Peter Lalor writing to his fiancee Alicia Dunne:

The diggers … in self-defence, have taken up arms and are resolved to use them … I am one amongst them. You must not be unhappy on this account. I would be unworthy of being called a man, I would be unworthy of myself, and, above all, I would be unworthy of you and your love, were I base enough to desert my companions in danger.

MacGregor Duncan, Andrew Leigh, David Madden and Peter Tynan, the authors of Imagining Australia:

It should be re-elevated to its previous position as a central legend of Australian nationalism, standing for those distinctly Australian values: egalitarianism, mateship and fairness with democracy, freedom, republicanism and multiculturalism.

Mark Twain:

It was a revolution — small in size but great politically; it was a strike for liberty , a struggle for principle, a stand against injustice and oppression. It is another instance of a victory won by a lost battle.

Tom Keneally:

I do think Eureka should be celebrated as the birth of our national identity rather than Gallipoli. It was the first time Australians-in-the-making put forward what they thought Australia should be: the flag, the invocation of freedom, the demand for representation.

Weston Bates:

The miners established a society that was more egalitarian than any other in the world at the time and it became part of our culture. The miners established that in this new land we expected new behaviour. They made it clear Australia would not be a nation of corrupt and bullying pseudo-aristocrats and downtrodden serfs.

It’s going to be a busy week.

In the lead-up to the 150th anniversary of the Eureka Stockade, I’ll be doing something about the Patriotic Youth League. A bunch of Stormfront motherfuckers who have been polluting my local area with their posters and stickers. Like many far right groups, these guys have pulled a major faux pas and used the Eureka Flag on their website and on their propaganda. Their most audacious being a sticker covering Epping Railway station which features the Eureka Flag and the words, “Aussies fighting back!”

Remember these guys? They’re the youth group for the Australia First Party. They were in the press about four months back when a couple of African students were assaulted at the University of Newcastle and racist stickers were posted about the campus. I engaged in some mildly subversive espionage on behalf of a friend of mine in order to find out some more about them. Hell, their head guy in Sydney, Andrew Wilson, lives a five minute drive away from me — I didn’t like that shit and wanted to make sure I was on top it all.

Essentially, they were your standard little neo-Nazi group that denied all and any links to the wider fascist racialist movement. I uncovered the fact that their leader, Stuart McBeth was a regular contributor to Stormfront and was also fortunate enough to receive verbal confirmation on the truth of this story.

I say they were in denial because after perusing their site, it looks as if they’re starting to drop some of their pretense. For example:

Already ordinary Australian youth who know nothing of the small hardcore skinhead scene are adopting patriotic music and throwing out the Snoop Dogg and Eminem s#@t. Soon the Newcastle foreshore will be packed with lowered utes with chrome rims and awesome stereos pumping out Fortress.

Not all pretense mind you. Despite claiming a fondness for Australian neo-Nazi skinhead band Fortress, they feature a link to a “Patriotic Music” site complete with a minute disclaimer that they don’t endorse the lyrical content of anything found there. Yeah, right.

It’s always pissed me off whenever neo-Nazi and racist groups use the Eureka Flag. For starters, there were nineteen different nationalities that fought under the starry banner. Brits, Italians, Germans, Americans and of course, the Irish. It was a microcosm of the nation that Australia would later become.

The far right likes to cite an incident at Lambing Flat in 1851, where a Eureka like flag was unfurled in a riot against “the Chinese plague” as their justification for using the Eureka banner. Naturally, the union movement takes a dim view of this and is never slow to rescue the flag from those who would use it to promote racialist ideologies.

It’s kind of ironic that Australian white supremacist movements would use a symbol that is so steeped in multicultural significance and meaning. They choose to ignore the fact that the very first person placed on trial for treason over the Eureka Stockade was John Joseph, a black American and former slave.

Perhaps I’ll get the chance to discuss this issue in person with some Patriotic Youth League representatives some time this week. Andrew Wilson will sure as hell get a nice shock when finds out that my name isn’t Edmond Funpants or whatever name it was I gave him after meeting him in the Epping pub. Depending on how things go,I may post an entry on this little spy mission. Naturally, I’ve had to keep a lid on it until my friend got some quotes for his story.

A mate of mine just called by and told me he saw some fresh PYL stickers posted around Eastwood shops. Word on the street is that some of the local Koreans are banding together to do something about it. I’ll try and bring the Greens, the local churches, Rotary types, the unions and the various ethnic groups together so we can combat the PYL constructively and lawfully.

I’ll start by heading down the shops with my BBQ scraper to get rid of those stickers. “Aussies Fighting Back”? Pfffft.