Summary
Australia has enacted strict anti-hate crime laws, mandating jail sentences for public Nazi salutes and other hate-related offenses.
Punishments range from 12 months for lesser crimes to six years for terrorism-related hate offenses.
The legislation follows a rise in antisemitic attacks, including synagogue vandalism and a foiled bombing plot targeting Jewish Australians.
The law builds on state-level bans, with prior convictions for individuals performing Nazi salutes in public spaces, including at sporting events and courthouses.
Redefining the freedom of speech can be a slippery slope. It will depend upon who is in power and their personal views. Hate speech is something that can be targetted. There would need to be statutory limitations to prevent misuse of the legislative principles. If the Germans can do it right, so can we, wherever we live.
I feel like this copypasta is mandatory here:
(transcribed from a series of tweets) - @iamragesparkle
I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, “no. get out.”
And the dude next to me says, “hey i’m not doing anything, i’m a paying customer.” and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, “out. now.” and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed
Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, “you didn’t see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them.”
And i was like, ohok and he continues.
"you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it’s always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don’t want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.
And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it’s too late because they’re entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.
And i was like, ‘oh damn.’ and he said “yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people.”
And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven’t forgotten that at all.
I first saw this on reddit
Also this idiot performing a nazi salute outside court after just being sentenced, got busted. What a nimrod.
“No charges to be laid over alleged Nazi salute made by officer at Victoria Police academy”
https://amp.abc.net.au/article/104796744
Cops get to be a little Nazi as a treat.
Yeah. There’s not a lot of information there though. Who really knows what happened.
Maybe the police covered it up. Maybe it wasn’t a Nazi salute.
This guy was pretty emphatic. I mean there was nothing about how she’s a good officer or maybe a misunderstanding or whatever. That was a sincere and direct statement of position and intent to prosecute any offenders.
The thing is this just makes it “cooler” among the Nazis because now it’s illegal. It plays right into their persecution complex. It also opens up a legal morass of trying to define a hand gesture in court. To me this seems like it’s fighting the symptoms and not the underlying problems.
A Nazi/Hitler salut was always illegal in Germany after WW 2 and courts figured it out what counts as a nazi salute and what not (it often comes down to context i guess).
It also opens up a legal morass of trying to define a hand gesture in court> It also opens up a legal morass of trying to define a hand gesture in court I feel like that part would just be the same way porn is treated, "I [the judge] know it when I see it]
The thing is this just makes it “cooler” among the Nazis because now it’s illegal.
Only until they are caught.
Then they become martyrs for their group.
Nonsense.
Courts are good at figuring out what constitutes an illegal action. It’s what they’re intended to do and what they have been doing since the dawn of civilisation.
I don’t really care what Nazis think is “cool”.
It’s addressing the underlying problem by communicating the seriousness of the threat of fascism to everyone.
Judges could have biases of their own whether they realise it or not.
I hope you’re right but I’m less optimistic about courts.
Remember that Hersant idiot from a few months back did the salute outside a courthouse.
He was found guilty, judge gave no fucks: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-08/vic-nazi-salute-jacob-hersant-court/104443118
Good. This needs to be worldwide. They need to reeducate the people as to
A: Why the Nazis were bad beyond ‘they wanna kill people!’ Their utter disgust of science and technology, and how their social policies were actively fucking over their own people in addition to others. B: Just how incompetent the Nazis were, and were far from a hyperefficient machine. C: Just how bad they were at science and despite their demonization, West Germany was never fully denazified and how many former Nazi officers returned to work as politicians and military officers.
There is a plethora of books written before and during WW2 that showcased just how evil the Nazis were and how fucked their society was. They also need a review of Mein Kampf and how Hitler dictated it. Exactly like how Trump dictated the Art of the Deal to a writer and did not write it himself.
My suggestion of one book written during the Nazi Era is Education for Death by Gregor Ziemer. The society it showed was really, REALLY fucked. How anyone could think this was a paradise is beyond me. Most modern fascists, with their donut bodies and chinless faces would be the types considered feeble and probably sterilized as a ‘charity’.
