The Review - The Tale of Jack and Jim

November 2002

The Tale of Jack and Jim
Infamous Aussie racists back in business

By Matthew Collins

The August issue of the Review’s Lunar column dealt with the supporters of one Jack Van Tongeren, at the time the incarcerated former leader of the Australian National Movement (ANM). Later that month, Mr Tongeren left WA’s Karnet Prison Farm as unrepentant as when he was sent there in 1990 for terrorising, via waves of fire bombings and burglaries, Perth’s Asian community throughout the late eighties.

Halcyon Days: Jack Van Tongeren before his arrest in 1989

Van Tongeren was initially a leading light in the Sydney based National Action (NA) neo-Nazi group in the early eighties. As with every almost other member that NA has ever had, Jack quit and went off to form his own organisation, believing NA were being soft on Jews, and not Nazi enough to lead the rebirth of the supreme Aryan being. Despite what followed, some in National Action, those with "radical" beliefs, felt in turn that Van Tongeren had been a little soft on the Asian question. Jack’s parents had previously disowned him, not surprisingly as it turned out, given his Asian ancestry.

Throughout the 1980s, while both National Action and ANM were breaking windows and spraying walls with catchy slogans, both organisations were closely scrutinised and monitored by the authorities. From the top to the very shallow bottom, members were arrested and imprisoned for fire bombings, shootings, even murder, while with their otherwise spare time, they battered and attacked each other.

Jack’s biggest nemesis throughout the eighties, and the ANM continues to bait him today, is James Saleam, former leader and founder of National Action. For constantly and casually reminding everyone of Van Tongeren’s Asian heritage, Saleam is labelled a "Sand Nigger" by the ANM, due to his own, some-say Turkish, some-say Lebanese, background. Certainly the two could not stand further apart in the political wilderness. While Van Tongeren saw a future for Australian neo-Nazism in building a broad-base with the Conservative right, Saleam has continued to waste his political life dreaming of Eureka style insurrection, inspired by Maoist and other obscure revolutionary thinkers. What the two do share, other than their long list of criminal convictions, is an empty and dying grip on the minds of what is left of the traditional Australian fascist movement.

Van Tongeren’s ANM is little more now than a fan club for the fifty-three year old. It produces low grade and low maintenance material on the internet, where a large type face is used to fill the blank pages. Even for Nazis, their material is worse than inept. Pointless, childish and heavy on jingoism, of course, but also high in back-biting, racism, conspiracy theories (dreamt up by Jack while in his prison cell,) as well as illiterate.

As part of the "White Pride Coalition" of Australia, the ANM has lost its website on Freeserve and moved to a US internet provider as Van Tongeren once more prepares to launch himself into a bitter campaign against the tolerant majority. Writing soon after his release, Van Tongeren launched an appeal for the $500,000 he feels the ANM needs to relaunch itself back onto the political landscape. The likelihood of this eventuating, other than by his tried and tested methods of robbery and violence is of course, zero. The ANM and their fellow coalitionists’ who believe Jack can lead them towards glory or at least a sizeable entity, are hopelessly out of touch with political reality on the far-right, not just in Australia, but also overseas. Van Tongeren’s former deputy in ANM, Peter Coleman, turned up two years ago in a Sydney garage wearing a white sheet over his head claiming he was the Grand Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan. That was shortly after he was asked to leave One Nation.

One Nation represented the biggest opportunity for the political misfits of the far-right, and was perfect for Van Tongeren’s supporters. A right of centre/racially conservative party similar to Britain’s formerly successful early National Front. ON was the perfect launching ground for the likes of Coleman to cut their political teeth among the small-time "elite," and similarly to the NF, seen as a perfect organisation on which they could attempt to divert conservative dissatisfaction toward Nazism. One Nation will not be coming back, but Van Tongeren’s magic figure of $500,000 is only two thousand dollars short of the magic figure Ms Hanson attempted to defraud the Queensland Electoral Commission of. Perhaps there have been some lessons learnt, politically.

Saleam and National Action have generally, though not thoroughly, rejected the ballot box and instead favoured the "cadre" system. Saleam has been busy writing of late, and on his own website publishes his own general musings about the state of the far-right, even offering us his doctoral thesis in which most of the sources quoted are his own.

National Action's Jin Saleam in the late 1980s

While the ANM live in a world of distant dream fantasies and conspiracies, Saleam has attempted to rewrite the entire history of his political life to the detriment of almost any member or activist he has ever had contact with. Instead of the standard far-right conspiracy theory, Saleam has opted for the paranoia approach, by which time you think the good Doctor is possibly the only person in Australia not working for ASIO. Reading much of Saleam’s "Nationalist Archive" you see a continuous attempt by Saleam to excuse himself of his long standing criminality and claim that time after time he was framed for his political beliefs. Interestingly, Saleam also believes that Van Tongeren was framed, but also that all neo-Nazis are working for the state.

Now seemingly an independent "authoritative" figure on much of the mess he created, Saleam has been keeping himself busy in of all places, Young, near Canberra on behalf of the tiny Australia First Party, which also has a tiny, previous link to One Nation. Despite having set himself up as the God Father of National Action, the skinheads and bovver boys now led by Michael Brander have little nice to say about him. The minuscule remnants of that organisation are more interested in causing trouble outside of school gates in Melbourne and Adelaide. Another implosion is set for them, very soon.

Saleam’s work in clarifying his position in over twenty years of fascist politics, denying any intentional or deliberate criminality, coupled with his sudden appearance in the AFP may see him finally re- launch his career, particularly if he can line up against ANM or the conservative right.

Whatever happens, no amount of money will bring electoral or any other kind of success for the ANM. However the ANM have a propensity for violence and intimidation that does not appear to have waned in Van Tongeren’s absence. While before on these pages we have discussed the attempted "browning" of the blackshirts by radicalising and intermingling with the extreme left, the re-emergence of both Saleam and Van Tongeren means that all sections of the community must continue to be aware and mindful that poison spreads. The tried and tested way by European fascists’, to secure funding for their "browning" is the solarium of petro-dollars. Throughout the eighties, "revolutionary" factions in Britain, France and Italy all attempted to and secured some form of funding from the Libyan regime. While the US were bombing Tripoli in response to that country’s support of terrorism, thousands of copies of Colonel Gaddafi’s Green Book were shipped to various "anti-Imperialist, anti-Israeli" movements, from the hard-left to the hard-right. Britain’s current leader of the BNP was himself entertained in Libya as he attempted to secure funding from Gadaffi in a trip organised for him by Brisbane White Supremacist Robert Pash.

The Federal Labor party’s setback at the hands of the Greens, in the recent Cunningham by-election, will have further increased the sense of urgency felt by Saleam and others attempting to forge a "new" right. Saleam recently joined other hopefuls’ including the NSW treasurer of One Nation and the ANM’s Wayne Van Blitterswyk, in a discussion forum attended by Dr Saad Al Samarai, the Iraqi Charge D’Affaires to Australia. Along with the fringe left, many at the conference perceive the war on terror as part of a conspiracy by the New World Order. The September conference swapped the "oil" conspiracy for "Zionist (Jewish)" conspiracies, attracting the full range of gun-nuts and conspiracy theorists, as well as a former executive member of Germany’s hardline NPD. The German NPD even attempted to send shaven-headed mercenaries to Iraq in 1990 to fight against the "ZOG controlled" allied forces during the Gulf War. How serious a push this is and how strong an alliance between the odd-ball mixture can be maintained is debatable in the wake of the Bali bombing;

The traditional right has just lately been overly keen on anti-Islam jingoism. There is already a considerable attempt by both the left and the far right to accuse Israel of masterminding the Bali bombs. (See the far left Sydney Independent Media 21/10 "Israel manufactured the C4 explosives") Never would there have been a more uncomfortable time to become populist at the expense of mein enemy’s enemy, but according to Saleam and others, never has there been a greater need for it.