Mandatory jail term for Nazi salute under new hate crime rules in Australia

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Do we really want to mandate jail time though? It seems like maybe fines would be effective?

Fines are generally not as effective as we'd like, because fines only affect the poor. If you're wealthy, a fine is nothing to you. If a working class person espousing Nazi ideology were to be fined, say, $10,000, that could possibly make them bankrupt. If Elon Musk was fined $10,000 every time he said something directly aligned with the Nazis, he'd still be a multi-billionaire.

Now, sure, we can adjust fines as a percent of income, for instance, which helps, but generally speaking, the loss of autonomy (imprisonment) discourages bad behavior more than the loss of money, thus it tends to be a better way to prevent given behaviors from occurring.

I’m not in favor of inventing more ways to fill up for-profit prisons [...]

I understand, and I agree to an extent, but I think if the problem is the for-profit prisons, we should focus on not having for-profit prisons, rather than not prosecuting what should be crimes just because the current prison system is quite bad.

[...] with non-violent offenders.

Nazis are inherently violent. They may not directly harm an individual, but the ideology revolves around harm coming to other groups. (e.g. how the Nazis killed Jewish people, advocated for the death of homosexuals, etc) When someone supports Nazism, they directly support an ideology that effectively mandates the death of many.

In the same way that I believe health insurance CEOs should be considered murderers when they deliberately implement bad algorithms that deny claims for the sake of shareholder profit, even though they didn't directly cause a death, I believe that people who support ideologies that can lead to the death of many should be treated maybe not as someone who has done a murder, but as someone who allowed the means for a murder to happen, knowingly, gladly, and deliberately.

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If you actually wanted to understand my point, you would have a long time ago. It's not that complicated.

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[…] [laws are] also a communication regarding what a society considers acceptable. […]

[…] the existence of the law is society standing together and sending a very clear message that some behaviors are unacceptable, a formalisation of social intolerance if you will. […]

That this isn't necessarily true: For example, if a society is ruled by a tyrannical government, then there is a divergence between the laws imposed on the citizenry, and what the citizenry thinks is socially just.

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[…] Fascist organisations have been successfully recruiting, and it seems like they’re gaining momentum. Sure some bar might be able to keep skin heads out, but “soft” social intolerance very obviously is inadequate. […]

For my own reference, do you have any empirical sources to back up the claim that opinions sympathetic to fascism are accelerating? I'm not disputing your claim — I just like sources.

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[…] The thing is, these groups don’t start with hatred right off the bat. A normal kid might see a fascist organisation as some kind of boys club. Cool iconography, loyalty, camaraderie, whats not to like? The existence of this law will ensure that people are aware of the depravity of this ideology and reduce their ability to seduce recruits by deception.

Presumably, this is under the assumption that education and awareness are insufficient means to that end.

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[…] not only does imprisonment do [social shunning] […]

I don't agree that this is necessarily true. For example, what of the case of a tyrannical government? Society may be accepting of a behavior, yet the behavior may be an imprisonable offense. Therefore something being an imprisonable offense doesn't necessitate that it be a socially shunned behavior (by the majority).

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[…] Especially when you consider that businesses look out for what will make them the most profit, not what’s socially right/wrong. If the Nazis had more money than the non-Nazis, then substantially less businesses would do anything to stop them […]

Hm. Your statement "If the Nazis had more money than the non-Nazis" is an important distinction; however, I think it also crucially depends on the distribution of nazis throughout the populace (assuming the society in question in governed by a majoritarian democratic system). The statement "If the Nazis had more money than the non-Nazis", I think, infers the potential of monopolistic behavior in that ownership of the market becomes consolidated in the hands of those who are nazi-sympathetic. In this case, assuming the nazis were a minority of the populace, the government would step in as it must prevent monopolistic market behavior to ensure fair market competition ^[1]^; however, if the nazis were a majority of the populace, I fear the argument is moot as they likely would be the ones creating the laws in the first place ^[2]^, assuming they had a monopoly on power (as if they didn't, it's plausible that the minority with a monopoly on power would revolt), and I think it would be plausible that they would create a market regulating body that is favorable to nazi-sympathetic entities.

