What are NFT's and should I care?

An example of hashmask image that accompanies a Non-Fungible Token (NFT). 

[Created by Suum Cuique Labs GmbH,. Full ownership and unlimited commercial usage rights given to the consumer over their NFT. Source: https://www.thehashmasks.com/terms Section 3. A. - https://www.thehashmasks.com/detail/15753, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99636644]

What are NFT’s?

Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFT’s, are designed as a way of certifying ownership of unique digital items. Essentially, in its simplest terms, an NFT is a one-off digital certificate containing the chain of ownership for an item, such as a digitally-rendered picture or a unique mix of a song, which is stored on a decentralized online ledger called the blockchain. Yes, that is its “simplest” terms. Welcome to the 21st century. Storing this certification on the blockchain allows the information to be stored on millions of computers across the world simultaneously, which eliminates the risk of forgery or theft as there is always an up-to-date copy of the certification available on millions of other computers to serve as proof of any transactions. This is the same basic principle employed by cryptocurrency to ensure its security for use in financial transactions.

Where NFT’s are unique in their function from cryptocurrency is that they contain artworks that only the owner of the NFT can verify ownership of. It breaks down like this: An artist creates an artwork. They sell the physical property to a collector. The collector owns the physical property and has a certificate demonstrating as such. The artist still retains the copyright on the product and can choose to reproduce or monetize that image however they want. However, any value derived from the actual physical piece, for which the world has various different measures, now belongs to the owner of the original.

How do you make them?

Making, or “minting, an NFT is simple enough. You can simply choose your platform and upload your artwork, and the company powering that platform will certify metadata indicating ownership and load it onto a blockchain. The overheads on creating an NFT are the data usage and power consumption behind them, which is well documented elsewhere, and marketing and online infrastructure costs to be able to sell these products to the public. These companies are frequently still in the “startup” stage, as the technology behind them has yet to be proven in a commercial market, but there is real money behind these ventures.

How do you buy them?

Buying an NFT is slightly more complex than simply buying an item off the internet with a credit card. Firstly, the marketplaces for NFT’s are crypto-oriented and as a function of their model they accept only cryptocurrency as payment. Ethereum is the cryptocurrency du jour on many of these marketplaces and the exchange rate for 1ETH is $2829.73AU. So, first you must purchase the appropriate cryptocurrency, and several marketplace startups are proposing their own cryptocurrencies to service their NFT markets.

To actually purchase an NFT you must bid or buy on an active NFT marketplace, run by the startups that mint the products for sale. These are apps or websites like …… Bidding is much like any bid on eBay, and if you are successful you are provided with the item, usually through some kind of encrypted drop. Then the ownership on the blockchain ledger is amended to show certification of the exchange. Presto, you own a valuable piece of digital art.

What do they do then?

The problem that arises is what to do with the art then. There has been no mechanism that exists to display them publicly for a profit, and in fact digital images are available to see quite freely on the internet. So where do NFT’s derive their value?

This is both difficult and fairly simple to answer, depending on your perspective on modern art. Many pundits see the digital art revolution as a natural extension of a lifetime growing up with video games and computer rendering. Where art was once about brushstrokes, it is now about an intangible kind of finesse that the finest digital artists in the world possess and for which they have not traditionally received due credit. For many exponents of digital art, it represents the culmination of decades of training and creative problem-solving, and valuing digital art in the way that NFT’s allow for is a natural evolution to the monetization of the artform. It is no longer necessary to work for a video game company or an animation studio; there are now outlets for artwork outside our usual modes, which is arguably one of the strongest draws of art in general.

Scarcity is the name of the game here. NFT’s are a commodity sold on the merit of its scarcity, and NFT’s are usually sold as extremely small-number releases of an item or even just as a single available item. These unique items fetch the highest prices.

How much can they be worth?

As of writing, the highest bid paid for an NFT was for a complex one-off collage titled Everydays: the First 5000 Days by digital artist Beeple, aka Mike Winkelman. The piece was the first NFT artwork to be sold through Christie’s auction house and represents a new level of legitimacy for the form. The piece was the culmination of a project where the artist produced a new digital artwork each day for 5000 days; the piece contains each of those 5000 artworks presented side by side, allowing the viewer to zoom into any of the images and see in detail the artist’s evolution over the course of several years. It is, by any measure, a remarkable piece. The price for this artwork was $69,300,000 once adjusted for US dollars. You can view this artwork here.

This stretches the average upwards fairly significantly, however pieces by relatively unknown artists are selling for tens of thousands of dollars essentially around the clock. Some NFT’s receiving consistently impressive sales are the classic GIFs of meme culture, where creators of some of the internet’s stupidest and most enduring memes are making mind-boggling profits. The well-known Nyan Cat GIF used in memes for close to a decade recently sold for $600,000USD.

Who’s buying them?

The person who bought Beeple’s piece for such an astronomical sum went by the online handle of MetaKovan. His real name is Vignesh Sundaresan, a Tamil entrepreneur from Singapore who runs several crypto-based startups. He revealed his name in a paywalled blog post on subscription-blogging site Substack and used the publicity of the moment to announce more moves in the crypto world.

While not all proponents of NFT’s are of such extraordinary financial means as Mr Sudaresan, many of them remain linked to the cryptocurrency world. It is unusual at this stage to find a person who is involved in the production, sale, or purchase of NFT’s who hasn’t demonstrated some prior knowledge of cryptocurrency. The two modes are linked by technology, and the exclusionary nature of understanding that technology has closed the market accordingly.

Many of the new users of NFT’s are young, fast-learning crypto profiteers who leant into recent market upheavals, such as the incredible GameStop controversy and the market manipulation of Elon Musk’s cultish fans, and came out with money to spend in a currency they have no immediate need to convert. As such, NFT’s are being sold at increasing rates and the markets are becoming easier to locate and engage with all the time.

Who owns the technology?

NFT’s, while still a startup-level technology, have seen limited support from established companies. There is no mechanism to purchase NFT’s from Amazon, for instance. The vast majority of the money and brains behind the technology is coming from digital disruptors of the “silicone valley pirate” type.

OpenSea, which is the largest online NFT marketplace currently operating, is owned by a private company operating out of New York and founded by Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah, two programmers who sought venture capital financing as early as 2018. With an initial capital of $2M in 2018, they successfully raised $28M as of 2020 to launch the platform, and with the immense boom-market that has emerged in early 2021, it seems this year may be incredibly lucrative for the young entrepreneurs behind this company in particular.

As with the users of the technology, most of the creators have significant links to the nascent crypto industry, and in particular financial technologies surrounding them.

Where do we go from here?

NFT’s represent a new form of legitimate art. They are affirming the ‘realness’ of digital art for a new audience that has grown up with unreal things. For a generation of kids raised on 3D graphics engines and increasingly detailed and emotionally-informed digital art, there is no real difference between a rendered image on a screen and a painting they may never see with their own eyes anyway, and in fact they can find a more immersive experience with that digitally rendered art than with abstract notions of fine art hanging in museums. Audiences today seem to be in touch with the individuality of art, and digital are with its accessibility and versatility has tapped into a zeitgeist that people have undermined or ignored unless packaged as a AAA-title videogame or the latest dazzling Pixar offering.

From here it seems the sensible choice is to embrace this new technology as an expression of a generation that is trying for something newer than we’ve dared envision for a long time – arguably since the leisurely innovations of modern industrialization like radio and television – before the bleak dusk of intransigence darkens our imaginations for the future.

KMM

Shaped By Anti-Heroes

 

Marilyn Manson at Cannes Film Festival/Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)

There has been a reckoning in recent years, exemplified by the #metoo and #timesup movements, that has left people reassessing their heroes and reconsidering the intrinsic value of their influences. Most visible has been the raft of celebrities caught up in various scandals. But where does the responsibility of the public override the value of their work, and where do we derive our guilt from?

Fans of cinema auteur Roman Polanski had to reconsider their willingness to forgive when they learned of his pending statutory rape charges, although too many artists have left this glaring red-flag unaddressed as they travelled to Europe to work with the man (where his return to the United States would result in his immediate arrest). And spare a thought for the ongoing confusion of Michael Jackson fans, as his innocent boyhood pop-star legacy has been thoroughly tainted by allegations of sexual abuse that simply nobody can agree on the legitimacy of.

It is obvious why the story of Marilyn Manson’s alleged abuses has struck such an uncomfortable chord; he was a rock-star, admired and beloved for decades, not just for his music but for his public persona. And his adoring fans are now caught in the wake of his worst decisions as they try to reconcile the possibility of having supported a monster.

But what if you never felt betrayed by your heroes? What if you learned from their faults as much, or more, than from their celebrity?

Returning to Marylin Manson, there is an argument that his public persona possibly obfuscated his nefarious personality. This might seem like a reasonable argument on the face of it, but there is an essential flaw to it: Marilyn Manson is more than simply a character, it is a choice made by a real person to promote himself as a drug-addled, criminalistic freak. That was the choice he made. It was never hidden. And people bought it, dicks-in-bibles and all.

When he spoke about outsiders and acceptance on talk shows or in Michael Moore’s Bowling For Columbine, he drew admiration for his empathy and intelligence.

But learning of the allegations of significant and frightening physical and sexual abuse has left people questioning whether this was simply a ploy by a deeply manipulative person.

Therein lies the rub. For many fans, there was simply no illusion that Manson was a “good guy”. His interviews implied a drug-addicted lunatic – one capable of great empathy and intelligence, just as people had believed, but a drug-addicted lunatic nonetheless. His value was as an anti-hero. Any effort to emulate him would make you a villain.

