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The elephant in the neo-Nazi room is that so much of the ideology and rhetoric is so close to what people soak up daily via certain columnists and outlets, and even certain MPs, that it's really not a huge step into extremism.
Nothing changed after Christchurch. Andrew Bolt wrote soon after that the mass killer's racist "Great Replacement" manifesto was "in some frightening ways rational".
They might reject terrorist actions, but they don't reject the "rational" ideology that leads to them.
They might reject terrorist actions, but they don't reject the "rational" ideology that leads to them.
Nothing has changed after the storming of the Capitol, which was all apparently everybody else's fault anyway. There is zero self-reflection by the most prominent voices in this broader ecosystem.
Tommy S has posted a little rant about this Nick McKenzie article that is very ranty, but he is notably mad at his special friends being photographed and filmed on their Nazi jamboree.
I'm always open minded about these things, so let's simply keep track of which commentators who have their knickers twisted about antifa and BLM has anything at all to say about this little lakeside shindig.
Dr Dvir Abramovich has been warning about this for years. Tom S openly and proudly worships Hitler as a model and the far-right is clearly feeling emboldened to engage in this kind of brazen activity.
[Link to the full updated article] https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/we-do-not-need-to-wait-for-a-christchurch-grampians-cross-burning-spurs-call-for-action-20210128-p56xer.html
The Nazis also suggest this cross-burning was "fuelled by pure Cronulla energy", so once again it's like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon only it's Sky News Australia folk and it's barely a goose step between.
Nazis bringing up Cronulla also shows how this whole biz is a continuum. Tom S is intensely antisemitic, but anti-Muslim hatred is a big part of the deal, making it even more alarming Frydenberg would lend himself to the laundering of Murray & Southern. https://twitter.com/BenjaminMillar/status/1354592876542320646
It's almost like... https://twitter.com/tom_tanuki/status/1354670347648286720
Two of the lads in this photo were mentioned in the Age today for ... reasons. The lady in the chair was on Sky News Australia again last night.
I feel like a broken record here, but it just seems nuts to me that this is the situation here https://twitter.com/rgcooke/status/1354677446591746048?s=19
Me: So at some point someone in our government will go hang on a minute, not so sure about this yeah?
Folk in our government: http://theguardian.com/media/commentisfree/2020/dec/11/barnaby-joyce-finds-love-with-alt-right-commentator-lauren-southern
Folk in our government: http://theguardian.com/media/commentisfree/2020/dec/11/barnaby-joyce-finds-love-with-alt-right-commentator-lauren-southern
I must apologise to Sky, here I was thinking they wouldn't be all over what is clearly the topic of the day
One thing I do think journalists need to consider more is that white supremacists are *very* switched on to media coverage and how to take the most advantage of it. While ABC Melbourne was discussing the Grampians, Tom S was actively trying to get his supporters to phone in.
Also while they're wildly anti-semitic they are heavily pro-semantics, at pains to note that they aren't (yet) engaging in violence at the same time as openly venerating the Holocaust and racist violence in frontier Australia as ideal models.
