Yup. They really are so much more emboldened now. And dumb.
Here are pictures of the Australian men who took part at the recent neo-Nazi rally in Sydney.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1K7WWcbPSi/
Are we really that surprised that this event was allowed to go ahead while the Australian police keep clamping down on free Palestine activists?
These views are no longer fringe. It has become the mainstream narrative in many countries, they are in our communities and neighbourhoods.
They could be your relatives and co-workers, and they are ready to use violence as part of their ideology.
If you're not drawing the lines with these people, if you're not calling out that one racist uncle or a manager at work, you are allowing the normalisation of their beliefs.
We desperately need legal frameworks to properly address these issues.
What do you do if you have suspicions that someone is a far-right nazi?
Do you call the police?
Is an off-the-cuff racist comment enough grounds?
What about owning or displaying Nazi flags or memorabilia?
Empathetic human beings generally agree that we shouldn't have to tolerate violent-extremist ideologies in civil society, and yet we do not have the legal means to truly protect ourselves from individuals and groups that spread hateful propaganda. The threshold seems too high for combatting speech or actions we would commonly consider abhorrent.
Notice how the proponents of free-speech are often the ones spouting hate-speech? This is not a coincidence.
We have no real way to actually hold these people to account. We have little to no resources going towards deradicalisation/exit programmes or community support groups.
They are successfully recruiting vulnerable, lost and angry young men who are causing real harm and they are hardly being challenged.
History isn't a timeline. It's a cycle.
#australia #sydney #farright #nazi #neonazi #nazirally