Following the police shooting of Tyler Cassidy last Thursday evening (December 11), and the subsequent exposure of his membership of the ‘Southern Cross Soldiers’, there has been a barrage of media attention coming the Soldiers’ way. In response, some appear to have ducked for cover (their main page on Myspace has been deleted: see Google cache) while others are cowering in their foxholes (setting their pages to ‘private’). In summary, the tragedy surrounding Tyler’s death is now competing for public attention with the farcical manoeuvrings of the volunteer army that is the Southern Cross Soldiers. Below are links to a number of posts on the slackbastard blog which discuss the Soldiers and which provide further links to some of the enormous (and growing) media coverage that Tyler’s association with SCS has generated.

More press on Tyler Cassidy shooting…
Provides links to a dozen or so press articles, including:

Call for answers after cops kill 15-year-old Tyler Cassidy, Julie-Anne Davies and Milanda Rout, The Australian:

…According to Cam Smith, the organiser of FightdemBack, a group which fights race-hate groups in Australia, the Southern Cross Soldiers is mainly organised through MySpace and there are at least 1000 members in nine chapters across the country.

The gang is made up of mainly teenagers, but the leaders were aged in their mid-twenties and the group was set up through the internet after the Cronulla riots. “They are mainly young people and are organised extensively through MySpace,” Mr Smith said. “It is a post-Cronulla thing. A lot of people who had been inspired by Cronulla have connected through the internet.”

Mr Smith said the Southern Cross Soldiers first came across the radar in January. “They are a gang whose activities are mainly limited to fights with other groups and occasionally picking on the random minority in the street,” Mr Smith said.

“A number of them are fairly hard-core neo-Nazis. The rest of them are fairly hard-core racists. They are interested in racial purity in Australia.”

Southern Cross Soldiers : Into the Blogosphere
Links to a small range of commentary on the case in the Australian blogosphere.

The Ugly Australian(s)
Links to an article in The Australian and very brief coverage of the reaction on everyone’s favourite White supremacist forum Stormfront.