Nihilism on the Highway with the War Fighters Motorcycle Club Veteran Bikers

This book tells the untold story of Australia’s veteran bikers. Like other motorcycle clubs, the Australian War Fighters (pseudonym) are a fringe-dwelling subculture that provokes strong opinions. Newspaper editors have been salivating over motorcycle club imagery since the subculture emerged in California in the middle of the twentieth century. Motorcycle clubs remain the subject of persisting ‘moral panics’ in Australia and have been the subject of successive crackdowns, police operations, and hard-hitting legislation aimed at driving them out of existence. The War Fighters operate on the periphery of the hard-core one percent element of the subculture. While they enjoy the notoriety of looking mean, the War Fighters do significant charity work, and the seemingly bizarre combination of outlaw biker subculture aesthetic with raising money for local hospitals means these men enjoy the paradox of looking bad while doing good. Drawing on sociological research Edward Scarr tells the true story of how and why the veteran motorcycle club subculture came to be. What follows is an ultimately hopeful story of redemption from despair and the salvation of lives that had been all but given up on.

Edward Scarr earned a PhD from the Australian National University in 2013 for his research in the Departments of Philosophy and Sociology. He has held research and teaching appointments at the Australian National University, the University of Canberra and the University of New South Wales—Australian Defence Force Academy where he has taught courses in philosophy, sociology, law and politics. Dr. Scarr has a background of military service in the ADF having graduated from the Royal Military College in 2007 and was operationally deployed as a platoon commander in 2010. He is also a motorcycle rider. He spent two years riding with the War Fighters Motorcycle Club and used the techniques of ethnography and grounded theory to record and interpret what he saw. His present book is a true account.