::: spoiler References

"Capitalism". Wikipedia. Published: 2025-02-08T16:40Z. Accessed: 2025-02-08T22:13Z. URI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism.
- ¶1.
  
  […] The defining characteristics of capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, [competitive markets], price systems, recognition of property rights, self-interest, [economic freedom], work ethic, [consumer sovereignty], decentralized decision-making, profit motive, a financial infrastructure of money and investment that makes possible credit and debt, entrepreneurship, commodification, voluntary exchange, wage labor, production of commodities and services, and a strong emphasis on innovation and economic growth. […]
"Majoritarianism". Wikipedia. Published: 2025-01-15T01:23Z. Accessed: 2025-02-08T22:19Z. URI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majoritarianism.
- ¶1.
  
  Majoritarianism is a political philosophy or ideology with an agenda asserting that a majority, whether based on a religion, language, social class, or other category of the population, is entitled to a certain degree of primacy in society, and has the right to make decisions that affect the society. […]
  :::

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[…] I don’t think Nazis should be able to say the things that make them Nazis, and I’ll be mean to them about it and hope businesses shun them, but I won’t actually stop them from doing that. […]

I think this begs the question — is it certain that social intolerance wont prevent, or is likely to not prevent these ideologies from accelerating in adoption?

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[…] So, what is your reasoning for why they should be shunned socially, but not legally? Why is it more beneficial to allow them to say specifically what they say, as opposed to preventing that by force?

It may depend on what you mean by "beneficial", but, generally, I'm not necessarily arguing that not imprisoning those espousing nazi-rhetoric would be more "positive" than the alternative, I simply fear the risks of going the route of governmental force outweigh the benefits. I fear tyrannical overreach, and I think a liberal approach, while not perfect, may be the best means to stave off this outcome. But, at least we have experiments like Australia, which can be examined from a distance.

Philosophically, the question becomes rather uncomfortable for me to answer; I personally don't feel that I can be certain that my views are moral, so I tend to prefer the option that ensures the largest amount of ideological freedom. I understand that the paradox of tolerance is a threat to that idea, and it should be resisted, but I'm simply not convinced that imprisonment is the best antidote.

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the government would step in as it must prevent monopolistic market behavior to ensure fair market competition

The government rarely actually steps in, even in cases of demonstrable monopolies. This is very easy to see in our world today, and will always be the case as long as you live in a capitalist system. Capitalism grants power to the capital holders by allowing them to buy the means of productions, restricting the power of workers to mobilize against corporate action, elect representatives not favorable to capital owners, etc. It causes anti-monopolistic tendencies to waver, because in a system built on being able to buy up businesses, capital concentration is the design, not just an unintended side effect.

if the nazis were a majority of the populace, I fear the argument is moot as they likely would be the ones creating the laws in the first place

A group of people do not need to be the majority of the population to hold drastically more wealth, and thus a direct ability to impact the choices of businesses. See: the top 1% of wealth holders owning 30% of wealth, and the bottom 50% of wealth holders owning just a few percentage points.

Critically though, we need to look at the possibility of such a drastically negative outcome occurring in both of our possible systems. In mine, Nazism simply is not given a chance from the start. It is not given the opportunity to even attempt a power grab, because those who publicly spread the ideology are imprisoned.

In yours, they are given the ability to spread their ideology, still get employment and buy goods at sympathetic businesses, can gain functional societal acceptance by accumulating wealth, and so on. Your system does less to stop Nazi ideology from spreading than mine does. It is fundamentally less hostile to Nazis.

Now, I'm going to try consolidating my responses to all your other replies in this one comment, since I want to try and keep this tidy.

I think this begs the question — is it certain that social intolerance wont prevent, or is likely to not prevent these ideologies from accelerating in adoption?