Just how bad they were at science
Operation Paperclip.
Those were the exceptions. When it came to things like medical science with experiments on POWs and concentration camp prisoners they were so abysmal it wasn’t funny.
First, I despise the fucking Nazis and Communists. The disgusting human experiments that were conducted by the Germans and Japanese were gobbled up by the Allied medical professionals.
They were useless scientifically and did not yield usable results. I will get you a paper proving it later.
I don’t see how mandatory jail time helps with “They need to reeducate the people”
People tend to get further radicalized in prison, not less.
If you want to Re-educate people you need to invest in education in the first place.
Some people need to be separated. This isn’t about censorship, it’s about group dynamics.
Let’s take it from both angles - just to avoid politics. A disruptive kid in a classroom affects every other kid. Get rid of that kid, and suddenly the whole classroom improves. Everyone can agree to that.
The other side - a company has a pro-union worker. Shitty company doesn’t like not controlling their workers, so they find a way to fire them.
Back to the Nazi, separate them from the rest of society. We don’t need them.
Once someone buys into Nazi rhetoric it can take decades to deprogram them. How do you suggest this to be done when it takes far shorter amount of time to spread their rhetoric?
Their point is that not only does jailing them not deprogram them or prevent them from spreading their rhetoric, it is more likely to have the opposite effect.
That is a poor point and allowing it to spread is the reality we are actually facing.
Case in point. Germany has been tightly controlling this for several decades. Is their society now overran by Nazi rhetoric? The answer is no.
Being German, unfortunately the answer to that is yes, but it didn’t happen in a vacuum, it’s because the media and politicians have been courting right wing ideologies over the past 20 years to an extent that things have become normalized that should have never been normalized, e.g. framing asylum seekers as „migrants“ and adopting dehumanizing language against them, which has led to us having AFD polling at 20% and CDU at 30%.
CDU has recently collaborated with the right wing extremist AFD to push through a proposal for an anti-migration bill that violates our constitution. There has been an uproar but CDU and AFD actually polled higher after this. Our country is in deep trouble and we’re moving into a very scary direction.
Thank you for that perspective. It is sad to see all that diligence being chipped away.
That example proves the first users point. The answer to the German question is that they spend a great deal of money on having an excellent education system, and spend a lot of time educating their youth with an honest, unflinching look at the history of Nazism and fascism.
I’m not even saying don’t throw people in jail, I’m simply saying it is pure idiocy to believe that will do anything at all to help the underlying problem.
The answer to the German question is that they spend a great deal of money on having an excellent education system,
I think it was more that they had their country completely flattened due to them being fascists, and didn’t want it to happen again.
facists are deadend for humanity
As an American, this feels wrong on the surface with our broad first amendment and all.
But when I think about it with my morality-enabled brain? Fuckin’ strewth mates! Get those cunts!
As an American, this feels wrong on the surface with our broad first amendment and all.
They do not give a rat’s fuck about YOUR freedom of speech and expression, and have been fighting in every single legal and illegal manner to suppress it. At this point in time it must be acknowledged that there needs to be that limit on them to force them back into being a small pathetic group that they were and to hopefully allow society to outgrow them in the future.
They will be ‘so much for the tolerant left’ so matter what you do, and they will actively censor anyone and anything they don’t like also no matter what. Liberals have been highly prone to hiring fascist and bigoted nutjobs in order to allow for a more ‘balanced’ perspective, but any attempt to make them hire more liberal minded people for their own platforms is brushed aside without a second thought. That shit doesn’t work on them. They want access to your stuff while also 100% forbidding you from even looking at their stuff.
Trump puts tariffs on Australia…
And Musk to block Starlink from Australia.
gosh, how we let the weird kid gather so much power…
He’s gonna get starlink to burn insects like with a magnifying glass. Maybe the Jewish space lasers were Nazi space lasers all along.
They’re projecting like always.
In their defense, that’s the only thing lasers know how to do.
