British politician Nigel Farage has denied he is spruiking a racist message during his Australian tour, but says immigration should be discussed.
Tag: Reclaim Australia
Bilal Cleland discusses Australia’s violent, white supremacist history and asks if this Australia and the values is the one some wish to “reclaim”.
Victoria’s Counter Terrorism Team and Australian Federal Police conducted raids in Melbourne’s west and Tatura, near Shepparton.
Source: Man arrested in terror raids in Melbourne’s west and country Victoria
The anti-Muslim movement feeds off an ideology with its roots in the 1980s, propagated by conservative think tanks, journalists, and corporate leaders.
Co-ordinated Reclaim Australia rallies in capital cities around Australia have met with counter rallies from anti-racism demonstrators, resulting in violent confrontations and arrests.At Melton Ci
A man who was briefly leader of Australia’s most vocal anti-Islam street movement, the United Patriots Front, has a history online of supporting far-right causes, including wanting to hang a picture of Adolf Hitler in every Australian classroom.
Source: Blair Cottrell, rising anti-Islam movement leader, wanted Hitler in the classroom
Malcolm Turnbull’s Assistant Minister for Multicultural Affairs has declined to criticise the Reclaim Australia movement, despite the government flagging a change in tone and more consultative approach with Muslim communities.
CHARLOTTE – (CT&P) – Ku Klux Klan officials held a press conference this morning to express their disappointment with the low numbers of young people signing up to join the organization during their latest recruiting drive, currently going on across the Bible Belt and for some weird reason in California as well.
The presser took place inside an abandoned Duke Energy toxic coal ash dumping site along a formerly pristine river in Pelham, North Carolina. Apparently it was the only location in which the officials felt safe enough to talk to the media.
“We just don’t understand the anemic response,” said Billy Joe Polyp, Grand Imperial Anus of the South Carolina Chapter. “We took great pains to put gluten-free candy in with all our flyers we distributed under the cover of darkness over the last few nights. We thought for sure that the candy would overcome young people’s nausea and disgust with what we actually had to say in our propaganda. It’s a real mystery.”
The propaganda, stuffed into plastic baggies with pieces of peppermint and Tootsie Rolls and hurled onto people’s lawns during the early morning hours, included a phone number for the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The fliers were distributed in California, Kansas, Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia.
It’s not something local police departments are taking lightly, and some have even reached out to the FBI for assistance. The Rockdale County sheriff’s department in Conyers, Georgia collected more than 80 fliers and is investigating whether anyone can be charged with criminal trespass or littering.
“Whether it was a joke or from an organization doesn’t matter to me,” Sheriff Eric Levett told The Daily Beast. “The fact that it was done during this time is ignorant and cowardly. We take this seriously and I’ve even ordered that we curtail some of our dog-killing patrols in order to work on this problem.”
A message on the hate-spewing hotline, based in North Carolina, salutes 21-year-old Dylann Roof, who was charged with murder for the killing nine people in Charleston. Roof penned a incoherent racist manifesto before the June 17 mass shooting and wanted to start a “race war.”
“We in the Loyal White Knights of the KKK would like to say hail victory to … Dylan S. Roof who decided to do what the Bible told him,” a man chirps in the recording. “Jesus is on our side! Why, he even wore a sheet! An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. They [black people] have spilled our blood too long. It’s about time someone spilled theirs.”
“If it ain’t white, it ain’t right,” the message concludes. “White power!”
Robert “Asswipe” Jones, of the Royal White Numbnuts in North Carolina, told The Daily Beast that the Klan is undergoing a national recruitment drive that coincidentally started around the time of the South Carolina murders.
“We’re doing this from the East Coast to the West Coast, just to let people know that the Klan, like a cancerous tumor that just won’t go away, is still in their community,” said Jones, the grand dickhead of the hate group based in Pelham, N.C. “Especially with all the stuff that’s in the news—in South Carolina they’re wanting to take the confederate flag down.”
Jones told The Daily Beast that he supports Roof’s crime, but preferred that he “shot the correct people,” such as minority drug dealers rather than churchgoers.
“It’s a racial war against our people,” Jones said. “The more the media pushes modern and progressive ideas down our throat, the more you’re going to see killings like this.”
Although the KKK leaders remain disappointed with the results of the recruiting drive up to now, they plan to redouble their efforts in the weeks to come.
“We don’t give up our archaic, savage, and inhuman beliefs very easily,” said Jones, as he removed a tick from his scrotum. “We think that maybe our target demographic is too heavily involved in Tea Party politics at this time to spend time with us burning down black churches and intimidating people who didn’t just walk out of the Middle Ages. But we ain’t gonna let that discourage us. The South will rise again and so will the Klan, just like a painful pus-filled boil on the ass of America!”
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A ‘national organiser’ and key promoter of this weekend’s anti-Muslim Reclaim Australia rallies has been forced to issue an apology after a video surfaced of him saying good Aboriginal people were “few and far between” and that “so many of them are just dickheads”.
