Quite some time ago, FDB got a sent a copy of a booklet from the little publishing empire of Kerry Bolton. It caused a few smiles and even loud laughter before it began collecting dust on a shelf somewhere. Recently dusted off, we decided to give it another look. Bolton is an “old hand” of the far right scene in New Zealand and has made a career out of rehashing many of the same press releases and graphics over the last few decades.
But what of his more recent rantings? Well, for a mere $10 you can get a 44-page book titled “RED ALERT - Behind the smear campaign against Australasian Nationalists” by K R Bolton. Throughout the booklet Bolton tries to portray himself as a rather moderate right-winger, and constantly states that the various far-right groups throughout Australasia are the victims of a lefty smear campaign. The media have apparently been duped en-mass by this campaign and have gone forth to write endless articles saying these groups contain fascist, white supremacists and nazi elements, which in turn is what Kerry claims is what caused some people with dodgy right wing beliefs to join up. Yep, he’d have us believe that it was all a self-fulfilling prophecy. But we say bollocks! Those fascist, white supremacist and nazi elements have been there all along. And as Kerry’s booklet often uses the National Front to outline his argument, why don’t we do the same?
The National Front as it exists in NZ at the moment started in 1990, under the leadership of Anton Foljambe. It existed for years in obscurity, with one of its earliest media appearances being courtesy of Kyle Chapman
Oops! Things went quiet for a few years until the NF became embroiled in a stolen explosives scandal
Oops! Then the next year they were going on about forming a militia
Oops! Note the NF spokesman “Todd Sweeney” has a pie-eating reference to his name. Who could it have been? Then in 2004 in Christchurch a series of racist assaults led a group of people to haold a march against racism. For some reason the NF decided to protest against it. They weren’t very clear about whether that meant they were for racism, but one of them decided to wear a t-shirt with a swastika on it anyway.
Things were beginning to look up for the NF. They had obtained a bit of a media profile, they had established a network of groups around the country, so they decided to start some protests. For some reason they got some bad publicity quite quickly.
Undeterred they announced a nation-wide callout for a protest in Wellington for Labour Weekend. But something went wrong. You see, publicly they claimed they weren’t nazis, white supremacists or anything like that, but some incriminating photos began to circulate of NF leaders and key activsts such as Brendan Rimmer or Troy Cullinane and even a photo of Kyle Chapman posing with a gun and wearing what appears to be a SS Regimental Armband.
Then there was the photo of no less than four NF leaders posing with a banner and some guys doing nazi salutes.
Kyle claimed he didn’t see the guys doing the salute, but surely one of the other three leaders saw them. After all, it was on a NF militia camp. But where the hell were those photos coming from? All seems to have been revealed when this article appeared a couple of days before the NFs big day in Wellington. Oops!
Now Kerry Bolton was National Secretary for the NF throughout 2004. Kyle Chapman was its National Director. Both denied the NF had anything to do with racism, white supremacy, fascism or nazism. So why the hell were they allowing a NF members-only e-group to circulate such photos? It really does make Kerry’s attempts to blame the NF negative public image lefty-backed media smear-mongering look like, well…. a pile of shit. All those photos came from the NF, Kerry. They are part of what caused the negative publicity, and they came from the horses mouth.
Not ones to learn quickly, the NF went ahead with their rally in front of the Cenotaph (war memeorial). It went..badly. Nazi salutes were performed
and several members of the NF Security team proudly displayed their nazi tattoos
Oops! There had been a couple of desecrations of Jewish cemetaries in the months previously, a couple of NF-linked assaults, plenty of NF-linked nazi stuff going down on the internet, so people in Wellington were feeling pretty angry about it. A group calling itself Multi Cultural Aotearoa (MCA) organised a counter-rally to the NFs demonstration, and got 1,500 people. A couple of hundred of those people spontaneously broke off from the end of the rally when a group of NFers came walking past under police escort. Insults were traded, a couple of eggs thrown. Most of the NF piled into cars and drove off. Cale Olsen was left behind, and he began walking off with fellow NFer Melanie Short. An insult directed at Olsen seems to be what provoked him to rip a placard from someones hands and punch another in the face, before copping a brief beating himself. It all happened in front a several camera crews, yet Kerry’s version of events as per his booklet is that it was all a riot commited by “communist and anarchist stormtroopers who gutlessly attacked NF supporters”. Dream on, Kerry.
The following Labour Weekend, in 2005, the NF held another rally, again in front of the Cenotaph. The irony of one of their security team sporting a large nazi eagle atop his shaved head seems to have escaped them. Nazi-flag boy David Roycroft was there too. But wait…don’t they expell members who have nazi leanings? It appears not.
And of course, the NF Youth Representative and the former NF webmaster, both of them long-term NF members, were arrested for vandalising mosques
With so much evidence of white supremacist, fascist and nazi tendencies within the NF coming from NF sources, it really is hard to understand how Kerry can claim that they have just been misrepresented.
Moving right along, Red Alert contains some amusing attempts by Kerry to appear being a non-fascist right-winger. He cites an article from the 1980s when he was running the Nationalist Workers Party (NWP) whereby the NWP denounce nazi politics. Kerry uses this to claim that he has always been opposed to nazism. But what was Kerry up to between the NWP and the NF? For a while he got into Satanism with strong Nazi links.
For someone opposed to nazism, what was he up to? The mind boggles.
Then of course there is Red Alert’s cute dedication “To the late Sgt. Ron Keen who fought a real war against real Fascists, and then fought to preserve European civilisation in the aftermath of that war”. We wonder what Sgt Ron Keen would think of one of Bolton’s groups that he ran alongside Kyle Chapman in the late 1990s, the Fascist Union? You couldn’t get much more of a “real Fascist” name than that. And while Bolton often waxes lyrical about lefties vandalising public property with stickers and posters, check out this literary masterpiece that was glued up all around Christchurch.
With all those spelling mistakes, we’re left scratching our heads as to who authored that one, but it appeared alongside
Hmm, bad spelling? Militia fetish? Who could that be? Hey wait a minute…!
A key aspect to Bolton’s book is a listing of genuine, certified lefties of Wellington, New Zealand, as well as a few Australian FDBers. We won’t bother rebutting what Bolton says here simply because it would take up too much space. But as Bolton stated in his foreword that Red Alert “has been compiled as background material for police and journalists” we’re sure they would appreciate the large amount of assumption, conjecture, weird hypothoses and incorrectly captioned photos that comprise that section of the booklet.
But Kerry let himself down very badly right at the beginning of his booklet when he praises Leftywatch and goes on to issue the rather weak claim that “I do not know much about Mr Weerheym of Leftywatch…”. Really? But while Bolton quotes heavily from FDB and spends much time criticising articles published on the site, he obviously, and quite incredibly, somehow managed to avoid the plethora of information available about the creator of Leftywatch, Ben Weerheym. Perhaps now Mr Bolton may go and check out Weerheym’s involvement in the White Devils. What was that about real Fascists Kerry? Oops!
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