Australia

He thinks that the Nazi wannabes are just a fringe group who turned up to try to recruit but they weren’t really involved.

And they've created that impression on purpose. Neo-Nazis are well aware that even most other nationalists dislike them, underhanded tactics and media manipulation are their bread and butter by necessity. So they control this "neutral" event that just coincidentally happens to be filled with NSN marshals, just happened to have NSN speakers and NSN equipment, and through their planning, managed to be front and centre.

It might just be another circular discussion, but if it comes up again it could be possible to explain to that landlord that even if the NSN are fringe, they're an organised group, and they successfully volunteered to become the major state organisers of M4A and successfully hijacked the event, and they'll do it again. It doesn't really matter if the rest of the crowd is sincere because they're running the show.

The kicker is that he is the child of German immigrants with a grandfather that was press ganged into the Nazi support apparatus as the Nazis were after competent photographers, you would think with that sort of family history he would be a bit wiser to the kinds of tactics fascists employ to foster a sense of acceptance and complacency in the general population for their batshit crazy movement.

Exactly. They act as a violent gang.

One thing, which is obvious to learn but can be harder to realise, is that Fascist ideology explicitly disagrees with the concept of Liberalism. And I don't mean 'progressivism', liberalism as in liberty, individual rights, the marketplace of ideas, liberal democracy. The fascist framework doesn't value good faith, it sees it as a joke, a vulnerability to exploit. They exploit liberal values, appealing to a right to free expression when it suits them and trying to deplatform anyone who says what they don't like. They say they'll come in uniform and then stack the front rows with their plainclothed cronies, their known members as marshals, and organisers downplaying or denying their clear links to the NSN.

The bottom line is, there isn't really much substance to Nazi ideology, even comparing it to Classical Fascism. It's not a cohesive worldview, it's a syncretic mash. There are former neo-Nazis (including a former moderator of the infamous Stormfront forum) who openly say that they didn't believe the Great Replacement propaganda they pushed, they knew it was ridiculous^[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7DUJbRJIKY]. They don't just lie occasionally, they systemically lie and they have no shame about it, it's fun for them.

"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past."

• Jean-Paul Sartre, 1946