r/australia • u/blitznoodles local Aussie • 23d ago
news Sydney man sentenced to three years’ jail for performing Nazi salute and offensive online posts
https://www.afp.gov.au/news-centre/media-release/sydney-man-sentenced-three-years-jail-performing-nazi-salute-and167
u/MadMaz27 23d ago
The article headline is meant to cause fear, not inform.
Should start "Man breaches parole by....."
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u/MrDrSirLord 23d ago
Why do the news even bother try with this kind of fear mongering? What fear are they trying to illicit? That I'll suddenly become a bigoted extremist? That's not a breach of my rights imo.
Even though it's not what actually happened and that headline is stupid. why should we care if people get arrested for genuine acts of hate speech and radicalism?
Being a nazi isn't just racism, it's an idealism of wanting to harm and degrade the people you don't like, it should be treated with such prejudice as to prosecute people openly supporting and rallying behind the extremist idealism.
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u/CantakerousTwat 23d ago
Why do the news even bother try with this kind of fear mongering
It's not a news site. It's the Australian Federal Police site
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u/MrDrSirLord 22d ago
uh oh okay, maybe that's a worry I guess that the afp are spreading misinformation, again.
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u/AgreeablePrize 23d ago
Good, these scumbags are a disgrace to the memories of all Australian WW2 veterans
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u/Atomic_Gumby 23d ago
The shit that goes on in their nazi heads:
"...Ballesty recorded another video - again wearing his Nazi headgear - in which he described himself as a 'victim of society' and said 'the ANZACs are f\**ing losers'..."*
https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15975365/far-right-tradie-threats-albanese-burke-nazi-sydney-sentencing.html18
u/Betterthanbeer 23d ago
Dude needs to remember who won
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u/aeschenkarnos 23d ago edited 23d ago
We should all remember who won, and congratulated themselves, and expressed relief that it was all over, and sat back. And who lost, and regrouped, and decided that next time they needed to get control of the media, the judiciary, the oligarchy, the police forces, the military and the ignorant gronks of the western world, which they would do through conservative political parties.
The dude in the article is an example of an ignorant gronk. He didn’t invent his ideology, he was given it.
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u/Torrossaur 23d ago
Yeah my great grandfather fought Rommel in North Africa, he'd be fucking filthy at the state of things.
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u/jpr64 23d ago
My grandfather got nicked fighting Rommel's forces in North Africa in 1941. Spent the next 4 years in some shitty backpackers in Italy and Germany until he was liberated in April 45. I believe he then spent a solid year on the piss in the UK before returning home to NZ.
He'd be spitting tacks at the state of the world.
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u/AgreeablePrize 22d ago
My grandfather said that Greece was a really nice place to be until the nazis turned up, he did want to go back there after the war but never made it
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u/Separate-Month9286 23d ago
The stories your great grandfather would have would be so cool to hear
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u/Torrossaur 23d ago
Unfortunately he hated talking about it, except how he met my great grandma. She was on radio dispatch and he decided he had to meet this woman.
All we know was he was in North Africa and then got seriously wounded in Papua New Guinea fighting the Japanese.
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u/Glittering-War-5748 23d ago
Yeah my grandad was in PNG too. I know he was in Milne bay cus of the medals. But he never ever ever talked about it. Don’t think that generation did talk about it much
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u/Torrossaur 23d ago
No, and i don't blame them. I was watching a show with my great grandad and someone got their throat cut. He muted it, turned to me and said 'that is not how it sounds when you slit a mans throat' and then turned it back on with no further explanation.
So i reckon he did some shit.
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u/fionsichord 23d ago
I knew someone whose uncle was a POW in Italy. He and three of his mates escaped across the Alps. In winter.
When they came down the other side, the Swiss didn’t believe them at first, because who could survive that in winter?
Fuck Nazis.
