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Tagged with Kerry Bolton
In December 2016 I wrote A (very) brief guide to the Australian far right, itself an updated version of an earlier post published in June 2015. Both were triggered by public demand for somesuch guide, though others have of course been published elsewhere (see, for example, Crikey's updated pocket guide to the far-right (yes, there are more), Charlie Lewis, January 14, 2019). Given the recent massacre in Christchurch and the documented links between the alleged killer and the Australian far right, April 2019 seems like an opportune moment to provide another brief guide. But first, some preliminary remarks.
To begin with, in media reportage on the killer's situation within the Australian far right milieu, much attention has been drawn to three organisations in particular: 'Antipodean Resistance' (AR), 'The Lads Society' (TLS) and the 'United Patriots Front' (UPF). In this context, it's important to note that, first, while there are critical differences between them, and only AR openly espouses neo-Nazism, all three are the natural outgrowth of the wave of public organising undertaken by the far-right under the umbrella of 'Reclaim Australia' (2015–). Secondly, members of all three groups remain politically active and, finally, all can be read as particular expressions of much (much) larger political and social networks, for which the dominant social media and publishing platforms — Facebook, Twitter and YouTube — have provided and will continue to provide a critical part of their organisational framework.
See also : Australia's Far-Right Is Winning Facebook This Year, Brad Esposito, Pedestrian, April 2, 2019 | Attacks by White Extremists Are Growing. So Are Their Connections., Weiyi Cai and Simone Landon, The New York Times, April 3, 2019. For an in-depth analysis of the alleged killer's manifesto, see : "White Genocide" and the Ethics of Public Analysis, A. Dirk Moses, Journal of Genocide Research, Vol.21, No.2, 2019.
In a recent public statement, Facebook's Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg, declared that, using its AI tools, AR, TLS and UPF, along with the 'National Front New Zealand', were being removed from Facebook. As noted, the UPF page was deleted in May 2017, AR did not have a public page on Facebook … though The Lads Society page has indeed since been removed from the platform. Since the statement, a handful of other pages and groups have also been removed, including pages for NSW, QLD, SA and WA franchises of the 'True Blue Crew' (TBC) and a right-wing fanboy page titled 'Australian Meditations'. Hundreds of other similar, Australian-based pages and groups of course remain.
In addition to AR, TLS, UPF and TBC, also getting a guernsey in the context of links between the Christchurch killer and the Australian far right has been 'Order 15' (O15). According to the US-based ADL (White Supremacist Terrorist Attack at Mosques in New Zealand, March 15, 2019):
The manifesto and writings on the weapons used by Tarrant identify him as a white supremacist. His manifesto opens with an image used by other white supremacists and similar to one that previously appeared on a white supremacist website, Order 15, a group with an international presence which is focused on building a parallel, self-sufficient white society because they believe the societies of most western nations are "irreversibly broken." The manifesto subtitle includes the words "Towards a new society," also from the Order 15 website.
Be that as it may, in Australia O15 maintains a presence on Facebook. (But note that, like others, O15 has a tendency to appear, disappear, and then reappear, both under this name and by way of other handles.) O15 is linked to the UPF by way of one of its central members, Kris0 Richardson. Thus before joining the UPF, Kris0 established the 'United Australian Front' (UAF) website and Facebook page. In-between noting the UAF's development (August 2016) into a straightforwardly neo-Nazi project, the Facebook page was closed and re-badged itself as O15, though ostensibly under the control of some of Richardson's mates. Another right-wing activist associated with O15 in Australia is Newcastle-based Shane Worrall, who was a key organiser for Reclaim Australia in 2015. Currently, Worrall stands accused of ripping off farmers via a fund he established in 2016, and goes to court over the matter in June.
With all that said …
• The list below is intended to be illustrative, not exhaustive;
• Hundreds if not thousands of Facebook pages and groups, Twitter accounts, and YouTube channels are utilised by the far right in Australia. Documenting these is beyond my capabilities and I choose instead to focus upon more stable expressions of same;
• A number of groups and projects are now defunct. This is indicated by use of a strike. I've included them for the purposes of historical accuracy but, in the event I publish another guide in the future and assuming that they remain inert, I will remove them;
• New entries are marked with an *;
• The number of people in Australia engaging with far right propaganda has expanded considerably in the intervening period, as has social media's monopolisation of online communications;
• There's a good deal more material on all of the groups listed available elsewhere on the blog;
• The far right in Australia must necessarily be understood in terms of its history and a broader political and social context. This post does not attempt to provide that context, but a glimpse is available by way of 'The Radical Right in Australia' (Andy Fleming and Aurelien Mondon, The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right, Edited by Jens Rydgren, Oxford University Press, 2018):
Compared to its European counterparts, Australia was for the most part spared the rise of powerful extreme right movements, and at times appeared immune to their appeal. However, rather than immunity, the absence of extreme right politics can be explained by the ability and willingness of mainstream politics to readily, openly, and officially absorb such values. This chapter discusses how, for most of the country's history, Australian mainstream politicians suffocated the extreme right, not merely by borrowing some key ideas of the extreme right, but by negating entirely its ability to appear as an alternative to the power in place. It then turns to the 1990s and explores the rise of Hansonism and its impact on mainstream politics. The final part of the chapter is dedicated to the current state of radical right politics in Australia.
*A26A
One of numerous tiny groupuscules that emerged (2017) in the wake of Reclaim, A26A are Melbourne-based modern-day vigilantes, fighting (African and/or Muslim) crimens. Under the wise stewardship of Daniel Purton, A26A has also operated in loose association with Asolate Security Group and the TBC, and sometimes appears in public as 'The Crew'. See also : The 'African gangs' narrative: associating Blackness with criminality and other anti-Black racist tropes in Australia, Mandisi Majavu, African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, 2018.
Adelaide Institute
The Institute promotes Holocaust denial and (a very specialised form of) 'historical revisionism'. Still carrying on like pork chops in April 2019, in May 2016, the Institute was apparently planning on republishing an edition of Mein Kampf with a German group. Among those associated with the Institute is veteran Kiwi agitator Kerry Bolton, who in March of this year avoided going to jail for naming a victim of sexual assault; he's also been linked to the naughty young boys of the Wellington-based 'Dominion Movement', who in the wake of the massacre have gone into semi-hiding.
Note that a new website called Paparoa has recently emerged. It was launched on March 31, 2019, 'primarily as a response to the horrific terrorist attacks on the Alnoor and Linwood Mosques in Christchurch'. The site is dedicated to monitoring, analysing, and responding to the far right in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Read An Introduction to the Organised Far Right in Aotearoa/NZ.
Anti-Antifa Australia (AAA)
A defunct blog and organising project which passed from Volksfront's Chris Smith to the UPF's Jim Perren to nazi crackpot Buddy Rojek. Much of this sort of activity is now being conducted by a range of others, including by way of XYZ (see below).
Antipodean Resistance (AR)
One of the newer kids on the neo-Nazi bloc, AR evolved on tumblr and made a splash in late 2016 when the lads plastered university campuses in homophobic propaganda. Modelled on National Action in the UK and Atomwaffen in the US, and closely associated with other boys on the AltRight in Melbourne, as predicted in December 2016, it did indeed obtain lots of 'further publicity through staging similarly provocative stunts' — at last count, something like 80 or more 'actions' have been staged since then, though the group's webshite has been closed and their gab account has been inactive since late last year. See : Who are Antipodean Resistance? (August 2018 Update).
Aryan Nations (AN)
Since the last update, two members of AN in Perth, Wayne Edhouse and Melony Attwood, have been jailed for the murder of Alan Taylor. See : Neo-Nazi Aryan Nations lovers Robert Edhouse and Melony Attwood jailed for murder, Joanna Menagh, ABC, May 8, 2018. Note that the AN HQ was used by the UPF to announce the formation of their stillborn political party, 'Fortitude'; other members of AN have carried on doing their nazi thing but — sneakily — have re-branded.
Australia First Party (AFP)
AFP is the largest and most well-established of the far-right groups, one dedicated inter alia to the resurrection of a White Australia policy. Founded in 1996 by former Labor MP Graeme Campbell, AFP is a registered political party and in 2016 the AEC also confirmed the Eureka flag as its official logo. Dr James Saleam is the party's current leader, a position he assumed a few years after being let out of prison for organising a shotgun assault upon the home of Eddie Funde (then the African National Congress representative in Australasia). Previously, Saleam was the leader of neo-Nazi group National Action and in the late 1960s/early 1970s a member of the Australian Nazi Party. The party regularly contests elections, with generally meagre results, and its HQ is in Tempe in Sydney — where it has the largest following. Two AFP members have been elected to local council (Bruce Preece in Adelaide and Maurice Girotto in Penrith – both resigned their memberships following their elections). Saleam and other party members frequently post on Stormfront (the world's leading neo-Nazi/White supremacist website) and occasionally on Daily Stormer (another US-based neo-Nazi site). In 2015, AFP absorbed the rump of the One Nation Party in WA.
April, 2019 : Saleam stood for the seat of Cootamundra at the 2019 NSW state election. At last count, the good doctor got 1% of the vote, and placed last of the six candidates contesting. Also in the news recently has been AFP member Nathan Sykes, editor-in-chief of the UNA blog (see below). Sykes has been 'charged with multiple counts of using a carriage service to threaten serious harm, and with using a carriage service to menace, harass or offend' (see : Right-wing troll to plead not guilty to threatening journalist, Angus Thompson, The Sydney Morning Herald, April 4, 2019). While a registered micro-party which has been active in promoting the white nationalist cause for decades, AFP has been effectively shunted aside by first Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party and now Fraser Anning's Conservative Nationalists.
Australian Coalition of Nationalists (ACON)
The formation of the Australian Coalition of Nationalists was announced in October 2016, and consisted of the AFP, Australian Protectionist Party and Nationalist Alternative; the Eureka Youth League and the Hellenic Nationalists of Australia were considered 'associate' groups. The coalition represented an attempted reconsolidation of White nationalist and national socialist organisations in Australia, but failed to register as much more than a paper tiger, and this failure briefly triggered the inevitable round of recriminations which follow in the wake of such manouevres.
