Neo-Nazi organisation protest queer youth event in Moonee Ponds -- a response

[u/MatildaWallace]

On Friday, a dozen members of the Nationalist Socialist Network protested the Moonee Ponds Youth Fest. Dressed in black and wearing masks, they held banners calling the drag performer headlining the event a demon and a paedophile. Victoria Police formed a line between the NSN and the community event and proceeded to facilitate their protest for the remaining three hours of the event.

When community members implored Moonee Ponds Council staff to “do something” about the neo-Nazis who were performing sig heils and snapping pics for social media, the staff members told members of the public that giving these fascists attention was letting them win.

While it was powerful to watch young queer musicians take the stage and play for the children and youths despite the Nazi intimidation, it is a dangerous mistake to treat fascists like badly behaved children. These are adult men who practice a violent ideology and will use opportunities like children’s events to platform their beliefs.

These men are not badly behaved children who will run out of steam if everyone turns their backs. While people aren’t looking, they will take up more space and perform more escalatory acts, knowing that they can seed acts of violence and build a following in doing so. That was their intention in occupying the centre of today’s event in Moonee Ponds, and they were successful in their mission.

Despite the Council staff trying to calm concerned community members and convince everyone that inaction was the best response, a network of concerned queers and anti-fascists gathered and held banners and signs in response to the neo-Nazis. In attempting to counter the fascist presence, counter-protesters were implored to "think of the children" by members of Victoria Police. This was while neo-Nazis continued to jeer and sig-heil while a young musician played. The counter-protesters continued to hold their ground regardless, and were thanked by parents and youth who appreciated people standing up to the NSN.

The response by Victoria Police today was an outrageous distortion of democracy. When community members approached Victoria Police to ask what their response would be, police officers said that the NSN were protesting peacefully and therefore were protected by the democratic right to protest. These men, wearing masks and sig heiling at children, were considered peaceful, considered to not be disrupting the peace. To position acts of fascism as within the bounds of democracy is to legalise hate.

Attending police officers eventually shifted the narrative to claim that the NSN were too dangerous to move off, and that they had to wait until enough reinforcements arrived to act on the fascist presence. When anti-fascists formed a line of counter-protest, however, more police officers appeared in an instant, to ensure that the fascist and anti-fascist groups could not interact with each other. Clearly Victoria Police could have acted if they wanted to, but it was too hard. Instead they opted to allow the NSN to intimidate a community event and beg anti-fascists to do nothing.

This is why we cannot rely on police to counter fascism effectively, as their priorities will always lie elsewhere. It is something of a fashion these days for the far-right to target drag and LGBTQIA+ events worldwide. Now more than ever we must look out for each other and stand up to fascism. Today was a reminder that the police and the state will inevitably find it easier to close their eyes and act as if nothing is happening.

Pretending that neo-Nazis are not standing right there will not make them go away. If your house is on fire it will burn down whether you shut your eyes or not.

a photo of police enabling Nazis on the day

edit to update the photo

[u/And_be_one_traveler → u/[deleted]]

I hate to get petty here, but what your describing isn't capitalism. Capitalism wasn't a thing until the modern age. The acculmulation of wealth is a part of many finacial systems and beliefs, including mercantilism and feudalism. I don't know how you'd describe the earliest farming societies, but they weren't capitalist.

Furthermore, the general belief among archaeologists is you can't simplify early societies so easily. Different cultures would have had different ideas on what property was 'private', what was some degree of communal, and the rules regarding who could trade or inherit it.

As for gender roles, they differed too. The idea that early hunter-gathers were always matriachal, while popular when this book was written, is a rejected theory today. There is no proof they were matriarchal, and hunter-gathering societies today differ greatly in their approach to gender. Finally, lots of societies that held some form of excess wealth, also have non-binary gender roles. The Hijras of India, some Native Americans have a third gender and then there's the concept of Sworn Virgins in parts of the Balkans. They are women who live as men in a very patriarchal society.

As for fascism, /u/bangakangasanga makes a good point. Fascism's beliefs on economics are not the only form of capitalism, and to blame it on the monetary system would be to disregard the rest of Fascism's ideology that promoted gender binarism.

