by Jamie Scanlan
Today I attended a rally against religious extremism and
Islamist intolerance of freedom speech on the steps of the State
Library in Victoria. Traditionally, an event called the Speaker’s Forum
has been held there, which has performed the function of a soapbox
venue, like Hyde Park in London, in which anyone can stand up and make a
speech. Speaker’s Forum started back in the 1890s, on the banks of the
Yarra (in what is now called the Southbank district), and featured
various socialist, anarchist and suffragette types, plus republicans and
radicals. Seventy years later, it relocated to the State Library steps,
and here we are.
Today’s rally was a response to the outbreaks of
Islamist violence, in Sydney and elsewhere around the world (in riots
last night in Pakistan, 17 died), which in turn were provoked by the
strange film, ‘The Innocence of Muslims’, produced by a Coptic-American,
Nakoula, who has a string of criminal convictions for drug-dealing,
fraud and the like. Nakoula somehow got his rather amateurish film a
cinematic release (back in July, this year) and had posted it on YouTube
successfully (without being taken down by the authorities who police
these things). Clearly, he aimed at provoking a reaction – and
succeeded. Just as September 11 was designed to provoke a reaction from
the Americans (who would, when provoked, engage in an unwinnable war in
Afghanistan), ‘The Innocence of Muslims’ was designed to push Islamists
into rash, precipitous action – action which would, in short, make
Muslims look like an aggressive, intolerant, violent, angry and
destructive people. (Just today, the Pakistani railway minister placed a
$USD100,000 bounty on Nakoula’s head). Nakoula has done more damage to
the global Islamic brand name, in the space of a few weeks, than Geert
Wilders, Nick Griffin or Pamela Geller have done in years.
I will say, from the outset, what Nationalist
Alternative’s position is: we don’t support the anti-Islamics, the
Breivikists, the Griffinites, the likes of Geller and Wilders. My own
belief is that Nakoula must have received funding and support from the
professional anti-Islamist activists – e.g., Pamela Geller – who are in
turn serving the interests of militant pro-Israel Jewish-Americans and
the State of Israel itself. I don’t have any direct evidence of this at
this point – right now, I don’t think anyone does – but I see a close
fit between Nakoula’s ideology, and tactics, and that of the Breivikists
– who are firmly tied to Israel. What’s clear is that the West – and
that includes Australia – is being used as a battlefield between two
contending ethnic and religious minorities, both of whom belong to (what
Spengler called) the Magian Culture, that is, the Arabic-Semitic
civilisation. (We white Westerners, on the other hand, belong to the
Faustian, or Western, Culture, which started over 1500 years ago with
the founding of the Holy Roman Empire). Israel hopes that America (and
Australia) will go to war with Iran for Israel’s sake; Benjamin
Netanyahu is playing the same role as the first president of the future
state of Israel, Chaim Waizmann, did back in the 1930s, with Waizmann’s
constant agitations for war between Britain and Germany. (Waizmann found
his tool for this purpose in the person of Winston Churchill: it’s the
Romneys, Obamas, McCains and Gingriches who are today’s Churchills). We
in Nationalist Alternative are the anti-war and anti-violence party.
So I attended the rally today, to protest against
creeping Islamism (in Australia and elsewhere in the West) and the
Islamist colonisation of the West; but also to draw the attention of the
participants against Israeli and Breivikist manipulation of popular
feeling against Islam.
Before the rally started, I had been concerned, by news
reports on Friday, that two Australian men in Sydney had been arrested
for ‘inciting violence’ against Muslims via text message. This, to me,
suggests that Australia is descending (just like Britain) to the level
of a police state, in which people can be arrested for a mere text
message. At any rate, I judged the news reports of an upcoming
anti-Islam rally this weekend, organised on Facebook, to be false. I had
seen Facebook postings advertising the rally on TV (on ABC and SBS
television), but didn’t give them much credence: I speculated that it
was operatives in the Australian government itself which had concocted
bogus Facebook postings, with the intent of luring people to attend a
phony anti-Islam rally that never existed in the first place (the
intention being to gather information, and conduct surveillance, on
anyone showing up). But fake rally or no, I was going to do my bit and
attend a real rally, at the State Library this Sunday.