They can do so, but they are less effective. We as a society, generally, hold distaste for people who do murders. If we lived in a society where nobody was ever imprisoned for murder, would we see less murder? Of course not, because the only consequence to doing so would be social shunning, but you would still be free to do whatever else you please in your life, and if you're a person that doesn't care what people think of you, or can surround yourself in a community of like-minded murderers, then social shunning does nothing to disincentivize you from murdering more people. Imprisonment exists for a reason, that being it is more effective than other means of preventing behavior, such as social shunning.

The exact same logic applies to Nazism. The ideology, after spreading far enough and gaining power, inevitably leads to outcomes that most of us would find highly undesirable, such as the genocide of entire groups of individuals, and thus should be treated as such, with the strongest force possible to reduce the chance of it spreading by as much as possible.

I don’t agree that this is necessarily true. For example, what of the case of a tyrannical government? Society may be accepting of a behavior, yet the behavior may be an imprisonable offense. Therefore something being an imprisonable offense doesn’t necessitate that it be a socially shunned behavior (by the majority).

Sorry if I was unclear by what I meant here. I meant specifically that imprisonment isolates you from the rest of society, by locking you up either in a cell block with very few other people to communicate with (relatively speaking) or by putting you in solitary, with no people to communicate with. You objectively have less ability to interact with other human beings, and have been "shunned" as a result. Or at least, you experience similar effects. (Social deprivation, being placed in situations only involving other people rejected from the common populace, etc) Again, apologies if I was unclear.

It may depend on what you mean by “beneficial”, but, generally, I’m not necessarily arguing that not imprisoning those espousing nazi-rhetoric would be more “positive” than the alternative, I simply fear the risks of going the route of governmental force outweigh the benefits. I fear tyrannical overreach, and I think a liberal approach, while not perfect, may be the best means to stave off this outcome. But, at least we have experiments like Australia, which can be examined from a distance.

Philosophically, the question becomes rather uncomfortable for me to answer; I personally don’t feel that I can be certain that my views are moral, so I tend to prefer the option that ensures the largest amount of ideological freedom. I understand that the paradox of tolerance is a threat to that idea, and it should be resisted, but I’m simply not convinced that imprisonment is the best antidote.

I understand this point a lot, and I do think it's a quite justified opinion to have. If we can't be certain our views are moral, we want to do what requires the least harm to come to people, in case we're wrong.

This

I fear tyrannical overreach

is a good fear to have, but if this logic was applied consistently, then we wouldn't imprison anybody, for any offense, because we can't actually be 100% confident that we were making the right choice in imprisoning them. As I mentioned earlier, we already know what Nazi ideology leads to in the end, we've seen its effects before, and with the rise of fascism in America with Trump's second term, we're seeing it begin again.

Just like how we could observe that murder negatively impacts the wellbeing of local communities, and societies as a whole, we can observe that what tends to arise from Nazi rhetoric also produces those same outcomes. For instance, Trump's new executive orders are doing things like cutting billions in aid that currently keep many people alive in struggling countries, who are now likely to die from a lack of aid. His policies will be resulting in a significant shortfall in spending on critical programs people need to stay alive, like Medicare/Medicaid, are cutting funding for research that develops critical cures for people's health problems, he's actively stripping policies that level the playing field for disadvantaged groups which will only result in their overall relative share of wealth going down over time, not to mention his billionaire supporting policy that's actively funneling more of the few percentage points of wealth everyone not in the top 50% of people has to the top 1%, which will only make their lives harder.

We see the outcomes, more concrete moral biases we can often feel more confident in (e.g. less death is usually ideal, people should ideally be healthy and happy, etc) back up why those outcomes are wrong, so we can then feel confident in saying the thing that caused those outcomes should be legislated against.

If you believe Nazis are a harm to society, and we have all our concrete understanding of their misdeeds to back that up, then it is no different from any action we take against any other bad action to say that they should be imprisoned for the harm we know they do to society.

I understand it's difficult to support something that you could end up being wrong on, that ends up overreaching, but if you do nothing more than the social shunning that already happened just recently right up through when Trump entered the Oval Office, then you get fascism, and we're seeing, yet again, the harm that fascism causes.

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[…] If your ideology allows Nazis to face no legal consequences for being Nazis, while you simultaneously state that you don’t believe they should be tolerated, then you hold mutually contradictory views. […]

I think you've made a fair point. I think, in this case, it depends on how you are defining freedom of speech ^[1.1]^. Freedom of speech doesn't negate one's freedom of association ^[1.2]^; it simply states that one should be free to express themselves without fear of censorship ^[2]^. Censorship requires active suppression of speech ^[3[4]]^; I argue that if one chooses to not associate with someone, they aren't actively suppressing their speech. So, more to your point, allowing the nazis to express their opinions is an exercise of freedom speech. Being intolerable of nazis is an exercise of freedom of association (eg choosing to not associate with them) and freedom of speech (eg vocalizing one's distaste of them).

All that being said, this makes me consider whether, philosophically, one's political positions also apply to how one personally behaves. I think it could be said that one's political philosophies derive from one's personal morals.

::: spoiler References

Title: "Liberalism". Publisher: Wikipedia. Published: 2025-02-02T19:43Z. Accessed: 2025-02-08T01:53Z. URI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism.
1. ¶1.
  
  […] Liberals espouse various and often mutually warring views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, [freedom of speech], freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion. […]
- Liberalism espouses freedom of speech.
1. ¶1.
  
  […] Liberals espouse various and often mutually warring views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, [freedom of assembly], and freedom of religion. […]
- Liberalism espouses freedom of association.
Title: "Freedom of speech". Publisher: Wikipedia. Published: 2025-02-03T14:50. Accessed: 2025-02-08T01:55Z. URI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech.

Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. […]
Word: "Censorship". Publisher: Merriam-Webster. Accessed: 2025-02-08T01:56Z. URI: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censorship.
- §"noun"
Word: "Censor". Publisher: Merriam-Webster. Accessed: 2025-02-08T01:57Z. URI: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censoring.
- §"verb"
  
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I think, in this case, it depends on how you are defining freedom of speech

Yes, it does. The extent to which I support any individual's freedom of speech only extends until that speech causes demonstrable harm. Unfettered free speech has no beneficial social utility compared to free speech that has restrictions for things that cause great social harm.

People often get caught up in the idea of "free speech = good, therefore anything I disagree with should still be allowed to be said," when it doesn't actually provide any value to let them do so, and actually harms society in the process. People have the right to say almost anything they want, but if we know the things they're saying inevitably lead to fascist systems of power that oppress and kill millions, then restricting their free speech as much as possible is always justifiable, because doing so directly reduces the chances of people dying unjustifiably.

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Oh right, you are pro criminal. I forgot that you defend the rapist.

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It's not really an assumption. Clearly, education and awareness has been insufficient.

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Sure ok but in a democracy the presumption is that law makers have the support of the public.

In this specific case most (maybe all?) Australian state's and territories have already enacted similar laws, the federal law just reinforces them. That doesn't really seem tyrannical?

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Would, say, an actor playing a Nazi officer in a movie be protected from this?

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because giving them wiggle room in the law only for them to destroy that legal protection for everyone else only leads to disaster.

matter of fact it did in every country that ever had fascism take root. they openly want to take actual freedom away for everyone else.

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You called me authoritatian for mentioning police. Your idea of having no police is a very pro-rape thing to say. If you don't like it then don't call me authoritarian for mentioning law enforcement.

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What you want is the government to enforce what you think the standards should be.
What you will get is the government enforcing what the government thinks the standards should be.

I disagree with the fundamental premise of your argument, and I cite the results of the last election is the foundation of my own.

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Mandatory jail term for Nazi salute under new hate crime rules in Australia