This anti-trans rally attracted so many Nazis that the state government says they’ll ban the Nazi salute

An anti-trans rally in Melbourne, Australia over the weekend included the shocking sight of black-clad neo-Nazis goosestepping to the front of Victoria’s Parliament House and throwing the sieg-heil salute. Now the state’s government is saying they’ll ban the Nazi salute.

The Let Women Speak rally, led by notorious U.K. transphobe Posie Parker, attracted an angry mob of about 400 anti-trans protesters on Saturday to the streets in front of the state of Victoria’s seat of government, and at least 30 members of the far-right Nationalist Socialist Movement.

Parker, real name Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, is the founder of Standing for Women, a women’s rights organization primarily concerned with excluding transgender women from women’s spaces.

At least 800 counter-protesters showed up to oppose Parker and her anti-trans agenda.

The British provocateur, 49, sported a platinum-blonde bob reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe, and was dressed in bright yellow pants and a matching bright yellow loose turtle neck with the word “woman” stamped in silver across the chest multiple times. Rhinestone studded hoop earrings and a pair of white Chanel sunglasses topped off the look.

Parker is in the second week of a tour across Australia, before heading to New Zealand.

From their perch on the steps of Parliament House, the neo-Nazis, some disguised under black balaclavas, shouted slurs at the LGBTQ+ counter-protesters and chanted “White power!” The group held a large banner emblazoned with the words, “Destroy Paedo Freaks.”

As the neo-Nazi cohort taunted counter-protesters with anti-gay slurs, trans-rights activists chanted, “Posie Parker you can’t hide, you’ve got Nazis on your side!”

While Victorian Police tried to keep the two groups separated, there were some reported clashes and minor injuries.

“There is a highly visible police presence in the area to ensure there are no breaches of the peace and to keep the community safe,” a police spokesman told the West Australian while demonstrators hurled insults and bottles at one another.

Victoria MP Moira Deeming, a member of the center-right Liberal Party, attended the rally and criticized “extreme left counter-protestors,” claiming they injured her and other women.

“They also became violent with police and punched police horses, forcing the event to finish early. I condemn their actions,” Deeming posted to Twitter.

After participating in the rally with Nazis and promoting the event in a speech to Parliament the previous week, Deeming is now facing expulsion from her political party.

Opposition leader John Pesutto joined lawmakers across the political spectrum, including Victoria’s Labor Party premier Daniel Andrews, condemning the rally, its promoters, and participants, and described Deeming’s position in the center-right Liberal Party as “untenable.”

Pesutto said: “This is not an issue about free speech but a member of the parliamentary party associating with people whose views are abhorrent to my values, the values of the Liberal Party and the wider community.”

Following the rally and counter-protest, Deeming joined Parker and other anti-trans activists, including the host of Australia’s TERF Talk Down Under, where they sipped champagne and live-streamed a “post-event chat.”

Parker claimed repeatedly that the self-identified neo-Nazis attending her rally may not have been Nazis at all.

“All of this doesn’t make any sense. It feels really off. I mean, look, in the U.K. we had police impregnating animal rights campaigners. And we had those police infiltrating those groups,” Parker said in one of many attempts to separate herself from fellow extremists. Speaking of trans rights activists, she speculated, “I don’t think it’s beyond the wits of anyone to think that either that was TRAs dressed up, or police, or, something was just off.”

“It’s a real shame although not surprising,” Parker added, “that the focus of our amazing rally with courageous and articulate women has been sidelined by the media who are focusing on what men — who weren’t even at our rally — had to say and do.”

Today the attorney general for the state of Victoria, Jaclyn Symes, said that the state will take “active steps” to ban the Nazi salute.

“The behavior we saw on the weekend was disgusting, cowardly – a sense of sadness, outrage, and disbelief all at once,” she said. “It’s clear this symbol is being used to incite hatred against a variety of people, a variety of minority groups … it’s being used as a recruitment tool.”

Even the opposition leader, John Pesutto, said that his coalition is open to discussing such a ban.

Online Hate Prevention Institute founder Dr. Andrew Oboler said that the proposed law doesn’t go far enough because if the Nazi salute is banned, neo-Nazis will just use other gestures. He believes that Nazi glorification, generally, should be banned.

“You can then leave the question of whether something is glorification or not to police and the courts,” he told The Guardian. “It is what we do for section 18C [of the Racial Discrimination Act]. With racism, we don’t get and prohibit every individual racist gesture.”