Outrage sparked by the latest neo-Nazi stunt is all part of a political program to get signatures, writesTom Tanuki.

THE MAINSTREAM RESPONSEto a neo-Nazibooingan Anzac Day dawn service last week has been exactly as the neo-Nazi hoped it would be.

Lots of naming of the neo-Nazi in question and little critical discussion of his intentions, with any and all of that drowned out by the chorus of "debate" over the meritofWelcomes to Country.

This has led many people to accuse the Australian mainstream of dancing to the tune of neo-Nazis, or allowing neo-Nazis to dominate the mainstream discourse.

This "debate"is a reductive, racist discourse, a pot thats steadily been stirred since theVoice Referendumfailed, but it was only given a shot in the arm by the stunt.Its all a perfect example of tactical racism: Racism fomented for a political or power-brokering goal.

I want to talk about whose tactic this is, fundamentally, or who "owns" it what everyones actual goal was and whether, as a tactic, its working out for the scumbags behind it.

Lets be clear about what happened, first, because the Australian mainstream media has not been capable of doing so with any clarity at all.They are too terrified of defamation, so they whittle most of their coverage of the Australian political fringe down to worthless inference and suggestion.

Forcing children to participate in school Anzac Day services is an attack on freedom and should be made illegal.

Planned political theatre

The booing stunt was meticulously planned political theatre.Readers of this column will be intimately familiar with National Socialist Network (NSN) stunts, which are planned out on a calendar basis.The intention, as I have relayed many times before, is always to use the resultant mainstream media coverage to promote their group and attract new recruits.Accordingly, the National Socialist Network planned the Anzac Day dawn service stunt well in advance.

Jacob Hersant, NSN leaderTom Sewelland two others were at theShrine of Remembrancefor approximately two and a half hours on Thursday 24 April, the day before the service. They were filming, planning and scouting the location, pacing around the forecourt and the cenotaph directly in view of the Australian Federal Police (AFP),Victoria Police (VicPol)and Shrine management.So nobody at the Returned and Services League(RSL) or the Shrine could say they werent amply warned.

In fact, RSL Australia and Shrine management have been warned in advance of NSN group attendance at several of these events over the years.Last time, they held up their groups flag outside the Shrine after the service for a photo opportunity.Nothing has ever been done about their presence.

NSN memberJimeone Robertswent to court a couple of days before the service to try and get his bail conditions changed to attend the dawn service at the Shrine.It was denied they encouraged him to attend any other dawn service in Victoria if, as he said in his request, he worshipped his grandads service record so much.Roberts intention was obviously to participate in the stunt.

NSN members positioned themselves in different locations around the service to avoid being identified as a group.They did the same stunt at other dawn services too, in fact, to maximise the chance of it being covered.Another NSN member interrupted a WA dawn service to do the same thing.It just happened that the other one wasnt filmed.

Anti-Indigenous campaigning

Hersant didn't onlybooUncle Mark Browns Welcome to Country. He also booed images of Indigenous soldiersand any time First Nationsservicewas mentioned. The plan was to boo anything non-white and see what stuck.(When I say stuck, I mean,reached national media headlines.)

Unsurprisingly, what stuck was booing the thing that has been the direct target of constant, paidnegative campaign advertising by lobby groupAdvance Australiasince the Voice Referendum failed.

The Australian political Right, galvanised by the failure of the referendum, saw an opportunity to turn anti-Indigenous racism into renewed political capital.So theyve been paying for bulk political ads on Facebook about Welcome to Country. "Dont welcome me to my own country!"has been the refrain, launched into the soft brains of targeted audiences with Metas pay-for-play behaviour modification tools.And many hours ofSky After Dark.

To assume that the NSN specifically care a lot about Welcomes to Country, enough to undertake the stunt they did in earnest, is understandable but a bit nave.Sure, they dont like hearing them because they are racist white supremacists.

But they consider every cultural item in Australia that isnt explicitly racist and white supremacist to be heresy.