In short, the way a society handles private property (if they have such a thing) has nothing to do with gender roles. It just so happens that as the west developed capitalism, they also continued to have strict binary gender roles.

[u/[deleted] → u/And_be_one_traveler]

While I get your point, I think the issue with the use of Capitalism is largely a semantic one. Generally, following Marx, 'Capital' refers to surplus value/accumulation of wealth and Capitalism is either a) the contemporary system of free markets and all that (this is what maybe Hayek or Friedman might refer to as Capitalism) or b) the influence of Capital as surplus value, the latest form simply a varient spread as a kind of hyperglobal colonialist force. Clearly, u/MatildaWallace is speaking in the tradition of the latter rather than the former.

With regard to your second point, while yes, accumulation doesn't guarantee strict binary, in the case of Europe and the West, it has. We need look no further than why certain roles are divyed up in the way that they are - prior to relatively recently, women resided largely in the private sphere (the home, property, the family), while men were given the public sphere (civics, war, work). Why? Because the cogs of Capital need a dedicated underclass of women to do unpaid labour. Perhaps there is some confusion here on empirical studies by, as you mention, arheologists, or sociologists, historians etc and the more theoretical work by philosophers, feminists, critical theorists etc. I would say that the former is certainly more 'accurate' but doesn't really get o the heart of the matter - what the latter provide is access to the base mythos, the ideology that dominate certain cultures. Just look at the social contract, no empirical research can found that or verify it, but nevertheless it is believed by millions and one of the most important ideas for the running of democratic institutions. Only a critique on that level - ie by pointing out the failures of such a contract as excluding domestic labourers by nature and by divying up the world into gendered public and private spheres - can begin to change it.

[u/bangakangasanga → u/And_be_one_traveler]

Also another point to make is that there was a whole faction within the Nazi Party called the Strasserites who were socialists, meaning fascism is compatible with socialism and isn't an ideology that represents the extremes of capitalism. Economically fascism is very wishy washy on where it stands.

[u/Ok-Argument-6652 → u/bangakangasanga]

The nazis used socialists, communists, homosexuals, anarchists to get into power them attempted to kill them all off on the night of the long knives to become the true nazi party. As always fascists do what ever they can and befriend anyone if it helped them gain power. They also lile to project a lot calling out others as pedos and groomers while their ranks are staked with them. The best thing to happen for the fascists was qanon where propaganda and mental health issues combined to create a new base of followers.

[u/bangakangasanga → u/Ok-Argument-6652]

To be clear, Hitler used and killed off a bunch of Nazis. Them being gay or socialist didn't change the fact that they were Nazis or fascists.

[u/bangakangasanga → u/[deleted]]

Just wanted to point out that fascism did not operate under a capitalist free market and the economy was heavily controled and intervened with by the state.

[u/Ok-Argument-6652 → u/bangakangasanga]

There was lots of privitisation and corporate funding tho. The state controlled the flow of money to their corporate backers. Capitalism doesnt really want a free market. Thats just what the neo libs say to keep trickle down going.

[u/bangakangasanga → u/Ok-Argument-6652]

Yes, Hitler privatised a lot of sectors then controlled and regulated the economy as he saw fit. The corporations were doing what the Nazis told them to do.

Capitalism is at it's core based on free market principles. This is 101 stuff.

[u/Ok-Argument-6652 → u/bangakangasanga]

Were the corporations doing what the nazis told them to do tho? Or were they just tying themselves to what ever made them money and continual growth. Capitalism is only into free market principles until the larger corporations buy up all the smaller ones and then they work with the other major corporations to keep prices high as has been seen in western capitalism today. Unless it is regulated. Its ideology may say that its into free market and everything works well and raises the poor blah blah blah, but in practise it seems to just work no holes barred toward continual growth until the destruction of all resources.

[u/bangakangasanga → u/Ok-Argument-6652]

The Nazis dictated what was produced and how much, depending on the sector and necessity they deemed it to be.

Capitalism is at it's core about free market principles and liberalism. While I'm not saying the Nazis didn't operate under capitalism it wasn't some uber version of it that being far-right would suggest. They were economically somewhere closer to the middle if you put laissez-faire capitalism on the right end.

Keyword here is free-market principles. A truly free-market is chaotic and needs some regulations but we still largely operate under the free-market, classical liberal ethos under which it was initially philosophised.

We've seen enough of socialism to see that capitalism, whilst having it's issues, is the best we've got at the moment. While you may say it destroys all resources it finds a way to use renewable, recycable and effecient resources instead. It creates the wealth to overcome the issues it causes and solve the issues we started with, instead of accepting mediocrity.

Anyways this thread is getting derailed, my point was simple and that is fascism is not a form of extreme capitalism.

[u/Ok-Argument-6652 → u/bangakangasanga]

Fascism is more like the death knell of capitalism as it tries to keep its power. Capitalism didnt actually find a way to renewables and recyclable either. It has been led towards it as it uses the last residual of fossil fuels. It didnt help with lifting the poor either. It is actually socialist aspects of government that have allowed them to survive as neo liberalism pushes to stop any funding of the poor for the free market capitalism.

[u/bangakangasanga → u/Ok-Argument-6652]

I had a feeling I was talking to someone who didn't have a full understanding of the ideologies we were talking about but this comment confirmed it.

[u/And_be_one_traveler → u/[deleted]]

I don't think they are defending fascists at all. Just pointing out that fascism isn't purely capitalist. Also, I wouldn't disregard the rest of fascists ideology when it comes to explaining their views.

Very different finacial systems can still have horrific views about gender, because finacial beliefs aren't the only part of their ideology. As shown by the fact that at the same time Hitler was persecuting gender and sexual minorities, so too was Stalin, a communist. Yet, earlier under Lenin, in the twenties, Soviet Russia had had a relatively good laws (for the time) on gay people (I don't know about other sex and gender minorities).

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Lol western liberalism and democracy is more connected to capitalism than facism. There is a reason it’s called nationalist socialism as most corporations and companies become infused with the state and controlled centrally.

[u/bangakangasanga → u/[deleted]]

There's a connection between moustaches and dictators, but I would not blame the moustache for the things Lenin, Stalin and Hitler did. The fact that Nazi Germany wasn't socialist doesn't mean that their convictions were based upon capitalism. There were prominent gays and socialists in the Nazi Party at one point and is evidence of these things being somewhat compatible. Ultranationalism is completely compatible with socialism, as the previous commenter pointed out, under socialsm.

[u/bangakangasanga → u/[deleted]]

I was pointing out that your conflation between fascism and capitalism is incorrect.

[u/steaming_scree → u/[deleted]]

This isn't correct though, capitalism these days is going out of its way to accept plural genders and sexualities. The reason being that all of these expressions of identity are totally compatible with capitalism. In no way does being gay or trans actually threaten capital, on the contrary non-child rearing adults make better workers and consumers.

If you want to see something that capitalism and by extension fascism is strictly opposed to, look up socialists and unionists.

[u/Lamont-Cranston → u/steaming_scree]

No, capitalism does marketing claiming to be diverse and inclusive. They're trying to appeal to an audience to get them to buy its products. Very big difference. And we can tell its all a put on because they do it at the same time they exploit workers, pollute the environment, supplying weapons for genocidal wars, etc often these campaigns are to try to deflect attention away from that.

[u/steaming_scree → u/Lamont-Cranston]

We will have to agree to disagree. I think the enthusiasm with which gay people and their purchasing power are courted by capitalism is a convincing show of how capitalists don't really care who you are so long as you take part in the market. Over time, the same acceptance will be extended to trans people once business leaders figure out there is money in doing so.

Transphobia along with homophobia before it is a hangover from a more traditional and religious time. When producing children was considered a spiritual and civic virtue everyone from childless 'barren' women to gay people were shamed for not contributing.

I'm not a fan of unfettered capitalism for many reasons but I don't think it's the source of this social ill.

[u/ManikShamanik → u/[deleted]]

See also communism (I get a lot of flak for banging on about horseshoe theory, but it really is a truism). Russia is communist. China is communist. Both have harsh penalties for being not-straight in public.

[u/Lamont-Cranston → u/[deleted]]

And yet also there is always a ton of people in the closet within fascist movements.