Attacking the Innocent: When Banning NAZI Symbols Is Not About The ‘Far Right’ at all

NB: This article was originally submitted to a well-known Australian conservative magazine which refused to publish it, stating that it was ‘too controversial’. Since the time of writing, the Bill has now become law and in the early weeks of 2024 all trade in any Third Reich artefacts which contain a swastika or a ‘double-sig-rune’ will be banned in Australia. How did this happen, and what are fair minded Australians going to do about it?

On the 8^th of June, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus announced on national television the introduction of the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Prohibited Hate Symbols and Other Measures) Bill 2023,proudly claiming that “by the end of next week no-one will be able to trade in these symbols of hate.” Fortunately, his prophecy did not come to pass. The Bill was sent to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security for review and for submissions from the public. And so it should.

In his various media statements of June 8, Attorney-General Dreyfus made the following comments, surreptitiously referring to militaria collectors, perhaps in the hope that no-one would notice:

[We want to] “send a message that this spreading of hatred, violence and anti-Semitism had got no place (sic) in Australia.”

[This Bill] “will make clear there is no place for those who seek to profit from the trade in these evil symbols, or use them to promote their hatred.”

There has been a “rise in this far-right violent activity” … “And importantly, banning the trade in any items that bear these symbols.”

“There is no place in Australia for symbols that glorify the horrors of the Holocaust. … And we will no longer allow people to profit from the display and sale of items which celebrate the Nazis and their evil ideology.”

“This is a ban that is about those who promote hatred and seek to divide us.”

“This is about a trade in this memorabilia and we think that, of course, there’s room for museums, there’s room for academic work, that there will be exemptions for literary, academic, scientific or religious use of these symbols. But where this is about glorification of the symbols of hate, where this is about glorification of the horrors of the Holocaust, where this is about spreading hate, and violence and anti-Semitism in our community that should have no part to play in modern Australia and that’s why we are introducing this ban.”

“The purpose of this law is to identify [and] directly prohibit the two most prominent of the Nazi symbols. And no one should think of this as an end. This, if you like, is a beginning, if we need to do more, we will.”

Attorney-General Dreyfus has been deliberately misleading, disingenuous and deceitful. What awful smears for Australia’s premier law-maker to utter about so many highly respected and in many cases, eminent citizens of this country. Militaria collectors are not ‘violent’ and have never ‘spread hate’, ‘glorified the Holocaust’, ‘celebrated the Nazis’, ‘promoted hatred’, ‘sought to divide’ anyone, or ‘spread violence or anti-Semitism’. Given there are no ‘exemptions’ for collectors, they are clearly the one’s targeted by this Bill. Militaria collectors are generally quiet conservative people who mind their own business, and yet Attorney-General Dreyfus conflates them with ‘violent fascists’. To draw such entirely confected and false comparisons is disgraceful.

Whilst one might have some sympathy for a ban on the Nazi salute being given in public and also a ban on the public display of the Nazi swastika, or ‘Hakenkreuz’, and the SS-runes, this Bill goes to a whole new level, one that deliberately targets the innocent. But first, let’s take a step back in time.

For the last six years, Dr Dvir Abramovich, Chair of the Jewish ‘Anti-Defamation Commission’ (which isn’t a ‘commission’ of any sort at all) has been targeting militaria auction houses, retailers, websites and militaria collectors in general who sell German Third Reich era (1933-1945) Nazi memorabilia. Dr Abramovich has made quite a name for himself regularly appearing in the media using emotive and inflammatory language to assist in creating a ‘moral panic’ about the alleged ‘rising threat of neo-Nazis’. Aided by a compliant media, he has been very successful.

However, it appears that Dr Abramovich’s pet hate is German Third Reich militaria and the people who buy, sell and collect it. He has widely advertised, principally on his own Facebook page, that he intends to stamp it out. Some auction houses have reported that in recent years they have been so bullied by Dr Abramovich and his supporters to cease selling Third Reich militaria, that many will no longer do so for fear of online and personal abuse. If it is illegal for a business to harass, intimidate or bully a consumer, why is it not illegal for a consumer to do the same to a business?

Nevertheless, Dr Abramovich seems to have found favour with both Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus, and the Liberal Opposition with Peter Dutton, as both are fully supportive of the new ‘counter-terrorism measures’.

What is supremely odious about this Bill is that it renames the inanimate objects of the German Third Reich as “hate symbols” and as “Violent Extremist Material” and, ipso facto, anyone who collects such items must be an ‘extremist’ and a ‘terrorist’, indeed, a ‘Nazi’. Therefore, the Bill now labels the thousands of Third Reich militaria collectors as such. This is both illogical and extremely offensive. Militaria collectors do not now and never have belonged in a ‘Counter-Terrorism’ Bill of any description.

But wait, it gets worse. Under this Bill, Australia will be the first country in the world to attempt to outlaw the ‘trade’ in all German Third Reich items that have a swastika or SS-rune on them, which is just about everything manufactured during that 12-year era. Banning the ‘trade’ means no buying or selling of such items, no importing or exporting (using Commonwealth powers) and not even any ‘transporting’ of such items.

