Australian lawmakers have banned the performance of the Nazi salute in public and outlawed the display or sale of Nazi hate symbols such as the swastika in landmark legislation that went into effect in the country Monday. The new laws also make the act of glorifying OR praising acts of terrorism a criminal offense.
The crime of publicly performing the Nazi salute or displaying the Nazi swastika is punishable by up to 12 months in prison, according to the Reuters news agency.
Mark Dreyfus, Australia’s Attorney-General, said in a press release Monday that the laws — the first of their kind in the country — sent “a clear message: there is no place in Australia for acts and symbols that glorify the horrors of the Holocaust and terrorist acts.”
I think there’s a very clear difference between a Buddhist swastika and a Nazi one. Nazis aren’t hard to pick out. And this is not a bad precedent. Nazis shouldn’t be afforded the freedom to speak. Their ideology should not be tolerated in any way whatsoever by a fair society.
Their ideology does not spread by reason or debate. It spreads by reinforcement, conspiracy theories, and propaganda. Giving them a platform to speak merely enables them to recruit. There is no debating them, as they have no points of debate. You can’t tell a Nazi they are factually wrong. That makes no difference in their ideology. You will say, “You’re wrong about Jewish people,” and the Nazi will point to the audience and say, "See how far the conspiracy goes? Even this guy is a part of it, " and some people in the crowd will genuinely believe them. They don’t need to win over every person at once, just more and more and more of them over time. Allowing them to speak in public is effectively the same thing as promoting them. They should not be afforded the option.
There isn’t a clear difference, all the cope about 45 degree angles and such is neo-Nazi gaslighting. You can find numerous examples in propaganda and military markings of the Nazis using it damn near anyway they wanted. And Buddhists and Hindus for that matter. It’s not anywhere near an exclusively Buddhist symbol btw.
The difference is simply in who’s using it and why.
What I meant wasn’t that there is a visual difference, but that context makes it crystal clear which symbol it is. I don’t mean in architecture or something, I mean you see a Nazi waving a Nazi flag or wearing a Nazi arm band or something and you’re not going to have to take a second to consider whether he’s using it in a religious way or not.
For real. It’s not hard.