August 26, 2025 • 15 mins
When a group of Neo-Nazis recently took to the streets of Melbourne, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan said that Nazi’s “don't belong” in Australia.
But while that might be a good sentiment, is it actually true?
Today, Arrernte writer and Crikey contributor Celeste Liddle, on Australia’s white nationalist past – and how in failing to reckon with it we’ve set the stage for the movement to grow.
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Guest: Arrernte writer and Crikey contributor Celeste Liddle
Photo: AAP Image/James Ross
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM. When
a group of neo Nazis recently took to the streets
of Melbourne, the state's premier said that Nazis don't belong
in Australia. But while that might be a good sentiment,
is it actually true today? Are and a writer and
(00:21):
Quikey contributor so less little on Australia's white nationalist past,
and in how failing to reckon with it, We've set
the stage for the movement to grow. It's Wednesday, August
twenty seven, so it's lest I thought we could begin
(00:43):
by talking about the marches in Melbourne earlier this month.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Tell me about what we saw on the streets.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
What we saw is an organized group of people assembled
at a ridiculous time of the day. So I think
of is it about, you know, midnight one o'clock where
they decide to take to the streets.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
Revelers enjoying a night out in Melbourne have been left
stunned after a large group of masked men marched through
the CBD.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
They were there, they are in numbers, They were a
threatening group. They were still yelling stuff like Australia for
the white man, which you know, I don't even have
the words to describe that sort of sentiment.
Speaker 5 (01:34):
Around one hundred people dressed in all black stormed down
Burke Street Mall while police kept a watchful eye.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
And we also saw, you know, a bunch of police
actually enable them to walk through without much of a problem.
The reports were stating that the only person who ended
up taking some sort of action to oppose them at
that hour of the morning was a homeless man and
(02:02):
he ended up being assaulted by the march attendees.
Speaker 5 (02:06):
All of the masked except for leader, well known neo
Nazi Thomas.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
So there was a number of them. There was a
sizeable group, and they were marching for quite a while
through the city without any problem.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Well let's talk a little bit more about the response
from police, from politicians, from media.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Well, firstly, I just found it extraordinary, and the police
responses were very much that they couldn't do anything, that
their hands were tied.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
Powers, police could do little but follow the white supremacists,
that there was nothing.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
They could do to stop this group.
Speaker 6 (02:46):
Police powerless following the crowd through the heart of the city.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
The fact that police were there and couldn't do anything
about it.
Speaker 5 (02:55):
That just makes things so much worse.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
And as somebody who had been at the march for
Palace Stone only a few days earlier, we got so
opposed by police that they actually shut down a bridge
with the Public Order Response Team and the amount of
police and the ordinary police in order to stop a
group of peaceful protesters from being on a bridge. They
(03:20):
can mobilize forces and be so aggressive against peace protesters,
what was their problem doing anything to stop a significantly
smaller group of Nazis. It was very very select But
more than that, it was hand ringing from the police
about how they were powerless to do anything, and then
(03:42):
the government responding about how you know, Nazis have no
place in society and they were going to give police
more powers to do something.
Speaker 6 (03:51):
The premier condemning the group Nazis don't belong in this
country and they know it. That's why they hide behind
masks in the dark, not afraid of these goons. But
we will not tolerate them either.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
So it was like a call and response, if you like.
And what that actually means is that there's going to
be tough for controls on any sort of protest.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
And that sort of statement this idea that this sort
of thing has no place in Australia. You hear words
like that often from politicians after something like this happens,
and it sounds good and you'd want it to be true,
but is it.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
It's not true at all. Australia very much has been
set up by ideas of racism and white supremacy. This
country was established on the legal fiction of Terranualius and
then you know, for decades this country had the White
Australia Policy, where there was actual barriers put in place
(04:54):
for non white migration, and this fed a lot of
the national character. Still see remnants of the Wide Australia
policy today. So the Constitution still contains the right to
exclude people from being able to vote based on race.