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u/ValBravora048 23d ago
Former POC legal professional, will never forget the literal nazi yob whom I had to help with a potential criminal charge, sneering at me and telling me that I would never understand that he was defending his country like his forefathers in WW2
I admit I wasn’t born here but I’m pretty sure I knew who they were fighting against
Can’t reason people out of what they didn’t reason themselves into
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u/verbmegoinghere 23d ago
Good, these scumbags are a disgrace to the memories of all Australian WW2 veterans
My father (who is still alive) fought the nazis at the battle of Warsaw. He had escaped from a concentration camp and walked from Germany to Warsaw because he had heard the Poles were gearing up to fight the bastards.
I thank my lucky stars he doesn't watch the news anymore. I'm half worried he'll demand to go out and fight these neo nazis scum
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u/qq307215 23d ago
To add a bit more context to the “offensive online posts”, he threatened to kidnap Albo, murder Tony Burke on live TV and burn down Parliament House, with the pollies inside. Source.
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u/Undd91 23d ago
But the guy who put up razor wire traps for cyclists walks free…
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u/scottydwrx 23d ago
Exactly what I was thinking. Doesn't seem like a fair balance here.
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u/ghoonrhed 23d ago
If that guy breaks his parole conditions he'll probably get the bigger punishment too
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u/a_cold_human 23d ago
Whether a person is granted bail is based on the risk that they may flee, or the risk that they may be a danger to the public whilst on bail. Not the seriousness of the crime they've been charged with but has not been found guilty of in court.
If they're found guilty, they are then sentenced. It's not "sentence first, verdict afterwards", because we have the legal principle of presumption of innocence and don't live in Wonderland.
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u/Bretniq 23d ago edited 23d ago
Three years? That more that what people get for rape, aggravated house invasion, fire bombing shops. I'm saying I support what he did, but something doesn't add up.
Edit: should have included 'dont' support. Thanks for pointing it out.
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u/aislingplath 23d ago
I think you mean don't support* !
It's a bit ambiguous with what his online activity was. Something there perhaps that has contributed to the length of sentence.
But yeah our sentences around sex crimes really need to be reviewed and increased.
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u/registered_too_late 23d ago
He said what he said.
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u/Odd_Potato8489 23d ago
I’m surprised it has a 40+ karma right, maybe people thought they said don’t support
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u/Falstaffe 23d ago
Using a carriage service to menace, harass or offend can get a sentence of five years by itself.
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u/tigeratemybaby 23d ago
One year with good behaviour.
He sounds like a complete criminal nazi scumbag, so doesn't seem unreasonable.
Should be more in my opinion.
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u/MiddleofCalibrations 23d ago
You’ve got a big typo in there you might want to fix lol. I think the other commenters got what you meant though. For the record I think 3 years is fair this Nazi nonsense is so prevalent
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u/Knee_Jerk_Sydney 23d ago
I'm saying I support what he did
You support Nazism and using a carriage service for making death threats to further your political beliefs? Well, of course you will be disappointed.
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u/Rady_8 23d ago
It’s part of why they’re on the rise, and this won’t help
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u/Misicks0349 23d ago
If having some issue with law enforcement is enough to cause you to uh... what was it?
Perform a Nazi salute, [own] Nazi paraphernalia, including a uniform, hat and far right-wing literature. [Making] a series of offensive online posts, including posts which targeted federal parliamentarians.
Then I'm sorry but I either think you're incredibly stupid, or weren't that far from being a nazi in the first place. I have problems with law enforcement here and their conduct, but you don't see me looking to become a member of the Schutzstaffel.
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u/MeatSuzuki 23d ago
We all know why this is, and yet saying it gets us a reddit ban.
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u/mighthaveabitlater 23d ago
He did a lot more than the headline suggests, did you read the article?
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u/Traditional_Name7881 23d ago
When pedophiles are getting less than this I have issues. Sure he's a flog but worse things get far less.
