Neo-Nazi political party threat: Here is how to stop it
What to do about neo-Nazis with not only their blatantly racist and threatening protests but also – perhaps more frightening – their apparent plans to form a political party with a clearly anti-democratic and hate-based platform?
Our current protest laws are generally fit for purpose: allowing lawful political protest while allowing police to protect public safety.
The National Socialist Network rallies outside the NSW parliament on 8 November. Credit: Flavio Brancaleone
Police could and should have done more to address the protest outside NSW Parliament House this month. This would have required an order banning the protests and therefore not being protected from charges under the Summary Offenses Act. Or it might have required a more robust use of their powers to take action against protesters once the threat of intimidation became clear.
But existing law gave them the power to balance conservation rights with legitimate public safety and public interest concerns.
Our party registration laws, by contrast, do little to restrict the formation of extremist parties with a political platform based on hate. Instead, these are largely procedural laws that require parties to adopt a constitution, register sufficient members, and refrain from using offensive or misleading words and symbols.
It is therefore urgent that we reconsider these laws and give Commonwealth and state electoral commissions clear powers to ban parties that espouse racial hatred and vilification as founding policies and values.
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After all, NSW youth leader Jack Eltis declared in PowerPoint slides: “We want to deport all Third World immigrants and Jews too, no matter what they think about it.” Elsewhere he extended this to all people of color.
These are parties whose defining aim is to undermine democracy itself. Democracy is, above all, a system of collective self-government among free and equal citizens. And you can’t do that if some citizens are allowed to intimidate, humiliate, or threaten others, even threatening to oust them from government.
