There are growing calls for author Gavin McInnes to be denied entry into Australia ahead of his planned speaking tour.
McInnes, who was a co-founder of Vice, magazine has become a prominent speaker of the alt-right movement and has founded a group called Proud Boys.
The group is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Centre. The group only allows male members and say they are against the ‘victim mentality’ of women and other marginalised groups. Members are initiated through a series of fights and must make a pledge to eschew masturbation and pornography and instead go out and meet women.
Shadow Immigration Minister Shayne Neumann has written to Immigration Minister David Coleman urging him to use his discretionary powers to refuse McInnes access as he poses a “significant risk” to the Australian community.
“Proud Boys” is a far-right organisation which admits only men as members and promotes political violence,” the letter reads.
“Gavin McInnes has repeatedly and publicly advocated for violence against women and has pledged to “assassinate” his enemies. Both this individual, and the group he represents, were suspended from Twitter in August for violating the social media platform’s policy prohibiting violent extremist groups.” Neumann said in his letter.
A spokesperson for the Department of Immigration told triple j’s Hack program that while they could not comment on an individual case, there were provisions in the immigration act to reject people who had a substantial criminal record or posed a threat to Australian society.
McInnes has previously written that people should be free to use offensive terms like “faggot” because only the person saying the word can know the true meaning of the context they are presenting it in.
He has also said that most gay people are more interested in furniture than politics but a small number of gay activists were obsessed with changing the world, and also described intersex people as “freaks”.
A petition at change.org that calls on the government to refuse McInnes entry to Australia has attracted close to 5,000 signatures.
Photo by Steven Crowder, CC BY 3.0, Link
