Bendigo McDonalds: Swastika spotted in Macca’s carpark, part of Nazi rise in Victoria
Racist bumper stickers and Nazi slogans splashed across Victoria’s roads are a sign white nationalists are on an active recruitment campaign, anti-discrimination advocates warn.
Bendigo
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A trailer, covered in Nazi and white supremacist stickers, has been spotted being towed on the Tullamarine Freeway.
The Melburnian who captured a photo of the trailer in Brunswick at 12.40pm, Thursday April 15, said he was “lost for words”.
The trailer had stickers featuring an emoji in an SS uniform doing a Hitler salute, a rainbow ‘no f-gs’ sticker, and National Socialist Network sign plastered under the Australian flag and the phrase ‘blood and honour’ — a political slogan used by Hitler Youth.
This was not the only recent sighting of Nazi imagery on Victoria’s roads.
A Bendigo driver became distressed when they noticed the red swastika and a matching skull sticker on the window of a 4WD at the California Gully McDonald’s drivethru in Bendigo on Saturday, April 17.
The red swastika sticker alarmed anti-discrimination advocates who say white nationalists now consider regional Victoria as “fertile ground” for recruitment.
Anti-Defamation Commission chairman Dr Dvir Abramovich said the disgusting display was a sign of hateful groups setting their sights on regional Victoria.
Dr Abramovich said the largely Melbourne-based neo-Nazi groups were on a “recruiting campaign” in the country.
“They’re of the opinion that regional Victoria is a fertile ground,” he said.
Dr Abramovich highlighted recent Nazi activity, with white nationalists groups rallying in Grampians region of western Victoria in February.
He said the anti-Semitic groups were “weaponising” the nation’s economic insecurity, allowing young, frustrated white men to scapegoat Jews, immigrants and other non-white communities.
“It’s an extermination policy,” he said.
“Part of that policy is laying the blame on an easy target … immigrants, the Jewish community, and people of the non-white persuasion.”
Dr Abramovich said this was not a new strategy, with Nazi groups exploiting this strategy for decades.
However, he said there had been a noticeable increase in regional Victorian recruitment over the past few years.
In 2015 Bendigo became the centre of an ugly and violent white nationalist campaign over the construction of a mosque in the Central Victorian town.
But Dr Abramovich said the problem was larger than the central Victorian town.
“It’s not locked to one region. It’s a national campaign,” he said.
This year, ASIO reported extreme right-wing individuals now made up around a third of all its counter-terrorism investigations.
Last month Victoria Police announced a new deradicalisation program amid rising fears of violent extremism in the state.
“The alarm bells are going off,” Dr Abramovich said.
“A democracy is defined not only by the rights we have but what we are willing to tolerate.”
Dr Abramovich responded to concerns that sharing their activities was playing into the trolling campaigns exploited by the hate groups.
“These groups will continue their (recruiting) activities whether we expose them or not,” Dr Abramovich said.
“It’s a problem we need to address and expose.
“I’m not going to go and give them a free pass.
“We have to stare the beast in the eye.
“This is a problem from hell.”
Dr Abramovich said the racially-motivated mass killings across the world was evidence that the groups’ fringe status did not diminish their threat.
“That cold blooded killer who walked into the mosques in Christchurch and who massacred 51 Muslim worshippers, and other white supremacist maniacs who murdered Jews in synagogues in Pittsburgh and San Diego were motivated and inspired by the same ideology that this Nazi swastika represents.”
“These are domestic terrorists in waiting,” he said.
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