Mandatory jail term for Nazi salute under new hate crime rules in Australia
Mandatory jail term for Nazi salute under new hate crime rules in Australia
Australia on Thursday passed anti-hate crime laws under which a Nazi salute in public, among other similar offences, will be punishable by a mandatory jail sentence.
Summary
Australia has enacted strict anti-hate crime laws, mandating jail sentences for public Nazi salutes and other hate-related offenses.
Punishments range from 12 months for lesser crimes to six years for terrorism-related hate offenses.
The legislation follows a rise in antisemitic attacks, including synagogue vandalism and a foiled bombing plot targeting Jewish Australians.
The law builds on state-level bans, with prior convictions for individuals performing Nazi salutes in public spaces, including at sporting events and courthouses.
Sending people to jail is a great way to make sure they don't spend time embroiled in Nazi ideology on every level. Probably the best way to make sure someone never comes in contact with a single particle of Nazism, is to send them to prison.
(Can you tell I'm american?)
Yeah, but most of the people I imagine pulling a Nazi salute "as a joke like Elon (were so hilarious haha look at those [insertracialslur])" might be deterred from pulling their shitty "joke" if it actually means prison time automatically. It doesn't matter if it's just like a week. Try explaining to an employer why you didn't attend the important meeting you had because you sat in jail for a week for a fascist "joke".
I mean free speech is a deeply contradictory concept, which i largely support, however, people having the "right" to harm others is not a human right but a right of domination, which I am actively and deeply set against. And prison justice is just a "right" to harm others, only one that we are conditioned to live with.
It does create an opportunity for a little irony, which I can't pass up.
But part of my criticism is not just "Nazis exist in prison" but "carcerial justice is just as fascistic as anything we associate with fascism" which never gets even thought about let alone discussed anywhere but the fringes of the prison abolition movement.
And things like prisons and police, the existence of many kinds of crime, particularly property crimes, need to be considered historically contingent, so that no matter how much we want to just delete all prisons they do serve as a solution to contradictions that arise within our society. So that the struggle to abolish carcerial punishment has to be simultaneously replaced with something better. Which is just and worth fighting for.
Getting rid of heil Hitler hand gestures in public might prevent the public proliferation of "signs" of fascism, the actual causes of it are institutional and function in cooperation with systems of institutional racism, Etc., and until those tendencies are abolished, and that is the worst expressions of class domination within capitalism, fascism will always be a problem to contend with.
In other words, we have fascism because we have prisons. Or rather, the underlying logic of fascism is just the underlying logic that justifies carcerial justice, taken to its natural conclusions.
So its not just irony, its like a double irony
I sat on a jury recently and a large part of the case had to do with prison culture. It's so incredibly sad how accurate this is.
My dad was a prison guard, I've thought about some of these dynamics a lot over the years.
Honestly what else is there to do? These people aren’t exactly going to change their minds, and letting them display hate in the name of free speech is only going to help them mobilize and elect more trumps in the world.
Well I say it elsewhere, but we need to really start to rethink carcerial justice as a solution to social problems. It doesn't help, it just compounds the contradictions that lead to problems like crime, fascism in the first place.
I understand we can't just snap our fingers to make it go away. But The first step is discussion.
Yeah its bad, but jail time for it?
Fucking finally. Good shit Australia. Doing better than most. Watch Elmo throw a hissie fit. Pathetic
Agreed.
I'm so sick of this absolutist free speech bullshit that wants to make room for terrorist ideologies to hide.
It's kinda weird to sort of start rolling back to where some type of conservatism is actually a good thing. I don't want to identify as a conservative, but I definitely want to conserve institutions of justice and whatnot and not have them corrupted by right-wing crypto cucks.
There is no free speech absolutism. Dare to criticize him or make fun of him and you are banned and ostracized. It's a Nazi enablement pure and simple.
I hope he tests the waters there and Australia follows through.
Don't kid yourself. Australia is also an oligarchy where corporations get most of what they want passed within days/weeks, with little to no debate, while popular or inconsequential policies are given months or years of debate (so the murdoch/oligarch propaganda machine can distract the public and tell them how to think).
There is no chance in hell either major party would imprison an American dictators right hand man. They're both corporate whores at heart, with little/no virtue.
Yeah. How about from 1948?
Good. I'm glad Australia drew a hard line.
A hard line angled up at about 45 degrees.
That's a bit too much. That's a country with Gallipoli battles being matter of national myth, right? And they use it the way of praising WWI Ottomans as a worthy enemy. That'd be Young Turks, that'd be the genocide of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks in those very years.
Jail for a salute seems a bit unbalanced.
The point is to jail people you disagree with by whatever means palatable to the general public. You can't just run around jailing people, you have to have a reason.
Multiple front page Reddit articles about this as well. Look at the downvote ratio compared to discussions. Israel just pulling the strings as usual & everyone is falling for it, as they plan to take over Gaza & call you all Nazis for opposing it.
One year's mandatory jail term for any "hate-related offenses" seems a bit far imo. Should be just a fine at least for first offense, unless it's some physical attack and stuff like that.
That's basically a tax on not being rich enough to be a nazi, which... well.
You’re playing into the paradox of tolerance. Don’t do that.
It's nothing to do with paradox of tolerance to think a year's mandatory jail time for a year is pretty ridiculous for any "hate-related offenses".
I'm against in general of just throwing people into the slammer and hoping that fixes the issues. Punishment should fit the crime and some dipshit doing some Nazi salute isn't worth a year in goddamn prison. Give them a hefty fine for first time, sure, but a mandatory sentence of a year for any such offense, just seems too far.
Why stop at jail time? Why not execute them?
a paywall for a moral breach sounds like a horrendous idea
If you consider a fine just a paywall then do you feel like there should be jail sentence for all traffic violations too, for example? A bit ridiculous, imo.
Soon protesting or advocating against the genocide in Gaza & speaking out against ethnic cleansing will be considered a hate crime too. Remember, this is what you wanted when you said no to free speech, regardless if it was something that offended you.
What a nicely timed distraction from issues like housing, cost of living and health.
Albo was definitely always going to pass these laws even if Zionist gangs hadn't staged the attacks across Australia to create the headlines that triggered these laws.
Definitely wouldn't happen here in Oz!
So this is Australia, but imagine we did something like this in the USA. A Nazi salute is a form of hate crime against Jewish people, would it also be illegal to use Racial Slurs?
Many countries do have hate-speech laws, and law against Nazi propaganda.
As usual intent and context matters, but I don't see why you should defend the right to use racial slur in a racist manier
Because it isn't physically violent. Black Democrats are out there making racial comments about white people as well. I don't think they should be locked up, do you?
Even Jewish people defend Nazis right to free speech:
But go ahead & tell everyone how saluting is a hate crime. Now imagine your right to protest, or say something negative about the President being taken away because you didn't like free speech.