Nazis don’t build broad churches
The far right looks to find a place in the Australian political landscape at the expense of the legacy of conservative politics.
At an anti-trans rally in Melbourne hosting a foreign anti-trans agitator, a group of Nazis brazenly arrived in support, took to the steps of Victoria’s parliament throwing Seig Heils and walking in lockstep behind a protective line of police down Spring Street. On that very weekend by coincidence, the news spoke of concerning revelations of far-right elements in police and Australian Defence Force ranks across the country, appalled onlookers watched these extremists march up and down on the tram tracks muffling their poison through hate covered masks concealing their identity, even high-fiving a police officer that protected them.
Even more surprising was the attendance of sitting Victorian Liberal member Moira Deeming, whose unapologetic bolstering of far-right causes created a dilemma for the newly minted Liberal leader John Pesutto and his shambolic party room. After initially repudiating the actions of his minister and harkening back to the essence of classical liberal values in an impassioned speech calling for her expulsion, Pesutto later relented under pressure and suspended Deeming after a divided party meeting, allowing her to continue with a suspension if she agreed to condemn the anti-trans activists she broke bread with. Deeming later would later walk out of the meeting, change her profile picture to a defiant post decision snap, and bragged to the very activists on Twitter that she never condemned them.
Today we see the mainstream conservative movement flirt with nazi inspired white supremacy. When the pandemic was raging in its first year, among the shifting sands of the economy and geopolitical unrest, ASIO chief Mike Burgess spoke with concern, pleading with the Australian public to understand a grave new threat facing domestic security in Australia. After decades of pursuing radical Islamic individuals and groups that were suspected of planning domestic terror attacks, Burgess warned the caseloads were rapidly shifting away from religious fundamental Islamic terrorism to homegrown far-right ethno-nationalism.
Greg Barton is Research Professor in Global Islamic Politics at Deakin University and an expert in ethno-nationalist extremism speaks on the proliferation of the nazi like movement, noting that adherents to the ideology have “risen sharply” since the globalisation of far right ethnonationalism due to the influence of established global movements and the proliferation of radical ideas on the internet. Barton says that the situation is compounded by a long history of racism in Australia and a wilful ignorance towards the alarming emergence of homegrown white supremacy in political discussion. As the government wishes the issue will remain out of sight on the periphery, some elements of the malevolent corporate press want to bring it front and centre into the Australian discussion.
The press has been instrumental in framing these cultural wars over the decades, neglecting their responsibility in their duty to mitigate the spread of far-right extremism. Barton mentions the effects the of the oxygen supplied by the press to the likes of Pauline Hanson, allowing her to communicate her modern conception of ideas like the “great replacement”, and the political decision-making of those like John Howard who allowed her ideology to feature in scare campaigning during the 2001 election, setting a building block for the modern political environment we see today. In the years since, Hanson has been joined by other more extreme ideologues who have been afforded political space by irresponsible mainstream political leaders and handed redemption arcs by pundits, journalists and ‘Dancing with the Stars’.
Over time, we watched how the corporate media twisted the reality on boat people, the Cronulla Riots, and African gangs, later spilling out into the amalgamated culture wars around gender, abortion and religion. With all the wanton damage and Avgas on the steel girders, Murdoch acolytes like Joe Hildebrand continue to squirt Zippo fuel on the conflagration, warning of “bothsiding” when it comes to banning Nazi symbology. In the daily propaganda sections, Andrew Bolt gets a bunch of dollars per word to remind us that unlike actual nazis, socialists actually killed more people than Hitler, spinning an *asterisk for nazis in the mainstream political discourse like a hateful funnel-web spider. The situation calls for restraint from the press to ensure that these groups don’t get free advertising, but so far, we have not seen much.
We have known about these Nazis for a while, using anti-lockdown protests to recruit new members. We saw Nazis in the Grampians, Nazis in the Victorian young Liberal membership ranks, nazi mailouts in South Australia, Nazi salutes at an Australia Cup soccer final, Nazis training at a boxing gym in North Sunshine last year, and once again posing with runic arts and crafts at the same North Sunshine gym last week. Leaders of far right groups work in pharmacies and brag in nazi Telegram groups about how they passively-aggressively shame women for buying contraception, senior neo-Nazis fly off to fight alongside other Nazis in foreign wars, small coordinated cells share paraphernalia, they find safe spaces in insular ideological Discord groups and private chat portals that act as echo chambers for hatred.
Homo-erotic blood pacts are being made by sexually repressed lonely men on the fringes of Melbourne, fuelled by a patchwork of hydra heads farting out an odorous amalgam of foreign conspiratorial thinking. Broken men mash up legacy Nazi pastiche with ill-defined modern hatreds, extruding a confusing rage through an endemic self-loathing to manifest into feelings that compel someone to emulate the visceral essence of the most horrible stanza in modern human existence. Is enough being done to adequately address this emerging social crisis? Law enforcement is at a crossroads with government on deciding on how it wishes to address this social issue, made more complex with internal challenges of their own, but most Australians wish to call this out how it really is, and demand support, courage, and respect from every aspect of the political class to do so.
Truth is, Kyle-Rittenhouse-dressing political staffers, the incessant dog-whistling towards the identity wars by Coalition backbenchers, inappropriate responses by the media, deformed denouncement by unaccountable leaders, and compromised senior figures who constantly adjust how much far-right flirting is safe and acceptable as they look to shift the political paradigm – this stuff all adds up. Deeming just adds to the stack of unacceptability and disingenuousness now given quarter by vocal sections in the conservative politico-media landscape, the commandeering of party levers by small groups of extremists now drown out the moderate majority, and see the party of Menzies lose Blue Ribbon seats, historic by-elections, and the political capital they have built over generations. All for a couple of angry loudmouths with small exclusionary and regressive ideas.
Austrian-British philosopher Karl Popper spoke about the folly in tolerating intolerance in a good society, and the lack of courage by the Victoria Liberals to eject Moira Deeming is an example of such a consideration. State governments have banned the use of Nazi symbols in the days since the event, but it is only a cosmetic measure to fix a deep rooted social problem. Unable to forge inclusive national ideas after a decade of Coalition revisionism and small mindedness, the current batch of decision makers on both sides of the political isle fall worryingly short of condemning this deeply troubling social phenomenon with the ferocity it deserves, and are faced with an expectation not to tolerate the intolerable.