Australian Defence League (ADL)
The ADL formed within the space of a year following the establishment of the English Defence League in 2009. Gaining only a fraction of the support the EDL did, the ADL has undergone numerous splits, fractures and changes in leadership, but of those who've nominated themselves its leader Martin Brennan and Ralph Cerminara – along with Nathan Abela – are probably the best-known, along with Shermon Burgess ('The Great Aussie Patriot'). There have been dozens of Facebook pages created by and for the ADL and it exists as a very loose network of anti-Muslim activists. Sporadic public rallies in Melbourne and Sydney have been poorly-attended but the group has been very active on social media. See : Who Are The Australian Defence League?, New Matilda, January 29, 2014.
As of December 2016, the ADL was a moribund institution, and remains so in April 2019. While Burgess has gone on to embrace neo-Nazism, Flat Earth theory, Odinism, and whichever other crackpottery registers in his fevered bRanes, Cerminara has been in serious trouble with the law, and earlier this year was sentenced to jail for assaulting a neighbour. In good news for Cerminara, he was released on appeal, and — irony of ironies — has apparently successfully applied for legal support from the Aboriginal Legal Service in NSW to aid in his efforts to free himself from the politically-correct courts. (Note that there remains at least one ADL page on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/pg/AustralianDefenceLeagueOfficialAdlEst2009), one of thousands of similar pages pumping out an endless stream of anti-Muslim propaganda. Oddly, while three admins are based in Australia, two are in the UK and one in the US.)
Australian League of Rights (ALOR)
The Grand Old Man of Australian fascism, the ALOR has been around for a very long time, successfully defending God, Queen & Country from the ravages of International Communism. The group's weekly newsletter may be read online and is useful for gaining some insight into the 'Lunar Right' and the many … er … 'interesting' characters which populate its ranks. April 2019 : ALOR remains largely inactive outside of publishing tracts for its diminishing number of followers, but in its heyday did reach a much larger audience. See : The many careers of Twiggy Forrest, Ramon Glazov, The Monthly, July 2013.
Australian Liberty Alliance (ALA)
A creation of the Q Society (see below), the ALA was formally registered with the AEC in July 2015. Modelled on Geert Wilders' Dutch party — Wilders attended the ALA's official launch in Perth in October 2015 — it fielded a number of candidates at the 2016 federal election but failed to attract much support, with the anti-Muslim vote largely being attracted to ONP. In September 2016 the ALA announced it would be going into a temporary hiatus.
April 2019 : The ALA has resurfaced on occasion in order to contest elections — most recently at last year's Victorian state election — but has failed dismally each time. Its star candidate last year was Melbourne-based serial pest Avi Yemini, whose batshit antics have gained him a considerable social media following, a platform alongside Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, and the financial support of Rebel Media in Canada, but little else of note. Otherwise, while the Arcadia Hotel in South Yarra has emerged as a key hub of support and venue for the ALA's activities, and its base is among older professionals, so Badly has the ALA performed that earlier this year it applied to change its name to 'Yellow Vest Australia'. Whether or not this re-branding was a serious attempt to crib from the French movement or simply a terrible joke is of course unknown at this stage.
Australian Patriots Defence Movement (APDM)
Still deaded.
Australian Protectionist Party (APP)
The APP formed as a split from AFP in 2007 when one of its Sydney branches – the two most prominent members of which were Nicholas (Hunter) Folkes and Darrin Hodges – elected to defect. It was active for a few years, producing propaganda and holding events, but is now largely moribund. Tasmanian Andrew Phillips is its leader. Hodges has retired from political activity while Folkes split from the APP to form the Party for Freedom (see below). April 2019 : The APP continues to maintain an online presence, but remains politically-moribund.
Australian Settlers Rebellion (ASR)
In essence, one of the Facebook pages of Shermon Burgess and Neil Erikson. April 2019 : Not long after its launch in 2016, ASR became 'Nationalist Uprising', but like ASR was chiefly a vehicle for the antics and propaganda of serial pest Erikson, and one of numerous social media platforms he used to publicise his activities. At its peak the page had over 70,000 followers but it was deleted in the wake of the Christchurch massacre. See also : ARN, EARL, NRG, Cooks Convicts, Patriot Blue, Aussie Patriot Army, Ban Islam Party, Generation Identity Australia, Neil Erikson Media, NRG Media, OzConspiracy, Pauline Hanson's Guardian Angels and United Patriots Front — Originals.
Australians Resistance Network (ARN)
Originally established by Erikson as 'Generation Identity Australia', ARN is one of many Facebook pages dedicated to anti-Muslim, anti-leftist and White nationalist propaganda. Almost three-and-a-half years after it was first published, ARN continues to grind out the usual, but like others its current admins are paranoid that it may fall foul of Facebook's new regime/AI tools, and thus be deleted.
Battalion88
One of dozens of short-lived neo-Nazi groupuscules, now deaded.
Blood & Honour (B&H)
B&H is a neo-Nazi musical network, originally established in England in the late 1980s, and has been operating in Australia for over 25 years. Activities are generally confined to selling neo-Nazi muzak and merch (via 9% Productions) and holding gigs. It functions essentially as an adjunct to the SCHS (see below). April 2019 : Last year, veteran Aussie reich 'n' rollers Fortress reformed, recorded a new album, and toured Europe, playing to thousands of neo-Nazis.
Christian Identity (CI)
CI is a tiny sect on the fringes of the far right with a handful of adherents and a minuscule social media presence. One, James Lawrence, popped up at the May 31, 2015 UPF rally and attended subsequent nationalist rallies. According to the ECAJ (Report on Antisemitism in Australia 2016): Christian Identity churches, unlike almost all other denominations of Christianity, place the concepts of race and racial purity high on their priorities. They are expressly anti-Jewish from a medieval Christian theological perspective. There are several Identity type churches. The one with the most prolific and popular website is Bible Believers. In April 2019, advocates of CI presumably continue to eke out an existence, while Lawrence has reportedly been in and out of hospital with various mental health issues.
Christian Separatist
A tiny, bizarr0 White supremacist kvlt. 'Pastor' Ken Cratchley is its chief propagandist in Australia. Last year, Cratchley re-emerged as a supporter of The Lads Society (see below) in Sydney.
Citizens Electoral Council (CEC)
The CEC is the name under which the LaRouchite kvlt travels Down Under. Seemingly most active in Melbourne, the group presents a range of entertainingly batshit theories about the world Lyndon LaRouche inhabits. It contested the 2016 Australian federal election and gathered a tiny fraction of votes. In April 2019, the CEC has been robbed of its leader, Lyndon LaRouche, who died in February this year.
Combat 18 (C18)
C18 is another foreign import, having its origins in England in the late 1980s. The group was established in order to protect B&H gigs and other fascist events from disruption by anti-fascists and has a rather bloody history. It's widely suspected that it was infiltrated by British intelligence on account of the close relationship between C18 and Ulster paramilitaries. In Australia, the 'brand' has been adopted by a number of different neo-Nazis including in WA, where C18 was responsible for a poorly-executed attack upon a mosque (see Bradley Trappitt). AFAIK, its only active 'branch' currently is in Melbourne under Patrick O'Sullivan. As of December 2016, O'Sullivan seems to have been joined by a handful of others, media has reported on various instances of C18 propaganda appearing around Melbourne and several boneheads in the orbit of C18 have attended various nationalist rallies during the course of 2015–2016. April 2019 : C18 continues to produce and distribute shitty B&W stickers, chiefly in Melbourne but also Sydney and other towns and cities, thereby occasionally generating local media reportage, and boneheads across the country still invoke its name.
*Conservative Nationals (CN)
A newly-formed (March 2019) political party and vehicle for Senator Fraser 'Final Solution' Anning. More on CN at a later date.
A bizarre, White supremacist 'religion' established in the US some decades ago. It's undergone numerous, often violent splits: its main exponent in Australia is Colin Campbell/Cailen Cambeul (Adelaide) and Patrick O'Sullivan (Melbourne). Scott Harrison was a 'Reverend' in the 'church' for many years before joining the Young Liberals. April 2019 : To the best of my knowledge, O'Sullivan has swapped Creativity for Combat 18. As for Campbell/Cambeul he was 'Pontifex Maximus' of one wing of the movement until 2016, and in 2017 became a 'Church Administrator'. (In February 2017, Cambeul got a guernsey in this article about a very Creative lad in Georgia who got caught playing with ricin.)
*The Dingoes
The Dingoes is the name adopted by a smol number of chiefly Sydney-based neo-Nazis in order to produce a podcast called 'The Convict Report'. The Report has attracted the participation of a wide array of white nationalists, AlRightists and other racist cranks, most notoriously QLD LNP MP George Christensen (whoops) and newly-elected PHONy Senator and ex-ALP Prime Ministerial candidate Mark Latham. The Dingoes were present on Twitter employing the hashtag #DingoTwitter and were reasonably-successful in having their bon mots shared by ABC's TV show Q&A. Following the Christchurch massacre, The Dingoes have gone a bit quiet (their Facebook page and Twitter account are down and their site is offline), but are otherwise active in the networks which infiltrated the Young Nationals in NSW last year and which are currently taking advantage of Fraser Anning's considerable social media presence to shitpost on Facebook and Twitter to an audience of tens of thousands.
See : Alleged mosque shooter's meme popular with Australian far-right group, Patrick Begley, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 15, 2019 | TheDingoes.xyz /// The Convict Report /// DingoCon (July 8, 2017) | Alt_Right White Lite: trolling, hate speech and cyber racism on social media, Andrew Jakubowicz, Cosmopolitan Civil Societies: an Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol.9, No.3, 2017:
The example used in this article of the trolling/ 4chan approach, set up in Australia during the US Presidential elections, is a project of a group calling itself TheDingoes. Perched on a service provided by .xyz (a new service platform that hosts many thousands of clients), TheDingoes exemplifies all the various elements of state of the art antisemitic and racist online presence; Buzzfeed reported that the founders of the TheDingoes were intentionally using as wide a range of social media as they could, skirting rules and testing boundaries, in order to normalise racist hate speech. Typically the members remain disguised behind pseudonyms and delight in their anonymity, particularly the opportunity it gives them to 'bant' (banter).