It still contains a race power, so the right to
(05:14):
make laws against certain races of people, and it still
contains the right to exclude jewel citizens from entering federal Parliament,
which is the one that people don't talk about. But
that jewel citizen ban was actually to stop Indian and
Chinese and other migrants of color from ever being eligible
(05:35):
to sit in parliament. Because the Australian Parliament was built
up to be filled by British subjects who had become
Australian citizens, not people of color who had migrated, you know,
during the Gold Rushers and all that. So with that
history comes a long, long history of white supremacy and
(05:59):
the ability for fascist to gain grown.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
So how does all of this this history, how does
it create the conditions that we see today when we
have marches like the one that we just saw in Melbourne.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Well, people aren't aware of the Constitution and it's racial
things that exist to this day. And the more that
ignorance is allowed to flourish and the less aware the
people are, the more space that we give for these
groups to latch onto the disenfranchised and grow their movement.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Coming up, who's really behind the march For Australia. The
Victorian government is proposing changes to protest laws. They say
it's an attempt to crack down on neo Nazi activity.
(06:54):
They want a ban on face coverings and certain symbols.
Speaker 7 (07:00):
Premier de siner Allen announced an overhaul of existing anti
protest laws late last year after a series of violent
attacks on places of worship for the Jewish and Muslim communities.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
What impact do you think that that will have well.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
When we're all in COVID lockdown. There was a massive
Black Lives Matter rally and technically by wearing face masks
at that time, we were both breaking and adhering to
the law. And by that I mean that there was
the COVID restrictions that are in place that required everyone
(07:35):
to be wearing masks everywhere, so you know, for health reasons,
we were adhering to the law, but also we were
breaking the law because the government was stating at that
time that wearing face masks at protests was illegal. But
face masks at rallies are also used as a tool
(07:55):
to protect protesters from things like paper spray. When police
decide to be incredibly liberal with pepper spray on protesters
and talk about banning symbols, who decides what is a
symbol of protest, what is a symbol of hate and
hate speech and what's objectionable.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
The legislation we have in the Parliament to make hate
speech a crime, where it should be to ban face
master stamp out extremist behavior a protests where there's an
opportunity to do more, and I will always grab that opportunity.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
And at any given time those definitions can be redefined,
and protest is a part of a healthy democracy and
needs to exist. The right to assembly is in the
UN Declaration of Human Rights. The more that process is
legislated against, the less able people are to exercise that
(08:52):
democratic right.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
So what do you think a good response would be then,
to neo Nazis, to rising fascism.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
I think a real good response for be honesty. I'm very,
very huge on the truth telling agenda, and the more
that we talk about Australia's history, and the more aware
the people are about the Australia's history, the less likely
they are to reinforce false narratives and therefore the less
(09:19):
likely they are to give power to Nazi groups. So
neo Nazi ideals will get more and more marginalized and
shifted to the side, to the point of where they
are objectionable by a vast majority of the public, not
where a vast majority of the public will sit there
and go, you know, on this front, they kind of
(09:40):
have a point and start to join them. And that
honesty needs to extend to how the media and how
the politicians do respond to neo Nazi groups and neo
Nazi ideals.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Can we talk a little bit about that, about the
media and the way that you think these issues should
be covered, because you know, it's obviously the interest of
these groups to get media reports about what they're doing.
It gives them publicity, but you know, ignoring them entirely
is obviously awesome a problem. So what do you think
the right conversation is to be having about what is
(10:17):
a growing white nationalism threat?
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Yeah, Like, for me, this is a really live question
because some people do argue that the more media coverage
they get, the more they're able to build their momentum.
So you know, if they gain the publicity, more people
notice that they're gathering, more people take an interest and
seek them out, and therefore they can grow their movement
(10:40):
and there is merit in that. But for me, I
sort of see and perhaps I'm approaching this as somebody
who is Indigenous and a woman, but you know, if
you try and pretend that they don't exist, then you
are kind of contributing in a way to this great
Australian silence and array that I'm very very much opposed to.
(11:02):
So I do feel that they need coverage, and I
do feel that there needs to be honesty in that coverage.
