The story below concerns a neo-Nazi ‘skinhead’ (more frequently referred to as a bonehead by anti-racist skinheads) called Kenneth Stewart. Stewart is a leading member of the local branch of the US-based Hammerskins neo-Nazi group. The Hammerskins have a long and bloody history–over the last 20 years or so, members have been convicted for murder and numerous other violent crimes–and a global reach. In Portugal, the gang’s leader Mário Machado was last year sentenced to seven years jail for crimes of coercion, robbery, kidnapping and illegal possession of weapons. You can read more background material on the Hammerskins here. The report also refers to a growing number of neo-Nazis working as mercenaries for Western powers. The reference to Randy Krager is elaborated upon by Rose City Antifa here; earlier reports by the SPLC may be read here, here and here.
A NEO-NAZI organiser from Victoria has been working as a private military contractor in Afghanistan, mocking locals and holding secret ceremonies commemorating the deaths of German soldiers in World War II.
Kenneth Stewart, 36, has worked as a military-trained paramedic, accompanying aid workers around Afghanistan. His Facebook page shows a swastika flag in his room in Kandahar, and another picture shows him surrounded by Afghans he refers to as ”my nignogs” with a friend adding the comment ”it’s lovely to see a white man back in control of the subhuman”. On Stewart’s Facebook page he regularly makes disparaging comments about Afghans, Aborigines, Jews and others.
He has worked as a medic for several aid groups based in Kandahar, including the United Nations Development Program.
The Age made several attempts to contact Mr Stewart, but received no reply.
In Melbourne, he helps recruit white supremacists to the local branch of the Southern Cross Hammerskins, an international neo-Nazi group. He described himself on one internet forum as a ”skinhead, mercenary, pork-eating viking; not bad just misunderstood”.
Anti-facist groups in the US say there are growing numbers of neo-Nazis working in the expanding private military sector, and that the Hammerskins are considered to be among the best organised and most violent neo-Nazi groups in America.
The beliefs and photos posted by Mr Stewart have been condemned by the United Nations and the contractor who hired him on their behalf.
Spokesman Brian Hansford said the UN was ”horrified by these … disturbing images”.
On Armistice Day last year, Mr Stewart posted on a white supremacist website that he and his colleagues in Kandahar had a service commemorating World War II soldiers, including Germans and Italians ”that did what they thought was right regardless of which side they were on”.
The Age has not been able to establish who Mr Stewart worked for in Afghanistan last year, but it is clear from photos on his Facebook page that he was doing similar work.
One Australian security company that has employed him said it repudiated any far-right views and said the images he posted on Facebook should be removed.
Security experts say any Nazi or racist references could risk endangering the Coalition troops fighting under the NATO banner, including personnel from the Australian Defence Forces.
In the US, an intercepted 2009 email purported to show Oregon fascist organiser Randy Krager warning his colleagues not to email him about his racist skinhead group while he was working in Afghanistan. The email read: ”All communications from the mid-east are monitored by dept. of defense and/or cia … so I will have some contact but will not be able to discuss any business, not even vaguely.”
The Southern Cross Hammerskins also organise music festivals where far-right bands perform in front of vetted audiences. Their next festival is on the Gold Coast next month.
Residents on the Gold Coast are furious after a group of neo-Nazi white supremacists were allowed to hold a gathering on the Queensland tourist strip over the weekend.
Gold Coast Mayor Ron Clarke condemned the gathering, organised by a group calling themselves the Southern Cross Hammerskins, but said he was powerless to stop it.
The skinheads organised the gathering alongside the international hate groups Blood and Honour and Crew 38 but very little else was known about it.
Anyone who was interested in going was merely told to email an organiser named Tattooed Aryan.
That person would then arrange to pick them up and take them to a secret location.
Gold Coast police monitored the weekend event and say it passed without incident but they wouldn’t be interviewed about it and they would not say exactly where it took place.
They also would not comment on how many people turned up.
Councillor Clarke says while he was absolutely opposed to it happening, there was nothing he could do to stop it because it was held on private property.
“You can’t account for people’s political leanings, tastes, or stupidity, can you?” he said.
The gathering started about 7:00pm on Friday when a group of about 30 skinheads turned up at a suburban restaurant in Ashmore on the Gold Coast.
Some of the heavily tattooed and shaven-headed men displayed swastikas. Others were wearing t-shirts with the slogan “Blood and Honour”.
Blood and Honour is a global skinhead network which was banned in Germany in 2000 for spreading Nazi messages.
Sociologist Alec Pemberton from the University of Sydney says Australians should be worried about the group’s activities here.
“These are white supremacists and they’ve actually been engaged in other countries in real acts of terror,” he said.
“[Oklahoma bomber] Timothy McVeigh and people like that, they’re along those lines.
“My point would always be, you are better off knowing about them, knowing where they are, what’s going on, than having them undercover and underground.”
The so-called Hammered Music Festival was promoted as the first event of its kind on the Gold Coast in fliers and over the internet.
Promoters touted it as a weekend of “sun, surf and racialist musical mayhem”.
“These events aren’t just about music – they’re about networking and meeting new comrades – so we look forward to seeing ya [sic] and hopefully many other good white folk there,” one promoter said.
The ABC tried to contact a number of members of the skinhead groups who organised the event, but all requests were ignored.
However Blood and Honour’s online radio stream reveals that members often get together “to build a strong, white community”.
Queensland Deputy Premier Paul Lucas is unimpressed.
“Those sort of attitudes of that sort of people are disgraceful and disgusting,” he said.
But the president of the Gold Coast North Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Tony White, says there could be a case for the state government to go further if skinhead groups continue to meet on the Gold Coast and cause trouble.
“If it escalates, I think something maybe has got to be put to law by the State Government,” he said.
