Progressive Germans struggled to find the words to condemn what had happened. Many media outlets didn’t report on the assaults immediately and then,when they did,didn’t mention the fact that the men were from an immigrant or refugee background. In later years,I asked the editor-in-chief ofDeutsche Welle why. He told me it was because they hadn’t wanted to stoke racist sentiment. Of course,that’s just what hushing it up achieved.
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Meanwhile,right-wing media outlet Breitbart,which briefly existed in Germany,and politicians from the EU and immigration-sceptical AfD political party had no trouble saying plainly what had happened. After that incident,many Germans learned to turn to their right to find out the truth of what was happening in their cities. A few more coins which had been teetering on the edge fell into the trough.
In the US,neo-Nazis have taken a slightly different tack,affiliating themselves with pro-Palestine protests,using the blurry lines between anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment to position Nazis as kind of right all along. At the end of last year,Vice reported on a group which gathered in front of the White House to proclaim that Israel “is a pure genocidal state” and that “we Americans have been snookered into supporting[Israel] by Jewish control of our banks,our media,and our politicians,but we have to say enough and rise up as a people”. They’re calculating that their narrative is close enough to what some people in the pro-Palestine camp believe to dislodge a few more edge-dwellers.
With the war in Gaza rendering social cohesion in Australia the most precarious it’s been in years,we can expect to see the neo-Nazis try more of this sort of stuff on. It’s easy to build an Australian Nazi:just call people racists or fascists for expressing real concerns and let the anti-semitic conspiracy theories rip.
And don’t forget,the next time neo-Nazis show up at a rally,make sure to blame other people you hate. If you want to build a Nazi,you must never,ever just point and laugh at the sausage-brains in black.
Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director strategy and policy at award-winning campaigns firm Agenda C. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.