Avi Yemini | |
---|---|
Born | Avraham Shalom Waks
[1] 17 October 1985 |
Nationality | Australian, Israeli |
Citizenship | |
Education | Yeshivah College, Melbourne [1] |
Occupations |
|
Employer | Rebel News (since 2020) |
Political party | Liberty Alliance (2018–2019) [1] [3] |
Military career | |
Allegiance | Israel |
Service/ | Israel Defense Forces |
Years of service | 2004–2007 |
Unit | Golani Brigade |
Part of a series on |
Far-right politics in Australia |
---|
Avraham Shalom Yemini ( né Waks; born 17 October 1985) [4] [5] [6] is an Australian-Israeli far-right political activist. [7] [8] [9] [10] From 2020 onwards he has worked for Canadian far-right website Rebel News [11] and is currently their Australian Bureau Chief. [2]
Yemini was born in Melbourne Victoria to Zephaniah (formerly Stephen) and Hava Waks, [12] and grew up in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda East. [1] He is one of seventeen children. [1] One of his elder siblings is Manny Waks. [6]
Yemini served with the Golani Brigade in the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) from 2005 until 2008. Most of his active duty was spent along the border of the Gaza Strip. [2] [13]
After returning to Australia, Yemini opened his first IDF gym in Caulfield, Victoria followed by a second in Melbourne's CBD in 2016. [14] [15] In 2018, the gyms were sold to a private buyer.
One of his brothers, Manny Waks, sued Yemini for defamation following claims by Yemini that Waks and their father were harbouring a known paedophile in the family home. [16]
On 4 March 2018, Yemini joined the Australian Liberty Alliance to run as a candidate for the Southern Metropolitan Region at the 2018 Victorian state election. [17] He was unsuccessful, receiving 0.49% of the vote. [18] Through the party and his collaboration with Tommy Robinson and Rebel News, he has been affiliated with the counter-jihad movement. [19] He has described himself as "proudly anti-Islam", Islam as a "barbaric ideology", and Muslim countries as "Islamic shitholes". [20]
In July 2019, Yemini admitted he threw a chopping board that hit his former wife on her forehead. He also pleaded guilty to using a carriage service to harass by sending abusive text messages to her, and one charge of breaching an intervention order relating to a video of a man. Yemini's lawyer argued he did not mean to hit her. [21]
In 2021, Yemini took legal action against three Victorian parliamentary officials − including former Legislative Assembly speaker Colin Brooks − after he was denied media accreditation in July of that year. [22] Yemini subsequently lost the case. [23]
In 2023 he sued Facebook fact-checkers RMIT for labeling Rebel News content as "misleading". The case was dismissed as he had "failed to make any formal inquiries via appropriate channels with relevant persons". [24] [10]
In 2015, he established Rebel Media, a far-right outlet that regularly features global and domestic "stars" of the nationalist movement.
Far-right Twitter accounts come and go, often generating significant traction without any obvious relation to organised movements. As a stage of his reinvention of self after the EDL, its leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon ('Tommy Robinson') reinvented himself as a journalist, working for the Canadian far-right media company Rebel Media.
The Rebel Media, a far-right news organization, published articles by Canadian alt-right propagandists such as: "Want to sop cultural Marxist indoctrination? Cut public funding of universities" (Nicholas 2017); "Social justice is socialism in disguise" (Goldy 2016); and "How progressives use our kids for Marxist social experiments" (Goldy 2017).
Far-right Canadian media outlets, for instance, have bombarded its subscribers with all kinds of pro-Trump, racist and xenophobic dialogue, both before and after Trump's victory. Rebel Media, a popular far-right online media platform run by Ezra Levant, a controversial Canadian far-right political activist, writer and broadcaster, has been an outright supporter of Trump, publishing countless extreme-right leaning articles on why to support him.
Beyond US-based far-right news websites such as Breitbart, Infowars and Epoch Times, other alternative online media outlets include Australia-based XYZ and The Unshackled, Canada-based Rebel News and UK-based Politicalite.com and PoliticalUK.co.uk, just to name a few, which operate as far-right metapolitical channels and counter-publics that strive to influence mainstream culture and discourse (Holt, 2019).
All four, including Robinson himself, were employees of The Rebel Media, a Toronto-based far-right website.
Jack Posobiec, a journalist with the far-right news outlet The Rebel, was the first to use the hashtag with a link to the hacked documents online, which was then shared more widely by WikiLeaks.
With politicians including Conservative heavyweights Andrew Scheer and Brian Jean swearing off appearances and a raft of exits by prominent contributors, Ezra Levant's far-right video and commentary network The Rebel spent the last week in damage control, trying to distance itself from the extremist alt-right movement whose values many have alleged the site's content too often sympathized with.
