On the evening of January 24 some antifascists reworked a racist mural in Newtown, on a property owned by Sergio Redegalli on the stolen land of the Gadigal people. For the past 4 years he’s been continually repainting islamaphobic statements on his walls which have been vandalised at least a couple hundred times. Despite his expensive security precautions, including numerous CCTV cameras, and motion sensor floodlights, (like many potential targets) it remains easy to attack.
He had only repainted the mural a couple days previously, and the new mural said “STOP MULTICULTURALISM”, calling it a “Petri dish that islam exploits”. We covered the words in red paint then sprayed:
BASH THE FASH
FUCK RACIST SCUM
On his other wall he has painted “FREE SPEECH”, which is ironic considering that his racist speech is protected by law while the ability of others to project their speech onto these walls is criminalised.
Our action (while part of a larger resistance to Australian nationalism around invasion day) was in direct response to a protest Sergio attended earlier that day against ‘muslim rapists’ along Victoria Rd in Rozelle. That gathering was organised by Sergio’s best buddy, Nick Hunter Folkes, fuehrer of the tiny ‘Party For Freedom’ sect (a recent split from the tiny ‘Australian Protectionist Party). A measly 7 fascists showed up carrying more racist signs than racists to hold them.
We cannot allow these fascist to publicly spread their xenophobia without consequence. For now these groups are tiny, but as racist ideas are fairly widespread in this country, these sects have the potential to grow if they’re not aggressively opposed.
The 7 nationalists held a banner reading ‘AUSSIE WOMEN ARE NOT HALAL MEAT’ and brought along signs saying things such as ‘STOP RAPE JIHAD.’ Their protest was apparently in response to media reports that a man of Iranian decent was recently charged with sexually assaulting a young woman at the Anzac bridge. By calling this protest they attempt to racialise perceptions of violence toward women, and make invisible the violence women suffer at the hands of men generally. They consciously play up the old racist and sexist anxiety amongst some white males of the imagined pure white woman being desecrated by a man of colour.
Merely looking through the webpage of the Party one finds loads of sexist and misogynistic content, with numerous demeaning and sexualised cartoons of former PM Julia Gillard, Greens Senator Sarah Hanson Young and numerous other women. Sergio himself gave an interview in 2012 in which he claimed to have been oppressed throughout his life by “man-hating lesbians”.
This fascist party obviously couldn’t give a fuck about patriarchy or rape culture in general. They will not demonstrate on Invasion day about the countless aboriginal girls and women abducted and raped by colonists throughout the brutal conquest of this land. The party and Sergio in particular, openly and aggressively demonise Muslim women who chose to wear any form of Islamic dress, campaigning for them to be criminalised. They help create and encourage a climate for sexist, racist violence against Muslim women, in Sydney alone there have been numerous reports of Muslim women in Islamic dress being abused, spat on and assaulted with their headwear torn off by racist white males.
While denouncing multiculturalism and comparing it to a ‘petri dish’ or ‘failed experiment’ they ignore and try to whitewash the real multiculturalism of the Aboriginal societies before invasion 226 years ago. Prior to the colonial genocide this land mass consisted of more than 200 district languages and coexisting national cultures.
This fascist party is attempting to hold an ‘African Crime Forum’ in a week, on the 6th of February at 'Humanist House' (10 Shepherd St Chippendale) from 6.30pm. We encourage people to contact the 'humanist' group and discourage them from allowing this fascist event from taking place. If the humanists allows it to continue we suggest an anti racist blockade of the venue from 6pm onwards. We suggest people bring antifascist banners, leaflets, and instruments for making a large amount of noise, so if police successfully escort the racists inside, at least we can drown them out with some beats of our own.
White Australia has a black history
Fuck patriarchy and Aussie pride
Lets drive the racists off our streets
