Summary
Australia has enacted strict anti-hate crime laws, mandating jail sentences for public Nazi salutes and other hate-related offenses.
Punishments range from 12 months for lesser crimes to six years for terrorism-related hate offenses.
The legislation follows a rise in antisemitic attacks, including synagogue vandalism and a foiled bombing plot targeting Jewish Australians.
The law builds on state-level bans, with prior convictions for individuals performing Nazi salutes in public spaces, including at sporting events and courthouses.
That’s a bit too much. That’s a country with Gallipoli battles being matter of national myth, right? And they use it the way of praising WWI Ottomans as a worthy enemy. That’d be Young Turks, that’d be the genocide of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks in those very years.
Jail for a salute seems a bit unbalanced.
The point is to jail people you disagree with by whatever means palatable to the general public. You can’t just run around jailing people, you have to have a reason.
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.