{"id":686,"date":"2007-05-03T02:24:45","date_gmt":"2007-05-02T16:24:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=686"},"modified":"2007-05-03T11:34:12","modified_gmt":"2007-05-03T01:34:12","slug":"dr-cam-on-helen-coonans-fascist-flirtation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=686","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Cam on Helen Coonan&#8217;s fascist flirtation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.crikey.com.au\/Politics\/20070427-Oops-Coonan-attends-neo-Nazi-celebration.html\">Crikey!<\/a><\/strong> <strong>Dr. Cam<\/strong> writes:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Jewish and Croatian communities of Australia are, according to a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ajn.com.au\/news\/news.asp?pgID=3061\">report<\/a> in today\u2019s [April 26] <em>Australian Jewish News<\/em>, angry and outraged that Communications Minister <em>Helen Coonan<\/em>, Liberal Senator <em>Concetta Fierravanti-Wells<\/em> and NSW Upper House MP <em>David Clarke<\/em> attended a commemoration of Croatia\u2019s inglorious independence on 10 April:<\/p>\n<ul>        The Howard Government has been embarrassed by the appearance of a cabinet minister at a Croatian independence function linked to a murderous neo-Nazi regime.<\/p>\n<p>        Jewish groups are outraged at Communications Minister Helen Coonan\u2019s attendance at the Sydney commemoration earlier this month, which marked Croatia\u2019s independence following the fascist Ustase regime\u2019s rise to power during World War II.<\/p>\n<p>        Liberal Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells and NSW Upper House MP David Clarke were also guests at the April 10 event, held at the Croatian Club in Punchbowl.<\/p>\n<p>        NSW Jewish Board of Deputies (NSWJBD) CEO Vic Alhadeff described the celebration as \u201coffensive\u201d to Australians, while it is understood Croatian embassy officials are also angered at the involvement of a senior government minister.<\/ul>\n<p>    The Jewish and Croat communities have every reason to be outraged when members of government are breaking bread with anti-Semitic extremists \u2014 and so should we all be. Coonan and Fierravanti-Wells\u2019 attendance at an event celebrating one of the most evil moments in Yugoslav history can probably be put down to ignorance. Clarke has no excuse, having been involved with the Ustase since the \u201970s, he is surely well aware of their violent tactics. Nor is this the first time he has celebrated the Nazi takeover of Croatia. In 2005, he feigned surprise at being connected to the Ustase \u2026 after he was caught out celebrating the exact same event at an Ustasi function. The Liberal Party needs to do to Clarke what it never managed to do to Urbancic \u2014 Clarke must be excommunicated from the party and assigned a Brian Burke-esque pariah status, even if the Christian right faction loses a few of its precious numbers.<\/p>\n<p>    Bigotry has no place in 21st century Australian politics.<\/p>\n<p>    It\u2019s an outrage the roots of which are 66 years in the making. On 10 April, 1941, the royal dictatorship of Croatia was overthrown and replaced by the brutal Nazi-aligned Independent State of Croatia, led by a group called the Ustase. The Ustase quickly got around to the business of murdering hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Romani, anti-fascists and pretty much anyone that didn\u2019t approve of wholesale murder. Hundreds of thousands of people were also forcibly deported or forcibly converted to Catholicism as the Ustase played their role in the wider Holocaust.<\/p>\n<p>    Following the conclusion of World War II a number of these active collaborators resettled in Australia \u2014 authorities turning a blind eye to those with murky Nazi pasts as their attentions turned towards fighting the Communist threat \u2014 and formed groups dedicated to the reformation of Independent Croatia, through terrorist activity, with the tacit support of the conservative end of Australian politics. In 1963, after the Yugoslav Government formally complained about Australian Ustase captured waging a guerilla war in Yugoslavia, Robert Menzies responded by praising the Ustase insurgents. A few years later [November 30, 1968], as Ustase laid waste to the Yugoslav consulate in Sydney, Billy McMahon (who would soon become Prime Minister and \u2018just happened to be there\u2019) described the Ustase as \u201ca good bunch\u201d with \u201ca good cause\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>    Throughout the &#8217;60s and &#8217;70s, the Ustase continued an unchecked campaign of terror (assaults, bombings, murders etc) against the local Yugoslav community which only ceased when several bystanders were injured by a bomb in Sydney and public outcry forced Australian intelligence operations to recognise that a violent terrorist network was operating in Australia. But why were the Ustase allowed to operate with free rein for so long? It surely had nothing to do with the fact that a member of the Ustase, Nazi propagandist Ljenko \u201cLittle Goebbels\u201d Urbancic, was a senior powerbroker within the Liberal Party. Urbancic remained an influential member of the far-right faction of the Liberals until his death in 2006, alongside his protege \u2026 <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/news\/national\/a-right-wing-and-a-prayer\/2005\/09\/09\/1125772697605.html\">David<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/news\/national\/lid-lifts-on-mysterious-clarke\/2005\/09\/04\/1125772412560.html\">Clarke<\/a><\/em>. Which brings us to today.<\/p>\n<p>    (Those interested in the history of the Ustase in Australia should check out <em>Sanctuary: Nazi Fugitives in Australia<\/em> by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ajn.com.au\/news\/news.asp?pgID=148\">Mark Aarons<\/a> [Heinemann, Melbourne, 1989] and <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.vulgar.com.au\/radmelb2.html\">Radical Melbourne 2<\/a><\/em> by Jeff &#038; Jill Sparrow [Vulgar Press, Melbourne, 2004])&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>See also<\/em> : Joan Coxsedge, Ken Coldicutt and Gerry Harrant\u2019s <em>Rooted in Secrecy: the clandestine element in Australian politics<\/em>, esp. \u2018One, Two, Three \u2014 Ustasha Are We!\u2019, pp.43-59.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Crikey! Dr. Cam writes: &#8220;The Jewish and Croatian communities of Australia are, according to a report in today\u2019s [April 26] Australian Jewish News, angry and outraged that Communications Minister Helen Coonan, Liberal Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells and NSW Upper House MP &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=686\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,6,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-fascism","category-history","category-state"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6AyE-b4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}