I think that perhaps the media needs to get better
at framing the fact that these are objectionable, you know,
far eye actors who threaten our society.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
And this weekend Celesti, there are marchers planned in every
capital city. They're being builders the March for Australia, and
the people claiming to organize these say that they are
ordinary Australians who are worried about migration. But the slogans
do have something in common with the protests that we've
just talked about when Nazis say things like Australia for
(11:41):
the white men. So how should we interpret this?
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Yeah, there's been a lot of dialogue with regards to
who's actually organizing it, and the organizers themselves have been
taking up space in social media spheres refuse claims that
the marches are being organized by neo Nazis. But the
(12:05):
fact of the matter is that there are a lot
of anti fascist researchers out there who spend a lot
of time drilling down into the telegram groups and exposing
them and seeing what it is that they're doing. So
a lot of the key figures who have been behind
these march are neo Nazi figures that this country is
(12:27):
already quite aware of. They're using some calling and rallying
chants about you know, this great country and all that
sort of stuff in order to bring people into the
fold who might feel threatened by the invasion, a process
that happen every year now or by the Palestine protests.
(12:51):
People from the mainstream who do feel a little bit
disenfranchised by the way they see Australia going to them
all or except society are probably latching on and thinking
this is a way to express themselves without doing the
research as to what they're actually affiliating themselves in. But
(13:14):
it is very deliberate to pick up on these people
within white Australia who are disenfranchised and bring them into
the fault by using a degree of subterfuge. And in
my opinion, that's what the March for Australia is, a
broader manifestation of wellthless, thank you so much for your
(13:39):
time today, no worries, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Also in the news today, Iran's ambassador to Australia has
been expelled and we'll have seven days to leave the country,
along with three other Iranian officials. It follows Asio announcing
it has intelligence that Iran directed at least two major
anti Semitic attacks in Australia in twenty twenty four, Lewis's
Continental Kitchen in Sydney on October twenty and the Addas
(14:14):
Israel Synagogue in Melbourne on December sixth. AZEO says the
attacks were directed by Iran with the aim of messing
with social cohesion in Australia, but the Iranian embassy was
not involved in the attacks, nor any Iranian diplomats in Australia.
And two police officers are dead after a shooting at
a rural property in Poora Punka in northeast Victoria. The
(14:35):
police were attending the property, about three hundred kilometers northeast
of Melbourne to serve a warrant. I'm Ruby Jones. This
is seven am. Thanks for listening.
I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM. When
a group of neo Nazis recently took to the streets
of Melbourne, the state's premier said that Nazis don't belong
in Australia. But while that might be a good sentiment,
is it actually true today? Are and a writer and
(00:21):
Quikey contributor so less little on Australia's white nationalist past,
and in how failing to reckon with it, We've set
the stage for the movement to grow. It's Wednesday, August
twenty seven, so it's lest I thought we could begin
(00:43):
by talking about the marches in Melbourne earlier this month.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Tell me about what we saw on the streets.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
What we saw is an organized group of people assembled
at a ridiculous time of the day. So I think
of is it about, you know, midnight one o'clock where
they decide to take to the streets.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
Revelers enjoying a night out in Melbourne have been left
stunned after a large group of masked men marched through
the CBD.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
They were there, they are in numbers, They were a
threatening group. They were still yelling stuff like Australia for
the white man, which you know, I don't even have
the words to describe that sort of sentiment.
Speaker 5 (01:34):
Around one hundred people dressed in all black stormed down
Burke Street Mall while police kept a watchful eye.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
And we also saw, you know, a bunch of police
actually enable them to walk through without much of a problem.
The reports were stating that the only person who ended
up taking some sort of action to oppose them at
that hour of the morning was a homeless man and
(02:02):
he ended up being assaulted by the march attendees.
Speaker 5 (02:06):
All of the masked except for leader, well known neo
Nazi Thomas.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
So there was a number of them. There was a
sizeable group, and they were marching for quite a while
through the city without any problem.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Well let's talk a little bit more about the response
from police, from politicians, from media.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Well, firstly, I just found it extraordinary, and the police
responses were very much that they couldn't do anything, that
their hands were tied.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
Powers, police could do little but follow the white supremacists,
that there was nothing.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
They could do to stop this group.