I grew up heavily influenced by Hunter S Thompson. He was an influential American writer, known most prominently for his wild, drug-addled, and violence-hued takes on American politics and culture, with his most famous work being the seminal roadtrip novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

It is difficult to justify admiring a man who so actively broke the rules of human conduct. He was a rude, dangerous, emotionally abusive person who took more drugs than is medically sound for longer than most people could maintain an addiction. Learning about his life was learning the limits of legality. He was regularly armed and under the influence of wild polydrug mixes that earned him a beastly reputation as a world-class drug-hoover. His sweet and inquisitive instincts seemed to be constantly twisted by a dark and violent spirit.

And while he is widely admired for his insightful words on the decline of American exceptionalism and the death of the democratic soul that his nation had grown up feeding on, his death marked a clear view of his terrible nature. Famously, his ashes were fired from a giant custom cannon which was commissioned by Johnny Depp. But few words have been written about his last moments. Thompson, ailing and consciously losing what made him formidable as a writer and a man, chose to take his own life.

That, in itself, might paint a sympathetic image. What many people don’t realise is that Thompson attempted to do this while he was on the phone to his estranged wife Anita; taking a rifle and pulling the trigger after an argument. His wife had, mercifully, hung up the phone before he took his life with her as audience.

So how do I reconcile my admiration for the man with the abusive instincts that he so readily showed?

The truth is, I don’t. I compartmentalize, for the sake of my own learning and growth. I look to the writing of Hunter Thompson to teach me passion and empathy in ways that only a personality that aggressive might impart. I look to the lessons of his worst moments and temper them with the lessons of his best. I regard him the same as one might regard Genghis Khan; a tyrant who advanced civilisation in his wake.

To hold an anti-hero in any kind of regard, it is vital to regard them wholly. Ignoring the best of these influences might limit the true breadth of their lessons. Michael Jackson does not lose his cultural influence if we learn he was indeed a sexually predatory monster. We do not unwrite the 1990’s if we find that Manson is culpable for crimes of abuse. I look to Jackson as a musical, cultural touch-stone; a common sound to our collective experience. I look to Manson as a unifying voice for people who desperately needed to learn how to say “fuck you” to authority. These lessons are distinct from those things that shape my empathy.

Where do I draw the line at my own culpability? I have supported these people financially, as have countless others. Do I deny myself influential art that I arguably understand the hazards of for the sake of telescoped political correctness? Do I burn my Mayhem album? I have shown these artists’ product to my friends and encouraged them to partake of it. Am I then a negative influence on my friends? Am I enabling the behaviour I abhor or, worse, am I relating to it in a way I am not cognizant of just by enjoying the content?

I posit that the responsibility of audiences to understand the motivations of the artists they admire does not cease with their positive and beneficial motivations. It is important to understand the poorer motives to grasp the whole of the lesson. Remember, nobody thinks they’re the villain in their own story. Even Hitler was attempting to bring freedom to his people, such as he saw it.

And for broader motives, there are other considerations. The overriding motivation for celebrity is economic – layers of vested interests funding the creation of public images that can be broken down to constituent parts, replicated, marketed, and sold at retail –, and that there are such powerful economic factors involved makes any reading of the situation on purely moralistic terms fraught. Forgetting that the product you are purchasing is not the whole of the personality behind it is one of the essential mistakes of fanaticism, and equating that product with that personality can conceivably warp one’s view of it.

What we are presented is not whole and complete humans, but mere facets of human experience wrapped up for mass consumption. The same is equally true of Roman Polanski as Marilyn Manson as Hunter S Thompson. The ability, let alone the obligation, to know the secret lives of these people is beyond mere civilians, so we rely on the gossip and allegations to fill in the gaps for us. But there aren’t really any gaps in these images, nor in the people who hide behind them. The gaps exist with us, the audience, as we try to reconcile the knowledge that our heroes are no better than we are.

Disconnecting the artist from the art has become a controversial concept, as so-called “cancel culture” becomes a topic of conscientious debate, but there are costs to us a society if we cannot separate the values. We know, for instance that Elmo is a puppet controlled by a person. We learn to love and hug from Elmo, all the while conscious that underneath that adorable fuzzy face is a man who probably says “fuck” once in a while. If we begin to see the man behind the puppet as the person teaching us the lessons, we might lose the innocent value of the naïve red puppet actually speaking to us.

KMM

AG Christian Porter backs Family Court dissolution

© Commonwealth of Australia, CC BY 3.0 AU <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/au/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons

Liberal-frontbencher and Commonwealth Attorney-General Christian Porter has been under intense scrutiny as allegations about his unsettling behaviour in the halls of the Australian Parliament increase speculation that he may be the name behind recent rape allegations by a junior staffer. In a Government so rife with scandal over the course of its term, these allegations have shone a significant and overdue spotlight on the misogyny festering in the offices of government.

With recent speculations flying about the seamy behaviour of Mr Porter, many people are revisiting his past looking for shady details and nasty statements. And they are finding them, thanks to an alcohol-fueled university career that brings to mind the “boofing” irresponsibility unearthed during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings in the US in 2017. His higher-education glory days have all the hallmarks of privilege that is inherently detached from the reality in which most people are required to live; where vomiting on oneself in public and writing about it in the law school newsletter doesn’t preclude one from career-path to the highest offices in the land.

However, this scandalous attention has overshadowed major changes made by the Morrison Government in recent weeks, as well as comments made by Mr Porter, regarding the decision to merge the Family Court of Australia with the lower, less-specialized Federal Circuit Court of Australia.

The move which has shocked legal experts, family advocates, and indeed members of the judiciary, has been met with praise by Mr Porter.

“Successive governments have been talking about delivering reform of the family courts for decades – the Morrison Government has delivered,” the Attorney-General said.

“This area has been one of the most reviewed in Australia but until now, no government has been able to achieve much-needed reform to focus the work of the courts on the users – those families which are dealing with the end of a relationship and need assistance to finalise their matters so they can move on with their lives.”

Experts are concerned about the lack of specialization that exists with members of the Federal Circuit Court, and many believe that the shortcomings of the Family Court will not be overcome by abolishing the court in its current form.

The first Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia, the Hon, Elizabeth Evatt AC, with 155 other signatories, delivered an open letter to the Attorney-General criticising the change to the courts in November 2019. Chief Justice Evatt later said about the move:

“Merging the Family Court into a generalist court will undermine the integrity and the structural specialisation of the Family Court. The impact of losing this institutional specialisation is not properly understood, and has been downplayed.

She added:

“The increasing number of cases in which issues of family violence and child abuse are raised has led to an even greater need today for family law jurisdiction to be vested exclusively in specialised judges who can give their full attention to the needs of family law clients without being diverted to exercise other unrelated jurisdictions. The current bill undermines this principle, is not in the public interest and should not be enacted.”

Former Chief Justice of the Family Court, the Hon. Alastair Nicholson, who was also a signatory to the open letter to Mr Porter, agreed, noting:

“It is unbelievable that Government would propose the dissolution of a Federal Superior Court in this fashion without the most careful and searching Public Inquiry and without carrying out significant research and without consulting the many experts in this field.”

He went on to criticise the benefits stated by Mr Porter.

“What those proposing this merger do not seem to understand is that family law is complex and nuanced, and it is not to be judged by the output by numbers of cases as if the Courts are sausage machines. Throughput is important, but so is the quality of the decisions made.”

Criticisms also spoke to the further risk of harm to already disenfranchised people. The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services noted these bills will “… disproportionately impact the most vulnerable including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families who need the most support.”

Pauline Wright, the President of the Law Council of Australia, said:

Australian families and children will have to compete for the resourcing and hearing time with all federal matters—that is, other matters like migration, bankruptcy and those sorts of things that the Federal Circuit Court and the Federal Court deal with. There must be an increase not a decrease in specialisation in family law and violence issues. This is critical for the safety of children and victims of family violence.”

Adding to criticisms of the proposed benefits of the merger, President of the Australian Bar Association (ABA) Matthew Howard said:

“The ABA sees the principal problem with the family law system as being one of chronic under-resourcing and the proposed merger des not address the problems that necessarily flow from such under-resourcing.”

This unpopular move may see families forced into confusing and untested circumstances and in practice it may prove more difficult to maintain the already failing standards of the Family Law Act.

However, Mr Porter has long maintained his position, saying in 2019:

“Bringing the courts together under one amalgamated structure creates a single point of entry for families who will no longer be bounced around between different courts – an issue that occurs too often in the current system and can lead to lengthy delays for families because matters have to begin again.”

The push, for which Mr Porter and the Morrison Government have struggled to gain bipartisan support in the Senate, led to Mr Porter striking an agreement over nearly two years of negotiations with One Nation leader Pauline Hanson and Independent senator replacing Nick Xenophon Rex Patrick in order to secure the votes in the bill’s latest pass through the Senate.

Attorney-General Porter has won a long-fought battle to reform the family courts in a streamlined, one-stop image, however he cannot escape the scrutiny of families limping through a hobbled courts system, and as these changes come into effect it is possible that Mr Porter’s darkest moment may have happened in full view of the Australian public.



KM

The Legacy of the Legacy of The Late Show

Santo Cilauro and Rob Sitch on The Late Show circa 1992

 

Between 1992 and 1993, Australians were treated to the short-lived, low-rent insanity of The Late Show on ABC TV. Not to be confused with the slick, professional late night American talk-show of the same name, The Late Show was a furiously ill-planned exercise in stupid audacity, with a simple format of pre-filmed segments and comedy sketches broadcast live in a 10pm time-slot on Saturday nights.

Featuring a cast of local comedy stars who met while attending Melbourne University, the show featured partly-improvised sketches parodying current affairs, skewering celebrities, and taking cheap shots at the local culture of suburban Victoria. The writers displayed a deep-rooted love for vaudeville comedy delivered with a sardonic edginess that befits a show of such reckless vision. Aging Australian celebrities earned their second-wind on the show, including musicians John Farnham and Kamahl. A raft of Australian sporting and political figures appeared on the show (often appearing in off-kilter musical performances) and one episode featured a young Russel Crowe in a brief guest spot in character as “Hando” from Romper Stomper.

