Agreed. A known leader of a neo-Nazi organisation registered a protest. The group have a history of registering events under false pretenses but there’s no excuse for this one. It was obvious.

Nazi speech is illegal.

It should be.

But fascists know their worldview is revolting to the public and parts of it are illegal to plainly say. That’s why they use pseudo-runes and sonnenrads instead of swastikas, talk about removing instead of exterminating, and protest around secondary positions like ‘mass immigration’ to spread racial supremacy rhetoric. They’ve been playing this game for a hundred years. Nazi speech is legal if you’re careful about it.

The problem is what they’re doing, not how they’re doing it, and our law struggles to handle that.

A couple of coworkers were talking at the pub about the nazis at the March for Australia so I’ll try and convince them to come along this time.

Good luck! We need everyone we can get. And with a bit of luck, the social media effect grows exponentially as friends tell friends to tell friends, just like with the March for Humanity.

Yes but I wasn’t talking about that. I was referring to the many smaller cases of individuals or small groups opportunistically harassing people on public transport, in parks, etc., which can easily be prevented just by having more people around to remove that opportunity. Simply attending the counter rally helps.

If we’re aiming to prevent an premeditated gang of dozens from going out of their way to terrorise a peaceful camp, we’ll need an organised force with fighting experience, or an even larger group able to mobilise rapidly. That’s absolutely possible, we saw that Melbourne has the roots for building such a force, but it’s a tougher challenge which involves more than just the regular public showing up.

Tom Tanuki had a great video detailing some speakers and attendees standing up to them, along with pointing out their plain clothes stooges manufacturing fake support, starting using the same chants in each state, and their other manipulation tactics. The video has been taken down by a copyright claim (edit: see reply!). I also know a couple of socialists who were present in the rallies to provide updates, who felt the crowd was a 50/50 split for support and rejection when the Nazi speaker got the mic. And after seeing horrible interpretations of the event like that from Red Flag (basically imagining every single person there was a white middle-class lost cause), I emphasise that many people there were tricked and didn’t just roll over or use their megaphone like Katters.

But yes. You’re right. Head in the sand has been something I’ve seen plenty of too, and this time they have no “ignorance” excuse. Nazis ran the major rallies. We weren’t just calling people ‘nazis’ as a scary strawman, they were real, they controlled the rallies, and they are planning to do it again.

They are planning another rally on Oct 19. Various locations have already announced counter rallies.

It is very important you turn up and bring along friends. If you can’t make it, then make sure that other people do. Not just social media posts either.

These Nazi-run rallies are particularly dangerous because the capitalise on a real, valid anger towards our government. If we allow them to grow unchallenged, bigots will continue to be embolded. There were many reports of people being opportunisticly harassed after last rally, so if we don’t outnumber them, they’ll do that again. If you don’t help your community to squash this, it will grow. We’re at a great moment where we can still stop this peacefully. Seize this moment while we have it.

Don’t just show up, bring along friends. And if you see me handing out fliers for the counter rally, tell me you’re bringing along friends! We can all use a smile :)

It was confusing for good reason. As the article explains, and as people here were saying before the rally, the marches were astroturfed by the NSN, from the start. It’s unfortunate that so many people bought into their trick, and it’s good to see many of the well-intentioned people had the guts to stand up once they realised they were being conned.

The NSN thought they could draw people into their tent by having half of them pretend to be “everyday Aussies” and by appealing to the cookers in the freedom movement, but at the end of the day, even cookers know that Nazis need to be forced out. Good on the people there who tried, but ultimately, anyone who goes to the next March for Australia now that they know the NSN are real, coordinated, dodgy manipulators and welcomed back by the MfA organisers… this time there aren’t any excuses.

It’s amazing how much isn’t taught in school. And I know that won’t be surprising to those in other colonial states like the US and Canada but we learned about US segregation, Jim Crow, read/watched To Kill A Mockingbird, but didn’t know we’ve had the same kind of de facto segregated towns here in Australia within living history, complete with our own Freedom Ride in 1965. Luckily the union movement and communists eventually put a dent in it through boycotts and shoved the government into action.

Classic outsourcing.