Speaker 6 (02:46):
Police powerless following the crowd through the heart of the city.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
The fact that police were there and couldn't do anything
about it.
Speaker 5 (02:55):
That just makes things so much worse.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
And as somebody who had been at the march for
Palace Stone only a few days earlier, we got so
opposed by police that they actually shut down a bridge
with the Public Order Response Team and the amount of
police and the ordinary police in order to stop a
group of peaceful protesters from being on a bridge. They
(03:20):
can mobilize forces and be so aggressive against peace protesters,
what was their problem doing anything to stop a significantly
smaller group of Nazis. It was very very select But
more than that, it was hand ringing from the police
about how they were powerless to do anything, and then
(03:42):
the government responding about how you know, Nazis have no
place in society and they were going to give police
more powers to do something.
Speaker 6 (03:51):
The premier condemning the group Nazis don't belong in this
country and they know it. That's why they hide behind
masks in the dark, not afraid of these goons. But
we will not tolerate them either.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
So it was like a call and response, if you like.
And what that actually means is that there's going to
be tough for controls on any sort of protest.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
And that sort of statement this idea that this sort
of thing has no place in Australia. You hear words
like that often from politicians after something like this happens,
and it sounds good and you'd want it to be true,
but is it.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
It's not true at all. Australia very much has been
set up by ideas of racism and white supremacy. This
country was established on the legal fiction of Terranualius and
then you know, for decades this country had the White
Australia Policy, where there was actual barriers put in place
(04:54):
for non white migration, and this fed a lot of
the national character. Still see remnants of the Wide Australia
policy today. So the Constitution still contains the right to
exclude people from being able to vote based on race.
It still contains a race power, so the right to
(05:14):
make laws against certain races of people, and it still
contains the right to exclude jewel citizens from entering federal Parliament,
which is the one that people don't talk about. But
that jewel citizen ban was actually to stop Indian and
Chinese and other migrants of color from ever being eligible
(05:35):
to sit in parliament. Because the Australian Parliament was built
up to be filled by British subjects who had become
Australian citizens, not people of color who had migrated, you know,
during the Gold Rushers and all that. So with that
history comes a long, long history of white supremacy and
(05:59):
the ability for fascist to gain grown.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
So how does all of this this history, how does
it create the conditions that we see today when we
have marches like the one that we just saw in Melbourne.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Well, people aren't aware of the Constitution and it's racial
things that exist to this day. And the more that
ignorance is allowed to flourish and the less aware the
people are, the more space that we give for these
groups to latch onto the disenfranchised and grow their movement.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Coming up, who's really behind the march For Australia. The
Victorian government is proposing changes to protest laws. They say
it's an attempt to crack down on neo Nazi activity.
(06:54):
They want a ban on face coverings and certain symbols.
Speaker 7 (07:00):
Premier de siner Allen announced an overhaul of existing anti
protest laws late last year after a series of violent
attacks on places of worship for the Jewish and Muslim communities.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
What impact do you think that that will have well.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
When we're all in COVID lockdown. There was a massive
Black Lives Matter rally and technically by wearing face masks
at that time, we were both breaking and adhering to
the law. And by that I mean that there was
the COVID restrictions that are in place that required everyone
(07:35):
to be wearing masks everywhere, so you know, for health reasons,
we were adhering to the law, but also we were
breaking the law because the government was stating at that
time that wearing face masks at protests was illegal. But
face masks at rallies are also used as a tool
(07:55):
to protect protesters from things like paper spray. When police
decide to be incredibly liberal with pepper spray on protesters
and talk about banning symbols, who decides what is a
symbol of protest, what is a symbol of hate and
hate speech and what's objectionable.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
The legislation we have in the Parliament to make hate
speech a crime, where it should be to ban face
master stamp out extremist behavior a protests where there's an
opportunity to do more, and I will always grab that opportunity.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
And at any given time those definitions can be redefined,
and protest is a part of a healthy democracy and
needs to exist. The right to assembly is in the
UN Declaration of Human Rights. The more that process is
legislated against, the less able people are to exercise that
(08:52):
democratic right.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
So what do you think a good response would be then,
to neo Nazis, to rising fascism.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
I think a real good response for be honesty. I'm very,
very huge on the truth telling agenda, and the more
that we talk about Australia's history, and the more aware
the people are about the Australia's history, the less likely
they are to reinforce false narratives and therefore the less
(09:19):
likely they are to give power to Nazi groups. So
neo Nazi ideals will get more and more marginalized and
shifted to the side, to the point of where they
are objectionable by a vast majority of the public, not
where a vast majority of the public will sit there
and go, you know, on this front, they kind of
(09:40):
have a point and start to join them. And that
honesty needs to extend to how the media and how
the politicians do respond to neo Nazi groups and neo
Nazi ideals.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Can we talk a little bit about that, about the
media and the way that you think these issues should
be covered, because you know, it's obviously the interest of
these groups to get media reports about what they're doing.