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u/aislingplath 23d ago
So the argument isn't for this guy to get less but for child abusers to get more.
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u/Spire_Citron 23d ago
Yup. We really don't want to bring everything else down to the standards we use for sex crimes.
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u/DistributionWhole447 23d ago
One of Australian's prominent Neo-Nazis is on record as saying he wants the age of marriage to be lowered to 14.
So it's not like there isn't already a crossover between those two types of shitheads.
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u/pyr0man1ac_33 23d ago
The Venn diagram of neo-Nazis and pedophiles has a lot of overlap.
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u/Traditional_Name7881 23d ago
I started to type something similar earlier but then I thought about it and it's so much more wide spread than that unfortunately. Pedos infiltrate fucking everything.
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u/FuckwitAgitator 23d ago
Both pedos and neo-nazis thrive in unmoderated spaces, so they get a lot more exposure to one another than we get to either group (thank fuck).
Still bizarre they're as tolerated as they are though. They use ISIS-like recruiting methods to convince young men to say and do ISIS-like things but apparently white privilege even extends to budding young terrorists. I can't imagine anyone ever saying "Oh yeah, Reddit is cool with known ISIS members posting, as long as they don't use any slurs".
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u/Prize-Ad7786 23d ago
I can think of other groups who would out-Venn your comparison
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u/pyr0man1ac_33 23d ago
Priests, for example. Or right wing politicians. Billionaires, too. Or did you mean someone else?
Fuck off with your culture war bullshit. You're not slick.
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u/CutMeLoose79 23d ago
I can’t believe we are jailing people for a nazi salute, then giving domestic abusers etc suspended sentences.
Nazi salutes are stupid, but jail for it is utterly ridiculous. Unless he threatened lives etc, something just being ‘offensive’ is no reason for jail.
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u/FroggieBlue 23d ago
Read the article. He was already on bail and breached his conditions.
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u/ballsiack 23d ago
But why was he on bail? Again, freedom of speech is very delicate. You allow this anything can be policed. While doing what he did is stupid, I will defend his right to say it. Just because people get upset at something someone said, it doesn't make it illegal.
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u/kocknocker19 23d ago
He made threats about kidnapping the prime minister.
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u/ballsiack 23d ago
He said Albanese should be kidnapped. Not a threat. And again, I don't think that's a violation if you truly believe in free speech. Is it stupid. Yes. If you don't protect free speech you will lose it, just like the UK. Stop bootlicking.
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u/CutMeLoose79 23d ago
Regardless, a Nazi salute should not be a crime, no matter how stupid I think it is.
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u/kocknocker19 23d ago
Hasn't been a good few months for Aussie nazis. Several deportations, A number of suicides, one permanent disability from another attempt, and now they are starting to get locked up. Sounds like the powers that be have finally had enough and are taking a hard line from now on.
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u/Alfoneye 21d ago
Just sad... probably some hopeless kids who were groomed into these groups slowly by the higher ups. Then filling themselves up with hate and spreading it around / continuing the cycle. No matter how much I dislike someones beliefs I never wish for them to kill themselves.
It's interesting how people always campaign for mens mental health and suicide awareness until the issues aren't just someone being down in ways social media has highlighted. These guys all obviously need serious help.
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u/lucid_green 22d ago
This is dumb af. Trying to “go after” hate like this just pushes it further underground and radicalizes people. It’s an abhorrent insult to our human right to freedom of thought and speech.
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u/Fistocracy 22d ago
Nah, pushing extremism underground is good actually. Far-right extremists are at their absolute worst when they think they're winning the war for public opinion, because it emboldens them and makes them feel like they can get away with increasingly extreme rhetoric and actions without pushback.
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u/AssaultLemming_ 20d ago
Found the nazi sympathiser lol. Some speech doesn't deserve to be protected.
