The hunt for slackbastard theantibogan Josh Bornstein

The Times of Israel blog entry, which Josh Bornstein did not write. Photograph: Screengrab

The white supremacist ultra-nationalist far right in Australia, like its pathetic bath-house-braces-bad-tatts-and-bare-nipples buddies overseas, is barking and baying an empty message of hate and violence consisting of repackaged bits of Mein Kampf along with selections from ancient propaganda toilet paper like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

In other words what they peddle as a “political philosophy/platform/vision” is totally devoid of a factual base.

Anyone with half a brain knows this, including their fellow travellers on the far right who are equally devoid of a factual basis for their own subset of bizarre beliefs. However these very same fellow travellers would indignantly deny they were associated with Nazis or were like them in any way despite ample evidence to the contrary.

The target du jour is Islam and Muslims: tomorrow it will be yet another group, probably the Jews who have never really lost their position as Hate Object No 1 with the nutzis.

The fact that Muslims are a multi-ethnic group and that Islam is a universal religious faith like Christianity is not a problem for the brain-dead racist zombies of Nutzidom. Nor is the notion and regular use of stalking, intimidation, slander and identity theft as an attempt to silence those they do not approve of.

Lacking any solid basis for the lies they peddle, the white supremacist/neo-Nazi/white nationalist collective have resorted to a number of illegal activities apparently designed to convey to their prospective recruits the impression that they have no opposition and that they are somehow “mainstream”.

Anyone with even a passing acquaintance with these criminals on social media will know that they employ a variety of strategies to silence their critics. These range from out and out threats, usually under a fake profile, continuing gender-, racial- and sexuality-based bullying and harassment, nuisance calls, publication of pictures and details of opponents’ young children (there’s a name for that beginning with “p”), vandalism to property and spurious complaints to workplaces (all of which are ignored by employers).

The latest person to have engaged their obsession is this man.

Josh Bornstein

Josh Bornstein is a prominent Melbourne human rights and industrial relations lawyer with an impressive record of taking on society’s nasties, ranging from rorting employers and companies to the institutional child abusers and their deniers in his own Jewish community.

You may remember the 2007 ABC series Bastard Boys based on the 1998 wharf dispute where Bornstein took on stevedoring company Patrick Corporation alongside the union movement.

So it raised eyebrows when this high-profile Australian lawyer came to the attention of a bunch of Internet maggots in their strenuous efforts to kick along their own war against Jews and Muslims by sabotaging the smallest amount of progress in the Middle Eastern peace process.

And as we have seen in similar instances of identity theft pulled off by these and similar extremists they started off by creating a fake “Josh Bornstein” blogger which managed to fool the editorial staff of the Times of Israel, a Jerusalem-based independent newspaper.

The story surfaced in the media in April, Crikey picked it up and it culminated in Bornstein himself writing an article for The Guardian detailing the stalking, harassment and identity theft.

Social media itself was not blameless.

A fake account was enthusiastically welcomed by Twitter who were happy to receive money to promote a tweet urging the killing of Arabs made by the fake Josh.

In Josh’s case perhaps the next to last word comes from Flavorwire

The insidious tactics of these hoaxers, combined with the speed and fury which which online “outrages” snowball and become major scandals, are also something to be on alert for in this brave new world in which trolls adapt and change tactics.

In the end, this mini-blowup is a good reminder to all of us, particularly the pugnacious and sensitive among us, that when we see something that seems as though it were explicitly designed to gin up a high level outrage and disgust, that might actually be the case.

And far from silencing Josh Bornstein, this has impelled him and others to redouble their efforts to work towards a just and tolerant world.

And we strongly suspect that quite a few of the enemy will be feeling the heavy hand of the law in due course – in this country and elsewhere.

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Between neo-Nazis and jihadis, Melbourne lawyer Josh Bornstein won’t be silenced by identity theft

Some detritus – WARNING offensive content

Laughing at the Lamington Reich

In the milling maggoty squirmy sludge that makes up the far right, one occasionally catches a glimpse of an older evil amongst all the present-day phobic paranoiacs and yammering identity movements.

