I’m not very knowledgeable about Neo-Nazism in Australia, but I think I just saw an Aussie Neo-Nazi. I was at a smoothie bar and the guy in front of me was a handsome, fit young man with a black T-shirt bearing the legend NEW RIGHT AUSTRALIA TRADITIONAL EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONARY surrounding a logo made of an upward-pointing arrow and a a stylized N combined to look something like a swastika. I was shocked that someone would wear something like this in the open, especially in area like this – affluent, educated, and liberal.
I think you can have your house sprayed for those these days, so I wouldn’t worry too much.
do you wanna talk about it?
It would be funny if it turned out to be like one of these t-shirts.
Here is the website for the group whose member you saw. It’s actually not a “neo-Nazi” group in the traditional, skinhead, tough-guy, swastika-wearing sense. It is probably anti-semitic; it has links to David Duke and to a website for a book claiming that “Jews control the world economy.”
However, unsurprisingly, it does seem to be one of the “we don’t hate Jews, only ‘Zionists’” groups. There are links to Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky.
In other words, they’re the Jeff Rense kind of loony-toon anti-Semites. I really prefer the old-fashioned skinhead-and-swastika type. With those guys, at least you know where they stand.
This new breed of anti-Semites is much more insidious because they’re saying, “we don’t hate Jews, just Zionists.” In reality, they have no idea what “Zionism” actually is, and they do hate Jews.
A neo-Nazi * patronizing a smoothie bar*??!?
No self-respecting Fascist would do that around here.
My cousin recently emigrated to Australia and he said where he’s living in Victoria there are lots of people with car stickers with an outline of Australia and “We’re Full Up” or something like that written on it. Not quite neo-nazi but I’m not sure it’s a sentiment you’d see or hear publicly expressed in Britain or Ireland by too many.
Last spring on my way to work I had a WTF moment. I wear my hair short (brush cut) and always own a pair of brown dock martins. As far as footwear goes I get the most bang for my buck with docks. My mother for my birthday bought me a plain black no logos sports coat which I wore that morning. Being friday at work it was jean day.
On my way out of my place on my way to work I did my usuall check the full length mirror for wanton boogers, open flies and untucked shirts. I realized. Jeans, docks, black coat and brush cut.
WTF I looked like a skinhead.
Got rid of the black coat and wore something else.
I hate New South Wales Nazis!
OP needs to watch Romper Stomper.
A mild amount of google-age produced this, which looks like their website. I haven’t had high enough rubber boots to start wading into it yet.
That’s a great t-shirt prank voltaire.
ETA:
Ninja’d by AT.
Yeah, but just how often do neo-Nazis do laundry?
Yeah, that sort of thing has been growing in Australia over the past couple of decades.
Of course, the idea that Australia is “full up” is laughable. I recognize that large portions of the country are basically uninhabitable due to climate and geography, but we’re talking about a country the size of the mainland United States, with a population smaller than that of Texas.
It’s also not too much of a coincidence that this sentiment tends to focus on people who look different from traditional Australian immigrant groups. Despite the fact that the single largest countries of origin for immigrants are still New Zealand and the United Kingdom (Source), fear-mongering news stories still tend to use almost nothing but footage of Vietnamese, Chinese and other Asian groups walking the streets. Although the xenophobia has, over the last decade, shifted slightly to focus on those of Middle Eastern appearance.
I’m not sure exactly how prevalent this sort of sentiment is among the Australian population as a whole, but there is, at the very least, a significant and vocal minority, egged on by narrow-minded talk-radio demagogues.
Well, David Duke IS a neo-Nazi, (he’s a former Klan leader), so at the very least, they’re sympathetic it looks like.
There is anti-Zionism and there is anti-Semitism. Judging from the links on their homepage, these guys seem pretty damned confused over which one it is they stand for.
Hell, they have links to everything and everyone from the New Black Panther party to Savitri fucking Devi, for God’s sakes. That would be the crazy Greek lady who believed Hitler was an avatar of the Indian god Vishnu.
my dad killed nazis with a machine gun in ww2. that’s why his is called “the Greatest Generation”.
Made me giggle remembering the people in Miami who claimed “we don’t have room for more immigrants!” Oh, yes, with that population density, you bloody well do It’s certainly not room that’s the problem.
I can still remember this guy in Brisbane in the 1970’s.
I don’t think Australia has any more neo-Nazis than anywhere else; xenophobia is pretty common in every country.
The right-wing press likes scaring the public with xenophobic rhetoric so they vote for law’n’order authoritarian gov’t. The previous Federal Gov’t were masters at that particular game. (Note to non-Australians: the right wing conservative party here is called “The Liberal Party” because of a masterful piece of political manoeuvring back in the 1940s. They’re not “liberal” in the way that a non-Australian would use the word.)
In actual reality, both sides of Australian politics want to increase immigration so as to stave off the whole aging-baby-boomer population time-bomb. Somebody has to pay all those pensions.