{"id":9953,"date":"2009-11-07T01:45:39","date_gmt":"2009-11-06T15:45:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=9953"},"modified":"2009-11-08T09:33:09","modified_gmt":"2009-11-07T23:33:09","slug":"pride-prejudice-mark-white-investigates-the-rise-of-australias-far-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=9953","title":{"rendered":"Pride & Prejudice : Mark White investigates the rise of Australia’s far right…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pride & Prejudice
\nMark White
\nmadison<\/a><\/em>
\nDecember 2009<\/p>\n

It’s a cool September morning on the day of the AFL Grand Final, and in a function room of an inner-city Sydney [Petersham<\/a>] RSL Club, a small crowd of men and women have gathered from around the country. A middle-aged man in a red T-shirt is addressing them. A sign behind him reads: “Is today’s economic system serving the people of a nation?” but that’s not what he’s talking about. He’s talking about Hitler and facing some hostile questioning.<\/p>\n

I’m at day one of the Sydney Forum, an annual weekend gathering of Australia’s Neo-Fascist and nationalist groups. Look closely and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a single skinhead here. Instead, the crowd is mostly male, middle-aged and conservatively dressed — trousers, shirts and sensible haircuts. All, that is, except for a man in front of me wearing paint-spattered camouflage trousers and a T-shirt bearing the Eureka flag and the words “Aussie patriot”.<\/p>\n

The event’s MC [Welf Herfurth<\/a>] suddenly takes the microphone. “They [RSL club members] tried to remove us from [this] club … if you behave and don’t shout ‘Heil Hitler!’ this forum will go ahead. This forum is not for Hitlerites!”<\/p>\n

There is a whole roster of speakers planned for the forum, including talks on 9\/11, al-Qaeda and, later on, a speech by inky-haired former radio presenter Terrie-Anne Verney<\/a>, who was sacked from a NSW community radio station after it was revealed she was the administrator on the racist Facebook group “Fuck Off We’re Full”.<\/p>\n

The RSL club officials wanted to cancel after finding out who precisely had booked the room, but were advised by police to let the event go ahead. Outside, a small group of protesters have gathered, holding banners that read “Neo-Nazis” and are shouting at people as they enter the club. Despite the venue being kept a secret until 7am this morning, one of the protesters bought a ticket to find out where it would be.<\/p>\n

I ask Jim Saleam<\/a>, the event’s organiser and NSW director of the white-nationalist Australia First Party, why he is holding the event on the day of the final of the Aussie Rules football match. “It’s a free-speech weekend”, he says. “You’ve got to hold it some time.”<\/p>\n

[Continued…<\/a><\/em>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pride & Prejudice Mark White madison December 2009 It’s a cool September morning on the day of the AFL Grand Final, and in a function room of an inner-city Sydney [Petersham] RSL Club, a small crowd of men and women … Continue reading →<\/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],"tags":[157,486,485],"class_list":["post-9953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-fascism","tag-2009-sydney-forum","tag-mark-white","tag-pride-prejudice"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6AyE-2Ax","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9953","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=9953"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10008,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9953\/revisions\/10008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}