Arresting the rise of the right
While our own government has demonised terrorists, boat people and African gangs, a far more sinister group has quietly gathered strength in the shadows. But while far-right extremism is a loathsome and intolerant idealogy, and a clear and present danger
Iactually feel bad talking to Launceston’s Rabbi Yochanan Gordon about the issue of Neo-Nazism and far-right extremism, which is again on the rise in Australia. It strikes me as absurdly unfair that in 2020 we are, apparently, still having this debate, that these things still need to be addressed. We literally had a world war about this issue in the 1940s, and the Nazi doctrine was resoundingly rejected by the rest of the world. People were charged with war crimes. They were executed. The argument has been had and a verdict was passed.
Yet here we sit, talking about a house in the town of Perth, in Tasmania’s north, displaying a Nazi Swastika in its front window; about visibly increasing racist and intolerant rhetoric in the community; and the fact that Jewish people — along with a number of other groups — are once again in the sights of far-right extremist groups seeking to drive them out.
To his credit, Rabbi Gordon is open and patient, but having to ask a Jewish man about the rise of anti-semitism and far-right nationalism in Tasmania still seems unfair and cruel.
“In Judaism, we have a 3000-year history of persecution and various groups hating us, whether it’s the Crusaders, the Inquisition, the Cossacks, the Nazis — we are attacked by someone every couple of generations,” he says.
“I thank God we were able to pull ourselves out every single time and be stronger for it afterwards. We have great resilience to overcome all this hatred.”
In mid-February, residents of the northern Midlands town of Perth discovered the front of a house in Scone St was adorned with spray-painted swastikas and a homemade Nazi flag and emblems.
It came as a huge shock to people in the town, who made their outrage known on social media and in local news outlets. A nearby resident, who had been trying to sell her house, found people turned up for an inspection only to drive off the moment they saw the offensive symbols across the road.
Some said the symbols had started appearing on different parts of the house as early as January, but police were essentially powerless to have them removed.
If the display of such a symbol is deemed to be inciting hatred or violence, there may be a case to force a person to take it down but, technically, it is not illegal to display a swastika in public in Tasmania.
Rabbi Gordon visited the street to speak with nearby residents to learn more about the owner of the house in question, and to see how the community was responding.
“The message I got was that nobody wants to have that hate in their community, nobody wants these kinds of people around,” he says.
The display was roundly condemned by politicians at both a state and federal level, with Premier Peter Gutwein describing it as abhorrent and Federal Lyons MP Brian Mitchell saying it was “a symbol of hate and division and has no place in Australia. Nazism is an evil ideology, an enemy of democracy and the values that Australians have fought and died for.”
Strong words that you would think should be fairly uncontentious. It really is hard to imagine why anyone would take issue with a position like “Nazis are bad” but, sadly, pockets of this intolerant ideology do still exist, and they exist here in Tasmania.
On February 24, ASIO director general Mike Burgess issued his annual threat assessment report in Canberra, saying foreign espionage activity in Australia was currently higher than it was during the height of the Cold War, and the number of terrorism leads being investigated had doubled since last year.
And while he said violent Islamic extremism, of the type embodied by the Islamic State, and al’Qaida and their offshoots, would remain the security agency’s principal concern, far-right extremism was rapidly gaining a foothold in Australia and was a real and growing concern.
Whether their target is Muslims, Jews, Asians, Africans, LGBTQI people, or all of the above, these far-right extremist groups are very much alive and using the vast reach and penetration of the internet to normalise their ideologies and recruit new people to their cause.
“Intolerance based on race, gender and identity, and the extreme political views that intolerance inspires, is on the rise across the western world in particular,” he said.
“Right-wing extremism has been in ASIO’s sights for some time, but obviously this threat came into sharp, terrible focus last year in New Zealand [the Christchurch massacre in March last year, in which an Australian-born shooter killed 51 people in an attack targeting Muslims]. “In Australia, the extreme right wing threat is real — and it is growing. In suburbs around Australia, small cells regularly meet to salute Nazi flags, inspect weapons, train in combat and share their hateful ideology.
“These groups are more organised and security conscious than they were in previous years.”
University of Sydney PhD candidate Raymond Radford says this should not surprise anyone — not even Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, who bizarrely attempted to implicate left-wing extremists in his response to the ASIO briefing, despite no mention whatsoever of left-wing extremists in the briefing.
According to Radford, who is completing his sociology PhD thesis on far-right extremism and white supremacists in Australia, these right-wing hate groups never went away, but we have been looking in the opposite direction for almost 20 years.
