The following article has been published in ABC Religion & Ethics and Times of Israel (Blog) by Julie Nathan.

Little more than a year ago, far-right activists in Australia could reas­on­ably accur­ately be divided into three ideo­lo­gic­al groupings: civic patriots, nation­al­ists and racial­ists. Whatever they might be said to have in common, these groups differed fun­da­ment­ally in their beliefs about race, religion and cit­izen­ship. But now, something far more sinister is going on. There has been a move further to the right by the civic patriots and nation­al­ists, and a general con­ver­gence around the racialist myth of “White Replace­ment.”

In 2019, the far right began its activ­it­ies with a rally on St. Kilda beach in Melbourne, protest­ing so-called “African crime.” The “Reclaim St. Kilda” rally was organised by two well-known far-right figures, Blair Cottrell and Neil Erikson ― both Hitler-admirers and anti-Muslim cam­paign­ers. Some of those at the rally were openly neo-Nazi, dis­play­ing Hitler salutes and flaunting a Nazi SS helmet. The rally was addressed by Senator Fraser Anning, who has stated he would bar Muslims from migrating to Australia. However, the par­ti­cipants were not all white suprem­acists. In attend­ance were also some Viet­namese-Aus­trali­ans who had been violently attacked by Sudanese-Aus­trali­an youth.

Such political exploit­a­tion of racism and religious bigotry is nothing new. It preys on fears about non-European immig­ra­tion into Australia, and attempts to revive the old “White Australia” con­vic­tion that Australia should be almost wholly, if not fully, composed of those of European ethnicity and Christian culture. Even indi­gen­ous Aus­trali­ans are air-brushed out of the picture. Variants of this kind of “nativist” populism are per­col­at­ing in Australia, and through­out the world. 

What is new is the concept of “White Replace­ment” (sometimes called “White Genocide”) which claims that there is a global Jewish plot to “import” non-Europeans ― espe­cially Africans, Asians and Arabs ― into Europe, North America and Aus­tralasia for the express purpose of “des­troy­ing” European culture, and sub­jug­at­ing and decim­at­ing those of European ethnicity.

Those who subscribe to the “White Replace­ment” myth believe that in this way, people of ethnic European back­ground will become a minority group, out­numbered and dominated in countries where once they were a majority of the pop­u­la­tion. This is the kind of feared “replace­ment” that the marchers at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Char­lottes­ville, Virginia, were referring to when they chanted, “Jews will not replace us!” It is the mirror opposite of the claim often made by far-left anti­semites that Jews are an integral part of the “White oppressor” estab­lish­ment.

The “White Replace­ment” myth is yet another mutation of classical antisemitism, the paranoid fantasy about a world Jewish con­spir­acy. The Working Defin­i­tion of Antisemitism adopted by the 31-nation Inter­na­tion­al Holocaust Remem­brance Alliance describes it as:

making men­dacious, dehu­man­iz­ing, demon­iz­ing, or ste­reo­typ­ic­al alleg­a­tions about Jews as such or the power of Jews as col­lect­ive ― such as, espe­cially but not exclus­ively, the myth about a world Jewish con­spir­acy or of Jews con­trolling the media, economy, gov­ern­ment or other societal insti­tu­tions.

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One advocate of the “White Replace­ment” con­spir­acy is Shermon Burgess, former leader of the anti-Muslim groups “Reclaim Australia” and the “United Patriots Front,” and one-time cam­paign­er with Blair Cottrell. Burgess later became openly antisemitic. He has referred to Jews as “leeches” who “control 75% of the entire world’s wealth … They run the gov­ern­ments of the world.” Burgess openly espouses and promotes the “White Replace­ment” myth: “Zionist Jews who run the Central bank/EU/UN flood White nations with hordes of Islamists to implement #White­Gen­o­cide”; and, “If your religion involves flooding all White Countries with mass Immig­ra­tion to wipe out an entire race … You might be a Jew!”

Burgess also advocates Nazism (“Revolu­tion then National Socialism or death is the answer”), “Race War” (“RAHOWA [Racial Holy War] is going to be a great day of racial awakening and vengeance for our people”) and racial violence (“Support your local Nation­al­ist FIGHT CLUB. Society is decaying the Zionist glob­al­ists are robbing us blind and flooding migrants into our nation’s ― the WAR is coming, BE READY!!!”). 

The neo-Nazi group Anti­podean Res­ist­ance, which began in October 2016 and became inactive online in late September 2018, blamed Jews for non-white immig­ra­tion in its pro­pa­ganda posters, although it did not spe­cific­ally espouse the “White Replace­ment” myth. However, from the seedbed of Anti­podean Res­ist­ance a new group, calling itself Identity Australia, emerged in October 2018, intent on opposing non-European immig­ra­tion and promoting the myth of “White Replace­ment.” So, there is an Identity Australia sticker bearing the words: “Identity Australia: Reject Your Replace­ment.” 

The online output and street activity of Identity Australia bears a close resemb­lance to that of Anti­podean Res­ist­ance, but Identity Australia appears to have learned the lesson that open support for Nazism and for the exterm­in­a­tion of Jews and homo­sexu­als, as espoused by Anti­podean Res­ist­ance, is a turn-off for most people. Identity Australia instead seeks to appeal more broadly to the ordinary “white Aussie.” Its discourse is shorn of Nazi ideology and imagery, and aims to appeal simply to “white” xeno­phobic nation­al­ism, all the while con­ceal­ing the antisemitism at its core.

If Identity Australia rep­res­ents a retreat from crude Nazism to a more generic white nation­al­ism, Cottrell and Erikson have evolved in the opposite direction. Initially, they down­played their antisemitism, describ­ing their strategy as “Muslims now and Jews later.” In one online exchange, first publicly exposed in February 2016, Erikson said to Cottrell: “My personal opinion is stick to the Muslim shit and Cultural Marxism for max support do Jews later you don’t need to show your full hand.” Cottrell responded: “Yeah good advice and that’s my current attitude as well. It will take years to prepare people for the Jewish problem. If any of us came out with it now we would be slaughtered by public opinion.”

Cottrell is now less cautious. His lead­er­ship of the Lads Society has demon­strated how difficult it is for the groups he is asso­ci­ated with to paper over their Nazi core. The Lads Society was formed in Melbourne in September 2017, and seems to be little more than a front for Anti­podean Res­ist­ance. The leader of the Lads Society in Sydney, formed in April 2018, is Mark McDonald, former leader of the Nazi group Squadron 88, which in 2014 and 2015 was respons­ible for let­ter­box­ing antisemitic leaflets in Sydney suburbs with large con­cen­tra­tions of Jewish residents. Nev­er­the­less, Cottrell uses a slightly more nuanced term for “White Replace­ment”; he calls it “Ethnic Replace­ment.”

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Online there has been a notable increase in articles on websites and posts on social media espousing and promoting the “White Replace­ment” myth, in Australia and overseas. David Hilton (a.k.a. Moses Apo­static­us) often promotes the “White Replace­ment” con­spir­acy in his articles published on the far-right XYZ website. Hilton also organised antisemitic posters in Brisbane and Sydney in November 2017.

The potential for violence which such online posts portend was graph­ic­ally demon­strated in the United States in October 2018 by Robert Bowers, who wrote on Gab, a Twitter-like platform which is a haven for extrem­ists and racists, ” Screw your optics, I’m going in.” Shortly after­wards, he entered the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pitt­s­burgh, Pennsylvania, and murdered eleven Jews. After­wards, Bowers told police that he was motivated by his belief that “the Jews” were “com­mit­ting genocide to my people.” 

Chillingly, these words were echoed by another Gab user, an Aus­trali­an named Ryan Fletcher, who wrote, “I think its about time to say ‘f*** your optics I’m going in’.” Fletcher has a dark history of calling for the murder of Jews in Australia and worldwide, and of posting images of Jews being killed, on his Gab account. Fletcher sub­scribes to the myth: “#White gentiles are waking up to the agenda of #ZOG (which is #White­Gen­o­cide).” “ZOG” stands for “Zionist Occupied Gov­ern­ment,” a term used to insinuate that “the Jews” control the United States and other Western gov­ern­ments. Fletcher also writes articles for XYZ.

The activist far right, in its oppos­i­tion to “non-white” immig­ra­tion and mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, ori­gin­ally focussed their venom at Muslims and then at Africans. With the open adoption of the “White Replace­ment” myth, it is likely that the far right will continue to target those two com­munit­ies while increas­ing the rhetoric that it is “the Jews” who stand “behind it all.” Their message will be ― and, indeed, already is ― that since this is being orches­trated by “the Jews” as part of a “Jewish plot” to destroy the West, the Jews need to be elim­in­ated, one way or another. Doubtless, then, any problem with Muslims or Africans or any other non-European group, will be con­sidered either man­age­able or at an end.

Ominously, many in the far right are claiming that 2019 will be the year that Australia is “taken back” are openly talking about sparking a “Race War.” It is unlikely that calls for a “Race War” will be taken up by masses of people. Aus­trali­ans in general have tra­di­tion­ally been too sceptical of zealots on a mission of any kind, to be receptive to extremist calls for violence from any quarter. However, the scope for a lone, indoc­trin­ated fanatic like Bowers, or a con­spir­at­ori­al group of people like him, to wreak murder and mayhem in Australia should not be under­es­tim­ated. Will political and civil society leaders adhere to the standards of zero-tolerance for racism, and incite­ment to violence, in actions as well as words? Time will tell.

Julie Nathan is the Research Director for the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry (ECAJ), and author of the annual ECAJ Report on Antisemitism in Australia.