Earlier this year, the British National Party tried to cut off a source of funding to the Tyne & Wear Anti-Fascist Association by writing to the GMB asking it to stop making donations. But the union had never heard of the community group — until the BNP told them about it. A GMB spokesperson said, “Slightly hilariously, the BNP have urged their members to ring up the GMB and ask why we are giving money to TWAFA, which we have not. But we will be giving it now.”

Own goal.

That’s the problem racist organisations face. Every time they think they’re making progress, they’re really uniting the community against them. Every time they think they’ve landed a punch, they’ve left themselves open for a knockout blow.

Take the recent Denial of Service attacks against Fight dem back! Sure, this website was offline for a few hours, and I suppose you could call that a victory. The spike in bandwidth cost us a few dollars, and I suppose you could call that a victory, too.

But within minutes of the first wave of attack, we had people coming forward to offer their support. We received generous financial contributions to help cover our costs, and some welcome advice about securing our site in future.

Most importantly, we have a new server. This one has regularly fended off much stronger DoS attacks than the nazi script kiddies managed to muster. It has several extra layers of security, and an administrator who is keen to work with us to add even more. Best of all, it’s free!

So we here at Fight dem back! have a few people to thank. We want to thank the activists who have made this site such a threat to race-hate organisations in Australia and New Zealand. We want to thank the supporters who offered their assistance over the last couple of days. We want to thank our new hosts for their generosity and expertise.

But most of all, we want to thank the racists who launched the DoS attack. Thanks to you, we’re saving money and we’re stronger than ever.

A note to our friends

We were trying to think of the best way to express our gratitude for your assistance. Returning the favour was tempting, but unsatisfactory. Then we came up with a brilliant idea.

For our friends in Australia:

Criminal Code (Cth)

Section 477.3: Unauthorised impairment of electronic communication

(1) A person is guilty of an offence if:

(a) the person causes any unauthorised impairment of electronic communication to or from a computer; and

(b) the person knows that the impairment is unauthorised; and

(c) one or both of the following applies:

(i) the electronic communication is sent to or from the computer by means of a carriage service[.]

Penalty: 10 years imprisonment.

And for our friends in New Zealand:

Crimes Act

Section 250: Damaging or interfering with computer system

[…]

(2) Every one is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 7 years who intentionally or recklessly, and without authorisation, knowing that he or she is not authorised, or being reckless as to whether or not he or she is authorised,—

[…]

(c) causes any computer system to—

(i) fail; or

(ii) deny service to any authorised users.

How does an all-expenses-paid holiday sound? We’ll see what we can do.