Here’s one who gave us a laugh.

Daz obviously gets his political rocks off by lovingly stroking the “Gays are paedophiles” myth.

Everyone knows that’s a furphy, but we’re a bit concerned about old Daz. Obsessive much?

Next to a warm wet homophobic slur coupled with an obsession with child abuse there is nothing your garden variety (as in noxious weed) nutzi likes better than a bit of Asian bashing.

This was in response to a post about Pauline Hanson, the bigots’ friend. The post quoted Hanson’s first speech from 1996 where she paraded the expected pile of rubbish about Asian immigrants.

Daz is very keen to get people from this Facebook group over to Scumfront, the site of choice for racist and bigoted losers everywhere. Perhaps he is hoping for a hot date? Or a bit of the old grooming? Or some Aryan-style family formation?

Happy Nazi family leaves a NY Family Court hearing

Daz even wants to show them dodgy movies. And he will keep banging on about Scumfront.

Having reached in, groped around  and given us a glimpse of his intentions he then gets on with Asian-bashing.

At the 2011 Census 2.4 million Australians or about 12% declared that they had an Asian ancestral background (ABS). This includes people of mixed ethnicity.

Looks like Asians are well and truly here to stay, integrated into the wider society and responsible for a great deal of economic activity.

And looks like Daz and his hero Pauline Hanson have missed that bit.

Now here’s the money shot

We’ve heard this one before where the bigot claims some sort of identity with the object of its hatred. We’re not sure of the mixture involved – maybe his mum was from Roswell and his dad was Reptilian?

That never stopped such blond blue-eyed Aryans Lamingtons like Jim Saleam and Jack Van Tongeren now did it.

Coward troll to Rabbitohs’ star Greg Inglis – “I steered (sic) in your face for more than a hour”

NRL joins hunt for troll behind Inglis racial slur

July 24, 2013

Glenn Jackson
Rugby League Writer

Greg Inglis with partner Sally Photo: Dallas Kilponen

The racial slur against Greg Inglis on social media has attracted the ire of the highest office in the sport, with NRL chief executive Dave Smith condemning the online comments while promising assistance in identifying the perpetrator.

Smith described the Instagram post aimed at Inglis, the South Sydney fullback, and his wife Sally as “abhorrent” on Wednesday night as the Rabbitohs players rallied around their teammate.

“Racism in any form is abhorrent and contrary to every value our game,” Smith said. “This applies on the field, in the grandstand and in any walk of life.

Racial abuse: A troll has targeted Greg Inglis and his wife highly offensive comments to a picture on Instagram. Photo: Getty Images

“Greg is a wonderful athlete and a great role model for our game, and this attack on him and his family is shameful.”

Souths officials have been trying to track down the source of the unsavoury post, which was directed at Inglis and his wife on Tuesday night. The NRL will also investigate “the extent to which the person can be identified and what action can be taken”.

The post was written as a comment on an Instagram photo of the Test representative and wife. In response, Inglis took a screenshot and forwarded the offending remarks to journalists on Twitter.

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And here’s a sample of comments made by NRL identities in support of Inglis. Moreover, the majority of readers’ comments in the SMH were supportive of him and disgusted with the cowardly troll.

Nathan Merritt: “It’s not appropriate. But I think it’s going to get taken care of. There’s no place in the world for it.”

Rabbitohs’ prop Jeff Lima described the act as cowardly.

“These things need to be stamped out,” Lima said. “The sooner they stamp it out, the better it’ll be for everyone. There’s a lot of bad people in the world.”

Roy Asotasi : “Racism is not acceptable in this country or anywhere…the more that we’re open about it, and aware that there is racism out there, we can obviously prevent it from happening,”

The sickening comment read in part: “I steered [sic] in your face for more than a hour trying to classify your race but I failed I didn’t not find any human catagories[sic] to classify you on it.”

It went on to further disparage Inglis’ background and his relationship with his wife. Inglis re-posted the comment on his Twitter account, with the hashtag “#racism#it#stops#with#me”.(SMH)

The troll trawls Instagram and associated sites under the nick “beauty_lovero”. It uses a stock photo of movie star Jennifer Aniston as its profile pic.

