Results were wildly different in different rallies. For example, in Sydney, the crowd was about 50:50 on boos and cheers for the neo-Nazi speaker. This is very different to Adelaide where the organisers rightfully (albeit far too late) tried to deplatform the NSN once they took to the stage and spewed their garbage, leading to a fight and the end of the event.
I believe it was only the Sydney one that let one of them speak
They owned the only microphone being used at the Townsville rally and they owned the podium used in the Melbourne rally with widely-used footage of Sewer speaking there. So you have to be pretty out of the loop if you honestly believe that.
Just because some bad people try to co-opt something it doesn’t mean that they were bad people protests. The overwhelming majority of people there were there for the stated reasons, none of which were racist or “neo nazi”.
We can’t generalise everyone, you’re right that a majority probably wouldn’t have supported neo-Nazis, many in larger rallies may not have seen them there before they took the stage, and plenty of attendees I wouldn’t consider to be racists, even if they’re expressing or supporting racist rhetoric. But this doesn’t change the fact that most of them attended a racist rally and should understand that and learn for next time this nationalist cover is tried.
It was co-opted before 99% of the people going there even heard of it. It was well-publicised in advance that many organisers were known neo-Nazis and white supremacists. The official promotions kept posting racist rhetoric about Indians, framing European immigration as acceptable. At the end of the day, it was largely a neo-Nazi attempt to appeal to broader nationalists, with some, limited, success. There were plenty of cheers among the boos during their speeches. “The overwhelming majority” didn’t fuck off or fight back once literal Nazis took the stage, and in most cases, kept the stage for the whole speech.
The anti-immigration rhetoric, that the housing crisis is caused or heavily impacted by immigration, is a racist deflection of real economic issues. I’m not suggesting that people repeating the argument are racists, or even that they realise it’s a racist argument. It’s a very normalised argument and once even promoted by Labor politicians and mass media. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s racism being used to deflect the housing crisis, the education crisis, the hospital crisis and more away from the government and the owning class. Stopping migration won’t even begin to solve those issues.
stib@aus.social 3 weeks ago
@FreedomAdvocate
Yeah nah. The scum I saw marching in Victoria, and the thugs who descended on Camp Sovereignty were all fucking nazis. You march alongside a nazi, you're a fucking nazi.
@ephemeral_gibbon
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 2 weeks ago
That’s not how it works when the march isn’t for Nazis and wasn’t about Nazi policies. If Nazis tag along and try to co-opt it then unless they’re breaking any laws there’s nothing you can do other then ask them to leave.
Btw how many Nazis does it take jumping into a march that isn’t about them and their policies before everyone magically turns into a Nazi? 1? 5? Is it a fixed number or a percentage? What other terrible groups does this apply to? Hamas supporters? Pedos?