Antony Loewenstein

The following story appeared on ABC Radio’s PM yesterday:

MARK COLVIN: Researchers in Europe say the financial crisis and the immigration debate are fuelling support for far right groups. Young men, in particular, are joining them via social media.

The same sets of issues are politicising young Australians but commentators here say there isn’t the same attraction to fringe groups.

Adam Harvey reports.

ADAM HARVEY: Researchers with the British think-tank Demos say young Europeans are being drawn to far right groups and they’re showing their support in a very modern way, by becoming Facebook friends with, and Twitter followers of, organisations like the British National Party.

Demos surveyed the opinions of more than 12,000 supporters of the BNP and other anti-immigrant parties like Marine Le Pen’s French Front National, and Italy’s Northern League.

And the group used Facebook’s own data to analyse more than 400,000 supporters of these groups. Most are aged under 30, and more than 75 per cent were men.

Australian journalist and author Antony Loewenstein says the rise of the far right is no secret.

ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN: One of the things that is very clear in the last 10 years, particularly since September 11th has been the growth in anti-Muslim, anti-immigration parties in many European countries, including countries that were traditionally quite liberal, open minded towards immigration.

ADAM HARVEY: Loewenstein is a contributor to a new book on the rise of the far right. The book, “On Utoya” is a series of essays prompted by the massacre on Norway’s Utoya Island by extremist Anders Breivik.

ANTONY LOWENSTEIN: His manifesto, 1500 page manifesto very clearly stated mainstream views these days, mainstream being anti-immigration, anti-Islam, very, talking about white pride, white culture, very supportive of Israel, supportive of the idea of Israel being a strong nation dealing with the Islam or the Muslim and the Arab problem. And that’s the kind of thing that used to be on the fringes but now is very mainstream.

ADAM HARVEY: The Demos research found that far-right supporters like Breivik who may once have been anti-Semitic, have found a new enemy.

ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN: They way that Jews used to be viewed, as strange, weird, strange dresses, odd food, a threat to the harmonious society has now been replaced by the strange, crazy Muslim in these people’s languages.

ADAM HARVEY: Social media commentator Tommy Tudehope says it’s easier these days to join far right groups.

TOMMY TUDEHOPE: You know for something that’s unpopular or something that can be embarrassing or if you don’t want to be publicly seen to be backing a far right cause, jumping on the internet and a few clicks supporting such a movement gives you that anonymity and gives you that right to support that thing which you may previously not have had.

ADAM HARVEY: But Tommy Tudehope says it’s important not to confuse online support with actual feet on the ground and that’s as true for the far right, as it is for far left groups like the Occupy protesters.

TOMMY TUDEHOPE: And I think there needs to be a far more considered approach in measuring how effective or how actually authentic these movements are. Now the Occupy Sydney movement, they may have cultivated some online presence but there’s very few of them in the street.

ADAM HARVEY: He says Australians aren’t as likely to be drawn to the fringe.

TOMMY TUDEHOPE: People are less likely to subscribe to an extreme movement regardless of its belief system simply because of the fact they think, well you know if I’m going to make a difference, I’m going to have to vote anyway so I might as well do it at the ballot box every couple of years.

But you know in terms of extreme movements, we have a very stable democracy and both parties are you know relatively vibrant in their membership and offer relative ease in terms of joining.

So I don’t think there’s too much of a cause for any sort of extreme movements to pop up.

MARK COLVIN: Social media commentator Tommy Tudehope ending that report from Adam Harvey.

The recent release of the e-book On Utoya about the Norway massacre and Right racism continues to generate necessary discussion about the highly political act of murdering dozens of Left activists. My chapter is about Israel and the far Right.

This morning I was interviewed on ABC Radio National’s The Book Show alongside Overland editor Jeff Sparrow on the reasons behind the book – not least challenging the mainstreaming of anti-Muslim hate – and the rise of e-books in general:

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There’s so much blather in the mainstream press about the Gilad Shalit deal this week. Mostly written by the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

I was invited onto current affairs show The Wire yesterday to offer a different perspective and argue that the press humanises one man, Shalit, while Arabs are largely invisible and faceless:

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The ongoing blind establishment embrace of Israel and condemnation of BDS as akin to Nazi Germany shows no sign of abating in Australia.

Yesterday’s ABC Radio National Breakfast featured a story on the issue and included a brief interview with me explaining the growing alliances between the fascist right and Israel; a mutual hatred of Islam is joining these forces.