“We know that they can bring in these laws – they ban bikie gangs, so if they can ban bikie gangs, they can ban these outlaw Nazi gangs … if they start causing problems that is.”
POLICE are investigating a white pride festival planned for the Gold Coast this month, however they may be powerless to prevent it.
White supremacists from around the world are expected converge on the Coast for the Hammered music festival.
The Queensland chapter of the Southern Cross Hammer Skinheads is publicising the festival which is ‘proudly presented’ by Crew 38 and Blood and Honour, a race-hate group banned in Germany for spreading Nazi messages.
“Hell yeah, this is going to be one hell of a week! Sun, Surf and Racialist Music,” wrote tattooed-aryan on the SCHS website, but the venue for the festival was not named.
First, Nicole Hanley, an Australian employee of French corporation ‘The Thales Group’, has been suspended from her job following revelations that she is an active member of the international neo-Nazi skinhead organisation ‘Blood & Honour’:
One of Australia’s largest Defence Department-linked companies has suspended a contractor over her alleged links to an international neo-Nazi group.
Nicole Hanley, a bid support manager for Thales – which has hundreds of millions of dollars in Department of Defence contracts – is alleged to have been involved as an administrator of the neo-Nazi web forum Blood & Honour.
The claims have been made by whistleblower site Wikileaks, which has published a hacked database containing private messages between the group’s members.
According to the Wikileaks private message trail it is claimed that Hanley has published a detailed online diary of her travels to Europe last year, which included attending several neo-Nazi skinhead gatherings, visiting Adolf Hitler’s birthplace, placing flowers on his parents’ grave and collecting Nazi memorabilia…
Secondly, B&H Australia has encountered a spot of bother following reports that the group is organising a gig in Perth on ANZAC Day (April 25). In response to criticism emanating from the RSL and general public, B&H Perth representative Murray Holmes compared Adolf Hitler to John HoWARd!
Mr Holmes said fascism had come a long way since the days when Adolf Hitler was Fuhrer.
“We’re not disciples of Hitler,” he assured.
“Adolf did some good and he did some bad, like Johnny Howard did good and bad, probably more bad than good.”
Joining Murray on stage on April 25 will be Jesse, a bonehead (and member of another nutzi group the Southern Cross Hammerskins) who sings in Melbourne band Ravenous. Jesse is also involved in a new business venture called 9percentproductions.com. A perusal of their online catalogue suggests that, contra Holmes, little has changed for nutzis since Adolf Hitler blew his brains out while hiding in his bunker in 1945. Some of the many fabulous items on sale include:
‘Der ewige Jude’ (The Eternal Jew) by Volkszorn;
‘Fetch the Rope’ by The Klansmen;
‘Freezer Full of Nigger Heads’ by Grinded Nig and;
‘Alcoholocaust’ by Jew Slaughter.
Some of the contents of one of the two principal websites belonging to the international neo-Nazi network Blood & Honour (B&H) have been Wikileaked.
B&H is a proscribed organisation in Germany and Spain; the Australian franchise (in conjunction with another international neo-Nazi network of boneheads called the ‘Hammerskins’) is organising a gig in Perth on April 25 this year (ANZAC Day) to celebrate the deaths of Australian soldiers in WWII…
An event widely recognised as being pivotal in shaping Anglo-Australian relations occurred in 1882, when an Australian cricket team beat England on an English ground for the first time. The following day, on August 30, 1882, the Sporting Times carried a mock obituary to English cricket which concluded that: “The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia”.
Hence: The Ashes.
(The first team to tour England, in 1868, was composed of Australian Aborigines, and coached by Tom Wills, who was instrumental in developing the game of Australian Rules football. Wills is honoured with a sculpture at the MCG by Louis Laumen, erected in 2002. The sculpture reads that Wills: “Did more than any other person – as footballer and umpire, co-writer of the rules and promoter of the game – to develop Australian Football during its first decade”; a contribution based — arguably — on his knowledge of and familiarity with the game of marngrook.)
2) The Nutzi Version
As noted several weeks ago, Perth nutzis have some ashes of their own: dead nutzi David Lane’s ashes. Upon announcing that the handful of dust would be scattered in Perth, on Stormfront Down Under, a Victorian Creator asked (February 11): “Sounds good. Who is hosting the event?” To which the ever-helpful Stormfront Down Under moderator Paul Innes (‘Steelcap Boot’) replied:
Mr David Lane.
I have just returned from witness to the package that contained the ashes.
All those White Nationalists who wish to attend and show their respects during this overdue service for David [L]ane here in Western Australia will need to contact W.O.T.A.N@hushmail.com
Combat 18 Accused Of Purloining David Lane’s Ashes
Larry Keller
March 11, 2009
He’s been dead nearly two years, but there’s a fight brewing in the white nationalist movement over one of its heroes, David Lane.
Actually, the brouhaha is over only a part of Lane. About one-fourteenth of him. That portion of his ashes is reportedly in Perth, Western Australia, more than 9,000 miles from where he died in Indiana. The last time a dead man’s ashes traveled this far may be when the cremains of LSD devotee Timothy Leary and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry were blasted into orbit in 1997.
How Lane’s ashes got all the way to Perth is a matter of controversy. Women for Aryan Unity activist Victoria “Vickie” Cahill is accusing members of the Australian division of the violent neo-Nazi skinhead group Combat 18 of misappropriating the ashes “through lies” and then “sending rape threats, threats of beatings” to Cahill and other WAU members when they protested.
“We want those ashes back,” Cahill posted to Stormfront and her MySpace page March 9.
Some background:
Lane died in March 2007 in a federal prison in Terre Haute at the age of 68. He was serving a 190-year sentence for racketeering, conspiracy and violating the civil rights of Denver radio talk show host Alan Berg, who was murdered in his driveway in 1984 by Lane and other members of the Bruders Schweigen, or Silent Brotherhood. The terrorist group was also known as The Order. Lane, a onetime member of the John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan, was a founding member of the group and served as the getaway driver in the Berg murder.
