Most parts of the world have very robust hate speech laws, but Australia? Not so much. So when the Southern Cross Hammerskins’ neo-Nazi festival rolls in to a secret Melbourne location this weekend, there is absolutely nada that the cops can do about it.
These events are nothing new. The Hammerskins and their fellow racists have been organising gigs in Australia for years. Then there’s all the marches and rallies; earlier this year an alt-right rally in St. Kilda made headlines in part because it was attended by our very own elected xenophobe, Fraser Anning.
However, it is pretty wacky that despite the sharp increase in white supremacist violence, virtually nothing has been done in Australia to combat that ideology in the first place. Mostly because every time someone suggests tightening hate speech laws, the free speech/censorship debate explodes all over again.
It’s not total free-for-all anarchy out there, we have had a Racial Discrimination Act since 1975. But, like so many laws, its application can be a murky matter – especially when the perpetrator is promoting a worldview, not attacking an individual.
While Section 18C makes it illegal to “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people… because of the[ir] race, colour or national or ethnic origin,” it exempts discrimination that takes place “in private.” Nazi music festivals don’t tend to take place in public spaces.
Worrying about whether shutting down the alt-right is censorship or not is an already a weird debate to be having – we don’t even technically have free speech in the first place. At least, not in the same way as Americans talk about it, because it’s not in our constitution.
It would be great to kill two birds with one stone, and get hate speech laws tightened up while making sure the democratic right to free speech is more than just “implied”. Victorian Attorney-General Jill Hennessy wants to tackle the challenge, but there’s no clear plans on the table.
So if the law can’t stop the alt-right from terrorising the rest of the country with their terrible heavy metal, maybe citizen action is the solution. Melbournians need to take a cue from that German town that fought a Nazi music festival by taking away their beer. Let operation ‘annoy the alt-right away’ begin!