Sixteen members of the National Socialist Network were arrested in Adelaide when they marched on Australia Day.Credit:Tracey Nearmy/Getty Images
The profiles of the two Melbourne men were shut down along with those of at least four other leading members of the Australian neo-Nazi movement that recently held rallies in the streets of Adelaide,where 16 members were arrested,and onthe steps of Victorian Parliament where they held up a banner reading “JEWS HATE FREEDOM”.
It is not yet clear if Australian agencies sought the bans,which come at a time ofheightened concern about antisemitic incidents and ASIO’s warnings about a probable terror attack driven by mixes of “twisted” ideologies – including anti-government conspiracy theories,racism,Islamist extremism and neo-Nazism – blending with social media-fuelled personal grievance.
The eSafety Commissioner,Julie Inman Grant,who along with the Coalition raised the alarm about the neo-Nazi rise inthis masthead’s report on Sunday,has been contacted for comment,as has the office of Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke.
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Joel Davis,an Australian neo-Nazi whose account was not suspended,reacted with fury to the news on Tuesday,while other far-right accounts complained about the apparent clamp instituted by Musk’s anti-censorship platform.
“These two men and several other nationalists were all censored off X this evening in a clear co-ordinated mass banning most likely requested by some department of the Australian government,” he wrote on X.
“No doubt you don’t agree with many of our views,but these are political figures of serious notoriety in Australia. Unelected bureaucrats shouldn’t have the right to sabotage the voice of its own citizens on ideological grounds.”