Australia’s largest Anglo-Celtic advocacy group has condemned former Neighbour’s actor Damien Richardson’s Nazi salute conviction as “absurd” and an “assault on free speech”.
Richardson was last week found guilty of performing the banned gesture during a speech at a private event in Melbourne, even though the magistrate accepted he was not a Nazi, and did the salute to mock the laws themselves and a hit piece done on him by The Age newspaper.
British Australian Community (BAC) President Harry Richardson said on Monday the conviction was “further evidence that ethno-religious diversity is inconsistent with free speech, a core value of Anglo-Celtic culture”.
The BAC President said it “appears absurd” that the actor was convicted for making a gesture that was likely to be confused with a Nazi salute, and noted that the actor had not only performed it to repudiate Nazi accusations in the article, but had expressed pride in his grandfather for fighting against the Nazis in WW2.
“As bad as this judgement seems to be, the even greater issue here is the trampling of free speech and expression. The contest between Britain and the Nazis was between an authoritarian, totalitarian regime on one side which abhorred freedom and free speech,” he said.
“On the other wise were the British and most of the Anglosphere. The British had pioneered and defended a system which guaranteed freedom, particularly through freedom of speech and expression. In Britain before the war, Oswald Mosley was allowed to form a pro-fascist group even though it was a brutal ideology.
“The great irony here is that today, those claiming to despise Nazi ideology are embracing the same totalitarian tactics by shutting down freedom of speech and expression. If these people succeed in robbing us of the right to free speech and expression, it will render our victory over the Nazis all those years ago as a pyrrhic one.”
On Saturday former Liberal senator Gerard Rennick also spoke out against the conviction, saying it “made his blood boil”.
“So a bloke does a Nazi salute mocking the media who called him a Nazi, and now he faces jail time even though it was obvious to the judge he wasn’t displaying allegiance to Hitler,” Mr Rennick wrote.
“The irony of the Victorian police in laying the charges who behaved like Nazis during Covid is even more infuriating. The police have even allowed self-confessed Nazis to speak at rallies.
“The double standards are breathtaking and symptomatic of how perverse our laws have become. This is a grave attack on freedom of speech and more importantly government intimidation on freedom of thought.”
Header image: Left, Damien Richardson about to perform the salute (supplied). Right, campaigning for the Freedom Party of Victoria in 2022 (Facebook).