The show that introduced the phrase “champagne comedy” into the Australian lexicon was a cult success, spanning no more than two seasons on government broadcaster ABC but helping to launch the entertainment careers of many of its regular players. Cast members have gone onto mainstream success with primetime radio shows, television shows, and profitable movies under their collective belts.

That vein is, in fact, deeper again than just these successes. Indeed, the group sprang from an earlier show with a slightly larger cast of familiar faces. This group, and their show, was called the D Generation, and this collective of comedians from the sandstone recesses of Melbourne’s oldest university have quietly imposed their influence on Australian comedy television and film for over 30 years.

The Original D Gen

The group was formed from comics based out of the University of Melbourne, with extra writers and performers joining in the second season to round out the cast. Between 1986 and 1992 they produced two series, four specials, and three albums including the ARIA award-winning The Satanic Sketches.

The cast would include Late Show alum including Rob Sitch, Santo Cilauro, Jane Kennedy, Tom Gleisner, Mick Molloy and New Zealand comedian Tony Martin. The show also represented the earliest performances by Australian comedy icon Magda Szubanski, who has gone on to international success in the years since.

A young Magda Szubanski in an early D Generation skit

 

Sketches were frantic and brimming with surreal humour and the kind of utilitarian costuming and effects that have exemplified Australian comedy shows since. The juvenile, prankster comedy mixed with incisive observations of local life gave the show a relatable quality; there was a naïve charm which offset the low-budget anarchism on full display.

Between 1986 and 1992, the group appeared in a regular weekend radio show on Triple M Melbourne with a rotating cast of D Gen guests before television commitments appeared to take priority. Long-time duo Tony Martin and Mick Molloy would later revisit radio with their drive-time show Martin/Molloy, garnering commercial success and fairly comfortable careers as radio and television talking-heads. Their relationship came to an end around 2008 when the pair had a public falling-out and they have not worked together since.

The Other Late Show

By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33239902

Approaching The Late Show’s 30^th anniversary in 2022, it is worth revisiting the unlikely success that the show created. Hosted by the duo of Martin and Molloy in happier times, the show took on a late-night variety show format, bringing characters and guests into the frequently anarchic show.

Not a well-rehearsed show, the players would frequently “corpse” (industry parlance for laughing during a take) during their nationally-broadcast performance, with wild impressionist Rob Sitch and hyperactive Italian Santo Cilauro often doing whatever they could to encourage it during more ludicrous sketches. The players would be barely able to contain their own laughter, sometimes to contagious effect, as the show went out live to screens across the country.

The charming carelessness that went into many of these moments became a comforting and relatable factor, and a sharp and precise production could have very quickly derailed the train-wreck comedic values.

However, under this silly and barely-managed exterior beat a deeply thoughtful and relevant show. It regularly employed Sitch’s extremely physical impressions of celebrities and political figures against Tom Gleisner’s relatable straight-man journalist character to make variously savage or childish swipes at the news of the day. The lackadaisical charm and snide sarcasm of Mick Molloy and Tony Martin’s quick repartee lent their comedy an anti-establishment quality while still plumbing the familiar rhythms of vaudeville comedy.

 

Tony Martin hosting an awkward Vox Pops on a Melbourne Streett in 1992

 

Tapping the rich vein of community television, the show pre-empted many of the ideas employed in later comedy shows. Parody ads for fake local businesses, like “Pissweak World” or its cousin “Pissweak Water World”, litter the series, each leaning on the cheap production values of community television and late-night advertising. Segments employ a cringe-comedy vox pops style that finds spiritual kinship with the aggressive, unscripted lunacy of Billy Eichner’s Billy On The Street. Finding its home on a late slot on ABC, a government-funded national broadcaster which has had a poor-to-middling ratings history for most of its existence, the show took regular shots at the network that was funding and producing them completely, effectively biting the hand that fed them in fine comedic fashion.

A show of its time, many of the risks taken here would simply not work in such a sensitive and competitive climate as exists in the 21^st century.

Full Frontal Stupidity

Some other members of D Generation’s early lineups went on to success on the Channel 7 sketch comedy show Full Frontal. The show was a ratings success in Australia, indirectly competing with the legacy of The Late Show and featuring Magda Szubanski, Michael Veitch and introducing Eric Bana to Australian audiences.

The show employed a more zany and broad comedic style, including a lot more recurring characters and a more apolitical tone. Sketches didn’t tend towards the controversial, instead making easy targets of safe cultural stereotypes and broad situational comedy sketches. Lasting seven seasons, the show became a major influence on Australian sketch comedy.

Bana, who has since gone on to international success and acclaimed dramatic performances, developed his early iconic character “Poida” on the show. “Poida” (which is just “Peter” in effusive parody of blue-collar Australian dialects) was a fantastically relatable bogan everyman, with just enough education to offer idiosyncratic life lessons in unlikely settings while swigging cheap beer from a can.

Eric Bana as “Poida” on Full Frontal

 

Bana unexpectedly parlayed this promising comedy career into a leading role in the heavily dramatic crime film Chopper, playing the eponymous real-life crook Mark “Chopper” Read. For this role, Bana underwent a major physical transformation and delivered a performance that earned acclaim from Hollywood, audiences, and critics. The film was an international success and earned Bana his first serious acclaim. The frightening menace of his character is marked by his sharp comedic sensibilities, and the role proved Bana’s presence as a serious acting contender. He has since gone on to roles in major Hollywood films and is considered one of Australia’s biggest movie stars.

Magda Szubanski also turned her appearances on the hit show playing broad, bogan characters into a long and storied career in television and film. In 1994 she appeared in the female-led sketch comedy show Big Girl’s Blouse on Channel 7. This show, roughly mimicking the format of Full Frontal, includes the first appearances of the characters that were later developed into the lead cast of hit show Kath And Kim. Kath And Kim has since gone on to international acclaim for its charmingly silly representation of Australian suburban life. In 1995, Szubanski appeared in Oscar-winning family film Babe, alongside film legend James Cromwell, earning wide praise for her performance in the groundbreaking feature. She also appeared in the sequel, Babe: Pig In The City, which was directed by Mad Max creator George Miller.

Other cast members have gone on to various other quiet successes. Michael Veitch, who became one of the show’s breakout stars, became a fixture of Australian comedy shows for a number of years, appearing in short-lived shows and hosting Arts Australia for several years. Marg Downey later made appearances alongside Szubanski in Kath And Kim.

Working Like Dogs

Tom Gleisner, Rob Sitch, Jane Kennedy, and Santo Cilauro went on to form a production company called Working Dog Productions in 1993. Australian audiences may be familiar with their production plate gracing the closing credits of popular television shows.

Among the company’s most popular properties is the bumbling and colloquially friendly character “Russel Coight”, played by sometime-Full Frontal guest Glenn Robbins. The show, called All Aussie Adventures, followed a simple mockumentary-style format as the outback survival expert character guides audiences through his disastrous travels in the Australian bush. The show ran for two seasons initially, between 2001-2002, but has seen enough grassroots support to warrant the production of a telemovie in 2004 and a limited series in 2018 to trade on the show’s nostalgic tone and long-running cult appeal.

Some of the greatest commercial successes this group of creators were Channel 10 prime-time shows designed for a broad, largely apolitical audience, firmly in the category of easily-consumed media. The company created the long-running talk-show The Panel, the format of which is an apparent template for longer-running replacement The Project, and devised the improvisation comedy show Thank God You’re Here. TGYH became an unexpected commercial success and spawned imitators and franchises overseas, including in the US market which was a moderate success.

The group have made more ambitious forays into the world of film, having made three features to varying degrees of success. The latest, 2012’s Any Questions For Ben?, was met with a lukewarm critical response and has been relatively forgotten. Their previous film, however, stands as one of the highest-grossing Australian movies ever. The Dish, an ambitious tale about Australia’s role in broadcasting the Apollo moon landing to television audiences around the world, grossed over $17 million – a remarkable sum for an Australian film.

Still from the film The Castle

Arguably, Working Dog’s biggest contribution to the Australian cultural landscape – while somewhat less lucrative at the box-office – was their first film foray, an ambitiously low-key comedy called The Castle. The film introduced phrases into the Australian lexicon that are still commonly uttered decades since its 1997 release. Lines such as “Tell him he’s dreaming” or “It’s the vibe” still evoke a referential humour for many Australians, even when context is loose at best. The country doesn’t have so many widely successful cultural representations, and so The Castle – with its scathing but sweet image of downtrodden suburbia – has filled a larger than usual space in the shared artistic experience of Australians.

Champagne Comedy

It is hard to underestimate such far-reaching influences on Australian comedy, television, and film. Members of the original D Generation have found their homes in many different places, and with such a heavy focus on writing and production, rather than performance or acting, it’s easy to have lost sight of some of the main players over the last three decades.

Indeed, some of the stars of the Late Show have barely been seen in public performances since those days yet they maintain significant influence behind the scenes. Jason Stephens, for instance, came to prominence as another zany cast-member in the second series of D Generation and went on to be a fixture of The Late Show. He had originally come to the show as a writer, however, and his creative chops have continued to service the film and television industry for the decades since. Stephens acted as the creative director for one of Australia’s largest independent television production companies, FremantleMedia Australia, from 2004-2014. His production of The King, a film based on the life of Australian television legend Graham Kennedy, earned three AFI Awards, the most prestigious film and television awards in the country.

Late Show-alum Judith Lucy has built a career from this early success as one of Australia’s premiere stand-up comics and comedy writers, and she has performed internationally to great acclaim for decades at festivals including Edinburgh Fringe and Melbourne Comedy Festival. Her earliest appearance on the show, however, included a comprehensive test – administered by Molloy and Martin – of her comedy talents which including pressure tests to ensure she could continue telling jokes while, for instance, inside a car crash and the immensely silly sketch still stands as one of her most iconic pieces.

