It has become increasingly evident over the past few years that a raggedy band of disgruntled Australians are trying to get neo-Nazism to take off in Australia. Amateurs. Australia is a hostile environment for extremists of their ilk. But there’s plenty we could do wrong that would allow these weeds to flourish.
Australia’s neo-Nazi movement is small and, frankly, with its pale, hairy legs sticking out the bottoms of its black Lowes shorts, kind of funny looking. It has made a habit of showing up at cultural flashpoint events in an attempt to provoke a reaction.
On the Australia Day long weekend, Victorian neo-Nazis who had bussed up to Sydney were stopped at Artarmon train station. Their myki cards probably didn’t work and then the cops showed up and told them that black was a terrible fashion choice on a 40-degree day. Stuck on the leafy north shore, the boys got together for a group photo and singalong in the park.
Had they made it to the site of the Cronulla riots, let’s say, or to another symbolic place or high-profile event, they might have achieved a success in the magnitude of one they managed last year. At the Let Women Speak rally in Victoria, a group of black bucket-hatted dweebs (who knew kids beach hats came in black?) showed up and kicked off an overreaction that is still paying dividends for them. The organisers of the rally were women concerned about pre-operative transgender women having unfettered access to the spaces in which women are most vulnerable, such as restrooms and prisons. It was dubbed an anti-trans march by progressives.
Everyone was shocked when the neo-Nazis appeared. Women’s rights groups are not used to attracting the support of Nazis, who tend to have hyper-traditional ideas about the role of women. It was immediately clear that they were there to make trouble. And they succeeded. A flurry of hot takes pronounced that women at the rally, including Victorian MP Moira Deeming, were linked to the Nazis (a comment that was baseless and immediately denied). Victorian Liberal leader John Pesutto moved to expel Deeming from the parliamentary party and, 10 months later, the saga is ongoing, with Deeming taking Pesutto to court in a defamation case for allegedly branding her a Nazi.
That’s great ongoing free publicity for the neo-Nazis, who just had to show up and lift a right arm to set society against itself. It’s also worked for them at a more strategic level: as soon as progressives embraced the idea that anyone at a women’s rights march was anti-trans and nigh-on neo-Nazi, neo-Nazi ideas were maybe a little more acceptable to some. Think of it like one of those coin machines in an amusement arcade, where you feed in 20-cent pieces in the hope that the more go in, the closer others will get to the edge until a dozen tip over and deliver a mini-jackpot. By accusing ordinary people who have concerns about women’s rights of being Nazi-adjacent, the progressives rendered a few people more open to the neo-Nazi message. That’s a win for the neo-Nazis, delivered straight into their hands by people who would identify with anti-fascists.
This strategy is being deployed worldwide to take advantage of troubled times. Germany, which spent the post-war years putting in place infrastructure to ensure that Nazis could “never, ever” rise again, looks like it’s grown a new Nazi movement.
In a nutshell, that’s because Germany has failed to address a problem that concerns many ordinary Germans: high immigration and failed integration. There was a seminal moment on New Year’s Eve 2015-16, when groups of immigrant men sexually harassed and robbed scores of women who were celebrating in Cologne.
Calling those you disagree with a Nazi only helps the real sausage-brains in black
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03.02.2024
It has become increasingly evident over the past few years that a raggedy band of disgruntled Australians are trying to get neo-Nazism to take off in Australia. Amateurs. Australia is a hostile environment for extremists of their ilk. But there’s plenty we could do wrong that would allow these weeds to flourish.
Australia’s neo-Nazi movement is small and, frankly, with its pale, hairy legs sticking out the bottoms of its black Lowes shorts, kind of funny looking. It has made a habit of showing up at cultural flashpoint events in an attempt to provoke a reaction.
On the Australia Day long weekend, Victorian neo-Nazis who had bussed up to Sydney were stopped at Artarmon train station. Their myki cards probably didn’t work and then the cops showed up and told them that black was a terrible fashion choice on a 40-degree day. Stuck on the leafy north shore, the boys got together for a group photo and singalong in........
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