When Nazis Hide in Plain Sight: The March for Australia Controversy
I’ve been watching the debate around the “March for Australia” unfold online over the past few days, and frankly, it’s left me both frustrated and deeply concerned about where we’re heading as a society. What started as people asking legitimate questions about the march’s organisers has devolved into the usual online shouting match, with some folks demanding “concrete evidence” while others point to what seems pretty bloody obvious if you just scratch the surface.
The whole thing reminds me of that uncomfortable feeling you get when you’re at a family gathering and your uncle starts going down a conversational path that you know is going to end badly. You can see it coming from a mile away, but somehow everyone else is pretending it’s just normal dinner chat.
What’s particularly galling is how these groups operate. They’ve learned to speak in coded language, use dog whistles, and maintain plausible deniability. They know that if they came out and said exactly what they meant, most reasonable people would walk away. So instead, they talk about “preserving Australian culture” and “controlling immigration” while burning Australian flags on their promotional materials and using imagery that anyone with half a brain can recognise.
The IT side of me finds it fascinating how easily this stuff spreads online. Social media algorithms don’t distinguish between engagement driven by outrage and engagement driven by genuine interest - they just see clicks and comments. So when people share these posts to criticise them, or when others defend them, the algorithm sees “success” and pushes the content to more people. It’s a perfect storm for radicalisation.
What really gets under my skin is how this poisons legitimate discussions about immigration policy. Look, we can have nuanced conversations about population growth, infrastructure planning, and economic policy without descending into racial politics. But when every attempt to discuss these issues gets hijacked by extremists, it becomes impossible to have the grown-up conversations we actually need.
I remember a few months back, my daughter was asking me about some of the protests she’d seen on social media, trying to understand why people were so angry. How do you explain to a teenager that some people use legitimate concerns about housing or job security as a Trojan horse for much darker ideologies? That the person holding the “Aussie jobs for Aussie workers” sign might actually believe in something far more sinister?
The response from social media platforms has been predictably useless. People report content that explicitly calls for violence or promotes Nazi ideology, only to be told it doesn’t violate community standards. Meanwhile, those same platforms will suspend accounts for much less. It’s almost as if there’s a deliberate blind spot when it comes to far-right content, which given the political leanings of some tech billionaires, shouldn’t surprise anyone.
The police response has been equally troubling. We’ve seen climate protesters arrested for blocking traffic, but somehow neo-Nazis can march through Melbourne streets with minimal interference. The optics alone should concern anyone who cares about equal application of the law.
What worries me most is that this normalises extremist rhetoric. When you have people defending the march by saying “show me where they explicitly say they’re Nazis,” you’re already losing the plot. It’s like arguing that a restaurant isn’t dirty because you can’t see the cockroaches during the day - sometimes you need to look a bit harder to see what’s really going on.
The worst part is that this whole mess makes it harder for people with genuine concerns about population growth or infrastructure to speak up. Nobody wants to be associated with extremists, so legitimate voices get drowned out while the loudest, most offensive ones dominate the conversation.
We need to get better at recognising these tactics for what they are. When someone talks about “preserving Australian culture” but can’t articulate what that culture actually is beyond keeping certain people out, that’s a red flag. When they use language about “taking back” the country, that’s another one. And when they organise events with mysterious anonymous leadership while distancing themselves from known extremists only after being called out, well, that’s the biggest red flag of all.
The solution isn’t to shut down all discussion of immigration policy - that would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Instead, we need to be more vigilant about who’s driving these conversations and what their real agenda is. We need social media platforms to actually enforce their community standards consistently. And we need law enforcement to apply the same scrutiny to all forms of extremism, not just the ones that don’t vote for their preferred political party.
Most importantly, we need to create space for genuine, good-faith discussions about the challenges facing our country without letting bad actors hijack the conversation. Because if we can’t do that, we’re just handing them exactly what they want: a polarised society where reasonable people are too afraid to speak up, leaving the field clear for those with the most extreme views.
The reality is that Australia has always been a nation built by immigrants, and our national anthem literally celebrates those “who’ve come across the seas.” If we’re going to have a march “for Australia,” it should celebrate that diversity, not try to roll it back. Anything less isn’t patriotism - it’s just prejudice wrapped in a flag.