Their use of the .xyz demonstrates a close knowledge of Internet trends. The .xyz domain name was released to the general public in mid-2014, as part of a refreshing by ICANN of generic top-level domain names. Google adopted it for its corporate Alphabet site, (abc.xyz), and by June 2016 it was the fourth most registered top level global domain name after.com, .net and .org. The name is managed by a company called Generation XYZ, (http://gen.xyz), which describes itself as 'a global community inspired by the Internet and its limitless potential… to connect with the world in a whole new way… you can focus on connecting with your audience anywhere in the world'. It represents a further layer of defence for users, from any retributive pursuit by people they harass.
TheDingoes appeared online in 2016, their website registered in January, followed up with a Twitter account in June. A number of the people associated with the group also joined about that time, including one tweeter whose display image contained the anti-immigration slogan 'Fuck Off, We're Full'. TheDingoes (once the name of a 1970s Australian music band that left for the US) described itself as '#AltRight, but not in the way that violates #Rule1'. Here they refer to Rule1, that is the 4chan /b/ rule 1, 'Do not talk about /b/' (which is also rule 2). /b/ is the general posting board for 4 Chan users. They also have '88' on their page, which stands for the initials 'HH', a code for 'Heil Hitler'. As of February 2017, TheDingoes had 1,461 followers online, had posted 3,640 posts, garnered 5,507 likes, and was following 442 other Tweeters; by September 2017 it had grown to 2,146 followers (gaining about 100 followers a month), with 4,615 Tweets and 7,500 likes, though it had abandoned some of its followed friends (down to 420). The site followed a range of micro-nationalist groups, a raft of conservative online commentators and some 'lulz' (Laugh Out Loud plural) antisemitic posters, such as one identifying as 'Goys just want to have fun', and another as 'Dachau Blues', backed by an image of the Auschwitz 'Arbeit Macht Frei' sign…
Eureka Youth League (EYL)
The EYL is AFP's putative youth wing and its ideology mirrors that of the AFP. It's largely inactive, and is currently presided over by (and may only consist of) a right-wing youth from Canberra, Matthew Grant. Grant is a Presbyterian, a White nationalist, an anti-Semite, and spoke at an anti-Muslim rally in Bendigo in October 2015. April 2019 : The EYL continues to exist. Presumably. According to Grant, writing on his personal website: The Eureka Youth League is a nation-wide network of fraternal organisations for young, white men in Australia. We have chapters in Canberra, Brisbane, Adelaide and smaller groups around regional New South Wales. My main goal in forming this organisation was to organise the traditionalist, nationalist [C]hristian youth of the country into private and safe social circles in which they can come together for moral, financial and emotional self-improvement. See also : The New Guard.
European Australian Civil Rights League (EARL)
One of dozens of online handles employed by Neil Erikson, in April 2019 EARL remains defunct, though leaves behind a blog (January–April 2013) and Twitter account (last tweet March 1, 2015).
Expel the Parasite
A neo-Nazi website run by 30-something South Australian Brett Light. Light identifies with Christian Identity and there are no prizes for guessing who he believes the 'parasites' are. As of April 2019, the site is still up and in its last update (August 2018) Mister Light thrilled to Fraser Anning's maiden speech to federal parliament, republishing it in full.
Full Blooded Skips (FBS)
A short-lived, seemingly defunct, Melbourne-based white yoof gang, the FBS had ties to Combat-18.
Golden Dawn (GD) / Hellenic Nationalists of Australia (HNA)
Golden Dawn is the Australian branch of the Greek neo-Nazi party. Its chief spokesperson in Australia is Iggy Gavrilidis while other organisers include Christos Cakouros in Adelaide, Christina Tsimtsirids and Sofia Krokos in Melbourne, Elias Vamiakis in Sydney, Peter Poulos in Queensland and Nikolaos Mitsakis in Tasmania. GD has a very small support base, chiefly concentrated in Melbourne and Sydney, and over the last few years has raised funds for its parent body and organised a handful of protests in conjunction with AFP and a smattering of local neo-Nazis and fascists. In December 2015, GD registered in NSW as an incorporated association named Hellenic Nationalists of Australia. GD held its first national conference in Sydney on October 28, 2016 at which over a hundred supporters attended along with Saleam of AFP and a handful of Russian fascists. April 2019 : The trial in Greece of GD as a criminal organisation drags on, while in Australia, GD continues to do its thing. See also : No to Golden Dawn in Melbourne.
Klub Nation/Klub Naziya
A bizarr0 groupuscule based in Sydney. At one point KN attempted to infiltrate and take over the Humanist Society of NSW. It didn't work, but the nazis had a red-hot go. Presumably, its membership continues to be active but not publicly. April 2019 : KN carries on in various guises, and continues to battle its rivals in Sydney in the AFP, including by way of a legal complaint lodged with the blog UNA (see below).
Ku Klux Klan (KKK)
With an obvious indebtedness to the US, in numerous, generally short-lived permutations and combinations, the KKK has been a minor player on the far right for decades. In one form or another, it continues to generate occasional stories and the image of the KKK is regularly invoked in various rural and regional settings, but the organisation itself is largely moribund. April 2019 : The KKK in Australia remains a spectral figure.
*The Lads Society (TLS)
The Lads Society is basically what the UPF (see below) became after it collapsed in 2017. It announced its existence by way of the establishment of a clubhouse/social centre in the Melbourne suburb of Cheltenham in September 2017, which was the site of a joint meeting in January 2018 with members of the Bendigo- and Melton-based TBC (and others) in order to discuss the formation of a vigilante group to tackle African yoof (crimens). In 2018, TLS opened another centre in the Sydney suburb of Ashfield, and apparently has plans to open similar centres in other major cities. Those involved in the TLS include Blair Cottrell, Tom Sewell, James Buckle, Jacob Hersant, Mark McDonald, Stuart von Moger and others who for the time being will remain nameless. Members of TLS were hired by Dave Pellowe to provide security for the 2018 tour by Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern, worked the March for the Babies in Melbourne in October 2018 and also participated in AltLight personality Sydney Watson's March for Men in August 2018. The antics of some nazi Lads in Brisbane has caused Cottrell some headaches — The (neo-Nazi) Lads Society : Blair Cottrell's pro-tip : Wear Your Swastikas On The Inside — and there's no love lost bewteen the Lads and AFP/UNA's Nathan Sykes (see : Tom Sewell & The Lads Society ~versus~ Nathan Sykes & The Australia First Party).
See also : New clues emerge of accused New Zealand gunman Tarrant's ties to far right groups, Byron Kaye, Tom Allard, Reuters, April 3, 2019 | Here's How Muslim Women In Australia Have Been Targeted By The Far Right, Gina Rushton and Mark Di Stefano, Buzzfeed, March 26, 2019.
Love Australia Or Leave (LAOL)
The creation of TV personality Kim Vuga (Go Back To Where You Come From, SBS), the party achieved registration in October 2016. Vuga attended and spoke at many nationalist rallies in 2015-2016. Contesting the 2016 federal election as a Senate candidate in Queensland, Vuga received 172 votes (0.01%). While blessed with an xclnt name, LAOL is unlikely to challenge ONP for hegemony over the (White) nationalist vote. April 2019 : Vuga and LAOL persists, though why is anybody's guess. See also : Apology for Labor MP Anne Aly over 'fake' Anzac Day claims, Rashida Yosufzai, SBS, April 29, 2017.
Nationalist Alternative (NAlt)
NAlt is a neo-Nazi group which has its origins in anti-Muslim agitation in Melbourne. Its leader is Mark Hootsen, who has travelled to the US in order to receive political training with Stormfront. NAlt was present at the April 4 Reclaim Australia rally in Melbourne. As of December 2016 its activities are largely confined to the keyboard, though the group can boast of having produced figures such as Blair Cottrell and Thomas Sewell of the UPF (see below) and Neil Erikson. April 2019 : NAlt continues to function, albeit with little real impact.
National Democratic Party of Australia (NDPA)
NDPA was launched by UPF activist Blair Cottrell following the April 4 Reclaim Australia rally. Based in Melbourne, the group is tiny and as of December 2016 inactive. April 2019 : The NDPA remains defunct, though Cottrell attempted to manufacture another political vehicle for himself called 'Fortitude', which similarly crashed and burned.
Nationalist Republican Guard (NRG)
NRG was EARL rebranded and from the beginning of 2015 worked closely with Reclaim Australia, UPF and Shermon Burgess in order to produce agitprop promoting these groups and individuals. One of dozens of labels Erikson has adopted then dropped.
*The New Guard (NG)
An online organising hub, principally on Facebook, for various white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and other AltRight odds & sods. The NG came to prominence largely by way of the exposure of its role in facilitating an infiltration of the Young Nationals in NSW last year, but remains active behind-the-scenes in a number of other, similar political institutions. The ABC has uncovered a covert plot by Australia's alt-right movement to join major political parties and influence their policy agendas from within. Background Briefing has witnessed members of the NSW Young Nationals in Sydney attending a secret men's-only fight club set up by some of the country's most prominent alt-right nationalists. The program has also gained access to a private Facebook group in which these same people discuss their manifesto, which includes plans to shake up mainstream politics. The group is called The New Guard and its followers are self-described fascists. See : Manifesto reveals alt-right's plans to go mainstream after 'infiltration' of NSW Young Nationals, Alex Mann, Background Briefing (ABC), October 14, 2018 | Neo-Nazi infiltration of the Young Nationals in NSW (October 11, 2018).
New Right (/National Anarchists) (NR)
The New Right emerged in the mid- to late-2000s as a project of Sydney-based fascist Welf Herfurth – Herfurth envisaged NR as the theoretical expression of 'national anarchism', a tendency on the far-right with origins in the UK fascist movement. It has produced some propaganda, staged a few publicity stunts, and attracted a handful of neo-Nazis (eg, Bradley Trappitt) and other fascists to its banner but is currently largely inactive. As of December 2016, it remains a dead horse in Australia. April 2019 : A wealthy gadabout, Herfurth continues to criss-cross the globe, network with fellow cranks, and fail to create much enthusiasm for his idiotic syncretism.
One Nation Party (ONP)
See : Pauline Hanson. Initially a deeply attractive formation for the far right, the history of ONP since the late '90s is long and complex (see : Danny Ben-Moshe, 'One Nation and the Australian far right', Patterns of Prejudice, Vol.35, No.3, 2001). Its activists belong to a broader far-right milieu, with some degree of overlap with groups like AFP. The possibility of a reconsolidation of the far right in AFP remains, though is somewhat complicated by Hanson's periodic political revivals. ONP's success at the 2016 federal election, when it won four Senate seats — Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts (QLD), Brian Burston (NSW) and Rod Culleton (WA) — has helped revive its fortunes. By the same token, ONP's success has meant failure for the ALA, and ONP is now the primary expression of politically-organised anti-Muslim sentiment. Finally, despite a deserved reputation for harbouring anti-Semites, ONP was invited to hold a meeting in Caulfield (Melbourne) in December 2016. In the face of local Jewish opposition, the two Senators invited to speak — Pauline Hanson and Malcolm 'Jew World Order' Roberts — elected to cancel the circus.