The whole tone of the comment has the stench of white supremacist about it.

It makes unwanted comments under photographs of young women. It also makes disparaging comments under pictures which it doesn’t like. For instance there was a shot of American parents and their adopted multiracial family which Coward objected to. The offensive comment was removed, probably by one of the parents.

Here are some more comments from random sites. Obviously English is not one of Coward’s strong points, nor is sanity.

We like to imagine what the NRL would do if it ever got hold of that cowardly creep

And Facebook owns Instagram. Given Mark Zuckerberg’s cavalier and careless attitude towards racism we are probably not surprised.

Listen

The things we carry: Meet Luke Kneale.

Reblogged from Tumblr

Meet Luke Kneale. He lives in Melbourne and works at Full Moon Tattoo in Prahran. He shared some thoughts with me today. I am disgusted. Please share this around.

Covering yourself with tatts doesn’t stop the hate oozing out

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Noisy bigots drown out silent bias

April 4, 2013 – 4:04PM

Waleed Aly

View more articles from Waleed Aly

Our real problem is the subterranean racism that goes largely unremarked upon and that we seem unable even to detect.

As opening lines in letters go, “I find you deeply offensive”, is pretty direct. Fair enough. I suspect lots of people do. It’s a natural consequence of media work. But then my anonymous correspondent decided to explain why: “You are foreign, you shall always be so. Piss off back to whatever Middle Eastern sinkhole you blew in here from.”

There’s nothing surprising about this. There’s nothing even particularly rare about it. Some version of that letter arrives every few months. This one was particularly unvarnished – complete with references to my wife and “half-caste kids” and cheerful threats of the return of the White Australia Policy – but the message hardly varies: this isn’t my country and my public presence is unwelcome, either because I’m a Muslim, or because in some racially determinable way not a “real” Australian. I’ve been accused of everything from taking elocution lessons to changing the spelling of my name to appear deceptively Australian before I unleash some Trojan conspiracy. Apparently, Aly is roughly equivalent to Smith. They’re onto me.

I have almost no emotional reaction to this kind of goonish racism. It’s simply too ridiculous to engage me. In fact, I’d completely forgotten about this most recent letter until racist ranting hit the headlines this week following yet another racist diatribe on a Sydney bus that was captured and posted to YouTube. It’s at least the third such case in about four months. Hence the fresh round of debate on Australian racism that always seems to follow the same unedifying pattern.

Racist rant … a screengrab of the video posted on YouTube.

First comes the shock, as though such incidents reveal something we never knew existed. Then comes the argument over whether or not Australia is a racist country. Frankly, I don’t know what the argument means. Every country has racism. How much do you need before a country itself is racist? Is it a matter of essence or degree? Do we judge it by surveying legislation, newspapers or behaviour on public transport? And even if we can answer those questions, then what?

That argument is a dead end. It’s more about a condemnatory label than the substance and nature of Australian racism. The real question is not about which adjective describes us. It’s about how best to identify and respond to the racism we inevitably harbour.

Debating the meaning of the occasional racist tirade does not help answer that. It’s just not that helpful to take extreme individual behaviour as the starting point on an issue like this. Sure, it’s troubling. Sure, it’s more common than we like to admit. Sure, it’s a problem. But it’s not the problem. The racism that really matters in Australia isn’t the high-level, weapons-grade derangement that winds its way via YouTube into the news.

Waleed Aly Photo: James Brickwood

 

The truth is we can’t compete with Europe for hardcore white nationalism or the US for white supremacist movements. We can’t compete with Asia or the Middle East for the maintenance of an explicit, institutionalised and sometimes codified racial hierarchy. Our racial and religious minorities are not having their communities torched (though the occasional building has been firebombed), and our handful of far-right politicians aren’t leading political parties that attract 20 per cent of the vote.

