The sight of 60 odd black-clad neo-Nazis standing outside the NSW Parliament on Saturday brandishing an anti-Jewish banner is alarming. It is surely a wake-up call to citizens who care for democracy and its institutions to take especial heed. 

The group, which calls itself the National Socialist Network, are doubtless knuckleheads with little or no historic insight into actual Nazism or its dismal past. If they had but an inkling of how awful the Nazi Party was they would ashamed to have any association with it.

The conditions in post-WW1 Germany and those in Australia today are not remotely similar, but we should nevertheless be on our guard. Thousands of Anzacs died fighting Hitler and his appalling dictatorship. Saturday's gathering and others like it are an insult to their sacrifice.

Only the weak follow those whose power is underpinned by being a persecuting and vilifying bully. Apart from their obvious racism and absurd notions of racial purity, Nazism was a complete failure, which brought disaster to Germany and wrecked Europe for a generation.