Prominent nationalist activist Jacob Hersant has been taken into custody after having his one-month jail sentence for performing a Nazi salute upheld by a judge following the loss of his appeal against his conviction and punishment late last year.
Mr Hersant, 26, argued that he did not perform the salute, and that Victoria’s Nazi salute laws were invalid as they violated the implied right of all Australians to political communication under the Constitution Judge Simon Moglia ruled against him last month.
Judge Moglia found Mr Hersant, the former leader of now-disbanded activist group the National Socialist Network, guilty of intentionally performing the salute, and determined that while the right to political communication had been “effectively burdened”, the laws were necessary to protect Victorians from “harm”.
The father-of-one faced the County Court of Victoria in Melbourne on Wednesday where Judge Moglia re-sentenced him to the same one month prison term originally handed down in the Melbourne Magistrates Court in 2024, and fined him $1,000 for breaching a Community Corrections Order by performing the gesture outside the same court in October 2023 following sentencing over a clash with far-left activists that took place in 2021.
During a hearing in October, a nine-minute video played to the court showed Mr Hersant and fellow activist Thomas Sewell speaking to reporters before Mr Hersant raised his arm partway, lowered it again and said: “Oh, nearly did it, it’s illegal now isn’t it?”
The court heard charges were laid after a 9News cameraman who was filming the pair made a statement to police about his footage.
Mr Hersant intends to take his constitutional appeal to a higher court, but will do so after serving his prison sentence, and is now the first Australian to be jailed for performing a Nazi salute.
Mr Hersant’s barrister Timothy Smartt asked Judge Moglia not to jail his client, saying Mr Hersant was a “wonderful father” to his three-year-old son, and had the support of his parents even though they disagreed with his political opinions, Newswire reported.
“People are far better than their very worst deeds,” Mr Smartt said, adding his client was a “far better person than the 10 minutes on that video”.
Mr Smartt also argued that the one-month jail sentence was “by far the most severe in Australia”, and pointed out other Nazi salutes, including one outside a synagogue and another outside a Jewish museum, had not been punished with jail.
But Judge Moglia told the court the salute was “contemptuous”, designed to send a “chilling message to the community”, and performed after sentencing for a “most terrifying” incident.
“I accept he relished that opportunity … with the full knowledge it was being done not simply in the presence of a few people but in the presence of the wider community in a realistic way,” he said.
Judge Moglia also told the court the salute was an attack on human dignity, and the law was in place to support the diverse “body of people who we truly are”, The Age reported.
“Diverse in ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, differing ability, and nation of origin. The diversity and its protection in our representative democracy is not just happenstance, we are an intentional community,” Moglia said.
“We are a free, civil and representative democracy that ought to be cherished understood and safeguarded.
“Parliament has ensured that that safeguarding of those precious features of our community are, in part, to be achieved by prohibiting a making of a Nazi salute.”
Header image: Left, Mr Hersant outside court on Tuesday (10 News). Right, making the salute (9News).
