Mandatory jail term for Nazi salute under new hate crime rules in Australia

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.

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?

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.

If you read the article, just a gesture with your arm does not land a person a 12-month prison sentence. It needs to be in public and in combination with: hateful speech, or a hateful act. It seems to be an add-on for specific types of hate crimes.

You sound like those cops who tell victims of domestic violence that there's nothing they can do until lives are being threatened.

I generally don't do "slippery slope" arguments, and I also dislike invoking the "paradox of tolerance", but I will say that I think the messaging here is important.

To me, it's not "just a gesture". It's a very clear and intentional demonstration of ideological alignment, and it's an ideology of hate and intolerance.

I'm absolutely ok with expressing, as a society, that we will not accept this ideology amongst us. If they want to scuttle around through the cracks like cockroaches then so be it.

It's a nazi fucken salute mate. What part of it isn't a hate crime?

Don't kid yourself. Australia is also an oligarchy where corporations get most of what they want passed within days/weeks, with little to no debate, while popular or inconsequential policies are given months or years of debate (so the murdoch/oligarch propaganda machine can distract the public and tell them how to think).

There is no chance in hell either major party would imprison an American dictators right hand man. They're both corporate whores at heart, with little/no virtue.

There is no free speech absolutism. Dare to criticize him or make fun of him and you are banned and ostracized. It's a Nazi enablement pure and simple.

It's kinda weird to sort of start rolling back to where some type of conservatism is actually a good thing. I don't want to identify as a conservative, but I definitely want to conserve institutions of justice and whatnot and not have them corrupted by right-wing crypto cucks.

It's illegal to do it "in public". So doing it at work is perfectly fine, as long as it isn't a public place.

I mean free speech is a deeply contradictory concept, which i largely support, however, people having the "right" to harm others as fascists mean to do is not a human right but a right of domination, which I am actively and deeply set against. And prison justice is just a "right" to harm others, only one that we are conditioned to live with.

It does create an opportunity for a little irony, which I can't pass up.

But part of my criticism is not just "Nazis exist in prison" but "carcerial justice is just as fascistic as anything we associate with fascism" which never gets even thought about let alone discussed anywhere but the fringes of the prison abolition movement.

And things like prisons and police, the existence of many kinds of crime, particularly property crimes, need to be considered historically contingent, so that no matter how much we want to just delete all prisons they do serve as a solution to contradictions that arise within our society. So that the struggle to abolish carcerial punishment has to be simultaneously replaced with something better. Which is just and worth fighting for.

Getting rid of heil Hitler hand gestures in public might prevent the public proliferation of "signs" of fascism, the actual causes of it are institutional and function in cooperation with systems of institutional racism, Etc., and until those tendencies are abolished, and that is the worst expressions of class domination within capitalism, fascism will always be a problem to contend with.

In other words, we have fascism because we have prisons. Or rather, the underlying logic of fascism is just the underlying logic that justifies carcerial justice, taken to its natural conclusions.

So its not just irony, its like a double irony

I don't know we do it, but I think addressing the root causes as to why people are drawn to hate groups or hateful beliefs would be better. Eliminating the symptom doesn't solve the problem.

Well I say it elsewhere, but we need to really start to rethink carcerial justice as a solution to social problems. It doesn't help, it just compounds the contradictions that lead to problems like crime, fascism in the first place.

I understand we can't just snap our fingers to make it go away. But The first step is discussion.

I hope you're right but I'm less optimistic about courts.

gosh, how we let the weird kid gather so much power..

*Unless applied in benefit

The funny thing is that the Nuremberg Trials were based on retroactive laws. Nothing the Nazis did was technically illegal, so they were prosecuted on the basis that their actions were decided to be crimes after the fact.

Where did I say that I do that or that I think it's okay? Or are you so blinded by rage that you have to go to this?

Nazis aren't "people you disagree with". They're anti-social violence-worshippers, and in this Australian context, terrorists grooming children. The main Australian neo-Nazi group literally had leadership get caught applying for a job in disability services when they said they only wanted to work cases for young boys[1]. ASIO have emphasised the decreasing age of NSNs membership. Their strategy, like many neo-Nazi orgs, is to indoctrinate and recruit disaffected and alienated teenagers.

Do you think the same about any traffic violation or all fines in general? We should throw people in the jail for a year, mnimum, because otherwise it's just a tax on not being rich enough for the crime?

Come on now. I'm all for having tougher sentences on the high end for hate related offenses, but a mandatory minimum being year in jail for any such offense, even some dipshit doing a Nazi salute and nothing is else, is just too much. It's like said, dipshit behaviour but hardly worth a year in jail. And it probably won't solve the issue anyway. Just putting people in jail seldom does imo. Yanks have already tried that.

Why stop at jail time? Why not execute them?

Edit: the point is to consider what level of punishment is appropriate, not to actually execute anyone.

If you consider a fine just a paywall then do you feel like there should be jail sentence for all traffic violations too, for example? A bit ridiculous, imo.

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?

Even Jewish people defend Nazis right to free speech

How did that work out for them?