White supremacists said to hail from southern Queensland took a trip across the border into the Northern Rivers region in order to display their ignorance & racism to the world

 

ABC News, 5 November 2024:

The white supremacist group said they had travelled from Queensland to the mountain. (Supplied)

Police are investigating after a group of white supremacists posted on social media that they had staged a rally at a sacred Indigenous site in northern New South Wales.

Warning: This story may be offensive to some readers.

More than a dozen members of the balaclava-wearing group posted images on social media platform X on October 31, which they suggested were taken on a weekend at Wollumbin Mountain, formerly known as Mount Warning.

The site, which includes a summit track, is regarded as sacred to the Aboriginal community and remains closed to the public.

The group carried a flag consistent with the neo-Nazi National Socialist Network and held a banner which read, "Mt Warning for the White Man".

The men erected a sign with white supremacist messaging up at Wollumbin Mountain. (Supplied)

"Members of the National Socialist Network in Queensland travelled to climb Mount Warning last weekend," the post on X, formerly known as Twitter, said.

"White Australians established and maintained the trail for nearly a century and White Australians will decide who climbs it.

"Mt Warning for the White man!"

'Vile demonstration not welcome'

NSW Environment Minister Penny Sharpe described the actions as "vile" and "utterly disgusting", with National Parks referring the matter to police.

"I condemn those involved," the minister said in a statement.

"It is not acceptable anywhere in NSW, whether it be a sacred Indigenous site or on our city streets.

"To these far-right extremists and neo-Nazis, who are reportedly from Queensland, you and your vile demonstration are not welcome in NSW.

"Any attempts to spread hate are taken extremely seriously. I ask anyone with information to contact Crime Stoppers," she said....

On the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service website, Wollumbin is described as "highly significant to Aboriginal people, particularly the Bundjalung nation, as a place of sacred ceremonies linked to traditional law and custom".

"Wollumbin (Mount Warning) summit track and Aboriginal Place remains closed. Decisions about the future of the summit track will be made by the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service in accordance with the wishes of the Aboriginal custodians," it said.

This is not the first time this year that people have deliberately chosen to give offence and inflict hurt on the Aboriginal custodians of this sacred mountain.

In August 2024, former Young Liberal and 27 year member of the Liberal Party of Australia before being elected to the NSW Legislative Assembly as a member of the Libertarian Party, John Riddick and his Libertarian mate Marc Hendrickx, in an ignorant act of defiance and self-promotion climbed Wollumbin.

IMAGE: The Daily Mail, 3 August 2024

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison's QAnon friend may have less reading material theses days

 

In 2018 Reddit.com shut down the original QAnon subreddit, r/CBTS_stream and r/TheGreatAwakening along with the 17 other major QAnon subreddits for inciting violence and doxing, with the last significant QAnon subreddiit r/Pedogate banned in September 2020.

Also in September as part of a broader QAnon sweep begun in July Twitter Inc permanently removed Scott Morrison's personal friend, Tim Stewart aka BurnedSpy34 from the QAnon cluster of conspiracy spreaders, for "engaging in harmful activity".

Now Facebook has extended its measures to counter conspiracy, hate, violent and militarized groups by completely banning QAnon from its social media platform.

Facebook Inc, 6 October 2020:

An Update To How We Address Movements And Organisations Ties To Violence

On August 19, we announced a set of measures designed to disrupt the ability of QAnon and Militarized Social Movements to operate and organize on our platform. In the first month, we removed over 1,500 Pages and Groups for QAnon containing discussions of potential violence and over 6,500 Pages and Groups tied to more than 300 Militarized Social Movements. But we believe these efforts need to be strengthened when addressing QAnon.

Starting today, we will remove any Facebook Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts representing QAnon, even if they contain no violent content. This is an update from the initial policy in August that removed Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts associated with QAnon when they discussed potential violence while imposing a series of restrictions to limit the reach of other Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts associated with the movement. Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts that represent an identified Militarized Social Movement are already prohibited. And we will continue to disable the profiles of admins who manage Pages and Groups removed for violating this policy, as we began doing in August.

We are starting to enforce this updated policy today and are removing content accordingly, but this work will take time and need to continue in the coming days and weeks. Our Dangerous Organizations Operations team will continue to enforce this policy and proactively detect content for removal instead of relying on user reports. These are specialists who study and respond to new evolutions in violating content from this movement and their internal detection has provided better leads in identifying new evolutions in violating content than sifting through user reports.

