A magistrate has found former Neighbours star Damien Richardson guilty of performing a Nazi salute during a speech, even though he accepted the actor is not a Nazi, and made the gesture to mock the laws themselves and a negative media article.
Mr Richardson, 56, was charged by police after being filmed performing the gesture to satirise the salute ban at a private event in Melbourne last year while saying: “Am I gonna be fined now? I’m going to go jail for five years?”
Magistrate Justin Foster on Friday convicted Mr Richardson of the offence in Moorabbin Magistrates Court despite noting that the actor was “trying to demonstrate, together with the words that follow, that he clearly wasn’t Adolf Hitler and that he’s not a Nazi” in relation to a newspaper article.
“Just prior to him giving the salute, the accused was complaining of his treatment by The Age newspaper,” Magistrate Foster said.
“He was saying that The Age treated him badly and was essentially labelling him as a Nazi or like Hitler, to shut down what some might describe as extreme right-wing views.
“The salute that came immediately afterwards was in a mocking gesture, perhaps aimed at The Age, perhaps aimed at himself, I don’t know.”
Magistrate Foster also noted that Mr Richardson had shut down anti-Semitic comments from the crowd during his speech and told the audience he proud of his grandfather for fighting the Nazis in WW2.
He also found that Mr Richardson was not showing “loyalty, affiliation or obedience” to Adolf Hitler or the Nazis, in relation to the prosecution’s expert witness’s testimony that the salute must demonstrate “loyalty or unconditional obedience to Hitler”.
The expert witness also told the court if Mr Richardson had made the same mocking salute in Nazi Germany he would have been jailed for two years.
But Magistrate Foster found Mr Richardson guilty anyway, saying the speech was made in public, the gesture was not performed for artistic, theatrical or academic reasons, and “clearly looked like a Nazi salute”.
“The gesture made by the accused does resemble a Nazi salute, and it is likely to be confused with or mistaken for that gesture,” Magistrate Foster said.
“So for those reasons I do find that a Nazi gesture, under the definition given to it, has been performed.”
On Saturday former Liberal senator Gerard Rennick spoke out against the decision, saying it “made his blood boil”.
“So a bloke does a Nazi salute mocking the media who called him a Nazi, and now he faces jail time even though it was obvious to the judge he wasn’t displaying allegiance to Hitler,” Mr Rennick wrote.
“The irony of the Victorian police in laying the charges who behaved like Nazis during Covid is even more infuriating. The police have even allowed self confessed Nazis to speak at rallies.
“The double standards are breathtaking and symptomatic of how perverse our laws have become. This is a grave attack on freedom of speech and more importantly Government intimidation on freedom of thought.”
The case came just two weeks after National Socialist Network leader Jacob Hersant appealed his own conviction and one-month jail sentence under the same Victorian laws for allegedly performing the salute outside a Melbourne court in 2023.
Mr Richardson will appear in court again on December 4 for a pre-sentencing hearing. The maximum penalty is 12 months’ imprisonment or a $23,000 fine.
Header image: Mr Richardson at a different event last year (supplied).
The post Iconic Aussie actor found guilty of performing Nazi salute while mocking gesture ban first appeared on The Noticer.
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