And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it does. There will be no ‘buyback’ of such items and nor will there be any ‘just compensation’ paid. Indeed, collections worth thousands, and some in the millions, of dollars will be frozen and sterilised. That is, our gracious Albanese Government will allow collectors to keep what they have, but they will not be allowed to sell their collections to anyone “for profit”. Bad luck if your investment portfolio or superannuation funds are tied up in your militaria collection, as many peoples are. Their collections will be rendered worthless. It’s likely this cunning move of the Government to ‘acquire’ the property of its citizens, for that is in effect what they are attempting, is not at all legal and will almost certainly be subject to High Court challenges if the Government is foolish enough to attempt to progress this de-facto confiscation.

And despite this misconceived Bill obliterating numerous small businesses and rendering the collections of many individuals worthless, the supposedly pro-small business Liberal Party seems to think this Bill is a great idea. Why?

What’s the rationale behind these measures you may ask? Well, the boffins in the secret ‘counter-terrorism’ basements of Canberra have decided that these ‘hate symbols’ which have apparently overnight morphed into ‘Violent Extremist Material’ are being used to recruit ‘neo-Nazis’, ‘neo-fascists’, ‘far-Right extremists’, ‘white supremacists’ and ‘anti-Semites’, and that accounts for the alleged (yet unproven) ‘rise’ in these groups. The only problem is that there is no known connection at all between any of the above-listed ‘extremist’ groups and collectors of militaria – none whatsoever. And there never has been.

To conflate ‘far-Right’ activity with militaria collectors is to simply kill two birds with the one stone, and to thereby curry favour with some in the Jewish community. It is to be ‘seen to be doing something’ about the pretend-‘Nazis’ on the streets, yet at the same time, implement another insidious agenda entirely, and that is Dr Abramovich’s almost solo crusade to ban the entire trade in German Third Reich militaria. Both Attorney-General Dreyfus and the Liberal Opposition have stated they will “go further” if these ‘measures’ don’t work. And of course they won’t work; they cannot work, because there is no nexus between the two groups whatsoever. We can therefore expect that both the Albanese Government and the Coalition will implement even more bans on an even wider range of militaria. This is simply kowtowing to that same small Woke Jewish lobby.

Governments would be better advised to examine why these so-called ‘neo-Nazis’ are foolishly strutting the steps of Parliament House, and ask them what it is they’re actually protesting about. If the Government actually engaged in some debate with these groups they’d likely soon discover that these mostly angry young men are mirroring what they perceive to be the fascist behaviour of our Federal and State governments against their own people, especially after Covid. They’re pretending to be ‘Nazis’ because they feel like they’re not being listened too. Their concerns include what they see as excessive immigration into Australia, which is changing the composition of our existing population, yet we as a population have never been asked if we want that to happen. That’s their number one concern, so let’s talk about it.

But no. Rather than addressing such valid and genuine concerns, and having an open immigration debate, the Woke far-Left will never allow that to occur and instead labels them as ‘neo-Nazis’ and ‘white supremacists’. And instead of rational debate, the Albanese Government decides to target entirely innocent militaria collectors and render their collections worthless and criminalise them and their hobby on the basis of another agenda entirely. The Government then further offensively and falsely alleges that militaria collectors act as a “recruiting ground for neo-Nazis” yet this is totally baseless and untrue, without any evidence at all. Indeed, such allegations are beyond belief.

Typically, the Bill is littered with emotive Woke language, it’s intent being to achieve one agenda and one alone – to ban the trade in Third Reich militaria that a few, a very few, in the ultra-Woke Jewish community have taken a dislike to. Yet this is a ban that has not been asked for or needed for the last 82 years, and given that most Holocaust survivors have now died, why now? The answer is simple – the rise of ‘Woke cancel culture’ – to the Left, anything ‘Nazi’ is inherently evil, hence an inanimate object can now overnight become a ‘hate symbol’ and ‘Violent Extremist Material’. Therefore, anyone who is involved with these symbols in any way is now by default, also a ‘Nazi’ and ‘evil’. For the Woke Left, such people are to be vilified, demonised and punished.

It has not gone unnoticed to many that the Albanese Government is using fascist techniques to deal with the alleged fascists in the community. As one collector remarked, “It’s amazing how the Government is using Nazi tactics to allegedly fight Nazis”. And why has the media not picked up on any of this? Where is the investigative journalism that should be covering this in great detail, being the worst case of ‘bait and switch’ any Government has ever attempted?

One of the saddest outcomes of all this is that, far from being ‘neo-Nazis’, collectors of German Third Reich militaria have been amongst the greatest supporters of the Jewish community, as they understand better than most the horrors of the Third Reich and the Holocaust. But now, thanks to this Bill, that goodwill is at an end. And curiously, more collateral damage is already being experienced, in that Third Reich militaria collectors are now receiving abuse and ‘hate’ from other Woke citizens incensed by the newly created and media-driven moral panic surrounding their hobby.

Submissions to the Committee Inquiry, which overwhelmingly oppose the Bill, closed on July 21^st, but the fight in nowhere near over yet. The submissions can be found at:

There is something very odious and deeply Orwellian about this Bill and its brazen attack against lawful militaria collectors. This massive injustice must not be allowed to happen and we can only hope this awful attempt at scoring Woke points with a few in the Jewish lobby will be thrown out. But for now … watch this space.

Dr Barton is a minor player in the militaria collecting field, but is incensed about this entirely unwarranted and illegitimate attack on collectors of German Third Reich militaria. His (partially redacted by Government) 53-page submission (#151) appears on the Committee’s website and will also be available on this website as well.