Weekend protesters claimed they were marching for Australia. Photo: File.
On two separate visits to Melbourne in recent months, I was profoundly shocked to see neo-Nazis strolling along Bourke Street.
They wore t-shirts with the “Black Sun”, invented by former SS officer Wilhelm Landig as a substitute for the Nazi swastika. On the front was a foul-mouthed anti-immigration slogan.
A little further along the Mall sat a group of elderly migrant women, some of them veiled – mothers and grandmothers who’d come here with their families, following the promise of a peaceful, fair country. Multicultural Australia, where everyone except the traditional owners has come from somewhere else (even Bob Katter).
I wondered what these young men’s grandparents and great-grandparents would have thought about them parading their allegiance to Adolf Hitler and his death cult?
Or have we forgotten what the Fascists wrought on the world? Are we now so far removed from those years of hell that Nazis are viewed as harmless young hotheads?
When I was growing up in the ’60s and ’70s, every suburban street would have someone’s Uncle Bob living in the sleepout, never quite “right” again after surviving the Burma Railway or a German POW camp.
Many others, of course, never came home. Anzac Day was less about glorification, more about remembering what people went through together in the worst days of their lives.
The diggers who fought, inch by brutal inch, across the Owen Stanleys to keep Australia free don’t have much in common with young men intimidating elderly migrants on weekends.
They might have told them to pull their bloody heads in and grow up – and shared some stories about what it was like to see the fruits of Fascism at Auschwitz or Changi.
Because it’s wise to remember what Fascism really is, beyond the thrill of hanging out with chest-beating losers in costume.
Fascism is characterised by authoritarianism, ultra-nationalism and dictatorial leadership where the government has strong control over society, dissent is heavily suppressed, democracy abandoned and racial superiority prioritised, whatever the race may be.
It appeals to those who feel left out of a diverse modern nation. Social media amplifies the call and apportions blame. Your failure to get a job, girlfriend, or house becomes, conveniently, someone else’s fault.
On the weekend, we saw people marching “for Australia” (including, predictably, Pauline Hanson milking the moment for every electoral dollar available).
It was only a particular kind of Australia, though.
Not one that welcomes the workers who keep bush abattoirs operating, who clean schools and drive trains, who bring us everything from butter chicken to K-pop or, indeed, the restaurants where many marchers enjoyed a slap-up yum cha or banh mi post-protest.
The marches were advertised as a movement against “mass migration”, but the blokes in the black shirts who joined the sovereign citizens and One Nation crowd aren’t looking for a reasoned debate on migration levels, workforce skills or housing issues.
Net migration has been high, but it replaced a COVID population decline when borders were shut and more people departed than entered. Australia’s population is still lower than it would have been if the pre-COVID growth rate had continued.
We need people to fill jobs and fuel our economy, which is sluggish but not in recession. People are cautious, but inflation has eased, and interest rates are falling. We’ve faced down global headwinds relatively well.
The housing affordability crisis has been ongoing for decades, fueled by a lack of low-cost and rental properties, as well as a taxation system that prioritises investors, inadvertently fueling speculation.
These are tough problems, and they deserve serious conversations, not simplistic, poorly informed slogans.
At this moment in history, Australia’s pragmatic centrism, steadiness and cohesion make us counter-cultural on the global stage. Someone who travels widely told me recently she kisses the ground with gratitude when she gets home, such is the state of the world.
Some would tear us apart for their own selfish reasons. Others are being manipulated, their grievances exploited to sow discord.
We are blessed with a strong and stable democracy. Our electoral system ensures everyone votes, and all those votes have an independent value. Unlike the Americans, very few of us believe the government is out to get us.
Let’s try to keep it that way. And in words that might have resonated with the diggers, those black-shirted idiots need to have a good, hard look at themselves.
Genevieve Jacobs is the CEO of Hands Across Canberra, the ACT’s community foundation.
