The following article is from The Aus­trali­an Jewish News was ori­gin­ally published on 2^nd March, 2018. The original article can be accessed here.

Neo-Nazi group’s assault

Peter Kohn
The Aus­trali­an Jewish News
March 2, 2018
A BARRAGE of anti-Semitic attacks has ravaged NSW and Victoria, with community leaders and MPs voicing concern over an upsurge in hatred and bigotry.
The attacks are believed to be a recruit­ment campaign by fanatical right-wing organ­isa­tion Anti­podean Res­ist­ance (AR), timed for the start of the school year, which has hit many targets.
The Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry (ECAJ) reported that in February, the group defaced 27 places with posters and stickers, including four high schools, nine uni­ver­sit­ies, and two MPs’ offices.
The Bega electoral office of Mike Kelly, Member for Eden-Monaro, was defaced by an AR flyer with the words, “Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, Degen­er­acy … Reject Jewish poison”, and featuring a racist illus­tra­tion and a swastika.
Melbourne Ports MP Michael Danby expressed the hope that NSW police would have CCTV footage of the incident at Kelly’s office and described AR as “totally alien to the Aus­trali­an tradition of a fair go”.
AR stickers were also spotted at bus stops and railway stations on the upper North Shore. David Citer, a Ku-ring-gai Coun­cil­lor, reported the incidents to the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies (JBOD) on February 13.
Two days later, anti-Semitic graffiti with despic­able wording was noticed outside The Rusty Rabbit cafeteria in Darlinghurst, which was also reported to JBOD.
“Anti­podean Res­ist­ance is a nasty fringe group whose website makes it clear that it does not accept ‘blacks, Asians, Jews or mixed abom­in­a­tions’ as members,” JBOD CEO Vic Alhadeff said. “There is zero tolerance for such bigotry.”
AR also postered several Victorian uni­ver­sit­ies, including LaTrobe Uni­ver­sity Bendigo and Victoria University’s Footscray Park campus last weekend, and at Bendigo South East College and a campus in Ballarat.
Victorian MPs raised alarms about AR flyers in Footscray, which stated, “The Jews are the whole world’s enemy … they are pure evil [and] poison us through vaccines, processed foods, med­ic­a­tions.”
The flyers, under invest­ig­a­tion by police, were condemned by Anti-Defam­a­tion Com­mis­sion chair Dvir Abramovich for their “venomous ideology”.
The Footscray attacks prompted Caulfield MP David Southwick to call on the Andrews gov­ern­ment to fully fund police to invest­ig­ate, catch and prosecute offenders.
Southwick said in Par­lia­ment it was not the first attack in Footscray. “These anti-Semitic attacks are unac­cept­able and those respons­ible should feel the full force of the law.”
Describ­ing the attacks as “vile and unac­cept­able”, Police Minister Lisa Neville acknow­ledged Southwick’s concerns and said she had also been approached by Footscray MP Marsha Thomson.
In Tasmania, the Launce­st­on electoral office of Aus­trali­an Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson was plastered with AR posters, pro­claim­ing, “raise the old swastika banner of fanatical res­ist­ance!”
Whish-Wilson told media that organ­isa­tions “are coming out of the shadows now because they are given political cover by debates in this country around things like immig­ra­tion”.
ECAJ research officer Julie Nathan reported the mem­ber­ship and geo­graph­ic base of AR has been steadily growing since the group was formed in Melbourne in 2016 and predicted poster and sticker attacks will continue to escalate.
She said AR’s real threat is “not in its vile and genocidal pro­pa­ganda, espe­cially against Jews and homo­sexu­als, or its targeting of innocent Aus­trali­an youth as recruits. The real danger is in its propensity for violence as seen in its pro­pa­ganda, its con­nec­tions overseas, and in the pub­lic­a­tions it promotes. All of these espouse violence, including murder and terrorism.”