According to the news, Muslim groups had cancelled a
planned anti-Nakoula rally scheduled for Sunday. Why? The authorities
had placed pressure on Muslim leaders to call it off. But, in addition,
the reaction of the liberal establishment here in this country to the
Sydney disturbances the week before had really stung a few senior Muslim
leaders, I think. Politicians, media commentators, senior police,
called the protests ‘disgusting’ and accused ‘criminal elements’ of
making up the majority of the protest group; they were treating it as
the most barbarous thing in the world. But to Pakistan last night, there
was no comparison. All I saw in Sydney were a few protestors getting in
scuffles with the police – which was no worse than the CFMEU scuffles
with police at the Grocon building site in Melbourne a couple of weeks
prior. But, evidently, a few Muslim leaders realised that, by protesting
today, and calling for the beheading of Nakoula, etc., they’d only be
playing into the hands of the Breivikists and doing exactly what Nakoula
wanted them to do.
On top of that, SBS news said, on Friday, that Muslims
didn’t want to attend a rally in Melbourne for fear of being attacked by
‘white pride groups’. Which is ridiculous: Muslim attendees could
outnumber any counter-demonstrators 30 to 1 (and the men in nighties and
beards can, I’m sure, put up a good fight); what’s more, there aren’t
any ‘white pride groups’ in Melbourne, or Australia, for that matter.
I showed up early with a few patriots, concerned young
nationalists from all walks of life. My strategy (if it could be called
that) before going to the rally was one of a united front: like the
communists in Spain in the 1930s, I would be prepared to work with any
individual or group, nationalist or non-nationalist, who would attend
the anti-Islamist rally. All would be welcome to attend, and I wasn’t
going to turn my nose up at anyone. In this instance, I wasn’t going to
be a purist, and reject anyone for not agreeing with my views a 100%. In
truth, we at the rally needed numbers to make an impression on the
Australian public, and by being ultra-pure (in this instance), I would
only succeed in alienating people. This sounds like common sense, but a
good many nationalists don’t understand this – Nick Griffin, for
instance, who alienated the old British Far Right by labelling them
“Nutzis” and cranks (simply for their suspicion of Israel) and refusing
to work with them. Griffin would have done far better by building
bridges between all the British nationalist groups. I was determined, as
a nationalist activist, not to repeat his mistakes.
I was one of the first to show up: the rally was due to
start around 1 p.m., with talks (on a public address system) by myself
and other activists, but I showed up around 11.30 and waited. This was
the most uncomfortable part of the day. A few dozen police, wearing
guns, came over and surrounded the steps, and around a dozen journalists
set up their cameras a few feet from us (by the end of the day, there
were more journalists than police or demonstrators – I estimated around
50 or so were there). In truth, neither the police nor the media knew
what was going to occur: they had good knowledge that the Islamist rally
had been called off, but the police in particular were concerned that
any nationalists would get rowdy (and the media hoped that there would
be some violent incident). A few senior police walked over and told us
that we had the right to protest, etc., but not to cause any trouble,
and one patriot (who was holding an Australian flag on a pole) had his
details taken down by one officer. We were approached by one or two
journalists, but we fobbed them off. It was as though we were sitting in
a pressure cooker…
Finally,
the storm broke: reinforcements arrived. A small group of militant
atheists and secularists showed up, waving placards. At once, several
dozen journalists got up and run over to them, taking photos and asking
questions. The intense police and media focus was placed on them
instead. The atheists were more than happy to talk to the media and give
statements. Some of the nationalists knew one or two of them, but
generally, the atheists didn’t want to stand near us or talk to us,
unfortunately. They weren’t afraid of offending God, with their denials
of God’s existence, but they were afraid of associating with Australian
nationalists.
Then another contingent showed up: surfer types, waving
Australian flags, wearing Australian flag capes, and some carrying large
laminated placards (which were beautifully done). I personally hadn’t
met some of these individuals before today – possibly they were the
Facebook-inspired attendees. Their presence, to me, was very welcome.