So this is Australia, but imagine we did something like this in the USA. A Nazi salute is a form of hate crime against Jewish people, would it also be illegal to use Racial Slurs?
Even Jewish people defend Nazis right to free speech:
But go ahead & tell everyone how saluting is a hate crime. Now imagine your right to protest, or say something negative about the President being taken away because you didn’t like free speech.
Even Jewish people defend Nazis right to free speech
How did that work out for them?
Was there another Holocaust or something I don’t know about during the time in this article?
Not quite yet - the US is currently in the Night of Long Knives phase of allowing Nazis to come into power, so perhaps soon.
Why, did the first one not count?
To be clear, the article calls the salute a hate crime. I’m restating it in my comment since it’s relevant to my question.
Many countries do have hate-speech laws, and law against Nazi propaganda.
As usual intent and context matters, but I don’t see why you should defend the right to use racial slur in a racist manier
Because it isn’t physically violent. Black Democrats are out there making racial comments about white people as well. I don’t think they should be locked up, do you?
Burning a cross on someone’s lawn isn’t physically violent either. So I guess you’re okay with it?
So you illegally trespass onto someone elses’ property which is their safe zone to commit arson & vandalism? You are allowed to burn all the crosses you want on your own lawn as long as it doesn’t violate fire codes where you live. That is free speech. Really dumb argument by you BTW. Do you want to be locked up for it cause you don’t like free speech?
That’s generally how it works in countries with hate speech laws, yes. Civilisation doesn’t work when civility is required only of a subset of the population, no matter its shape.
Also for the record in Germany the salute doesn’t qualify as incitement to hatred, at least not without further context, it’s plain and simply use of a symbol of an outlawed organisation, which is punishable if it is done in the furtherance of the goals and aims of that organisation. Same law applies to e.g. 1%er badges. I think there’s “gang symbols” type legislation in the US, so why the sudden pearl-clutching when the violent goons signalling each other happen to be Nazis? It’s a criminal organisation having had their official structures banned still trying to organise, that’s illegal.
I’m not pearl clutching. I’m a free speech absolutist. I support cosplay Nazis right to free speech just like I support people’s rights to call cops pigs, etc. Also gang signs aren’t illegal.
You’d be surprised how many times free speech has benefited Democrats. Remember how many up votes praising Luigi Mangione got, now those same people want to eliminate free speech. Good luck to them. I’ll just sit here & watch as I get downvoted into oblivion. Not like they bothered actually studying history.
cosplay
Not what anyone is talking about.
Democrats
Luigi Mangione
You mean the party that co-created the conditions that made that happen. Both of the parties are complicit in turning the country into an oligarchy. The US is completely cooked politically speaking, you’re not a standard or role model for anyone. Your completely fucked-up political culture and completely absent standards of civility are part of that. Not a thing you should be proud of.
Where are you from? America has become the most successful superpower due to free speech. Go ahead tell us how much we suck. Maybe you should go look in the mirror first though.
Have you watched the news lately.
Good. I’m glad Australia drew a hard line.
A hard line angled up at about 45 degrees.
Soon protesting or advocating against the genocide in Gaza & speaking out against ethnic cleansing will be considered a hate crime too. Remember, this is what you wanted when you said no to free speech, regardless if it was something that offended you.
I heard they throw you in jail for stabbing someone, what’s next, throwing you in jail for buying a knife? Stop this slippery slope! #allowstabbing #freestabbingabsolutist
Yeah makes no sense & you sound like an idiot. Maybe they should lock you up for what you just said.
Send nazi pig Elon there on a one way flight.
Hey now! Australia is probably sick of everyone just sending criminals there!
targeting Jewish Australians.
There it is. I’ll bet criticizing Isreal is considered anti-semetic too. Meanwhile Aboriginals still don’t have rights.
You may want to quote some more of that bit, bud. It was a FOILED BOMBING PLOT targeting Jewish Australians.
How is Israel relevant?
