The Disconnect Between the Antisemitism Moral Panic and Melbourne’s Nazis on Parade

The National Socialist Network (NSN) again paraded through city streets last weekend. This time, however, the footage of the black clad white Australian men shows a more formidable procession than ever before, with more than a hundred white supremacists on display, and despite this ever-increasing rise in far-right public rallies, Victoria police were again seen to facilitate its safe passage.

The NSN parade popped up to march on Wurundjeri land in the Melbourne CBD at around 12.40 am on Saturday. The reason for this late-night tactic was to avoid law enforcement attempts to shut it down, despite the fact that many consider VicPol is sympathetic towards the far-right actors, and the fact that police flanked the Nazis until they dispersed forty minutes later did little to dispel this idea.

The NSN formed out of the remnants of the white patriots that commenced mobilising under banners such as Reclaim Australia circa 2015. The NSN commenced making its presence known with a 26 January 2021 action in the middle of the bush on Djab Wurrung and Jardwadjali land in the Grampians, prior to their first public mobilisation on the streets of Melbourne in March 2023.

Last week’s rally was the second such late night mobilisation of late, and the bizarre aspect to the increasing presence of adherents of the Nazi doctrine is the stark contrast to which the Israel lobby has been condemning a suggested rise in antisemitism, some of which has been manufactured, yet it and its political supporters have done little to include the rising neo-Nazis in this equation.

Indeed, not only has Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Jillian Segal left this matter unaddressed publicly and in her action plan to combat Jewish prejudice, but PM Anthony Albanese, who appointed the envoy out of his own concerns, has left this issue festering, while local Victorian pollies don’t appear to condemn Nazis in the same way they disparage left wing actors for Palestine.

“White man fight back”

Footage online shows a large procession of men dressed in black marching through the Naarm-Melbourne CBD in lines last Saturday. The neo-Nazis were chanting, as they marched along the tram tracks in the centre of the main thoroughfare, when about six Victoria police vehicles descended upon the scene to head them off, only to then back up and let the march continue on.

So many white boys were on parade last Saturday morning that onlookers were heard to gasp, as the procession made its way past them, and whilst this is hardly the first such neo-Nazi mobilisation over recent years, it is certainly the largest and perhaps the most unsettling to have been captured on film due to the threat it posed.

Originating in Germany in the 1930s, the political ideology of Nazism led Nazi Germany to dehumanise and then kill over 6 million Jewish people during the Second World War. This extreme act of Jewish prejudice is why the charge of antisemitism is so damning. The Nazis also targeted Slavic people, the Roma, Black people and LGBTIQ people amongst other minorities.

So, when the Nazis parade on the streets it is an open display of this prejudice against those groups. This is part of the reason why law enforcement falls over itself in policing them, the other being that some officers harbour far-right sentiments. And the NSN has taken to showing up late night of late, because VicPol and South Australian police have promptly shut down other recent daytime actions.

The NSN commenced its public demonstrating in the Grampians bushland, but then crept its way onto the city streets initially to support UK antitransgender activist Kellie Jay Keen as she held a rally before Parliament House in Melbourne in March 2023. And since then, Nazis have repeatedly mobilised in Naarm, along with having shown up in NSW, and in Adelaide and Brisbane as well.

But the fact that the National Socialist Network was able to openly demonstrate against Jewish people on the steps of Victorian parliament last December, during that summer’s nationwide moral panic over antisemitism makes no sense. But it does go some way to explaining how the NSN got away with a 3 am demonstration in June this year, in which it used a banner displaying the ‘N word’.

Boys will be boys

“Nazis don’t belong in this country, and they know it. That’s why they hide behind masks in the dark,” said Victorian premier Jacinta Allan in the wake of last Saturday’s early morning display of Jewish hate on the Naarm streets, which was much more subdued than her reaction to a series of suggested antisemitic incidents, some of which specifically targeted Israel, that occurred in her city in early July.

In the wake of an arson attack on a synagogue in East Melbourne on 4 July, the Victorian premier launched “a new anti-hate taskforce between governments and Victoria police”, in addition to her yet-to-be enacted tough new antiprotest measures that were first raised last year, as she added that “hate has no place in Victoria”, and she wants “every Victorian to feel safe to be who they are”.

The arson attack on the synagogue and other incidents that occurred that same night, including a rally outside an Israeli restaurant, were all said to have targeted either the Jewish religion or Israel in response to the genocide Israel is perpetrating upon the Palestinians of Gaza right now, and it has long been the practice of Allan to chastise the street protests against Israel’s genocide.

But the Nazi demonstrations have never received the same level of condemnation as pro-Palestinian protests have, even though the antigenocide protesters haven’t been displaying any religious or racial hatred, as the white supremacists have been. In fact, neo-Nazis hardly even raise eyebrows when they display banners that read, “Jews Hate Freedom” or “Ban Machetes Not N#@gers”.

Overt antisemitism on display

Around 20-odd neo-Nazis gathered before Victorian parliament on 20 December 2024, holding aloft the banner, which read “Jews Hate Freedom”, while NSN figure Joel Davis delivered an antisemitic diatribe over a loudspeaker, condemning the state’s Jewish community for allegedly pushing the Victorian Labor government to legislate new antiprotest laws and hate crimes.

The astonishing aspect to this is this demonstration has been the most overt act of antisemitism to have occurred in this country since the moral panic around antisemitism has come to the fore, besides some of the arson and graffiti crimes upon Jewish properties, and yet Israel lobby figures have done nothing to condemn this clear display of antisemitism.

The other overt acts of antisemitism that involved property damage crimes have, for the most part, been shown to have occurred as a result of actors overseas hiring local gig criminals to perpetrate them on their behalf in order to make it appear that there is an antisemitic crisis in this country for their own advantage.

So, for the rise of neo-Nazi demonstrations on Australian streets to have been occurring at the same time that the moral panic around antisemitism has been occurring, and for those figures at the forefront of combating antisemitism to simply be ignoring this, really does lend itself to the idea that Zionists are propagating the panic to shield Israel from criticisms regarding its mass murder in Gaza.