These are people who:

• think that every movie ever made is Jewish propaganda to make white men stop having kids;
• dress their girlfriends and wives up likeExclusive Brethrenmembers the ones that have fled and taken out court orders, that is;
• believe in legalising marriage to teenage girls;
• groom, manipulate and guilt isolated little boys into joining them on gaming platforms likeSteam;
• have reportedly had at least one member among their ranks take his own life; and
• believe Australian white men owe an ancestral blood debt toNazi Germany dictatorAdolf Hitlerfor the sin of the Anzacs having fought Nazis in World War II (the men who went to the Anzac Day dawn service think that, yes).

Honouring our Anzacs shouldmeanthinking critically about war the ones we fought and the ones we might have to.

The push toward recruitment

For the NSN, a radical fringe cult, the Welcometo Country acknowledgement is the least of theirmany bizarre concerns.

What they are concerned about is recruiting more boys and, more importantly right now, obtaining 1,500 people willing to provide signatures and addresses so they can launch a politicalpartywhich they plan to call the 'White Australia Party.

To achieve maximum stunt reach, therefore, they simply copy whatever is the topic du jour among the Australian right-wing.

All of this is to say that I dont think this is fundamentally a neo-Nazi discourse at all.This is lobby group Advance Australiasdiscourse.Its Opposition LeaderPeter Duttons discourse, Sky After Darks discourse andCoalition frontbencherJacinta Prices discourse.

Neo-Nazis are parasitising the tactical racism of the Australian Right for their own end, which I suppose is easy to do with a campaign that is fundamentally all about manipulating people.

When neo-Nazis do the extreme stunt that the political Right is too worried about self-preservation to pull off, they still rush in to collect the spoils.I was told that One Nation Party LeaderPauline Hansonwas being interviewed by the ABC the other day about all this, situated as the voice of reason.This is how they shift theOverton windowto let more racism in.Racism as a political tool.

By 2pmon Anzac Day, Advance Australia hadlauncheda petition about scrapping Welcomes to Country.Rugby clubMelbourne Stormcancelled a Welcome to Country set for the next day.

The neo-Nazis who led the stunt and the right-wing lobby groups who paid to astroturf it into existence have been largely set aside while we all "debate"a simple, traditional and dignified cultural tradition.A grand tradition of welcoming, in a nation whose colonising settlers brought none of their own.

Theres a dispute in anti-racist discourse about the term "tactical racism", because its not simply tactical, as some of the left acknowledge.It wouldnt work without vast reserves of actual vestigial racist attitudes in the societies it is deployed in, after all.And of course, theres nothing "tactical" about the effect that this has on my Indigenous brothers, sisters and comrades.I see that.

But if this racism is about white power about dividing the people to subjugate some of them, invariably to benefit the few then this is absolutely, plainly a tactic.

Whose tactic was it, then?

Again, I argue it was fundamentally the people who paid to astroturf it. Lobby group Advance Australia and its attendant media and political sounding boards.And Dutton, of course.

Did the NSN win by parasitising the "debate"?Sure.They got the attention they wanted from the media again.But what much of the media didnt report is that they were actually booed and abused out of the serviceat the time.Thats no win, outside of their precarious mainstream media optics lens.Thats usually the reception they get when they stick around in public for a while.

One of the neo-Nazis greatest weaknesses is that he builds his entire identity around being strong.Thats why they wont do any public stunts that go for longer than fiveminutes.They remain petrified that people will see what happens when they leave themselves exposed.

Regarding the political Australian Right who first fomented this "debate", my comrade and podcast co-host,Celeste Liddle,writingforCrikey, observed the following.

Shewrote:

So, how has the tactical racism worked out for them, then?Well see today, when theballotsclose.

I dont think theyre about to be paid out the dividends they expected.

Tom Tanukiis an IA columnist, a writer, satirist and anti-fascist activist whose weekly videos commenting on the Australian political fringe appear onYouTube. You can follow him/X@tom_tanuki.

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