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.
Their point is that not only does jailing them not deprogram them or prevent them from spreading their rhetoric, it is more likely to have the opposite effect.
That is a poor point and allowing it to spread is the reality we are actually facing.
Case in point. Germany has been tightly controlling this for several decades. Is their society now overran by Nazi rhetoric? The answer is no.
Being German, unfortunately the answer to that is yes, but it didn’t happen in a vacuum, it’s because the media and politicians have been courting right wing ideologies over the past 20 years to an extent that things have become normalized that should have never been normalized, e.g. framing asylum seekers as „migrants“ and adopting dehumanizing language against them, which has led to us having AFD polling at 20% and CDU at 30%.
CDU has recently collaborated with the right wing extremist AFD to push through a proposal for an anti-migration bill that violates our constitution. There has been an uproar but CDU and AFD actually polled higher after this. Our country is in deep trouble and we’re moving into a very scary direction.
That example proves the first users point. The answer to the German question is that they spend a great deal of money on having an excellent education system, and spend a lot of time educating their youth with an honest, unflinching look at the history of Nazism and fascism.
I’m not even saying don’t throw people in jail, I’m simply saying it is pure idiocy to believe that will do anything at all to help the underlying problem.