April 2019 : Much has happened to ONP since December 2016. Among other things, of the four Senators bumped into parliament at the 2016 federal election, only Hanson remains in place, with Roberts replaced (November 2017) by Fraser Anning, who then left to join Katter's Australian Party, left KAP to sit as an independent, and has now formed his own party, the Conservative Nationals. Burston quit the party in June 2018 to join Clive Palmer's United Australia Party, while Culleton was disqualified in February 2017 and replaced by his brother-in-law Peter Georgiou in March 2017. ONP has also won seats (2017–) in state parliaments: Stephen Andrew in the lower house seat of Mirani in QLD, three upper house seats in WA (Robin Scott, Charles Smith & Colin Tincknell) and most recently gained another in NSW, occupied by the the former federal Labor leader Mark Latham (2019–). The success of ONP is generally read as a failure of the Nationals, and presents particular problems for them in their regional and rural heartlands. Apart, perhaps, from running a nominally Muslim woman, Emma Eros, for a seat at the NSW state election (Eros received 2,250 votes or 4.5%), nothing Hanson or ONP does or says dissuades her fanbase from continuing to support her. See also : How To Sell A Massacre, Al Jazeera, March 2019.
Party for Freedom (PFF)
Modelled on Geert Wilders' Dutch party, PFF is what happened when the Sydney branch of APP decided to hold a public rally in mid-2012 demanding that the Australian government blow up refugee boats. APP disavowed the action and so the Sydney branch of APP decamped to form PFF. It holds regular events in Sydney but has little discernible support outside of it. Is chief and seemingly only spokesperson is Nicholas (Hunter) Folkes, a publicity whore who delights in provocative stunts (see : Cronulla). In April 2016 the PFF travelled to Melbourne to protest outside a halal expo and got a clip around their ears for their troubles; in November 2016 they returned to Melbourne and the suburb of Eltham to protest a refugee housing project. Joined by the SOO and TBC (see below) they were again defeated by a combination of butterflies and unicorns.
In April 2019, the PFF is largely defunct, after Folkes was diagnosed with cancer and decided that his energies would be better directed at staying alive (by inter alia adopting a vegan diet). Between December 2016 and its collapse a year or so later, the PFF distinguished itself by way of organising an anti-antifa demo in Newtown in May 2017, a homophobic rally at the LGBT Holocaust Memorial in Sydney in September 2017 and various other daft stunts. A few weeks ago, Folkes failed to attend a tribunal hearing in Queensland, where it's alleged that he and the PFF produced propaganda which 'equated same-sex marriage with child abuse' (Far-right group accused of hate speech fails to appear at Queensland tribunal, Ben Smee, The Guardian, March 26, 2019). Along with this minor legal difficulty, the PFF also produced a short-lived group called 'Australian Patriots Uprising', which was openly neo-Nazi, and organised a tiny rally in Canberra in August 2018 which featured Shermon Burgess as a riveting guest speaker.
Patriotic Youth League (PYL)
The PYL was established in the early 2000s as the yoof wing of AFP. It was not a successful venture and collapsed a few years later to be replaced by the EYL. Andrew Wilson — now attached to Anning — was involved in the PYL.
Patriots Defence League of Australia (PDLA)
An ADL splinter, the PDLA is largely a Facebook creation, with numerous, very small branches across the country which hold semi-regular, private meetings. In its latest incarnation, the PDLA was established as an incorporated association (Australian Defence League) which later changed its name to PDLA. Mark Lenthall, TJ (Torin) O'Brien and Daniel Sutcliffe were its office bearers. Also prominent is John Oliver of Newcastle, who helped organise and spoke at the Reclaim Australia rally in Newcastle on April 4. In November 2016 its Melbourne organiser, Shannon Wallace, deaded. April 2019 : The PDLA continue to maintain a Facebook page, but otherwise would appear to be inactive.
*Proud Boys (Australia)
The Australian franchise of the US-based gang established by Gavin McInnes. PBs rocked up to Anning's rally in St Kilda in January and to his meeting in Moorabbin last month, attended the tours by Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern and Milo Yiannopoulos in 2017–2018, and are otherwise active (or claim to be) in NSW, QLD, SA and WA. The Boys defend Western Civilisation by not reading and going to the gym. In October 2018, following the arrest of several PBs in New York on assault charges, Facebook decided to remove PB pages from its site, and it's unclear if the network will recover. Currently, its chief propagandist in Australia is a bloke from Sydney called Nicholas Stone.
Q Society
The Q Society is an anti-Muslim propaganda group which functions as the ideological ballast for the anti-Muslim movement in Australia and largely consists of educated, middle class, bigots. See : International guests Q up for bigotry, Andy Fleming, Overland, March 10, 2014. April 2019 : The Society continues to trundle along, in February 2017 organising a gathering at Victoria University, and otherwise keeping the dream of an Australia cleansed of Muslims alive in the hearts of its elderly supporters. (Also at about the time of the conference, which featured the talents of George Christensen, the Society settled a legal matter with halal certfier Mohamed El-Mouelhy. See : Victory Against Anti-Islam Group: An Interview with Halal Certification Authority Director Mohamed El-Mouelhy, Paul Gregoire, Sydney Criminal Lawyers, March 2, 2017.)
Reclaim Australia (RA)
Largely the brainchild of online activist and (former) ADL member Shermon Burgess ('The Great Aussie Patriot'), RA was the first anti-Muslim project of its kind to generate anything more than minimal public interest and to successfully mobilise anti-Muslim networks. Its April 4, 2015 rallies attracted several thousand supporters who attended over a dozen rallies across the country — to which the largest and most effective opposition was in Melbourne. Following April 4, RA split and Burgess established the UPF (see below). RA's next series of anti-Muslim rallies took place on the weekend of July 18/19 while a third and final round of protests organised by RA took place in November 2015. In general terms, RA attracted every Tom, Dick & Harry 'patriot', (White) nationalist, racist, fascist, neo-Nazi and xenophobe in the country, but experienced a good deal of internal difficulties, with a rump faction led by John Oliver eventually going on to establish itself as an incorporated association in NSW in January 2016. April 2019 : Like others, RA has experienced various twists and turns, splits and stoopid, but while street mobilisations have ceased since early 2017, it continues to pump out propaganda on Facebook, with former UPF star Scott Moerland being one of the more active voices.
Restore Australia
Another one-man band, Restore Australia was the political vehicle of Queensland-based anti-Muslim activist Mike Holt. Holt/Restore Australia is part of a shifting network of anti-Muslim activists, largely active online on sites like Facebook.
April 2019 : Holt continues being a right-wing blabbermouth, only now wearing a hat called 'Citizens Initiated Referendums Now' AKA 'Foundation for National Renewal' AKA 'Advance Australia HQ Pty Ltd' (2017–). He played a leading role in providing direction to a short-lived Australian version of the Yellow Vests in early 2019 (which was mostly composed of the sorts of folks who attended Reclaim Australia events in 2015 and expressed similar concerns about immigration and the United Nations). He's also championed the cause of accused terrorist Phil Galea. According to Holt: Phil Galea, Australian patriot, was arrested and accused of being a terrorist in August 2016 after he followed and filmed ANTIFA terrorist thugs at their headquarters; a 'TrueBlue Observer' on his website writes (Why Phil Galea was Arrested, October 25, 2018): One of Phil's aims was to expose these corrupt people and groups. As part of his work he followed ANTIFA members and filmed their meetings at coffee shops and other places around Melbourne. He also recorded every encounter between the Andrew's Socialist Government and ANTIFA…the same people who constantly turn up at any patriot rally to bash them up as the police look on without arresting them. Holt is batshit, but mostly harmless.
Right Wing Resistance (Australia) (RWRAU)
With origins in Aotearoa/New Zealand, the Australian branch of RWR has a very patchy record, assembling a mere handful of neo-Nazi skinheads under its banner; Kyle Chapman, a veteran neo-Nazi activist, was RWRNZ's fuehrer until his resignation in September 2016. Members of RWR in Australia have distributed propaganda and attended a small number of nationalist rallies over the course of 2015–2016, but its only real claim to fame was in September 2016 when its putative 2IC, Ricky White, was arrested and charged with the arson of a church in Taree (NSW). On RWRNZ, see : Deranged but Dangerous- Right Wing extremists in Aotearoa and the dangers they pose., leftwin, December 6, 2015 | Pride & Prejudice – the worried world of white pride, Michael Botur, March 25, 2014.
April 2019 : RWRAU, like RWRNZ, has more-or-less collapsed, though its former members remain active while wearing different-coloured hats. In April 2018, one member, Ethan Tilling, starred in an ABC report concerning him playing with guns in Ukraine (see : From Neo-Nazi to militant: The foreign fighters in Ukraine who Australia's laws won't stop, Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop, Suzanne Dredge, and Michael Workman, ABC Investigations, May 7, 2018). Bizarrely, in a court decision handed down late last year inre Ricky White, I was accused of being Mister White, and my blog a principal platform for RWR propaganda. See : Right Wing Resistance, Ricky White, & slackbastard (December 20, 2018).
Rise Up Australia Party (RUAP)
RUAP is the political vehicle of Christian fundamentalist Pastor Danny Nalliah ('Catch the Fire Ministeries'), a man who is perhaps best known for blaming the Victorian bushfires of 2009 on the state government's decision to decriminalise abortion. In 2015, RUAP entered into a loose alliance first with RA and then the UPF, the Christian fundamentalists happily joining neo-Nazis on stage to promote hatred of Muslims and refugees. Other than Nalliah, deputy leader and Casey councillor Rosalie Crestani has been very active in promoting bigotry (see : Rosalie Crestani really is deplorable, Kieran's Review, November 28, 2016). April 2019 : RUAP's ambitions to establish itself on a national level received a blow when, in January 2017, CTF was stripped of its 'charity' status, but Crestani is now deputy mayor for Casey, and the council has been effective in preventing the construction of a mosque in the area (see : Expired permit leaves mosque plans in City of Casey on hold, Rachel Eddie, The New Daily, January 21, 2019).
Soldiers of Odin (SOO)
Founded by Finnish neo-Nazi activist Mika Ranta in late 2015, the Soldiers of Odin formed a branch in Melbourne in early 2016 and the organisation claims support in a number of other cities, though none seem to be especially active. Its President is Jason Moore, a former activist with the PDLA. See also : Who are the Soldiers of Odin?, Kieran's Review, October 10, 2016. April 2019 : SOO has been an active presence at various patriotik rallies in Melbourne since 2016, including the Anning rally in St Kilda in January this year, but does not seem to have grown much, and is currently simply one of hundreds of Facebook propaganda outlets. (One of its members, Garry Mattsson, got a slap on the wrist after being found guilty of being naughty at the Milo stoopid in December 2017.)
