Ignore these neo-Nazis at our peril: Evil left unchallenged will be normalised

It is almost impossible to find any silver lining in the neo-Nazi rally held outside NSW Parliament last Saturday. The fact that this rally – the explicit purpose of which was to target the Jewish community – received formal authorisation from NSW Police remains inexplicable and inexcusable. Serious questions still need to be answered as to how this rally was handled, and it is imperative that charges are brought against anyone who breached newly enacted hate speech legislation.

There is one positive outcome: the chilling images and despicable words that emerged from the gathering have stopped us all in our tracks and finally woken up the community at large to the nature and extent of the growing threat confronting our society. It has also provided a politically unifying moment to consider our collective response.

More than 60 members of the National Socialist Network attended the rally on Saturday.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone

As has been well documented, the neo-Nazis proudly displayed a carefully coded banner at the rally calling to “abolish the Jewish lobby”. Any doubt that their hostility extends to the Jewish community more broadly was made clear through their antisemitic rhetoric, the “blood and honour” Hitler Youth slogan they chanted and their policy platform which proudly seeks to deport all Jews from Australia.

The fact that these hate-filled individuals gathered so brazenly and unmasked outside the symbolic heart of our democracy speaks to how emboldened they are. Such an event would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. Now, somehow, it has become a reality – not once but twice this year.

It may be tempting to dismiss them as fringe figures, best ignored and starved of the attention they crave. This is certainly a view which has been expressed this week.

But evil left unconfronted becomes evil that is normalised. That is the lesson of history, and it is one that we ignore at our peril. The hate that initially targets the Jewish community rarely stops there – and other Australians are already in the crossfires of these racists.

ASIO director-general Mike Burgress has already warned of the group’s “hateful, divisive rhetoric and increasingly violent propaganda, and the growing likelihood these things will prompt spontaneous violence”. This was evidenced last week with the arrest of a teenage boy who allegedly conspired with neo-Nazis online to perpetrate and live-stream an attack using chemical gas to inspire a “nationalist and racial violence extremist” revolution here in Australia.

It is clear that the re-emergence of organised neo-Nazism needs to be tackled by all Australians.

The internet, social media and the dark web have all become the amplifiers of this dangerous ideology. Of great concern is the fact that these neo-Nazis are recruiting not merely disaffected young men but educated individuals with families. The rally on Saturday was attended, for instance, by a civil engineer, a teacher and an IT worker.

What is to be done? This issue requires a multifaceted response but now is the time for all people of goodwill to directly push back and expose the lies and manipulation at the heart of the neo-Nazi ideology.

By way of example, these demagogues deliberately distort history and hijack the Anzac legend for their own purposes. They dare to invoke nationalism while defiling the memory of the almost 40,000 Australians who died fighting Nazi Germany and her allies. They conveniently characterise the Anzac legend in racial terms and overlook the sacrifice of the more than 7000 Jewish Australians who have proudly served in our nation’s uniform and the fact that Australia’s greatest general, Sir John Monash, was Jewish. But, of course, for conspiracy theorists, facts do not matter.

They are not the inheritors of the Anzac legend or spirit and we cannot allow them to claim this mantle. On the contrary – they proudly chant the slogans of the greatest enemy our country has ever faced. We need to make sure we are properly teaching the lessons of history in our schools so that this is self-evident to the next generation.

Second, the NSW government is entirely correct to look at new ways of further restricting their activities. This group is fundamentally subversive to the values and structures of our democracy. ASIO has previously welcomed legislation banning Nazi symbols, asserting that it helps law enforcement by enabling early intervention.

Finally, we have witnessed in recent months an alarming mainstreaming of traditional antisemitic conspiracy theories – the old poison in new bottles. Sadly, the rot does not begin or end with a few dozen extremists in black shirts or online echo chambers where antisemitic myths circulate unchallenged, metastasising in comment threads and encrypted chats. Baseless antisemitic tropes about Jewish power or malign Jewish intent have emerged and been legitimised in mainstream discourse, including by those who should know better.

This is the ecosystem in which a neo-Nazi rally outside parliament becomes possible. Each drop of tolerance for hate, each wink and nod to conspiracy, fills the cup that eventually overflows onto the streets – affecting the Jewish community at first but others in time.

This is, unmistakably, a precarious moment. For the first time in eight decades, questions once thought consigned to history are being asked, and we must be resolute in answering them.

David Ossip is president of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies.