The following article was ori­gin­ally published in the fourth edition of the WA Liberal Party’s policy journal, The Con­trib­ut­or, August 2018.
UPDATE: This article has also been published by ABC Religion & Ethics.

Can the centre-right hold in an age of polarisation?

Peter Wertheim
The Contributor, Vol 4.

August 2018

 
Miniscule far-right political groups have for decades inhabited the murky fringes of Aus­trali­an politics. The last 10 years have seen a bur­geon­ing of such groups. They represent every con­ceiv­able gradation of far-right political opinion, from anti-immigrant and anti-globalist groups who seek to ‘restore’ Aus­trali­an democracy, to secretive cabals of Hitler-saluting neo-Nazis who are intent on over­throw­ing it. Young white males in search of meaning and purpose seem espe­cially sus­cept­ible to their call, the mirror opposites of their jihadi coun­ter­parts.
The insec­ur­it­ies engendered through­out the western world by tech­no­lo­gic­al dis­rup­tion, financial collapse, political scandals, mass migration and the spread of terrorism have convinced these groups that the inter­na­tion­al and supra­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions which have formed the political, economic and military archi­tec­ture of the post-World War II world – including the UN, NATO and the EU – no longer work. In their place, they have sought refuge in nation­al­ism and a re-assertion of state sov­er­eignty.
With the electoral success of Donald Trump in the US on a platform of “America First”, of Brexit in the UK and of ultra-nation­al­ist parties in Europe, it is little wonder that these groups feel that they have the political wind in their sails. Each in their own way taps into “a deep current of anger, resent­ment and nostalgia for an imagined past that was orderly, pre­dict­able and pat­ri­arch­al”.ⁱ
Still largely hidden from the wider community, but destined to burst into open acrimony at some stage, are the ideo­lo­gic­al fault-lines that divide these groups. My colleague, Julie Nathan, has discerned three cat­egor­ies of far-Right groups who she iden­ti­fies as “civic patriots”, “nation­al­ists” and “racial­ists”.ⁱⁱ
“Civic pat­ri­ot­ism” is the stream that is closest to the views of Australia’s main­stream political parties, except that it is overtly and implac­ably anti-Islam and favours an immig­ra­tion policy that expli­citly excludes Muslims. Civic patriots, in common with many con­ser­vat­ives, believe that Australia’s con­sti­tu­tion­al, political and legal found­a­tions have been distorted and under­mined by a con­cat­en­a­tion of global and local forces – “inter­na­tion­al bankers”, “cultural Marxists” and “global Islam” – which they believe have operated to enrich a small elite at the expense of the many. They seek a res­tor­a­tion of the integrity of “com­prom­ised” tra­di­tion­al western insti­tu­tions.
Civic patriots subscribe to the ste­reo­type of Muslims as having a super­ses­sion­ist theology and pros­elyt­ising history, which makes them incapable of assim­il­at­ing into Australia’s secular society. However, the concern of civic patriots is to preserve what they see as Australia’s tra­di­tion­al political and civic culture, not a bio­lo­gic­al race. Civic pat­ri­ot­ism thus differs from much of tra­di­tion­al far-Right discourse by dis­tan­cing itself from antisemitism. Indeed many civic patriots see Israel as western civilisation’s front line of defence against the threat of “global Islam”.
Australia’s “nation­al­ists” share the anti-Islam and anti-globalist creed, but they differ from the civic patriots in that they see tra­di­tion­al western insti­tu­tions as part of the problem. While cri­ti­cising “cultural Marxists” for poisoning society with “identity politics”, they loudly promote the identity of Australia’s majority racial or ethnic group, aping their coun­ter­parts in the US with the slogan “white power”. They define them­selves primarily as members of a perceived race and ethnicity, not as citizens of a State. For the moment, Muslims are their main target, but their bigotry extends to all minority ethnic com­munit­ies. Jews are earmarked as a long-term target.ⁱⁱⁱ
The “racial­ists” are a more extreme version of the nation­al­ists. They seek the violent overthrow of democracy and the impos­i­tion of an expli­citly Nazi dic­tat­or­ship by “Aryan” whites. The newest such group, Anti­podean Res­ist­ance, whose Hitler-saluting members hide behind the anonymity of “death’s‑head” masks in all their videos and photos, actively promotes and incites hatred and violence. Its anti-Jewish and anti-homo­sexu­al posters include graphic images depicting the shooting of Jews and homo­sexu­als in the head. One poster called to “Legalise the execution of Jews”. Other posters urged homo­sexu­als to commit suicide; one of these was widely dis­trib­uted during the same sex marriage debate.
There remains an ideo­lo­gic­al bright line that divides the main­stream right-of-centre parties in Australia from the far Right. A corner­stone of the Liberal Party in par­tic­u­lar is its com­mit­ment to the freedom of the indi­vidu­al, which takes priority over the demands of any col­lect­ive – State, social class, ethnic group or “race”. The Liberals are also ideo­lo­gic­ally committed to democracy, the rule of law and the equal rights of all Aus­trali­ans regard­less of race, gender or sexual pref­er­ence. There are elements within the thinking of all three cat­egor­ies of far Right groups which are incom­pat­ible with these values.
Yet Aus­trali­an history suggests that some followers of the con­tem­por­ary far Right will adopt the tactic of “entryism” (or entrism) of the centre-Right parties, if they have not already begun to do so, if only to push the latter’s policies further right­wards. The tactic was invented by Trot­sky­ists in the 1930s in their attempt to make social demo­crat­ic parties more militant, but it has also been adopted in Australia over the years by the far Right.
The presence of several hundred Nazi col­lab­or­at­ors and war criminals among the 2 million migrants who arrived in Australia from Europe in the first 20 years after World War II has been well-doc­u­mented.^iv
They came from the Balkans and central and eastern Europe and were fan­at­ic­ally nation­al­ist, anti-communist and anti-liberal in their politics.
Several of them and their sym­path­isers allegedly went on to commit terrorist and other violent acts on Aus­trali­an soil.^v
Some became active in the Liberal Party from the 1950s onwards. László Megay, who had been listed as a wanted war criminal by the UN War Crimes Com­mis­sion, was a leader of the Liberal Party’s Migrant Advisory Council in the late 1950s, sharing a speaking platform with senior Liberal politi­cians, including a Federal Minister. As mayor of Ungvár in wartime Hungary, Megay is accused of enthu­si­ast­ic­ally aiding the Nazis in rounding up the town’s 18,000 Jews and confining them to a ghetto in appalling con­di­tions before they were trans­por­ted to the Auschwitz death camp where most of them were murdered.^vi
Another figure, Ljenko Urbančič, presided over the Liberal Ethnic Council in the late 1970s and was a member of the Executive of the NSW Liberal Party. His rise within the Liberal Party was inter­rup­ted in 1979 with public rev­el­a­tions about his role in wartime Slovenia as an anti-western, antisemitic pro­pa­ganda broad­caster for the Nazis.^vii
Urbančič nev­er­the­less escaped expulsion from the party. He and his asso­ci­ates, who included other extreme-Right emigrées with histories of col­lab­or­a­tion with the Nazis, were among the ‘Uglies’ faction and continued to be active within the NSW Liberal Party well into the 2000s. Their openly declared mission was to push party policies and oper­a­tions further to the Right, and at times they turned on moderate Liberals who stood in their way.^viii
Another notorious attempt to infilt­rate a Coalition party was the push in the early 1970s by the antisemitic, white suprem­acist Aus­trali­an League of Rights to flood the National Party of Australia with its members and effect a takeover. After a struggle lasting several years, main­stream Nationals under the lead­er­ship of Doug Anthony defeated the League.^ix
Looking back, one can say that in the climate of the Cold War those on the centre-Right of politics, who were under­stand­ably pre-occupied with Soviet aggres­sion abroad and Soviet espionage within Australia, were blind-sided on the opposite political flank. They were often oblivious to the threat to democracy and indi­vidu­al freedom posed by those on the extreme Right.
In our own time, one can only hope that this kind of mistake is not repeated. Legit­im­ate concerns about Islamist terrorism and threats to democracy ought not to become pre-occu­pa­tions that leave us with a blind-spot about the gathering threat to our democracy, freedoms and safety emanating from the far Right of politics.
Peter Wertheim AM is co-CEO of the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry
Endnotes:
ⁱ Anne-Marie Slaughter, ‘Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin want to create a new world order’, Financial Times, 22 July 2018: https://outline.com/JF8XUG
ⁱⁱ ‘The Rise of Australia’s activist far Right’, ABC Religion & Ethics Report, 31 January 2018: http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2018/01/31/4796789.htm
ⁱⁱⁱ Ibid.
^iv Mark Aarons, War Criminals Welcome (Melbourne: Black Inc, 2001).
^v “In the 1960s and 1970s there were sixteen bomb attacks and numerous other incidents against Yugoslav interests in Australia, many if not most of them attrib­uted to [ultra-nation­al­ist] Croatians, although some were believed to be the work of the Yugoslav Intel­li­gence Service”: John Blaxland, The Protest Years – The Official History of ASIO: 1963 – 1975 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2015), p.123
^vi Mark Aarons, War Criminals Welcome (Melbourne: Black Inc, 2001), pp.318 – 329
^vii Ibid, p.384.
^viii Ibid, pp. 387 – 9.
^ix Andrew Campbell, The Aus­trali­an League of Rights: a study in political extremism and sub­ver­sion, (Colling­wood: Outback Press, 1978).