Southern Cross Hammerskins (SCHS)
SCHS is the Australian franchise of neo-Nazi skinhead gang the Hammerskins. It was introduced into Australia 20+ years ago via Scott McGuinness, the lead singer in neo-Nazi band Fortress, which has recently reformed to record a new album and tour Australia and Europe. The Hammerskins last came to world attention when in 2012 one of its members, Wade Michael Page, shot dead six worshippers at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. The SCHS organises several social events a year. April 2019 : SCHS keeps on keeping on.
Southern Cross Soldiers (SCS)
A short-lived yoof gang from Melbourne which came to public attention following the police killing of Tyler Cassidy in 2008. The name of the group was re-invoked by Shermon Burgess in 2015 as a supporter of the UPF but as of December 2016 it remains deaded.
Squadron 88 (S88)
S88 was a tiny neo-Nazi group based in Sydney. Its titular head was Ross 'The Skull' May, an ageing bonehead and one of Dr Jim Saleam's closest allies. S88 organised a protest against the construction of a mosque in Penrith and obtained some small media traction via stuffing letterboxes in Sydney with badly-composed anti-Semitic tracts. April 2019 : While S88 remains — alongside their hero Mister Hitler — in the grave, its fuehrer Mark McDonald has re-invented himself as a key organiser with TLS in Sydney.
True Blue Crew (TBC)
The True Blue Crew formed during late 2015 and early 2016, largely in response to anti-Muslim campaigns in Bendigo and Melton. Building upon pre-existing social networks, the TBC made its formal debut in Coburg in May 2016, where it attempted but failed to disrupt an 'anti-racist' rally. It organised two further rallies — a flag-waving event in Melbourne in June and an anti-Muslim rally in Melton in August — but most recently has been subject to internal dissent following the conviction of several of its members for 'domestic violence' and allegations of abuse and financial impropriety by its leader, Kane Miller. Its most infamous supporter is alleged 'terrorist' Phill Galea. See also : Galea intended to bomb "left wing premises" according to police, Kieran's Review, November 1, 2016. April 2019 : The TBC has remained active in VIC while also recruiting supporters in NSW, QLD, SA and WA. In 2017, it organised a flagwit parade thru Melbourne, and again in 2018; its NSW chapter organised one in Sydney in 2018, and is planning to march again in 2019. Unfortunately for TBC, its pages have been deleted by Facebook, presumably on account of the expressed support given it by the Christchurch killer. In any event, Tom Tanuki provided this pithy summary of TBC lvl boss Kane Miller — who popped up at Anning's rally in St Kilda in January in the company of some meathead with an SS helmet — back in 2018:
The TBC were formed after a few of their original core crew got into a scrap with some Antifa kids after a 2015 rally. 'Never again,' they said! So, the TBC were originally meant to be a patriot answer to black bloc Anteefa contingents.
Their red letter day came in May 2016, when they took part in an organised attempt to have the far-right march through Coburg. Their brief, televised fights with masked lefties were a big popularity boost for them. TBC started charging membership fees – $20 a week, $10 for 'casual' members. At one point, they were earning tens of thousands of dollars in just a few months! The money was being managed by TBC 'President' Kane Miller's partner and her sister and all of that money was going to Kane. He was largely spending it as he liked.
Behind closed doors, the 'President' was abusing his partner. He even broke her back. He wasn't the only woman-bashing TBC member, either – and when photographic evidence of another member's brutal assault on his wife was made public, Kane avoided the increasing media spotlight on TBC by kicking Mark out. Members knew that decision made Kane a bit of a hypocrite, for the abovementioned reasons… So they started leaving the TBC. Kane's abused partner finally left him too and the money management side of TBC went down the drain. The things she revealed about the abuse meant even more TBC members left the group – and they took their membership fees with them.
Kane went quiet for a long while, feeling defeated. TBC 'club meetings' dwindled after a time to little more than 12 unemployed blokes sitting around sucking cones in Kane's mum's living room. But the lure of conning working class Aussies out of their hard-earned wages still called to Kane. So TBC returned somewhat with an Australia Day BBQ in St Kilda (a genius idea he came up with after a sesh watching the new Romper Stomper). And he had some stupid fucking idea to wander around parks with a bunch of other losers looking for Sudanese children to fight. A meeting he held at Tom Sewell's Cheltenham clubhouse was televised, with Channel 7 airing a description of the TBC's initiative as being 'like a Neighbourhood Watch' – and it seemed to the world like the TBC were back!
It was not like a Neighbourhood Watch. It was just more hare-brained, shard-addled fantasy garbage from a man who was desperate to be given more membership fees to enjoy himself with. He says it's for a 'clubhouse' but it isn't and it never will be. TBC only have about 5-10 people contributing membership fees and they get most of their cash from merch. It's not enough. Kane just wants to siphon more money out from poor, angry, confused Aussies.
That money won't do anything but fund the TBC 'President' and his lifestyle. This is a man who gets cash-in-hand from his Muslim boss (serious!) and has membership fees go into his mates' bank account so child support can't take it. This is a man with convictions for domestic violence (he was also violent to his last ex, who also dumped him), multiple AVO breaches and firearms charges who won't pay for his own child. Money given to TBC is fleeced money, and it pays for a shit fucking dude.
See also : Christchurch shooting accused Brenton Tarrant supports Australian far-right figure Blair Cottrell, Alex Mann, Kevin Nguyen and Katherine Gregory, Background Briefing (ABC), March 23, 2019.
United Australian Front (UAF)
The UAF was a new player on the far right bloc in July 2015, bringing together a number of the leading organisers of RA and UPF. Its members were present at the RA rally on April 4 and UPF rally on May 31 in Melbourne sporting UAF merch. The establishment of the UAF was largely the responsibility of UPF member Kris0 Richardson; the UAF was eclipsed by the emergence of the UPF when it formed in early- to mid- 2015. Around mid-2016, the UAF Facebook page re-badged itself as 'Order 15' and now promotes neo-Nazism and White supremacism. (Richardson states that he is no longer responsible for the page.)
United Patriots Front (UPF)
Established in April/May 2015, the United Patriots Front emerged as a splinter group within the network of anti-Muslim activists known as 'Reclaim Australia', bringing together neo-Nazis, fascists, White supremacists and Christian fundamentalists, and conceiving of itself as the Antipodean expression of various European fascist parties and movements. It organised an unsuccessful rally in Richmond on May 31, 2015 to protest socialism which attracted around 50-70 participants. On June 27 2015, the UPF staged a tiny rally outside ABC HQ in Melbourne to protest Islam and the presence of Zaky Mallah on the previous week's episode of Q&A. Members present were Troy Bloodstone, Warren Broadhead, Blair Cottrell, Neil Erikson, Kris0 Richardson, Chris Shortis, Thomas Sewell and Linden Watson.
Since then, the UPF has staged a number of other media stunts, harassed left-wing activists and institutions, and organised a number of rallies. While the group's Facebook page has a relatively large number of likes (as of this date, over 83,000), in terms of its mobilising capacity it seems to have peaked in late 2015, when two anti-Muslim rallies in Bendigo in August and October attracted many hundreds of supporters. In February 2016, the UPF embarked upon a tour of Toowoomba (QLD), Orange (NSW) and Bendigo (VIC) in order to recruit members to its political party, 'Fortitude'. The tour failed to attract sufficient interest and members and the party remains stillborn.
Subject to many ups and downs over the course of its existence, the UPF in Melbourne is now largely reduced to its neo-Nazi leader, Blair Cottrell, his sidekick, Thomas Sewell, and a small number of hangers-on. It also has a presence in Perth, where Dennis Huts and Kevin Coombes (AKA 'Elijah Jacobson') constitute its leadership. Formerly prominent UPF members Shermon Burgess, Neil Erikson and Chris Shortis have all left the organisation, Burgess and Erikson currently constituting the ASR with Shortis joining the Australia First Party in mid-2016. Following a daft publicity stunt in Bendigo in late 2015, in September 2017, Cottrell, Erikson and Shortis were found guilty of inciting hatred for Muslims; Cottrell is appealing the conviction, and returns to the County Court in June for a directions hearing. Note that after his Facebook ban, Cottrell transferred his attention to Twitter, but was removed from the site just a few days before the Christchurch massacre, and has now joined all the other nazis on gab.
*Cottrell is a neo-Nazi who believes in a Jewish conspiracy to control the world, is a Holocaust denialist, has recommended that a copy of Mein Kampf be issued to every Australian school student annually and has a violent criminal record. Cottrell's political views are documented in Blair Cottrell, rising anti-Islam movement leader, wanted Hitler in the classroom, Michael Bachelard and Luke McMahon, The Sydney Morning Herald, October 17, 2015 and Quotations From Chairman Blair Cottrell (July 27, 2015), while his criminal record is detailed in United Patriots Front leader Blair Cottrell details violent criminal past in video, Geir O'Rourke and Angus Thompson, Herald Sun, June 11, 2016 and Blair Cottrell : " … and I started getting arrested after I did that." #Fortitude /// #UnitedPatriotsFront (February 23, 2016).
April 2019 : As noted, the UPF collapsed in mid-2017 after Facebook deleted its page (which had at the time over 120,000 followers), and was replaced by TLS. Cottrell was blessed with a platform by the ABC in September 2016, by SKY in August 2018, and otherwise enjoys a love-hate relationship with mainstream media. See also : A Dialectical Approach to Online Propaganda: Australia's United Patriots Front, Right-Wing Politics, and Islamic State, Imogen Richards, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol.42, Nos.1–2, 2019.
United Nationalists Australia (UNA)
A blog and Facebook page that has taken on the functions of the defunct AAA and WLT (see below) blog and Facebook pages. Closely-aligned to AFP, it features the writings of AFP member and Daily Stormer writer Nathan Sykes (AKA 'Hamish Patton') and a handful of others. April 2019 : While UNA maintains a Facebook page, its wordpress blog was deleted after the massacre and Sykes is on trial for allegedly issuing threats over the intarwebs (he's also declared that UNA will return in some unspecified form at a later date).
*The Unshackled (TU)