But yes, native people always seem to get the shaft, no matter where you are. Again though, not relevant in this thread surely.
Sorry what rights don’t Aboriginals have ?
I’m gonna be generous and assume the original commenter meant “Aboriginals on average have significantly worse outcomes compared to non-aboriginal Australians due to historical persecution”
Slippery slope
I don’t think this behavior should be socially tolerated; however, I don’t think it’s a good idea to police it through the use of governmental force.
well put. i still thoroughly disagree with you, mind, but this comment clicked my understanding of this argument.
[…] i still thoroughly disagree with you […]
Would you mind outlining why?
.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to police it through the use of governmental force.
Oh it absolutely is.
If you don’t think it should be socially tolerated, then great, regulations are how we enforce social tolerance in a manner that isn’t just “I don’t like you, please stop, but also I won’t do anything to you if you keep doing it.”
Furthermore, and this is something you’ll probably see brought up a lot when using that talking point, there is a paradox of tolerance that cannot be avoided when it comes to issues like Nazism. Nazi rhetoric is inherently discriminatory and intolerant. If you allow it to flourish, it kills off all other forms of tolerance until only itself is left. If you don’t tolerate Nazi rhetoric, it doesn’t come to fruition and destroy other forms of tolerance.
Any ideology that actively preaches intolerance towards non-intolerant groups must not be tolerated, otherwise tolerance elsewhere is destroyed.
(This mini comic explains the paradox well, as well.)
-
What you want is the government to enforce what you think the standards should be.
-
What you will get is the government enforcing what the government thinks the standards should be.
I disagree with the fundamental premise of your argument, and I cite the results of the last election is the foundation of my own.
This argument boils down to “You want the government to do a good thing, but bad people can abuse the government to do the opposite.” Sure, that happens sometimes.
But following your logic, I guess all laws shouldn’t exist then. After all, if we give the government the ability to do anything against any citizen, they might use it in a bad way! This argument is fundamentally unworkable, because it doesn’t just apply to enforcing rules regarding speech, it applies to all rules.
Yes, I believe the government should enforce the standards I believe are correct. No, I do not believe that simply by enforcing such standards the power is magically granted for them to use it incorrectly, in a way that they wouldn’t be capable of had my preferred regulation not been implemented. Whether Nazis are or aren’t allowed speech won’t stop a bad government from simply censoring acceptable speech, if the government is acting in bad faith. They will do so regardless of if anti-Nazi speech regulations were in place prior.
Should we never attempt to implement any positive policy if it grants power that could theoretically be abused?
But following your logic,
You’re not following my logic.
I guess all laws shouldn’t exist then.
That conclusion does not arise from my arguments.
After all, if we give the government the ability to do anything against any citizen, they might use it in a bad way!
I am saying that the law should be objective. “The speed limit is 35mph” is an objective law. Yes, it can be abusively enforced, by allowing some people to go 55, while stopping others at 36.
Contrast, “Disturbing the peace”, a purely subjective law. Cops apply that law to do pretty much anything they want, to anyone they want, at any time they want, with zero consequences. The only objective factor is your presence in public: It’s pretty hard to argue you were disturbing the peace from the comfort of your own home.
Concepts as nebulous and vague as the ones we are talking about here are as broadly and subjectively enforced as “disturbing the peace”. The Nazis could claim you are in violation of your laws if you support “pedophiles” (by which they mean “trans”). Or supporting “enemy invaders” (by which they mean “immigrants”). Even mentioning “Luigi” could qualify as a violation.
Never give the government a power that you would not give to the Nazis.
The Nazis could claim you are in violation of your laws if you support “pedophiles” (by which they mean “trans”). Or supporting “enemy invaders” (by which they mean “immigrants”). Even mentioning “Luigi” could qualify as a violation.
Nazism, however, can be more objectively defined than single-word terms, as you’ve used here.
