Many lovers of Review will have read editor Tim Douglas’s account of his visit to Hobart’s Dark Mofo festival a few weeks ago, and his participation, with 2000 other nutcases, in the winter solstice nude swim in the Derwent River.
The swimmers were all issued with bright red caps, so weren’t completely naked; but in a mass display of what I consider poor judgment, they chose to put the caps on their heads.
It was a chilling assignment for everyone connected with these pages, not just because of Tim’s 7am start in 10C water, but because the prospect of him bringing in a sheaf of photographs from his mission sent a shiver up the collective spine. Happily he had the wisdom not to do so, knowing we’d have popped them on the internet faster than an AFL rover’s party snaps.
Still, I’ve seen a few unpleasant things in my life, so a parade of cold-shrivelled genitalia and puckered bottoms is not enough to put me off Tasmania. With beautiful land and seascapes, fabulous food and wine, it’s an excellent place to visit. But a word of caution: if the island’s latest legislation is warranted, it seems there are much uglier arses to beware of in the state, albeit fully clothed in the sinister black outfits of our repellent, imbecilic, would-be Nazis.
Most people view these vicious halfwits with a mixture of loathing and pity, but they’re a test case for free speech. It’s hard to tolerate the poisonous utterings of the worst kind of people; but you accept you are defending a principle, not the disgusting individuals. You beat out wicked ideas by replacing them with better ones; you change minds by voicing smarter arguments; you help purge society of toxic rabble-rousers by permitting their spittle-flecked fury and pointing out how vile it sounds.
But last month the Tasmanian government, in addition to banning Nazi symbols (as many jurisdictions around the world have done), took the further step of banning the Nazi salute, a favourite gesture of the brain dead, on pain of three months’ imprisonment.
How did this come about? Were there unreported Nuremberg rallies taking place in Devonport and Launceston? Or did the ever-vigilant legislature, spotting a novel threat, leap into pre-emptive action?
The desire to cancel these morons and their posturing is understandable, perhaps noble; but to my mind, it’s flawed. I’ve never considered this before, but as well as being a free-speech advocate, I find myself an equally committed defender of free movement, like some radical modern choreographer. It’s bad enough that increasingly authoritarian governments want to control the sounds that come out of our mouths, without also seeking to limit the directions in which our limbs are allowed to point.
Agreed, it does put an end to those tedious friends’ recreations of Basil Fawlty not mentioning the war, but I’m not sure that’s sufficient justification. Furthermore, is the full range of Nazi salutes forbidden? (Jerry Seinfeld once did an amusing bit on this.) Watch any WWII film and contrast the Wehrmacht motorcycle messenger snapping to attention with the SS-sturmbannfuhrer’s response, an effete, limp-wristed “Ja, ja” salute from the elbow. And careful when you’re stopping a taxi in Hobart: “Honest, officer, I see how it might have looked, but I was hailing a cab, not a genocidal dictator.”
By passing this law the Tasmanian government unintentionally buttresses the neo-fascists’ delusions that there is a conspiracy against them, that they are a force to be feared rather than ridiculed, and drives them into the darkness.
It has missed the opportunity to implement my preferred solution, which would be to expose the pathetic cretins so the rest of us know who to avoid. For ease of identification, instead of banning the Nazi salute, we might make it compulsory for them; they should be obliged to incorporate the gesture in their dealings with everyone else, enter shops and pubs with a click of the heels and a shout of devotion. Let’s see where that gets them.
Hitler, to their disappointment (and perhaps surprise), has been dead for almost 80 years, but I’m sure they’d find some other arsehole to “heil”. In fact if they’re short of ideas, I’ve got one or two first-rate candidates in mind.
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