We need to take violent threats to our movement seriously but, explains Hamish McPherson, rather than just react to the far right, the left should focus on building a coherent and democratic alternative to the establishment and modern capitalism, the root cause of limitations for the working class.
The sight of Hitler-loving Nazi Thomas Sewell brazenly speaking to Aussie-flag-draped crowds in front of Victoria’s Parliament House and the violent attack on Aboriginal people at Camp Sovereignty in the Botanic Gardens has rightly set off alarm bells.
The usual response of the organised left is to hold counter demonstrations. While these can be a useful signal that anti-migrant street mobilisations will be challenged, the fact that such a counter demonstration in London this month was swamped by hundreds of thousands mobilised by far-right activists waving English flags shows the limitations of this approach.
Rather than being reactive to the far right, the left should rethink its strategy and focus on building a coherent and democratic alternative to modern capitalism, which is the root cause of limitations for the working class.
We must be the challenge to the establishment and not merely echo the empty liberal anti-racist posturing of the state and corporate Australia. Otherwise, our activism will be sidelined by the initiative of the right or be a dull echo of the establishment, and not present a real challenge to either.
Across the country tens of thousands of people answered the call to “March for Australia” on 31 August against non-white migrants in a mobilisation in part orchestrated by the National Socialist Network and other shadowy white nationalist figures.
The racism of many was open, with publicity extolling people to ‘Take our country back, defend our heritage, defend our culture, stop mass immigration’. Leaflets were distributed targeting the South Asian community with the false claim of ‘More Indians in 5 years than Italians and Greeks in 100’. At the rallies non-white attendees or bystanders were physically ejected or assaulted and faced chants that called for “deportation now!”
Sewell and eight of his wannabe Nazi ‘patriots’ are now in police custody or facing charges following the attack on Camp Sovereignty. However, the marches showed a disturbing level of national co-ordination by the small fascist group which encouraged supporters to attend in plain clothes, alongside uniformed black shirts. In many cities the NSN acted as marshals, leading chants and gaining the platform to spout their toxic hate.
This follows a build-up of often violent and increasingly confident publicity seeking actions by the NSN, especially in Victoria. There have been training camps in national parks with assaults on campers, intimidation of a refugee protest camp and disruption of Welcome to Country speeches at ANZAC day.
Their attendance at the anti-trans ‘Let Women Speak’ rally set off a rolling crisis in the Victorian Liberal Party that ended the leadership of John Pesutto. The Nazis have also held masked para-military style street marches in Melbourne, Ballarat and Corowa.
Cost of living a cover for national chauvinism
The role of the NSN in the March for Australia shows their intent to promote fascism in the garb of white Australian ‘patriotism’. According to their rhetoric the marches mobilised ‘ordinary folk’ worried by impacts of mass migration on housing affordability and living standards.
To what extend is this true? And how should the left and labour movement respond to this seeming upsurge in far-right racism?
The far-right talking points about wider support should be treated with scepticism. While the marches mobilised numbers, they weren’t just suburban mums and dads concerned by housing costs and duped by the right. There were plenty of private schoolboy cosplayers, including former Scotch College student Hugo Lennon, who was prominent at the Melbourne rally.
There was a hodgepodge of right-wing grievances, including the anti-vax conspiracy crowd, but the uniting feature was anti-migrant national chauvinism and a reactionary call for a return to the White Australia of 50 years ago.
This vision of the past is out of sync with the lived reality of the great bulk of working-class people. Most urban workplaces and communities are multi-ethnic, and many communities rely on migrant workers to provide the health, aged care and human services that people value. These factors provide a positive lived experience that insulates most workers from overt racist ideology.
This cannot be taken for granted, and anti-chauvinist sentiment should be strengthened by the left and unions – connecting it more directly with the need for working class unity and class agency to advance our material and political interests and well-being.
When unions such as the Electrical Trades Union (QLD/NT) have run such campaigns, they’ve had persuasive value beyond the well-intentioned official government backed ‘anti-racism strategies’.
A class-based approach is also needed as an antidote to the tokenistic corporate ‘diversity’ programs that patronise workers and which are viewed with cynicism when corporate employers show little genuine interest in the actual rights of the workforce.
The March for Australia was directly connected with a recurring appeal to racism by sections of the establishment – including populists and the right of the Liberal Party.
On their own, thugs wearing jackets with HH (Heil Hitler) initials and extolling the racial purity ideas of the German Nazi Party have little to no chance of becoming a mass movement in Australia. The real threat of fascism arises from the establishment when it is faced with its own mortality – if the working class rises up against it.
In such moments, elements of the ruling establishment can use fascist thugs to mobilise. We are in no such period now, however, we have seen concerning signs that ‘mainstream’ conservative elements in Australia are providing a space for the NSN and other far-right currents.
Queensland federal MP Bob Katter spoke at the Townsville rally using a megaphone provided by the NSN covered in weird Nazi rune symbols. Pauline Hanson got behind the push and moved an unsuccessful Senate motion to establish a parliamentary inquiry into “the impact of high immigration on the Australian economy”.
While the Coalition officially opposed the motion, National Senators Bridget McKenzie and Ross Cadell, both members of the opposition frontbench, along with Liberal Senators Sarah Henderson, Alex Antic and Matt Canavan all voted in favour of the inquiry.
This provides context to the claim by NT Senator Jacinta Price that Labor is importing Indian migrants to bolster its vote. After some dithering by Sussan Ley this cost Price her frontbench role.
Since then, Liberal leadership contender Andrew Hastie has taken up the anti-immigration call, claiming in social media posts that, “We’re starting to feel like strangers in our own home” due to what he called “uncontrolled immigration”.
Hastie and the reactionary LNP Senators represent an established hard-right element in the Liberal Party who have long sought to appeal to xenophobia. John Howard echoed Pauline Hanson’s national chauvinism and dog-whistle racism as a key part of his Prime Ministership, especially by targeting refugee arrivals. This period witnessed the anti-Arab Cronulla race riots, fomented by radio propagandist, alleged serial abuser and Liberal stalwart Alan Jones.
Tony Abbott enthusiastically took up the cudgel with his “Stop the Boats” campaign to bring down the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Governments. His henchmen Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton were always obliging in persecuting asylum seekers or whipping up fear of “African crime gangs”.
All the while Federal Labor either failed to oppose or adopted the same logic by joining in on the repression of asylum seeker arrivals. Let’s not forget it was the Gillard government that reopened the Nauru and Manus Island offshore detention centres.
Capitalism and migration
The Australian establishment and capitalist class have a contradictory attitude to migration. As a whole, capitalists benefit economically from and need a steady influx of migrant labour to sustain economic growth for the extraction of surplus labour, especially with declining birth rates and the declining rate of profit.
Afterall, Australia originates as a ‘work colony’ of the British Empire. Unlike South Africa, where colonists sought to exploit the local African population, Australia relied on genocide against First Nations and the importation of a European working class for surplus extraction.
However, the capitalist class must cohere workers around the nation-state, and will use national chauvinism and anti-foreigner sentiment to do so. So, we see a section of their political representatives willing to appeal to crude xenophobia for political gain, to destabilise Labor governments and grease the path to power.
In Australia, the capitalist class is broadly divided on this question between the more chauvinist and xenophobic resource extraction (mining) and agriculture industries and the more ‘urbane’ banking, retail and city-based fractions of capital. It is no accident that one relies more on migrant labour than the other.
Dividing the working class on the basis of national chauvinism works to cohere the population around the state against foreign powers and also works to weaken working-class unity at home.
We see this appeal to backward views today being pursued by the well-funded Advance group, which has produced a series of online anti-immigration ads. One ad warns the Albanese government has “flooded the country” with migrants, resulting in the country’s values “being threatened”.
Tony Abbott is an Advance board member and recently published a newsletter titled “Mass Immigration Across the Anglo-Sphere Must Cease”, which argues that “no one should come to Australia without an expectation of living in an Anglo-Celtic culture, with the Judeo-Christian ethos”. This approach is similar to that espoused by US President Donald Trump at the UN General Assembly in September.
Jillian Segal, the anti-semitism envoy, also has links to Advance. Her husband John Roth is a director of company Henroth Investments, which donated $50,000 to Advance in 2023-24. Segal has been missing in action when it comes to opposing open Nazis marching on the streets, declining to comment on “any particular incidents” when directly questioned.
Response of the left
The March for Australia has prompted a series of left responses driven by a rediscovered sense of urgency around the issue. This seems a recurring pattern.
While it is important to seek methods to counter and defeat the influence of the racist far right and fascists, many of the strategies adopted seem unlikely to be successful in any meaningful way.
My own union, the AEU (Vic Branch) has called for a Community Summit to be convened to discuss a response and has joined six other unions in endorsing a broad Unite Against Racism rally called by the Refugee Action Collective. While this united strategy is a good start, it is unclear at this stage if any ongoing, serious anti-racist organising will eventuate from either initiative.