Being in the media and police pressure cooker is an intense experience,
and very uncomfortable (it’s not for nothing that the British police
call their method of crowd-control ‘kettling’), and it was good to have
others there to share the burden. (While all this was going on, various
passers-by and gawpers were coming out to look at us, or just to visit
the library, or sit on a park bench. At one point, a hipster-fellow got
up on the steps, right next to us, and started playing a ukulele).
Simply put, the police, the media, and many members of the Australian
public, don’t want you to be politically active and call attention to
yourself, and express your beliefs, at a demonstration: it’s as though
they’re shouting at you, ‘GO HOME!’ or ‘SHOP INSTEAD!’. (Which isn’t to
say that quite a few interested Australians did come up and engage with
us, in conversation, as to what our beliefs were. Traditionally, it’s
the Left – conspicuous by their absence today – who dominated that
public space; these interested people were surprised, and pleased, that
nationalists had actually shown up there).
I felt as though I had shown up, to the battlefield,
with one lone battalion, and had to defend an entire sector with that
one battalion. Now, two more showed up. I became a lot more relaxed, and
sauntered around the battlefield, like a Wellington or Rommel, watching
events unfold.
Where were the Muslims? They stayed away. One young
Muslim couple sauntered by, and gave a statement to the media, and then
left. But, on the steps, one (!) lone Muslim activist got involved an
argument with a few Australian patriots – an argument which lasted for
thirty minutes. Unbelievably, fifty journalists converged on one spot,
and swarmed – literally swarmed – around the debators, poking cameras,
phones, microphones. The crowd of journalists, circling the debators,
looked a cylindrical structure – like a giant bee hive or plum-pudding.
It was impossible for me to get through and hear what the debators were
actually saying.
The media loves conflict – it’s what they write their
stories are about – and they needed a story for today. Journalists live a
rather parlous hand-to-mouth existence. So it stood to reason that
they’d strive to get a few seconds of footage which would show some
conflict…
At
one point in the debate, a few patriots gave the ‘Aussie, Aussie, OI,
OI, OI’ chant in response to the Muslim debater, who was steadily
becoming more and more heated. I saw brows of the police officers
furrow: I could tell they were thinking, ‘Shades of Cronulla’. They
leaped into action and confiscated the three laminated placards –
luckily, this was caught on film.
Eventually, the police asked the lone Muslim to leave
(to the jeering of the assembled multitude). It was then that a comrade
got his P.A. system working on a bench, and straight away, without
missing a beat, launched into a speech. This went on for a while, and
attracted a little media attention (although not as much as the
debators). The microphone was passed on to me, and, without thinking it
over too much, I gave a speech – on the topic of Zionist influence and
the role of the Breivikists in propagating the Nakoula film. Then the
microphone was given to another nationalist comrade, and then another.
It was all rather dizzying – I felt like a paratrooper being pushed out
the plane door, in a war movie… We all delivered speeches ex tempore. No
time to think!
After that the show wound down (and it was a show – a
piece of political street theatre). We passed around a few cards and
fliers, and then left. Later, in the evening, I caught up with the
multiple news reports on the rally – in The Age, The Herald Sun, The
Australian, SBSNews.Com.Au, and other sources – and managed to catch two
news reports, one on Channel 7, the other on SBS.
Turning on the TV news, I saw that there had been quite a
number of demonstrations throughout the world today – in Germany
(Muslim immigrants protested against the Nakoula film), protests in
Japan (Japanese nationalists protesting against the Chinese, protests in
Africa (Muslims again) and so on… The SBS news report had four or five
protest stories (including ours) in the one bulletin. There must be
something in the air…
Reflecting on the Nakoula incident, it struck me as to
how sensitive certain minority groups were to, to public expressions of
disbelief in their religion. Suppose that someone doesn’t believe the
Talmudic-Holocaust story – why should Jewish people get upset? Surely
they’re convinced that the event happened? Likewise, suppose someone
says some bad things about Islam – would God (Allah), who allegedly
created the universe, really care? But that’s an argument for another
day…