While in prison, Lane wrote screeds about race and became revered among white nationalists. He is perhaps best known for coining the “14 Words,” “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children.” He co-founded 14 Word Press in Idaho to publish his writings. After his death, neo-Nazi stage mom April Gaede announced that she “and the gals from WAU [Women for Aryan Unity]” had created a memorial fund to have Lane’s ashes stored in the capstone of a pyramid monument to be erected in a white homeland, per Lane’s wishes.
But the gals couldn’t raise enough money for a full-sized pyramid, Gaede later revealed, and so they decided to apportion Lane’s ashes among 14 miniature pyramids – one for each of the 14 Words. Each of the puny pyramids was to be enshrined in the homes of 14 white nationalist women, including Cahill.
It wasn’t long before Gaede and Cahill and other members of Women for Aryan Unity were feuding over Lane-related matters, with Gaede accusing the WAU coven of “showing off” Lane’s remains at white nationalist events.
Now Cahill is urging a boycott of a proposed “ash spreading memorial service” for Lane in Perth. An invitation to “pro-White concious [sic] people” to attend the big event was posted last month on Stormfront. “Date will be finalized when attending numbers have been estimated,” it read. “Civil and neat attire is expected for the proceedings.”
Cahill is vowing to reclaim the ashes before said proceedings can proceed. “If I have to make my way to Australia to get these ashes I will,” she wrote. Cahill then added, ominously, “I will be contacting the bruders about this.”
Hmmm. The bruders ~ versus ~ the Innes brothers. I’d pay to see that.
ACHTUNG!
Jake is the man with the plan. And access to David Lane’s ashes. He’s also desperate for a drummer. His band, Indigenous Hate, will be playing a gig in Perth to celebrate the deaths of Australian soldiers in WWII. Scheduled to take place on ANZAC Day (April 25), it is being organised by Blood & Honour Australia and the Southern Cross Hammerskins, with Murray Holme’s band The Quick & the Dead and Melbourne band Ravenous. Jake (February 11, 2009):
Perth band Indigenous Hate are in desperate need of a new drummer. With weeks to go until some gigs, and half way through recording our album, our drummer has done the dodgy on us and left us in the dark. I am willing to pay for someone, anyone, across Australia, to come over to Perth and live for a couple of months so we can play the gigs and record the rest of the album. I can email a couple of songs that we have done in the studio to see what we sound like, but if you like hard, skinhead music, you wont be disap[p]ointed. Please contact me, Jake, A.S.A.P [at] W.O.T.A.N@hushmail.com.
Perhaps the closest Australian authorities have come to doing something similar was the arrest of David Pollard (b. December 31, 1983) in June last year. Pollard was responsible for the distribution of nutzi propaganda via his website ‘Noble Front’. Among the items confiscated by police from his property was the Deaths Head CD ‘Feast of the Jackal’ (featuring the No.1 smash hit ‘Swastika’; the swastika “will fly again”, apparently).
Deaths Head is — or rather, was — a local Melbourne band, and closely associated with both Blood & Honour and the Hammerskins, international neo-Nazi networks. B&H is banned in Germany, but active in Australia. To celebrate the deaths of Australian soldiers in WWII, the two groups are organising a gig in Perth on ANZAC Day later this year; bands playing include Indigenous Hate, Quick & the Dead, and Ravenous.
Deaths Head and Ravenous member Jesse, a Hammerskin, maintains a channel on YouTube which features a number of Deaths Head videos, as well as two very brief cartoons featuring the decapitation and shooting of ‘Sheky’ the Jew. The band has a MySpace page here.
Deaths Head is also notable for having provided local oi! band Bulldog Spirit with a drummer, Joel. Doug, the vocalist for Bulldog Spirit, is a big fan of mine, and it was in this spirit that he published what he claimed (erroneously) to be my work address on an online forum frequented by boneheads.
Local German-born nutzi Welf Herfurth — leader of the tiny ‘New Right Australia (and er, New Zealand)’, and the bonehead gang Volksfront Australia — must be crying into his imported German beer this evening (likely to be shared with Novocastrian bonehead and Volksfront co-organiser Douglas Schott), following reports of another crackdown by German police on the radical right in Der Vaterland.
BERLIN (Reuters) – German police have launched a nationwide search of more than 200 homes and businesses of people suspected of belonging to the country’s extreme right, the Federal Crime Office (BKA) said Wednesday.
“The primary aim of the concerted action by crime fighting authorities is to seize and confiscate prohibited items like music in order to move effectively and extensively against the spread of right wing extremism,” the BKA said in a statement…
The raids come only a few weeks after one of the largest nutzi gatherings in post-War Germany in Dresden, when 5-6,000 fascist wankers jackbooted about the city (with a police escort of several thousand). They also come after former NPD executive member Uwe Luthardt, who recently quit the party, made what is presumably intended to be some kinda ‘revelation’ regarding the NPD’s continued adherence to the incestuous corpophiliac Hitler’s political legacy.
The real significance of Luthardt’s confessions lies in the fact that he speaks as a former member, and therefore with some added degree of insight into the party’s ‘true’ nature.
Uwe Luthardt was a senior member of the right-extremist NPD. But he quit after three months. In an interview, he describes the NPD as a deeply radical party where Hitler salutes and financial irregularities are common — and which is bent on restoring the German Reich.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: You recently quit the right extremist party NPD. Aren’t you afraid?
Luthardt: The local party leader threatened me. He said a board member doesn’t quit the party, he’s either thrown out or disappears. I replied that I know more about him than he does about me. Since then it’s been quiet. Someone who just quits usually gets a lot of problems, and can find himself waking up in intensive care.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: So people who leave are threatened?
