Seven men have been charged with performing a Nazi salute in public after an image emerged online showing a group of soccer fans allegedly performing the outlawed gesture at a Geelong venue.
The men – who range in age from 19 to 25 – now face up to 12 months in jail and a fine of more than $23,000.
The image was posted to Facebook earlier this month after a North Geelong Warriors Football Club match. Other images of the same group appear to show the men, dressed in black, with their faces covered by Nazi insignias.
On Wednesday, Victoria Police said detectives had retrieved CCTV footage from the Croatian Club in Geelong – where the alleged incident took place on February 8 ahead of the match – as part of an extensive investigation to unmask the men.
Both the Croatian Club and the North Geelong Warriors have condemned the incident.
The Warriors said such offensive and antagonistic conduct went “against the spirit of the game”. The Geelong Advertiser reported the club had organised an educational visit to the Melbourne Holocaust Museum for its members.
Local MPs and councillors have slammed the photo, with some querying what the Warriors club was doing to distance itself from racist and fascist displays.
“Victoria Police stresses there is absolutely no place in our society for antisemitic, racist or hate-based behaviour and such activity will not be tolerated,” a police spokesperson said.
The men will appear before Geelong Magistrates’ Court on May 6.
The incident follows revelations by The Age that Australia’s most prominent neo-Nazi group, the National Socialist Network, has been training teenagers in Melbourne.
Among those at the white supremacist boot camp this month was Jacob Hersant, who last year became the first person in Victoria charged and jailed for performing a Nazi salute.
Anti-Defamation Commission chair Dvir Abramovich said the ban on the gesture, introduced by Victoria in October 2023, was a reckoning for hate. He called on authorities to continue their crackdown on the Nazi movement in the state “before it metastasises further”.
In 2023, an investigation by this masthead revealed some Croatian sporting clubs were still openly celebrating fascist symbols and anniversaries of the Nazi-aligned Ustasha regime.
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