Skip Navigation
32 comments

  • Weird. Our US government would consider it anti-semitic not to use a nazi salute twice on stage in front of millions of people. I wonder which government is serious about protecting their Jewish citizens?

    • Our US government would consider it anti-semitic not to use a nazi salute twice on stage in front of millions of people.

      I was almost going to mention Musk's gesture as an example of how context dictates meaning, but removed it from my comment. Glad to see that someone else mentioned it though - that gesture can be only understood as a Nazi salute and as support to Nazism, nothing else.

      [I'm neither from Australia nor USA, but it's clear that Australia got it right. Musk and his puppet, on the other hand...]

    • In light of last Spring and Summer "From The River To the Sea" marches in every major American city, and University common across the county, and having overwhelmingly voted (80%) for Kamala Harris to be President, and Trump's baby boy Elon Musk throwing up the Seig Heils, American Zionist Jews (90%) have gone to fucking ground

  • mandatory minimum sentencing is a completely fucked up knee jerk reaction. The government does sweet FA to tackle Nazis because half of Parliament is sympathetic to them, then decide to earn some quick PR by interferring with the court system and lending legitimacy to an extremely blunt instrument primarily used to lock up indigenous kids.

    edit: no actually fuck this. Anti hate speech laws were only really updated for this shit a year ago (tells ya something huh), there literally hasn't been time to test if the courts are just throwing Nazis back out onto the street with a slap on the wrist. Gaol is basically never good and the idea of punishing someone disproportionately as a warning to others is completely unjust. MMS is largely used in Australia to fuck up children and Aboriginal Aussies, the police still have to actually charge people and since they're sympathic to fascism laws get applied unjustly.

    LGBT people face vilification like actual eugenics enforced by the state until last year for trans people in NSW, murder by cops until quite recently that was never investigate, expulsion from private schools (students recently protected I think, teachers not) but faith groups get immunity to existing hate speech laws. The government doing this is in favour of completely ludicrous and fashy anti protest laws, and directs an increasingly militarised police state to spend most of their effort fabricating evidence against climate protestors while intelligence agencies scream into the void about a rising tide of fascism.

    Mins himself (large pusher for this from nsw) is an enthusiastic supporter of ethnic cleansing in occupied Palestine. This is not an anti fascist measure from any sort of coherent platform. It is a stupid kneejerk reaction that will do nothing to actually stop facist (remember, they are very good at dog whistles) from a government that has no interest in stemming the tide of fascism.

    Bullshit totalitarian cruelty doesn't start being good because it's used against people you hate sometimes, that just legitimises bullshit totalitarian cruelty and provides cover. Fuck this law, fuck this government.

  • Depending on how this is implemented, that sounds sensible.

    the key here is that context should be always taken into account when interpreting symbols.

    • Nobody's been brave enough to hail a taxi since this was introduced. Taxis are going out of business.

  • As much as I dislike the iconography of hate I don't know if such laws are effective. They get media attention and their followers think they are martyrs and it feels like virtue signalling and easy options. Also I think the mandatory part was pushed by the conservatives whose leader seeks to benefit from the votes of these people so that tells you what you need to know about the likely effectiveness.

    We need to have a serious adult public discussion about fascism, why people want it and what the consequences are because it tends to be catastrophic for everyone, not least the people who gave it power. Our lives aren't perfect but they are way too good to euthanase our society in pursuit of hideous intolerance.

    The leader of the opposition's mask keeps slipping and the media refuses to examine the issue seriously. The party of Bob Menzies always represented a set of values in opposition to the progress of the Australian working class but they were still generally committed to a democratic and moderately liberal Australia which provided a voice for the many self-employed, small business owner types and others who shared their values. They were never generally more or less bigotted than the ALP or Australian public of the time to my knowledge. In the old days the ALP strongly supported White Australia as a form of labour protectionism and they still have a strongly religious conservative branch. It was never a cartoonish dichotomy between the sides.

    While I would say I am generally center left now I have voted for Liberal and National parties in specific elections based on local issues or representation. Choice is good and once we lose our commitment to the rule of law and pluralistic democratic values we lose that choice and people will need to fight to get it back at great cost.

    The import of Trumpism and the bigotted dogwhistling pushing the boundaries from the leader of a major party needs to be discussed seriously and unfortunately it won't be in our current media and tech environment and that concerns me greatly. I helped bring 3 great kids into this world in a bountiful and mostly united country full of hope and opportunity. There were big challenges ahead in the form of climate change but I thought we would have made some headway on those by now and there was progress on other issues. Western democracy turning to the fascism which our forebeears helped defeat wasn't on my bingo card.

32 comments