The following article from ECAJ Research Office Julie Nathan was ori­gin­ally published on ABC Religion & Ethics on 31^st January, 2018.

The Rise of Australia’s Activist Far Right: How Far Will It Go?

Julie Nathan
ABC Religion & Ethics
January 31, 2018
Not long ago, the activist far right comprised a motley assort­ment of anti-Islam groups and indi­vidu­als rallying in cities across Australia railing against Islamist terrorism, Muslim immig­ra­tion and the Islam­isa­tion of Australia.
Today, the activist far right scene has been sharpened and gal­van­ised into something much bolder, more militant and poten­tially threat­en­ing to Aus­trali­an society.
Within Australia, the far right contains a wide diversity of views, and is composed of a multitude of groups of varying sizes and aims. Many tend to be active pre­dom­in­antly online or within-house, rather than publicly on the streets.
Out of this melange, three main political streams of thought have emerged in the con­tem­por­ary activist far right in Australia. These streams may be described as civic “patriots,” nation­al­ists and racial­ists.
These streams define them­selves according to their own idio­syn­crat­ic ideas about identity, about who “qualifies” as an Aus­trali­an and what con­sti­tutes the ideal demo­graph­ic make-up of Aus­trali­an society. Notions of race and culture, mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism and integ­ra­tion, are pivotal in these streams.
There is some overlap in their beliefs, some mem­ber­ship exchange, and at times a great deal of hostility between them. A brief summary of the under­ly­ing ideas and modus operandi of the groups in each stream follows.

Civic Patriotism

This stream is closest to main­stream Aus­trali­an views, except that it is overtly and implac­ably anti-Islam. Civic pat­ri­ot­ism emphas­ises alle­gi­ance to the secular state, state insti­tu­tions and civic values, with the over­rid­ing belief that cit­izen­ship is the primary determ­in­ant of group identity rather than race, ethnicity or religion.
Adherents of this stream believe that non-Europeans and non-Chris­ti­ans may immigrate to Australia on the proviso that they assim­il­ate into “Aus­trali­an” culture. In short, civic patriots believe in culture over race, in the secular state over religion, and in cit­izen­ship. However, they consider that observant Muslims are unable to assim­il­ate, and that they act as a fifth column (with collusion from the political left) and aim to Islamise Australia. This is the basis of the oppos­i­tion by these far-right groups to Islam and Muslims.
Civic patriots hold other related views which are likely shared by a much broader amorphous group of Aus­trali­ans who nev­er­the­less do not subscribe to the civic patriots’ policies of banning Muslim immig­ra­tion or overtly polem­i­ciz­ing against Islam, or who are repelled by the neo-Nazis who have been known to have promoted and attended rallies and other events organised by groups in this stream.
These related views include a con­cep­tion of Islam as a suprem­acist, total­it­ari­an and imper­i­al­ist ideology, oppress­ive of non-Muslims, which aims at world dom­in­a­tion, com­par­able to pre-modern Chris­tian­ity. A corollary of this view is sympathy for Jews, who are seen as a favoured target of Islamist ter­ror­ists, and for Israel, based on the belief that Israel, a tiny non-Muslim enclave in the Islamic dominated Middle East, is at the front line of freedom for Western civil­isa­tion. The belief is that if Israel falls to the Muslims, then domino-style, Europe too will be swept up in the Muslim avalanche and lost to indi­gen­ous Europeans.
Civic patriots are also not alone in focusing on what they perceive as the oppress­ive nature of Islam towards women, homo­sexu­als and non-Muslims, and on Islamist terrorism, female genital mutil­a­tion, child brides, alleged higher crime rates and other negative char­ac­ter­isa­tions of Muslims as a group, but they do so more publicly and stridently than others.
Examples of groups and parties falling within the civic pat­ri­ot­ism model are Party For Freedom (led by Nick Folkes), the Rise Up Australia Party (led by Pastor Danny Nalliah) and Reclaim Australia. Not all of the sup­port­ers of this stream have European back­grounds – for example, Nalliah is a Sri Lankan migrant to Australia, Folkes is married to an Asian woman, and some sup­port­ers are ethnic Chinese.

Nationalists

The second stream on the far right defines itself primarily – at least, publicly – as anti-Islam, but holds Jews also to be respons­ible for Muslim immig­ra­tion and considers Jews to be a major threat to Western society. Muslims are the immediate target; Jews are marked for targeting at a later time. Nation­al­ists pri­or­it­ise race and ethnicity over cit­izen­ship as the prime determ­in­ant of identity. This view sub­or­din­ates the state to the service of the nation (which is to say, the majority racial or ethnic group), and pri­or­it­ises the continued existence and self-iden­ti­fic­a­tion of a par­tic­u­lar race. As expressed by the group Nation­al­ist Altern­at­ive, “Our struggle is not to safeguard the state, but to safeguard the nation.”
Nation­al­ists, like Civic Patriots, are actively anti-Islam/Muslim. Both groups, for example, engage in protests against devel­op­ment applic­a­tions for mosques. Although the Nation­al­ist focus is primarily against Muslims, Nation­al­ist groups also oppose other minority groups, although this is less publicly visible.
The Nation­al­ist model is exem­pli­fied by the United Patriots Front (UPF) and its leader Blair Cottrell. In a Facebook message dis­cus­sion between Blair Cottrell and another Nation­al­ist, Neil Erikson, in February 2016 on the future direction of the UPF, Erikson advised: “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.”

