No leader, no order, but make no mistake – neo-Nazis were there in numbers

The walking, chanting expressions of this country’s deep divisions over immigration, race and colonialism were separated in Melbourne’s CBD by just one city block on Australia Day.

The fact that they did not come within striking distance was testament to the work of a large contingent of helmeted police officers and, arguably, a lack of organisation by protesters.

Standing on Lonsdale Street with the March for Australia crowd, I could see the Invasion Day rally making its way down Bourke Street. It was only about 200 metres away, but a heavily reinforced police line prevented the two groups coming together.

Instead, police directed the anti-immigration protesters towards the steps of Parliament House.
There, as their ideological antagonists had done earlier in the day, they set up their podium and made their speeches.

In August last year, during the first March for Australia, neo-Nazis very much set the tone. The National Socialist Network, in uniform, drummed the rally through the streets; their leader made a speech at a podium they had supplied.

And on that occasion, they manufactured a series of scuffles by dodging police lines and filtering through the streets and laneways of Melbourne’s CBD. They had come to commit violence, and police, struggling to keep up, were forced to deploy tin loads of capsicum spray to subdue it.

Afterwards, to cap off their Big Day Out last year, the NSN went on another rampage, far from the eyes of the police, beating up a group of people, including women at the Aboriginal Camp Sovereignty.

This time the Nazis – without the presence of leader Thomas Sewell – were more low-key. They did not come in their trademark black spray jackets and caps, and they did not march in a bloc.
But make no mistake: they were certainly there. In numbers.

They started and sustained a number of chants. One, “Free Joel Davis”, referred to a member of the disbanded NSN who was arrested after he invited members of a Telegram social media channel to “rhetorically rape” independent Wentworth MP Allegra Spender.

Another chant they led referenced the great replacement theory, a far-right trope that suggests non-white people would out-populate white people in Western countries. “You will not replace us,” the crowd chanted, interspersed with ragged renditions of Waltzing Matilda and “Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi”.

Members of the recently disbanded NSN also positioned themselves at the front of the March for Australia.

Even so, without their overt guidance, Monday’s rally seemed a little more chaotic than the version last September. Many in the crowd, standing in the hot mid-afternoon sun on Spring Street, were impatient that the organisers could not even get the PA to work. Many would have missed the speeches by two One Nation politicians and rally organiser Hugo Lennon.

That, if nothing else, seemed to shorten the rally as many simply gave up, having made their point, and headed off to the pub instead.

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