The Australian Jewish Democratic Society is outraged by revelations from the coalition of researchers at the White Rose Society and the ABC Background Briefing program that neo-Nazis and members of the alt-right are stacking the NSW Young Nationals.
Indeed, as the White Rose Society has shown, these relationships go far deeper than the ABC have reported.
This includes some of the most active neo-Nazi and fascist gangs in Australia, including the now indistinguishable Lad’s Society and Antipodean Resistance, stacking the NSW Young Nationals Metro-Region. It involves adopting neo-Nazi symbols and signalling. It involves active recruitment and grooming of young people from clearly fascist and fascistic online forums. It involves the active advancement of strategies to take power within the National Party by fascist activists.
The NSW Young Nationals are rapidly becoming a respectable front for neo-Nazis, and the National Party is rapidly becoming a site for laundering white supremacy.
However, we are not surprised.
It is not surprising that white supremacists have found a home in the youth wings of the National Party, when, for as long as some of us can remember, racist policy and election campaigns have been the modus operandi of its leadership.
For the Coalition, this is the accumulation of all the years of racist dog whistling, denial of past and present colonial violence, entrenched Islamophobia, deep misogyny, immigration concentration camps, and union witch hunts. The broader Coalition are not innocent dupes, but willing participants in this infiltration.
This situation is, of course, beyond unacceptable. Neo-Nazis and the alt-right should never be able to find a welcome home.
Our future lies in the understanding that hate can only be defeated when we stand together across lines of division. We create power when we refuse to allow them divide our communities. In looking outward we might build a better world.
Let’s join together to build a world where neo-Nazis can find no space to call home.
FURTHER INFORMATION
White Rose Society: ‘NSW Young Nationals stacked by Clifford Jennings and Neo-Nazis.’
- Go to the bottom of the page and read the profiles on a number of key individual neo-Nazis that were part of the stacking and infiltration of NSW Young Nationals Metro Region
ABC Background Briefing Report Haircuts and hate: Inside the rise of Australia’s alt-right
- This report is based on the work researchers at the White Rose Society conducted