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.
Sending people to jail is a great way to make sure they don’t spend time embroiled in Nazi ideology on every level. Probably the best way to make sure someone never comes in contact with a single particle of Nazism, is to send them to prison.
(Can you tell I’m american?)
The main Australian neo-nazi organisation has known connections to ‘bikie’ gangs, so you’ve hit the mark here too.
The best answer, while it’s still an option, is to continue community anti-fascist action against them. [enjoy1] [enjoy2]
Someone performing a Nazi salute is already a Nazi.
Making the gesture illegal is a clear communication to all Australians that we will not tolerate this ideology.
Yeah, but most of the people I imagine pulling a Nazi salute “as a joke like Elon (were so hilarious haha look at those [insertracialslur])” might be deterred from pulling their shitty “joke” if it actually means prison time automatically. It doesn’t matter if it’s just like a week. Try explaining to an employer why you didn’t attend the important meeting you had because you sat in jail for a week for a fascist “joke”.
It’s illegal to do it “in public”. So doing it at work is perfectly fine, as long as it isn’t a public place.
Alright. Make me a video of you giving the salute to to your boss during work hours and we’ll see how it goes.
Maybe he works at Tesla? Hell probably get a raise and employee of the month trophy.
As if he ever saw Elon while working at the factory floor, loltz. And the manager might not take too kindly, no matter who they work for. Lots of them prolly got their job before Elon went batshit insane. Or took mask off, whichever. Or pre- crippling ketamine addiction. Idk.
It was a joke, chill bro.
Well both can be true.
I did understand it was a joke but also yes I wish I could but there’s laundry to do and a genocide to stop.
Work like at a business open to the public?
I mean free speech is a deeply contradictory concept, which i largely support, however, people having the “right” to harm others as fascists mean to do is not a human right but a right of domination, which I am actively and deeply set against. And prison justice is just a “right” to harm others, only one that we are conditioned to live with.
It does create an opportunity for a little irony, which I can’t pass up.
But part of my criticism is not just “Nazis exist in prison” but “carcerial justice is just as fascistic as anything we associate with fascism” which never gets even thought about let alone discussed anywhere but the fringes of the prison abolition movement.
And things like prisons and police, the existence of many kinds of crime, particularly property crimes, need to be considered historically contingent, so that no matter how much we want to just delete all prisons they do serve as a solution to contradictions that arise within our society. So that the struggle to abolish carcerial punishment has to be simultaneously replaced with something better. Which is just and worth fighting for.
Getting rid of heil Hitler hand gestures in public might prevent the public proliferation of “signs” of fascism, the actual causes of it are institutional and function in cooperation with systems of institutional racism, Etc., and until those tendencies are abolished, and that is the worst expressions of class domination within capitalism, fascism will always be a problem to contend with.
In other words, we have fascism because we have prisons. Or rather, the underlying logic of fascism is just the underlying logic that justifies carcerial justice, taken to its natural conclusions.
So its not just irony, its like a double irony
Yeah because it’s childish strawman. Of course it’s not the same to have to spend a day in a drunk tank because you lost control and were kicking off mirrors from cars as it is to be marched into a gaschamber.
That’s false equivalency.
Also, if you had ever picked up a single philosophy book, you’d know how much positive and negative freedoms and the right of the government to impose those on others is actually discussed. It’s like >95% of what philosophy has been going on about for the 1000 years.
Not really. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demagogue
Fucking roflmao, literally. Well I didn’t drop to the floor but I did roll around giggling a bit on my chair. I would suggest reading “Leviathan” from Hobbes, but since I know you won’t, here’s a video sort of summarising Hobbes’ thoughts, by a professional philosopher called Alain de Botton and his channel “School of Life” POLITICAL THEORY - Thomas Hobbes
Alain de Botton did some really good philosophy videos, maybe for the BBC.
Recommended.
Alain de Botton omg and you thought I was funny.
Anyway you completely missed my point wrt false equivalence since both things are true. Its called nuance, dingus. I believe in the continual progress of human spirit, similar to Hegel’s formulation of freedom, but I’m a materialist and Marxist, not right wing liberal like Hobbes. Because believe it or not society has progressed since the 1680s when the ascendent English bourgeoisie seized control of the British empire and needed rational justification for their rule – which Thomas Hobbes Leviathan is. Its a piece of political philosophy, and certainly worth studying. I haven’t read it and might not, but I know others that have. I get the gist I don’t need Alain de Buttman’s watered down baby philosophy for online babies, please and thank you.
I’ve read thousands of pages of philosophy. You’ve watched thousands of hours of vaush and destiny. We are not the same. Come back when you’re capable of making a point or having an adult discussion. I’ll be here.
Actually if you could point to the place in the book where he argues definitively for carcerial justice over other forms, effectively addressing arguments that have come since from intellectuals like Michel Foucault and Angela Davis, as well as the abolition movement more broadly, that would be super helpful to a big dumb idiot like me a hurr durr
Good luck with that happening and allowing Nazis to be Nazis right out in the open.
Nazism, and I’m not sure why you don’t know this, is the opposite of progress.
