Support for Thorpe
"Neo-Nazi activity, including online, is a threat to everybody."
Jewish leaders have condemned a neo-Nazi group that posted racial slurs about Indigenous Senator Lidia Thorpe on YouTube and gave a Hitler salute.
Calling themselves Warriors of the Convict Resistance, a group of masked men is seen burning the Aboriginal flag after one of them delivers a rant against opponents of January 26 as Australia Day. Behind them, a sign is clearly visible targeting the Victorian Greens senator with a vicious racial slur.
In the video, one man reads out a manifesto in which he proclaims that “our enemy is the Aboriginal … Understand this land belongs to and is a part of white Australia”. The men later give a Nazi salute.
Calling for “a zero-tolerance approach” by law enforcement, Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Peter Wertheim told The AJN, “Neo-Nazi activity, including online, is a threat to everybody. Whether the targets are First Nations peoples or anyone else is immaterial. Jewish history demonstrates what starts with the racist targeting of one group never ends with that group.”
He added, “Anything less than a strong condemnation – across the political spectrum – of disgraceful racist slurs such as those that were directed at Senator Lidia Thorpe, contribute to the moral corrosion of our society and help create a form of social licence for racism more generally.”
Anti-Defamation Commission chair Dvir Abramovich stated, “These hardcore bigots are only becoming more emboldened, targeting a federal parliamentarian … I hope the federal government considers designating these groups as terrorist organisations, since such a classification will dramatically aid our law enforcement.”
In a statement, Thorpe said, “The rise of white supremacists and their ongoing threats to parliamentarians must be taken seriously. This video has been raised with the relevant law enforcement agencies and we will allow them to undertake their work.”
At a 2018 reenactment of the Aboriginal Advancement League’s 1938 protest march over Kristallnacht, Thorpe told a rally of Jewish attendees, “Our culture and our human and civil rights were oppressed, as were yours.”
comments