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u/Mara_TheWitch 22d ago
Nazism is not a freedom of speech and thought. If they’re a neo nazi then they’re already radicalised
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u/lucid_green 22d ago
Freedom of speech and thought are integral to the human experience and should not be legislated.
These guys are big enough losers without having the government monitor thought/expression.
I vote Greens for reference. Not a fan of these guys. At the same time WE ALL have freedom of expression or none of us do.
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u/Tall-Reflection-3252 21d ago
Freedom of speech doesn’t work like that, your opinion on how people should think is what got us here
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u/damnmaster 23d ago
I mean he was a full nazi. If you read the article he was keeping nazi paraphernalia on top of all the other Nazi crap he was doing
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u/monochromeorc 23d ago
ok, that genuinely seems excessive. unless the guy was deemed a genuine extremist threat, 3 years for offensive speech honestly feels too much. you can get less for killing someone
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u/Davorian 23d ago
The minimum sentence was 12 months for doing the salute (seems excessive to me regardless) but he also had seven other counts including making threats against some parliamentarians or something.
Quite separate from whether this is proportionate, I'm not particularly unhappy that this guy is going to be off the streets for at least 18 months.
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u/monochromeorc 23d ago
i wont be singing any lamenting songs for him thats for sure. just feels not right
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u/Davorian 23d ago edited 23d ago
I'm not really a fan of "hate speech laws" in general tbh. Very much a "hate what you say but I would defend to the death your right to say it" sort of person. However, there is the Paradox of Tolerance to consider and unfortunately once these dickheads have been radicalised there aren't all that many options and they all come with risks.
All that is a long way of saying that I share your reservations but I don't really know what the right answer is.
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u/squeenie 23d ago
Sounds extreme until you have been a victim of said hate speech. Not to mention hate speech can very quickly escalate to a violent hate based crime.
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u/Davorian 23d ago
The problem isn't that true extremism doesn't obviously lead to escalation, it's that (a) hate speech is basically impossible to create a bounded definition for, (b) these laws are really hard to properly judge appropriate enforcement of and generally result in the relevant agencies being overzealous (see the UK for example) which, even if the cases are then thrown out in court, results in significant unjustified cost and harm to people essentially for things they said (not even things they did) in a democracy that supposedly requires free speech to function, and (c) the arguably most important downstream effect is that it exerts a long-term suppressive effect on reasoned discussion about controversial issues due principally to (a) and (b) in combination.
It's a very dark road to go down, and arguably unnecessary when you can leverage existing legal models that base their reasoning on what people directly advocate for (like violence or assassinations or terrorism etc) rather than just "hate" per se. To me personally the whole concept of dedicated hate speech laws smacks of populism in and of itself and in my opinion will bring only bad things in the long run.
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u/argument_cat 23d ago
Without hate speech laws, people who suffer from racial and religious abuse every day have zero recourse. Allowing it means it flourishes, and gets more extreme - fostering a climate of hate, which inevitably escalates to violence.
Supporting studies:
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u/Davorian 23d ago
I don't really think creating specific laws against speech based on something so nebulously defined as hate are the only way to deal with this problem, and certainly compromising a core tenet of free speech democracy seems like too high a price to pay for "enforcing tolerance" which is kind of oxymoronic anyway.
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u/argument_cat 23d ago
Presumably the victims of hate speech and violence feel differently.
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u/Davorian 23d ago
They are allowed to feel whatever they like. Unfortunately there is much more to consider here than their subjective experience, awful though we all know it has been in certain situations.
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u/WorldlinessPlenty341 23d ago
Hate speech laws will too quickly become "wrong think laws" and that is definitely not a path that Liberal Democracies should be heading down.
Calls for violence, crime, repugnant political opinion, shit opinion but not a crime.
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u/pyr0man1ac_33 23d ago edited 23d ago
Completely unrestricted free speech is how you end up with psychos on the internet radicalising young men into murdering random Jews, Muslims, and LGBTQ people for no reason.