Racialists

For the third stream, race, not culture or religion or even nation­al­ity, is seen as the primary determ­in­ant of identity. The long-dis­cred­ited pseudo-science of social Darwinism is relied on to rank races (itself an ill-defined concept) in a hierarchy according to their supposed physical, moral and intel­lec­tu­al fitness. Racial­ists are hostile to all people they consider to be non-Europeans, but Jews are seen as the primary enemy.
Yet, in contrast to followers of the other two streams, racial­ists are not neces­sar­ily anti-Islam or anti-Muslim. This might seem para­dox­ic­al but it reflects the World War II alliance between Nazi Germany and certain Muslim leaders, most notably the Palestini­an Arab leader Haj Amin al-Husseini.
The racialist stream is on the outermost fringes of the political spectrum, and consists primarily of neo-Nazis, and others driven by ideas of white supremacy and antisemitism. Their racialism is typically accom­pan­ied by belief in antisemitic con­spir­acy theories. Jews as a group are portrayed as somehow con­trolling the mech­an­isms of power in the world – banking, gov­ern­ment, media – to the utter detriment of the European races. Part of this mindset is the con­vic­tion that “the Jews,” along with other non-whites and leftists, are plotting “White Genocide” through mass immig­ra­tion of non-whites into white majority countries.
Anti­podean Res­ist­ance, a neo-Nazi group, typifies this third model. Unashamedly neo-Nazi, with its antisemitic, anti-homo­sexu­al and anti-non-white immig­ra­tion stance, it is a small but highly active group. It models itself on National Action in the UK (a pro­scribed terrorist organ­isa­tion) and the Nordic Res­ist­ance Movement in Scand­inavia, some of whose members have been convicted of carrying out bombing attacks. There are quite a few other estab­lished racialist groups in Australia but these have not generally been so publicly active over the last few years.
In contrast, a plethora of civic patriot and nation­al­ist groups have been active over the last several years. This activism is often in the form of public protests, such as the anti-Muslim Reclaim Australia protests through­out the major cities in 2015, anti-mosque protests in Bendigo and elsewhere, and other anti-Muslim events. Many of the protests in Melbourne were violent, with scuffles between sup­port­ers of the far right and far left. In Sydney, the nation­al­ists and social­ists were kept far apart by police, and hence there was virtually no violence.
Of note is the hard-left response to the far right. Antifa (short for “anti-fascist”) is a col­lect­ive term for street­wise anarch­ists and social­ists who engage in “direct action.” Many of them look for inspir­a­tion to iconic anti-fascist his­tor­ic­al events, such as the Battle of Cable Street (1936) in London and the Spanish Civil War (1936 – 39).
In a reversal of roles, it is now Antifa activists who promote violence through such memes as “Punch a Nazi,” and who encourage physical violence against anyone they deem to be a fascist or Nazi, whether they are or not. The Antifa social­ists see them­selves as mounting the bar­ri­cades in glorious defence of Islam and Muslims, mosque and burqa, and against the far-right bogans and bigots. Both groups typically spoil for a physical fight with each other.

Emboldening the Far Right

Events overseas, espe­cially the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. pres­id­ency in November 2016, have given the far right a sense that things are turning in their direction. They are becoming increas­ingly emboldened, as was seen in the United States in the August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Char­lottes­ville, where a con­glom­er­a­tion of far right groups across the United States converged, marched and rallied. The far right marched to chants of “Jews will not replace us” and held placards with the words “the Jewish media is going down” and “Jews are Satan’s children.” Armed far right militia men stood threat­en­ingly outside the Char­lottes­ville synagogue as the praying Jews inside held their regular Sabbath morning service. And a far-right activist drove his vehicle into a group of left wing pro­test­ers, killing one and injuring many others.
In Australia, these events coincided with the rise of an extreme hard-core activist group, Anti­podean Res­ist­ance, heralding a new stage in far-right activity in Australia. Anti­podean Res­ist­ance promotes and incites hatred and violence, as seen through some of its anti-Jewish and anti-homo­sexu­al posters, with graphic images of shooting 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 during the same sex marriage debate.
Meanwhile, three leaders from the nation­al­ist camp (Blair Cottrell, Chris­toph­er Shortis and Neil Erikson) were convicted and fined in September 2017 for inciting serious vili­fic­a­tion of Muslims through their stunt of beheading a mannequin with a toy sword outside the Bendigo Council offices in 2015. The civic patriots and nation­al­ists have somewhat quietened, for now, perhaps as they regroup or splinter further.
It remains to be seen where the far right, espe­cially the racial­ists, will go in 2018. Will the racial­ists eclipse the patriots and nation­al­ists, forcing them to move further to the right to maintain a public profile, street cred­ib­il­ity and political dynamism, or will the reverse happen with the racial­ists being seen as too extreme, and being mar­gin­al­ised and rejected within the far right? Time will tell.
An emboldened and activist far right threatens Aus­trali­a’s suc­cess­ful mul­ti­cul­tur­al society. The targeting of Jews, homo­sexu­als, Muslims and non-white immig­rants, starts with vili­fic­a­tion and demon­isa­tion, pro­pa­ganda and lies. If the aspir­a­tions and plans of groups like Anti­podean Res­ist­ance come to fruition, there will be blood in the streets across Aus­trali­an cities.
It is time that Aus­trali­an leaders in politics, media, law enforce­ment, and elsewhere, address the social dis­lo­ca­tion and the ideo­lo­gies that are often a spur to extremism, whether on the political right or left, or within religious com­munit­ies. The time to act is now.
Julie Nathan is the Research Officer for the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry and the author of its annual Report on Antisemitism in Australia.