Peace Be Upon You, with John Safran

Welcome to Aussie writer, satirist and pan-media idiot skewerer John Safran’s new blog column, in which he puts your racial, religious and ethical quandaries to rest.

*pre-emptive NB: You should know that, in Australia, the word "wog" is used as a pejorative to refer to people from the Mediterranean. It is also not as pejorative as the English pejorative, having been de-offensivised and reclaimed in-part by real life "wogs" with Mediterranean ancestry. I've starred each mention of the word in this article because I know there's a small chance you're an idiot who won't read this first and just jump in the comments to shout about how this article is racist.

Dear John,
I am Greek. Can I turn up to the white nationalist Hammered music festival in Brisbane next month?
- Chris, Brisbane QLD

Dear Chris,

I’ve hung out with a rainbow spectrum of pro-white groups (filming documentaries, not lynching blacks, I hasten to add). Last year, I drank Swiss coffee in the Mississippi woods with an alumnus of the 1960s Ku Klux Klan. Spend time with white nationalists and you soon see there is all sorts of in-house head-butting and head-scratching over who is white and who is not.

Jared Taylor heads the pro-white organisation American Renaissance. He says “Jews look white to me.” Alas, Jews don’t look white to former Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon David Duke, a speaker at a 2006 American Renaissance conference. A race war broke out between those who think the Jews are all white and those who don’t.

During Australia’s 2005 Cronulla riots, shirtless boys circled not a brawl, but a debate. A Croatian had turned up to fight. He thought he was one of the whites. He’d come to punch up some Lebanese. But the ‘whites’ thought that, as a Croatian, he was a wog*, which is pretty much the same as a Lebanese. The Croatian couldn’t believe it. He looked really hurt.

The tangle for pro-white Aussies is this: For the global white nationalist movement, Greek culture is seen as the cradle of white civilisation. It’s what the movement uses to argue its case.

"Look at that marble Parthenon built 438 BC!" they say. "Compare it to the shithole huts the Africans came up with! And what about the philosophers, the statues, the art? Doesn’t it say it all about the races?"

However in Australia, Greeks were the non-whites, the wogs*, the thick eyebrow’d folks who floated over in boats after World War II.

Italians, the Spanish (ie people from Spain, not Hispanics) and Serbs are also often seen as master races by white nationalists across the globe, but as wogs* by racists Down Under.

So, if the Greeks were non-white (to Aussies) in 1945, are they still non-white now? Too non-white to turn up to Hammered, the Nazi Glastonbury run by racist, straight edge guys the Southern Cross Hammerskins?

The organisers won’t return my calls or emails, and they're not responding to any other media, either. But there’s this: A guy named Dr James Saleam runs the white nationalist group, Australia First Party. He was thrown in jail for orchestrating a shotgun attack on an African National Congress representative in Australia.

Jim is Greek.

But it gets better. There are rumours that Jim’s faking he’s Greek to cover up his true lineage – Lebanese. (The Sydney Morning Herald and the anti-fascist blog slackbastard.anarchobase.com have both floated this. In Arab-Australians Today, there’s also talk of a Lebanese/ Syrian Saleam slipping through immigration during the White Australia policy years).

So, if a Leb who, at the very least, is a Greek can run one of Australia’s premier white nationalist groups, I say a Greek can rock up to Hammered.

(I’ll have to save talk of the neo-Nazi hero Savitri Devi for another post. That woman’s story suggests that not only can a Greek turn up to a pro-white music festival, but that she can probably bring her black boyfriend along, too).

Follow John on Twitter: @JohnSafran