What most people saw when they watched the chaotic events on the steps of Parliament House on Saturday was a group of neo-Nazis engaging in an act of self-promotion by spreading hate on the highest profile stage they could find.
But on the channels of the National Socialist Network, the group of about 20 black-clad and mostly masked Hitler saluting neo-Nazis imagined themselves as a “vanguard”, forming a “wall” on Spring Street to protect a group of women who were protesting against transgender rights.
Members of the neo-Nazi group the National Socialist Network at the rally on Saturday.Credit: Chris Hopkins
Never mind the women say they were almost unaware of their presence, as police were already doing the job.
From the stance of the left-wing protesters across the road, everyone was against them: the women protesters; the Nazis, of course; but most particularly police, who in their view were protecting the bad guys while arresting some of their number.
The confusing events that unfolded on Spring Street on Saturday have resulted in 48 hours of claim, counter-claim and conspiracy.
The result could be that Moira Deeming, an MP elected only last November to the upper house for the Liberals, loses her party endorsement; the Nazi salute is banned from being performed in Victoria; and, if threats become reality, a number of defamation suits are launched.
Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, who also goes by the name Posie Parker, with Liberal MP Moira Deeming (in black) on Saturday.Credit: Twitter
The protest started when a diminutive British woman – known variously as Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, KJK and Posie Parker – organised an Australian and New Zealand tour entitled “Let Women Speak”. She has held rallies in other cities to assert that the transgender lobby is silencing, disparaging and discriminating against women.
She’s appealing to an increasingly angry cohort of women who believe that the push for trans rights has gone too far and is risking the rights and safety of women by allowing “men” (transgender women) into women’s sports, change rooms and other female-only activities.
The speakers at Saturday’s rally ranged from young feminists who said they were once trans allies but had flipped, to older (often lesbian) women worried about losing female-only spaces and claiming people who would otherwise be lesbians were being hoodwinked into transitioning.
One woman, wearing a Greens T-shirt told a story of being punished by her former party for insisting on the rights of “real women”. The audience numbered about 400 mostly middle-aged women.
‘I hope you have a good lawyer.’
Activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull to Liberal leader John Pesutto
These activists were once dismissed by their opponents as TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists), but many now embrace the title. The movement has brought together elements from the right, including the religious right, and the old left. The principal organiser of the Melbourne rally, Angie Jones, describes herself on Twitter as “Gender Heretic. Woman ... Leftie. Women’s Rights Activist. Radfem”.
At the extremes, some anti-trans rights activists claim, without any evidence, that increasing the rights of trans people licenses paedophilia.
Deeming, for now a Liberal upper-house MP, accompanied Keen-Minshull from the members’ car park at Parliament House to her post at the start of the rally. Later, Deeming sipped champagne in a live conversation with Keen-Minshull, Jones and the former Liberal candidate for Warringah, Katherine Deves. They then prepared for dinner and karaoke.
This, according to Pesutto, was enough to expel Deeming from the party.
“I know Moira is not a Nazi. But my point is that she’s associating with people who are and that brings them into a place where it’s unacceptable for me as a leader,” Pesutto told 3AW.
One problem, Pesutto says, was that Deeming did not leave the rally when the 20-odd neo-Nazis turned up to perform their salutes. But the accusation goes further.
Keen to stamp his ideological mark on the party early, Pesutto says Deeming was closely associated with Keen-Minshull, who, he alleged, had a “long rap sheet” of associating with Nazi sympathisers.
This, Pesutto claims, is based on interviews Keen-Minshull has done with Jean-François Gariépy, a prominent far-right YouTuber who calls for a “white ethno-state”, and whose other guests have included former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. She was also once interviewed by a channel called SOCO, or “Soldiers of Christ Online”.
Thomas Sewell (centre) leads his neo-Nazi contingent towards the steps of Parliament House on Saturday.Credit: Chris Hopkins
Keen-Minshull is on record saying she had not fully vetted her interviewers to check their beliefs, but added that her cause was too important to be fussy about which YouTube channel she appeared on. She has said she abhors “white supremacy and the racism that fuels it”, but that, as a free speech advocate she thought “dialogue, even with those with the most odious prejudices, is essential”.
To that end, perhaps, Keen-Minshull took to another far-right media outlet, with activist Avi Yemini from Rebel News, in an interview posted on Sunday, to threaten Pesutto with a defamation claim under what she called Australia’s “pretty robust” defamation laws.
“I hope you have a good lawyer,” she said in the interview.
The left-wing protesters are also unhappy with the weekend’s events. The two main groups that turned up on Saturday were the Campaign Against Racism & Fascism (CARF), a union-backed online lobby group with 18,000 Facebook followers whose position can be summed up by one of its signs: “Pro-vax. Pro union. Anti fascist”.
Liberal MP Moira Deeming speaks at Saturday’s anti-trans rights protest.Credit: Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull
“Fighting transphobia,” they say in their literature, “is part of fighting the right.”
A second group came from Trans Queer Solidarity Naarm, whose Twitter profile says it is “Bulding [sic] rad trans queer solidarity”.
They were furious with police officers who, in blocking their protest from getting closer to the group at the parliament steps, made several arrests, including one in which a police officer drove his knee into a man’s upper back.
But it’s the mostly unimpeded presence of the neo-Nazis that’s caused most angst. The bulk of the police faced the left-wing protesters while having their backs to the Nazis as they sauntered past repeatedly delivering the Sieg Heil salute.
Members of the counter-protest at Saturday’s protest in Spring Street.Credit: Chris Hopkins
Police are also under fire from the women’s anti-trans activists.
Organiser Jones told The Age the Nazis from the National Socialist Network turned up about halfway through their rally and were “let in by police”. She said she initially thought they were Antifa (anti-fascist activists) seeking to join their mates in the counter-protest.
“Then the police opened up the line,” said Jones, who is Jewish and says she abhors Nazis. She worried they were there to attack the women, but they stood on the steps away from them.
“As soon as we realised who they were, we went into a huddle and concentrated on our speakers and ignored them [the Nazis], except for a couple of people who took selfies just to take the piss.”
Deeming said the police should have had the “move on” powers, but didn’t “due to Labor’s removal of those powers”. She said she had been “horrified to see masked men ... inside the buffer zone”.
In a statement, police said they were mediating between “at least six groups”, some of which “failed to engage with police ... or altered their plans without notice”.
“Consequently, officers were required to form many lines between the different groups to protect the safety of all involved, stop breaches of the peace and prevent any physical violence,” a police statement said.
Three people were arrested, two allegedly for assaulting police.
The only people who are happy were the Nazis, who regard Saturday as a propaganda triumph.
So, who are the National Socialist Network? They are the group infiltrated by The Age and 60 Minutes for a series of reports that revealed they were an all-male group of avowed Hitler-lovers training physically in hope of bringing about societal collapse or a white revolution.
They urge members to hang onto their guns, raise funds to buy rural property to form the genesis of a new, white-supremacist state and, behind the scenes, some of their number praise the Christchurch terrorist Brenton Tarrant.
Their leader, Thomas Sewell, who appeared on the steps of Parliament House on Saturday bearded and unmasked, once invited Tarrant to join an earlier iteration of his group, The Lads Society. Tarrant, an online member, declined Sewell’s offer, so he could pursue his New Zealand plot.
On his social media channel on Monday, Sewell described the weekend’s events as a “Total Aryan Victory”.
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