We’ve been vigilant in enforcing our policy and studying its impact on the platform but we’ve seen several issues that led to today’s update. For example, while we’ve removed QAnon content that celebrates and supports violence, we’ve seen other QAnon content tied to different forms of real world harm, including recent claims that the west coast wildfires were started by certain groups, which diverted attention of local officials from fighting the fires and protecting the public. Additionally, QAnon messaging changes very quickly and we see networks of supporters build an audience with one message and then quickly pivot to another. We aim to combat this more effectively with this update that strengthens and expands our enforcement against the conspiracy theory movement.

This is not the first update to this policy – we began directing people to credible child safety resources when they search for certain child safety hashtags last week – and we continue to work with external experts to address QAnon supporters using the issue of child safety to recruit and organize. We expect renewed attempts to evade our detection, both in behavior and content shared on our platform, so we will continue to study the impact of our efforts and be ready to update our policy and enforcement as necessary.

Speaking truth about “the rightness of whiteness”

The Guardian, 3 April 2019:

https://youtu.be/eoTULlxgxak

The Labor senator and Yawuru man Pat Dodson spoke about the links between Australia’s massacre history and the terrorist attacks in Christchurch, while addressing the censure motion against Fraser Anning in the Senate.

The motion condemned Anning for his “inflammatory and divisive comments seeking to attribute blame to victims of a horrific crime and to vilify people on the basis of religion, which do not reflect the opinions of the Australian Senate or the Australian people.”

Dodson said Indigenous people carry the consequence of murderous prejudice “throughout our entwined history”.

 “First Nations’ peoples … know the impacts of murder wilfully carried out and morally justified by hatred of minorities, misplaced power and bullying superiority,” Dodson said.

“In Gurindji country, they talk of the Killing Times.

“Mounted Constable Willshire was stationed at Victoria River Downs in the 1890s. He was a mass murderer in uniform, who took it upon himself to protect the interests of cattlemen by dispersing the traditional owners of the lands at gunpoint.

“He took to print, justifying his actions with boastful pride and emboldened by the rightness of whiteness and condemned the First Nations’ people to death.

“Willshire wrote about the killing on Wave Hill: ‘It’s no use mincing matters. The Martini-Henry carbines at the critical moment were talking English in the silent majesty of these eternal rocks.’”

Dodson said he has walked through some of the sites of mass murder in Australia with descendants of the victims and “sometimes too with the descendants of murderers.”

“In South Australia I visited a monument erected by both sides in the small community of Elliston to commemorate the mass murder of men, women and children pushed over the steep sea cliffs by charging horsemen and barking dogs.

“I have visited the sites of massacres, of mass murders in Balgo, in Forrest River, and at Coniston. Those mass murders took place in living memory.

“I have sat down with old Warlpiri men and women who luckily survived those murderous attacks as young babies, hidden from the attacks.

“1928 was not that long ago. My mother was just seven years old.

“But we are in 2019 now and a mass murderer, rejecting the richness of difference, driven by religious hatred and xenophobia, empowered by military-style weapons, has waged his atrocity in Christchurch,” Dodson said.

“The murder of 50 innocent people does not just happen. It arises from the feeding of hate, irresponsible language and the demonising of people of colour, and difference.

“We know, and senator Anning knows, the real cause of the bloodshed in Christchurch. The real cause was prejudice, hate, and a passion for violent action, aided and abetted by the availability of military-style weapons.

“We call out those who exploit fear and ignorance for political gain: who mock the traditional dress of women of another culture; who seek donations from the manufacturers of weapons of war to override our own laws; who argue that it is “alright to be white”.

“Their values would plunge our country back into the Killing Times.

“We should instead turn our face to the light of a new future, a peaceful, non-violent, tolerant country of hope, respect and unity.

“A country where no innocent man, women or child is ever again the victim of mass murder.”

Response To Organised White Supremacist Racism 101: compare the pair

On Saturday 5 January 2019 a predominately male, motley band of openly racist people held a rally at St. Kilda Beach in Victoria, during which they expressed their xenophobia and hatred.

The organisers appeared to be members of Australian white supremacist/facist/neo-Nazi/anti-immigration groups.

Including The Lads Society, Antipodean Resistance, The True Blue Crew, Soldiers of Odin and the Proud Boys, Whose combined ranks allegedly hold individuals who have convictions for violence, inciting serious contempt of Muslims, stalking, trafficking, assault, aggravated burglary, arson, affray, riotous behaviour and/or breaching intervention orders, according to media reports.

Nazi symbols featured on clothing worn by some members of these groups, Nazi salutes were frequently given during the rally and anti-Semitic as well as racist taunts were thrown about.

