Police have seized art posters from a Canberra music venue and bar that depict world leaders and others, including Donald Trump and Elon Musk, wearing Nazi uniforms, and are investigating whether new federal hate symbol laws were broken.
David Howe, the owner of Dissent Cafe and Bar in Canberra’s CBD, said his venue was shut down for about two hours on Wednesday night as police investigated a complaint about hate imagery relating to five posters in the window.
“I think it’s ludicrous to be perfectly honest,” he told Guardian Australia, describing the works as an “anti-fascist statement” and noting the shut down had caused the cancellation of an interstate band’s performance.
ART is ART
disagreeing with what is considered art is fascist
disagreeing with what is considered art is fascist
Fascism certainly is a nebulous concept, but this is just diluting it. Censorship is not fascism, even if fascists support censorship.
And what could be more fascist than police raiding your place to remove it?
So the very first application of a law which is purported to be to stop neo-Nazis / neo-fascists was against anti-fascist art.
This does seem to be contrary to the law itself, which has at least two defences here for anti-facist political art.
Firstly, the artistic defence:
“(9) Subsection (1) does not apply to a person if a reasonable person would consider that: … (a) the conduct mentioned in paragraph (1)(a) is engaged in for a purpose that is: (i) a religious, academic, educational, artistic, literary or scientific purpose; and (ii) not contrary to the public interest;”
Secondly, the defence that it was genuinely exhibited to oppose Nazi ideology or fascism:
“(10) Subsection (1) does not apply to a person engaging in conduct mentioned in paragraph (1)(a) if: … (f) the person genuinely engages in the conduct for the purpose of opposing Nazi ideology, fascism or a related ideology”.
Malicious compliance?
Pretty derpy, we’ll see how this plays out in court.
Isn’t this almost exactly the same as:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-01/former-deputy-pm-slams-nazi-posters-wagga-shopfront/105121020
The only problem I have with this is that the person doing it seems really tough putting up artwork of people as Nazi’s (even though all it does it make the nazi’s look weaker than the insane human life destroying machines they were) is that if someone was to put up an anti-trans poster or greens members etc as Nazi’s then suddenly they’re upset
it feels very one way street with being offensive
If Netanyahu wasn’t one of the figures in one of these posters this raid never would have happened. The problem here is that the laws are being (deliberately) interpreted as pro-Zionist
If some establishment had a picture of Sarah Hanson-Young dressed as a Nazi literally no-one would care except the right wing mouth breathers who would find that kind of thing amusing.
The problem here is that the laws are being (deliberately) interpreted as pro-Zionist
Because they were explicitly drafted as pro-Zionist.
It’s pretty silly to pretend it’s strange that people would react differently. Being offensive is obviously not the point of these posters.
