White supremacy and extreme ideologies are still present in regional communities like Ballarat, and a “whole-of-society” response is needed to stamp it out, Anti-Defamation Commmission chair Dr Dvir Abramovich said.
Speaking to The Courier after delivering the inaugural Marcus Stone Memorial Oration at the historic Ballarat Synagogue, Dr Abramovich said Victoria is at an “inflection point”.
A number of troubling incidents in regional Victoria have provoked outcry, including a neo-Nazi gathering in the Grampians in early 2021, and a Nazi swastika flag flying in Beulah, near Warracknabeal, in 2020 – in Ballarat, anti-Semitic graffiti was seen briefly with anti-lockdown slogans on a prominent billboard last year.
“Jews in Victoria, but also across the nation, are feeling more vulnerable, are not feeling safe, and we have an increasing number of Jews who are concerned about wearing anything that would physically identify them as Jews,” Dr Abramovich said.
“There was a report recently showing that almost a quarter of all Australians don’t know about the Holocaust.
“Nazism didn’t die in the bunker with Hitler, neo-Nazism and anti-Semitism are alive and well in Victoria, it’s not history, it’s current news.”
In Ballarat at the tail end of Harmony Week, a celebration of multiculturalism, he pointed to recent anti-lockdown protests being “infiltrated” by known white supremacists, who hope to expose new followers to more extreme ideologies and accelerate real-world action as an example, and described the internet, and particularly social media, as a “superspreader of hate”.
Read the article by Alex Ford in The Courier.