The attentions of government, media and the popular consciousness shifted heavily towards the threat of Islamic terrorism following the September 11 attacks in 2001.
And, while we collectively obsessed over Jihadists, boat people and African teenagers in Melbourne in the years that followed, far-right groups simply continued to grow and strengthen in the shadows.
“Attacks that originate from far-right groups far eclipse those committed by jihadists in the last 20 years,” he says. “The last actual Islamic mass attack was the Orlando nightclub shooting where 50 people died.
“In the US pre-September 11, the groups that were at the top of CIA and FBI watch lists were far-right, white, Christian terrorist groups.
“A lot of them were these heavily armed, ex-military, antigovernment groups, all with the same endgame — they want a white Christian state.”
There are complex and manifold sociological conditions that underpin the growth of far-right extremist groups. The so-called “lost boys” phenomenon is a well known one, essentially describing the way young men who feel socially isolated or outcast for various reasons tend to gravitate towards groups that make them feel like they finally belong, and they give them a sense of being in control — and often something they can direct their anger towards.
A conspiracy theory mentality is a common trait with most far-right hate groups as well, with conspiracy theories often being a way for people to feel like they are somehow more enlightened than the majority of the populace — the custodians of secret knowledge that only they can interpret or understand.
This conspiracy theory aspect is what makes far-right extremists difficult to combat or reason with, logically. In a classic Catch-22 situation, any attempt to aggressively combat or confront these groups usually only serves to reinforce their perception that they are the persecuted minority — it strengthens them.
Radford says the conspiracy theories that underpin these groups range from twisted interpretations of history to outright absurdity.
“While we commonly see these groups as being predominantly Christian, there are some that aren’t. There is one particular movement of atheist white supremacists who believe Christianity is just another Jewish plot to keep the white man down,” he says.
“Often they simply don’t understand history, or they just put their own version of history over the top to make it fit their position.
“But if you go to someone with these deeply held beliefs, whether it is a religion or a conspiracy or whatever, the more you try to convince them otherwise, the more they get entrenched in their own view.
“If you say ‘there is no Jewish global conspiracy’ they will just assume you’re a part of it. It’s the same as the way Flat Earthers will usually surround themselves with other people who have the same beliefs and reinforce those beliefs, because they’ve already pushed everyone else away.”
So how do you combat ideologies like these? How do you reason with the unreasonable?
It is tempting to say “we should ban the swastika”. It seems like an obvious first step at the very least, and it was certainly a popular refrain among those who were appalled about the display of Nazi emblems in Perth.
A similar call went up in Victoria in January, when a couple in the rural town of Beulah started flying a Nazi flag from a flag pole in their front yard, citing their German heritage as a justification.
Just like Tasmania, Victorian authorities also have no specific powers to force the removal of such a flag.
But banning the swastika is not as simple as it might seem. One commonly cited objection to banning it is that the hooked cross is also a symbol of peace and prosperity in Hinduism and Buddhism, so banning it outright could infringe upon the freedom of a whole group of people to practice their faith.
In fact, in October last year, a delivery man saw what he thought was a swastika on the front porch of a suburban home and destroyed it.
In fact, it was an elaborate coloured-sand sculpture created by the household’s Hindu resident as part of his celebrations of the Diwali festival. The design, called a rangoli, took three hours to create.
But, that being said, surely there is a clear difference between the ornate display of a Hindu symbol and the stark redwhite-and-black blockiness of the Nazi emblem?
And if the Tasmanian Government can ban bikie gang colours in publicly visible places, surely the Nazi swastika can be banned as well? After all, Germany and Austria have both banned the public display of Nazi emblems outright.
Australian Lawyers Alliance spokesman Greg Barns says, well, it’s complicated.
“It would be less difficult to ban the swastika in Australia than it is in the US, for example, where the constitution has entrenched that right to freedom of speech and they take it very seriously,” Barns says.
“There have been attempts in the US to ban things like Nazi symbols and Ku Klux Klan symbols that have failed, because the right to freedom of speech is interpreted very broadly, whereas that protection is much weaker here.”
But while the right to freedom of expression is not as firmly embedded in the Australian constitution, an attempt by a state government to ban something like a Nazi emblem might not survive a review by the High Court if someone chose to challenge such legislation.
“In the recent case Bob Brown won here against anti-protest laws, the High Court said there was an implied freedom of political communication in our constitution,” Barns explains.
“In other words, governments need to be careful when seeking to regulate or ban areas of activity that are political in nature, like protests against certain laws.
