One of the official (meaning political) first off the rank for the totally disconnected-from-realty troublemakers and fools was the Minister for  Multicultural Affairs, Anne Aly who squealed: “This brand of far-right activism grounded in racism and ethnocentrism has no place in modern Australia”.

We don't hear anything from the Minister about the regular multicultural, antisemitism and hatreds the eastern states are subjected to on an almost weekly basis.

Apparently antisemitism, hatred of the West thinly disguised behind  hatred for the only democracy in the Middle East,  is Aly's idea of “modern Australia”.

Just one more example of multicultural character assignation of ordinary traditional Australians  descended from “settlers” and those post-war migrants who willingly assimilated with the local culture and helped bolster it with hard work and sincerity, not coming here for an easy life provided by Anglo/Saxon/Celtic culture and democracy. 

An insult too to the more recently arrived migrants who joined their fellow Aussies in protesting what is happening to their adopted country - rubbish that they escaped from. 

The political class that is supposed to be guarding our country's traditions and culture, and sharing them with newcomers anxious to come here, are doing exactly the opposite.  

Australia is now, possibly irreparably, divided like never before, thanks not to a few bad eggs who should never been let into our country, but by our own cynical, corrupt, self-serving political class, and their uncontrolled mass immigration, which all Australians, old and new, have every right to speak against. 

We must continue to do so, and stop empowering horrible people by trying to reason with them. They are immune to reason. Division is their goal.

Fester,

Antisemitic slogans like "gas the Jews" are vile, but the distinction I drew remains either way.

There's an irony here, too: the neo-Nazis who spoke in Melbourne would have no problem with those same chants. They’d probably applaud them.

That shows the overlap, not the difference.

When Australians march under a banner that immigration itself is the problem, it paints every migrant community as suspect. That’s identity politics at its ugliest, and it happens right here, not just in Gaza.

When people chant "from the river to the sea," it’s framed as a political position on statehood (however extreme or destructive). When a neo-Nazi takes the microphone in Melbourne, it’s framed as a cultural purge of who belongs in this country.

Both deserve criticism. But pretending they’re the same thing, or that one excuses the other, just blurs the lines until nothing is accountable.

We can condemn antisemitism in Gaza and xenophobia in Australia at the same time. One doesn’t wash the other away.
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ttbn,

Anne Aly’s comment wasn’t "character assassination" of all Australians, it was a pointed description of a very visible element at those rallies. You can disagree with her choice of words, but the moment a neo-Nazi gets the microphone, it’s no longer just "ordinary traditional Australians."

Pretending otherwise is wishful thinking.

Antisemitism in pro-Palestinian rallies deserves to be called out too - and it has been - but that doesn’t erase what happened on Sunday, and it doesn’t make it any less legitimate to describe those rallies as "grounded in racism and ethnocentrism" when that’s exactly what the loudest voices on stage were promoting.

The truth is simpler: immigration policy is a fair topic for debate, and no one is saying otherwise. What undermines that debate is when it’s wrapped in scapegoating and identity tests for who counts as a "real" Australian. That’s division by definition.

Draw a distinct line between reasonable policy arguments and extremist dog-whistling if you want to discuss immigration. Until this happens, the extremists get to define the terms and the rest of us just end up reacting to them.

John,

Yes, I see the irony as well. I think that "them and us", "we were here first" and "rack off' are the building blocks of the voice, Palestinian hatred and romper stomper racism. At least Hitler and the Mufti were bonded by their virulent antisemitism.

GY says;

"There was a neo-Nazi speaker in Melbourne, which was a bit more than unfortunate, and because of the secretiveness of the organisers,"

WELL, the organisers were the neo-Nazi's and it was unfortunate that certain Useful Idiots from the right of politics like Bob Katter were out there supporting the hate and bigotry of the organisers! For a couple of Old Farts on this forum its all about exclusion, never about inclusion!

More Indians could be on the way.

India is in “secret” talks with the Albanese government to build 1 million houses in Australia using Indian migrants. Cost? $500 billion is being bandied about. The Indian Industry Minister is pondering on the idea of Indians  being trained in Australia so that Australian standards could be met. That's a relief, but how about training the 650,000 or so unemployed Australians to start with.

Albanese is so far keeping this revelation  to himself. Probably dopey enough to think that secret actually means secret. Of course they might not vote Labor as 85% of the Indian diaspora does; one of the reasons Albanese prefers foreigners to locals. It won't matter to him that most of them will speak English with an accent worse than a Spike Milligan take off. 

Albanese's deal with his second bestie, Prime Minister Modi,  already recognises Indian qualifications in Australia from secondary school to degree level in Australia; so the idea of  the  training of Indian brickies here could be worth squat. 

As for the making of bricks, Albanese is sh.tting tons of them over his housing fantasy. 

Lastly, where would extra Indians live while they were building all these houses. Board with the 961 thousand of them already here, perhaps. You know: the masses of immigrants causing the housing shortage in the first place.

Someone really hates Indians! Where has this Old Fart got all this "secret" info from? Was he at one of those hate marches yesterday listening to some black clad, balaclava wearing neo-Nazi?