A Queensland tradie has emerged as the sole corporate sponsor of one of the world’s most popular neo-Nazi websites, drawing condemnation from a Jewish civil rights organisation.
Simon John Hickey, a Brisbane electrician and airconditioner installer whose business logo appears to feature Pepe the Frog, a meme that has become popular with the alt-right, wearing an SS uniform and standing in front of Auschwitz, wouldn’t answer questions posed by Fairfax Media.
He instead emailed through comments criticising the “Lame Stream Media Fake News” and referencing Donald Trump’s claim the media was the “enemy of the American people”.
Anti-Defamation Commission chairman Dvir Abramovich described the logo as “one of the ugliest and most disturbing” things he’d ever seen and slammed Mr Hickey’s support for the prominent Daily Stormer website.
Andrew Anglin of the Daily Stormer, described by America’s Southern Poverty Law Center and many others as a neo-Nazi site, claimed to have engaged Mr Hickey’s company, Smerff Electrical, as a corporate sponsor on February 3.
The Daily Stormer features sections including “Jewish Problem” and “Race War”, regularly uses racist slurs and Mr Anglin has identified as a Nazi.
It has recently featured articles headlined “Jews Destroy Another One of Their Own Graveyards to Blame Trump”, “Milk: The New Frontier of White Supremacy” and “Trump Refuses Invitation to Faggot-Jew Fake News Dinner Party”.
Mr Anglin didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Dr Abramovich said he wondered how Mr Hickey’s customers would react if they knew that he was supporting such a “dark, perverse and extremist ideology”.
“This is wrong on so many counts and makes me sick,” he said, in a statement.
“We are deeply shocked to see such a public and unabashed display of hatred in our midst. There is nothing funny or amusing about this racist and abhorrent image of Pepe the Frog as a SS soldier in the Auschwitz death camps where nearly 1.5 million people were murdered and gassed.
Read the full article by Jorge Branco at The Brisbane Times.