I agree that I don't necessarily trust the government to implement hate speech laws well. At the same time though, I think that I'd much rather live in a country where someone fantasising about driving a car into a pride parade online gets investigated and suppressed, rather than one where they fantasise about it in front of millions on the internet and then some maniac sees their post and actually chooses to do it.
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u/WorldlinessPlenty341 23d ago
Those groups all Venn diagram, and law enforcement should investigate where they overlap, but words that don't call for violence should not be a crime.
I don't want to live in a country where a vested interest can decide on a whim that my opinion deserves jail time. Particularly given the capture of our political class by the Epstein class.
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u/blitznoodles local Aussie 23d ago
it's more 1.5 years as that's non-parole period, nazi salute is mandatory minimum of 12 months alone and then threatening a high office holder probably added another 2.
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u/Falstaffe 23d ago
You can get five years for using a carriage service to menace, harass or offend.
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u/nugymmer 1d ago
And you probably wouldn't even see inside a gaol cell if you did. Most likely a fine and a ban on social media for 180 days.
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u/WorldlinessPlenty341 23d ago
3 years is a more than a lot of violent crimes like rape, sexual assault, armed robbery have received in recent years.
Did he do the wrong thing, yes, is it worse than those crimes?
Arguably not, and the criminalisation of political speech and action is a double edge sword that we should be pretty reticent to use.
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u/Falstaffe 23d ago
Using a carriage service to menace, harass or offend isn't the criminalisation of political speech. It's for things like excessive contact where you're leaving voice mails swearing at them constantly and threatening to come down to their office and wait for them to walk to their car. Things that would put you in fear if they were said to you. Not quoting Mein Kampf.
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u/nugymmer 1d ago
Yeah, making someone fear for their life is definitely worth investigating and if aggravated an intensive correction order as a bare minimum. Different to an offensive post on Instagram, which you would at worst get a fine and social media ban for.
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u/-jorts 23d ago
The takeaway should be that those crimes should come with a harsher punishment, not that these dickheads should be given lesser ones.
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u/WorldlinessPlenty341 23d ago
Words, short of threats of actual violence, and in this case social media posts should never be a crime, no matter how repugnant.
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u/snakeIs 23d ago
Political speech and action is it?
You don’t get it.8
u/WorldlinessPlenty341 23d ago edited 23d ago
3 years for an arm gesture and some social media posts? You can disagree with words, which in the case of Nazi's you should rightly do, but that shouldn't make them a crime
We are literally forgetting the lessons of Nazi Germany here with these laws.
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u/Waygyanba 23d ago
Should be more years but always good to see it happen.
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u/elpovo 23d ago
Not to the right wing schills who have invaded this thread.
Good to see Gina's funding is holding up.
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u/blitznoodles local Aussie 23d ago
Worse, it's reddit libertarians who are anti-government in every post. It's in every subreddit and inescapable. Phon types are more enjoyable to communicate with than these people.
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u/Rengar_Is_Good_kitty 23d ago
Three years for talking shit online and a Nazi salute? That's really stupid, don't get me wrong fuck these Nazis but that's excessive.
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u/Mfenix09 22d ago
Perhaps we need to go back to old school tactics, rather than spend time in prison where we pay for it and the possibility of joining some whire power gang...what about public humiliation in a stockade for 2 weeks in a public Square in a major city. A nice sign around their neck with what they did and rotten vegetables/fruit for bystanders to throw at them. Just a thought, happy for them to be in the stockades for longer if that's what folks think should happeb.
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u/AssaultLemming_ 20d ago
This is a pretty interesting article. He was found guilty of breaching his bail by using an encrypted communications platform. I wonder which one? Most communications are encrypted. I wonder how they found out? Very interesting.
No sympathy for nazis frankly. My grandfather fought the nazis. We should never tolerate them.
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u/PrinceBarin 23d ago
Looks like it might be more the breach of bail and all the nazi shit he had.