Summary
Jacob Hersant, a self-described Nazi, was sentenced to one month in prison, becoming the first person in Australia jailed for performing an outlawed Nazi salute.
Convicted in Victoria for making the salute outside a courthouse in October, Hersant’s act followed new legislation banning the gesture.
Magistrate Brett Sonnet justified the sentence, citing Hersant’s intent to promote Nazi ideology publicly.
Hersant’s lawyer argued that his actions were nonviolent and claimed they were protected as political expression, stating plans to appeal the ruling on constitutional grounds.
This is not the correct way to do this.
Because it works and shows the foolishness? Yeah.
What foolishness? Removing Nazis from civilized society?
No, trying to enforce unenforceable laws, if a bunch of people went and did this and made the state arrest and prosecute all of them, it would be an extreme burden to the taxpayers unless they just didn’t decide to prosecute the cases. The point would be to punish unenforceable laws economically. Here in the United States, a form of that would be to protest absolutely every traffic ticket that you ever receive on purpose. Even if you did wrong and you know it, The point is that it wastes their time and energy that they could be using for real issues on trivial shit.
🤔
It just seems performative and works against your other point. It would be nice to flip a magic switch and get rid of Nazism, but at the same time, you’re right that you can’t just decide what free speech is allowed and what is when it comes to this. I get it for words or phrases that cause immediate danger like, bomb, fire, etc.
Everything else is a slippery slope, especially given how creative our supreme court is (US)