In the lead up to the so called March for Australia, many people downplayed the involvement of Neo Nazis in organizing and promoting the rallies that took place in cities across the country. But in Melbourne, Neo Nazis were not just central to the march. They led it all the way to the steps of Parliament House, where a prominent Neo Nazi speech to the crowd ended in applause, if we do.
Not maintain art demographics, if we do not stop immigration, then our death is shorting.
Just hours later, that same man was part of a group that stormed Camp Sovereignty, an Aboriginal led site of protest and mourning, tearing down flags and tents, stomping out the campfire, and assaulting people with weapons. I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM Today writer and seven AM co host Daniel James on why Neo Nazis targeted Camp Sovereignty and how ordinary grievances provided cover for the violence. It's Wednesday, September three, so Daniel, let's begin by talking
about the attack on Camp Sovereignty in Melbourne. That attack was captured on video. Some of It was streamed live on Facebook. So can you walk me through what we know happened?
It's a scene that Aboriginal people, through the history of colonization, are all too familiar with. It was all filmed. There was a sixteen minute Facebook live stream that captured the whole thing. Read about five pm on Sunday, as the light was fading, there were a handful of people as custadians of camps are already sitting around the campfire. There as of men dressed in black approached from the west.
Then all of a sudden start running towards the camp, charging, yelling and all sorts of things, and started tearing the camp apart, started attacking some of the people there, who are mainly original women. They were beaten, people were kicked in the stomach, thrown to the ground. Unfortunately and horrifically, this is actually the third confrontation between now Nazis and camp members that day and a lot of questions are being asked about how it could happen. There was a
huge police presence within the city. You would expect that there would be a degree of intelligence being shared between authorities in the city, and even if there wasn't Unfortunately, this attack on Camp Soeverrity was entirely predictable.
Well, let's talk about why Neo Nazis targeted this site in particular, What is Camp Sovereignty Way, is it sacred?
Why did they pick it?
The main reason they picked it was because there was easy pickings for them. It's an area that is open to the public. It's available for anyone to go along and participate and sit around the campfire there and learned out why it is a sacred site. And the reason it's a sacred site is that it's a burial site in King's domain and the location of a permanent vigul that has been set up there since January twenty twenty four. The site is a reminder of First Nations people's survival.
It is a place that is an invitation to the rest of the community to come along and sit beside Aboriginal people and find out what happened here. They came by after being humped up at the rally for Australia, on which their main head, Honcho Thomas Sell, who was a New Zealand born there Nazi and the leader of their group that we've seen, was not only just given a microphone he was actually given the keynote address on the steps of Parliament House in Melbourne.
Not this new Australia that they're trying to build, but our Australia, the Australia we were put in and raised it.
And on the back of that, that's the kind of validation these type of characters need. And so they would have walked away feeling validated, they would have felt emboldened. And unfortunately Camp Soeverregty is a place that is open for neo Nazis to come and defile.
Let's talk a little more about the rally, how it came about, who was there, because in the days leading up to it there was talk about it being about immigration and about housing, and obviously some of that frustration that some people were feeling was weaponized by neo Nazi's life Thomas Seule, So what role do you think that Australia's media and political landscape played in how this all unfolded.
The coverage and the lead up to the march for Australia was one that was characterized by ordinary Austrains being fed up with things like the cost of housing, pustioning the blame at the feet of immigrants.
Crime is clearly up as a result of mass immigration in certain areas, and we're continually told on top of that that Australia is built on stolen land and that our history is something to be ashamed of. Is it any wonder then that so many regular mums dads are upset?
But if you actually have a look at any sort of social media page, it was clear from the very very outset that this was a rally that was organ I was by extremists both inside and outside the Parliament. It was something that Nia Nazis were always going to attend, and there was an attempt to mainstream it by trying to get everyday Australians to come along and attend. And for my sins, I listened to talk back on a
regular basis. I don't know why I do it, but I was listening on Sunday afternoon and a woman called up a commercial radio station here in Melbourne and she was going to the anti immigration rally, as she said, for her grandchildren.
We're doing this because Victoria and Australia isn't the way it used to be, and you know, we're doing it for our grandchildren.
Her voice was very interesting. It trembled, but there was also a defiance in her voice as well. You could sense that she was engraved danger of the Australia that she knew slipping away, and was mirrored in the evening too when I listened to talk back as well. It was just people that were insisting that they were there peacefully. They were there as an act of love. But there wasn't too much about the speech that the Nazi gave. There was nothing about the racist placards that were also there.
There was nothing about the fights or the police court and that had to separate them from other protesters in the city for various reasons. And then, of course the grandmothers of the world, rightly or wrongly, are therefore able to give cover for what it was, and that was basically a far right Nazi rally.
Coming up. Should this attack be treated as an act of terrorism?
Prime Minister, welcome, good afternoon, Patricia.
Do you think there were good people with legitimate concerns at these anti immigration reies this weekend?
Of course, there's always good people will turn up to demonstrate their views about particular issues. But what we have here is neo Nazi has been given a platform that's in the.
Wake of the marches on the weekend, the Prime Minister and the Albanesi said that while they were quote good people who attended these rallies, they were ultimately about selling division.
So let's talk about that response. What do you make of it.
