The Nazi National Socialist Network (NSN) rally outside NSW Parliament in November drew outrage. Unmasked, 60 Nazis carried a banner reading “Abolish the Jewish Lobby” accompanied by antisemitic and racist chants, calling for a return to a “white and free Australia”.
It was a sign of the growing confidence of the NSN following the racist March for Australia rallies.
For the past two years NSW Police have worked overtime trying to shut down pro-Palestine and anti-genocide protests, with Chris Minns passing new anti-protest laws and saying he wanted weekly protests for Palestine banned.
Yet police decided to allow the Nazi rally to go ahead without any court challenge and failed to inform the Police Commissioner it was even happening.
This was a stark contrast to NSW Police brutalising and pepper-spraying pro-Palestine protesters at the Indo-Pacific arms expo earlier the same week.
In the aftermath of the Nazi rally Chris Minns declared, “If we had our time again, that rally wouldn’t have taken place.”
He has announced laws against any conduct supporting Nazi ideology in public, including a ban on Nazi chants and slogans, with a maximum penalty of two years’ jail and a potential $22,000 fine.
However, these laws won’t stop the Nazis. The NSN was careful to claim the rally had limited demands that did not explicitly advocate fascism.
In future they could organise rallies through front-groups and not the NSN itself—as they appeared to do in organising the March for Australia (MFA) protests.
Messages leaked by the Nine Papers between prominent NSN members and MFA organisers confirm the strategy of appointing people to front them.
Nor can we rely on the police or the courts to take the action needed. In late October a magistrate in Victoria let off NSN leader Thomas Sewell on a charge of offensive behaviour after a white supremacist tirade during a Nazi march in Ballarat in December 2023.
Anti-fascist activists managed to identify several NSN members who attended the Sydney rally, with some sacked from their jobs as a result and one deported to South Africa.
We shed no tears for the deported Nazi but the left should not call for deportations—a measure used overwhelmingly against people of colour.
So we can’t leave efforts to stop them there.
Nazi recruitment
A Nine papers expose has detailed how the NSN is recruiting out of the MFA rallies. According to the White Rose Society, which tracks Nazi organising, “Rallies have always been the NSN’s key recruiting ground.”
The papers reported that at the second round of MFA rallies in October “prospective recruits were sent directly to neo-Nazi vetting meetings held at secret locations around the country”.
This shows the importance of the anti-racist counter-rallies held to challenge the racist marches.
But with the racists mobilising thousands of people, we need far bigger numbers of people to attend the anti-racist protests. Our counter-rallies need to show the opposition to racism and fascism on a scale that demoralises the racists and stops them coming back.
Many people are still complacent about the threat. But the anti-immigration rallies are already leading to a rise in violent racist attacks.
In late November a 63-year-old Indian-Australian man was punched in the face in Westfield Parramatta by a woman who shouted “F— off Indian, go back to where you come from”, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Similar incidents against Indian-Australians in the last three to six months have “been more than the last few years put together”, Pawan Luthra, publisher of the Indian Link newspaper, said.
The MFA rallies specifically targeted Indian immigration, with leaflets denouncing the number of Indian migrants claimed to have arrived in the last five years.
A different racist group has called protests on 29 and 30 November to “Put Australia First”. While they have distanced themselves from the NSN, the rallies will feature Tommy Robinson, a violent British Nazi, speaking via videolink.
The rallies oppose immigration and have targeted the Palestine rallies, lamenting that for the past two years “almost every weekend ‘extremist’ groups have freely occupied Sydney’s streets and parks”.
March for Australia is planning to rally again on Invasion Day—potentially disrupting the Indigenous-led Invasion Day marches.
Unless we stand up to them the racist rallies will not go away. We need to respond by ensuring the Invasion Day marches are as large as possible. This is the best way to ensure the far right skulks off and doesn’t try to rally on the day again.
We need to prove to the racists that there is no room for their racism, Nazism and hate-filled agenda.
