Tuesday, December 05, 2017
Jewish woman confronted by Nazi hate chants
Felicity Perry, a 33-year-old university administrator, was walking through the gathering Melbourne dusk towards the Flemington Railway station when she heard the chant. “Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau.’’
At first, she thought she’d misheard. Then she turned and looked at the faces of the men glaring at her, chanting in unison. “Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau.’’ She hadn’t misheard. There was no mistake; only a hatred deeper than Perry, a woman readily identifiable as Jewish, could have imagined.
This was Perry’s first antifa rally, an event that turned a normally busy road into a maul of far right and hard left activists, turned the normally peaceful residents of the Kensington commission towers into an angry mob, turned a city against itself in scenes of violence and abuse.
Her tormentors were men in their 40s and 50s. All white, all old enough to know the history of what they were chanting. They stood in Racecourse Road, next to another group of men carrying Trump flags. “They weren’t messing about,’’ Perry said.
She came to the rally as part of a small activist group, Jews Against Fascism, to add her voice to those trying to shout down alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos as he spruiks his brand of pop outrage. “I’ve been watching the rise of Yiannopoulos and the new alt-right and, frankly, I’m very concerned,’’ she said.
The call went out at 4:17pm. More precisely, the location of Yiannopoulos’ speaking engagement at the Melbourne Pavilion in Kensington was posted on a Facebook site moderated by CARF, the Melbourne-based Campaign Against Racism and Fascism.
Since late October, CARF had been mobilising numbers for a mass intervention. Over the past week, it ran a daily countdown. Finally, show time had arrived.
The CARF battle strategy is simple. Spokeswoman Tess Dimos, an arts student at Monash University, calls it “mass collective resistance.’’ The objective is to gather wherever the far right gathers, to meet in greater numbers than they do, and to drown out their message. “Our intention is to try to stop the far right from growing in Australia,’’ Dimos said. “That is the reason why we protest at their events; to make people feel uncomfortable about the politics they are supporting.’’
Violence is an organisational hazard, neither condoned nor condemned. Once Neil Erikson, Ricky Turner and a group of their Patriot Blue buddies came walking around the corner into Racecourse Road on Monday night, violence was inevitable.
Erikson says it was Piergiorgio Moro, an anti-fascist activist he has known since Bendigo two years ago, when far right and antifa groups squared off over the fate of a proposed mosque, who initiated hostilities. “He walked right up to us and he grabbed Ricky,’’ Erikson said. “While that was happening a big herd of lefties tried to come in. We just defended ourselves. Ricky went down with that Piergiorgio and I just tried to defuse it with the banner.’’
Piergiorgio and witnesses tell a different story. He said he was attacked by Erikson and his mates. “They grabbed me, threw me to the ground, punched and kicked me and they broke the flagpole over my head.’’ That was Erikson’s banner. Piergiorgio said he was left battered and bruised.
Yiannopoulos’s Melbourne venue is across the road from high rise towers home to a large number of Sudanese, Somalian and Eritrean families. Some have lived in these flats for a generation. Many are Muslim. On Monday night, they joined the demonstration. Police suspect some young men, so far unidentified, ran on to nearby railway tracks and gathered heavy, sharp-edged rocks. As police and right and left activists clashed outside the entrance to the Melbourne Pavilion, rocks were thrown from the opposite side of the street.
One struck a member of the True Blue Crew known as Tiny, deeply gashing his head. Police were also hit. A Soldiers of Odin member, another right-wing group, grabbed a megaphone and boomed amplified expletives at locals. Erikson taunted them with repeated cries of “Mohammed is a pedophile.’’ The situation teetered dangerously close to a riot.
African community leaders are furious that the owners of a popular local venue hired it out to Yiannopoulos. They are also angry that teenage boys from the tower were encouraged by antifa activists to take on the far right.
Community leader Berhan Ahmed, who knows many of the families who live in the towers, said most teenagers who got involved in the protest “didn’t know about Milo’s existence’’ before Monday. His concern is that long after Yiannopoulis has left Australia and the activists have gone back to their studies and day jobs, his community will have to rebuild its relationship with police.
India Hussein and her three children live on the 20th floor of the commission tower. For four hours on Monday night, they sat at the high rise window, watching the confrontation below. “The boys are full of energy and hots,’’ she said. “Even a little thing, they think is true. If they lie to them, they don’t know. They shouldn’t make the meeting here.’’
Four people were arrested and five police injured, none seriously.
