote several posts about … nazis … and — also — Invasion Day: Tom Sewell’s gang planned to parade thru Gadigal lands for the occasion but, sadly, NSW police proved to be less cooperative than their Victorian counterparts have been. Oh, I made some notes about defunct yoof gang the ‘Southern Cross Soldiers’ too.
While February was when Tim Lutze’s nazi boxing gym formally closed (though Mr Lutze continues to train the boys for RaHoWa), I noted this in March, along with some local anarchist talks, a statement on the fifth anniversary of the Christchurch massacre, Moira Deeming’s legal aktionversus John Pesutto, and a rather pathetic repetition of Lady Parker’s original (March 18, 2023) publicity stunt. The reenactment also starred a very womanly ex-Lad named Matt Trihey: a self-described ‘free speech advocate’ (and ah, white nationalist) who recently got a brief mention in Former Neighbours star Damien Richardson charged by Victoria Police for performing Nazi salute at Melbourne event (David Estcourt, Mike Lorigan, Alysia Thomas-Sam, ABC, December 18, 2024). Another supportive fellow in attendance was Mr Phillip Simpson, an ‘alleged neo-Nazi accused of performing a Hitler salute and threatening to kill a police officer’ who last week ‘had his hearing adjourned after experiencing a “severe panic attack”’.
In April, I noted the existence of a federal government inquiry into ‘Right wing extremist movements in Australia’ — which published its Report this month — and also some thing called ‘May Day’.
Yeah Nah May.
Junesaw naughty li’l nazi and ex-Tory Stefan Eracleous get a slap on the wrist from the courts (and be subject to allegations of ripping-off Sewell & The Gang), the current crop of VIP Tories declare ‘Never Again’ and, not entirely un-relatedly, VIP mourning over the death of Stefan Romaniw.
July 25th is the International Day of Solidarity with Antifascist Prisoners.
In August I wrote a bit about the weirdness inre Active Clubs at the government inquiry into RWE in July, how the CFMEU got into heaps big media trouble (and placed into government administration; though, as of this date, while many officials have exited the organisation, there’s been very few criminal prosecutions), and finally about how some local binfluencers announced their intention to bring batshit right-wing propagandist Candace Owens Down Under.
There were more National Socialist Network shenanigans in September (and in the boys’ spiritual heartland), while Lauren ‘The Great Replacement’ Southern (among others) lost an important source of income with the exposure of Putin’s gangsta state’s sponsorship of propaganda network Tenet Media.
October saw old mate Jacob Hersant be judged a very naughty boy, Chairman Cottrelljoin the Ordinary Dumbs & Mads of Patriotic Alternative in Merrie Old England, and a boys’ parade in Corowa. Finally, Candace Owens met Fortress Australia and Vashti Fox authored “I believe in the sun. Even when it’s not shining:” Militant antifascism in Australia, 1970-2016 (UWA, 2024).
There were Rising Tides in November, Cheet0 Mussolini RETVRNED and there was some wonderful (and completely non-Nazi) poetry sadly unread in court.
In December, I wrote this.
*For radio/podcast, see also: Yeah Nah Pasaran!, which this year comprised interviews with Nicole Nguyen, Cam Wilson, Betsy James Quammen, Jason Wilson, Tarek Younis, Rae Jereza, Arun Kundnani, Audrey Truschke, Claudia Leeb, Chris Wilson, Tyler West, Alex Hanna, Fran Amery, Jordana Silverstein, Stephanie Wescott, Amy Cooter, Spencer Sunshine, Shane Burley & Ben Lorber, Aurelien Mondon, Tinfoil Tales, Rachel Withers, Susannah Crockford, Tomas Rothaus, Joe Mulhall, Gabriel Kuhn, Ariel Bogle, Lucy Hamilton, James Hogg, Talia Lavin, Rebecca Yeo, Noelle Cook, David Neiwert, Amanda Moore, Benjamin Moffitt and Elise Thomas.
On this week’s episode of Yeah Nah Pasaran! — our final for 2024 — we talk to Elise Thomas [Bluesky]. Elise is a Senior OSINT analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an investigator at the Centre for Information Resilience and a previous guest of the show in June 2023. On this occasion we spoke to Elise about the year in dis-/mis-information, information management, infotainment and propaganda.
4.30pm, Thursday, December 12, 2024 /// 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.
This week on Yeah Nah Pasaran! we talk to Benjamin Moffitt [Bluesky]. Ben’s an Associate Professor of Politics at ACU (Melbourne) and the author of three books on … populism! Populism (Polity, 2020), Political Meritocracy and Populism: Curse or Cure? (with Mark Chou & Octavia Bryant, Routledge, 2020), and The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style and Representation (Stanford University Press, 2016). We spoke to Ben about … populism: its (recent) origins; influence, meaning and significance; dominant forms; popularity as a political designation … and more.
4.30pm, Thursday, December 5, 2024 /// 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.
4.30pm, Thursday, November 21, 2024 /// 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.
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?"
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