{"id":1354,"date":"2008-09-22T05:09:31","date_gmt":"2008-09-21T19:09:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=1354"},"modified":"2009-10-23T00:13:19","modified_gmt":"2009-10-22T14:13:19","slug":"nick-griffin-down-under","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=1354","title":{"rendered":"Nick Griffin Down Under?"},"content":{"rendered":"

[img deleted]<\/p>\n

Griffin plans visit to Australia
\nMatthew Collins
\nSearchlight<\/em>
\nSeptember 14, 2008<\/p>\n

The BNP has announced that its leader Nick Griffin intends to visit Australia<\/a> in the \u201cvery near future\u201d at the invitation of the miniscule far-right Australian Protectionist Party.<\/p>\n

The APP is a tiny, minority party (led by a former BNP leading light) that seeks to drag Australia back to the dark ages of the \u201cWhite Australia policy\u201d, a policy that prohibited non-white immigration until 1973.<\/p>\n

The proposed December visit by the leader of Britain\u2019s premier racist party would help a tiny minority there in their attempts to drag Australia back into the dark ages of unapologetic imperialism and racism. It would also give Griffin the opportunity to act like some kind of spokesperson for ex-patriots, damaging Britain\u2019s tolerant reputation while at the same time attempting to raise funds for his party\u2019s coffers.<\/p>\n

This year, the Australian parliament\u2019s first order of business was to make an apology on behalf of the nation to the \u201cstolen generation\u201d, Aborigines who were removed from their families and ancestral lands to be \u201canglicised\u201d (made to behave more like white people) for over one hundred years, until 1969. Only a tiny minority of Australians were opposed to this long overdue sentiment.<\/p>\n

As a modern nation, Australia celebrates its new, modern and diverse culture with great pride. A visit by the BNP, a party notorious for sewing the seeds of intolerance, hate and mistrust, is likely to only be attractive and beneficial to the sort of Neanderthals who took pleasure from race-related rioting against Muslims in Cronulla New South Wales in 2006. Since those riots, described as a \u201cpogrom\u201d by some Australian journalists, the Australian far-right has gone to great lengths to recruit and galvanise support for their policies.<\/p>\n

The BNP and its Australian supporters will attempt to use Griffin\u2019s controversial visit to garner support to their campaign against the new Australia. In a time of sweeping economic turmoil, the APP will be hoping to learn from Griffin how to make local gains on the back of world-wide difficulties. This weekend (September 13th) the APP is standing in local elections as a litmus test for its policies.<\/p>\n

Britain has strong historic, cultural and sporting ties with Australia. In 1998, Griffin was refused entry to the country as was Holocaust denier David Irving before him. The Australian government is being urged once more not to soil those positive ties by allowing Australia to take in another one of our criminal undesirables.<\/p>\n

Jeremy Jones, a spokesman for Australia\u2019s Jewish community said: ”A visit by Griffin ought to be a matter of concern for Australia’s Muslim community, indeed by all communities here who have found that tolerance and engagement is a better path than division and hatred.”<\/p>\n

To add your voice to the campaign, send a \u2018He\u2019s not fair dinkum\u2019 postcard to the High Commissioner. Click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[vid removed]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Comments, corrections, clarifications, and c*ckups<\/strong><\/p>\n

The APP is indeed a “tiny, minority party”, with a very short history: it announced its formation last year as a splinter<\/a> from the Australia First Party, lead by veteran fascist militant Dr James Saleam. (AF split three ways: a third splinter claims to be the original — and er, the best.) Thus far, only three individuals have gone public as APP members: Darrin Hodges, Andrew Phillips, and Mark Wilson. Mark Wilson is the “BNP former leading light” whom Searchlight<\/em> claims leads the party, and is also the person who attended the BNP’s recent Red White & Blue festival<\/a>. As noted elsewhere ‘Australian Friends of the BNP’ was set up (in 1999\/2000) by Wilson, a former BNP organiser from Hertfordshire.<\/p>\n

Nick Griffin has indeed previously attempted to enter Australia, in 1998, under the auspices of the now defunct far right organisation ‘National Action’. NA was lead at one point by Saleam, but upon his imprisonment for organising a shotgun attack on the ANC representative to Australasia, his place was taken by Michael (de) Brander<\/a>, who has most recently been embraced by Quadrant<\/em> magazine.<\/p>\n

[Previously] the main support for the BNP in Australia has come from the group, Australian Friends of Europe (AFE), formerly known as Australian Friends of the BNP, based in Petersham, NSW. <\/p>\n

The AFE\u2019s principal organisers are Welf Herfurth and Mark Wilson. Wilson migrated to Australia in the 1980s from Britain where he had been the BNP local organiser in Essex. He has previously spoken to Australia\u2019s oldest racist group, the Australian League of Rights, which has touted him as an expert on \u201cthe effects of multiculturalism in Britain\u201d.<\/p>\n

A resident of Riverstone, NSW, Herfurth is a former executive member of the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD) in Bavaria, Germany. He has previously spoken to the Australian League of Rights and is next scheduled to speak at its AGM on 28 August 2001 on \u201cThe threat to freedom and democracy in Germany today\u201d. He has also contributed to far-right forums, including the now-defunct Australian National News of the Day website and The News Report email list. Amongst the views Herfurth espouses is that Hitler \u201cachieved some remarkable things\u201d.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/em> : ADC Online, Vol.2, No.4, July 2001<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Welf Herfurth has since become Saleam’s right-hand man, the pair being the principal organisers of the annual Sydney Forum<\/a>, a far right gathering in — you guessed it — Sydney. Herfurth is also the leader of another tiny fascist grouping called the New Right\/’national anarchists’. Modelled on similar developments on the fascist fringe in Germany<\/a> and the UK, they, like the APP, are also a very new formation, making their first public appearance in Sydney last year at the APEC protests. Included among the 20 or 30 or so members of the fascist ‘black bloc’ was Darrin Hodges.<\/p>\n