This is not a time for our politicians to be really doing about with this. This is not a time for clever politicians like Anthony Albernizi and clever politicians like Susan Lee to try and weave their way through some sort of middle road.
Here what units Australians will always be stronger than those who seek to divide us. That unity is at risk. The Coalition stands ready to work with the government to repair our social cohesion. Is a moment the demand's leadership. The Prime Minister must show that leadership.
Now. We are now in a situation where we have neo Nazis openly on the street preaching hate against minorities, against immigrants, against First Nations people in the open. These extreme views are now being centralized, They are now being embedded within the mainstream politics of this place itself. If you want to look at the Victoria Liberal Party, for instance, you will find people that hold extreme views within the Parliament.
It's very alarming to see what I would term as a placid response from our political leaders.
They weren't big numbers in the scheme of things in a nation of almost twenty seven million people. Let's be clear here, So you do think.
This is a tiny proportion of the Australian population, this anti immigration center.
That shows that that was the case.
And there's always the attack on camp so I already hasn't yet been dubbed the hate crime or a terrorist attack. What other way could you describe it? It wasn't a fight over property, or wasn't an aggurvated burglary. It was there to destroy the camp and to destroy in many ways the movement that Aboriginal people have set up for ourselves there. So the response from our political leaders so far has been wishy washy at best and appeasing at worst.
And so late yesterday afternoon, Thomas Saw and two others were arrested in relation to the attack.
What happened in the ny of Victoria.
You're under arrested the burny yourself.
Of course, there were many other people involved. So as the investigation goes on, what do you think needs to happen from here, what do.
We need to do from here? I mean, my view is that sovereign citizen movement and the Nazi movement in Australia need to be categorized as terrorist groups because as they are becoming increasingly emboldened, people are dying, people are getting beaten up, and it's fraying at the civility of our society. And the mainstream media has a fair degree
of blame when it comes to that. The algorithms that our social media sites that we use, such as Meta, send people down rabbit holes so deeply that there is seemingly no way for them to come back and join us here in the real world. We need to start taking this incredibly seriously, and I'm not sure that our political leadership or our security agencies are taking this as seriously as they should. What happened on Sunday should never have happened.
And when you look at the scale of what occurred, it's estimated that there were more than twenty thousand people attending these protests in cities across the country, which is not an insignificant amount of people. So what does that reveal to you about where the country is at right now and the extent to which these beliefs have taken.
Hold, they've become more and more mainstream, they have become more and more acceptable. The level of hate that is fired at our authorities, at our political leadership, the level of hate that is of course fired at Aboriginal people and other marginalized communities is out in the open, and
so people are being emboldened to say these things. And the more that these things are said, and the more that these things are heard, the more likely it is that there is going to be action like we saw on Sunday against innocent people at Camp Sovereignty.
I describe it as an act of terror, actually, as a terrorist act.
Terrorize those followers, and very scary for those people.
Uncle Robbie Thorpe, he's one of our respected elders here and basically the man who can be attributed to setting up Camp Soeverrity. He's made a very good point. There has been new hate laws that have come out to protect places of worship, and this is something that Senator Lydia Thorpe has also come out and question. She's asked the question, how do you define a place of worship? Aboriginal places of worship? There are no buildings. Ostensibly, Camp
Soeverrity is a place of worship. It's a place of remembrance. It is a place where we go to heal and to move forward and to educate. Is that a place of worship? And should that be protected under hate laws? We have covered for mosques and synagogues, and rightfully so. But the question needs to be asked. Can Aboriginal people worship their elders, worship their own spirituality, worshiped land without fear of being attacked by Nazi extremists?
And the people who were attacked at Camp Sovereignty, how are they doing?
Deeply deeply rattled For people were injured, two were taken to hospital with head wounds. But I think it's fair enough to say that the whole a community has been injured by this. What happened on Sunday was had all the hallmarks of a massacre. We've had hundreds of massacres in this country at the hands of white men approaching camps at low light when there are only a handful
of people around to commit acts of violence. Now, the only thing that was separate from what happened on Sunday and what has happened throughout the history of this place was the body count and the fact that there were witnesses there, the fact that there were people filming it. One would hate to think what would happen if this was actually out of the bush somewhere and a group of emboldened Neo Nazis came upon an Aboriginal camp site. How far could it have gone? These are questions that
are not rhetorical. These are questions that need to be asked with a degree of sobriety in the cold, hard light of day, because these movements are getting away from the authorities, They're getting away from our ability to contain them, and they have shown that once they've given a little bit of validation, they become more and more emboldened, more and more extreme, And I just hate to think what will happen next.
Well, Daniel, thank you so much for speaking with me.
Thanks Ruby.
Also in the news today, the number of people entering Australia through the permanent migration program will remain unchanged, with the government maintaining its annual cap of one hundred and
eighty five thousand places. The federal government says it's undertaken consultations with the states and territories which recommended maintaining the size and composition of the program and Elon Musk has shared a post on his social media platform X that wrongly claims one hundred and fifty thousand people took part in anti immigration protests Sydney in Brisbane, despite police estimating
the total in attendance was about twenty one thousand. New South Wales Police saying estimated fifteen thousand people attended the rally in Sydney. Queensland Police confirmed about six thousand protesters came out in Brisbane and did Melbourne Police estimate five thousand took to the streets, but that figure also includes counterprotesters. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. See you tomorrow.