Although one of the rally organisers tries to deny his group's links to Nazi ideology 
and racism, the fact of the matter is that as late as December 2017 the founder of The Lads Society was castigating members for forgetting his game plan is to emulate Hitler by creating a political party with mass appeal, with the words:

"Seriously, just to wrap it up, too, just to wrap it up, the last fucking thing I’ll say is, do you really think that, if Adolf Hitler rose from the grave, if his spirit descended and stood beside you, put his hand on your shoulder, and he surveyed your jackboots with your red laces, and your fucking swastika tattoos, and your abrasive, fuck-the-world attitude, your little syndicate-separatist cult, do you really think he’d be proud of you? Do you really think he would say you’re a true national-socialist, well done? Do you think the man who said all great movements are popular movements and one must adjust himself to the times would be proud of you, would believe in you? Get a fucking clue!" 

There was a second diverse group of people who formed a sing-a-long & community picnic at St. Kilda Beach on the same day, in support of the ethnic and religious minorities that the first group were vilifying.

What has been reported as hundreds of police, including mounted police in riot gear as well as police dog handlers, attended St. Kilda Beach to make sure no violence occurred.

Victorian Police arrested three people who may have been at the beach for the racist rally - one for breaching bail conditions, one for a drug charge and another for possessing a dangerous article.

Independent senator from Queensland and well-known political ratbag, Fraser Anning, flew down to support the racist rally - flying business class and using chauffeured Comcar/s at taxpayers expense.

This was Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison's response to that Saturday at St. Kilda Beach:

This was the Leader of the Opposition and Labor MP for Maribyrnong Bill Shorten's response to that day: 

Now an observant reader may notice that there is something vaguely familiar about Morrison's tweet - a rather uncomfortable similarity to US President Donald Trump's infamous response to the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally, in which he attempted to assert a false equivalence between the white supremacists/neo-Nazis and those protesting against Unite the Right.

This did not go unnoticed in the USA where one political commentator pounced on Morrison's use of the plural "ugly racial protests":

This is the PM of Australia “both siding” it after a Nazi rally.

He is, obviously, a world-class idiot and appeaser. https://t.co/zJ6ryYOyHk

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) January 6, 2019

Then, like Trump, when Morrsion realised that public opinion was running against his false equivalence he tried to retrieve the situation with a statement sent to mainstream media on 7 January - and just like Trump he couldn't quite refrain from hinting that that community picnic was also extremism at work.

"I support entirely the views expressed yesterday by Acting PM Michael McCormack condemning Senator Anning for attending the racist rally in St Kilda and associating himself with extreme and offensive racist views that have no place in our society. He is a repeat offender on these issues. Australians are not anti migrant nor racist. Genuine concerns held by fair-minded Australians about immigration levels, border protection or law and order should not be used as a cover or be hijacked to push hateful and ugly racist agendas. As I did yesterday, I’ll always be prepared to call out extremism in all its forms." [my yellow highlighting]

It seems that when comparing the responses of Morrison and Shorten, Morrison in echoing his hero Trump comes off a very poor second best.

BACKGROUND

The main speaker at the St. Kilda Beach racist rally has a long history of espousing neo-Nazi ideology.

This comment was posted by Cottrell n 2013 expressing the view that a portrait of Hitler should be in every classroom and every school and that his book issued to schoolchildren annually:

And again in 2014:

After Cottrell and the United Patriots Front failed to launch the Fortitude Australia political party in 2016, there appears to be no political party directly associated with the founder of The Lads Society and the alt-right's plan to infiltrate the National Party of Australia is reported to have been unsuccessful to date.

Nevertheless, there are a number of registered political parties that are anti-Islam and anti-immigration which may attract racist, fascist and/or neo-Nazi voters. For example Pauline Hanson's One Nation, Australia First Party (NSW) Incorporated, Rise Up Australia  and Love Australia or Leave. Then there are the deregisterd parties which apparently continue to have a presence on digital platforms, such as the Australian Protectionist Party which was deregistered in 2015.

Quotes of the Week

"We truly hadn't ever considered that people could just be really evil." [Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince in Gizmodo on 1 December 2017, on why this service provider company protects virulent neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer]

"Some families, some communities, some cultures breed strife. Governments cannot always fix it. Compulsory contraception for those on benefits would help crack intergenerational reproduction of strife." [NewsCorp journalist and newly appointed  head of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission, Gary Johns, in BuzzFeed, 19 May 2015]

The Charlottesville incidents to which US President Donald J. Trump gives tacit support - WARNING: violent and disturbing images

https://youtu.be/P54sP0Nlngg

The Sydney Morning Herald, 16 August 2017:

He [President Trump] argued that both sides had been guilty of violence, he noted that the white supremacists indeed had a permit to protest, but the "other group" did not. He insisted that both sides had "bad people" and "very fine people" and he drew an equivalency between George Washington, who help create the United States after the American Revolutionary War that ended in 1783, and General Robert E. Lee, who led the secessionist armies that killed more American troops than any other foe in the defence of slavery nearly a century later.