The Unshackled is a propaganda outlet for the AltRight and AltLight which over time has increasingly favoured the former. Its chief editor is Tim Wilms, an advocate of inter alia Right Wing Death Squads. The site has included contributions by and offered a platform to various others, including a number drawn from other groups and projects featured here. Established in September 2016, Wilms described TU as being 'Australia's leading battlefront against the regressive left, social justice warriors and political correctness', though that honour could more justifiably be bestowed upon Sky News and Newscorpse. Operating out of an office in Oakleigh South, as Tasman News Media Pty. Ltd. Wilms is also producing merch (as 'Upright Market') and offering commercial services (as 'Box Media Studios'). His political background is with the reactionary, right-wing Liberal Democrats micro-party. Thus in 2014 Wilms was the Victorian state treasurer for the LDP, a candidate for the party in the race for a Senate seat at the 2013 federal election (he and his running mate Peter Whelan scored a total of 363 votes, or 0.01%), and he campaigned for the seat of Dunkley at the 2016 state election, gaining 1,037 votes (1.16%).
When it was first launched, TU was the joint effort of Wilms and Sydney student Sukith Fernando, but unfortunately Fernando was dropped not long after it was revealed he was a Holocaust denialist. Among those to have recently joined Tim on the site is independent filmmaker, AltRight activist and self-described fascist Richard Wolstencroft. Wolstencroft got into some troubles in 2017 for a homophobic diatribe, and temporarily relinquished his role as fuehrer of his 'Melbourne Underground Film Festival' (MUFF) as a result. Happily, the yuppies who love MUFF are a forgiving lot, and he was soon back on top. Note that the principal venue for last year's MUFF also served as the venue for Anning's meeting in March, the same one at which #eggboy made his sensational appearance.
Volksfront (VF)
VF is (was) another neo-Nazi skinhead organisation, a US import which was active for several years. Its parent body in the US was declared dissolved after the massacre at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin by VF associate Wade Michael Page. Its principal activist is (was) Chris Smith (AAA) and while active VF worked closely with the NR (Welf Herfurth). As of December 2016, VF remains defunct. April 2019 : VF remains deaded, but one of its members, Andrew Wilson, has re-emerged as a staffer with Senator Anning.
White Pride Coalition of Australia (WPCA)
Chiefly of historical interest, the WPCA was established in the early 2000s as a coalition of neo-Nazi and White supremacist groups. It was eventually disbanded but briefly re-emerged in 2014 as a Facebook page before disappearing again. Prominent members include(d) neo-Nazis Peter Campbell (Sydney) and Jim Perren (Brisbane). Both men were responsible for the 'Whitelaw Towers' blog.
Women for Aryan Unity (WAU)
In Australia, WAU is a tiny group very closely associated with the SCHS. Recently, it raised funds to support the Azov battalion in the Ukraine, to which many neo-Nazis and other fascists across Europe have been drawn. See also : The Azov movement and the Christchurch terror attack, Late Night Live (ABC), April 8, 2019.
Whitelaw Towers (WLT)
A long-running blog that shut up shop at the beginning of 2016, shortly after wrognly declaring that this blog was authored by a Monash academic, Rob Sparrow. Its two principal authors were Peter Campbell and Jim Perren, later supplemented by the efforts of Nathan Sykes. Campbell died a few years ago while Perren had a brief association with the UPF and Fortitude, helping them to organise a rally in Toowoomba and even being assigned a role by the UPF in Queensland: Perren has since repudiated the UPF.
Established in May 2015, XYZ is a website posing as a news organisation and is explicitly pitched against the ABC, which is understood to be a purveyor of 'Cultural Marxism'. Its contributors are young Tories who share similar concerns with the AltRight and are partisans of 'Traditionalism'. April 2019 : Since December 2016, XYZ has increasingly gravitated towards the open embrace of antisemitism and white nationalism. Among its principal VIC-based contributors are editor David Hiscox, Ryan Fletcher and Matthew Roebuck ('Matty Rose') along with David Hilton ('Moses Apostaticus') in QLD. See : Keyboard Warriors of the Australian #AltRight : XYZ & David Hiscox (February 5, 2018) | The Daily Caller has published white supremacists, anti-Semites, and bigots. Here are the ones we know about., Matt Gertz, Media Matters For America, September 8, 2018.
Bonus t o u r s p i e l …
Since December 2016, a number of individuals have attempted to profit from resurgent interest in the far right by way of touring some of its leading foreign propagandists, in particular Milo Yiannopoulos, Gavin McInnes, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon ('Tommy Robinson'), Stefan Molyneux, Lauren Southern and Nigel Farage (September 2018). Promoters have included QLD businessmen Ben & Dan Spiller (AKA AE Media/Future Now Australia), Dave Pellowe (Axiomatic Events) and Damien Costas (Filthy Gorgeous Productions Pty Ltd/Global Media & Entertainment Pty Ltd/Penthouse Australia). The first and likely most profitable tour was that undertaken by Yiannopoulos in December 2017 (Costas), while the Spiller Bros tried and failed on successive occasions to tour not only Yiannopoulos but McInnes, Yaxley-Lennon and Ann Coulter. Pellowe's tour by Molyneux & Southern (July 2018) was, like others, not without its upsets, but did at least provide an opportunity for members of The Lads Society to gain employment. As of this date, Costas and his various enterprises are in deep legal and financial trouble, having been declared a bankrupt, pursued by ASIC for various alleged irregularities, and seemingly owing money to almost every other person involved in organising and promoting his cavalcade of racist stoopid. In CBD Melbourne (March 26, 2019), Samantha Hutchinson and Kylar Loussikian write:
Readers by now will be well acquainted with Penthouse publisher Damien Costas' full dance card. He's fighting bankruptcy proceedings in two states as well as the investigative gaze of ASIC.
But it's worth mentioning an affidavit filed by publicist Max Markson's Obelisk Ventures in the Victorian Supreme Court which contains a creditors list that reads like the production schedule from Sky After Dark.
Accounts from February suggest conservative commentator Daisy Cousens is owed $420 by Costas while sex therapist, mens advocate and occasional guest Bettina Arndt is owed almost $4000.
Fellow Sky identity, Quillette editor and so-called 'Mistress of the intellectual dark web' Claire Lehmann is also owed $1044.
Markson's Markson Sparks publicity group is one of the biggest creditors listed, claiming almost $60,000 in unpaid bills.
But it's not just rabble rousers and right-wingers who have been stiffed of payment.
A swag of Penthouse models, photographers and make-up crew were also left out of pocket, including former Beauty and the Geek star Jordan Finlayson, Maxim model Danie Sommers and specialist nude model Sylph Sia.
Others still owed money in February included Crikey writers Guy Rundle and Ben Hagemann, who was owed almost $3000, while Rundle was waiting on almost $1500.
And spare a thought for self proclaimed "creative rockstar fuelled by sushi and coffee" turned Tabcorp senior social media manager Tristan Brookes-Perrin. He's owed $3000.
See : antifa notes (march 5, 2019) : Milo Yiannopoulos & other #PellDefenders (March 5, 2019) | On Right-Wing Trolls Touring Australia in 2018 (December 1, 2018).
April 9, 2019 12 Replies
Kerry Bolton Killdozer Spork!
I say… it's magick!
Has Kerry the Nazi cast a spell, or are our media watchdogs just incompetent?
Late last year the Broadcasting Standards Authority bewildered observers by upholding a couple of thoroughly spurious complaints that veteran Kiwi neo-Nazi Kerry Bolton had made against Radio New Zealand. Bolton, who is the author of books with titles like The Holocaust: a sceptical inquiry and a former member of groups with names like the National Socialist Party of New Zealand, had complained to the BSA because I had had the temerity to call him a neo-Nazi and a Holocaust denier on a Radio New Zealand programme devoted to the discussion of anti-semitism…
Scott The Unbeliever then proceeds to outline the case for Kerry Bolton: neo-Nazi. Like other Men of Science, Scott laffs in the face of The Supernatural, foolishly believing that Radio New Zealand's apparent decision to appeal to the High Court the BSA's verdict means that the Scienticians know better than The White Masses — The White Masses whose need for Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer has been channelled by Enlightened Ones such as Herr Doktor for many years.
I feel dizzy…
See also : The murky politics of the Right (in New Zealand/Aotearoa) (March 16, 2010).
Killdozer Cures Everything!
Michael Gerald was the normal skinny clean-shaven guy with the big growling bearded voice who helmed Killdozer, one of the original "grunge" bands back before Nirvana and Pearl Jam changed the meaning of the word. For ten years or so, Wisconsin's Killdozer (Gerald and two men named Hobson) played loud, heavy and slow music with lots of guitar distortion and lyrics inspired by the foibles and problems of the Middle American everyman. Disaster films, `70s classic rock, Walmart, serial killers: all this and MORE! MORE! MORE! Then the Hobsons called it quits with Mr. Gerald not far behind them. However, he was PROUD and HAPPY and NICE to let me conduct an email interview with him. See below for proof that this occurred! (unless I made up all the responses myself, in which case don't tell him). My questions are the bold and his answers are the beautiful.
See also : "I get so emo, I could die" / Drop the attitude, fucker / In music, nothing happens… (April 30, 2007).
April 16, 2010 Leave a reply
antifa notes (march 29, 2010)
RaHoWa!
"We gird for total war against the Jews and the rest of the goddamned mud races of the world — politically, militantly, financially, morally and religiously. In fact, we regard it as the heart of our religious creed, and as the most sacred credo of all. We regard it as a holy war to the finish — a racial holy war. Rahowa! is INEVITABLE. … No longer can the mud races and the White Race live on the same planet."
~ Creativity founder, Ben Klassen (1987)
OMGWTF. Bizarro White supremacist cult The Creativity Alliance has gotten a guernsey in the local press in Penrith, NSW. Apparently, 'It's Alright To Be White' — which message comes as quite a relief to this Whitey, I can tell you.
White supremacists target Penrith
Omar Hamwi
Penrith Press
WHITE supremacists are targeting Penrith in a recruitment campaign for a group that first emerged in the US.
The Creativity Alliance has distributed flyers at Glenmore Park and Kingswood and posted a banner on the Kingswood Rd M4 overpass recently.
A Glenmore Park resident contacted the Press about the group, which has a Penrith postal address.
The resident, who asked for his name to be withheld, said he was "disgusted" by the group's message.
"I saw the flyers and thought they were junk mail," the 18-year-old said.
"Then I had a good look at one and thought, 'What's the point?'."
He said the contents of the flyers didn't have a place in Penrith.
After receiving about 10 in the past few months, he saw the banner while driving on the M4.
"I remembered the flyers when I saw the flag," he said.
"I ripped it down and ditched it in a bush, but someone put it back up."
On the group's website, its NSW co-ordinator is listed as Chris Smith.
The Press contacted him by email and he responded to questions.
Mr Smith said the group hoped to educate white Australians about "what is really going on in the world".
"(We are) helping them see through the everyday hypocrisy of a morally bereft society … rather than relying on a biased media and a corrupt government telling them what, how and where to think," he wrote. "It is time white people awaken to reality and realise that doing what is best for the white race is best for themselves."
Asked how many members the group had, Mr Smith refused to comment.
Actually, Creativity is pretty awesome. Its founder, Ben Klassen, committed suicide in 1993, while its last 'Pontifex Maximus', Matt Hale, currently sits in jail. Here's a video of a March 24, 2001 meeting Hale and his followers organised four years prior to his receiving a life sentence (for soliciting an undercover FBI informant to kill Judge Joan Lefkow):