There was little self-reflection on either side. CARF declared its rally a success. Antifa blamed police for the violence. Erikson, Avi Yemeni and other right wing agitators gathered a month’s worth of content for their Facebook pages. And Yiannopoulos took his show to Sydney.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/jewish-woman-confronted-by-nazi-hate-chants/news-story/30825c499f96819b51fd50617bbf2c06
At first, she thought she’d misheard. Then she turned and looked at the faces of the men glaring at her, chanting in unison. “Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau.’’ She hadn’t misheard. There was no mistake; only a hatred deeper than Perry, a woman readily identifiable as Jewish, could have imagined.
This was Perry’s first antifa rally, an event that turned a normally busy road into a maul of far right and hard left activists, turned the normally peaceful residents of the Kensington commission towers into an angry mob, turned a city against itself in scenes of violence and abuse.
Her tormentors were men in their 40s and 50s. All white, all old enough to know the history of what they were chanting. They stood in Racecourse Road, next to another group of men carrying Trump flags. “They weren’t messing about,’’ Perry said.
She came to the rally as part of a small activist group, Jews Against Fascism, to add her voice to those trying to shout down alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos as he spruiks his brand of pop outrage. “I’ve been watching the rise of Yiannopoulos and the new alt-right and, frankly, I’m very concerned,’’ she said.
The call went out at 4:17pm. More precisely, the location of Yiannopoulos’ speaking engagement at the Melbourne Pavilion in Kensington was posted on a Facebook site moderated by CARF, the Melbourne-based Campaign Against Racism and Fascism.
Since late October, CARF had been mobilising numbers for a mass intervention. Over the past week, it ran a daily countdown. Finally, show time had arrived.
The CARF battle strategy is simple. Spokeswoman Tess Dimos, an arts student at Monash University, calls it “mass collective resistance.’’ The objective is to gather wherever the far right gathers, to meet in greater numbers than they do, and to drown out their message. “Our intention is to try to stop the far right from growing in Australia,’’ Dimos said. “That is the reason why we protest at their events; to make people feel uncomfortable about the politics they are supporting.’’
Violence is an organisational hazard, neither condoned nor condemned. Once Neil Erikson, Ricky Turner and a group of their Patriot Blue buddies came walking around the corner into Racecourse Road on Monday night, violence was inevitable.
Erikson says it was Piergiorgio Moro, an anti-fascist activist he has known since Bendigo two years ago, when far right and antifa groups squared off over the fate of a proposed mosque, who initiated hostilities. “He walked right up to us and he grabbed Ricky,’’ Erikson said. “While that was happening a big herd of lefties tried to come in. We just defended ourselves. Ricky went down with that Piergiorgio and I just tried to defuse it with the banner.’’
Piergiorgio and witnesses tell a different story. He said he was attacked by Erikson and his mates. “They grabbed me, threw me to the ground, punched and kicked me and they broke the flagpole over my head.’’ That was Erikson’s banner. Piergiorgio said he was left battered and bruised.
Yiannopoulos’s Melbourne venue is across the road from high rise towers home to a large number of Sudanese, Somalian and Eritrean families. Some have lived in these flats for a generation. Many are Muslim. On Monday night, they joined the demonstration. Police suspect some young men, so far unidentified, ran on to nearby railway tracks and gathered heavy, sharp-edged rocks. As police and right and left activists clashed outside the entrance to the Melbourne Pavilion, rocks were thrown from the opposite side of the street.
One struck a member of the True Blue Crew known as Tiny, deeply gashing his head. Police were also hit. A Soldiers of Odin member, another right-wing group, grabbed a megaphone and boomed amplified expletives at locals. Erikson taunted them with repeated cries of “Mohammed is a pedophile.’’ The situation teetered dangerously close to a riot.
African community leaders are furious that the owners of a popular local venue hired it out to Yiannopoulos. They are also angry that teenage boys from the tower were encouraged by antifa activists to take on the far right.
Community leader Berhan Ahmed, who knows many of the families who live in the towers, said most teenagers who got involved in the protest “didn’t know about Milo’s existence’’ before Monday. His concern is that long after Yiannopoulis has left Australia and the activists have gone back to their studies and day jobs, his community will have to rebuild its relationship with police.
India Hussein and her three children live on the 20th floor of the commission tower. For four hours on Monday night, they sat at the high rise window, watching the confrontation below. “The boys are full of energy and hots,’’ she said. “Even a little thing, they think is true. If they lie to them, they don’t know. They shouldn’t make the meeting here.’’
Four people were arrested and five police injured, none seriously.
There was little self-reflection on either side. CARF declared its rally a success. Antifa blamed police for the violence. Erikson, Avi Yemeni and other right wing agitators gathered a month’s worth of content for their Facebook pages. And Yiannopoulos took his show to Sydney.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/jewish-woman-confronted-by-nazi-hate-chants/news-story/30825c499f96819b51fd50617bbf2c06
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