Beyond the direct influence of D Generation alumni on the Australian comedy oeuvre, the show and its stars have borne a strong influence on generations of Australian comedians, writers, and creators. The anarchic sketch comedy of D Generation, The Late Show, and Full Frontal helped paint the television landscape in vivid colour, giving rise to some of our biggest stars in the process, and creating a template for live-television during the 90s. Youth-oriented Saturday morning music program Recovery – which has earned its own special place in the cult-television hall of infamy – echoed the unrehearsed train-wreck comedy of The Late Show, complete with ill-conceived vox pops segments and surreal community-television elements written into the fabric of the show.

The heady political comedy that was the foundation of early Working Dog show Frontline, a satire about news reporting, has been retraced by countless imitators to varying degrees of success, although few with the same focus and charm as Working Dog’s own 2008 series The Hollowmen, following the closed-door dealings of Parliamentary policy advisors.

The kitschy surrealism, prankster spirit, and DIY ethic employed by D Gen cast shows clear influence on the likes of groups like Auntie Donna. Their more subdued forays into mainstream media have provided older Australians with comforting replacements for the talk shows and comedy game-shows that used to be the backbone of national television. Their films have quietly provided the template for a uniquely Australian kitchen-sink comedy, and have influenced writers and performers for close to three decades. Their productions have provided a launchpad for some of the country’s brightest stars and have tapped a rich vein of older stars to breathe new life into their flagging careers.

The members of D Generation are not a terribly self-possessed group where self-promotion is concerned, and you’ll rarely see pictures of them unless they have posed for them intentionally. However, they have rarely remained idle during the last decades and have managed in that time to fold themselves into the DNA of Australian culture in unseen ways. Their outsized influence is in fair contrast to the size of their celebrity, and that seems very much by design.

Karl May

The Official Rulebook of the Australian Contact Cricket League

 

Official Rulebook of the Australian Contact Cricket League

Revised Edition (2021)

Written and Edited by KM May, 2021, Australian Contact Cricket League Rules Committee



Originally published in 1984 by the Australian Contact Cricket League and the Australian Death Sport Commission. Official rules are subject to change only by decision of the ACCL with approval from a special committee of the ADSC, to ensure viability and establish liabilities for the League, Players, Officials, and Commercial Partners. The ACCL and the ADSC allow reprinting of elements from this Rulebook where Fair Use may apply, and for the purpose of disseminating the rules of the game to Players or Officials. The authors/publishers reserve all copyrights.



HISTORY

In the early days of Australian colonialism, soldiers, convicts, and free settlers alike found common interests in the fledgling sports of their homelands. Among the more popular sports, thanks in large part to English occupation, was cricket. Variations of the rules were frequently adopted to accommodate inconsistencies with the playing surfaces in the almost-entirely undeveloped new grounds, which were often simple fields adjacent to prisons colonies. Most of these variants were forgotten as the facilities slowly improved. However, one variant of the rules remained: Contact Cricket.

The sport’s origins are uncomplicated; a game began in a wide field near the colony of Moreton Bay between inmates and guards. Tempers became flared and as a storm loomed, a lone unnamed prisoner who had been kept off the field of play as a reserve – the feared “12th Man” – approached the field with a spare bat in his hand and began assaulting the guards. This resulted in a small riot in which all guards and inmates were injured but luckily nobody was killed.

The following year, the guards and players elected to face each other in a rematch. This time the game continued in a more orderly fashion, with shortened rounds to speed up play and guarantee a sooner result. However, tensions remained high and all the players were becoming increasingly rowdy as the inmates gained a lead on their opponents in the third round of play.

The long game was soon threatened by looming storm clouds again, just as in the year prior. Unwilling to forego a sure victory over their captors, the prisoners proposed a change to the rules to speed up play further. With this change, all of the players would be on the field at once, and each would be equipped with a bat. The guards, enticed by the opportunity to thrash their prisoners with impunity, agreed. And with that, the first game of contact cricket was underway.

Prisoners beat the guards: 76 – 42, with significant injuries in all rounds of play.

The game persisted in backyards and prison-yards until the deployment of Australian troops in the First World War. After this time, the game was regarded as too dangerous to play as it regularly resulted in serious injuries and occasionally death. It was deemed counter to the war effort, and henceforth banned in schools and jails. Ultimately the game was forgotten by newspapers, media, and eventually the general population as commercial sporting bodies began establishing their safer, more-traditional sports in the Australian culture. The game of Contact Cricket became a relic of our sporting past, played only by historical enthusiasts and violent offenders.

In the late 1970s, coinciding with a marked increase in armed robberies in Australia’s eastern states, the sport of Contact Cricket experienced something of a revival within the nation’s penal system and eventually spilled out into the suburbs once again. This formative era in the sport’s history gave rise to a formal set of rules and standards, which encouraged inter-team rivalries at a local level. This era of sporting achievement provided the story of Contact Cricket with such esteemed legends as Tony “Shinboner” Marsten, Jim “Jimbob” Roberts, and Farouk “Fuck You” Aleem.

The fledgling local league began organizing wider tournaments and garnering grassroots support from the community, until finally in the Spring of 1983 four teams from Queensland, two from NSW, three from Victoria, and a team representing the Northern Territory formed a coalition to formalize the rules and the structure of the sport, and afford the game broader community interest (in light of the high number of arrests and legal actions participants had endured up to that date).

Australia remains the only country where the sport is legally played.

RULES

Contact Cricket is played with a flat wooden bat and a hard, leather ball on a large oval field. Two teams of 11 players each compete to achieve the highest score.

The object of the game is to score “runs”, which is when a player successfully strikes the ball and then runs the distance between each wicket at centre-field. Opposing players will attempt to return the ball to a wicket before the “runner” makes it to the line of safety, called the “crease”.

A traditional 3-pillar wicket is used, as in Test Cricket. The centre-field area where the wickets are positioned is called the pitch. The pitch is generally to be kept dry with extra-short grass, or no grass at all, to increase speed and bounce of the ball. Grass in the field is to be kept short and level to aid the ball rolling unimpeded.

PLAYERS

Each team is allowed 11 players. Due to safety considerations, Contact Cricket does not allow a 12th Man as in the Test Cricket version of the rules.

Two umpires are included in the field of play to ensure adherence to the rules of the game and to call stoppages in case of serious injury or death. Umpires are also afforded the ability to call Fouls where a Player has breached the Rules of Physical Conduct.

GAME STRUCTURE

Contact Cricket is a game that spans over four rounds, called “overs”, over two halves, called “innings”. Each of these overs represents a quarter of the game and spans 15 minutes (as in Australian Rules Football, which derived many of its practical rules by sharing fields and players with early Contact Cricket Players) for a total game-time of 60 minutes. This means that one “team” needs to score more runs over the course of two quarters of play than the other team.

Each team begins “at bat” twice per game. When a team is “at bat”, they have batsmen at each of the wickets. When a ball is hit, the runners can attempt to run to the opposite wicket to score a point, or “run”. If the ball is returned to the crease or strikes a wicket, the Runner is out and must return to the player pool on the field.

The Bowler may sheathe their bats on their backs to facilitate bowling freely. Upon releasing the ball, they may unsheathe their bat and return to a defensive position.

All other Players are on the field of play. Each is equipped with a bat and safety-wear. Each player must either aid or disrupt play according to their position in the innings; defensive or offensive. Players on the field cannot score runs until they have been called from the player pool for their turn at bat.

SCORING

The aim of the Runner is to score runs. The ball is bowled toward them and they must hit the ball as far into the field of play as possible. If the Runner is struck by the bowled ball, they must remain in place while the opposite Runner stands at wicket. When the ball is hit into the field of play, the Runner sprints for the opposite wicket, making safety when they cross the line marked as the crease. To do this the Runner must deal with the Wicket Keeper.

The Wicket Keeper is equipped with a double-ended bat and heavy protective gear. The Wicket Keeper’s aim is to prevent the Runner getting to the crease. He stands in front of the wicket and will use extreme prejudice to prevent the Runner making a run. The Runners must overcome the Wicket Keepers to score.

If the Player hits the ball out of the field of play, they are given a score of 6 runs, as in Test Cricket, however they are returned to the player pool and replaced by the next in the batting order.

OUTS

Runners can be called out in a limited number of ways, returning them to the player pool until next innings.

If a Bowler strikes the wicket, the Runner is out.

If a Runner is injured by the Wicket Keeper and cannot cross the crease, he is out.

If the ball is returned to the wicket while the Runner is outside of the crease, he is called “Stumped” and is out.

If the Runner otherwise knocks or molests the wicket, this is also called “stumped” and he is out.

Players on the field cannot handle the ball. Instead, Players must hit the ball in the direction of play with their bats.

If a Player or Runner is caught handling the ball, their team is stripped of 2 runs to discourage interference and enforce compliance.

MULTIBALL

Once an inning, and one per side, a randomized alarm will sound signalling the beginning of Multiball Play. Multiball Play will allow Bowlers to use unlimited extra balls each to bowl towards both Runners simultaneously. This will continue for 2 minutes and each ball on the field at the end of 2 minutes will remain in play until the end of the over.

FIELDING

Players on the field will have bats at hand. Players will prevent the opposite team to attack the ball and will attempt to direct the ball in a preferred direction of play.

Contact will be permitted including shin, leg, arm, bat, and body blows. Intentional head hits are not permitted for the safety and survival of players. The ACCL and ADSC regard previous incidents as tragic accidents and no longer condone the use of high-hit tactics, or the modification of Player bats to include spikes, blades, or additional weights. The ACCL’s legal counsel have advised to no longer allow this kind of behaviour for safety and liability reasons.

