Neo-Nazi groups successfully infiltrated and helped organise anti-immigration protests that drew tens of thousands of people across Australia over the weekend, prompting widespread condemnation from government leaders and raising concerns about far-right extremist influence in mainstream demonstrations.
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The demonstrations, which saw protesters chanting slogans like “send them back” and “stop the invasion,” have been condemned by Australian leaders as racist gatherings that provided a platform for far-right extremist ideology to reach mainstream audiences.
Research expert Kaz Ross, who studies far-right extremism, warned that the protests represented “a significant moment for the far-right in making inroads into the mainstream,” describing what she called a “crossover success moment” where neo-Nazi groups successfully connected with thousands of ordinary Australians without being rejected or booed from the rallies.
“They’ve successfully — it looks to me — met up in public with thousands of Australians. No one threw them out. No one booed them out of the rally,” Dr. Ross observed. “It is very, very concerning, and we don’t know where it’s going to go from here.”
According to Dr. Ross, while the protests appeared to have been initiated by disparate online influencers, far-right elements successfully shaped the demonstrations according to their ideology, capitalising on mainstream concerns about soaring living costs and housing scarcity to stir up anti-immigrant sentiment.
Widespread Participation and Neo-Nazi Presence
About 15,000 people gathered for the “March for Australia” anti-immigration rally in Sydney on Sunday, while approximately 3,000 people attended a counterprotest organised by a pro-Palestinian group, according to police. In other Australian cities, thousands more attended rallies, though police did not distinguish between protesters and counterprotesters in their crowd estimates.
Local media reported that populist politicians delivered speeches at some rallies, while at others, members of neo-Nazi groups spoke and led chants of “heil Australia.” Some confrontations occurred between protesters and counterprotesters, resulting in a handful of arrests across the country, police said.
Pauline Hanson, leader of the far-right anti-immigration One Nation Party, spoke at the protest in Canberra, the nation’s capital.
At a demonstration in Adelaide, a protester displayed a sign featuring the face of Dezi Freeman — identified by authorities as the suspect in a shooting that killed two police officers in Victoria State last week — with the caption “free man.” Freeman remains at large.
Government Response and Security Concerns
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese acknowledged media reports linking Freeman to the radical anti-government “sovereign citizen” movement, though he noted these were allegations. According to local media reports, Freeman was born Desmond Christopher Filby and later renamed himself “Dezi Freeman” as a symbolic gesture of his belief in personal sovereignty.
The “sovereign citizen” movement, built on the belief that people can place themselves outside government authority, gained momentum during the pandemic and has long been viewed by police as a security risk. A 2023 Australian Federal Police note described the movement as having “an underlying capacity to inspire violence.”
Australia’s domestic intelligence agency, ASIO, warned earlier this year of the growing threat of “nationalist and racist violent extremism” and “issue-motivated extremism, fueled by personal grievance, conspiracy theories and anti-authority ideologies.”
Political Condemnation Across Party Lines
The Australian government strongly condemned the protests as hateful demonstrations. “This brand of far-right activism grounded in racism and ethnocentrism has no place in modern Australia,” said Anne Aly, the minister for multicultural affairs.
Representatives from both the centre-left Labour government and the conservative opposition voiced concerns about the far-right extremist presence at the rallies. Minister Aly told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that while the majority of protesters were not neo-Nazis, the rallies were organised by neo-Nazis and were “clearly racist.”
“When we see neo-Nazis address a crowd of people in some of our major cities, that raises material concerns with respect to social cohesion in our country,” said Paul Scarr, the opposition immigration spokesman.
Growing Extremist Threat
Australia is grappling with the growing threat of extremist ideology amid a global rise of far-right nationalism. While Australia prides itself on multiculturalism, experts indicate that discontent among some groups has been growing due to a lack of affordable housing and soaring living costs.
The weekend’s shows highlight how extremist groups can exploit legitimate economic concerns to advance radical ideologies, transforming mainstream grievances about cost of living into platforms for anti-immigrant sentiment and racist messaging.
The successful neo-Nazi participation in these large-scale public demonstrations represents a troubling development for Australian authorities, who now face the challenge of addressing both the underlying economic issues driving public discontent and the extremist groups seeking to exploit that frustration for their own radical agenda.
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