Cheeky ? Or crossed the line ?
Oh, come on. He’s exactly the opposite type of person these laws were designed to stop.
Can always trust the cops to abuse whatever laws are available to them…
They’ll of course go after the Murdoch media for similar images, right?
Right?
Its the NSW police. They’re jealous that this shopkeeper can display images that are clearly parody, while they can’t display similar images in their private lives in earnest.
Agreed. Clearly taking the piss (quite funny if you ask me) and an abuse of power from the local force. Hopefully something positive comes from the court case.
Fuckers are gonna try real hard to turn public opinion against anti nazi laws, so expect a protracted lawsuit
Personally i’d like to see the presiding judge look at the evidence, hike their robe, square their wig then walk down and give the prosecution and chief of wagga police a clip around the earhole for being stupid cunts before dismissal
NSW hate crime laws were passed in February this year in response to an increase in hate speech and a string of anti-Semitic incidents in the state.
Arresting parody that upsets Nazis to protect… * checks notes* … the Jewish people.
We need more Luigi Mangionis and we need them to go after the entire authoritarian class and their billionaire backers.
If nothing else it makes for a good example of why one should be wary of laws aimed at hate speech. You can’t rely on any ambiguity within them being interpreted with common sense, particularly if you’ve annoyed someone in a position of power.
this is tough for me, on the one hand it’s pretty mild, on the other hand it continues the trend of everyone i don’t like is a nazi which reduces the impact of the actual nazis
the trend of everyone i don’t like is a nazi
Yes, that’s a real problem, when some people carelessly throw around “nazi” as a generalized slur against bigots. It’s tactless and does trivialise the specific threats that neo-nazis pose, as opposed to the different threats posed by those more imminently harmful politicians (Gina et al is involved in policy making, just indirectly).
We, all of us, need to use more specific ways to describe politics than “nazi commie fascist liberal” buzzwords, because real neo-nazis love to utilise the overuse of “nazi” as cover - if someone who is clearly contradictory to Nazism is called a Nazi and experiences that non-Nazis are called Nazis by “the left”, then actual self-identifying neo-Nazis will exploit this and say “yes, pink-hair SJWs also called all these normal people Nazis too!” when they’re talking about actual crypto-fascists promoting actual neo-Nazi ideology. As part of this tactic, they also like to exaggerate how common this phenomenon is through memes/social media, but it does happen.
But with all that said, it’s not a tough one for me. Someone being legally charged for that is ridiculous, and it’s very clear in context that they are not promoting or glorifying neo-nazi ideology or its persecution. If we charged everyone who used political symbolism poorly, the entire continent would have to be a prison colony again. They’re being harassed for insulting certain politicians, and whether the charge is technically legal or not doesn’t change this.