Note the comments by Zionist lobbyist Danny Lamm, President of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, who denies there is even an occupation of Palestinian lands and demands Palestinians be grateful for Israel bringing universities to the occupied Arabs. Such is warped Zionist “logic”:

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Debate around Palestinian statehood is becoming increasingly polarised, but necessarily so. While Israel continues to build illegal settlements in the West Bank, a two-state solution is dead and buried. That only leaves eternal apartheid or a one-state solution, my favoured option, a truly democratic state.

Last week I was extensively interviewed by ABC radio on these very subjects:

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I appeared last night on ABCTV News24′s The Drum (video here).

The Federal government is introducing its carbon tax legislation into the parliament and yet I argued it’s legitimate to ask why so many polluters are receiving such concessions. It’s an attempted political fix that hasn’t convinced many Australians. Simply put, many people are skeptical about the tax and even the science. That’s because hysteria has too often been associated with the debate over global warming. Climate change is clearly happening (hello Arctic!) but real leadership involves convincing the masses that reform is both necessary and vital to saving the environment. Personally, I remain far from convinced that the very weak carbon tax on offer will really make any difference to climate change.

The asylum seeker question continues to haunt both major sides of politics and Australia remains mired in a debate that sees politicians looking to be tough on the “people smuggler’s business model”. Human rights be damned. Off-shore processing is a sneaky way to take the “problem” somewhere else, causing untold mental misery. What Australia needs, without privatising the system with Serco, is to manage the relatively small refugee flow with speed and fairness.

Finally, the announcement of a media inquiry is welcome but it appears the main issue will be absent; an investigation into ownership and power of the moguls. It’s unsurprising that the Labor government is scared to seriously tackle the Murdoch thugocracy in Australia – why should one family control 70% of our print media? – but tickling around the edges may achieve window-dressing at best. A real democracy would want to encourage more diverse voices in our media landscape. That country isn’t Australia.

I was interviewed this week by 2SER’s The Wire on why boycotting Israel is a legitimate tactic in the face of Zionist occupation and calling these actions anti-Semitic, as many in the political and media elites do, simply demeans the word’s real meaning.

The debate around Israel/Palestine in Australia has descended into calling critics (and backers of BDS) Nazis. Yes, that dignified. And the Zionist establishment is leading the charge, completely undermining its argument that the memory of the Holocaust should be holy. For them, Israel must be protected no matter what, even if dead Jews must be used as fodder.

I was interviewed last week on Press TV about this issue, discussing the apparent attempts to criminalise the legitimate civil call for boycotts against occupying Israel.

I recently wrote about progressive unions in Australia being pressured by the Zionist lobby, conservative politicians and elements within the Labor Party to stop supporting Palestine.

I was interviewed on Sydney 2SER radio’s AidWorks program about this issue and why BDS so scares Israel firsters opposed to Palestinian rights. The segment starts around 16.38:

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I appeared on ABCTV News 24′s The Drum last night (video here) talking refugees and the mass killings in Norway.

I argued that the Australian government’s refugee swap deal with Malaysia was nothing more than an attempted political fix to allow Julia Gillard to say she’s stopped the boats. But the human rights conditions in Malaysia are notorious and how will Australia really be able to monitor the hundreds of asylum seekers living in the community there?

More importantly, why has Malaysia become the latest example of a colonised land, Australia, dumping our problems in another country? There’s no reason we can’t process the relatively small number of refugees here coming to our shores in a timely and humane way. But that wouldn’t be “tough” enough to please the baying wolves.

After the massacre in Norway, and the clear racist rantings of the killer, I said it was vital that we understood that positions once on the fringes are now in the mainstream; attacks on Islam and multiculturalism, praise of ethically-pure Israel and a perceived moral and cultural battle for the soul of Europe and the West. Muslims are the enemy, demonised constantly as the problem for a happy society.

The killer Anders Behring Breivik imagined a Christian fundamentalist future and his imagery and thoughts were reminiscent of many prominent right-wing commentators today. Such views have seeped into the American political mainstream, too.

I argued that increasing numbers of citizens globally were feeling isolated economically, spurred to blame the “elites” for this alienation (though the media putting this point is clearly part of the elite itself) and we had a responsibility to better explain why multiculturalism and racial diversity was the best medicine for improved democracy.

I was interviewed last week by a progressive Portland radio station, 620KPOJ, on the Murdoch phone hacking scandal and the empire’s pernicious effect on democracy (interview begins around 21 minutes):

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The struggle for democracy in Syria has continued for most of this year. The media has been largely locked out of the country, so independent reporting has been very difficult (though local bloggers have remained essential).

Al Jazeera’s Listening Post discusses the crackdown and I was asked to comment (my last appearance on the show was in February on the Egyptian revolution). My comment is at 9.26: