Political victim or common thief?
Those of you who are following the Patriotic Youth League will already be aware that Stuart McBeth, one of the racist group’s organisers, was sacked recently. He had been working as a case officer for the Salvation Army and was warned about his behaviour, but when he failed to change his ways his employment was terminated. What exactly did he do?
On the PYL discussion boards, McBeth says, “I was sacked for being white the other day.” That’s nice rhetoric for a pro-apartheid activist, but hard to believe given the Salvation Army’s ethnic background.
Another post to those boards gives a clue:
As you may be aware I have recently lost my job. I will finish my degree full time now. This needed to happen as the detail in my course is becoming quite intense anyway.
To sustain operations I need to raise around $200.00 per month that was coming out of my own pocket. The more people that help out the cheaper it is for everyone. I will say a $10.00 per person donation per month is reasonable so I need 19 people as I will obviously donate.
While lost income would obviously make it difficult for McBeth to continue donating $200 to the PYL each month, it’s worth considering whether those contributions really were “out of my own pocket” or whether they were a perk of the job, so to speak. A comment left at Darp’s blog suggests that he “used the Salvos photocopier for PYL stuff,” and an email I received offers further details.
Apparently the first time McBeth was caught misusing the Salvation Army’s equipment was at the same time as the PYL poster campaign at Newcastle University (which shared a mailing address with the Australian branch of Volksfront, and coincided with racial violence). After he had run off some PYL material, he forgot to remove the originals, and they were discovered by somebody who used the machine later.
The Salvation Army has confirmed that it suspended McBeth last August, at the time of the Newcastle campaign. I can only speculate, but it seems likely that he was again caught stealing office supplies (possibly up to $200 worth per month) in order to promote the PYL’s latest campaign.
Here’s a hint, fellas.
If you’re going to lose your job to promote a rally, try to get more than a dozen people along to support you — or at least convince them to stay for longer than twenty minutes.
Note: I have posted this because some people have expressed concern that the Salvation Army would sack someone for their political beliefs, and McBeth accuses his employers of racism. I believe there is a public interest in discussing allegations of discrimination by charitable organisations.
I would not support termination if McBeth’s political beliefs did not impact on his work. However, the evidence suggests he was sacked for misconduct, after being given a second chance. If he wishes to dispute anything I have written, McBeth should feel free to contact me and I will post his version.
They sacked him because he was white. Riiight. Those Christian charities sure hate the anglos, don’t they?
Try ‘they sacked me because I’m a Nazi’, Stu.
OT:
Rob, Im in the middle of my reformat but I just watched the debate and plan to annotate the transcript. Could you let me know when it becomes avaliable? Cheers.
I confess to being more then a little bit confused.
Is it possible that the “Patriotik Yoof League” take themselves alot less seriously then you guys?
Their website is clearly, atleast to some extent or another, intended to be humerous. They have photoshopped images of their rallies, something called “Austria Thirst”, a Newcastleemburg Rally and they donated money to the Tsunami appeal.
I laughed hard. Am I laughing at the banality of evil, as Hannah Arendt might have said, or am I laughing at a couple of undergraduate students just taking the piss? Am I missing part of the story?
Uh, sounds like you’ve stumbled across the spoof website and thought it was the real thing, buddy.
What are you talking about? I don’t even know who the Patriotic Youth Leauge are. How could i possibly be expected to tell the difference between a spoof website and a real website when I have neither heard of this organisation before nor seen their real website. I went to the website that Rob linked to in the first line of his post.
Fill me in with some details and THEN you can patronise me with terms like “buddy”.
Well, Buddy, their is a disclaimer on EVERY page of the spoof site, saying that it is a spoof site and not affiliated with the real youth leage or any other facist organization.
Snap.
I’d liken the this issue to that which is frequently discussed in relation to mainstream churches: should rebelling in a public manner against the values of those institutions potentially lead to an employee’s sacking? The mainstream Churches say yes. So does the state: they are given various dispensations from discrimination law accordingly.
So this idiot acted in a way contrary to the ethical values of the Salvos and got sacked. Too bad. Moreover, his beliefs – when stated in public fora – may themselves have bordered on the unlawful, depending on their content. (I don’t know enough to know for sure).
I’m still worried these PYL neanderthals are being given too much publicity by the left-o-blogosphere Rob. Tell me I’m wrong. If they can only get less than a dozen of the Master Race together at any one time, why not ignore them?
It’s only because of an active campaign against them (first at Newcastle University, now in Sydney) that they struggle to get numbers. If they were allowed to spread their disgusting propaganda unchallenged, they would be more successful.
It’s worth me pondering I guess.