The story of 'Creativity' — which has undergone numerous schisms since Klassen's suicide, Hale's imprisonment, and numerous other, violent incidents — is summarised by the SPLC in its Intelligence Files. In Australia, there's a bloke in Sydney, and others in Adelaide, Brisbane and Melbourne. The Melbourne representative is Patrick O'Sullivan, who gained fame in 2002 after being sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail (for stabbing another bonehead), but is otherwise known for plastering White Man Awake! stickers all over town.
In Sydney, followers of a similar (but even tinier) group, known as the 'Christian Separatist Church Society', function under the leadership of a bloke called Ken Cratchley. Cratchley, along with several score other racist froot loops, have joined the Humanist Society of New South Wales (Inc.), and in February 2010, one of their number, Mark Pavic, was elected Vice-President of the Association. His election took place after two small public rallies at the Association's headquarters, Humanist House, in Chippendale last year to protest monthly meetings of racist kooks; a small amount of media reportage; and a rather larger degree of wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of non-fascist membership of the group. Finally, note that another Cratchley — 'Syd' — stood for the Australia First Party at NSW local council elections in 2004 in Sutherland, where he gained 289 votes.
See also : That's Melbourne! (January 24, 2008).
Elsewhere, Mick Saunders, Australia First Party candidate for the seat of Lindsay in NSW, reckons that there oughta be less taxes on fuel (he works as a truckie), that the country needs fixing, that his Party is the right man for the job, and that the people of Penrith "need a hospital somewhere" (Libs silent on Lindsay candidate, as Australia First steps up, Caryn Metcalfe, Penrith Press, March 27, 2010).
Move over Patriotik Yoof League, here comes Eureka… Yoof… League
Several years ago now, the Australia First Party initiated a yoof wing, and called it the Patriotic Youth League. It had its moments, but ended with a whimper and having John Drew, a middle-aged gentleman and confirmed bachelor from Brisbane, as its sole member. Chris Smith — the Creative man cited in the Penrith Press — is a fan of the EYL, as is Robert Wills (one of the organisers of the rally AGAINST IMMIGRANTS AND ISLAM in Melbourne on April 9), neo-Nazi bonehead Murray Holmes, and numerous other racists, young and old. (Oddly, the 'Patriotic Youth League' brand has also been revived by another, seemingly separate, but overlapping, yoof group.)
Bonus !nataS
I'm beginning to think that Satan Is Real, and that Uncle Kerry Bolton is a man NOT to be messed with. Thus:
Case Number: 2105 KERRY BOLTON AGAINST THE PRESS
Council Meeting MARCH 2010
1. Kerry Bolton complains that an article in The Press, on 5 December 2009, entitled 'A Right muddle' was inaccurate and biased.
2. The complaint is upheld.
Now, if only Dr James Saleam could take a leaf out of Dr Kerry Bolton's !cinataS Bible…
Anyway, the Devil is in the detail, or so they say, and one detail of Kerry's complaint I found fascinating is the following:
10. Its response to the matters raised in paragraph 7 above are:
(a) The initial source for its statement that Dr Bolton was a member of the Nationalist Alliance was a document from April 2008 The ANZAC Declaration: Australia First Party and New Zealand National Alliance: Declaration of Common Interest and Future Relations, signed by Dr Bolton. In response to Dr Bolton's claim that he was not a signatory to the declaration, nor did he have any input into it, The Press says that the document when originally sourced on the "slackbastard.anachobase" website showed Dr Bolton as a signatory but a later document on another website does not show him as a signatory. The Press's position is that the original page from Way Back Internet Archive shows Dr Bolton's name as an active signatory on July 19, 2008 and it cannot speculate as to why the declaration has subsequently been altered or by whom. It stands by its statement that Dr Bolton was a member of the National Alliance.
The Press is correct. The original declaration was signed by Bolton; his name was subsequently removed. In addition to the text on my blog, the document also exists on the Australia First Party website. The archived version (July 19, 2008) includes Bolton as a signatory; the version AF currently publishes on its site does not. Obviously, Bolton's name was removed from the text at some point after July 19, 2008, for reasons which are not provided on the altered document.
See also : The murky politics of the Right (in New Zealand/Aotearoa) (March 16, 2010) | Don't mess with Uncle Kerry! !nataS strikes again in New Zealand (December 26, 2009).
March 29, 2010 6 Replies
The murky politics of the Right (in New Zealand/Aotearoa)
FTR.
The murky politics of the Right
The Press (Christchurch)
[December 2009]
The country's hardcore Right-wing factions look like they mean business. It's just that their business never gets off the ground. JOHN McCRONE reports.
With a slightly self-conscious smile, the tattooed skinhead, New Zealand flag draped over his shoulder, places a flyer in my hand. Then he and his small rag- tag group continue their quiet parade around the sunny, tourist-filled streets of central Christchurch.
So this is white power, neo-Nazi politics, skinhead malevolence in 2009? Up in Wellington, the National Front's annual rally drew larger numbers, but was a similarly subdued affair.
The anarchists and anti-fascists, the loyal leftie opposition, did not even bother to show up. With no confrontation, no aggro, the skinheads were reduced to wandering the streets, shyly interacting with the public, passing out their leaflets railing against immigration, multiculturalism, and threatened changes to the national flag. The TV cameras, finding no action, fast got bored and melted away.
White power was looking very much yesterday's news in New Zealand. But then came the other events of the day. A first surprise was the sight of former National Front leader, Christchurch mayoral candidate and marae fire-bomber, Kyle Chapman, back in the thick of things at the Wellington Cenotaph gathering.
It was only last May that 38-year-old Mr Chapman renounced his white power activities following his marriage to a devout Mormon. Mr Chapman moved from Christchurch to live with his wife on her lifestyle block outside Hamilton.
Yet Mr Chapman says the pull of the movement – the importance of its ideas, the camaraderie of his mates – proved just too strong. "I never really gave it up," he admits. So there he was with the troops again, split from his wife and full of plans as leader of the new "skinhead survivalist" faction within white power.
Mr Chapman says he wants to spread his Right Wing Resistance, a skinhead "community security" group he claims already patrols Christchurch, across the country. He also wants to build up his Survive Club, a military skills training squad which has been carrying out combat exercises with paint ball guns and ex-army Landrovers in preparation, he says, for the predicted collapse of society.
In a time of desperation and panic there will be no room for pussies, says Mr Chapman: "We want people who will not only stand up for themselves and their families, they have to stand up for the other club members and their families."
Going even further, Mr Chapman has been fundraising to found a Nationalist Land Base, a protected skinhead commune with long houses and vegetable plots, somewhere in North Canterbury. A "unified mini state for like-minded Europeans", as he describes it.
While Mr Chapman is organising for the apocalypse, there was also evidence that the National Front, under its new leader, 63-year-old Colin Ansell, is intent on relaunching itself after a chaotic few years under interim chief, Sid Wilson.
Mr Ansell, a Hawera print shop proprietor and former driving force of the New Zealand Nazi Party – in 1967, as a youth in Auckland, he was jailed for 18 months for his part in the fire-bombing of a synagogue – says he agreed to come out of retirement to prevent the movement folding entirely.
Mr Ansell plans to incorporate the National Front for the first time. He is busy redrafting its political manifesto. And crucially, he says, he wants a membership drive to get the party's paid-up numbers to the point where it will qualify for state funding and free airtime at the next general election in 2011.
This would be following the similar achievements of Australia First, the far Right party emerging to fill the gap left by Pauline Hanson's One Nation across the ditch. Australia First New South Wales director Jim Saleam was invited as a key speaker at the National Front's annual meeting which followed the Labour Day rally, and Mr Saleam was able to tell how he has recruited the 500 members needed to take a tilt at Australia's own next elections.
So this year is about showing the National Front is serious again, says Mr Ansell: "Members who came to the AGM were able to see a proper financial report this time and everything. We've set up a bank account to stop the people getting in who're just going to milk it, as has happened in the past."
Don't mess with Uncle Kerry! !nataS strikes again in New Zealand
I've said it once and I'll say it again: I'm beginning to believe that Kerry Bolton really does have !cinataS powers. The latest victim of his magick spells and potions is the accursed Kiwi sociologist Scott Hamilton and the New Zealand Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) — Joanne Morris, Tapu Misa, Paul France and Mary Anne Shanahan — which has issued a statement, described by the meddling sociologist as 'The Broadcasting Standards Authority's Christmas gift to anti-semites' (Reading the Maps, December 24, 2009).
In recent years Bolton has attempted to deny much of his political history, and to repackage some of his most unpleasant views. Bolton was not happy, then, at an interview I gave to Chris Laidlaw on Radio New Zealand earlier this year during which I discussed anti-semitism and Holocaust denial in New Zealand. During my chat with Laidlaw I cited Bolton as one of New Zealand's leading Holocaust deniers, observed that he has had connections with Holocaust deniers overseas, and suggested that he has had a thoroughly bad influence on the young people who make up the majority of the membership of neo-Nazi groups like the National Front.
Bolton complained about my comments to the Broadcasting Standards Authority, telling them that he is neither a Holocaust denier nor a neo-Nazi. Given the weight of evidence for Bolton's views, and the [notoriety] he enjoys as New Zealand's longest-serving neo-Nazi, I expected the Broadcasting Standards Authority to treat his complaint with the contempt it deserved.
Instead, the BSA has just issued a bizarre, convoluted judgement which refuses to take a position on whether or not Bolton is a Holocaust denier, and which finds that my comments about his beliefs were unfair, and should have been censored by Radio New Zealand. Bolton and the international Holocaust denial community will be delighted by their unexpected Christmas present.
Ho ho ho.
Note that Uncle Kerry has also contributed to the first issue of Ab Aeterno: Journal of the Academy of Social and Political Research. Michael O'Meara writes that 'Though the new journal is not explicitly racialist and Jew-wise (this is a luxury now denied to most publications in the white world), it is implicitly so. This is evident in Ab Aeterno's eloquent "Introductory Message"' (Ab Aeterno & The Occidental Quarterly, The Occidental Quarterly, November 24, 2009).
http://www.academy-of-social-and-political-research.com/
See also : "Wellington Nazis. I hate Wellington Nazis." (Two) (October 22, 2009) | Satan : 1 University of Waikato : 0 (July 13, 2009) | Let Waikato @#$% you! | Satan King of Waikato (February 4, 2009).
December 26, 2009 Leave a reply