Players can hit the ball with both high swings and low ground-hits in order to manoeuvre the ball in the direction of play. Incidental contact with other players will be refereed by the umpires based on severity to ensure contact rules are followed and no other interference occurs, but to also ensure the maintenance of the pace of play.

UNIFORM/SAFETY EQUIPMENT

Due to the high-risk nature of contact sports, protective gear is recommended. The ACCL enforces strict safety protocols, and as such Players and Umpires are required to wear helmets rated to a 5-star ANCAP safety rating. Players are also required to wear moulded shin, chest, and spine guards in all A-Level ACCL tournament matches. The ACCL and ADSC regard previous incidents whereby Players have been injured as tragic accidents and no longer condone Players entering the field of play without the proper safety equipment.

Team/Player uniforms must conform to basic standards of decency as regulated by the ACCL Code of Conduct.

CODE OF CONDUCT

Players and Umpires must obey basic rules of conduct. Personal interactions on the field must not include attacks based on race, nationality, class/economics, disability, gender, sexuality, gang affiliations, beer preference, veganism, vegetarianism, pescatarianism, carnivorism, alcoholism, teetotalism, or religion except for the silly ones (which will be judged on a case-by-case basis by a special committee of the ACCL and the ADSC).

Drug testing will be enforced throughout the tournament season at random, with tests administered by the ACCL Doping Commission. Players who fall below minimum requirements will be brought before the Doping Commission, where they may be fined, administered drugs, or stripped of their right to play in Australia depending on the severity of the offense.

DISCLAIMER

Contact Cricket, the ACCL, the ADSC, and all subsidiaries are subject to Trademark protections. Any entity claiming use of the term “Contact Cricket” as intellectual property or actual property is in breach of the Australian Trademark Regulations Act 2001. Any business or entity gaining pecuniary advantage by use of this material or any other Trademarked material owned by the ACCL or ADSC is liable and may incur civil judgement against them in an Australian Magistrates Court.

The ACCL and the ADSC accept no responsibility for actions undertaken by members of the general public in efforts to imitate or exemplify the dangerous nature of the sport. Warnings are readily available, and common sense should prevail. This is not a real sport, I just fucking hate cricket.

Australia's Nazi Music Festival (And That Time I Tried To Infiltrate It)

*DISCLAIMER: I did not successfully infiltrate the HammerFest skinhead festival. Not even close*

[Photo by Erik Mclean from Pexels]

Back when I began studying journalism at University of Queensland in 2012, I learned of a music festival called HammerFest. It was a private music event – technically a “private party” rather than a concert or festival for legal reasons – run by a local chapter of US-based white power organisation called the Hammerskins, in conjunction with dominant international skinhead organisation Blood and Honour, based in the UK.

Australia has a lurid history with white supremacy which finally came to a horrific boiling point with Australian Brendan Tarrant’s murder spree at a New Zealand mosque in 2019. The undercurrent of bigotry, jingoism, and implicit hatred of minorities has existed in the nation’s character since Englishman strode ashore in 1788.

This dark aspect to the nation’s personality has been hidden or passed off as harmless colloquial larrikinism for generations, but what that has allowed to fester is an impermeable crust of racism that collects in some of the nation’s dirtiest recesses. They find ways to exist away from the public eye, and they find ways to exist within it – just in the corners where people aren’t really looking.

There are few better or clearer examples of this working dichotomy, where the menace is seen and unseen, than the secretive neo-Nazi music world.

 

A Brief History of Neo-Nazi Music in Australia

[Pictured: Doc Martin boots, a staple of Skinhead fashion]

Australia’s culture of racism and distrust is long-since engrained, and early colonialist’s treatment of the native Aboriginal people and many minorities visiting the country has been historically horrific. Policy reflected these horrors in countless ways, small and large, but the people who founded this continent never completely reconciled with how their home could be declared “Terra Nullius”, invalidating their human existence in two words and writing in lasting ink that it would take the best part of 200 years for the simple truth of their experience to be recognised, in lieu of being resolved.

While white Australians decried the changes that were befalling them through the 20^th century at the hands of an international civil rights movement and feckless progressives, fear of Nazis shifted to fear of Communists. That fed moral panic and fear of foreigners for which a newly-connected Australia was unprepared; from its staid, conservative citizens to the unprecedented authority of the fledgling media.

Soon enough, politicians expanded on post-war “invasion” rhetoric and fears of economic ruin fed by anti-Communist propaganda. A generation of children brought up with unguided xenophobia and unchecked fear of Leftism came from their economically and socially barren lives somewhere around the 1980s, where they emerged in the midst of an economic boom at the advent of what is often colloquially called the “MTV Era”. Suddenly, disenfranchised youth who were raised with the myopic conservatism of their parents still ringing in their ears were seeking refuge in rebellion.

The juvenile, violent sound of punk music arrived, with some of the genre’s earliest practitioners emerging in Australia in the form of The Saints at the Petrie Terrace punk-houses of Brisbane, and in cestuous backyard bands forming and repurposing themselves into fledgling DIY communities.

Early introductions to UK Oi! and punk music became available, especially through mail-order based record labels and distros. The neo-conservative politics and social fidelity bullishly advertised by these communities began to reach an audience of more disenfranchised, impressionable young people. Small companies dedicated to connecting skinheads from around the world began operating in the UK, the US, Australia, and across Europe. Early skinhead-success stories include the long-running Rock-O-Rama Records, which came to be exclusively associated with RAC (Rock Against Communism) music and was supported by UK hate group Blood and Honour, founded by neo-Nazi musician Ian Stuart Donaldson.

Australian racists caught on to the bold new subculture coming out of the UK, and indeed were home to the first international chapter of Blood and Honour. Bands to come out of Australia in RAC music’s early wave included notorious Perth band Quick and The Dead (who expatriated a member, Murray Holmes, to the UK to play in RAC stalwarts Skrewdriver alongside Donaldson for a brief period), and long-running racist nuisance Fortress, who have plied their hateful trade for somewhere nudging 30 years.

Early labels and distros operating in Australia increased access to overseas materials through mailing-lists and nascent internet message boards. The genre of racist rock music morphed over the years to include significant heavy metal influence, spawning subgenres and affiliations that persist in staining the paths of young music fans around the world. Australian neo-Nazis found community in the fledgling Black Metal scene, eventually burdening the world with several bands in the NSBM (National Socialist Black Metal), Death Metal, and relatively-obscure War Metal genres.

Infamous early progenitors hailing from Brisbane, Spear Of Longinus have proclaimed their allegiances to national socialist ideals for a number of years, speaking in hard-to-acquire NSBM zines and addressing their audiences in an era pre-camera phones to capture the mess for posterity. Audiences at Spear Of Longinus shows were not substantial, and due to lack of support and public pressure shows were frequently forced to occur in private residences, often in ill-prepared garages.

Melbourne war metal band Destroyer666 have courted controversy in the past. They profess no overt allegiances to white supremacist doctrine, however critics claim their music is littered with codes and hidden references to neo-Nazi sympathies and messaging, and they were forced to cancel an Australian tour in 2019 after racist and sexist comments from colourfully-named front-man KK Warslut surfaced online. [1]

Brisbane has an unfortunate affinity with neo-Nazi bands, with several more prominent NSBM or Nazi-aligned metal bands originating in the sunny coastal city, including Hammerskin-approved acts Deaths Head, Ravenous, and Vomitor.

Blood Red Eagle from Sydney represent a rare visible example of the relative allegiances of the Australian skinhead community not coalescing, as the band have allegedly been maligned by the Blood and Honour community and have aligned themselves exclusively with rival skinhead organisation Volksfront, which was founded in a US prison in the 1990s. [2]

Neo-Nazi music made headlines in 2000 when three members of Australian Army unit 3RAR (3^rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment) were discovered to be members of hate-metal band Blood Oath.

The hateful culture persisted. Independent concerts were held for years in cities across Australia to mark important events to the white power calendar, loosely organised and broadly decentralised, timed to commemorate Hitler’s birthday, Ian Stuart Donaldson’s birth or death, and various fallen martyrs to their cause such as the ultimate inspiration for Hammerfest, Joe “Hammer” Rowan.

Skinheads revel in the grand traditional of rock and roll bacchanals to celebrate their heroes and to foil their enemies. They use music as their strongest recruiting tool and exploit the connectiveness with impressionable young audiences to indoctrinate them with rhetoric and inculcate them to their cult. Power, as they see it, exists in numbers.

 

Blood and Honour

[Pictured: Blood and Honour logo]

Blood and Honour (frequently stylized as Blood & Honour with a triskele in place of the ampersand) are a UK based white power organization founded by Ian Stuart Donaldson in 1987 in the UK. Ian Stuart Donaldson was a prominent early skinhead and founding member of seminal RAC/hate-rock band Skrewdriver.

Donaldson is considered an icon of the hate world. His doctrines and style have become dogma and uniform in the days since his band helped revolutionize violent bigotry.

The name “Blood and Honour” is taken from the title-song of Skrewdriver’s 1985 LP. The cover art was created by Bugs Tattoo Parlour in north London, and the popularity of the album inspired multiple London skinheads to visit the shop and purchase the “Blood & Honour Viking” tattoo from the promotional artwork. [3] They are also sometimes recognisable by their adoption of the number “28”, often as a tattoo or symbolized in artwork, which represents the common alphabet code of numerical values, where “2” is “B” and “8” is “H”.