No, our real problem is the subterranean racism that goes largely unremarked upon and that we seem unable even to detect. Like the racism revealed by an Australian National University study, which found you are significantly less likely to get a job interview if you have a non-European name. The researchers sent fake CVs in response to job advertisements, changing only the name of the applicant. It turns out that if your surname is Chinese, you have to apply for 68 per cent more jobs to get the same number of interviews as an Anglo-Australian. If you are Middle Eastern, it’s 64 per cent. If you are Indigenous, 35 per cent.

This is the polite racism of the educated middle class. It’s not as shocking as the viral racist tirades we’ve seen lately. No doubt the human resources managers behind these statistics would be genuinely appalled by such acts of brazen, overt racism. Indeed, they probably enforce racial discrimination rules in their workplace and are proud to do so. Nonetheless, theirs is surely a more devastating, enduring racism. There is no event to film, just the daily, invisible operation of a silent, pervasive prejudice. It does not get called out. It’s just the way things are; a structure of society.

That is what bothers me about all the fuss that surrounds these occasional racist diatribes. It puts the focus overwhelmingly on the most exceptional kinds of racist behaviour. But are we capable of recognising racism when it isn’t gobsmackingly obvious? Recall, for example, the widespread failure to understand why former Telstra boss Sol Trujillo felt racially offended at being caricatured relentlessly as a sleepy, sombrero-wearing Mexican on a donkey, or described as a “Mexican bandit”. Certainly, criticise his management of Telstra but can we really not see the gratuitous racial stereotyping? And Trujillo is not even Mexican.

Or note the strange Australian comfort with adopting blackface. Remember when Qantas gave two Wallabies fans free tickets because they promised to dress as Radike Samo by blacking up and donning Afro wigs? No offence meant. Qantas apologised. But that’s the thing about racism: it goes beyond intentions. The most insidious kind is just so ingrained it’s involuntary. It’s not about what Qantas intended. It’s that no one responsible for the decision even saw the existence of the problem. That sort of thing worries me much more than some crude, anonymous hate mail.

It’s easy to point at the barking racists on the bus precisely because they aren’t us. They allow us to exonerate ourselves; to declare that if we have a problem with racism, at least people like us are not responsible for it. It allows us to escape self-examination of the racism we all probably harbour to some extent or other. That self-examination is crucial. Without it we have nothing to fix, and only other people to blame.

Waleed Aly presents Drive on Radio National.

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Greg Jessop -Twerp the Twitter twat

Our Twitter feed has recently been visited by an unwelcome intruder calling himself “Greg Jessop”.

Just for now we will pretend it is theoretically his real name, though he does share it with some character in the British soap opera East Enders.

We also wonder why any dumb troll would be foolish enough to use their real name anyway when they post stuff like this one does.

But to show our scepticism we might just call this one Twerp, especially since it apparently gets extremely butt-hurt if its (fake?) name is mentioned anywhere though it quite happily trolls Twitter and serious forums such as Whirlpool.

Typical bogot behaviour.

So eager is Twerp to get its anger off its puny chest it even accused our female Twitter admin of being a …wait for it…paedophile (gasp!).

The chances of that being true are one in several billion.

And it is defamatory.

You see unlike Twerp, we didn’t get our legal knowledge out of a cornflakes packet

So Twerp is definitely someone who craves attention. No matter if it is of the kind it will come to regret.

Look at moi, look at moi, look at moi -with apologies to Kath and Kim

Strangely enough (or maybe not so strangely) our contacts in the mining industry have never heard of Twerp. There is someone with the same surname, same location and the same alleged profession on Linked-in but that is where it ends.

Twerp could be an avid Centrelink client for all we know. Or awaiting Her Maj’s pleasure in a house of correction.

Of course we at TAB include in our number a nuclear physicist, a Nobel Prize winning evolutionary biologist and a three-hat chef who nevertheless doesn’t swear.

See, you can say just about anything about yourself on the Interwebz

And  Twerp’s attacks are not confined to our Twitter feed. Take a look at these.

No one knows why anyone would pick on comedian Corinne Grant but there you go. Anyone who has insights into the bizarre behaviour of nasty misogynist sociopathic Internet trolls like Twerp would make a fortune writing a psychology textbook.

In fact we could probably append that weighty tome to our own star-studded CVs and add the Booker Prize to our list of achievements 😉 .

Not to be outdone in the shock and awe stakes, Twerp then tackles journalist Joe Hildebrand. Not sure what Twerp has got in for Joe, but it could have something to do with Joe’s recently successful Dumb, Drunk & Racist TV series.

And there’s more

You see, Joe will tell you himself that people who are dumb, drunk and racist take themselves very very seriously. And we can attest that Twerp is definitely the first and last. As for Twerp’s sobriety, we don’t know and we don’t care. It’s his liver.

This could allegedly be Twerp’s liver. Allegedly. Note there is no bacon. So it’s not Strayan.

And here’s more Twerp showing his misogyny.

And just to add the icing to the cake of hate, here’s some homophobia.

If you have a strong stomach you can catch more of Twerp here.

You will note that Twerp’s pose as Twitter’s own self-appointed moral compass and judge of others is not backed up by one of his images of choice. In fact that picture has been passed around the Internet by every Tom and dickless Harry like a lascivious bawd in a Restoration comedy.

But if you want to know the provenance of the image, TAB is happy to provide it. It is part of the collection left by one of Australia’s greatest photographers, Reynolds Mark “Rennie” Ellis who died in 2003.

Man with Australian flag draped over his shoulders. © Rennie Ellis, 1985, courtesy of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive

So we wondered why Twerp was so eager to take TAB to task for exposing the utterances of racists, bigots, homophobes and misogynists to public scrutiny and criticism yet was happy to misuse the work of an iconic Australian photographer as Twerpy trolls, tweets and twats his ponderously humourless way across the Internet.

Whirlpool Forums doesn’t get many trolls but that does not stop the Twerp. Here he is taking the flat earth climate change denier stance, typically without evidence.

And there’s a heads-up for the UN, chief demon of the far right. Foil hats anyone?

Neo-Nazi “Jay” and his dummy spit

Online Opinion is in its own words “a not-for-profit e-journal that aims to provide a forum for public social and political debate about current Australian issues. We publish articles to stimulate a public discourse on a range of topics.”

A recent article by journalist Alan Austin discussed the proposed amendments to a range of Commonwealth anti-discrimination laws. These amendments are designed to consolidate several pieces of existing legislation and to simplify the process of making complaints under this legislation.

What the release of the draft legislation is designed to do is to enable discussion by members of the public, advocacy groups and the legal profession.

So it was not surprising to see that a range of bottom-feeders had manage to lurch and slither over from their usual haunts

Racists, bigots, white supremacists, Andrew Bolt fans…

Let’s take a look at one of them – a full-blown neo-Nazi, no doubt amazed at actually getting to post in a mainstream web forum read by real people.

Nice change from Scumfront.

His ethnic group? Neo-Nazi is not an ethnic group.

And what a procession of racist losers he cites. Every one of them deserves every expression of loathing which comes their way.

This is what “Jay” and his kind do not get. No-one who is either sane or normal would embrace the loathsomeness of race hatred and white supremacy.

And what “Jay” and his kind need to learn now is that he speaks only for himself and his daft friends. He does not and never will speak for us.

“Anti-racists who look like me”? Jeez we hope not…

Oh noooooes!!!

Oh look we upset “Jay” and got a mention! Nice to see we are doing the right thing.

Oh, and that vdare place? If you’ve seen Scumfront then vdare is that site’s mutant little brother.

So?

“…rip the raga [sic] off there [sic] heads…”

 

Wouldn’t it be awful if the world saw how ‘ugly and messed up there [sic] faces are’? You’re so insightful Ben ‘Full Blooded Skips’ Jamieson.

More from the ‘Full Blooded Skips’ here…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Excuse Me Nathan, but Australia Fought AGAINST the Nazis…

Mmm the master race indeed…

It’s a shame you weren’t able to take your own advice, Nathan Eetswaa.

Racial Hatred + Access to Firearms. Problem, Australia?