text:
FACT CHECK ON CLAIMS BY OPPONENTS OF MEDICARE FOR ALL
As the debate over health care heats up during the 2020 election cycle, it is challenging to separate truth from disinformation, memes, and outright lies by a defensive private health insurance industry and its corporate allies struggling to preserve their profits on the backs of patients, families, and taxpayers. Within this debate, the three main alternatives to reform the financing system for U. S. health care are (1) to build on the Affordable Care Act of 2010; (2) to adopt some kind of a GOP plan, not yet finalized; or (3) to adopt a single-payer Medicare for All system, with two such bills in Congress (H. R. 1384 in the House and S-1129 in the Senate).
In reaction to the single-payer bills, centrist Democrats have brought forward several other incremental proposals, such as Medicare Extra for All, that would include a version of the public option that people could buy into and preserve a role for the private health insurance industry. 1
We are now seeing a political battle royal over whether or not private health insurers should continue as a major mechanism for financing health care in this country. Corporate stakeholders and their lobbyists are pulling out all the stops in their own defense.
Here are some of their false claims vs. evidence-based responses:
Patients want choice of insurers.
We are being told this, but patients really want choice of their physicians and hospitals, not insurers that restrict their choices in so many ways, such as by restrictive and ever changing networks and denial of services. 2
Dr. Don McCanne, health policy expert and family physician of long experience, suggests that we ask this question when considering our three main financing options:
Would you give up the insurance you now have if the new public plan was guaranteed for life, always providing you with your choice of physicians and hospitals, providing all essential benefits including mental health and long-term care, had no out-of-pocket costs whenever accessing health care, and was paid for by taxes that you could afford based on your ability to pay instead of being based on the high costs of care? 3
Medicare for All would bring socialism and a government takeover.
False. In a socialized system of health care, as in England, the government
employs health professionals and operates hospitals and other facilities under public ownership. Physicians and other health professionals would not be employed by the government and would remain in private practice. Hospitals and other facilities would retain their private ownership and receive global, year-to-year operating budgets.
Physicians wouldn't like it.
On the contrary, they and other health professionals would be freed
from the growing bureaucratic burden of dealing with some 1,300 private insurers with their different and changing policies concerning restricted networks, pre-authorizations, and other requirements related to reimbursement. Primary care physicians are now paying more than $99,000 a year per physician just for their billing activities, taking many hours each day from patient care. 4 As a result, more than one-half of physicians are showing signs of burnout and decreasing satisfaction with their practices, threatening quality of care. 5 With Medicare for All, they will gain increased practice satisfaction with less burnout.
The public doesn't want Medicare for All.
Untrue. National polls find that as many as 70 percent of Americans support Medicare for All, including 85 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of Republicans. 6 A 2019 report from Gallup News documented that 70 percent of Americans have, over more than 20 years, described the U. S. health care system as being in a state of crisis over its decreased access, uncontrolled prices, and unpredictable quality of care. 7
Medicare for All would bring rationing.
This false assertion disregards how our current system rations care by ability to pay, not medical necessity. We ration care now by restricting access to care through lack of adequate insurance and unaffordable services and treatments, as documented in a just released study by The Commonwealth Fund. 8 Medicare for All, however, will bring universal coverage to all U. S. residents, regardless of age, pre-existing conditions, or location in the country and eliminate disparities across our population.
What will happen if employer-sponsored health insurance goes away?
While it is true that more than one-half of employed Americans under age 65 have some kind of employer-sponsored health insurance (ESI), that coverage has become more unreliable with every passing year. Many small employers provide no coverage, and people often lose coverage when they become disabled. ESI is now too unstable to depend on. The average worker has about 12 jobs before age 50, and 66 million people left their jobs in 2018. All of these people lose their health insurance, with many never regaining coverage. 9 Moreover, most employers will be relieved of the burden of providing ESI as they gain a healthier workforce with improved coverage under Medicare for All, and employees will no longer have to cope with losing their health insurance.
Medicare for All would be too disruptive.
Opponents of Medicare for All use a scare tactic that it will be too disruptive to those with private employer-based health insurance. They avoid telling us, however, how volatile that coverage is, and that more U. S. workers are voluntarily leaving their jobs now than at any time since the quit rate has been recorded. All of these people lose their health insurance. With Medicare for All, individuals will have continuous health insurance not related to their jobs, with much less disruption in their lives.
The passage of original Medicare was seamless in 1965, with a one-year transition and without the use of the internet and computers. Medicare for All will bring reliable, comprehensive coverage for all U. S. residents, as today's disruption goes away and is replaced by universal coverage that we all pay into and becomes as reliable as Social Security did in the mid-1930s. The single-payer bills in Congress call for a transition period of 2 or 4 years.
We can't afford Medicare for All.
False. We cannot afford what we have now—29 million uninsured, 80-plus
million underinsured, uncontained prices and costs soaring, many people forgoing essential care because of costs, and the corporate greed that consumes so much of family and government budgets. Economists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst estimate that Medicare for All will save more that $600 billion a year through big savings in administrative, pharmaceutical, and provider payment spending. Middle class Americans will see savings of up to 14 percent, while 95 percent of Americans will pay less than they do now for health care and insurance.10
In conclusion, for all of these reasons and more, the private health insurance industry in this country has broken the public trust. Corporate greed has become the norm, as illustrated by Humana's CEO's compensation of $27.2 million in 2018. Our government is paying some $685 billion a year to prop up the industry, including $3 billion a year in overpayments to private Medicare Advantage for payments to insurers not substantiated by audits. 11, 12 This failing industry should not receive further bailouts from the government at the expense of taxpayers. The industry has had a long run, and has failed the public interest. It is past time to bid goodbye to the U. S. private health insurance industry.
John Geyman, M.D. is professor emeritus of Family Medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, where he served as Chairman of the Department of Family Medicine from 1976 to 1990. As a family physician with over 21 years in academic medicine, he also practiced in rural communities for 13 years. He was the founding editor of The Journal of Family Practice (1973 to 1990) and the editor of The American Journal of Family Medicine from 1990 to 2003. Since 1990 he has been involved with research and writing on health policy and health care reform. His most recent publications are Struggling and Dying under TrumpCare: How We Can Fix this Fiasco (2019) and a pamphlet, Common Sense: The Case For and Against Medicare for All, Leading Issue in the 2020 Elections (2019)
Grim, R. The special interests behind Rep. Pramila Jayapal's Medicare for All are not the usual suspects. The Intercept, February 27, 2019.
Murad, Y. Majority backs 'Medicare for All' replacing private plans, if preferred providers stay. Morning Consult, July 2, 2019.
McCanne, D. Commentary on reference 23. Quote of the Day. June 28, 2019. don@mccanne.org.
Tseng, P, Kaplan, RS, Richman, JD et al. Administrative costs associated with physician billing and insurance-related activities at an academic health system. JAMA, February 20, 2018.
Clinician well-being is essential for safe, high-quality health care. National Academy of Medicine, Washington, D.C., 2017.
Cortez, Z. The Year for Medicare for All. Common Dreams, January 2, 2019.
Gallup News, as referenced by Conley, J. New analysis shows why Democrats are wrong to fear bold embrace of Medicare for All. Common Dreams, January 14, 2019.
Tikkanen, R, Osborn, R. Does the United States ration health care? The Commonwealth Fund, July 11, 2019.
Bruenig, M. People lose their employer-sponsored insurance constantly. People's Policy Project, April 4, 2019.
Pollin, R, Heintz, J, Arno, P et al. In-Depth Analysis by Team of UMass Amherst Economists Shows Viability of Medicare for All. Amherst, MA,
Schulte, F, Weber, L. Medicare advantage overbills taxpayers by billions a year as feds struggle to stop it. Kaiser Health News, July 16, 2019.
Ockerman, E. It costs $685 billion a year to subsidize U. S. health insurance. Bloomberg News, May 23, 2018.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
from javascript import JSON

class _UnProvided():
    pass

class ObjectStorage():

    def __init__(self, storage):
        self.storage = storage

    def __delitem__(self, key):
        del self.storage[JSON.stringify(key)]

    def __getitem__(self, key):
        return JSON.parse(self.storage[JSON.stringify(key)])

    def __setitem__(self, key, value):
        self.storage[JSON.stringify(key)] = JSON.stringify(value)

    def __contains__(self, key):
        return JSON.stringify(key) in self.storage

    def get(self, key, default=None):
        if JSON.stringify(key) in self.storage:
            return self.storage[JSON.stringify(key)]
        return default

    def pop(self, key, default=_UnProvided()):
        if type(default) is _UnProvided or JSON.stringify(key) in self.storage:
            return JSON.parse(self.storage.pop(JSON.stringify(key)))
        return default

    def __iter__(self):
        keys = self.keys()
        return keys.__iter__()

    def keys(self):
        return [JSON.parse(key) for key in self.storage.keys()]

    def values(self):
        return [JSON.parse(val) for val in self.storage.values()]

    def items(self):
        return list(zip(self.keys(), self.values()))

    def clear(self):
        self.storage.clear()

    def __len__(self):
        return len(self.storage)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub