How Australia celebrates Nazis as part of its culture

There has been a lot of talk about Nazis over the past few years with Neo-nazis, incel- fascists, Proud Boys and a veritable Star Wars cantina scene of white supremacists that regularly appear in media reports.

According to the Australian Federal Police’s Counter Terrorism & Special Investigations Command,  there has been a 750 percent increase in its caseload of ideologically-motivated (mainly right wing and some Islamic) extremism since 2020. 

While this figure is expected to climb, no-one in government, media or in any NGO seems to want to deal with this insidious issue. 

Then it should be no surprise that several groups like Australia’s ruling Liberal National Party (LNP), veteran’s advocacy NGOs such as the Returned Serviceman’s League (RSL) and some sections of the media seem determined to hide the fact that we have actual bona fide Nazis from WW2 marching on the streets of our capital cities annually every April 25, or Anzac Day.

Anzac Day is an integral part of Australia’s history and culture and is meant to be a celebration of the country’s defeat of fascism by Australian and New Zealand as well as other Allied forces.

Therefore it comes as quite a shock seeing an actual SS-led Nazi military unit marching alongside those who were real Allies.

Chetniks with their German Allies, eastern Bosnia, 1943.

The unit in question is the Serbian Chetniks, a military group that according to most official WW2 historical sources collaborated with the Nazis, and who’s surviving members surrendered to the Allies and were interned by British forces in 1945 as SEP’s - or ‘Surrendered Enemy Personnel’.

It has been noted previously that “During the course of World War 2, Serbia’s Chetnik movement had a number of collaboration agreements: first with the Serb collaborationist Milan Nedić forces  in Serbia, then with the Italians in occupied Dalmatia and Montenegro, with Ustaše forces in northern Bosnia, and after the Italian capitulation, also with the Germans directly as of September 1943.”

Chetniks marching in Sydney’s 2021 ANZAC Day march.

Yad Vashem has also stated: “As the Chetniks increased their cooperation with the Germans, their attitude toward the Jews in the areas under their control deteriorated, and they identified the Jews with the hated Communists. There were many instances of Chetniks murdering Jews or handing them over to the Germans.”

This collaboration pushed the Allies – including Australia – to dump their alliance with the Chetniks and throw all their support behind Yugoslavia’s Communist-led Partizans.

Chetniks killing a victim.

Fed up with their constant collaboration, Winston Churchill decided to break all ties with Mihailovic in December 1943.

In mid-May 1945, the entire Chetnik army surrendered to Allied forces in Italy and Austria. Because of his collaboration and other war crimes, their leader Draza Mihajlovic was executed by Yugoslavia in July 1946.

Just how the RSL managed to convince its members to accept a Nazi-aligned unit marching shoulder-to-shoulder with Australian veterans is unknown, but it is thought the late Bruce Ruxton, the pugnacious former President of the Victorian branch of the RSL was a key supporter of the Chetnik’s inclusion into the event. 

Chetniks at ANZAC Sydney, 2016

More troubling, reports have come out that some of those marching have formed alliances with modern day neo-Nazi groups such as Greece’s Golden Dawn, Vladimir Putin-aligned Russian Cossacks on ASIO watchlists and well-known local far-right extremists and allegedly even Christchurch mass murderer, Brenton Tarrant.

But it’s not just NGOs like RSL that’s enabled this circus. 

Australia’s Minister for Home Affairs Karen Andrews was recently asked what her department would do about these Nazi collaborators. 

Chetniks with Greek Golden Dawn and Russian Cossacks, Sydney, 2018.

After all, Nazi groups do not just spring up randomly and are (usually) part of a wider right-wing ecosystem, consisting of older, more experienced extremists as well as at times, actual WW2 Nazis and their sympathisers, as has been shown in this case.

Considering Minister Andrews has repeatedly claimed her department would tackle the right-wing extremist menace ‘head on’, one would assume she would have some interest in removing these groups and their sympathizers from public events.

But that is not the case going by the response from Home Affairs to questions from a journalist covering the matter:

“Under Division 268 of the Commonwealth Criminal Code, individuals can be prosecuted for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Extended geographical jurisdiction applies to offences under Division 268, meaning the offences purport to cover anyone, anywhere, regardless of citizenship or residence, and regardless of whether the conduct is lawful in the place in which it occurs.” 

“The Attorney General has policy responsibility for Division 268 so any further questions about the scope of these offences should be directed to the Attorney General’s Department… Any evidence of an alleged war crime should be referred to the Australian Federal Police.”

In other words, ‘we don’t really care but we’ll pass the buck to another federal body’.

And this attitude is not just confined to our politicians.

Journalists, civil rights campaigners and ex-RSL members have approached a range of national media outlets to point out the absurdity of having Nazi’s march with Australian veterans only to be told by a Rupert Murdoch-owned online news portal that ‘It’s not news - Australian’s don’t care about Nazis anymore’.

This leaves Australia in the absurd position as a country that decries it will stamp out the evil of Nazism while allowing a group of Nazi collaborators from Serbia to publicly march as ‘Allies’, despite the fact this same group is forbidden to march as ‘Allies’ in Serbia itself.

Moreover, one would also think that a government that is currently battling one of the tightest election races in living memory would be salivating at all the positive press they’d garner by removing Nazis from our streets.

Apparently not.

And not only are there Nazis on our streets, but they are also beamed live into our living rooms courtesy of the live TV broadcast of the annual Anzac Day march.

It looks as if Australia and not Ukraine is the place that may be in need of some ‘denazification’, as Nazis and their collaborators are not only accepted as part of everyday Australian culture, but they are also celebrated as well.