Damien Richardson, pictured at a National Workers Alliance event in September. Photo / ABC
Damien Richardson, pictured at a National Workers Alliance event in September. Photo / ABC
Former Neighbours actor Damien Richardson is being investigated by Victoria police after his alleged performing of a Nazi salute at a nationalist organisation’s gathering in Melbourne.
The Australian TV star, 55, is being investigated by Victoria police after footage emerged of Richardson addressing a gathering organised by his organisation the National Workers Alliance (NWA) on September 14, which was live-streamed on Facebook at the time.
News.com.au attempted to contact Richardson, with his NWA co-founder Matt Trihey returning calls instead.
The NWA describes itself as “an Australian nationalist organisation for the preservation of Western culture and identity”.
Trihey vehemently denied he or Richardson aligned with neo-Nazi values, despite members of the National Socialist Network (NSN) being in attendance at the event. They were heard cheering after Richardson performed the Nazi salute.
Actor Damien Richardson in a scene from Neighbours. Photo / IMDb
“We’re all a little bit disillusioned,” Trihey told news.com.au.
“Damien was just demonstrating, ‘If I do this [salute], then am I going to be fined and possibly jailed?’
“We are 100% not [affiliated with neo-Nazi groups]. We were having a discussion about, ‘What is free speech?’
“Damien is an entertainer, so his speeches are entertaining … He broaches questions, and the sad thing is that as soon as anybody starts sticking out from conservative perspective, you’re immediately branded as a Nazi. It’s a way the left shut down the discourse.”
Trihey, who said he’d been talking intermittently to a “disillusioned” Richardson since the footage emerged midweek, argued he had no control over who bought tickets to NWA events, saying there were members across “all ends of the political spectrum” in attendance.
“I had some socialist party people who were there,” he said.
“What I want is an open dialect from both sides. I want to hear what the communists say. Of course, there should be limits on hate speech, but in a political sense, I’m a total advocate of free speech.
“Our ongoing stance has cost all of us a lot career-wise, but that’s the risk you take with speaking out.”
At the event, Richardson was talking about racial identity and societal changes when he declared there was a “war on men”.
“I thought it was a war on Western tradition, Western values … And actually, it’s an anti-white-male agenda,” he said, before performing the salute.
The Victorian government introduced new laws in October last year criminalising the display of Nazi symbols or salutes in public places.
Damien Richardson quit acting in 2021. Photo / Instagram
Trihey insisted the event was “private”, though Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke told ABC, “The moment you put things online there’s a new legal question on whether it was done publicly, so that will be something our authorities will work through.”
Victoria police confirmed on Saturday an investigation was ongoing.
“Police are investigating vision which shows a person performing a Nazi salute, believed to be in Victoria,” a statement read.
“The circumstances surrounding the incident are yet to be established and an investigation is ongoing.”
Richardson, who was born in Adelaide, is best known for his roles as Detective Matt Ryan in the crime drama City Homicide, which he starred in from 2007 until 2011, and Gary Canning in Neighbours, whom he portrayed from 2014 until 2020.
Richardson stepped away from acting after leaving the soap, and began campaigning against vaccinations during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In 2021, he launched a failed bid to gain a seat as an independent in the Australian Senate in the 2022 federal election, before starting the NWA alongside Trihey after the pair met at an anti-vaccination mandate protest in 2021.
