BNP leader's speaking tour postponed

The Australian Protectionist Party says it has had to postpone a planned speaking tour this week featuring the leader of the far-right British National Party (BNP), Nick Griffin.

A spokesman for Immigration Minister Chris Evans says Mr Griffin had lodged an electronic visa application earlier this year. But he says Mr Griffin has been asked to submit a full written application, as he appears on Australia's "movement alert" list.

Mr Griffin was refused entry in 1998 under former immigration minister Phillip Ruddock.

ABC News

Fascist backers fear racial riots

Denying a visa to British fascist leader Nick Griffin, who has a conviction for inciting racial hatred, would only increase the likelihood of Cronulla-style racial conflict, his supporters say.

Mr Griffin, head of the right-wing British National Party, has applied to visit Australia to address the issue of "the demographic genocide … caused by large-scale immigration of people from the Third World".

Darrin Hodges, NSW head of the Australian Protection Party, which is backing his visit, said that "having a full and frank debate was more helpful than not … and suppressing the debate leads to events like Cronulla".

Mr Hodges said Mr Griffin would speak at private forums in Sydney and Melbourne.

Anti-defamation groups opposed to the December speaking tour by Mr Griffin - a one-eyed Holocaust denier with long-standing links to right-wing groups in Europe - believe the free-speech argument has to be balanced against the harm done to local communities.

British anti-fascist activists who track his movements say Mr Griffin and the BNP have a history of fomenting racial hatred in Britain.

"Australia should not let the racist in. Nick Griffin is as dangerous to the community as any radical Islamic preacher," said Matthew Collins, a former BNP member who now works for a London anti-fascist monitoring service.

The BNP has 49 elected councillors and 51 parish councillors among Britain's 6000 local councillors.

Jo-Anne Schofield, head of Catalyst, an Australian think tank opposed to his visit, said: "The BNP is very clever at moderating its message to appear more acceptable, but scratch the surface [and] they still have a hateful message at their core. The burden of free speech is carried by the people harmed by his message."

Mr Griffin, who reportedly lost an eye when a shotgun shell he threw into a fire exploded, was denied entry to Australia in 1998.

He once described the Holocaust as the "Holohoax", saying: "I am well aware that the Orthodox opinion is that 6 million Jews were gassed and cremated and turned into lampshades. Orthodox opinion also once held that the world is flat … I have reached the conclusion that the 'extermination' tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie and latter witch hysteria."

A spokesman for the Department of Immigration said because Mr Griffin appeared on a "movement alert list" his application would not be approved electronically and would be reviewed by the department. No decision has been made yet on whether to issue him a visa.

Sydney Morning Herald

Oh, Darrin!

Darrin Hodges is hardly the prettiest individual on the Australian far-Right. His appearance suggesting, as one of our colleagues has mooted, a close relationship with the rat family, we suspect that Darrin's fascist friends are given to making sudden embarrassed winces whenever the unlovely visage of the Sutherland Shire's least popular son pops up in the Australian media.

Darrin is something of a thinker - or so he would like to believe. And Darrin has a plan. A Very Cunnimg Plan.

At its most complicated, Darrin's Plan is to copy the BNP, lock, stock and lies.

That's it.

And so it is that - just like the BNP - Darrin has put his Jew-hating, anti-black credentials in his back pocket and now sports those of the born-again anti-Muslim persuasion, because - as the BNP and Darrin will have it - Moslems comprise a religion, not an ethnicity. And, if you're attacking a religion and not an ethnicity, how ever can you be called a racist?

Darrin is one of those far-Rightists who, having for years peddled the white supremacist line, has grown increasingly frustrated by the lack of any tangible success. On the factional and turbulent Australian far-Right scene this lack of success is hardly surprising, since - much as their British counterparts - Australian fascists seem to hate one another more than they hate anybody else.

Darrin's overarching hatred is for Australian Nazi and sometime Australia First Party big-wig Jim Saleam, who he refers to in one of his many incriminating but judiciously terminated blogs as "a criminal lunatic" and an "oily spiv". You'd never know that Darrin was once his loyal lieutenant. Darrin believes that racist hard-liner Saleam was in harness with Australia First leader Diane Teasdale, the pair conspiring to expel the newly-coined "moderate" on charges that certain of his internet postings did not reflect well on Australia First.

Disproving the hypersensitive Hodges's theory, shortly after his own expulsion Teasdale sent Saleam packing, and this latter pair now run rival versions of the same organisation. For his part, Darrin contented himself with denouncing the "Australia Faggot Party", basing his denunciation on the recollections of the AFP's John Drew, who recalled sharing a flat with a noisily sexually active homosexual in the 1960s.

Darrin spent many happy years posting on the Nazi Stormfront Down Under forum, as well as maintaining his multifarious blogs. He felt that the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion were essential reading for all Nutzis, and opined: “I’m more interested in the purer form of fascism… and while I don’t subscribe to the whole ‘worship Hitler’ thing, his comments on multiculturalism and politics in general are still just as relevant today as they were 70 years ago”.