Luthardt: It happens. Otherwise the party would have even fewer members. The mood isn’t good at the moment. It’s easy to see that the party is short of money…
Luthardt’s testimony is also useful in the sense that it confirms the already well-known fact that groups like the NPD rely on the nutzi muzak industry for a considerable proportion of their income.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: How does the party finance itself?
Luthardt: Through music events among other things, they get money from ticket sales. And then of course through the Festival of Peoples, that generated just under €17,000 in 2007.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: But you have to subtract the money the bands get from that amount.
Luthardt: No. Usually one tells the authorities that the bands get paid. But in reality they just get their expenses back and a receipt for a supposedly paid fee. But that is donated back to the party. And the party can write the donation off their taxes.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why do the bands forego the money they are due?
Luthardt: Out of conviction. It happens in the party too. Whenever I went to Berlin on a training course, we got our transport costs paid but then handed the money back to the party in the form of donations. It’s the same pattern.
(Luthardt notes that NPD chairman Udo Voigt — whom Welf Herfurth unsuccessfully attempted to bring into Australia for a speaking tour in 2003 — partly finances his power base within the party with the help “of money men from South America”. For moaron Welf’s nutzi German kameraden, see: Neo-Nazi ‘national anarchists’ in Germany in the headlines, June 4, 2008.)
Horst Wessel (and other pimps)
In Europe, one of the principal distributors of nutzi muzak is Belgian label Pure Impact. Pure Impact arose from the ashes of German label Rock-O-Rama — on which Skrewdriver released an album (Hail The New Dawn) and single (Invasion/On The Streets) in 1984. It was established by a fascist-sympathising businessman, Herbert Egoldt.
In October [1997] it was revealed that Herbert Egoldt, the notorious distributor of neo-Nazi skinhead music, was operating from the Brussels-based far-right mail order company Pure Impact. Egoldt formerly operated Rock o Rama in Cologne, once the world’s largest supplier of racist material, until police invaded his office and confiscated 30,000 records in 1992. The entrepreneur is now linked with Belgian extremists Peter Swillen, Ludo Henri Crol and Luc Taymans, who have launched Pure Impact in an attempt to revive the neo-Nazi record empire, which in recent years has been taken over by Resistance Records and Nordland…
Pure Impact enjoys wide support within global punk, hardcore and skinhead/bonehead communities, including Australia, and distros both straightforwardly neo-Nazi titles — such as those by Douglas Schott’s band Blood Red Eagle — as well as other, ‘apolitical’ releases. Despite an apparent reluctance to provide a platform for fascism — at least when under the media spotlight — Pure Impact also enjoys the support of MySpace (as do numerous other neo-Nazi distros, bands and political projects).
Part of the rationale for selling ‘apolitical’ product, aside from the added income it generates, stems from the desire to legitimise the business in the eyes of the general public. Various legal and political constraints also produce another response: a softening of ‘the message’. Thus US-based Resistance Records — bought by dead nutzi and author of The Turner Diaries William Pierce in 1999 — touts the virtues of the nutzi band Cut Throat as follows: “Possessing catchy lyrics, haunting vocals, and top-notch musicianship, this California band belongs on mainstream radio. With not-too-blatant lyrics, Cut Throat can easily fly in under the radar and reach a wider audience than most pro-White bands.” (The Turner Diaries are available via Australian Protectionist Party member Martin Fletcher’s website Downunder Newslinks.)
This ‘softening’ process is sometimes necessary, but sometimes not. Thus Belgian band Kill Baby Kill — which travelled to Australia last year to perform at the annual bonehead gathering to mourn the death of Skrewydriver Ian Stuart Donaldson (held at the Beaconsfield Hotel) — also enjoy the support of MySpace. Well, until very recently…
Of course, the links between local nutzis and their European counterparts extend beyond the occasional importation of foreign bodies into the country. It includes exports.
Last year, a True Blue Dinky-Di (Nutzi) Aussie — whose identity has yet to be established — co-operated with the dynamic Danish and German duo Dane Flemming C., 32, and Stephan G., 33, by providing them with True Blue Dinky-Di (Nutzi) muzak. The men, arrested in August, are accused of overseeing the production and distribution of neo-Nazi music under the label ‘Celtic Moon’. Investigators say the pair produced as many as 100,000 copies of the music. Coincidentally, Celtic Moon has close ties to ‘Werwolf Records’: Werwolf Records distributes Blood Red Eagle.
Finally, there is one less distro in Australia: Deadset Music. Its fascist-sympathising owner has sold her interest in the business, and it has now become known as Pug Music; it sells only a handful of racist titles. Filling the gap is new nutzi distro 9% Productions.
http://www.9percentproductions.com/
http://www.pugmusic.com/
Compare and contrast!
1) ‘Let’s kick out all the foreigners, then the Germans will have jobs again’ – that’s the basic concept the NPD talks about ~ Ex-NPD member Uwe Luthardt, 2009
2) ‘British Jobs for British workers’ ~ British PM Gordon Brown, Labour Party conference, 2007
3) “TATARSZENTGYORGY, Hungary: Thousands of people, mostly Roma, joined the funeral procession Tuesday of a young boy and his father who were shot dead last week in the latest in a series of attacks on Roma in Hungary… The boy, who police say was 5 years old, and his father Robert Csorba were shot and killed as they were trying to escape their house, which had been set on fire. Two other children were injured in the blaze… There is a growing resentment against the Roma, also known as gypsies, as the economic crisis deepens and jobs are lost. The Roma often remain on the margins, lacking jobs and proper education and living in deep poverty. Critics say they take advantage of the welfare state. The strengthening of the far-right over the past two years, which fights what it says is a rise in “Roma crime,” has also contributed to an increase in antagonism, activists say…” ~ Hungary buries two Roma killed by hate, Reuters, International Herald Tribune, March 3, 2009
Metal Up Yr Fascist Ass
In Atlanta, Chicago black metal band Nachtmystium has been kicked off a bill for alleged nutzi associations. The band denies the allegation, and claims to be ‘apolitical’. Which may well be the case, at least in the sense that they don’t explicitly endorse any particular political viewpoint. If so, the relationship between Nachtmystium and neo-Nazism, as in the case of many other bands, is one of convenience, rather than conviction. Pitchfork:
Chicago black metal band Nachtmystium, originally scheduled to play the fest, were absent from the lineup. According to a statement from frontman Blake Judd– first posted by Brooklyn Vegan and later verified via a press release– Scion’s parent company Toyota kicked Nachtmystium off of the bill because of the band’s alleged associations with Nazism. “A troubling, and unjustly-applied notion that we are, or ever have been, in any way, a ‘Nazi’ band or a political band on any level, is completely absurd and we are disgusted that there is someone out there who really believes we are of this ilk,” he said.
