Neo-Nazis pledge to campaign to make Hanson prime minister
Australia’s neo-Nazi movement has declared it will back One Nation’s path to government if the High Court overturns a ban on its new political party.
Labor and the Coalition called on Hanson to immediately reject the support, months after she admitted her party was being “infiltrated by extremists” and after she also met with Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe, whose far-right party has links to banned neo-Nazi groups.
The normally quiet High Court in Canberra has been packed this week as the National Socialist Network, an openly neo-Nazi group, has fought to overturn laws passed after the Bondi massacre which outlawed neo-Nazi and Islamist groups.
Thomas Sewell – a notorious neo-Nazi who has called for a “race war” – and a team of lawyers are arguing the federal ban on NSN’s successor, the White Australia Party, should be struck down because the Commonwealth was acting outside its power and was breaching the implied freedom of political communication and the separation of powers.
A court decision to strike down the laws would be a serious defeat for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s post-Bondi crackdown on hate groups and, according to Sewell, it would “assist the creation of a Pauline Hanson prime ministership”.
“Our purpose would be to support One Nation in forming government,” Sewell said outside the High Court on Thursday in a video posted on social media.
“I believe that a factor in why the Labor government has decided to pass this legislation was not only because of the hysteria of the Israeli lobby, but also because they know that we can assist One Nation in forming government.
“If this legislation is not overturned by the High Court, it could mean the difference between Pauline Hanson winning the election or not.”
Labor MP Josh Burns said Hanson “needs to immediately condemn this and rule out any association with neo-Nazis or hate groups”.
“If she fails to do so, she will send a very loud signal about how dangerous One Nation is for the Australian Jewish community,” Burns said.
Hanson’s office declined to comment on Sewell’s remarks. On September 1, Hanson hit back at Attorney-General Michelle Rowland after the Labor MP contentiously suggested Hanson’s association with radicals was fuelling violent threats.
Hanson said: “Millions of Australians support One Nation. They are not extremists. They are not dangerous. And ministers should not use language that encourages others to treat them as if they are.”
Embattled One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts last month said he was opposed to racism and bigotry but he said the proposed White Australia Party “should have a right to exist”.
“If there’s free speech and freedom of association, you have to have those things. If they start breaking laws and hurting people, then you penalise them in the law,” he said.
Roberts wrote an article on Substack last week condemning Nazis and calling them out for trying to co-opt One Nation’s mainstream popularity.
“It’s well known the neo-Nazi movement makes a point of infiltrating mainstream politics. They don’t hide this. They feed off the media attention that follows. Every handshake, photo, and interview is seen as a victory toward normalisation,” he said.
“Neo-Nazis [Nationalists] are predators, ruining young men’s lives, and stealing any hope they might have to build successful careers and stable families.
“To those young people, I say this: you are on a path that could damage the only chance Australia has to rescue itself. The Left, media, and shamefully the Coalition are using the presence of a neo-Nazi movement in this country as a political tool.”
Legal experts say White Australia has a serious chance of defeating the Commonwealth.
Constitutional law expert Anne Twomey told the ABC this week that the key question about the laws was: “How consistent is it with our democratic system as imposed and required to operate by our constitution?”
Twomey said the federal changes may have been rushed through parliament without proper checks.
As Hanson continues her ascendancy in the polls and taps into widespread concern about migration and ethnic diversity, her tolerance for hardline views is being closely scrutinised.
This masthead reported last month that an online influencer known as Ausmaxx, whose associates have attended neo-Nazi training camps, was a member of One Nation. One Nation said weeks later his membership had lapsed, but the influencer contradicted the party. His far-right associates suggested on a social media stream that it had stronger connections to One Nation than was publicly known.
“You don’t even know the connections in One Nation that we have,” Hugo Lennon, a wealthy associate of National Socialist Network members, said last month. Lennon has been in Canberra to support the court case.
In this week’s court case, Justice Robert Beech-Jones asked the Commonwealth’s lawyer, Brendan Lim, if the White Australia group represented the “modern manifestation” of Hitler’s Nazis, to which he replied: “Yes.”
“There are few legitimate reasons, outside of history books and museum, that warrant use of Nazi symbols,” Lim said.
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