I’m not false equivocating in order to take the fight off of fascism, both things are true. My point is we don’t fight fascism by allowing courts to make performative gestures outlawing performative gestures, its done by organizing against the worst tendencies of capital. By all means ban Nazi salutes it won’t affect anyone I associate with, and if it did I would no longer.
Lots of people seem to think having a slight criticism is the same as trying to bad faith rhetorically muddy the waters to give space for fascism. But no, that’s what liberalism does, consistently.
Oh you’re laughing at it because he’s so familiar to you because it’s the most “hardcore” philosophy you’ve ever engaged with? Yeah, I assumed as much.
That’s why I assumed you wouldn’t read “Leviathan” and from all your writing it’s clear you never have previously. Or even listened to a summary. Perhaps had those playing in the background, pretending like you’ve been listening to them.
The way you can’t distinguish a thought from the philosopher who brought it up shows that you larp as being read instead of being read.
Oh you most certainly do. It would definitely improve your skill on larping as a philosopher if you had the ability to pay any attention.
Thanks. That got rid of some phlegm. THOUSANDS of pages you say. Wow. That must be like… at least a half a dozen books. :D
We’ll continue the conversation when you understand how asinine your earlier garbage is. If you weren’t an egoistical teenager who’s all about what other’s perceive for them to have read and done and actually put import on understanding the things people say to you, you would at least skim what the Leviathan is about so you’d know what point I was making. But the fact you’re incapable of even understanding that means that I’m simply not interested in anything you have to say as you have zero intellectual curiosity. That sort of youthful egoism is fine, as long as it’s driven by actual intellect.
Yours isn’t.
Your previous comment. It looks a bit like how ridiculous it looks to you to now look illustrations of what people in the late 19th century thought the 21st century would look like. Firemen with flappy wings and whatnot. It’s utterly ridiculous because you know that would be the absolute worst way to go about flying. Either the wings would have to be absolutely massive or go really fast and still they’d be much worse than most other options we have for personal flying we can already achieve, like the jetpacks. The reason I’m saying this is that is what it looks like to me when reading your “arguments”. I can see how someone ignorant of political theory might formulate a naive theory like that, but the theory itself is utterly ridiculous and wouldn’t work because of facts you do not seem to know.
If you have even the tiniest bit of intellectual curiosity, you’ll look up what the Leviathan is about (while remembering to distinguish between an author and an idea) and then you’ll see why your earlier assertions are laughably naive.
Why are you so rude and mean? I actually have an interest in philosophy, which you apparently do too? But I don’t use it to like make people feel stupid. I’m nobody. I’m just like a guy with a job and a family that reads hard books. I’m proud of what little intellectual accomplishment I’ve made, and I encourage others to study. But dude I don’t fucking care about reading Leviathan! I’ll read books by people who have read it, but not Alain de Botton because he is a turd, but despite a good measure of intellectual curiosity, more than most in my life at least, it isn’t something that will come up for me. I’m glad you got so much out of it. made it into your whole identity maybe, but it hasn’t come up for me in the way that will lead me to read it, at least not yet! All I can say if on my very long reading list, it isn’t on there and I don’t see that changing this year.
This book is so important and crucial to your point yet you can’t point to a single line or paragraph to support your non existent arguments, which amount to “ur dum”. Why not demonstrate how great a book it is by quoting a passage that is relevant? L
I’ve read more than 6 philosophy books in the last 6 months. You are strawmanning me, because I’m not who you have delusionally convinced yourself that I am. Its completely unnecessary and not at all about the topic at hand.
I’m neutral and you’re reading into it.
If you find it offensive that I caught on about you actually not having the authority which you pretend to have on the subject, then the “hostility” is from your own non-acceptance of your ignorance, not me calling out your hypocrisy. If you don’t pretend to be an expert falsely, people can’t shame you for falsely pretending to be an expert, can they?
Then don’t make statements like
Because it DOES GET DISCUSSED, you just “don’t fucking care” to read the discussion.
Just to alleviate the “you’re so mean” thing, the point here is very shortly that you can not have a society without some sort of a government. That probably sounds very authoritarian, because lots of people don’t use these words in the same context as they’re used in the philosophical discussion of politics. It’s because any society that comprises of more than three members will have some sort of rules. And those rules will then be enforced in some way. And that is the question they try to answer in these HUNDREDS OF YEARS OF PHILOSOPHICAL DISCUSSION that isn’t hidden anywhere and accessible to pretty much literally everyone in the world through the miracle of the internet, which you claim doesn’t exist.
They do explore the alternatives. Pretty much all of them. You should just start with Hobbes because he sort of started the conversation because it was around the time belief in the “divine right of kings” was already faltering. And since you “don’t fucking care about reading Leviathan”, you might put on the “baby philosophy” or whatever you called it (seems you’ve cleaned up your answer a bit) from de Botton and quickly listen to the cliffnotes on what he thought about it from a guy — who is making pop-philosophy videos, yes, but — who also is a professional philosopher and is objectively communicating their ideas rather skilfully. As that will save you time on reading the centuries of books on the matter as you can get the cliffnotes or sort of “previously on:” so that you can get to the book that you’re more interested in reading but which comments a lot on the earlier works which you may or may not have read.
