An Australian white supremacy group that worships Adolf Hitler cannot be shut down because it is hosted in the United States.
The website, www.whiteprideco.com, has outraged ethnic groups who are calling on state and federal governments to toughen up racial vilification laws.
Extreme right-wing propagandists have found a safe haven in the United States, where they are protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Most neo-Nazi Web sites are hosted in the United States, Inger said.
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The website “aims to provide White Aryan People with accurate and truthful information in relation to the treacherous acts of the Jewish/Zionist factions all over the World”.
The site, which boasts more than 28,000 visitors, lists the Nazi leader in its “Aryan Heroes” page, alongside Australian Nationalist Movement leader Jack van Tongeren.
Van Tongeren was arrested in Perth earlier this month on charges of inciting racial hatred.
The site also counts novelist George Orwell, composer Ludwig van Beethoven, and Australian historic figures Ned Kelly and Harry “Breaker” Morant among its heroes.
But nothing can be done about the site because it is hosted in the US, according to the Ethnic Communities’ Council (ECC) of NSW.
“There’s nothing we can do about a site like that,” ECC executive officer Phillip Prideaux said.
“That’s the problem with all sorts of things – pornographic sites, whatever – that are hosted out of the USA.”
Mr Prideaux said the site was “one of many” racist sites purporting to represent Australian groups but hosted overseas.
He said “post-it-note-sized” posters were stuck on telegraph poles in western Sydney, urging people to visit the white supremacist site.
Mr Prideaux said racial vilification legislation needed to be toughened up so those who created “outrageous and abhorrent” websites were punished “the same as they would if somebody was spraying graffiti on a wall in the middle of the city and the police would come along and arrest them”.
Police this week were able to shut down one website, believed to be set up by students of a Sydney high school, which recommended teachers be sent to Nazi death camps.
NSW Police were investigating the site, but it was not known whether it was hosted in Australia.
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