Prominent nationalist activist Joel Davis will go on trial for racial vilification early next year over a speech he made at a protest against Jewish lobby influence in Australian politics.
Mr Davis, 31, last month pleaded not guilty to one count of “publicly inciting hatred on the grounds of race to cause fear” in relation to the speech, and faced Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court on Wednesday where a one-day hearing was set for February 22.
A police prosecutor and Mr Davis’s defence lawyer both agreed a full day would be needed despite there being only two witnesses listed, as one would be a “historian expert” who would need “a long time in the witness box”, and because the offence he has been charged with is new and a “matter for interpretation”.
Mr Davis is also facing 10 Commonwealth charges of “using a carriage service to menace, harass or offend” in relation to an alleged Telegram post about federal MP Allegra Spender, and his lawyer convinced Magistrate Greg Grogin the cases were related and should be heard on the same date.
The former member of the National Socialist Network (NSN), who spent 133 days in solitary confinement on remand after being arrested over the alleged post, had his bail extended with unchanged conditions that ban him from social media.
During the rally on November 8 last year, where 67 then-members of the NSN stood outside NSW Parliament next to a banner reading “Abolish the Jewish lobby”, Mr Davis criticised the NSW government for bringing in the new “hate speech” laws he has since been charged under.
He said the new legislation, which also included anti-protest laws that have since been struck down by the courts, was brought in as a result of a “pressure campaign” from Jewish lobby groups, and said the Anzacs “did not fight for a multicultural police state”.
Days later he allegedly wrote on Telegram “Patriots, I bid thee rhetorically rape Allegra Spender” after the MP called for the protesters to be jailed over the rally, and was arrested by an Australian Federal Police National Security Investigations team near his Bondi home on the day his first child was due.
He missed the birth of his son after being refused bail, and is banned from entering Bondi and living in his former home with his partner and child as part of his bail conditions.
While in custody Mr Davis was hit with nine Victorian “hate speech” charges over alleged podcast comments and an election stunt, and appeared in Melbourne Magistrates Court last week where the case was adjourned to August.
He is also fighting a South Australian Nazi symbol charge over a belt buckle with an eagle on it, dating back to an Australia Day March in 2025, which is set to go to trial in Adelaide later in the year.
NSW Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon told parliament on March 26 a review had found the Jewish lobby protest, which was peaceful and pre-approved by police, did not breach any laws, but Mr Davis was charged in early May after the rally was mentioned at Australia’s ongoing Royal Commission into Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion.
The day before Mr Davis was arrested, Peter Wertheim, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, which has frequently lobbied for stronger “hate speech” laws, told the anti-Semitism inquiry the demonstration should never have been approved by police.
“A person of colour could have passed by, a person wearing Jewish religious clothing or Muslim religious clothing,” Mr Wertheim told the Royal Commission.
“The risk to public safety that that would have constituted seemed to me to be a gross error of judgement.”
NSW Police said while announcing the charges that the investigation was “undertaken by the Security Investigation Unit, Counter Terrorist and Special Tactics Command, who sought legal advice in relation to the public assembly and content of the speeches”.
The racial vilification offence came into effect in August as part of a new suite of “hate speech” and anti-protest laws brought in by Premier Chris Minns early last year, and carries a maximum penalty of two years’ imprisonment.
In February Sydney father Brandon Koschel, 31, was jailed for one year with a non-parole period of nine months after becoming the first person convicted under the new laws for an Australia Day speech where he called Jews the “greatest enemy to the nation”.
His sentence was reduced to 10 months with a six-month non-parole period on appeal, and NSW District Court Judge Tanya Smith noted in sentencing that the laws were created in response to a spate of anti-Semitic incidents in Sydney and “recognise the harm of hate speech and its potential to escalate into violence”.
The November 8 rally also resulted in the deportation of South African civil engineer Matthew Gruter, who had his visa cancelled by immigration minister Tony Burke after he was identified by far-left extremist activists working with Nine Newspapers and ABC News.
Header image: Left, Mr Davis at the protest. Right, leaving court (supplied).
The post Australian nationalist to face trial over ‘abolish Jewish lobby’ protest first appeared on The Noticer.
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