Not subscribing to "the whole 'Hitler worship' thing" is what marks you out as a moderate on the far-Right, even if you are "interested in the purer form of fascism" - whatever that is - and believe that "... he [Hitler] laid a foundation that we should build on".

Perhaps Darrin believes that the "purer form of fascism" is something close to anarchism?

Just a few weeks after Diane Teasdale tore up his Australia First membership card, the ubiquitous Darrin turned up with fifteen of his young male friends at Sydney Town Hall to protest against the APEC summit, taking place elsewhere in the city. Dressed in black clothing, and wearing dark glasses and scarves to obscure their faces, they carried, according to Antipodean anti-fascist @ndy Slackbastard, "three long banners — with slogans reading ‘Australia: Free Nation – Or Sheep Station?’, ‘Globalisation is Genocide’ and ‘Power to the People, Not Political Parties’ – which were joined together to form a three-sided bloc, within which those gathered assembled to form a ‘black bloc’. The group also distributed a leaflet, and claimed to belong to a group known as the ‘New Right’, one which — as other statements on the banners and on the leaflet stated — consists of ‘National Anarchists’ espousing a ‘Traditional-European Revolutionary’ philosophy".

Darrin's flirtation with "national" anarchism - and, along the way, a group of Tibetan monks - was short-lived as the moderate fascist-racist cast about for ideas - any ideas - that would bring salvation for the Australian lunatic fringe, and so he jumped aboard the brand spanking new Australian Protectionist Party, made up largely of expellees from Australia First. Darrin is now its New South Wales chairman.

From the beginning, the APP sought to jettison the political baggage carried by Australia First, claiming to represent a "new expression on an Australian Nationalist perspective". Exactly how "new" can be seen on Darrin the moderate's personal website, where the oversized rodent gives full vent to his vicious Islamophobia in post after predictable post, and in his statement to the Canberra Times that "if you're an Asian, you are an Asian" - and most emphatically not a white Australian, or any kind of Australian, for the matter of that.

Long an admirer of Nick Griffin, with whom he says he corresponds, Darrin has swallowed the Griffin = Success fairy-tale hook, line and sinker, saying: "The BNP is a successful nationalist party ... Griffin rescued the BNP from the murky depths of right-wing extremism", and: "We look to the BNP as it is one of, if not the most successful nationalist party in the anglosphere and see no reason why we cannot draw ideas from them."

Perhaps Darrin and his comrades took this drawing on the ideas of the BNP a little too literally, as an early disgruntled would-be member sourly informed Stormfront Down Under that the APP was a "scam ripping money off White Australians hoping to protect the future of this country and the heritage that is theirs".

Recently Darrin was presented with an opportunity to shine in council elections held in south Sydney's Sutherland Shire, which also happens to include Cronulla, the 2005 scene of vicious racial conflicts enthusiastically fanned by the Australian far-Right - almost certainly the origin of an anonymous text message received by hundreds of Australians exhorting whites to gather on Cronulla beach to attack the "wogs and lebs".

Extolling "traditional and family values" (while neglecting to mention that he was once contracted to maintain the servers of a company dealing in decidedly non-traditional adult products and pornographic material), and railing against the "Asianisation" of Sutherland Shire, Darrin found himself treading on some very stony ground, achieving a thumping 2% and last place, and thoroughly demoralising the go-ahead Australian Protectionist Party's tiny following. To add insult to injury, in a nearby division of Sutherland Shire, Darrin's former friends in Australia First obtained double the APP vote share, even though they also came last, with 4% of the vote.

Rather than send for the Flying Doctor to cure their ills, the APP has sent for the Flying Führer, as detailed elsewhere on this blog.

Exactly what Darrin and the APP brethren hope to learn at the feet of Nick Griffin isn't clear to us. They have already toned down their public expressions of racism, never mention The Jews, won't talk about the Holocaust, and rant against everybody's favourite punch-bag, the Muslims.

Maybe Darrin will come away thinking what a whizz it would be to set up a record label or a fake trade union? Perhaps Nick will impart the dark arts of BNP accounting to a spell-bound audience all dreaming of retiring as quickly as possible to their own pig farms in the Outback? Or he could do several sessions on the fine art of purging, for having so much experience in that regard.

Oh, Darrin!

The truth of it is that Nick hasn't taken the BNP anywhere - rather, as we have previously noticed (posts passim), what little success came the BNP's way happened despite Nick Griffin and his tantrums and his purges. Didn't you notice May's abysmal election results? Or those of the May before it? Hasn't it occurred to you that in a climate never more condusive to the electoral prospects of the BNP that Nick Griffin has signally failed to advance the party in the one arena that matters? Why do you think Nick got his redundancy package sorted out when he did - could it be because he knows his members will one day make contact with the reality of his sham "success" and turn him out?

Oh, deluded Darrin! Nick Griffin can only teach you how to fail - and since you already enjoy failure, frustration and factionalism in great and unending abundance, you really do have nothing at all to learn from the Flying Führer.

Let's stop Nick Griffin's visit to Australia

The BNP has announced that its leader Nick Griffin intends to visit Australia in the “very near future” at the invitation of the miniscule far-right Australian Protectionist Party.

The APP is a tiny, minority party (led by a former BNP leading light) that seeks to drag Australia back to the dark ages of the “White Australia policy”, a policy that prohibited non-white immigration until 1973.

The proposed December visit by the leader of Britain’s premier racist party would help a tiny minority there in their attempts to drag Australia back into the dark ages of unapologetic imperialism and racism. It would also give Griffin the opportunity to act like some kind of spokesperson for ex-patriots, damaging Britain’s tolerant reputation while at the same time attempting to raise funds for his party’s coffers.

This year, the Australian parliament’s first order of business was to make an apology on behalf of the nation to the “stolen generation”, Aborigines who were removed from their families and ancestral lands to be “anglicised” (made to behave more like white people) for over one hundred years, until 1969. Only a tiny minority of Australians were opposed to this long overdue sentiment.

As a modern nation, Australia celebrates its new, modern and diverse culture with great pride. A visit by the BNP, a party notorious for sewing the seeds of intolerance, hate and mistrust, is likely to only be attractive and beneficial to the sort of Neanderthals who took pleasure from race-related rioting against Muslims in Cronulla New South Wales in 2006. Since those riots, described as a “pogrom” by some Australian journalists, the Australian far-right has gone to great lengths to recruit and galvanise support for their policies.

The BNP and its Australian supporters will attempt to use Griffin’s controversial visit to garner support to their campaign against the new Australia. In a time of sweeping economic turmoil, the APP will be hoping to learn from Griffin how to make local gains on the back of world-wide difficulties. This weekend (September 13th) the APP is standing in local elections as a litmus test for its policies.

Britain has strong historic, cultural and sporting ties with Australia. In 1998, Griffin was refused entry to the country as was Holocaust denier David Irving before him. The Australian government is being urged once more not to soil those positive ties by allowing Australia to take in another one of our criminal undesirables.

Jeremy Jones, a spokesman for Australia’s Jewish community said: ''A visit by Griffin ought to be a matter of concern for Australia's Muslim community, indeed by all communities here who have found that tolerance and engagement is a better path than division and hatred.''

To add your voice to the campaign, send a ‘He’s not fair dinkum’ postcard to the High Commissioner. Click here.

Hope not Hate

Nick Griffin plans visit to Australia

The BNP has announced that its leader Nick Griffin intends to visit Australia in the "very near future" at the invitation of the miniscule far-right Australian Protectionist Party.

It appears that Griffin intends to conduct a speaking tour of the country in December of this year. However, to enter the country he requires a visa and this was refused in 1998 when he last tried to visit Australia.

Nick Griffin wants to visit Australia, now one of the most vibrant, brilliant and multicultural countries on the planet, to help that tiny minority (led by a former BNP member) attempt to drag Australia back into the dark ages of white, racist and unapologetic imperialism that the Australian Protectionist Party wants to "protect".

There is still a minute imperialist, divisive and racist minority of Australians that often hark back to the bygone days when the country had a "White Australia" policy, which restricted non-white immigration into the country right up until 1973. The BNP has often commented that this is the sort of policy that it feels it would like to introduce to this country. If Australians thought that the imbecilic Pauline Hanson and her band of One Nation red-necks were bad, they will be in for one hell of a rude awakening when Griffin and his band of perennial sunglass wearing thugs arrive on their sunny shores.

Contrary to the popular stereotypes, today's Australia is a modern, vibrant multicultural country. In the last couple of years Australia has made very positive steps to redress some of the awful injustices meted out on its indigenous people by British descendents who colonised the vast nation and the surrounding continent. The Labour Prime minister Kevin Rudd, has close ties to the Chinese community in Australia and has an excellent record on defending the rights of migrant communities and workers.

This year, the Australian parliament's first order of business was to make an apology on behalf of the nation to the "stolen generation" - Aborigines who were removed from their families and ancestral lands to be "anglicised" (made to behave more like white people) for the good of the country for over one hundred years until 1969.

The effects of removing children from their parents and their communities has had an enormous and dreadful impact on the lives and the culture of the Aborigine and Torres Straight Island people of Australia.

Griffin's attempted visit is a reminder that not everyone subscribes to this modern vision. Indeed, the sort of people that would be attracted to the BNP message are the thugs who took part in race-related rioting against Muslims in Cronulla New South Wales in 2006. In this country the BNP fuels racist tensions and violence by descending on areas of economic and social difficulty to turn dissatisfaction into racist torment and violence.

It is in the interests of both countries that Griffin is refused entry into Australia.

Jeremy Jones, a spokesman for Australia's Jewish community said: ''A visit by Griffin ought to be a matter of concern for Australia's Muslim community, indeed by all communities here who have found that tolerance and engagement is a better path than division and hatred.''

Stop the BNP