It gives them publicity, but you know, ignoring them entirely
is obviously awesome a problem. So what do you think
the right conversation is to be having about what is
(10:17):
a growing white nationalism threat?
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Yeah, Like, for me, this is a really live question
because some people do argue that the more media coverage
they get, the more they're able to build their momentum.
So you know, if they gain the publicity, more people
notice that they're gathering, more people take an interest and
seek them out, and therefore they can grow their movement
(10:40):
and there is merit in that. But for me, I
sort of see and perhaps I'm approaching this as somebody
who is Indigenous and a woman, but you know, if
you try and pretend that they don't exist, then you
are kind of contributing in a way to this great
Australian silence and array that I'm very very much opposed to.
(11:02):
So I do feel that they need coverage, and I
do feel that there needs to be honesty in that coverage.
I think that perhaps the media needs to get better
at framing the fact that these are objectionable, you know,
far eye actors who threaten our society.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
And this weekend Celesti, there are marchers planned in every
capital city. They're being builders the March for Australia, and
the people claiming to organize these say that they are
ordinary Australians who are worried about migration. But the slogans
do have something in common with the protests that we've
just talked about when Nazis say things like Australia for
(11:41):
the white men. So how should we interpret this?
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Yeah, there's been a lot of dialogue with regards to
who's actually organizing it, and the organizers themselves have been
taking up space in social media spheres refuse claims that
the marches are being organized by neo Nazis. But the
(12:05):
fact of the matter is that there are a lot
of anti fascist researchers out there who spend a lot
of time drilling down into the telegram groups and exposing
them and seeing what it is that they're doing. So
a lot of the key figures who have been behind
these march are neo Nazi figures that this country is
(12:27):
already quite aware of. They're using some calling and rallying
chants about you know, this great country and all that
sort of stuff in order to bring people into the
fold who might feel threatened by the invasion, a process
that happen every year now or by the Palestine protests.
(12:51):
People from the mainstream who do feel a little bit
disenfranchised by the way they see Australia going to them
all or except society are probably latching on and thinking
this is a way to express themselves without doing the
research as to what they're actually affiliating themselves in. But
(13:14):
it is very deliberate to pick up on these people
within white Australia who are disenfranchised and bring them into
the fault by using a degree of subterfuge. And in
my opinion, that's what the March for Australia is, a
broader manifestation of wellthless, thank you so much for your
(13:39):
time today, no worries, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Also in the news today, Iran's ambassador to Australia has
been expelled and we'll have seven days to leave the country,
along with three other Iranian officials. It follows Asio announcing
it has intelligence that Iran directed at least two major
anti Semitic attacks in Australia in twenty twenty four, Lewis's
Continental Kitchen in Sydney on October twenty and the Addas
(14:14):
Israel Synagogue in Melbourne on December sixth. AZEO says the
attacks were directed by Iran with the aim of messing
with social cohesion in Australia, but the Iranian embassy was
not involved in the attacks, nor any Iranian diplomats in Australia.
And two police officers are dead after a shooting at
a rural property in Poora Punka in northeast Victoria. The
(14:35):
police were attending the property, about three hundred kilometers northeast
of Melbourne to serve a warrant. I'm Ruby Jones. This
is seven am. Thanks for listening.
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