Under this loosely-adopted symbol, British skinheads and racists began to organize. Ian Stuart Donaldson founded a more formal cult in 1987 with the publication of the first issue of Blood and Honour magazine, and dissemination of a “Founding Statement” claiming to be an “independent National Socialist movement supporting all active NS/Nationalist parties and groups in the White world”. Donaldson vows to “create units in every city and every town in every country” and “win our nations back, once and for all”. [4]

Blood and Honour adopted several symbols to represent their organization. Along with the usual far-right symbolism, they adopted a flag adorned with a modified tri-pointed triskele substituting a swastika, frequently laid in a white circle with a black backdrop akin to the Nazi flag. Similarly, the group has commonly adopted a modified Totenknopf symbol with the “B” and “H” of the name supplanted above and below the iconic deaths-head skull. [5]

Blood and Honour began raising funds for far-right causes, including the British-nationalist National Front, and promoting the RAC and hate-rock music that popularized the movement and fashions. They spread across the world, first into Australia where they shared fanatical adherents and band-members. One of these early connections was Australian RAC musician Murray Holmes, formerly of Perth band Quick and The Dead, who joined Skrewdriver for a brief stint as bassist in the late 1980s.

Donaldson was known to relish violence. In 1985 he was sentenced to 12 months in prison for a racially motivated attack at London’s King’s Cross station against a group of youths. In 1992, a planned Skrewdriver concert in London became what is colloquially referred to as the “Battle of Waterloo”, resulting in skirmishes between hundreds of skinheads and anti-fascists. [6]

In 1992, splinter offshoot group Combat 18 was formed from associated British skinhead factions including Chelsea Wolves and Blood and Honour. Combat 18 have become known for criminal violence and escalation, finally becoming a banned criminal or terrorist organization in several Western countries, including in Germany after a bombing at a train-station was attributed to members of the group. The group has issued a statement in their eponymous propaganda magazine “Combat 18” stating their aims as creating an all-white nation by sending “all non-whites back to Africa, Asia, Arabia, whether alive on in body bags”. They further make threats against their perceived mortal enemies, “all Jews” with the usual patina of holocaust-worship that exists in the more extreme corners of the far-right.

Ian Stuart Donaldson, frequently abbreviated and codified to just “ISD”, died in 1993 in a car accident in Derbyshire, England. His organization and his hateful legacy continue, and his death inspired a tradition of memorial concerts in his name, often held on his birthday or the date of his death worldwide. Popular among white supremacy conspiracy theorists and skinhead cultists is the belief that Donaldson’s death was not accidental, although there is insufficient evidence to support this theory.

This theory-making distracts from the less convenient fact of Blood and Honour co-founder Nicky Crane’s death from AIDS-complications just two months later, soon after confessing his much maligned homosexuality on television. [6]

Blood and Honour still have an alarming presence in Australia, and they maintain a website which contains a welcoming missive suggesting a “need to provide White youth with an alternative to the ‘hip-hop’ culture so eagerly promoted by the Zionist controlled media” and other such racist-by-numbers tropes. The website proudly proclaims their promotion of live gigs and events, however COVID restrictions have restricted legal gatherings so instead there is simply an image with a message promising a rescheduled “ISD memorial” in December 2020 at the time of writing (in January 2021).

Nonetheless, through these gigs and their musical associations, Blood and Honour maintain support and dark-allegiance with the Hammerskin Nation through their Australian chapter, the Southern Cross Hammerskins.

 

Hammerskins

[Pictured: Hammerskins logo]

Formed in Dallas and the small town of Garland, Texas in 1988, their primary ambitions were initially to produce and disseminate white power music in the US and eventually through international networks. They are closely affiliated with white power record label 9% Productions, who produce and promote bands exclusively associated with white power, neo-Nazi, or RAC music, and content from ideologically aligned speakers and podcasts. The Anti-Defamation League has described them as the “one of the oldest hardcore racist skinhead groups in the United States” [7]. The Southern Poverty Law Centre describes them as “the best organized, most widely dispersed and most dangerous Skinhead group known”. They have their own official media, Hammerskin Press, and they are they proudly “labor with a Race First motto”. [8]

Hammerskins have maintained this reputation for organization through regular dissemination of music and materials, as well as recruiting policies that require strict “face-time” with prospective members and probationary periods for initiates. Recruits to the Southern Cross Hammerskins require initiates to the organization to spend time serving in their recruiting faction, Crew38, before gaining entry to the senior gang. [7]

Their logo is derived from the fictitious neo-Nazi organization from the 1982 Pink Floyd movie “The Wall”.  Their logo depicts two left-facing claw-hammers crossed to resemble two goose-stepping boots, usually laid over a cogwheel. This is frequently laid over a flag or shield bearing the national colours of Nazi Germany or some identifying regional variant.

Their motto is “Hammerskins Forever, Forever Hammerskins”, frequently abbreviated/symbolized as the acronym “HFFH”. They are known to use the number designation/code “838”, which represents the 8^th and 3^rd letter of the English alphabet and is meant to codify as “HCH” or “Hail the Crossed Hammers”.

The Australian chapter, known as the Southern Cross Hammerskins, maintain a barebones website hosted at a .org address. The website proclaims the organization “a fraternal group of like-minded individuals who believe in loyalty, respect, trustworthiness, strength, commitment and the 14 Words”. The “14 Words” is a codified phrase solidifying the racist beliefs of white supremacists: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

In 1989 five members of the recently-formed Confederate Hammerskins, including their founder Sean Tarrant, were charged with crimes related to race, assault and deprivation of liberty when they began patrolling a local park, then known as Robert E. Lee Park, in Garland, Texas in order to exclude minorities from the park by intimidation and violence. They had elected to enforce a “white’s only” policy in the public park in response to rumours the NAACP was attempting to change the name of the park. The defendants appeal was dismissed by an appellate court in 1991. [9]

Founder, Sean Christian Tarrant, had played drums in white power band called the Bully Boys. This link between racist music and the skinhead movement has endured as an essential element of the relationship ever since, as do the hostile and conspiratorial anti-Semitic rhetoric and appeals to real-world violence that permeate the sound. Indeed, Bully Boys played in Australia in 2004 at a memorial concert in honour of neo-Nazi figurehead and Blood and Honour founder Ian Stuart Donaldson, alongside stalwarts of the racist Australian scene Blood Red Eagle, Deaths Head, and Fortress, all of whom carry their own troubling histories. Sean Tarrant ultimately served 9 years in prison for the 1989 arrest, after appealing sentence in 1991. [10]

Soon the Confederate Hammerskins spread across America, becoming known as the Hammerskin Nation. Chapters appeared across the country, each adopting a regional variant on the original Hammerskin logo to create identifiable factions. This habit of adopting regional variants of the original logo has continued as the organization spread internationally, with versions appearing to denote different national chapters around the world, including the Southern Cross Hammerskins in Australia.

The permeation of this group into the cloth of white extremism in America had further real-world consequences. Hammerskins have been charged with countless crimes in their 30-plus year history running the gamut of violent and coercive hate-crimes with multiple convictions.

The promulgation of white power materials was initially aided by the adoption of mail-order purchases, with the earliest popular white supremacist literature and music available to curious persons from ads in the back of newspapers and special-interest magazines declaring the security of brotherhood and shared ideas, or spread through personal networks and word-of-mouth. Some of the most notorious and influential racist and eugenics-laden materials were disseminated through closed networks of turned-on readers and remain essential-reading for aspiring white supremacists in 2021. A search of terms like “Day of the Rope” (derived from a fictional book describing an apocalyptic race-war) or “1488” (using the common numerical code of white supremacist networks to indicate the dual symbolism of the “14 Words”-doctrine of modern neo-Nazism, and the numerical representation of the acronym “H.H.”, meant to symbolise the expression “Heil Hitler”) on social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook will return some chilling results.

[Pictured: Twitter screenshot; credit Author, Jan 2021]

9% Productions is a white power/RAC record label which is run by and with support of members of Blood & Honour and the Southern Cross Hammerskins, according the Australian extremist watchdog-website Slackbastard. [10] As of January 2021, 9% Productions website is regularly active with releases from prominent white power bands and podcasts in honour of notorious deceased neo-Nazi figurehead Ian Stuart Donaldson.

This connection between white power music and proliferation is not accidental. Member of prominent American “hate rock” band Bound For Glory, Ed Wolbank says, “Music is number 1. It’s the best way to reach people. Through music people can start getting into the scene, then you can start educating them. Politics through music”. [11]

This connection between 9% Productions, Blood and Honour, and the Australian white supremacist movement became more substantive when Blood and Honour made early headways into the country by forming their first international chapter on Antipodean soil. The organization increased access to racist RAC rock music in the Southern Hemisphere and helped proliferate an Australian RAC/neo-Nazi punk-rock oeuvre, which has persisted with long-running bands, secretive shows, and incestuous member-swapping.

Brisbane and Perth, on opposite coasts of the country, have long served as epicentres for the RAC and neo-Nazi music scenes. Perth became home to early bands to link up with the British and American neo-Nazi scenes, most notoriously Quick and The Dead, who ultimately shared a member for a short time with infamous British band Skrewdriver.

Brisbane has had multiple associations, including many live shows and a glut of early skinhead, RAC or NSBM (National Socialist Black Metal) bands forming and playing in the city. Most notoriously are early NSBM band Spear of Longinus (named for the spear that the Roman soldier Pantera used to pierce Christ’s side as he lay on the cross at Golgotha), although the city has continued to make news into the 2010’s with long-running punk band Big Bongin’ Baby unfurling a swastika flag and making Nazi salutes at a show in Brisbane in 2016, causing some national outrage at the time.

Thanks in part to their affiliations with RAC music and 9% Productions, Hammerskins made forays into Australia in at least the early 1990s. The group’s reach with neo-Nazi music internationally made them a user-friendly proponent of racist music and materials in Australia in the fledgling days of the internet. This early connection made for a fertile association with the newly-formed white power community organized under the Blood and Honour banner. Still, much of the organizing for Hammerskins-sponsored events occurs on forums associated with Blood and Honour.

