Banning protest slogans won’t end antisemitism. We need to understand the complex forces driving it |
The Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion will deliver its interim report to the governor-general by April 30. Public hearings will follow, defining antisemitism and its effects on Jewish Australians.
As a researcher of political violence, I provided a submission to the NSW parliamentary committee considering prohibitions on slogans that some argue incite hatred and violence against Jews, such as “globalise the intifada”.
In the wake of the Bondi Beach attack in December, the political debate in Australia has directed an inordinate amount of attention to these protest slogans as a source of antisemitism.
This focus rests on a flawed premise about what is driving contemporary antisemitism.
Antisemitism is a serious and persistent problem. And any effective response must begin with a clear recognition of its causes and harms.
Treating protest speech as the primary problem risks misidentifying where the most serious dangers lie.
Neo-Nazism: the most explicit threat
The most overt form of antisemitism in Australia comes from extreme right and neo-Nazi movements.
For these groups, hostility toward Jewish people is foundational. Their narratives cast Jewish people as hidden forces behind both the international financial system and revolutionary socialism. In this framing, Jewish people are falsely portrayed as an all-powerful, transnational enemy operating above the nation-state.
These tropes date back to interwar fascist movements in Europe, and continue to feature at the centre of the worldviews espoused by neo-Nazi groups today.
In Australia, groups such as the National Socialist Network have distributed propaganda outside synagogues and Jewish schools, and used social media to glorify Nazi iconography.
These movements aim not only to intimidate Jewish Australians, but to normalise Nazi symbols and ideology in public life.
The far........