Lismore Labor has slammed pro-Nazi comments attributed to prominent Kevin Hogan supporter, Kurt Tucker, this week.
Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, in a front-page expose, reported on Tuesday that Mr Tucker had posted on his Facebook page statements that had he been alive in the 1930’s he would have joined the Nazi Party.
Mr Tucker is the federal campaign director of the Young Nationals and was formerly a staffer for Page MP Kevin Hogan.
A spokesman for Mr Hogan, said that he was ‘extremely disappointed’ with the comments attributed to Mr Tucker.
However the spokesman added that Mr Tucker had not worked for the Lismore office of Mr Hogan ‘for some time’.
When asked if Mr Tucker was prominently involved during the 2016 election for Mr Hogan, the spokesman declined to comment.
Mark Bailey, secretary of Lismore Labor’ said Mr Tucker ‘was well known to people involved in the campaign for Page,’ adding he had played ‘a prominent role.’
Mr Tucker subsequently resiled from his Facebook comments, telling the Telegraph that, ‘on reflection… I realise I was totally wrong. I find the Nazi party to be totally morally abhorrent and I would never willingly engage with them.’
But Harry Gregg a Young Labor member said that Mr Tucker was heard on a number of occasions to make homophobic slurs.
‘I found his comments totally offensive and as a young person I was amazed that someone the same age as me could have such hateful views,’ Mr Gregg said.
Kurt Tucker says that he would have joined the Nazi Party because in Nazi Germany it was the only way to get ahead.
Kurt, imagine how much respect you would have garnered for your now defunct political career if you had said ‘I would proudly have joined Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the other 77,000 Germans who were sentenced to death by Hitlers People’s Court in opposing the Nazi War machine, the genocide of Jews, homosexuals and other minorities and the destruction of the German state and the tainting of its citizens.”
I note Kurt is studying Economics and Politics at U of Q. I can only hope that by the time he graduates he will understand that power at any cost usually ends in disaster. The Nazi regime which he apparently likes a little bit is an outstanding example. Maybe teenagers wanting to become politicians should study history and politics. Sigh.
Is the trend of neo Nazi-ism on the rise? Or has it always been there but we never took notice? Or is it, frighteningly, because most of these supporters are kids, not born during the war or within two decades after its end and have no idea what they are engaging in? I believe it needs to be noted that the horrors of the holocaust should to be presented in our school system otherwise this mass ignorance will keep manifesting itself into a gigantic monster raising its ugly seven headed maw!!! I for one was educated by my own parents about the horrors of the holocaust at the tender age of 7 when I found it challenging to try to draw the swastika over and over again. I was lucky to find this out at an early age, but I doubt most parents today have no idea how to educate their children on such matters.
I am waiting for the Young Nationals to say if they agree with Mr Tucker’s pro nazi statement. Maybe Tucker has exposed the tip of an iceberg.
History repeats, the Nazis came for the Jews the Nationals are coming for the Muslims. I have had first hand experience of the xenophobia in Mr Hogans office. As a Muslim Australian I informed him that the Anti-Muslim rhetoric by the government and the media was dividing our country. The result : Mr Hogans staff took an AVO out on me. It must have struck a raw nerve. I was forced to sell my house and leave Lismore because of continual harassment by the xenophobic population and the racist police.