For instance, if someone says the words “Heil Hitler” while raising their hands in a traditional Nazi salute, there isn’t exactly room for a fascist to go “weeeeelllll but you saying ‘black lives matter’ with your fist up is the same thing, actually,” if the law explicitly states that saying the exact words “Heil Hitler” while raising your hand in that salute is the specific thing required to get you imprisoned. Laws can be more objectively defined than “pedophiles,” “supporting enemy invaders,” or “Nazis.”
Never give the government a power that you would not give to the Nazis.
Nazis simply ignore the law. Trump is quite literally doing it right now, He’s passing executive orders he doesn’t actually have the legal capacity to enforce, which is then leading to things like congresspeople being prevented from entering buildings they have a right to enter, or databases being given to people without legally required security credentials. They don’t care what the law was, they care what it will be once they’re done screwing with it.
Whether or not you pass a law prohibiting explicit behaviors that are categorically harmful to society will not change whether or not they are then capable of manipulating the laws to do what they wanted to do to you regardless.
It will, however, heavily reduce the chances of them coming into power, and having the ability to misuse any laws or power they may have in the first place
That conclusion does not arise from my arguments.
And yes, it obviously does. You stated that we should not censor Nazis because Nazis in power later on could use that law to suppress others. The same logic applies to any other regulation or prohibition. We shouldn’t pass gun control legislation because it’s possible someone uses it to take the good people’s guns away. We shouldn’t imprison people for rape because someone could redefine what rape means to mean non-married people having sex. We shouldn’t jail pedophiles because they could redefine trans people as pedophiles simply for existing.
It’s the same logic all the way down. There is nothing different when it comes to imprisonment for Nazi-aligned speech/actions, or other dangerous speech/actions. All of them can be prohibited to an extent, even though there’s a possibility that the power dynamic could then be reversed later on by the same group of people being prohibited.
Look, I’m not going to keep going on this because I think it’s clear neither of us are changing our stances. Send a reply if you want, I’ll gladly read it, and give it some thought, but I’m done trying to continue a conversation if you think we shouldn’t try to stop Nazis because Nazis could possibly get in power and stop us instead. That applies to any regulation against any group that could possibly come into power, and I would encourage you to look back at the examples I provided, stop, and think about just how different the logic really is to the idea of censoring Nazis, because I think you’ll find it is, in fact, not different at all.
-
Furthermore, and this is something you’ll probably see brought up a lot when using that talking point, there is a paradox of tolerance that cannot be avoided when it comes to issues like Nazism. Nazi rhetoric is inherently discriminatory and intolerant. If you allow it to flourish, it kills off all other forms of tolerance until only itself is left. If you don’t tolerate Nazi rhetoric, it doesn’t come to fruition and destroy other forms of tolerance.
Any ideology that actively preaches intolerance towards non-intolerant groups must not be tolerated, otherwise tolerance elsewhere is destroyed.
I would like to clarify that I am not advocating for tolerance. It’s quite the contrary. I am advocating for very vocal intolerance of these groups and their behaviors. It is simply my belief that governmental force is not a necessary means to this end, not to mention that it is incompatible with the ideas of liberalism [1], which I personally espouse.
References
- Title: “Liberalism”. Wikipedia. Published: 2025-02-02T19:43Z. Accessed: 2025-02-08T05:47Z. URI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism.
- ¶1
[…] Liberals espouse various and often mutually warring views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion.
- Policing speech is incompatible with the freedom of speech.
- ¶1
deleted by creator
I would like to reiterate that I am not advocating for tolerance. It’s quite the contrary. I am advocating for very vocal intolerance of these groups and their behaviors.
Saying we shouldn’t police those behaviors is actively stating that you want to tolerate them, just via legal means rather than solely social ones. You say you don’t want to tolerate them socially, but when it comes to any actual legal intervention, suddenly, they should be tolerated. If saying they shouldn’t be stopped using the force of law isn’t tolerating the behavior more than saying we should stop them using the force of law, then I don’t know what is.
It is simply my belief that governmental force is not a necessary means to this end, not to mention that it is incompatible with the ideas of liberalism [1], which I personally espouse.