Representatives for the festival and for Scion have not yet responded to questions about the incident.
According to Decibel, these accusations have dogged Nachtmystium for years, due to the fact that their first album, Reign of the Malicious, was released by the NSBM (National Socialist Black Metal) label Unholy Records [a subsidiary of Resistance Records]. As Judd told Decibel in 2006, “In the past, we’ve had some indirect [sic] ties to labels and bands that are part of the NS scene. At one point not too many years ago, it wasn’t uncommon for NS labels or bands to trade and work with non-politically motivated bands and labels because at the end of the day, we’re all trying to promote, release, and be involved with music—all politics aside. Today it seems like there’s less of a connection, at least for me and my label. We don’t oppose people’s right to be ‘NS’ or whatever—that’s a personal choice, and if you live in the USA, you have the right to that opinion. Even though I personally, my band(s) and my label have absolutely no interest in being a part of that scene, I will ALWAYS take their side when it comes to their freedom of speech being imposed upon.”
LOL.
The issue is not ‘freedom of speech’, but providing financial and political support to racism, fascism, xenophobia and homophobia. Upon achieving any real level of popularity, bands which initially embraced fascist politics — including Australian bands like Deströyer 666 and Gospel Of The Horns, and labels such as Modern Invasion (nee Pipe Imported) — frequently seek to disassociate themselves from their past, as such associations become more inconvenient than they are useful.
And of course, anyone unfortunate enough to have to rely upon an ‘apolitical’ rock * to guarantee their rights has already lost them.
Still, placing a hat marked ‘apolitical’ on your head is a very common response when bands perform / record / tour with nutzis, play nutzi venues, or release material on nutzi labels. Such was the case with The Birmingham Hotel — until mid-2008, the subject of “a pretty unsuccessful boycott” — and such is the case with Sydney band T.H.U.G..
Simon T.H.U.G., Dutch neo-Nazi zine Out of Order, 2000. Simon says:
“All my mates were into oi! and white pride as well. I did not know any skinheads that were into oi! and were not white and proud of it. Lefty skinheads would never dare to show their face on the street for fear of getting severely beaten. And that’s the way it should always be…
Best memory was playing a gig in Melbourne, in some pub, can’t remember which, full swing into it and about 30 Maoris drinking in the front bar… I’m sure you can picture what happened. Bedlam. We managed to protect all our gear however. Mic stands make magnificent clubs…
Volksfront Australia, like most local neo-Nazi groups, is a foreign import. Established in 1994 in the United States, and named in honour of a racist Afrikaaner mob, the group has recently embraced a few converts Down Under: chief among them (according to rival sect Blood & Honour / Southern Cross Hammerskins) the former German NPD and Australian One Nation Party member Welf Herfurth.
Did I happen to mention that Welf also considers himself an “anarchist”?
This is not the first time Volksfront has had an Australian franchise. In 2004, a young racist named Stuart McBeth (1981–), then the leader of the now defunct ‘Patriotic Youth League’ (PYL) — a risible attempt by Dr James Saleam to extend Australia First Party membership to the under-40s — threw his tinfoil helmet into the ring as an Australian organiser for the United States People’s Front. (Oddly enough, like Welf, Stuart was also a former member of ONP.) McBeth resigned as PYL President shortly after being fired, in late January 2005, from his job as a case officer for the Salvation Army. McBeth was replaced by Lachlan Black, also a former ONP member and, like McBeth, a former ONP candidate.
Last year, however, some hardy souls decided to revive the Front — presumably in order to provide yoof a boneheaded alternative to B&H and the SCHS. In the US, where the franchise is based, relations between Volksfront, B&H, and the Hammerskins have been frosty. Well, kinda. Actually there are two, rival B&H networks: in the US, B&H ~ American Division, is allied with Volksfront, while outside of the US, relations between different groups in different countries are more fractured. (‘Blood & Honour USA’, allied to the Australian mob, appears to be defunct.)
In any event, the corpse of Volksfront Australia has shown some signs of life. It also appears that at least some local boneheads aren’t all that happy about it. Thus on Stormfront, a local bonehead, ‘Pitbull38′, recently yap-yapped the following:
Re: Hammerskin Nation and Blood & Honour
HSN & B & H have worked well together for 15 odd years in Oz.
We have been here from the start & built things from the ground up.
VF’s been in Oz for about [a] year and managed to disrespect & piss off the 2 oldest bonehead crews in Australia (to put it very mildly)… certainly not the best way to start things.
Of their leaders, one [Welf Herfurth] runs National Anarchists & New Right (he goes to Asian countries a lot to live with and help the slopes… strange for a supposed WN to travel to Asia so much & without his wife… sure no hanky panky going on there??? Yeah right). He has his fingers in many different pies and is certainly no skinhead & never has been. His stated love for Asian culture, trying to be a politician & trying to appear everything to everyone & his twisted written works are proof of this.
