From the Liveblog of
Sunday, August 31, 2025
Australian government condemns anti-immigration rallies as linked to neo-Nazis
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleAustralia’s center-left government condemns anti-immigration rallies that drew thousands of protesters across the country, accusing them of seeking to spread hate and being linked to neo-Nazis.
“We absolutely condemn the March for Australia rally that’s going on today. It is not about increasing social harmony,” Murray Watt, a senior minister in the Labor government, tells Sky News television, when asked about the rally in Sydney, the country’s most-populous city.
“We don’t support rallies like this that are about spreading hate and that are about dividing our community,” Watt says, asserting they were “organized and promoted” by neo-Nazi groups.
March for Australia rallies against immigration were being held in Sydney and other state capitals and regional centers, according to the group’s website, which calls for an end to “mass immigration,” saying it has “torn at the bonds that held our communities together.”
March for Australia organizers do not immediately respond to a request for comment about the neo-Nazi claims.
Some 5,000 to 8,000 people, many draped in Australian flags, had assembled for the Sydney rally, the Australian Broadcasting Corp reports.
A large March for Australia rally was also held in central Melbourne, according to aerial footage from the ABC, which reports that riot officers used pepper spray on demonstrators.
March for Australia Brisbane. Huge! pic.twitter.com/VlJNV78gf7
— The Hon Gary Hardgrave (@Gary_Hardgrave) August 31, 2025
Australia – where one in two people is either born overseas or has a parent born overseas – has been grappling with a rise in right-wing extremism, including protests by neo-Nazis.
Laws banning the Nazi salute and the display or sale of symbols associated with terror groups came into effect in Australia this year in response to a string of antisemitic attacks on synagogues, buildings and cars since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza following the terror group’s attack on October 7, 2023.
The Times of Israel Community.