The political and media response afterwards was immediate and shocked. Again Republican leaders were forced to come out to rebuke and distance themselves from their ostensible leader. In a long Twitter statement Marco Rubio declared, "Mr President, you can't allow #WhiteSupremacists to share only part of blame. They support idea which cost nation & world so much pain."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I suspect that the reaction to "Unite The Right Rally" marches in Charlottesville is not what Neo-Nazi, Klu Klux Klan and other hate groups were expecting

From 11 to 12 August 2017 extreme right wing groups gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia USA to participate in a two-day rally. Counter protesters also gathered over that same time period.

By the evening of 12 August two police officers and one counter protester were dead and at least twenty counter protesters were wounded.

Unite The Right march participant……

"We are stepping off the Internet in a big way. For instance last night at the Torch Log there were hundreds and hundreds of us. People realised they are not atomised individuals, they are part of a larger whole. Because we have been spreading our memes, we have been organising on the Internet and now they are coming out and now as you can see today we greatly outnumbered the anti-white, anti-American filth and at some point we will have enough power that we will clear them from the streets forever. That which is degenerate in white countries will be removed. We are starting to slowly unveil a little bit of our power level – you ain't seen nothin yet." [Robert "Azzmador" Ray, feature writer at The Daily Stormer, video, 12 August 2017]

Reaction to the white supremacist violence……

The white supremacist who helped lead the Charlottesville rally has been banned from Facebook

Facebook has banned the Facebook and Instagram accounts of a white nationalist who attended the rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that ended in deadly violence.

Facebook spokeswoman Ruchika Budhraja told the Associated Press on Wednesday that the profile pages of Christopher Cantwell have been removed as well as a page connected to his podcast..

The Daily Caller Removes 'Unite the Right' Organizer Jason Kessler's Bylines From Web Site

As of 14 August 2017, Daily Caller —  a conservative web site with a twin nonprofit organization — has scrubbed its site of articles by Jason Kessler, the white supremacist who was an organizer of a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia the weekend before. 

Daily Stormer jumps to dark web while Reddit and Facebook ban hate groups

GoDaddy – the internet domain registrar and web hosting service – and Google cancelled the Daily Stormer's domain name registration on Sunday, saying they prohibit clients from using their sites to incite violence. The Daily Stormer helped organise the violent neo-Nazi gathering in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday at which a civil rights activist died.

Twitter is joining its fellow tech companies in clamping down on the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website

On Twitter, the Daily Stormer's feed is no longer visible; instead, the page on Wednesday afternoon reflects its account has been "suspended." A spokesperson for Twitter said the company could not comment on individual users, but added: "The Twitter Rules prohibit violent threats, harassment, hateful conduct, and multiple account abuse, and we will take action on accounts violating those policies."

Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

Earlier today, Cloudflare terminated the account of the Daily Stormer. We've stopped proxying their traffic and stopped answering DNS requests for their sites. We've taken measures to ensure that they cannot sign up for Cloudflare's services ever again.

US companies crack down on key services for hate groups

US companies are blocking hate groups from key services such as payments, cyber security defences and social media sites after the violence in Charlottesville, despite questions over the consequences for freedom of speech. Leading payment and credit card groups MasterCard, American Express, Discover Financial Services and Visa have joined Silicon Valley companies Twitter and Cloudflare to become the latest corporations to try to block neo-Nazis' access to funds and the internet. Several of the payments companies added they did not ban the use of their services because the customers expressed offensive views — but because they violated their terms of service or incited violence.

Trump Dissolves Business Advisory Councils as CEOs Quit

Most leaders on the councils thought Trump's statement on Monday, in which he condemned the hate groups by name, was sufficient. But they were furious and disgusted with Trump's follow-up remarks on Tuesday, according to the offices of two CEOs.

By Tuesday night, at least nine members decided to drop out individually, and reached out to Schwarzman, who then proposed dismantling the council entirely.

A dozen members of that strategy and policy council participated in a conference call Wednesday, during which they all agreed to dissolve the group, the people close to the decision said. Schwarzman then notified the White House. And after that, Trump tweeted that he was "ending both" advisory councils. The business leaders had expected that Trump would portray the developments as his own decision, the sources said

Matt Talhelm‏ @MattTalhelm

#BREAKING: #Cville car suspect, #UniteTheRight rally organizer, & alt-right leaders face $3M lawsuit from 2 ppl injured in car attack

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