The RAC rally is effectively the initiative of the socialist group Solidarity, which is adopting a united movement building approach by involving migrant groups, unions, civil society and Labor Friends of Palestine.
The larger group on the non-Labor left, Socialist Alternative and its electoral front the Victorian Socialists, are more focused on confronting the NSN and racist right on the streets by calling counter-protests with a select number of other far left ‘anti-fascist’ groups.
It is appealing to imagine humiliating and sweeping the Nazis off the streets with mass protests. But the narrow approach SA and VS take to organising these actions pretty much guarantees this won’t be the case. The result is a series of street actions in which varying numbers of left and right protesters face off, divided by hundreds of police.
There is value in demonstrating that the racists face opposition and to act in public solidarity with the First Nations, migrant, multi-ethnic and LGBTQ communities that they threaten.
However, beyond that the actions run the risk of being performative and morally gratifying for a minority without really impacting the far right or shifting the views of wider layers of working people. We risk being seen by most people as part of a street circus, and not part of a solution to confront the real challenges capitalist society throws at us.
By being reactive to the racists, the counter-protests give them the power of initiative, taking up energy that could otherwise be used to build an anti-racist campaign and a left firmly based in workplaces and suburban communities.
Some Labor people are arguing that the state should proscribe the NSN as a terrorist entity to ensure it is crushed. Some have called for the New Zealand-born Sewell to be deported. However, relying on state repression comes with its own dangers. We have seen in the UK how the application of the ‘terrorist’ designation can also be used against the left – in that case against the civil disobedience of Palestine Action.
We also need to be mindful that while we grapple with how to stop a minority of knuckle draggers the main threat may come from a revived establishment far right. Leading conservatives, inspired by the success of Trump’s MAGA movement, have ambitions to copy the playbook here. That is where the real threat to the working class lies.
Alexander Downer, former opposition leader and paid-up member of the Adelaide establishment, recently wrote an opinion article in The Australian titled US, Europe ‘counter-revolution’ to hit major parties here.
The tone of the piece has echoes of mainstream conservatives like Menzies, who in the 1930s looked with satisfaction at the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany for its capacity to deal with the left.
In the article Downer attacks what he describes as the ‘new social democratic orthodoxy’ that has arisen since the 2008 global financial crisis and predictably criticises climate change action, diversity and inclusion policies and claims that “corporations have been forced into downgrading the profit motive and replacing it with …environmental, social and governance targets”.
He notes the collapse in support for the traditional conservative and centre left parties in the UK and Europe and rise of the far-right parties, including the Alternative for Germany and Giorgia Meloni’s government in Italy.
Downer writes in positive terms about the March for Australia as being motivated by people’s concern about “the impact immigration is having on the traditional culture and way of life of their country” and as a promising sign of a potential ‘counter-revolution’ starting here.
Downer asserts that “in Europe and America, the counter-revolution is being driven by conservatives and classical liberals. It has not been driven by Nazis, fascists, homophobes and misogynists” before concluding:
“Either way, my prediction is that there will be a counter-revolution in Australia just as there has been in America and Europe. It will take longer in Australia partly because fashions emerge here later than in America and the UK. But it’s partly because, so far, no leader of the movement has yet to emerge. But it will happen whether you like it or not. The counter-revolution is coming.”
This may be a reactionary pipe dream, but the trends Downer notes cannot be dismissed. However, what exists as a ‘social democratic orthodoxy’ in Downer’s imagination is nothing but the capitalist state adapting to post-neoliberal realities. It shows that if the working class actually mobilised for revolutionary and socialist change, reactionaries like Downer would embrace fascism whole-heartedly.
The failure of centrist and neoliberal ALP governments to deliver meaningful improvements can open the space for rightwing revival. Labor figure Wayne Swan has recently warned of just this possibility, with Albanese Labor elected on a low primary vote and without deep support, especially among lower income workers.
Swan’s response to this is for the ALP to keep to low ambitions. For the socialist left, we need to promote an audacious program of democratic and radical change that can capture the imagination of the working class.
The vast majority of working people in Australia have no interest in the divisive and narrow agendas of either the far right or the corporate establishment. But people are under pressure and tired of the erosion of living standards and general wellbeing.
We have the capacity to stop the development of a racist right ‘counter-revolution’ in Australia.
To do so the labour movement and left need to be more ambitious about developing and building a robust pro-working class, anti-capitalist and socialist political program and organisation in the working-class communities of modern Australia. We need to break from both the small group mentality of the far left and the incremental caution of modern Labor. In the long run that’s what will ensure the defeat the far right, in whatever guise they periodically rear their ugly heads.