“So, banning bikie gangs from publicly displaying their insignia is a relatively clear case. They are not political groups, just private organisations, and the intent is to prevent violence from occurring.
“With something like a Nazi emblem, you could make the argument that they are a symbol used to incite hate and violence, but the counter-argument could be made that a ban would impinge on freedom of political communication.
“I’m not sure what the outcome would be. It is untested so far.”
There is also the danger that banning the public display of such emblems, or even the possession of Nazi memorabilia, would simply make people display them more privately.
And while forcing someone to hang their Nazi flag in their living room is certainly preferable to having it on a flagpole outside, it would probably do very little to combat the ideology.
“You can’t destroy a movement just by banning their symbols,” Radford says. “They will just move them from somewhere visible to somewhere that isn’t visible.
“And even if you ban or eradicate those symbols completely, they will simply find something new to rally around, invent new signs and symbols.”
Even Rabbi Gordon is not convinced a ban on the swastika would be a good idea.
“It is far easier to deal with open anti-semitism than hidden anti-semitism,” he says.
“People try to hide their anti-semitism — disguise it — but they’re still taking some situation and blaming it on the Jewish people. It can come out a lot worse because you don’t know the enemy you’re fighting against.
“And when the Nazis rose to power, one of the first things they did was to regulate the freedom of speech. So there is a concern that to do so here in any way could still be manipulated to be used against us later.”
The internet, of course, has been a game-changer for the way extremist groups disseminate their propaganda and recruit new members. Terrorist organisation Islamic State is infamous for its prolific use of online videos to inspire impressionable people to join their cause.
And the appeal of the internet as a recruitment tool is obvious. Decades ago, members of extremist groups needed to letter-drop their pamphlets and post their bills in person.
But now, YouTube can be used to create ranting videos that can be shared globally in an instant.
Entire private social network sites have been created to be safe places for white supremacists and extreme nationalists to share their ideas with other like-minded people.
Auction houses, who intermittently come under fire for selling artefacts with Nazi insignia, even offer online bidding for their auctions now, so an auction house in Tasmania can end up selling items to a bidder on the other side of the planet.
Given the huge market for Nazi memorabilia, such items always attract a lot of bidder attention. And there is a very valid argument to be made for the fact that they are undeniably of great historical value, relics of a time and a crisis that reshaped the entire planet in countless ways.
But the downside is that quite often these items end up in the hands of neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups and sympathisers.
And when they do, they are no longer sober reminders of a nightmare we must never allow to happen again — instead they become rallying points, prized symbols of an evil regime that can be used to stir pride and solidarity among those seeking to resurrect it.
So, in the face of ideologies that cannot be reasoned with, and an internet-connected world where these ideas can propagate faster than any attempt to restrict them, just what can we do to fight these hate groups?
According to Radford, the best thing we can do is to be aware of their existence and learn as much about them as we can, without giving them too much oxygen.
“I don’t think it will ever go away or be suppressed,” he says. “All we can do is try to learn about it, study it, and try to predict what is happening.
“We can’t stop this from happening, but we can learn to predict it, plan for it, put more emphasis on prevention.
“I think it is great that ASIO stressed the danger posed by these groups, because I think they are a significant threat and they absolutely are growing in numbers and reach.
“But we need to keep watching them and stop getting distracted by things that just don’t matter, that really aren’t a threat to us.
“Look at Prime Minister John Howard and the Tampa debacle.
“Making people afraid of the idea of all those poor unfortunate people setting foot on Australian soil — it was hardly anything to actually be frightened of, but it won him an election.
“And every subsequent government has tried to do the same thing to keep people scared and to remain in power. We need to be looking in the right direction.”
Even Gordon says we have very little hope of ever truly stamping out extremists and hate groups. But he says the Jewish people have weathered countless assaults over the millennia and have always recovered as a people.
He believes this resilience is a beacon for those seeking to hold the line against rising far-right extremism in present day Australia. And he urges people to resist the urge to fight hate with hate, violence with violence.
“Extremism will always be there. If you suppress it, it will just change shape. We just hope and pray we can overcome it every time,” he says.
“To be a part of any society, we need to have love of every single person, no matter their background. These people who hate us, we don’t hate them.
“We might hate what they do and what they think, but we don’t hate them as individuals.”
To be a part of any society, we need to have love of every single person, no matter their background ... We might hate what they do and what they think, but we don’t hate them as individuals
– LAUNCESTON RABBI YOCHANAN GORDON