If you made excuses for neo-nazis this week, you’re just as sad as they are | David Penberthy

If this sentence passed your lips this week, you’re no better than the neo-nazis marching on Aussie streets, writes David Penberthy.

When we said we wanted Adelaide to be a city that attracted a lot of conventions, I am not sure if this is what we had it mind.

Nevertheless, our normally sedate and civilised town was this week afforded the dishonour of hosting a dozen-odd chaps from the neo-nazi organisation the National Socialist Network.

They are happy and proud to use the term National Socialists to define themselves, which is of course the same moniker by which Hitler defined his ideology and supporters.

And given that a demonstrated hatred of Jews is a bedrock, entry-level requirement for the Australian National Socialist Network, let’s just say that it looks, walks and quacks like a certain political outfit which first shot to prominence in Germany around 1933.

So how did Adelaide end up being the venue for this fascist version of Gather Round, with the 15 attendees travelling here from every corner of Australia?

Just bad luck I guess. It was probably just our turn.

We are not the first part of Australia which has seen these gaggles of blokes with their balaclavas and cheap sunglasses bung on one of their miniature Nuremberg rallies, or disrupt protests or marches being held by others.

Alleged neo-Nazi supporter Joel Davis arrested in Adelaide.

I say blokes because they are all blokes, every one of them, with their plans to father an Aryan master race seemingly hamstrung by an inability to meet any girls.

There would be something almost comical about these guys if not for two things.

First, they draw inspiration, companionship and happiness by embracing the most putrid of political ideologies, which gave rise to the greatest atrocity in human history – the systematic attempted execution of an entire race.

Second, there is evidence that at their most extreme, especially among their leadership, they represent the new type of security threats which have police and intelligence services concerned, with their sovereign citizens’ hostility to the authority of the state, a furious disrespect for our laws and those who enforce them.

But let’s set these guys to one side for a moment. They are what they are.

More disturbing this week has been the response from others in the community who try to explain their behaviour as the inevitable response to unchecked migration.

Or who downplay their protest on Australia Day as less offensive than other protests which have been held in Australia.

I’ll deal with the second part of that paragraph first.

I’ve heard multiple people say this week that they are less worried about these National Socialists than they were about the conduct of Arabic Australians on the steps of the Sydney Opera House after the October 7 terror attacks.

Let there be no doubt that the protests in Sydney that day were an abomination.

The political response from the morally confused Albanese Government was beyond pathetic.

Pro-Palestine supporters rally outside the Sydney Opera House on October 9, 2023. Picture: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

The reaction from NSW Police was insipid, the only people being moved on that shameful day being Jews, the mass murder of whom was the subject of real-time celebration on Australian soil.

But two points need to be made here.

It is logically possible to be appalled by pro-Hamas extremism and far-right extremism at the same time.

Conversely, it is logically impossible to be so upset at an event in Sydney whose participants are driven by a hatred of Jews, that you’ll excuse an event in Adelaide whose participants are driven by a hatred of Jews.

And on that last question, anyone regarding this event as merely a protest at migration and multiculturalism should inform themselves by reading the extraordinary article by reporter Luke Williams in this newspaper this week.

Williams courageously and meticulously documented the lives of the members of the National Socialist Network by infiltrating the organisation and attending multiple meetings and socialising with its members.

He did so for a period of five months. The piece he produced from this experience is both empathetic and informed.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Picture: Supplied/Jonah McLachlan

Federal opposition leader Peter Dutton. Picture: Brendan Radke

While the NSN members would bristle at the comparison given their generalised hatred of all Muslims, Williams’ piece shows how the profile of these guys is actually very similar to that of the radical Islamists who sign on for the most extreme forms of action.

They are almost all young, poor, poorly educated, unlucky in love, looking for meaning in life, enthralled by the Messianic strongmen who lead these cults, cells and sects.

Most emphatically, Williams also establishes the entry-level requirement for this organisation – a hatred of Jews and also homosexuals, with new members advised to start their ideological journey by reading Mein Kampf.

So let’s drop the excuses and the rationalisations.

It is bad enough that this appalling, stupid event happened here. We can do without the appalling stupidity of downplaying it on account of other protests we also disliked even more, or giving it moral cover by rationalising it as some primal cry against the excesses of immigration.

We can have an immigration debate, for sure.

In fact we are, in case you didn’t notice, it’s a big-ticket difference between Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese, one which may well make this a one-term government.

But to be clear, there is no good sentence which begins: “I didn’t agree with the neo-Nazi protest, but …”

It comes with massive historical precedent and explains how warped political fringe dwellers can find themselves in the ascendancy.