Almost 70 years since the end of World War 2, stickers emblazoned with imagery from Nazi Germany, and linked to a white supremacist group trying to recruit Australian children to their ranks, appeared across Bega this weekend.
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The stickers appeared on prominent buildings, including media organisations, the court house and petrol stations before most were quickly removed.
The small but very active group (which will not be named) appeared in 2016, with members photographed wearing a skull mask and a distinctively Australian Akubra hat, after forming on online forums for neo-Nazi hate group sympathisers.
They are anti-Semitic, white supremacist, anti-homosexual, vehemently against non-white immigration and use the gimmicky stickers to recruit children.
In Bega on Saturday, Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security member and Eden-Monaro MP Mike Kelly said the committee had been briefed on the growth of home grown far right hate groups.
”We’ve seen right wing extremists peddling garbage, and trying to pervert the minds of our kids in particular,” Dr Kelly said.
“We’re better than that, because this is what generations of Aussies have fought hard to defeat.
“Protecting persecuted minorities from concentration camps and defeating fascism.”
Dr Kelly said while there is a focus on the fear of other extremist groups, the organisation promotes murder with its call to "legalise the execution of Jews”.
It is not the first time this group has foisted itself on the town of Bega, with hate filled posters plastered on Dr Kelly’s office last year.
“We have to remain eternally vigilant, and make sure we stamp out racist attitudes wherever we see it, and call it out when we see it,” Dr Kelly said.
While the group’s Youtube channel has been taken down due to “hate speech”, their website describes them as a “youth organisation” with a female wing to help girls reach their “natural potential” via activities that include cooking and sewing.
Over the last two weeks the group has bragged online about placing hundreds of stickers around Perth, Melbourne and the Sunshine Coast, and openly admits to targeting young and impressionable high school students.
This hate has no place in any society.