The factionalism of, and friction between, these groups appears limited, however, as many adherents to the Blood and Honour or Hammerskins labels also firmly associate with other known white power organisations. According to Slackbastard and the ADL, Hammerskins and Blood and Honour have known connections to affiliates such as Crew38, notorious prison-gang the Aryan Nation, and the “openly terrorist” Combat 18. [10]

The international connectiveness of the Hammerskins network came to bear again in a pivotal moment for the growing skinhead movement when Australian RAC band No Remorse played a show to commemorate the death of Ian Stuart Donaldson in Wisconsin in 1994. Sometime after the show, vocalist for US band Nordic Thunder, Joe Rowan, was shot dead during an altercation at the Starvin Marvins convenience store in Racine, Wisconsin by Naseer Ghani after provocation by Rowan and friends. [12] According to former bandmate of Rowan, referred to only as “Bob”, in an article published by German white power website Frontmagazin.de, Rowan was an “ideologically established skinhead” and describes him as “the driving force that united all local groups”. [13]

This double-whammy of martyrdom, with Blood and Honour godfather Ian Stuart Donaldson dying in 1993 and Joe Rowan in 1994, cemented a myth-making surrounding the early days of the movement which is still represented in symbols, language, and indeed events such as the internationally-franchised HammerFest, held initially to honour the memory of Joe Rowan and now repeated ostensibly-annually around the world.

 

History of HammerFest

Australian skinheads had been putting on low-key shows in dive-bar locations and garages for years, and eventually worked with Blood and Honour to hold Ian Stuart Donaldson commemorative concerts from about 1997. Infamously, the location of two of these events was discovered; namely The Birmingham Hotel in Melbourne, resulting in the management at the time resigning. [14]

The inaugural HammerFest was held in 1999 in Bremen, Georgia, USA. No listing of the bands is available. The event caused public furore but was not widely reported. This is the first Australian event held to commemorate deceased Hammerskin Joe “Hammer” Rowan.

HammerFest 2000 occurred in Bremen, Georgia, USA; featuring the descriptively-named bands Brutal Attack, Hate Crime, Extreme Hatred, Code of Violence, Dying Breed, and White Wash. [15]

The festival bounced between locations in the US, holding secretive concerts in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Oregon. In 2005, organizers broke from their RAC/hate-rock preferences to book infamous Nazi tween-pop duo Prussian Blue. (In a happy aside, the sisters who formed Prussian Blue as young girls under the encouragement and management of their parents, have since renounced their white supremacist ideology and have embraced multi-culturalism and cannabis). [16]

Meanwhile, the RAC, skinhead, and neo-Nazi movements in Australia were picking up speed, emboldened by the support from Blood & Honour and the perceived kinship with the Hammerskin Nation and other white power groups making incursions into Australia at that time. Minimal information is available about the earliest iterations of ISD memorial concerts in the country.

In 2007 Blood and Honour, in conjunction with Southern Cross Hammer Skins, sponsored a memorial show in Melbourne featuring several of the aforementioned Australian neo-Nazi musical-offenders, including Fortress and Quick and The Dead, alongside unnamed “international guests”.

The inaugural Australian HammerFest occurred on the Gold Coast, in secret in 2010, “proudly presented” by Crew38 and Blood and Honour. Neo-Nazi bands Open Season and Ravenous were scheduled to play the event.

“Hammered Music Festival” occurred in Brisbane in 2012, sponsored by Southern Cross Hammerskins, Crew38, and Blood and Honour. This was the third annual gig, featuring bands such as locals Ravenous, Open Season, and Deaths Head. The event was held to commemorate the 20^th anniversary of the Southern Cross Hammerskins. [17] The website proudly advertises the presence of an unnamed “brother from the Confederate Hammerskins chapter” and began the day after Hitler’s birthday. [18]

A review of the event published on Blood and Honour’s Australian website describes a tight-knit group of skinheads from around Australia and New Zealand partying in a motel for Hitler’s birthday and then attending a gig at an unknown location.

Federal Race Discrimination Minister Dr Helen Szoke called the festival “abhorrent” amidst the furore pre-empting the festival, which was to be held at a secret location to avoid scrutiny from what the group called the “Zionist-controlled media” and obstruct efforts to prevent the gathering. [19]

Queensland Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie said, “While the government does not condone neo-Nazi or extremist beliefs, it is not illegal hold an event such as this.” He further said, “The Queensland government will not ban this festival, but any attendees who incite or commit violence or racism will be dealt with by police”. [17]

Hammered Music Festival occurred in Queensland again in 2013, this time at a secret location at Carrara on the Gold Coast. Posts on notorious neo-Nazi forum Stormfront.org described the event as “a massive event on the white calender (sic) with great bands, great atmosphere and a great weekend… in one of Australia’s top holiday destinations”. Despite calls for the festival to be moved or, again, banned, the festival went again this year as well. [20]

Hammered VII occurred in 2016, this time in Tasmania. Information about this event is scarce.

A post by user “AustralianMade” on Stormfront.org alludes to “meet & greets for people that we haven’t met before”, implying a significant level of screening and security. [21]

Hammerfest appears to have continued under varied titles, with varying degrees of publicity and public outcry, for most or all of the years since its inception.

In 2019, a new controversy began to brew, as Blood and Honour and the Southern Cross Hammerskins announced plans for a Hammerfest event in Melbourne, this time called “Hammered Music Festival”. The trouble drew attention from major news outlets across Australia and the world, as residents fought to have the festival banned.

In the wake of several far-right rallies and events around the country and particularly in Melbourne, there was increased interest and fear surrounding the prospect of a Hammerskin festival occurring in their proverbial backyard.

“Following a far-right rally in St Kilda in January this year, the Emmy Monash Aged Care Facility in Caulfield North, which houses a number of Holocaust survivors, was targeted with neo-Nazi graffiti; many in my community are deeply concerned that this group poses a real and present danger to all Victorians and believe we need to take action to prevent violence before it occurs,” said Opposition police and community safety spokesman David Southwick in 2019. [22]

A submission filed with the Victorian Government by multiple organizations (including the Human Rights Law Centre, GetUp!, Anti-Defamation Commission, Victorian Trades Hall Council, and the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre) was submitted under the title of “”Stopping hate in its tracks; Joint submission to the Victorian Government’s Anti-Vilification Protections Inquiry” in 2019. This submission was made in direct response to the announcement of the Hammered Music Festival, stating “Hateful conduct is harmful and contrary to democratic values.” The submission further states: “Victoria currently prohibits vilification and serious vilification through the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 (Vic)(RRTA)” which defines vilification as “conduct that incites hatred against, or serious contempt for, or revulsion or severe ridicule of, a person or class of persons based on a particular protected attribute.” The coalition submitted a petition containing 27,000 signatures supporting the cessation of the Hammered Music Festival. [23]

The organizations behind the submission urged for “expanded, best-practice” laws that included, amongst other items, “(c) Enacting a better criminal test for serious vilification”, and “(e) Enacting a new criminal offence prohibiting the public display of vilifying and intimidating materials, including the swastika”. This brings up a troubling issue with prohibiting events such as Hammerfest, and that is many of the extant laws do not prohibit the display or demonstration of hateful ideas. It is legal, at least in Victoria, to display white power symbols without fear of legal repercussions in many instances. This extends to the right to hold gatherings of politically aligned, like-minded individuals. Many of the parameters Blood and Honour and the Southern Cross Hammerskins undertake to limit exposure to the public are self-imposed, for fear of incursion, exposure, and various unmanageable legal issues that would arise if the location of these events was made public. These issues extend from the obvious, such as litigation and harassment, to the mundane, such as insurance and licensing. International bands attending Hammerfest performances are regularly required to navigate strict VISA laws to enter the country, where they cannot legally perform music as “employment”, so many of these bands enter the country on tourist VISAs and must perform ostensibly as a “hobby” in relative secret and without promotion. This is part of the reason international bands are rarely, if ever, advertised for Blood and Honour events ahead of time.

According to Anti-Defamation Commission chairman, Jewish community leader, and member of the coalition Dr Dvir Abramovich, the event did not proceed. Victorian Police said they had “no intelligence of the concert going ahead as scheduled”.

Dr Abramovich said at the time, “Bravo to our community who beat hate. This is a victory for people power, for justice, for decency, and for those courageous individuals who acted as a moral amplifier. Who locked arms in declaring threat the words and ideas of neo-Nazis are counter to everything this nation stands for.” [24]

 

That Time I Tried to Infiltrate It

[Pictured: Author having regrets]

Upon hearing about this secretive cabal of racists and their annual shindig in 2012, I realised the whole affair was ripe for investigation. Finding good fodder for articles seemed like good journalism, so I logged the idea alongside all my other half-formed ideas, like full-contact cricket and musical prophylactics, waiting for an opportunity to expand it.

Soon enough, that opportunity presented itself when I learned through a random comment in a random music message board that the Southern Cross Hammerskins had begun chatting about another music festival in Brisbane in smaller forums across the internet.

After some rudimentary snooping, I discovered the first obstacle to admission: there were no tickets, no bookings, no address to purchase from. Instead, there was email addresses listed for each state for prospects to contact Hammerskins representatives and purchase entry directly from the organizers.

This would, of course, end my expedition immediately, as I had no racist credentials and any background checks would have revealed a liberal long-hair posing to gain admission. This would not do.

However, I had learned through these first incursions that the community existed on a handful of internet forums, most prominently Stormfront.org and the Blood and Honour forums.

