Kate Emery: WA Government’s plan to ban swastika 78 years late, but a good start

Dayne Brajkovich’s tattooist can start shopping for a holiday home, if they’re not already rich off the former Hells Angels’ ink habit.

Brajkovich, who dodged jail under WA’s anti-insignia charges this week, will soon be more full of pricks than a Noosa park after the State Government signalled it planned to ban the swastika.

That presumably means Brajkovich faces a date with a tattoo needle to remove or cover the swastika inked on his chin just last year. At the time he was busy covering up (illegal) gang tattoos while adding a (legal) swastika but, as the great 20th century philosopher Ferris Bueller once said, life moves pretty fast.

Nobody could accuse the Government of rushing this, given World War II ended 78 years ago and the abhorrence of the Nazi regime has been known for decades to all except NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet when he dressed as a Nazi for his 21st party.

The ban has been discussed before, but may have been triggered by the swastika spray-painted on an outdoor advertisement for Hillarys Labor MP Caitlin Collins last week, along with a word better suited to describing a female dog or a singer-songwriter Meredith Brooks biography.

The legislation should make it to Parliament this year and will see WA follow much of Australia and other countries, including Germany, where the swastika is about as welcome as Brajkovich at a Hells Angels barbie.

Attorney-General John Quigley has indicated some likely exemptions, including using the swastika for education, media coverage and by religions for which the swastika is a symbol of peace. He has also suggested buying and selling World War II memorabilia would be another exemption.

I’m not the Attorney-General (twice the hair, half the wit) but if I was I might consider that last point.

It was not quite two years ago that a Perth antiques shop oversaw the auction of Nazi memorabilia, including Adolf Hitler’s former tableware, prompting understandable outrage from WA’s Jewish community.

It’s one thing for a museum to shell out for a set of Nazi cutlery, but is there any good reason for an individual to want memorabilia tied to a regime that killed millions? Is displaying Hitler’s old hairbrush truly that different to displaying gold teeth prised from the mouths of concentration camp victims?

The owner of that antiques business at the time made the fair, but depressing point that selling Nazi memorabilia was not only not legal but big business. It was his view that most customers were history buffs, not neo-nazis and he described them to ABC radio as “male, they’re middle class, they’re tradies, they’re the average person that you walk past in the street, they’ll be your neighbour.”

I hope he was wrong on that last point, unless the sweet woman next door is hiding a bust of Joseph Goebbels she only takes out for the really special visitors.

While I think most West Aussies will be in favour of this ban, there will be some who oppose it, not because they think Hitler made some good points, but on the basis that banning a political symbol is an assault on our political freedom.

It’s an argument not so far away from that being advanced by lawyers for former US president and John McEnroe-level sore loser Donald Trump as to why he should be allowed back on Facebook.

There are people out there who still think the marketplace of ideas is a valid thing and not a flawed bit of idealism defended by people who like to pretend privilege, power and social media algorithms don’t exist.

But we live in an age of misinformation, where conspiracy theories flourish, including those which claim the Holocaust never happened or was exaggerated. (There’s also a conspiracy theory that Australia doesn’t exist and we’re all being paid off by NASA, but that’s a whole other column).

This is a world where Kanye West, once regarded as one of the greatest rappers of his generation, can comfortably tell the world he admires Hitler, possibly unaware that the feeling would not have been mutual.

Far-right extremism is a problem not just in Australia but overseas. There’s little difference between deplatforming the hate-mongers who spread dangerous lies and deplatforming their symbols, which include the swastika. Banning the swastika won’t change these drongos’ minds (or give them a brain) but it will limit their ability to so brazenly flaunt their abhorrent views in a way calculated to deliver maximum offence.