The quality of political discourse in Australia continues to surprise on the downside, but the weaponising of the Nazi smear for domestic political point scoring has been particularly disturbing.

In Melbourne on 18 March, there was a rally organised by the Let Women Speak movement headlined by visiting British women’s rights campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, also known as Posie Parker. The event was supported by some prominent local women including Victorian Liberal MP Moira Deeming, former Liberal candidate Katherine Deves, and activist Angie Jones.

Their event held near the Victorian Parliament House was crashed by 15 to 20 Nazis, young men dressed in black shorts, shirts, hats and mostly masked. There was some very odd policing. While the trans-activists’ counter-protest was held back by police, the Nazi group was waved through and marched in formation to the proximity of the women’s rally doing Heil Hitler salutes which they repeated on the steps of parliament.

Almost instantly, politicians and the media began smearing the women involved in Let Women Speak as themselves being Nazis, having Nazi values or at least being closely associated with Nazis.

Premier Dan Andrews led a pile-on stating, ‘anti-trans activists gathered to spread hate. And on the steps of our parliament, some of them performed a Nazi salute’, immediately conflating the women with the Nazis. He went on to say Nazis weren’t welcome (of course), expressed support for the trans community and said he would move to ban the Nazi salute.

For anyone who listened, the main messages articulated by the Let Women Speak organisers were to protect the integrity of women’s sport from biological men, that spaces where women might be vulnerable such as changerooms, bathrooms or prisons should be exclusive to biological women, and children should be shielded from radical gender theory. Perhaps it is possible to argue if such messages are more or less likely pro-women or anti-trans, but whatever one’s assessment of the merit of those messages they provide exactly zero basis to accuse the women behind the rally of being Nazis.

Andrews has form in playing the Nazi card to smear political opponents. Shortly before the Victorian State election in November 2022, he claimed that Liberals were preferencing Nazis. Under only soft media questioning he got away with providing no names or evidence to support such an ugly smear.

In a pathetic display of weakness, Victorian Liberal leader John Pesutto abandoned any semblance of Liberal principles and loyalty and followed Andrews’ lead of guilt by association targeting a member of his own team, MP Moira Deeming, who supported the rally. ‘I will never, ever accept any member of the parliamentary Liberal party under my leadership ever associating with anybody who shares a platform with people who peddle hate, division and attack people for who they are,’ Mr Pesutto said.

If that’s the standard to be adopted, politicians could never attend or speak at public meetings in case some obnoxious characters unexpectedly turn up.

Pesutto’s attempt to expel Deeming failed and instead she is suspended. It is not known which genius in the Liberals came up with the suspension time of nine months, a time of exclusive special significance to women.  If the Victorian Liberal party didn’t have a problem with women before, it certainly has one now.

But the prize for the most despicable comment must go the Greens leader in Tasmania, Cassy O’Connor. She lifted a copy of a photo from the social media of Auschwitz Memorial no less. It was of a young German Jewish woman, Sara Jacobson, murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust. To her photo O’Connor attached the comment, ‘The TERFs and Nazis who spewed hate and goose-stepped… are ideologically aligned with the murderers of Sara Jacobson, her family and six million other innocent people.’

Apart from the disgraceful behaviour in leveraging Nazism, the hypocrisy is easily exposed. Within days of the Let Women Speak rally in Melbourne, World Athletics president Lord Sebastian Coe had announced ‘The (World Athletics) Council has agreed to exclude male or female transgender athletes who have been through male puberty from female world-ranking competitions from March the 31st this year.’

Now World Athletics has implemented one of the major objectives of the leaders of the rally. Yet not one of the politicians who smeared the organisers as being Nazis or aligned with Nazis would dare make a similar accusation against Sebastian Coe or World Athletics.

But it is the political Left that most actively supports the ideology which today exhibits features which most closely resonate with Nazism; that of large segments of the Arab Palestinians. Their leader during the second world war was Amin al-Huseini who worked closely with and supported the Nazis. There are photos of him with Hitler, other senior Nazis, and touring military units and concentration camps. He played a role in recruiting Muslims into Waffen Mountain Divisions of the SS in Croatia and Bosnia. Today there are locations where Mein Kampf in Arabic remains a popular book and Arab Palestinian social media often lauds Hitler and Nazism. Numerous teachers in Arab Palestinian schools have been exposed as Hitler fans. The murder of Jews is wildly celebrated in many Arab Palestinian communities. It is also a culture in which homosexuals and trans people are persecuted and killed.

Be in no doubt, that when the political Left, including many in the Labor party and the Greens, champion the cause of Palestine, they are aligning with an ideology which has features of Nazism. Perhaps they should be calling themselves Nazis if the same standards applied to the women’s rally were applied to them.

The unjustified use of Nazism for domestic political purposes is grossly disrespectful to the Jewish community, particularly the Holocaust survivors, their families, and to the memory of those who perished as a result of the brutality of the real Nazis.

Across Labor, Liberals and Greens, we have seen inexcusable conflation and appropriating of Nazism for political point scoring. This shameful practice is deserving of the strongest condemnation.

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