Mentions National Socialist Network (NSN)

Um… You've heard of the Nazis, haven't you?

During the final day of the hearing on Tuesday, the court heard from a member of the public who observed the rally on December 3, 2023.

Mark Doery was a witness presented by the defence.

"It just looked like a bunch of boys in a group, going for a walk," Mr Doery told the court.

"Nothing stood out as offensive to me, but that's just me."

[…]

"The prosecution has not proved the behaviour of the accused was offensive," Mr Sewell said.

Ultimately, Magistrate Mike Wardell agreed and said he had not been convinced of Victoria Police's case that Mr Sewell's behaviour during the rally was "deeply or seriously insulting".

"Behaviour deemed unacceptably offensive by some, may not trouble others at all," Magistrate Wardell said.

"The test … is whether the impugned behaviour is so deeply and seriously insulting … as to warrant the interference in the criminal law.

"Society is evolving in attitudes all the time … Fringe groups are arising all the time."

This is an absurd claim. As an Australian who grew up in arguably (and famously) the most homogenously small-minded and bigoted part of it, I can assure you that "Russian operatives" did not turn Australia racist overnight via Facebook. Australia is a big box of racist fireworks; forty years of fiscal austerity is the match tossed in.

ASIO is investigating pro-Russian social media influencers who are working with an offshore media organisation to condemn Australia's support for Kyiv, while also using "social media to spread vitriolic, polarising commentary on anti-immigration protests and pro-Palestinian marches", he said.

"These state-sanctioned trolls are more than propaganda puppets; they want to turn hot-button issues into burning issues, tipping disagreement into division and division into violence," he said, giving the annual Lowy Institute address.

A large neo-Nazi group, the National Socialist Network, had also attempted to leverage recent anti-immigration and cost-of-living rallies in Australia, he said.

Anti-immigration rallies that have drawn out tens of thousands of Australians in capital cities are being secretly controlled by neo-Nazis – part of a co-ordinated “fraud on the public” experts say could become even more violent when they march again next month.

An investigation by this masthead can reveal how neo-Nazi leadership is using far-right influencers to sell the March for Australia rallies as a “spontaneous” groundswell of “everyday Australians”, while they stack crowds with plain clothes Nazis and send key members interstate to headline rallies. Some neo-Nazis have even donned yellow vests to act as official safety marshals in order to bring marches under the group’s control.

Leaked chatlogs, recordings and insider accounts tell the full story of how the March for Australia rallies grew out of a mysterious TikTok video in early August and descended into a day of chaos and violence across the country on August 31.

And they lay bare the strategy of Australia’s most prominent neo-Nazi group, the National Socialist Network, as they move to radicalise the right to their dangerous fascist ideology under the cloak of the Australian flag.

While the National Socialist Network might be “deluded in thinking they can get a Nazi elected”, researchers at the White Rose Society say “you just have to look at the way [some] mainstream conservatives” have latched onto the Shrine booing stunt, to question Welcome to Country ceremonies, “to get a preview of how a Nazi political campaign will be used to push the Overton window”, referring to efforts to bring extreme views into the mainstream.

Far from deflating their party launch, researcher Dr Kaz Ross expects the publicity from the stunt will boost it. “They’re eating One Nation’s lunch,” she said. “And they’re growing.”

On the weekend of October 14-15, the state Labor government in New South Wales threatened to ban a pro-Palestinian protest in Sydney, on the grounds that it could result in incidents of violence and hate crimes. A demonstration opposing the bombardment of Gaza in Melbourne was also met by a massive police presence.

Actual Nazis, walking through Melbourne like stormtroopers and hunting for Jewish people, received a tiny fraction of the negative media coverage that the mass peaceful Palestinian protests did. This glaring disparity only underscores that the official campaign over anti-Semitism is a conscious fraud. The media is cynically using the accusation against people it knows are not hostile to Jews, while largely responding with indifference to those who are actual anti-Semites.