Like 14 years ago or something I had just recently seen Slavoj Zizek, and I enjoyed his analysis (and honestly just his person.) So after watching some of his speeches and the The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema and The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, I decided to pick up a book of his. It’s genuinely the only book I’ve ever just given up on, as back then I was nearly as read and it made so many references to specific ideas of specific earlier philosophers, that I spent like a few days getting through just the first pages as I had to teach my self so much stuff backwardly before really understanding what Slavoj was trying to say. I also tried reading it without doing that and it was fine, you can keep up the context somewhat, but I noticed after a chapter or two that I had gotten something wrong on a fundamental level and had been getting some tiny idea wrong for a few pages and it had coloured my read of it and I had to do it all again.
So, because Hobbes is one of the fundamental thinkers on the subject, despite his own personal political views, he does make good and fundamental points about society. They’re not too complex, so you honestly don’t need to read the entire book. Fucking read a wiki-article what do I care. I’m just trying to point out that because you’re trying to make spending a night in a drunk tank “as fascist” as marching people to a gas chamber, you don’t seem to have a too nuanced understanding of the necessities of certain control measures in a society.
Google “State of Nature” to start with idk.
Like idk how you’d expect me to politely inform you of just how wrong you were in that statement because it would require me to author a succinct reply that would still convey hundreds of years of philosophical ponderings which you thought didn’t even exist?
edit that wasn’t exactly that “shortly”. well, to me it was, but I gather other people perceive it differently sometimes
I do think it’s funny that they accuse you of being mean one comment after they insult you.
This thread is a fuckin roller-coaster of back and forths!
I sat on a jury recently and a large part of the case had to do with prison culture. It’s so incredibly sad how accurate this is.
My dad was a prison guard, I’ve thought about some of these dynamics a lot over the years.
Honestly what else is there to do? These people aren’t exactly going to change their minds, and letting them display hate in the name of free speech is only going to help them mobilize and elect more trumps in the world.
I’mIn American prisons are white, black, Latin superiority gangs.I don’t know we do it, but I think addressing the root causes as to why people are drawn to hate groups or hateful beliefs would be better. Eliminating the symptom doesn’t solve the problem.
It’s a hell of a lot harder to join a hate group if you can’t identify any members to find out who to sign up with.
They can still easily identify each other online, social groups, clubs, etc. I would think that’s how most of these people get together anyway, and not from some rando on the street throwing up a nazi salute. Making the gesture illegal also doesn’t solve why people are this way. It doesn’t solve the problem. It just covers it up (imo).
I have no idea why you are so convinced that people are just as likely to join hate groups when they don’t know that they exist, but okay…
Well I say it elsewhere, but we need to really start to rethink carcerial justice as a solution to social problems. It doesn’t help, it just compounds the contradictions that lead to problems like crime, fascism in the first place.
I understand we can’t just snap our fingers to make it go away. But The first step is discussion.
Lets discuss freeing violent rapists.
No.
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No, the vast majority never go to prison. I gave it as an example, i dont think you are pro rape. It’s just an example of incarcarating people in order to protect society. I believe that protecting people is the primary goal of incarceration. Better rehabilitation would obviously help this endeavour. I disagree completely with the idea of no incarceration as this would allow violence to flourish with no protection for those under threat.
Sorry I deleted that comment, I didn’t like my tone.
Personally I’m not a prison abolitionist. I’d like to see an end to it, ideally, but realistically that would be an amount of practical work beyond just simple reforms, the whole of society would have to be changed. I’m into that, which is why I don’t ideally dismiss it.
I treated it better elsewhere, here I just said “you can’t snap your fingers” but what I mean is prisons and police they actually are the answer to a lot of problems in society. I agree with you, I would like to see much more reform programs rather than the USA prison system that “needs” prisons, which isn’t to say every prison is a social necessity, more like there are political and economic incentive structures that make meaningful progressive change extremely difficult. But my father was a prison guard, and we don’t agree much on politics, especially when it comes to carcerial justice, but that man had seen some absolute monsterous behavior from people who are basically unreformable by any modern standard – and as much as I wish that wasn’t the case and I wish they had been given the opportunity for a better life where maybe they wouldn’t have lost every bit of their humanity, that doesn’t change reality.
However I do think that a society that proliferates carcerial justice the way that we do in the USA, which is all my experience is about, I dont know about Aussie prisons, is not one that is able to restore or even preserve the humanity of all its citizens. A society that makes monsters needs a place to put them; however a place to put monsters creates a demand for monstrousness that must be met. This is what I think it is possible and realistic to abolish.
Thanks for the response, I did take it personally but thanks for clarifying your position
I think we would agree that for profit prisons are an absolute atrocity. I harbour a lot of hate for certain types of criminals, but for profit prison is downright evil and corrupt right off the bat. Protecting the public must include rehabilitation or you’re just releasing monsters. I would separate violent and non violent, i would also throw every intervention at the problem and see what works, employ the success stories, end poverty fist and foremost. In my opininion, incarceration is necessary mostly because society has failed, in some caes it is however, unavoidable.
I appreciate your perspective and experience on the subject. Thank you.