Andrew Bolt: The presence of neo-Nazis at the anti-immigration rally became the stick that politicians used to beat an important issue to death

Yes, there were neo-Nazi morons at the protest. But don’t let the Labor hypocrites distract you from the real issue most people were rallying against.

The neo-Nazis did their best to discredit Sunday’s nationwide protests against mass immigration, and the danger is that it worked.

Some of this tiny band of morons pushed into the Melbourne rally, shoving and yelling and disgracing the Australian flags they carried.

So predictable, which is why many conservatives stayed away.

Thomas Sewell and other neo-Nazis disgraced the Australian flags they carried. Picture: Valeriu Campan

Yet, just as predictably, and hypocritically, they became the stick that politicians used to beat an important issue to death.

Take Jacinta Allan, Labor premier of Victoria, a state going broke in part because it’s struggling to cope with the explosion in its population, as the Albanese government lets in an unprecedented number of immigrants.

“Australia isn’t a place where we spread hate and fear about foreigners,” she declared, as if concern about taking in nearly 1.5 million immigrants, net, in just the Albanese government’s three-and-a-half years, is the same as hating immigrants as people.

Allan smeared the many with the few: “Australia isn’t a place where we walk with Nazis.”

The Albanese government also played the Nazi card.

“The fact that this is being organised and promoted by neo-Nazi groups tells us everything we need to know about the level of hatred and division that these kind of rallies are about,” declared Environment Minister Murray Watt.

Neo-Nazis did their best to discredit Sunday’s protests. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

Some federal Liberal politicians also urged conservatives to stay away, knowing too well how Labor and journalists would exploit them, and wisely not trusting the largely faceless organisers.

But the hypocrisy!

The worst violence I saw was actually when a man in Melbourne had his head and shirt bloodied by, he said, a protester from a pro-Palestinian and hard-Left counter-protest who’d hit him with a pole. Police reportedly used pepper spray and rubber bullets, but only on the counter-protesters.

So who were spreading the most “hatred and division”?

I heard no politician damn the counter-protesters as they’d damned the nationalists.

More hypocrisy.

Conservatives were urged to stay away, knowing too well how Labor and journalists would exploit them. Picture: Valeriu Campan

Check that big anti-Israel rally on the Sydney Harbour Bridge a month ago. Did any politician tell people to stay away and not legitimise the radicals and racists who predictably infested that protest, too?

In fact, even Labor politicians turned up, to be photographed in front of a poster of the Supreme Leader of Iran, a country ASIO says had Jewish targets in Australia firebombed, while other protesters waved flags of Hamas and other jihadist groups, or yelled: “Our war and their war is one.”

Is this the multiculturalism Watt claimed “was a good thing for our country”?

Bob Carr (middle) and other Labor politicians attended the anti-Israel rally on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Picture: Getty

But who dares discuss that now that Sunday’s rallies have been dismissed as a riot of racism, rather than a sign of our country fracturing, partly because of mass immigration?

Consider just how unprecedented the intake now is, and how it hurts our young and poor.

For the first 60 years after World War II, Australia took in an average of 90,000 immigrants a year, mostly from culturally compatible Europe.

But under the Howard Coalition government, and worse under Labor, that rocketed to more than 220,000 a year.

After the pandemic lockdowns, it became even crazier – about 440,000 a year.

Does anyone seriously believe we can import that many people that fast without any trouble? Without struggling to assimilate them, let alone house and transport them, and care for their children and sick?

Just look at the housing crisis. Our population, including births, has jumped by almost two million people under the Albanese government, but we’ve added only about 560,000 dwellings.

That’s when the average household is 2.5 people. No wonder many of the young in our cities cannot afford to buy a home.

Also consider all the other challenges from importing so many newcomers so fast, often from societies very different to our own, and just when our elites sneer even at our Australian flag.

Do we seem more united than a generation ago, or less? More culturally cohesive, or dividing into tribes?

Only look at the protest on Sunday the politicians didn’t condemn – the counter-protest to all those people waving our flag.

Yet again, I didn’t see one Australian flag among the Palestinian ones.

Yet again, a foreign conflict was imported on to our streets.

Now there’s shock and surprise that there’s a reaction to it? That there are nationalists marching in our streets, demanding respect for our flag?

I predict much more of the same, as long as only extremists dare talk about our destructive immigration and multicultural policies, and moderates stay silent for fear a guilty Labor politician will call them a Nazi.

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: The presence of neo-Nazis at the anti-immigration rally became the stick that politicians used to beat an important issue to death