The other guy ([Douglas Schott] singer of Blood Red Eagle) used to be [an] anti-racist/SHARP with his own anti-racist band to boot. A little big-mouthed midget with the ego of Napoleon.
VF leadership have been made aware of these facts & none seem to care, so yeah… sounds like a great NS [National Socialist: ie, Nazi] bonehead crew to me… lol!
VF are outcasts (akin to C18) in Australia as far as SCHS & B & H are concerned. So if you don’t want to be outcasts yourselves, avoid them like the plague.
Unfortunately for Poodle38, Stormfront moderator Lycia had to yank on his chain. Thus the above post now reads simply:
HSN & B & H have worked well together for 15 odd years in Oz.
We have been here from the start & built things from the ground up.
Hammers don’t forgive, but whether or not Poodle38 responds positively to his obedience training remains to be seen.
Incidentally, the next gig organised by Benson & Hedges is scheduled for ANZAC Day in Perf, WA, where a small assortment of boneheads will pay tribute to the ANZACs by celebrating the Nazi war-machine that killed them in their thousands.
Yes: they’re a weird mob.
Volksfront (United States)
As for Volksfront, it, like other bonehead groups, has a violent history. A few highlights:
Jacob Laskey, formerly Volksfront’s Prisoner Affairs Coordinator in Eugene, was arrested in 2005, along with his brother, Gabriel Doyle Laskey, Jesse Lee Baker and Gerald Anthony Poundstone, for throwing rocks engraved with swastikas at a synagogue in Eugene, Oregon, during a religious service in October 2002. They were indicted for conspiracy to violate civil rights and other related charges. Jacob Laskey also faced charges of attempting to intimidate a witness in the case. Jacob and Gabriel Laskey both pleaded guilty in August 2006. Poundstone received 15 months in prison in September 2006 after pleading guilty. Jacob Laskey was sentenced to 11 years and 3 months in prison in April 2007. (Laskey had previously been charged with battery and commission of a hate crime for allegedly beating and threatening an African-American man in December 2000 in Jacksonville, Florida.) Gabriel Doyle Laskey was sentenced to five years probation, as well as six months at the Lane County work release program followed by six months of home detention.
Kurtis Monschke, 20, a probationary unit leader for Volksfront, was sentenced to life in prison on June 4, 2004, for his role in the March 23, 2003, murder of Randall Mark Townsend, 42, in Tacoma, Washington. Prosecutors indicated that Monschke, who has the Volksfront emblem tattooed on his chest adjacent to a swastika that is similar to the one depicted on the main racist skinhead character in the film American History X (1998), instigated the brutal attack in an effort to establish his fledgling crew among higher-ranking members of Volksfront. Emulating a brutal scene in the film, Monschke and his three followers placed Townsend’s open mouth on a railroad tie and stomped several times on the back of his head. Each blow was accompanied with shouts of “white power.” Scotty James Butters, 20, David Nikos Pillatos, 19, and Tristain Lynn Frye, 22, all pleaded guilty and testified against Monschke.
On January 25, 2003, five boneheads attacked a 17-year-old black youth in the parking lot of his residence in Vancouver, Washington. Matthew R. Schmoyer, Carl D. Wolff, Brandon Webb, Jeremy R. Whitten and one other bonehead who was later acquitted had been partying at Schmoyer’s apartment before heading to a Volksfront-sponsored concert near Hillsboro, Oregon, called “Rock Against Communism.” The group was holding the concert to raise legal funds for a Volksfront “comrade” whom they felt was “wrongfully charged with assault.” Whitten was sentenced for misdemeanor assault after striking a plea agreement. Wolff, Webb and Schmoyer were convicted of malicious harassment.
According to the ADL: “The rivalry between Volksfront/Hammerskin Nation and the Vinlanders remains high. An Internet exchange at the racist online forum Stormfront indicated that a prominent Vinlander even cut off the ear of a Volksfront member in St. Louis.” (On the Vinlanders Social Club, seeBurnout: Vinlanders Social Club on the Decline, David Holthouse and Laurie Wood, Intelligence Report, Winter 2008.)
Volksfront was founded in prison by a bonehead called Randal Lee (‘Randy’) Krager. In 1989, when he was 15, Krager was arrested along with several other boneheads and charged with racial intimidation for allegedly assaulting three teenagers near a park in Portland, Oregon. During the attack, assailants pummeled a Hispanic girl in the face while shouting, “Why aren’t you white?” Krager was sent to a juvenile detention center.
The next year, he attended the civil trial of White Aryan Resistance leader Tom Metzger — who was being sued by the Southern Poverty Law Center for his role in encouraging the bonehead murder of a black man in Portland — and told a reporter that Metzger was a “cool guy … one of the nicest guys you’d ever meet.”
By the time Krager turned 18, police had encountered him 28 times.
That year, 1992, Krager was sentenced to 27 months in prison for putting an African-American man into a coma with a single punch. During sentencing proceedings, Krager reportedly shouted “Fucking Jew pig!” at court officials.
Krager’s white supremacist beliefs were reinforced in prison. While inside, he networked with boneheads outside, laying the groundwork for his Volksfront neo-Nazi gang. Krager assumed leadership of Volksfront immediately upon his release in October 1994…
There’s been a few ups and downs for Krager and his kkkrew since then, obviously — mostly revolving around violent crime and bad muzak — with a few lives ended and many more ruined, but what Volksfront Australia will achieve is likely to be a lot less. Much will depend on the ability of the German-born yuppie Welf to put a leash on the boneheads belonging to B&H/SCHS — a task which will probably prove to be a good deal more difficult than convincing a handful of teenagers that his peculiar brand of neo-fascism is actually a form of ‘anarchism’.
Above : Fredrick Töben (Adelaide Institute) and Welf Herfurth (ex-One Nation, ex-Australia First Party[?], mathaba.net) annexe Sydney using the MaGiCaL pOwErS invested in Horst Mahler‘s flag and on behalf of the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, January 27, 2005. Unkle Fred was recently released from police custody in London; Herfurth, based in Sydney, has established a tiny fascist groupuscule called the ‘New Right’, consisting of various former members of Stormfront, and — following the lead of British and German fascists — espousing a doctrine he calls ‘national anarchism’. In the UK, the ‘New Right’, lead by Troy Southgate, specialises in Holocaust denial, various other forms of historical revisionism, and the promotion of racism and fascism.
Above : Viking Power Rock &/Or Roll. Members of Blood Red Eagle — (L-R) Jeff, Doug, Kerry & James — on the piss.
AUSTRALIAN Muslims are angry about an internet game in which players set out to “wipe out the Muslim race with an arsenal of the world’s most destructive weapons”. No one in the Australian Government seems able to do anything about it…
The game was created by a Brisbane man and was removed from his website after the initial complaints from Mr Trad about a month ago.
But it remained available on a Canadian website [that is, Domain Privacy Group, Inc., c/o muslimmassacre.com, 5160 Yonge St. Suite 1800, Toronto, ON M2N 6L9, CA, is the address given for the registrant -- the IP location is the United States].
Following publicity in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday [Asher Moses, Muslim Massacre online game causes outrage, November 4, 2008], the game vanished from the Canadian site.
It is not clear, however, if there is anything the law can do to stop it reappearing in yet another corner of the internet.
Asher Moses (Tuesday):
In 2006, the Government was powerless to remove from the internet a racist board game based on the Cronulla riots. It was eventually removed by the US-based web host, Angelfire, following extensive lobbying by anti-racism groups.
Similarly, in 2007 a game based on the Virginia Tech massacre, developed by a Sydney man, was removed by its web hosting service after the Federal Government failed to come up with a way of using its powers to have the game blocked.
However, this sort of content could be blocked in future if the Government proceeds with its controversial plans for mandatory ISP-level filters of “illegal” material.
A Sydney-based Jewish businessman bankrolling a shoot-’em-up warfare game pitting Israeli troops against Iranians says the aim is to “throw out a challenge to Iran” after its President vowed to wipe Israel off the map.
But Kevin Bermeister, world renowned for being sued by the music industry in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit over the Kazaa file-sharing program, said his intention was also to take the war between Jews and Muslims out of the real world and into cyber space.
The online multiplayer game, Rising Eagle – Gaza, was officially released as a free download less than a week ago. It earns revenue through advertising billboards peppered throughout the game environment…
And on the third hand…
Muslim Massacre has been around for a while, its creator, Eric Vaughan (Brisbane), announcing its launch in June 2008. It came to the attention of the corporate/state media three months later, in September. Initially, Eric withdrew the game, and issued an apology. Subsequently, he changed his mind, and republished it. Since then, the game has been republished elsewhere, including two sites hosted by local neo-Nazis: Martin Fletcher (Sydney) of the Australian Protectionist Party on his Downunder Newslinks site, and Colin Campbell (Adelaide), a Creator (a member of a tiny white supremacist religious cult).
In addition to being a webmaster for the APP — which is currently seeking to bring British Nationalist Party leader Nick Griffin to Australia next month — Martin is also responsible for distributing online the “racist board game based on the Cronulla riots” (otherwise known as Cronulla 2230), Holocaust denial and other anti-Semitic literature, and the cartoons produced by Tom Metzger’s ‘White Aryan Resistance’ (even earning Tom’s praise for doing so). Here’s an example of Martin/WAR’s humourous take on racial politics:
In October 1990, the SPLC won $12.5 million in damages against Tom Metzger and WAR when a Portland, Oregon, jury held the neo-Nazi group liable in the beating death of an Ethiopian immigrant (Mulegeta Seraw; seeAnti-fascist organizing in Portland 1988-1993, October 12, 2007 for more details). Terrible Tom was also implicated in an earlier crime when, in 1988, five members of the original ‘Confederate’ Hammerskins in Dallas — Christopher Greer, 23, John Jordan, 17, Michael Lawrence, 20, Sean Tarrant, 18 and Daniel Wood, 18 — “chased and attacked minorities who attempted to enter Robert E. Lee Park in downtown Dallas. The five were apparently inspired by a racist rally they attended in Tulsa that June where Tom Metzger, leader of White Aryan Resistance (WAR) spoke. When they were arrested, the defendants had baseball bats and broken pieces of concrete, which they apparently intended to use to recreate the Kristallnacht to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the attacks on Jewish stores and homes that took place on November 9, 1938 in Nazi Germany”. The five were sentenced for the crime in April, 1990.
The Hammerskins are active in Australia, and help to organise (along with the local Blood & Honour franchise) a yearly gig in Melbourne. In addition, Newcastle band Blood Red Eagle (led by the diminutive warbler of Viking songs Douglas Schott) are proud to be considered part of the Hammerskin Nation, and have even played Portland (October 2007) and New Zealand (April 2007). SeePride, Strength & Honour : Kiwi bonehead on trial for murder (October 16, 2008) for evidence of what boneheads consider to be their duty in their RAcial HOly WAr.
For one night only, Blood & Honour Australia and the Southern Cross Hammerskins — from the relaxing ambience of the Central Hotel, Beaconsfield (1 Princes Highway, Beaconsfield) — present:
and all the way from horribly multicultural Belgium…
Kill Baby Kill!
As previously noted, the globe-trottingBlood Red Eagle are from Newcastle (NSW), and their Viking-inspired aural assault is spearheaded by the diminutive Douglas Schott; Ravenous is a local band for local people, *ing the racist psychotic Jesse on vocals (and, possibly, Joel of Bulldog Spirit on drums); while Kill Baby Kill *s Dieter Samoy on vox.
Dieter Samoy is a top bloke and fits the bonehead stereotype exceedingly well: in 2006, good old Dieter was behind a vicious racist attack on a black man and his white friend in Bruges. We understand that the black man was put into a coma, and that Samoy’s trial is pending. As a result of these and other efforts by Dieter and his fascist comrades, and as has also been remarked by Belgian antifa, Belgium is rapidly turning into “a playground for all manner of right-wing extremists”; so too — at least for tonight — is Beaconsfield.
Almost 700 boneheads showed up for yet another “Ian Stuart Donaldson (ISD) Memorial” haterock fest in Belgium on 27 October, a disappointing result for the Blood&Honour-Vlaanderen (B&H-VL) organisers who had hoped to attract at least 2,000 nazis to the event.
It is not known whether the poor attendance was because of internal problems in the banned German wing of the organisation but the “event” nevertheless got lots of coverage in the Belgian national media. After having major trouble in finding a venue that could host two thousand participants, B&H eventually reverted to the venue used for last year’s ISD commemoration in the remote village of Wolfsdonk, near Aarschot, in the province of Vlaams-Brabant (Flemish Brabant).
The venue, hired a few weeks ago by a man – not a bonehead – who wanted the place for a “big birthday party”, turned out to be the canteen of a local football club and a huge tent alongside it. At the meeting points, car parks along Belgian motorways where the nazis gathered before moving off to the “secret” location, the people redirecting them were mainly Germans.
At the venue itself, the “security service” was organised by British B&H members who menaced a national TV team that wanted to interview local people. When not doing that, they were ensuring that those attending handed over all their weapons!
On the bill were, among others, notorious hate bands like Whitelaw, Propaganda, Eternal Pride, Avalon and the Flemish band Kill Baby Kill led by one of the fascists – Dieter Samoy – behind a vicious racist attack on a black man and his white friend in Bruges last year.
More attention, however, was paid to beer drinking than to the music with most of the participants at the gig getting drunk and, by getting into several brawls, reducing the event to a chaotic mess. When the organisers called for “a minute’s silence for white hero Ian Stuart” hardly anyone observed it. “Fuckheads who can’t even keep their drunk shitholes quite for a fucking minute for a true white hero” yelled one of the organisers in his own very subtile way. As a result of this fiasco, B&H Flanders had to shut its online forum the next day because it had received so many complaints.
The left-wing party “Spirit”, which was part of the previous Belgian federal government, has announced that it will reintroduce its demand that federal parliament outlaw nazi activities on Belgian soil and also ban groups like B&H that are illegal elsewhere. In Germany, B&H was outlawed seven years ago but in Belgium apparently, the political world lacks the courage needed to ban organised nazi activities.
This failure to act is turning Belgium into a playground for all manner of right-wing extremists. Just days before the B&H hatefest, for example, the far-right Vlaamse Jongeren Westland (VJW – Flemish Youth Westland) organisation staged a “national demo” in the streets of Bruges on 21 October.
Despite an intense mobilisation campaign and winning media attention, no more than 60 to 70 extremists showed up, among them numerous boneheads and a delegation from the Walloon fascist outfit Nation.
At the end of a short demonstration, VJW organiser Pieter Van Damme called for a “national-solidarist society” and demanded more respect for the Dutch language. Taking the presence of French-speaking nazis into account, it is unlikely that everyone present really understood his message. Even though “Freedom Of Speech” (for nationalists) was one of the main themes on the day, the participants in the VJW demo were not allowed to speak to the press.
Neither the far-right Vlaams Belang (VB) nor its satellite Voorpost were present at the demonstration because relations between the “bourgeois-liberal’ VB and the “genuine nationalist radicals” of the VJW are very frosty. Perhaps this rivalry explains why the VJW deliberately made use of the old VB slogan ‘Eigen Volk Eerst!” (“Our own people first”) during the march. Most of the VJW’s activists, incidentally, share a past in the ranks of the VB but were excluded in one way or other.
About 300 anti-fascists, mobilised by the anti-fascist group Blokbuster, protested at the nazi march.
Wim Haelsterman
Reports from Flanders for AFF/Verzet – RésistanceS.
Things have changed a little for Belgian boneheads since this report (seeBad news for Belgian boneheads in Blood & Honour, May 5, 2008; also Blood & Honour in Belgium… and Australia, September 10, 2006) — prompted, in part perhaps, by the shooting to death in May 2006 of a two year old (white) child and her (black, pregnant) nanny. More recently, in the United States: “Two members of Tampa Blood and Honour, a chapter of a particularly violent international white supremacist organization, were indicted in Florida for beating two homeless men to death in 1998. Two other members had already pleaded guilty to the crimes. Federal officials say the men planned to participate in a race war and killed the homeless men because they were deemed inferior”: ‘The Blotter: Updates on Extremism and the Law’, Intelligence Report, Fall 2008 (Southern Poverty Law Centre).
And while the efforts of Dieter & Co. to cleanse Belgium of anarchists, Asians, blacks, communists, the homeless, homosexuals, Jews, leftists and people with disabilities (and assorted other undesireables) may be looked on unkindly by some, the band does at least have the full support of Tom and Myspace.
It may also be considered slightly odd that Australian Customs didn’t ask a few more questions of Dieter and his chums when they arrived in Melbourne last week, but presumably membership of a violent international neo-Nazi network and a violent criminal record is no barrier to entering Australia these days. Meaning that Nick Griffin’s entry to Australia on a proposed speaking tour in December should be a piece of (fruit)cake… As for what the good burghers of Beaconsfield think about making their little hamlet into a happy home to members of two of the most violent neo-Nazi associations in the world, who knows?