Then you should reconsider your ideology. If your ideology allows Nazis to face no legal consequences for being Nazis, while you simultaneously state that you don’t believe they should be tolerated, then you hold mutually contradictory views.
If you don’t think their views should be tolerated, you should support actions that prevent their views from being held and spread. If you don’t do that, then you inherently are tolerating them to an extent.
[…] If your ideology allows Nazis to face no legal consequences for being Nazis, while you simultaneously state that you don’t believe they should be tolerated, then you hold mutually contradictory views. […]
This is a loaded statement — it depends on what you mean by “being Nazis”.
Generally speaking, espousing/engaging in the support of many harmful beliefs traditionally held by Nazis, and generally fascists more broadly since Nazism is just a branch of fascism, such as:
- Supporting the actions of the Nazi party historically (e.g. saying the Nazis were right to kill Jewish people, saying “Heil Hitler,” or doing the Nazi salute in a clearly deliberate manner)
- Supporting dictatorship, authoritarianism, or totalitarianism as a concept or goal
- Belief in a so called “master race” or the subordination of other races for the benefit of another/the nation
- Advocating for the imprisonment/killing of homosexual/transgender individuals (the exact category of people at risk here can change over time, since fascism just re-selects a new group of people to attack once the former has been exterminated/ostracized enough)
- Religious nationalism by any denomination
- Advocating to eliminate unions for the benefit of corporations/the state
- Ultra-nationalist rhetoric
- Advocating for an expansion of the police state
- Views of immigrants as sub-human
- etc.
Practically speaking, I think it would probably make the most sense to judge whether somebody is a “Nazi” legally, by requiring at least a few of these tenets to be met before any trial could take place to prevent false imprisonment and the like, but as these views are objectively harmful to society, I don’t believe they should be allowed to flourish, full stop.
If you don’t support imprisoning people who hold these views that directly lead to the death of many innocent people, the taking over of people’s land/homes, the destruction of democratic systems, and the elimination of entire races of people from populations, then you are inherently tolerating their beliefs.
[…] If you don’t support imprisoning people who hold these views that directly lead to the death of many innocent people, the taking over of people’s land/homes, the destruction of democratic systems, and the elimination of entire races of people from populations, then you are inherently tolerating their beliefs.
To me, it feels like you are conflating some things here: I draw a distinction between how I try to conduct myself (and, by extension, how I think society should conduct itself), and how I think a government should conduct itself. Any common overlap, while it may theoretically draw from the same core personal beliefs, is more of a coincidence in practice, imo. Yes, I think that society should not socially tolerate any of these behaviors, and I think that society should take an active position to socially oppose them; but I don’t believe that a government should take action unless the well-being of an individual is actively under threat.
I could be wrong in my interpretation, but all of your examples seem to simply a be a difference of opinion (no matter how abhorrent and unpalatable an opinion may be). I don’t believe that one should be legally punished for a difference of opinion. The only one that may have some legal ground, in my opinion, as I currently understand your examples, is
Supporting dictatorship, authoritarianism, or totalitarianism as a concept or goal
but that would depend on how you are defining “support”.
- Title: “Liberalism”. Wikipedia. Published: 2025-02-02T19:43Z. Accessed: 2025-02-08T05:47Z. URI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism.
My thoughts exactly. I have absolutely no sympathy for Nazis, or anyone else who thinks mass murder and genocide were good policy. But one of the things that makes a free society different from Nazi Germany, is free expression. If we limit free expression to only things the people in charge want expressed, no matter how noble the intent that starts us down a very dark path very quickly.
The way we fight Nazis and racism is not by beating them up or jailing them. It’s by teaching each other and our children why they are wrong, by learning and understanding what it is like to have racism directed against you. And thus, we defeat racism not with force but with empathy.
As far as I’m concerned, this is the sort of policy that would make Hitler proud. It’s the sort of policy that would be enacted in Nazi Germany, or Soviet Russia.
deleted by creator
Maybe Musk should take one of his Boeing Cyberplanes to Australia