Avi Yemini | |
---|---|
Born | Avraham Shalom Waks
[1] 17 October 1985 |
Nationality | Australian, Israeli |
Citizenship | |
Education | Yeshivah College, Melbourne [1] |
Occupations |
|
Employer | Rebel News (since 2020) |
Political party | Liberty Alliance (2018–2019) [1] [3] |
Military career | |
Allegiance | Israel |
Service/ | Israel Defense Forces |
Years of service | 2004–2007 |
Unit | Golani Brigade |
Part of a series on |
Far-right politics in Australia |
---|
Avraham Shalom Yemini ( né Waks; born 17 October 1985) [4] [5] [6] is an Australian-Israeli far-right political activist. [7] [8] [9] [10] From 2020 onwards he has worked for Canadian far-right website Rebel News [11] and is currently their Australian Bureau Chief. [2]
Yemini was born in Melbourne Victoria to Zephaniah (formerly Stephen) and Hava Waks, [12] and grew up in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda East. [1] He is one of seventeen children. [1] One of his elder siblings is Manny Waks. [6]
Yemini served with the Golani Brigade in the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) from 2005 until 2008. Most of his active duty was spent along the border of the Gaza Strip. [2] [13]
After returning to Australia, Yemini opened his first IDF gym in Caulfield, Victoria followed by a second in Melbourne's CBD in 2016. [14] [15] In 2018, the gyms were sold to a private buyer.
One of his brothers, Manny Waks, sued Yemini for defamation following claims by Yemini that Waks and their father were harbouring a known paedophile in the family home. [16]
On 4 March 2018, Yemini joined the Australian Liberty Alliance to run as a candidate for the Southern Metropolitan Region at the 2018 Victorian state election. [17] He was unsuccessful, receiving 0.49% of the vote. [18] Through the party and his collaboration with Tommy Robinson and Rebel News, he has been affiliated with the counter-jihad movement. [19] He has described himself as "proudly anti-Islam", Islam as a "barbaric ideology", and Muslim countries as "Islamic shitholes". [20]
In July 2019, Yemini admitted he threw a chopping board that hit his former wife on her forehead. He also pleaded guilty to using a carriage service to harass by sending abusive text messages to her, and one charge of breaching an intervention order relating to a video of a man. Yemini's lawyer argued he did not mean to hit her. [21]
In 2021, Yemini took legal action against three Victorian parliamentary officials − including former Legislative Assembly speaker Colin Brooks − after he was denied media accreditation in July of that year. [22] Yemini subsequently lost the case. [23]
In 2023 he sued Facebook fact-checkers RMIT for labeling Rebel News content as "misleading". The case was dismissed as he had "failed to make any formal inquiries via appropriate channels with relevant persons". [24] [10]
In 2015, he established Rebel Media, a far-right outlet that regularly features global and domestic "stars" of the nationalist movement.
Far-right Twitter accounts come and go, often generating significant traction without any obvious relation to organised movements. As a stage of his reinvention of self after the EDL, its leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon ('Tommy Robinson') reinvented himself as a journalist, working for the Canadian far-right media company Rebel Media.
The Rebel Media, a far-right news organization, published articles by Canadian alt-right propagandists such as: "Want to sop cultural Marxist indoctrination? Cut public funding of universities" (Nicholas 2017); "Social justice is socialism in disguise" (Goldy 2016); and "How progressives use our kids for Marxist social experiments" (Goldy 2017).
Far-right Canadian media outlets, for instance, have bombarded its subscribers with all kinds of pro-Trump, racist and xenophobic dialogue, both before and after Trump's victory. Rebel Media, a popular far-right online media platform run by Ezra Levant, a controversial Canadian far-right political activist, writer and broadcaster, has been an outright supporter of Trump, publishing countless extreme-right leaning articles on why to support him.
Beyond US-based far-right news websites such as Breitbart, Infowars and Epoch Times, other alternative online media outlets include Australia-based XYZ and The Unshackled, Canada-based Rebel News and UK-based Politicalite.com and PoliticalUK.co.uk, just to name a few, which operate as far-right metapolitical channels and counter-publics that strive to influence mainstream culture and discourse (Holt, 2019).
All four, including Robinson himself, were employees of The Rebel Media, a Toronto-based far-right website.
Jack Posobiec, a journalist with the far-right news outlet The Rebel, was the first to use the hashtag with a link to the hacked documents online, which was then shared more widely by WikiLeaks.
With politicians including Conservative heavyweights Andrew Scheer and Brian Jean swearing off appearances and a raft of exits by prominent contributors, Ezra Levant's far-right video and commentary network The Rebel spent the last week in damage control, trying to distance itself from the extremist alt-right movement whose values many have alleged the site's content too often sympathized with.