The hegemony created by the general domination of Blood and Honour and Hammerskins in Australia meant it was simple investigating an avenue to infiltrate the community. Unfortunately, it also creates the greatest obstacle to completing this task; the bottleneck created at the initiate stage means you are forced to meet one of these members, and frequently many at the same time, in order to pass the basic scrutiny of whether a person is “one of them”, so to speak. A person may be able to adopt a racist lexicon online in order to blend in, but the average non-racist person will likely have other more subtle tells at the least, and possibly significant physiological fear-responses that will give them away under the pressure of a face-to-face meeting with avowed white supremacists that is designed specifically to weed out fakes. I regarded this as a problem for later. As it happens, I needn’t have worried at all.

I created a burner-email address and joined the forums on Stormfront.org, initially expecting that my smarts and general arrogance would see me through to being accepted by the community. However, this proved difficult, as there was significant use of coded language that remained confounding to me. I didn’t surmise that I was being excluded from important information, but without understanding the short-hand I struggled to become a part of the conversation much at all, which seemed to be a basic, essential requirement of becoming engaged with this group.

The forum was full of jokes and aggression, with posts about bands of obvious neo-Nazi leanings and a lot of regular hardcore and heavy metal as well. There were gigs posted around the country, all with bands I’ve never heard of at venues that are unlikely to still exist, and forum members would speak of them as pivotal dates on the social calendar. The language was severe, although even then I felt weirdly inoculated to the burning racism and repressed violence thanks in part to the seeping of white supremacist language into all facets of the social media realm.

I was lost, like a foreigner, and I had started to attract some attention. Members of this group, who were aggressive with even their most loyal compatriots, had begun to notice I wasn’t really one of them. I had been lurking and occasionally posting for approximately two months, and I had noticed a strange shift. I was no longer getting into the same fights and petty arguments as everyone else. First, there was a flavour of distrust, as members accused me of complex ethnic sympathies and eugenic impurities. This distrust quickly became a sense that I was an outsider, and a constant language-pattern emerged wherein I was spoken to like a shady foreigner trying to spy (which was a not-completely unfounded attitude, to be fair). Soon I was being threatened, in the various ways tough guys on the internet threaten people, and I realised the jig was up.

I had left the forum alone for some time, knowing that I was not going to be able to successfully infiltrate the group. However, one night while buried in homework, I took a break, poured some whisky, and scrolled some pages online. I don’t know what compelled me, but after several drinks I found myself back on the skinhead forum, logged in and scanning for news. There were several people online, all bickering over eugenics theories that essentially boiled down to “I’m more Aryan than you are.”

I am a difficult drunk. Not an aggressive one, and rarely a sloppy one. I am good-humoured, and I don’t get angry as much as I do sardonic and quippy. I think I am Winston Churchill when I’m drunk. I cannot explain why I joined the discussion beyond that.

What resulted was a brief discussion where I criticized the active members’ ethnic purity, based on a befuddled insistence that their ancestors probably slept with Mongols and Greeks and Gypsies for hundreds of years, and essentially posited that none of them were White enough to be Aryans.

I was banned from the forum. I received a vague and anonymous threat to my email address. I received a second one using my real first name. I promptly closed the email address and have never opened it since.

 

Conclusions

Australians speak of having a complex history with racism. This is true, although not in the off-handed way it is commonly repeated. We have morphed from a colonial prison-outpost for the British Empire to a liberal, multicultural economy predicated on our geographic proximity to Asia. The nation relies heavily on tourism dollars and international mineral, agriculture, and exploration conglomerates to bolster the economy. Australia fought in the war against the Axis powers, and “Nazi” is still shorthand for “bad-guy” to most Australians.

However, there remains a twisted thread of racism that is sewn through the fabric of the country. Cronulla was our fledgling Charleston. It put our racism on the front page of newspapers, and the event cemented the knowledge that there was a white Australia so fearful of their perceived extermination that they began to feel entitled to strike first; Blair “I Lost My Neck In Prison” Cottrel and sympathizers to symbiotic far-right causes like Avi “Domestic Violence Order” Yemeni since found platforms preaching to simple-minded Australians who rallied behind propagandist noise and comforting patriotic sloganeering.

White supremacy is an ugly package. It presents itself as a sacred fraternity that will protect white brethren, but only if they’ll put themselves and others in harm’s way. No rationalisation for its existence says it should be a party. But such is the propagandist foundation of the movement that, by admission of its proponents, the most effective recruiting tool is music and events like Hammerfest. Therefore, it is perhaps essential for the fair application of extant discrimination laws that they address the social harm of the recruiting tools of white supremacy. The publication of an event meant to cause fear to and discriminate against minorities may arguably represent a crime of discrimination or racial vilification in itself, relative to the nature of the publication or event, if the promoters could reasonably expect that the public would learn of its existence.

It has been easy for lackadaisical Australia to ignore the rising prevalence of white supremacy, as neo-patriotic rhetoric and old-timey larrikinism have increasingly fed into the national identity. The nation fought a war and believes it knows what the country looks like, and what their countrymen should look like.

But if this wide brown country has a colour it is the colour of dust.

KMM

 

References

[1] “Destroyer 666 cancels tour after ‘racist’ past unearthed”, Carmody, Broede; Sydney Morning Herald, 2019, www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/destroyer-666-cancels-tour-after-racist-past-unearthed-20190424-p51gur.html

[2] “A Brief History of Neo-Nazi Music In Australia”, Slackbastard, 2010, www.slackbastard.anarchobase.com/?p=22224

[3] “Ian Stuart Donaldson & Skrewdriver Biography (1957-1993)”, Anonymous, www.bloodandhoourworldwide.co.uk/bhww/isd-biographies/ian-stuart-donaldson-skrewdriver-biography/isd-biography

[4] “B & H Founding Statement”, Donaldson, Ian; bloodandhonourworldwide.co.uk, www.bloodandhonourworldwide.co.uk/bhww/b-h-founding-statement

[5] “Triskele”, Anti-Defamation League; www.adl.org, www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/triskele

 [6] “Ian Stuart Donaldson and a legacy of hate”, Whelan, Brian; www.channel4.com, 2013, www.channel4.com/news/ian-stuart-donaldson-a-legacy-of-hate

[7] “Hammerskins”, Anti-Defamation League, www.adl.or/education/referemces/hate-symbols/hammerskins

[8] “Hammerskin Nation Emerges From Small Dallas Group”, Reynolds, Michael, SPLC Intelligence Report 1999 Fall Issue, www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/1999/hammerskin-nation-emerges-small-dallas-group

[9] United States V Christopher Barry Greer, Daniel Alvis Wood, Sean Christian Tarrant, Michael Lewis Lawrence, and Jon Lance Jordan, 939 F.2d 1076 (5^th Cir. 1991); www.courtlistener.com/opinion/565154/united-states-v-christopher-barry-greer-daniel-alvis-wood-sean-christian

[10] “A Brief History of Neo-Nazi Music In Australia”, Slackbastard, 2010, www.slackbastard.anarchobase.com/?p=22224

[11] “The Hammerskin Nation”, Anti-Defamation League, www.adl.org/education/resources/profiles/hammerskin-nation

[12] “Alleged supremacist shot to death”, United Press International, 1994, www.upi.com/Archives/1994/10/01/Alleged-supremacist-shot-to-death/8600780984000

[13] “Joe Rowan: A Fallen Brother Who Will Never Be Forgotten”, Anonymous, 2019, www.frontmagazin.de/magazine/?p=8208

[14] “Hammerfest 2007”, Slackbastard, 2007, www.slackbastard.anarchobase.com/?p=868

[15] “White power music festival Hammerfest 2000 draws international fans to Atlanta”, Southern Poverty Law Center, 2000 www.splc.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2001/white-power-music-festival-hammerfest-2000-draws-international-fans-atlanta

[16] “’Marijuana changed us from Nazis to peace-loving hippies’: Twin sisters who sparked outrage with pop band named after gas used on Jews claim they’ve grown up”, Enoch, Nick; Daily Mail, 2012, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2165342/Prussian-Blue-twins-Lynx-Lamb-Marijuana-changed-Nazis-peace-loving-hippies.html

[17] “Neo-Nazi music festival to go ahead”, Feeney, Katherine; Brisbane Times, 2012, www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/neo-nazi-music-festival-to-go-ahead-20120416-1x3h0.html

[18] “Hammered Music Festival – Brisbane – 2012”, ‘Pommy’; 2012, www.bloodandhonouraustralia.org/hammered12.html

[19] “Brisbane set for ‘secret’ neo-Nazi music festival”, Nine News Australia; 2012, www.9news.com.au/national/Brisbane-set-for-secret-neo-nazi-music-festival/52a2c8f8-b2e5-42ed-ab63-9332ddd1a90d

[20] “Neo-Nazis will gather at a secret location on the Gold Coast for a white supremacy music festival”, Potts, Andrew, 2013, www.couriermail.com.au/new/queensland/neo-nazis-will-gather-at-a-secret-location-on-the-gold-coast-for-a-white-supremacy-music-festical/news-story/800dc6f2d037937a3fd8611944b0e3dc

[21] “Southern Cross Hammerskins present ‘Hammered 2016’”, User “Australian Made”, 2013, www.stormfront.org/forum/t1144669

[22] “Shut down and investigate: Calls to stop neo-Nazi concert”, Hope, Zach, 2019, www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/shut-down-and-investigate-calls-to-stop-neo-nazi-concert-20190919-p52t05.html

[23] “Stopping hate in its tracks: Joint submission to the Victorian Government’s Anti-Vilification Protections Inquiry”, Anti-Vilification Protections Inquiry, 2019, www.static1.squarespace.com/static/580025f66b8f5b2dabbe4291/t/5e33c00c95862d328a6ca24e/158044981/Submission+-+Stopping+hate+in+its+tracks+-+30+January+2020.pdf

[24] “Melbourne’s neo-Nazi festival stopped, Jewish leader says”, Goodman, Rick, 2019, www.7news.com.au/news/vic/melbournes-neo-nazi-festival-stopped-jewish-leader-says-c-506975