Hanson: neo-Nazis' 'Joan of Arc'
By Norm Dixon
"If I said, 'Joan of Arc', you'd think immediately of an inspired, young patriotic girl, rising from peasantry, leading her people gloriously into battle. If I said, 'Pauline Hanson', you'd probably say 'Who?'. But soon you'll think of Pauline Hanson just as you think of Joan of Arc." No, this is not from a script posted on the Full Frontal web page. It comes straight from the pro-Nazi American Nationalist Movement, Cross-star.
Pauline Hanson has become something of a pop star for the international neo-Nazi movement. They find her views appealing, even exciting. In an article entitled "From Fed-up to Freedom Fighter", ANM fuehrer Richard Barret gushes, "Pauline Hanson vows to exile non-whites from Australia and to prevent non-whites from further flooding her country. A female David Duke, of sorts, she has exceeded every expectation and confounded every poll as she wins battle after battle ...
"Pauline Hanson is known as the 'Fish and Chips Lady'. She acquired a reputation for being 'racist' — reminiscent of Lester Maddox who refused to let Negroes into his famous Pickwick Restaurant during the sixties — for persistently objecting to money being spent on Aboriginals (those are the Negroes of Australia). She kept insisting that Orientals be stopped and sent back (like our Mexicans) ... So popular and effective is Pauline Hanson, that the Left has changed tactics from trying to ridicule her to trying to have her killed by anarchist assassins."
Hanson has joined Duke and Maddox in Cross-star's racist pantheon. Lester Maddox violently — with a pick handle — prevented African-Americans entering his cafe and was elected governor of Georgia.
David Duke is the former Ku Klux Klan leader who swapped his bed sheet for a business suit to run for governor of Louisiana as a "white nationalist" Republican. Duke currently has his sights on a seat in the US Senate. A quick look at Duke's web page proves the only difference between a "white nationalist" and a klansman is the sheet.
The ANM would not dispute this. Cross-star proclaims, "... anti-nationalists call patriots white supremacists, racists, neo-Nazis, bigots, white separatists and haters. Some say militiamen, klansmen, segregationists, the New Right or white nationalists. Nationalists are, simply, real Americans, speaking for the American people, advancing the American Way of Life and fighting for the American Nation.
"What do Nationalists want? Freedom from non-Americans: Wetbacks, boat people and aliens who crash our borders, trash our way of life and treat us as a big grab-bag, including domestic incompatible minorities and defectives incapable of citizenship. Freedom from anti-Americans: Enemies of the nation who give aid and comfort to America's foes or who seek to overthrow the American Nation, such as communists, communist-sympathisers, cultists, traitors and other subversives. Freedom from un-Americans: Egregiously anti-social elements, riot-prone minorities, dastardly criminals, homosexuals, drug-dealers and perverts."
Little wonder that Hanson's racist outpourings crop up in no less than five editions since December of the ANM's monthly journal, All the Way. Hanson's "inspiring" maiden speech even makes it into Cross-star's "Nationalist Oratory" section, which is no mean achievement since the only other "oratory" is by none other than Fuehrer Barrett.
You can almost feel his thrill as Barrett breathlessly describes Hanson's infamous speech to his bed-sheeted, goose-stepping followers: "A freedom-fighter to the core, Pauline Hanson stood before the lawmakers, the whole world and all of history, uttering these gallant words of liberty, democracy and national salvation: 'If I can invite whom I want into my home, I should have the right to say who comes into my country'." (Yes, I did double-check that it was not the Full Frontal site!)
Incidentally, our Pauline is not the only Australian "nationalist" to be praised in Cross-star. Former Labor, now Australia First, MP Graeme Campbell gets a guernsey too, also being likened to the ubiquitous Lester Maddox.
Hanson also features in Stormfront, a US neo-Nazi web page that makes Cross-star look like it is run by hippies. Stormfront's Aryan News Agency disseminates bulletins to far-right and neo-fascist groups throughout the world. Its links page is a who's who of the world's neo-Nazis, racist skinheads, "white nationalists", Holocaust deniers and assorted other psychotics. Hanson's ravings figure prominently in its "news" dispatches.
According to Nazi-watcher David Greason, Stormfront "is edited by Don Black, a former lieutenant to one-time Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard turned Republican David Duke. Between 1982 and 1985, Black served a three-year federal prison term in Texas for conspiring to overthrow the government of Dominica." Articles by Duke are a feature of Stormfront.