The video was posted by Shermon Burgess, who runs the popular anti-Islam facebook page the Great Aussie Patriot.
In it, Burgess counsels viewers on how to deal with “left-wing idiots in the workplace”, but goes off on a tangent, complaining about critics who “bring up the Aboriginal card”.
“Just know, I’ve met some nice Aboriginal people, I really have, but they’re few and far between, really, so many of them are just dickheads man. You see ‘em on metho, passed out, bludging cigarettes, and still blaming the modern generation for what happened 200 years ago, which wasn’t even this modern generation that did anything to them,” Burgess said.
Behind him an Australian flag hangs from the wall.
Burgess is understood to be a former member of far-right group the Australian Defence League.
Though deleted, the video was saved and reposted by ‘Reclaim What’, a website dedicated to monitoring the activities of far-right and anti-Islamic groups.
It’s also available on the New Matilda Youtube channel.
John Oliver, an organiser of the Reclaim Australia rallies, confirmed to New Matilda that Burgess was a member of the event’s national organisers’ group.
Rallies are planned across the country today and have been widely promoted on social media.
In a bizarre apology video posted from The Great Aussie Patriot facebook page, Burgess said he was sorry for making the comments, but reiterated his belief that contemporary white Australians are not responsible for earlier mistreatment of Aboriginal people, and admitted he used to dislike Aboriginal people.
Explaining his change of heart, Burgess said his father had asked him to imagine how he would feel if Muslims took over Australia, and that this was how Aboriginal people felt about the British invasion.
To put that another way, Burgess used racism to overcome his racism.
In an equally strange turn, Burgess was moved after an Aboriginal person stood up for his right to ignore another Aboriginal person.
“I had one Aboriginal girl, she was at me, blaming me for stuff that happened, that my ancestors did, that I didn’t do, and it was really frustrating because I was trying to ignore it and she was at me, and at me, and at me, and her Aboriginal friend actually stuck up for me and said ‘hey, just leave him alone, he hasn’t done anything wrong’,” he said.
“Once I got to know some Aboriginal people, they were some of the nicest people I’ve met,” Burgess said.
The video made a special mention of another popular facebook page ‘Blackfulla Revolution’ https://www.facebook.com/ourcountryourchoice?fref=ts and the Tent Embassy.
It didn’t seem to bring them round to his point of view, howevever
We stand strongly opposed to ‘Reclaim Australia’, just another brand of the kind of racism this country was founded on through dispossession and genocide of First Nations. Every racist who posts to this page seems to support ‘Reclaim Australia’ and there’s nothing coincidental about it. Muslim brothers and sisters have shown great solidarity in recent weeks and we stand with you in rejecting all forms of oppression and bigotry. Full support to all opposing the hate brigade. #SOSBLAKAUSTRALIA
Since the Burgess clip came to light, Reclaim Australia promoters have posted pro-Aboriginal videos and spoken out against the closure of remote First Nations communities in Western Australia
Oliver told New Matilda Aboriginal people had been involved in organising the Reclaim rallies, and had seen the video.
“Oh yeah, yeah, yeah they’re not happy with those at all,” he said.
“We have to live with that, he made a mistake, the video you’re talking about happened about a year and a half before the rallies and he’s apologised and we’ve just got to move on.”
Reclaim organisers have worked hard to convince the broader public that the rallies are not fuelled by racial hatred.
Oliver told New Matilda he was concerned about ‘extremist’ Muslims and that “we’re suspect of anyone who questions us for questioning extremists”.
Having said that, Oliver admitted his own event was attracting extremists.
“I’ll be the first one to say we have a lot of people on board who have extremist views as well. Now I know that’s a fact that we can’t do anything about. Some people are trying to hijack it for their own gains.”
An oft-quoted refrain of Reclaim supporters is that they can not be considered racists as Islam is a religion, not a race.
Shermon Burgess stages a ‘gun show’ for his many fans on his popular Facebook page, ‘The Great Aussie Patriot’.
Dr Ghena Krayem, a University of Sydney academic whose research interests include multiculturalism and legal pluralism, told New Matilda this reasoning was misleading.
“It doesn’t matter what you call it, the thing that’s bad about racism is not its name, it’s the underlying process behind it. You are ostracising a group for no reason other than the basis of their race, an aspect of identity that is so important to them,” Krayem said.
“You’re just lumping all these people in the one group and effectively discriminating against them.”
Krayem said the objections of Reclaim Australia, for instance in relation to halal certification and Sharia law, were not well informed.
“They need to be sure their position is an informed position. It doesn’t mean they need to agree with Muslims, but they need to be more informed than the current level of public discourse,” she said.
When pushed to explain his positions, Oliver admitted he was not an expert.
“I’ve spoken to my local mosque. I wanted to know exactly what I was dealing with,” he said.
New Matilda was not able to reach Shermon Burgess for comment.
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